Chapter Text
In the groves of Tirashan, where trees as old as the world grew gnarled and broad-boughed, it took no great magic to summon shadows: Fade-touched whispers of memory, echoes of bygone ages. Ellana Lavellan stood barefoot in the leaf litter, feeling the play of spirits at the periphery of her mind, but venturing no further. Once her clan’s First and then a fearsome rift mage of the Inquisition, she hadn’t done more than mummers’ tricks in a year. Her left hand had always been the one to steer spells, as she carried a staff in her right, and its absence made casting a burden.
“You’ll learn to compensate, my dear,” Vivienne had told her in their halfhearted sparring matches, held under the auspices of helping her to accustom herself to the loss of the forearm. She had, when it came to handling silverware and dressing one-handed, but the spark for lobbing fireballs or drawing lightning to her fingertips guttered out—until not even Dorian’s baiting could get her to conjure a flame in her palm.
By the time the Inquisition had disbanded, she had stopped seeking the Fade purposefully, finding it only by chance in places like this forest, where ancient powers were so tightly woven into roots and soil that she could almost see them on the other side of Fen’Harel’s Veil.
Phantom sensation prickled up what remained Ellana’s arm, as if her hand could still pass over warm, pale skin—the sharp features of an elvhen hedge mage. Solas—friend, love, and liar—had been her last touch, before he took the hand and the Anchor, leaving her scarred and heartsick for the favor of a god.
The Lavellan clan hadn’t come this far west in a generation, but stories of strange elves in the depths of Tirashan had piqued Keeper Istimaethoriel’s interest, and the hunters, with no particular fondness for Wycome, had agreed to venture out of the Free Marches and through Orlais to explore it. Ellana, who had returned to the clan after declining Cassandra’s request to work with her to track the agents of Fen’Harel and, with hope, prevent him from tearing down the Veil, had picked up her small bag of belongings and set off.
The journey had taken the better part of nine months, and the clan had been moving along the border of the forest since, the hunters charting it and searching for the strange elves, the Keeper probing with her magic to reveal its secrets. Hathaan, the man who had stepped into the vacant role of First, dutifully helped, but Ellana had made clear from the day she walked back into the clan’s camp that she would not use her talents as a mage, save for minor healing magics and conjuring bursts of light and color to entertain the children.
It made the clan uneasy, since she no longer slotted neatly into their small society, but even if she had sought a traditional place as mage or hunter, she would have garnered wary stares on account of her bare face. Without the vallaslin she might well have been a stranger, and strangers were not to be trusted.
“Did the Inquisition demand you remove them?” Istimaethoriel had asked one night, not long after Ellana had returned, as they sat together by a campfire. “It was born of the shemlen Chantry and—”
“No, hahren,” Ellana had said, “they weren’t like that. It was strange for the humans at first, but there were many other elves among the Inquisition by the end. And Circle mages couldn’t have removed the vallaslin. The magic was of our people.”
Lines of wisdom and age in Istimaethoriel’s face had deepened further. “I have never heard of such magic. It has not been taught to any Keeper. Who could do it?”
“I cannot speak of him.” Ellana had thought her tone measured enough to hide the lancing pain of betrayal, but Istimaethoriel had known her from infancy and wasn’t fooled.
“Lathbora. A lost love.” At Ellana’s glance away, the Keeper had reached for her hand. “He must have been a great mage, to work magic potent enough to take your vallaslin, and an even greater man to win your heart.” An indulgent half-smile. “Our hunters were never enough for you.”
“He was a great mage,” Ellana had said softly, “but he wasn’t the man I thought he was.”
“Is he dead?”
“No, but I am dead to him.”
The canopy of trees above her hissed with a passing breeze and with it came a gentle shifting of the Veil. Tendrils of magic grazed her arms and the back of her neck, raising the hairs there. The well of her power rippled with longing to be drawn upon, but she quashed the instinct. The Fade had been poisoned for her, since it would be, if Solas succeeded, the end of her world.
“Lethallan,” came a voice from nearby, drawing Ellana’s awareness back to the physical. She turned to find First Hathaan leaning on his staff, studying her with small brown eyes. “What were you doing?” he asked. “You’ve come to this place in the forest every day for a week just to stand among the trees.”
Ellana peered back at him. Can’t you feel the Veil here? It’s as fragile as wet paper and just as permeable. But she said nothing of that. Hathaan, while he had a keen memory for the clan’s history, befitting a future Keeper, was only a passable mage. She shouldn’t have been surprised to find him oblivious to the fraying threads of the Veil. After all, he hadn’t been held in the arms of its creator and shown how to caress its seal over the Fade.
The ghost of her left hand tingled again, for want of Solas’s over it as he murmured, “Only you, ma vhenan, can be with me in setheneran, a place of waking dreams, where the Veil is thin enough to break. You have the strength of the old elvhen. I thought I would never find such wisdom in this world, but”—he traced the bridge of her nose, where the vallaslin marked her skin—“you are extraordinary.”
Rubbing the knob of her elbow, she said to Hathaan, “Did you need me for something?”
“Not I,” he replied. “The Keeper was asking for you. It’s nearly sunset, and you said you would make sparklers for the feast.”
