Chapter Text
When a great dreamer fell, the elvhen vanguard gathered in its shadow. A host of mages descended on the blood-spattered warriors, drawing azure gore from their armor and weapons with magic. Every drop of the precious spoils would be bottled then distilled to raise reinforcements from willing spirits, fortifying the army for its next campaign.
But the titans’ greatest treasure was not the free-flowing blood, rather what was left to petrify into deep blue crystals. Those June would split with hammer and spellwork to forge twin panes of looking glass.
To each eluvian pair he bound a key—a word, a spell, or an object as small as a pendant—without which both were useless. He gifted the keys to the generals but guarded the making of them jealously. Not even Elgar’nan’s rumbled demands moved him, for trust among the firstborn was tenuous even then.
The mirrors had been too useful in the war and after for Solas to dwell on his suspicions that they were not as private as June claimed—that somewhere he held a master key to the labyrinth. Now, caught up in a new war, he desperately scoured the memories he had drunk from June’s flask for that master key.
Felassan had applauded the torrent of curses he had uttered when he found nothing, no key and no way to break the locks. His friend’s reassurance, however, had come quick and confident: “You’ll find a way, Solas. You’re too clever and altogether too stubborn to let June, of all people, outwit you.”
It seemed unlikely when faced with the height and breadth of his doubts, but Felassan was not often mistaken—particularly in him.
“Set your mind to it,” his friend had said with a squeeze to his shoulder, “and I’ll go for the makings of a new eluvian.”
Solas had slid his gaze away from Felassan’s violet one, a lame attempt to hide his relief. He knew the battlefields on which every slain dreamer lay, yet was paralyzed to act, unable to defile them again after so many centuries. That he would allow Felassan to bear that burden on his behalf… When he looked at himself reflected in Vi’Revas, he would see his disgrace.
The mirror’s crafting took thirty-seven days. Solas slept in brief, sweat-damp spurts and ate only to replenish the strength blood magic demanded. As he hewed and reshaped the crystal Felassan brought, Clan Lavellan’s prohibition buzzed like flies in his ears. His people had never balked at blood magic—they were of it—but Solas could not shake the dread that if Ellana discovered that, she would turn from him.
She had accepted the bloodletting necessary to wake the shrine’s eluvian, and her skin did not crawl at the angry blood that shaped her Veil, but Solas grimaced when he opened his wrists to dribble dark trails across the crystal. Forbidding energy filled the cave where he worked, hot, living blood mixed with dead to make a new mirror.
And the item that proved a suitable master key was yet more grim.
“Is there nothing else that will serve?” Felassan asked as he stood with Solas, both of them dwarfed by the towering Vi’Revas. He peered at the lyrium dagger in Solas’s grasp. His measured tone lacked the furor Mythal had turned on Solas when he had come to her barefaced after the final battle and said in a voice ragged from screaming, “It is gone.” If she presumed that meant destroyed, he let her. Felassan did not seem surprised to see it whole.
“It is the only blood magic potent enough to subdue June’s.” Months of trying anything and everything else had been fruitless, the dagger his last resort—as it had been when he had forged it.
“You must carry it with you whenever you use the mirror?” At Solas’s nod, Felassan’s equanimity turned to agitation. “That’s not penance,” he snapped. “You cannot undo what that blade was meant for with this new purpose. Every path it cuts, it strikes you, too. A reminder of what she ordered you—”
“What I chose to do,” said Solas. Mythal’s had been far from the only pleas for a weapon to deliver victory. “And now I choose it again, for the People who need our aid.” What burdens I bear do not matter in the face of that. He bit his tongue against the last, knowing his friend would only fight on if he let it loose.
Felassan released the balled fists that had been churlishly parked on his narrow hips. “Will it only work for you?”
“Whomever holds the dagger. I will not trap you here should I be incapacitated.”
“Is that a risk we can afford? What our enemies could do with that blade…”
Drawing magic to him, Solas knitted it into the lockbox he had taught Ellana. It swallowed the dagger, his palm left empty. “It is not infallible, of course, but—”
“Better than nothing,” said Felassan. “Fine. Show me how it works, then.”
