The demons we slay at the ruins of the Elven baths prove tougher than most, and we are beyond weary once we're done. No one complains when I suggest that we set up camp in what was once possibly the antechamber of this ancient ruin; we are too wrung out to stumble our way back to the nearest camp, especially since it's growing dark. The walls will provide some shelter this night.
I can only guess at the function of some of these rooms; it's difficult to tell when all that remains are archways and stonework. What mosaics once gleamed on the walls has long since been lost to time, though Solas assures me they were objects of exquisite beauty.
My Mark pains me more today than it has for weeks, my entire left arm throbbing with a dull, marrow-deep ache that makes me grit my teeth and clutch the affected limb to my chest. I can't bear to be in my armour, yet even once I've shed the vambraces and the rest, I still feel constricted, like my skin's too tight. No one looks askance of me when I withdraw from their immediate circle, to lean against a cool stone wall and close my eyes. My companions' quiet banter soothes me: Cassandra and Varric arguing about the best way to start a fire – Cassandra insulting his intelligence, but in a way that makes them both laugh when he disproves her theory about stacking wood just so; Solas moving on cat feet as he investigates the environs. I don't need to see him to know where he is; his presence is a low buzz on the periphery of my awareness that I feel like sunlight on my face.
So much power, that he keeps wrapped up. Always restrained, reserved, careful, as if he might attract too much attention to himself. It is not my place to ask; it is not polite. The things left unsaid between us: What is it that we have? Where is this going? What will become of us when this is all finished?
That he desires me as a woman is undeniable; when we kiss, his mouth closes over mine, hungry. His fingers grip my flesh, flex momentarily like claws. I have brushed the hard length of him through his breeches. His tongue invades my mouth, tangles with mine, then retreats. We bite at each other, but then pull away, like wild beasts claiming territory but reluctant to cross the last boundaries.
I can't help but compare him to Mihren; I've known no other beside him.
Mihren with his careful, gentle hands. Fingers twined with mine, never still. Sly kisses up my neck and secret whispers for my ears only. Mihren with his secret smile, wicked eyes, but his lips so soft, so gentle. None of this ferocious hunger of Solas's. Mihren knowing we had all summer, all autumn, moving slowly with the turn of seasons.
If I'd had foreknowledge of what would transpire at the Temple of Ashes, would I still have gone?
Solas, however, who clearly needs, who wants, who plunders but then retreats before we can close. I'm no shrinking virgin, I want to tell him, but I'm fearful that I may seem too forward. There are occasions when he's shuttered from me, and "vhenan" becomes "Inquisitor", and those days make me die a little inside, when his gaze is distant and he enfolds himself in silence.
Yet there are days when he smiles, and talks about the things he's seen in the Fade. Or he shares old pieces of lore that rival even Varric's in eloquence. He forgets himself then, and the cares fall from him and soften the severity of his features.
He takes my hand, and we walk a distance from our encampment, and our time is perfect, illuminated in the sunset. He'll cup my face in his hands, and tell me my beauty is that of the star lily. Yet the star lily withers at dawn, cannot grow far from the cold-rushing streams of the Northern Marches. I don't say that. No one has ever called me beautiful before, and I am content with such rare praise.
"Vhenan." That simple word jolts my heart and I glance up at Solas, who's crouched before me. "It pains you, doesn't it?" He reaches out to claim my hand. I can barely feel his touch, as if my limb is wrapped in bandages.
"It's all right," I say.
"You're a terrible liar."
"I don't want to be trouble. It's been a long day. I'll be better for some rest."
He shakes his head, takes my hand in both his, and the rush of his magic is cool water that travels up my arm. "If we could remove this... " Another shake of his head. "It's part of you. I'm afraid…"
"It's stable for the most part, thanks to you."
He meets my gaze. "But for how long?"
"Doesn't matter. We can worry about that once we've defeated Corypheus."
His lips twist into a wry smile but he doesn't offer anything further save to concentrate his magic on the Mark, on my hands, until the fires eating up my arm have been banked, shrugged aside by his power.
"Better now?"
I nod, bite the inside of my cheek. I mustn't cry. Must be strong and not show how relieved I am. My afflicted limb is cool, feels almost normal.