In the penumbra of the forest, she hadn’t noticed the sun going down, but the breeze that had stirred the Veil had been cool—herald of an encroaching autumn night.
“Of course. I’ll come right away.”
She meant it, too, since the children had been looking forward to her sticks of glittering sparks. Fed by an infinitesimal spell, they could be carried through the forest, handled, and dropped without the threat of starting a fire—which could not be said for the human version that inevitably caused small misfortunes during Satinalia each year.
The Dalish claimed they didn’t partake in the rituals of the shems, but their autumn celebration fell suspiciously close to that moon festival, its rites of feasting and masked revelry too similar to be coincidence. Which had come first was lost to history, but it didn’t matter to the Lavellan children, not when it meant they could hang lanterns from the tree branches and play late into the night, while their parents were occupied with drink and song.
The journey back to the circle of the clan’s aravels wasn’t a long one, delivering Ellana and Hathaan to where the hunters had spent all day preparing decorations, food, and wine for the festival. Meat roasted over a massive bonfire. An older man and his son tuned their stringed instruments to accompany the dancing. Vibrant ribbons were draped from all the nearest trees, twining around each other in the lazy wind. Excited laughter sounded from a group of young women comparing the masks they’d made of bark, leaves, and halla leather.
Hathaan hid a smile (poorly) as he admired them. They were a year or two his junior, but of an age for courtship, especially on the festival night, when spirits were high and inhibitions low. Masked, it was easier to make advances without the fear of shame that came with refusal. More than a few bonds within Clan Lavellan had been sealed at the turning of the season.
Istimaethoriel waited by a stack of twigs on a long table, all ready to be imbued with the spell for sparklers. She easily could’ve done the work herself, but when Ellana made a rare offer to use her own magic, the Keeper readily agreed. It was a brief moment where the gifted First she had sent to Divine Justinia’s Conclave four years before shone though the woman who had returned bare-faced and shuttered against the Fade, almost unrecognizable.
“Ellana,” said Istimaethoriel, “did Hathaan find you in your new favorite grove?”
“He did, hahren. I’m afraid I lose track of time when I’m there.” She gestured to the sliver of sun at the horizon. “But it’s not yet twilight. The sparklers won’t be needed until full dark.”
“They won’t,” the Keeper agreed, “but I wanted to make sure you had time to dress for the festival after you’d finished with them.”
Ellana patted down the front of her dull linen shirt to where it was tucked into leather trousers. “I was going to wear this. Maybe it needs a wash, but I’ll be chasing the children around all night. Whatever I have on will be filthy by the end of it.”
The Keeper pointed to where a hunter not yet entirely out of girlhood was crouched between two little boys, making faces that had them in stitches. “Lanissa will see to the children tonight. You will join the rest of us.” From behind her back, she drew a half-mask of rich red leather crowned with golden oak leaves. The eyeholes were lined with white bark so delicate it might’ve blown off at a sigh.
“It’s beautiful,” said Ellana, “but—”
“For once,” Hathaan interjected, “don’t fight this.”
She rounded on him, caught off guard at the vexation in his voice. He had, for as long as she’d known him, been mild mannered and gently spoken.
With insistence, he continued, “Maybe you don’t pay the Keeper, or any of us, much mind, but I’ve watched her fret and wring her hands over you long enough. If she wants you to put on a mask and pretend you’re one of us again for a night, do it.”
“Hathaan,” Istimaethoriel warned.
“Please, hahren,” he said, “you know I’m right.”
The Keeper set a hand on his shoulder, gnarled fingers light against the furred collar of his robe. “Perhaps you are, and your concern for me is appreciated, but I will speak to Ellana about this. Alone.”
Hathaan opened his mouth, maybe to protest, but Istimaethoriel shooed him away before he could. When he was gone, she said to Ellana, “He will make a good Keeper when the time comes, but sometimes I wish he wouldn’t take so long to grow into his spine.” A soft laugh. “You would not have been so biddable at his age.”
“No,” said Ellana. She looked at the mask, still in Istimaethoriel’s grasp. “I suppose I’m not very biddable now, either.”
“I won’t force you into a festival night, da’len,” said the Keeper, “and I promise I won’t wring my hands if you decline, but I believe it would do you good to go among your people as you once did.” She offered the mask, looking to Ellana’s unmarked face. “We are too few for true anonymity, but you may find others are less distracted by appearances tonight. Will you do it? At least try to enjoy yourself?”
Chagrin slithered down Ellana’s spine at the last. It was plain, then, that there was little joy in her days. Yet, she had foolishly thought no one noticed or, if they did, that they didn’t care. How self-absorbed that assumption had been, especially when faced with her old mentor’s concern.
“Hahren, forgive me. I’ve been caught up in myself since I returned. I haven’t tried hard enough to fit in. I—”
Istimaethoriel raised her hand for silence, and Ellana gave it.
“You were gone from us for a long time, da’len,” the Keeper said. “You saw and did things we couldn’t conceive of. You met people you must have loved, for it was clear you felt their loss keenly when your Inquisition ended. Coming back here was not what you wanted. You would’ve stayed with them forever, if you could have.”