Solas’s labor had yielded a disappointingly inelegant mechanism: the brute force of his dagger’s spellwork piercing through June’s safeguards. More to Elgar’nan’s taste than his own, but undeniably effective.
With the tip trained on Vi’Revas, the mirror’s expansive face lit silvery pale. A thought of the eluvian they had brought from Arlathan sent a shiver through it, then revealed the interior of his cabin in the mountains.
Felassan clicked his tongue. “Hardly a challenge to break your own locks.”
Biting back a pert, “I’m aware,” Solas conjured a different portal. His friend took a hasty step away from the light-filled interior of Anaris’s floating fortress. “Impressive enough for you?”
“Can they see us on the other side?” said Felassan, his weight still on the back foot, ready to run.
“Yes, but Anaris abandoned this place even before he took Vir Dirthara.” So Solas had discovered by infiltrating it through a smaller eluvian in the empty larder. Highly defensible perched amongst the clouds, without an avenue to bring supplies in, it became a tomb. Anaris had wisely left it behind before a siege.
“And the city?” Felassan asked of Arlathan below.
“Ravaged,” Solas replied. “What few people remain are starved and sick. We must begin the evacuation there.”
His friend ventured a tight smile. “You have a plan.”
It felt incomplete, but an imperfect strategy would better serve the refugees than years more of planning.
With the awful dagger in his grasp, Solas passed through Vi’Revas to face the destruction and death the firstborn had wrought.
Charred timbers stuck up like jagged, brittle ribs from the ruins of houses that once lined the high street. Despite a sweltering northern summer, Solas kept his hooded cloak pulled close around himself, his head down to mind the way ahead. The ash that covered the ground and stained his feet hid innumerable hazards: broken glass, twisted nails, splintered bones. One wrong step could cripple him, and he could not afford to slow, not when each moment of delay risked lives.
Ducking under the slant of a half-fallen lintel, he pulled what little ambient magic remained in the city’s wreckage to ignite a fistful of mage’s flame. A rune appeared on the battered surface of the cellar door before him, glinting in the only firelight it answered to.
Haven.
He had chosen it to mark the places where survivors—slaves, merchants, nobles, any and all—could gather in safety until the way to the mountain refuge could be opened to them. The Wolf’s Den, though no one dared say it within his hearing.
“Give the stronghold a name,” Felassan had groused, “if you hate that one so much.”
Even if he did, and etched it in gold above the portcullis, Solas suspected it was too late.
He stooped to pull the door open, rust flaking from the handle as he slipped into the pit below. The stifling closeness of many bodies, the odors of the fearful unwashed, nearly choked him. Putting back his hood did not make breathing easier.
“Fen’Harel,” said an elvhen boy at the head of the huddled group. His face and the rest behind him were tattooed, new and old ink a mix of Andruil’s and Dirthamen’s. Only one woman bore a treelike spread of vallaslin across her stout brow, the slave of a noble house loyal to Mythal.
“Are there any others expected?” Solas asked, though if they had not arrived by now, they would have to wait until this haven’s turn came again—perhaps weeks hence, drawn at random. June and his allies could discern a pattern if any one eluvian was used too often.
“No, Dread Wolf. Everyone else is dead.”
Solas marked the boy’s bare head, shaved diligently despite conditions in the cellar. “Whom do you mourn?”
“My mother. Two sisters.”
“And your father?”
“He marched with Lady Andruil’s army.”
Eight years past, and if the boy had not had word of him, he likely shared the same fate as the rest. Since Ghilan’nain had turned the dragons into war beasts, the casualties on both sides had been staggering.
“I cannot undo all you have suffered,” said Solas, and not only to the boy, “but where we go is far from here. There is shelter, food, and what peace I can offer.” From under his cloak he drew the lyrium dagger, its glow pronounced in the murky cellar. The refugees retreated from it, making way for him to approach an eluvian leaned against the back wall. It woke as he neared, its coruscating face clearing to show the mouth of a cave, snow-capped peaks beyond promising an escape from the stifling heat.
