The Inquisitor's Ghost
Author's Note: This chapter has a soundtrack: Lullaby by Chase Coy.
Chapter 18 – Visits At Midnight
Though stung with a hundred arrows
Though suffering from ailments both great and small
His heart was strong
And he moved on
- Chant of Light
It was eerily silent.
The moon was full in the midnight sky, providing ample light on Skyhold.
A shadowy figure slipped silently and effortlessly through the Inquisitor's window.
Just as it did every night.
In the hushed stillness of the Inquisitor's bedchamber, the shadowy figure kept to the dark corner of her room where no light penetrated.
Time passed as the figure stood unnaturally still. Silent as death. Watching. Keeping to the shadows, utterly and devastatingly alone. Silent and starving, the figure watched her. Always watching.
Cole, the Ghost of the Spire, companion to the Inquisitor, stared into the mirror on the Inquisitor's vanity and tried to find himself. But a demon stared back at him in the reflection.
He moved through this life like a wraith passing through the thin knots of milling people like a ghost, nothing but a cold draft on the back of the necks of those he passed.
But not her. With her, he was more than a demon, more than a ghost, more than himself. She made him feel good. Good? No, that didn't go far enough. She made him feel… alive. Real. Human.
And he'd hurt her.
The memories came, barreling through his mind in an avalanche of fresh horror, remorse, and shame.
The guilt… it chafed the open wound until it bled.
He would never forgive himself for that. Never.
As he stood in the dark corner of her room, he suppressed the nearly irresistible desire to rub his chest until the aching hole in it disappeared.
He knew he shouldn't be here, in her room, anywhere near her, but it was the only way to remain and the only thing that kept him from falling apart completely.
The full moon disappeared behind a cloud, casting the entire room in darkness. As if waiting for it, he then moved through the dark toward her bed, as if drawn by an invisible force. He made not a sound, gliding across the wooden floorboards like smoke over a river.
He stumbled abruptly as his body dissipated, ice cold invading him. His eyes rolled back into his head and he reached out for the wall to steady himself, afraid his hand would pass right through. He suddenly felt like he was disappearing, like he was becoming immaterial.
His heart was hammering in his throat. A cold sweat was pouring down his face. The shadows in her room shifted and swelled, growing and stretching out toward him. The panic rose within him, clawing at his throat as he felt them surround him, seep into his skin. Way down inside of him, in the darkness he never dared to look, something was there and it was spilling up inside of him. It seeped into every part of him, trying to take him away, back to the world he came from.
Cole suddenly lost all sense of himself and felt only a soul-deep terror that he'd stay this way, without mind or body. His connection was fading. He was fading. He panted, his body shaking and sweating from the effort to solidify. When he'd felt this before, he'd had the urge to kill. No more. He had an urge, but it was not to kill. The urge was something else. Something that had everything to do with her.
Cole's movement forward was automatic, against his will, his feet unconsciously taking him to where he needed to be. Each dragging step toward her was necessary, desperate, needy, like a man lost in a snowstorm, crawling toward a bonfire. Being near her was crucial, paramount, as imperative as breathing.
With each step that brought him closer to her, the shadows slowly stopped closing in on him.
He moved as silent as moonlight to stand beside her bed and stared down at her. Instantly, the cold, swirling emptiness in his chest stilled. He drew in a deep breath, the air in his lungs filled with the scent of her, and it was only then that he was able to regain the use of his lungs.
He was breathing again.
Real.
Alive.
Only she could do that to him.
Exhaling a sigh of relief, Cole stood staring down at Ember's slumbering form. He stood stock-still, arrested by just looking at her, just like he always was when he looked at her. She was sleeping on her stomach, the side of her head resting on her forearm, the other hand hanging off the side of the bed. Her fingers were wrapped around the hilt of the dagger hidden beneath her pillow. His eyes drank in the sight of her freckled face and fine-boned features. Her ruby lips were parted, brows softened. A blood-red curl rested across her cheek, her even breaths stirring it with each exhale.
Beautiful. Utterly and unimaginably beautiful.
So much so it was hard to look at her.
Why are you here? Why do you return every night? Cole thought, but he knew why. Because he felt this strange, unbearable urge to be near her. No, it was a need. He needed to be close to her, to simply… be near her. Always. Night after night, ever since he'd arrived at Skyhold, the need became more and more undeniable. He ached. All over. All the time. It was a wound that bled into his damned soul and only eased in her presence.
His entire attention became fixated on her torso, on the sunbeam flaring within her. So bright. Twinkling and shimmering. A single flame flickering in the darkness that surrounded her. There was no light in the room. No light but the one shining luminously from within her. It radiated from beneath her skin. A glowing light in the darkest night that could wash away the darkness of hell. It made her body haloed with a white-golden light, giving her an ethereal glow, painting her in color against a grayscale world.
Ember, he thought, and even her name inflicted torture upon his mind that felt like it was splitting at the seams.
Without conscious thought, his hand lifted toward her, uncontrollably, like a dehydrated desert traveler reaching for water. He wasn't supposed to touch her. He didn't deserve to touch her, not after what he'd done.
You can't.