"Come, I'd like to show you something." He takes my right hand, pulls me onto my feet.
Varric and Cassandra pause mid-conversation, cast glances in our direction then continue their discussion. They're discreet enough not to interfere with any "mage-business" as Varric puts it, though how much of that "mage-business" between Solas and I has also resulted in more intimate interchanges, is not discussed with anyone.
Solas holds my good hand loosely clasped in his own; I can pull away any time I want to, but I don't, and in silence we descend the stairs to the open area fronting the water where the baths were once situated. Less than two hours before, a rift still coruscated here, spilling the Fade's more malignant inhabitants. Now, a nondescript brown river warbler investigates the sedges at the perimeter, and a hesitant frog chorus has started its song near the lazy, tea-stained waters.
The last of the sun's rays slant from the west, painting the stonework in gleaming salmon and gold, and the clouds on the horizon are dark and puffy, bruised. The chill autumn wind promises that the next day might be overcast even. I shiver.
He pulls me to him, wraps his arms around me. We don't need words. This close, I can breathe in his scent, honest sweat and something darker, wilder that is uniquely Solas that I will always hold within me and taste when I lie awake at night wondering whether he thinks of me too. What must it be like to sleep with him holding me, fitting his body to mine so that we are one?
Presently, he pulls away, draws me to the gap in one of the archways where we step through to find a short jetty and an abandoned rowboat.
"I wonder who comes here," I say.
He sits against the ruined wall, pats the ground next to him, and I curl into the space beneath his arm.
"Fishermen, most likely. At least until the rift opened and the demons appeared."
"What was this place like before? Who came here back in the day?"
"They were beautiful," he says. "Proud men and women with stars woven into their hair. Their cloaks feathered with the plumage of birds that no longer sing in the wilds. They came here to celebrate life, to reaffirm the pleasures of the flesh. They drank wine from fine, crystal goblets, and musicians played music of such exquisite perfection that to hear it now we'd weep for all that was lost."
"You say it like you were there yourself."
"The Fade remembers," he tells me after a pause, a catch of breath.
I want to ask whether he'll show me, but he shifts so that he can kiss me, the first contact lingering, desperate, like a drowning man after air. Then he steals a hand under my tunic, fingers brushing a nipple – more daring than he's been with me before. We pull away from each other briefly, long enough for an unspoken agreement to pass between us before he allows me to straddle him, to press kisses to his brow, his cheekbones, to nibble at the soft skin under his neck. He is still beneath me, watchful and whipcord tense, while I work my way down his neck to nip at the hollow beneath his throat. I taste the salt on his skin.
Will he? Won't he? How far will I dare to go this time?
I want this; I need this reminder that I still live, that every day I face an uncertain future. Will I be roasted to cinders by an angry dragon? Will I be ripped apart by a terror demon? Will a Red Templar's arrow finish what the darkspawn's didn't back in Coracavus?
I try to tell him this with every lingering kiss, praying that he can taste my desire on my lips, the way I mould myself to him, allow my magic to ripple across his, playful, like the kittens I've seen near the Skyhold kitchens stalking fallen leaves.
He wants me – that much is obvious – that much I've been able to tell from every other encounter. My heart beats wildly with each success, ties unfastened, being able to bare flesh. Our breathing is ragged, and a fire rages through me with its need to consume as his fingers quest into the very secret part of me. I need more.
We reach that crucial moment, where I fear he will hesitate, withdraw into the reserved Solas who hardly dares to hold my hand when others can see, but then he capitulates. We come together, in soft sighs and moans, the resistance worn away, and though there is the initial strangeness of the intimacy after so long, I want to weep feeling him move within me, filling me, completing me.
We are the river water lapping in the shallows, the ragged starlings torn through the sky, the clouds billowing and rolling, the sough of the wind shaking the willows. We are man and woman, moving, burning while the sun loses its life in a last burst of flame orange, and when he shudders into me that final time, I find my release.
For this crystalline moment, suspended in dusk, there is no Inquisition, no Veil torn asunder, no Corypheus blazing in red lyrium-induced malevolence, no disintegrating empire, no squabbling nobles. There is only he and I, tangled limbs, breathing together, dirt clinging to skin, leaves in our hair and dreams in our eyes.