“Come,” Solas said, and stepped through the portal.
He was met by another crowd, this one armed with water, blankets, and bandages. They flowed around him is if he were a rock in a stream, their attention on the new arrivals. A woman and her child, their slaves’ clothes in tatters, stumbled as they came through the mirror, unused to and disoriented by the transit. They were caught and steadied by a matron who swept a blanket around the child’s shoulders, murmuring reassurances.
Solas remained at Vi’Revas’s edge until the flow of people trickled to a stop. He peered a last time into the empty cellar before sealing the passage.
Activity filled the torchlit cave. Healers inspected the refugees for wounds or signs of malnutrition, dehydration. The worst cases would be sent to recuperate in the courtyard infirmary. The others would be fed, bathed, and given beds in the stronghold’s austere residences until permanent accommodations could be found. What those would be fell to the steward, who wended his way through the refugees with a quill and palimpsest, collecting names and trades.
Solas, his part played, moved to go, but the refugee boy stepped into his path. A matron followed close behind him, calling, “No, no, don’t do that, da’len! You must come this way. He is not to be—” Solas silenced the protests with a gesture, allowing the boy to drop to one knee at his feet.
“Lord Fen’Harel, I am Hannik. My father was a solider, as I was meant to be. I cannot bake or weave or farm, as she”—a jerk of his chin at the matron—“asked, but I can be of good use in your travels. I can run and I can carry supplies. I am skilled with bow and blade.” He bent his bare head. “I was pledged to serve Lady Andruil, but she burned our city. I will not fight for her. Let me serve you.”
His was not the first offer. In the years since Solas had opened the ways, many had pledged their service in gratitude—as soldiers, servants, and builders. His first replies had been floundering and tinged with panic that they saw in him the desires of the first- and spirit-born who had owned them. But their determination to live and work at the stronghold was as much for themselves as for him. He had imagined a safe haven for them, and they had made it real.
To the boy he said, “Rise.”
Hannik did, youthful conviction unwavering. He could not have been more than thirteen years old, more than half his life lived in wartime.
“I have no doubt your talents are considerable,” said Solas, “but I must travel swiftly and can do that better alone. However, this place and the people in it need protection. If you are willing, the master at arms will welcome you into the ranks.”
“Of your army, Dread Wolf?”
Solas shook his head. “The fortress guard. You would be a peacekeeper among them, not a solider. Will you do that, Hannik?”
The boy said solemnly, “If that is your will.”
Another refrain Solas had grown used to, his distress subsided with time and habit. “No, it is your choice. You are free now, unbound to any master, especially me. I ask only that if you stay, you help others as they have helped you. And you may call me Solas.”
Hannik turned anxious green eyes on him. Solas tried a small smile—encouragement—but the boy’s gaze dropped, and he stayed silent.
The matron approached then. “Come, da’len, I will make your introduction to the master at arms.”
Hannik allowed himself to be led away, and Solas felt the attention of the others in the cave drift slowly back to their own business. It did not spare him the reverent murmurs of “Fen’Harel” as he passed them by on his way to the stronghold above.
Through stained glass, afternoon light painted the flagstone floor of the great hall. Solas stepped into pools of pink and slashes of orange. An afterthought to years of construction, the three rose windows were new, crafted by an artisan who had fled her home in the south. The colors of sunrise, they drew everyone in the stronghold to admire them—save him. Their splendor had been meant for Ellana, and while he had unlocked all the eluvians of Elvhenan with his dagger, hers remained closed to him. None of the thousands of passages through Vi’Revas had delivered him to the shrine. No manipulation of the mirror’s magics revealed the spellwork summons of her blood. And the windows reminded him daily of his failure.
A private door at the back of the hall shut out their lovely hues, Solas taking the spiral stairs behind it two at a time. He burst, winded, into his residence to find it gloriously brisk, the open balcony doors admitting a breeze. It had cooled the bathwater servants had prepared for him, but that was remedied with a spell. When it was steaming again, he stripped out of his rank clothes and climbed in.