You shouldn't.
Can't, can't, can't!
No, no, no!
Stop, stop, stop!
His hand drew closer despite the warnings in his head that begged him not to.
He gritted his teeth and somehow stilled himself. His hand hovered a mere inch above her. His eyes were wide, his heart pounding in his chest. He could feel the heat of her skin. She was fire-hot. There was a blissful feeling echoing inside of him as her heat and light seeped into his skin, warming him from the inside out, driving away the hard ice and dark that coated his veins. She was the only thing that could.
Touch her, his mind screamed at him, the urgency of it burning through him. Need to. One touch and you might last another night.
His tenuous control shattered. Reaching out, ever so carefully, he touched the very tips of two fingers to her cheek. His eyelids fluttered shut and he nearly groaned. Instant relief and torture all at once. A feeling of being made whole. Every time. More pain, more joy than anyone can bear.
The moment his fingers touched her skin, Ember stirred in her sleep and made a slight, whispery noise that may have been his name in response to his touch. But she didn't awaken.
Trembling, his fingertips trailed over the soft skin of her cheek with the utmost piety. His eyes followed the movement of his hand as he feathered back the curl hanging in her face, his expression one of infinite longing. Haunted eyes were intense and unwavering as they raked over her, as if memorizing every line, every curve of her face. With all the care in the world, he brushed his fingers along her jaw, touching her lightly, so lightly, just skimming his fingertips along her jawline, as if there wasn't anything more precious in all of Thedas.
He swallowed visibly. There was skin under his fingertips, soft and warm, and something dark and primitive reared its head and took notice inside him, waking up growling and ravenous.
Hunger pulsed inside him, seeking desperately to touch more of her. It was an overwhelming burning need deep inside. A heat and hunger that craved to be sated. He wanted his arms full of her to banish the black emptiness inside him. He didn't want to just have her. He wanted to fill her. Consume her. Devour her. Bury himself in all that fire. Bind her to him.
Blue eyes wide and wild, blacker than usual, remained fixated on her face intently. There was an urgency in his every heartbeat to touch, to claim, to fill, to breathe her in and never let her go. He felt an uncontrollable need to possess her endlessly, to brand her as his own, to take everything she was until she was a physical part of him.
Cole's hand immediately pulled back, growing colder as he drew away from her. With each inch that came between him there was a tearing in his chest, a rending he felt at the depths of his soul. An unbearable ache crushed heavily upon him, like a thousand suns. The hand that had touched her spread out and then relaxed against his side. His breath left him in short, silent bursts as the darkness whispered to him, urged him to claim the one thing he so desperately wanted. Needed. How desperately he wanted to… to…
Cole shook his head fiercely and crouched down, placing his head between his knees and his hands over his head.
Too much. There was too much happening inside of him. It was a chaotic tangled web of things he'd never felt before. He didn't understand them. They erupted within him, impulses he didn't understand. He didn't understand anything anymore. His thoughts raced and he didn't trust a single one of them. Everything out of control. Too intense, too much. Cotton in his ears, hearing only himself and the unfamiliar things raging within him that hurt his head, tightened his lungs, and pressed on his chest. Too many. Raw. Sick. Choking. Tangles on top of knots. Drowning. Unbearable. Frightening.
He rocked back and forth, fingers digging into the back of his skull as he clenched his jaw tightly, forcing the maddening maelstrom that raged within him to diminish, refusing to let it flare beyond his control, refusing to drown in it. He couldn't lose himself. Not like before. Never again.
Demon, he reminded himself, trying to gain some semblance over his throbbing body and breaking mind. That was why he couldn't have her. And because he couldn't bear to see her blood on him again. Blood that spilled because of him. Nightmare had said he brought only death. What if he touched her and he didn't just hurt her? He could never forgive himself if the light within her blew out because of him.
Leaving would be best, but every time he tried he didn't get far.
She needed protection.
Someone to look out for her, to watch over her.
Not just someone… him.
She needed him.
She. Needed. Him.
No one else ever had.
But she did.
A marrow-deep feeling of protectiveness filled him and all of his senses zeroed in on it.
He'd promised years ago that no one was ever going to hurt her. He would keep it. No matter how much he wanted, no matter how fierce this burning need.
No one would ever harm her.
Not even himself.
Never touch her again, he scolded himself. Stay away. Protecting from a distance. Never hurt her again. If you do, cut yourself down.
The clouds in the sky moved, revealing the full moon once again that cast its silvery light in beams into her room.
Cole stood and took a step back, then another, retreating from her and shrinking out of the light of the moon. The shadows of her room welcomed him as he sank back into them, like a controlling parent welcoming home a rebellious child.
He returned to the dark corner of her room where no light penetrated. From the darkness of her room he watched her. Watched her like a freezing man out in the snow watches the flames of a warm fire flicker and dance through a frosted windowpane.
And when the sun rose in a few hours and kissed her skin through her window, he would be gone, as all things of the night tended to do in the morning light of day.
With the coming of the sun he would return to coveting from a distance, each new day a tortuous exercise in self-control and restraint.
But he would return when darkness once again claimed the world.
He always returned.
Always would.