The soap-maker had once been a favorite of Falon’Din, and she worked wonders with even the simplest ingredients. Solas scrubbed a bar of sheep’s milk and yarrow over his limbs, washing away the filth of yet another overland hike. Running from June’s scouts between the eluvians with only what food he could carry had made him strong but rangy, wearing down the last plushness of Arlathan’s comforts. He had removed the bits of gold from his brow, nose, and lip. Only the ring in his nipple remained: an indulgence he permitted in the night, teasing it with his fingertip while he dreamed Ellana laved it with her tongue.
Overtures of company from refugees had been made over the years but had been so immediately and vehemently refused that he was certain the matrons now warned any newcomers to show their thanks another way—any other way.
In Dalish stories, the gods don’t take lovers among the People.
Perhaps there was truth to that particular legend; Fen’Harel did not need or want the bed slaves they had been. They were not her.
Water splashed onto the floor as he left the bath. What droplets struck the dagger he had discarded with his clothes turned to bubbles, then evaporated entirely. Shrugging on a robe, Solas snatched the dagger up. He had made a place for it in a hidden recess in the wall by his bed, of which only he and Felassan knew. His friend would retrieve it when he returned from another visit with Anaris.
He did not want for company, Solas thought bitterly—unfairly. Felassan had maintained the connection to gather information used to thwart both Anaris and Elgar’nan. While Solas knew there was no affection in the arrangement, he envied the looseness in Felassan’s gait when he returned from Vir Dirthara, the ease of his bearing after a vigorous bedding.
His own paces short and tight, Solas went to his eluvian. It was little more than a looking glass now that he had Vi’Revas. Still, he kept it near in the dwindling hopes that it would open on the sunken shrine and the woman he yearned for.
His sigh fogged the glass as he touched his brow to it, the needs of his heart cruelly reflected back in the unchanging surface. Requisite thoughts of shattering it came and went, the wet spot of his breath growing until there was nothing left but to concede another defeat. Eyes closed, he set a hand on the glass to push himself back—and fell into another world.
Ellana caught him, embrace sturdy and wonderfully tight. Lightheaded with shock and a rush of elation, Solas clung to her, inhaling the scent of her hair. She laughed as he nuzzled her ear, half-heartedly protesting that it tickled. He persisted, if only to hear that sweet sound again. Her hands found their way to his wet hair and steered him into a kiss. With each deepening press of their lips, the war—the People’s hardships and his own—shrank to motes that floated away on their shared breath.
“Did youget caught in the rain?” Ellana asked, her cheeks rosy with health and from their long, ardent greeting. “It’s always me, but—” Blue-gray eyes swept over his robe. “The bath?”
“A much-needed one,” said Solas. While he did not wish to sully this place with travails of Elvhenan after he had just escaped, Ellana’s curiosity was worn too plainly for him to ignore. Taking her hand, he drew her toward the blanket she had laid out. “Sit with me, and I will tell you.”
They shared food and wine as he spoke of his trek into the ruined city, of the network of rune-marked havens across the empire, of Vi’Revas, and of the years it had taken to build the stronghold. “At last count,” he said, “there are four thousand people who live there, and in the village below.”
“So many,” Ellana mused. “And they’re safe with you.” She stroked his forearm where it was wrapped around her middle. “It’s what you wanted.”
“Yes,” said Solas, “but there are always more in need.”
He could not hide the lamenting timbre, and it brought her to face him, worry a crease between her eyebrows. “And what about you? Do you have what you need, Wolf?”
Her Common tongue lacked the refugees’ reverence, yet Solas bridled reflexively against it. He had not chosen to make Elgar’nan’s mocking epithet into a badge of honor; he could barely stand it, perilously close as it was to worship. Ellana may have fondly diminished it to Wolf, but if it was inescapable in Elvhenan, forced upon him twice over, he could not bear to wear the mantle here, with her.
“Ellana,” he said, “I have not been honest with you. I have let you—led you to—believe things of me that are not true.” His fingers itched to take hers for purchase, or perhaps to enjoy the last moments before she was lost to him. “I have lain with you under false pretenses.”
Confusion took the place of compassion in her face, but she did not recoil from him.
Solas scrabbled at what little comfort that offered and forged ahead. “Those you call the Creators, they are not the gods of your people.”
“You’ve told me that.”
“No, you do not understand. They were the first of the elvhen, but not divine. So far from it. The power we wield, the magic I have taught you, we stole from the old masters of the world. What do your histories say of the titans?”
“I don’t know that word,” Ellana replied.
So the firstborn’s victory was complete here, the dreamers erased entirely.
Solas said, “They were founts of ancient magics. It lived in their veins for uncounted ages before us, so potent the air around them shimmered.” Not entirely unlike the Veil did her. “Such power inevitably draws interest—first Mythal’s and then Elgar’nan’s, though they had not yet chosen those names. They were spirits then, and had watched the titans use their blood to shape the bodies of the durgen’len. Could it do the same for them, they wondered. Taking it was not a simple task, but one they managed, and with that blood gave themselves form.
“Together, they learned to harness their newfound magic, to walk and to speak. They gathered other curious spirits, convincing them to live as elvhen. You know the names they took: Andruil, Falon’Din, Dirthamen, Sylaise, June. Ghilan’nain came later, after the war began.”
“The war,” said Ellana, “with the titans?”
Solas nodded gravely. “The more spirits that wished to become elvhen, the more blood was needed. When the titans refused to give it willingly, the firstborn took a hostage to bleed. Of course, the rest mounted a force for rescue, but Elgar’nan swore he would kill it if they attacked. The titans had never known another being that could threaten them, so they did not heed him, and went to their deaths. From them the firstborn raised an army, appointing themselves its mage-generals.”
Ellana surveyed him, the body that had been forged by those conquests. “You were among them?”
“Not at first,” Solas said, heavy with old sorrow. “I watched the early campaigns from a distance with no desire to join them. I was content as I was, but the requests of a friend won out over Wisdom.”
“Mythal,” Ellana said.
“When she asked for my help as an advisor and lieutenant, I gave it.”
“And became Fen’Harel.”
“No. The Dread Wolf of this place, of your stories, does not exist. He is no more a god than they are. I”—he touched the fluttering pulse point in his neck—“am Solas.”
In the ensuing silence, all was still. Even the restless Veil did not stir. It waited, as he did, for Ellana to speak.
“You told me that on the very first night.” Veilfire ignited in her palm, illuminating her features and then the emerald rune he had laid on the flagstones then: pride, imbued with his self-satisfaction after he had pleasured her.
“That was a boast,” he said, “not an admission. Ellana, I have lied to you from the start, used your misapprehensions of Fen’Harel to seduce you. You would be right to send me back through the eluvian and then to break it—”
“No!”
Her voice cut through his like she wielded his dagger, and he clamped his mouth shut. Softly, she put her fingertips against it, in the center where he no longer wore the gold ring. He was as unadorned as the day he had been made, and just as frightened. She said, “I have questions.”
“I’m sure.”
“To answer them, you have to stay.”
Longing constricted his throat—for permission, for absolution, for the solace he found only in her arms. “Is that what you want, Ellana?”
“It is. Solas.”
He took her by the wrist and kissed its underside, smooth and smelling of evergreen. He swore against it and upon it that he would never lie to her again.
“I know,” Ellana said, more decidedly than he deserved. Nor did he deserve the gentle insistence with which she raised his face and slipped his name between his lips.
Scorching northern climes were no match for her finding the naked skin inside his robe. Her hands left hot impressions on every part of him she could reach, undeterred by the truth of the blood spent to shape him. His body roused in reply, once unwanted and now essential to gather her into his lap.
An unseen weight landed at the center of his chest, and despite the lust forefront of his mind, he sensed magic. Ellana, with her own sense of his interest, grazed her fingertips over the empty space between them. A lockbox spell unwound to reveal the wolf’s jaw, worn as she had promised for protection in his absence.
“I haven’t taken it off,” she said, “even to sleep.”
“I envy it,” said Solas, “in your bed when I am not.” Bumping his thumb over the wicked teeth, he asked, “Will you put it aside, now that I am here?”
By the leather cord, she drew it over her head. The bone had yet not struck the ground before Solas’s nose met the hollow of her throat, his chin pillowed on her breast. She stroked the back of his head so tenderly he trembled, the depth of his feelings no longer constrained by deceit. If she took him now, it was not in exchange for his knowledge or out of obligation to the false master of a moldering shrine; he was simply Solas, and his devotion to her outstripped the supplicants of any god.
Ellana sloughed the robe from his shoulders, her intentions clear as she went for the laces of her stout bodice. Whether it was a help or a hinderance, Solas lent his hands to her undressing. Linen and leather were discarded piece by piece, until she was bare and anointed by veilfire glow. With a rumbled sound in his chest, he grasped her by the slender ankles and pulled her to him, making a place for himself between her legs.
“Solas!” she cried as he ducked to lick her from the musky damp of her slit to the top of her sex. The flick of his tongue there nearly brought her knees to box his ears. He pressed her thighs open, feeling the muscles quake and bunch under his palms.
The pride of the first night was no match for what surged through him when she juddered and pulsed, rising so fast it took both her breath and his. She held him in place with a relentless grip on his hair, ensuring he saw her through to the very end of her release. Only when she had gone lax, shuddering at his slowing laps, did he withdraw, his chin shining.
Below him, she was flushed and open, the peaks of her breasts taut. Her pleasure-hazy eyes drifted from his face, down his chest and belly, to where he was hard for her. He needed no other invitation than the subtle tilt of her hips toward him. Sweeping the fan of her dark hair away, he planted one hand next to her head and took himself in the other.
The spirit-born claimed they were the finest made elves, but Solas had never doubted that more than now, as Ellana, entirely world-born, wrapped her legs around his back and seated him deep inside her.
In careful, testing strokes, he gauged for discomfort. This was still new to her, and he was content to go slowly, assured there was no pain by an eager if inexpert response. Hot exhales puffed against his cheeks between kisses. Her fingers dug into the ridges of his shoulder blades when his cock struck an agreeable place within. Each moan chased off the lonely wanting he had suffered while the eluvians denied him, the pitiless march of years contained in only one of her days. If he faced another lengthy interval after tonight, he would satisfy a craving he had nurtured in countless dreams of having her again.
She whined, bemused and disappointed, as he slid out of her. He hurried to kiss her brow, her temple, and her cheekbone, promising, “Come. You will like this.”
Their fingers knitted together, he drew her to lie on her side, molding himself to her back. She gave a sultry hum as he stroked along her thigh, the finespun hairs soft, to her knee. Catching there, he hooked her leg over his hip.
Spread so, he could ease his cock into her, and see the place where they were joined—where she, glistening, pink, and parted, took him in. His stolen blood surged, and he grasped her breast to anchor himself as he thrust. Forefingers went to her mouth, wetted on her tongue, before he laid them against her sex.
She was not so quick to rise a second time, nor did he permit it. When she began the quivering ascent, Solas slowed his hand, using only the fullness of his cock to attend to her. He teased the stretched edges of her slit, rewarded with tiny, sipped gasps. His own lungs pulled ragged breaths to see himself disappear inside her, a perfect vessel for him—and only him—to fill.
The impetuous urge to possess her ran counter to every custom in Elvhenan, where even such dedicated lovers as Ghilan’nain and Andruil made space for others in their bed. Claims of custody were made on slaves, distasteful to the classes above bondage. But that was not so among Ellana’s people. Their bonds, she had told him, were sealed with vows of fidelity. Trust and affection, not ownership. They did not seek other lovers because they had all they required between themselves.
For Solas, the excesses and parade of dalliances in Arlathan had long ago lost their allure, but he had known no other way—until Ellana. She had entered into Fen’Harel’s bargain to be of use to her clan, and yet had set it aside, seeking his attentions because she wanted them. She had allowed him to mark her and then to lie with her as her first. When he had confessed his nature and his deception, she had not flinched.
He had not thought of another since the night she had called him to her, and he would not, as long she would have him.
“Vhenan.”
“Heart?” she murmured, and his own skittered at the query, a rare void in her knowledge of his language. Much as he wished to, he could offer no translation into hers, only an emphatic repetition:
“My heart. My love.” Seeking her eyes, he found them radiant and awestruck, the shade of the sea lit by sun. “Ar lath ma, Ellana.”
The reply came in her Common tongue, and while Solas could not place the words, the cadence was matched to his, leaving no place for uncertainty. For all that separated their lands and their peoples, this was the same: “I love you, Solas.”
The force of the next kiss sent shockwaves through him, spurring him to move again—driving into her, his fingertips circling in a frantic request for her to come for and with him.
Prurient cries were muffled in his mouth until she tore hers away, shouting into the night while she spasmed and clenched. Answering climax washed over him, starbursts of white against his pinched-shut eyelids. Ellana held tight to the hair at the back of his head, the pressure prolonging the sensation.
When, at last, they were spent, a green cloak lay over them, swaddling them in strange, stippled energies. They stayed under it until Solas’s cock softened and slid from her. The leavings smeared across her inner thigh sparked an acquisitive delight that chased the Veil back into invisibility.
Ellana, catching him looking, frowned shallowly. Before Solas could ask after it, she slipped out of his arms to retrieve a vial from among the items she had brought. She drank its reddish-brown contents in a hasty gulp, chasing it with a draught straight from the wineskin.
“What was that?” Solas asked. He had sat up enough to touch her back.
“A prophylactic,” she replied. “I wasn’t sure if it was possible with a g—with you, but…”
Solas, grateful for her prudence and regretful at his own lack of it, said, “Not all elvhen are spirit-born.”
Ellana wet her lips, nose casting a shadow on the shoulder she looked over to see him. “Have you—”
“No,” he said firmly. “Nor will I burden you so.” A featherlight kiss to her neck and then her jaw. “All I want, vhenan, is you.”
Melting again into his embrace, she lay back with him on the blanket, her head nestled into the crook of his neck and their hands joined over his belly. He might have dozed, did he not want to cling to every moment they had. He cursed June and then his own inability to master the magic that brought him to her.
“Could there be another flask of memories hidden?” Ellana asked. If she shared his regret or held his failure against him, Solas did not hear it in her voice.
“It is always possible,” he replied, “but I would not know where to look. The world is vast, even when I have pressed every eluvian into service.” And the People’s ceaseless needs were more immediate. He had not intended to say so aloud, but must have, for Ellana said, “Are the refugees in your castle spirit-born like you?”
“Very few of them. After the titans fell, the spirit-born were raised to nobility. When this new war began, they rallied to their former generals’ banners. Those I have freed were world-born slaves.”
He felt the scrunch of her expression, disgust in her asking, “How could they do that to their own people?”
Solas sighed. “They have given countless reasons over the millennia, but it is all a guise for the same ambitions that drove them to murder the titans: power. What is an empire without someone to rule?”
“But you didn’t want that,” said Ellana. “To rule, or even to be elvhen.”
“It is not in my nature,” he told her. “Neither Wisdom nor Pride.”
She stroked her thumb over the rounded bone in his wrist, a grounding physicality. “What is it like to be a spirit?”
“It is difficult to put into words,” Solas replied. “Spirits do not have a language as we do. And”—he fought the impulse to squirm under her warm weight, to avoid memories that brought more anguish than joy—“it is not something I often speak of.”
Rather than demur as she might have on earlier nights, too timid to worry a sore subject, she said, “You miss it.”
“I do,” said Solas, “and I believe I always will, but the loss is not so great when my form allows me this, with you.” He traced the length of her arm to her shoulder and then the long, elegant line of her ear.
Ellana raised her head to look at him. Staticky waves of tousled dark hair haloed a handsome face, no artifice in her nakedness or manner. It disarmed him entirely, and captivated him. Her blunt fingernails passed over the scar on his forehead as she asked quietly, “Will you try to tell me of Wisdom?”
Ancient grief complained in his breast, but not dread—not anymore. Turning his cheek into her palm, he kissed its center and said, “My heart, I will tell you everything.”