Homesickness complained under Ellana’s breastbone—for the Herald’s Rest and the Undercroft, for Varric’s overblown stories and the Iron Bull’s truer ones, for Blackwall’s quiet lethality and Sera’s brash laughter, for the colorful frescoes that had served as a backdrop for midnight kisses, for sharing her love’s breath as the Veil shivered at the power of their desire—a desire never fulfilled.
“It is possible you will never be as happy with us as you were with them,” Istimaethoriel continued, “and if that be the case, you may continue on as you have, keeping us at arm’s length and mourning, but if there is any chance that you can find yourself again among us, I must encourage it.”
She offered the mask and this time Ellana took it in her right hand, feeling the supple leather.
“I’ll try.”
Istimaethoriel gave a small, relieved smile. “Shall I help you with these sparklers so that you might take the time to dress?”
Smiling in return, Ellana said, “I’d like that.”
And so they set to working the spell together upon bundles of ten sticks at a time. Each child would have their own bundle, and the Keeper slyly tucked several away for the adults, too.
“They’ll want to play just as much,” she said. “As I hope you will, da’len.” Patting Ellana’s hand, she took her share of sticks and went away.
“Lanissa,” Ellana called.
The young hunter trotted over, briefly leaving the children to their own devices. Ellana studied the flourishes of her vallaslin, complemented by green eyes and a happy expression.
“These are all for the children,” Ellana told her, indicating the sparkler sticks. “Spread them out over the night and you’ll be the favorite.”
“They’re wonderful!” said Lanissa. “I remember when you made them last autumn. I traced the Creators’ marks in the air for hours.” She stopped, her cheeks reddening. “I was still in the children’s group then.”
Ellana leaned in conspiratorially. “Nobody ever grows out of them. You’ll see your mother and father with drawings of their own by moonrise, I promise.”
Lanissa gave her a toothy grin. “Which do you draw, lethallan? Who is your chosen Creator?”
Knowing the truth of what the Evanuris had been—indulgent, petty slave-masters—tied Ellana’s tongue. Lanissa wore the marks of Sylaise, the Hearthkeeper, who supposedly gave the elves fire, weaving, and healing herbs, but who had, according to Solas, demanded her slaves learn the crafts in order to make her the finest wardrobe in Arlathan. They’d spun thread and embroidered until their fingers bled, and she had relished the dye of their blood in her gowns.
Ellana could not name any of the false gods as her chosen. Save Mythal, who had been kindly, or—
“Fen’Harel,” she said, hushed. “Though I didn’t know I was choosing him until it was too late.”
Lanissa didn’t—or couldn’t—stifle her gasp. “The Dread Wolf? But, lethallan, he’s the Betrayer. No one chooses him; he has no markings.” Her pretty eyes widened as she looked over Ellana’s face. “Oh.”
An ache of dread and bitter sorrow pierced Ellana through. Down to her bones, Lanissa feared the trickery of Fen’Harel, and she was right to. He cared nothing for her; he planned and schemed relentlessly to end her world. For that, Ellana hated him. He had no right to dictate hers or anyone else’s death, even for the paradise he claimed he would restore.
Yet, ire shared space in her breast with the love she’d borne for Solas—who he’d been before the wolf reared its head. He had fought by her side and taken her to astonishing places in the Fade, spinning wonderful stories of them. Among the dream-distorted ruins of Elvhenan, she had kissed him and, though she hadn’t understood it then, had tasted his yearning for the world that had been. What was her artless affection, compared to that?
“I can’t undo my choice,” she told Lanissa, “but listen to the Keeper when she says to beware.” Stepping back at pace, she picked up a bundle of sticks. “Light these to chase away wolfish shadows tonight.”
It was a lie, but allayed Lanissa’s fright. She pushed the bundle back at Ellana. “Keep some for yourself, then, lethallan.”
Moved by her care, Ellana held the bundle to her chest and nodded.
Once Lanissa returned to her charges, Ellana went to her aravel. From a trunk inside it, she retrieved one of the few things she’d brought with her from Skyhold: the velvet dress Josephine had given her for her thirtieth birthday. Ellana preferred leathers to finery, but when the rich fabric had swung around her legs as she’d entered the main hall for the party, she’d felt beautiful—and surrounded by her friends, happier than she could remember.
That the dress was the vivid green of a rift hadn’t escaped Ellana’s notice that night, or Solas’s.
“This shade becomes you,” he’d said as they’d stolen a moment alone in an alcove. “However, I would rather see you bathed in true rift light…and perhaps nothing else.”
She had trembled agreeably, brushing her cheek to his. “Tonight?”
He had sighed against her ear, a wordless regret she’d heard before. Disappointment had tempered her want, but she’d said, and not for the first time, “It’s all right. We can wait. We have time.”
Solas had brought his brow to hers. “Do we, vhenan?”
Before she’d been able to ask his meaning, he’d pressed his mouth to hers in a hot, urgent kiss. She’d lost herself and her worries in it. More fool her.
Removing shirt and trousers, Ellana knelt by the bucket of water she’d collected from a nearby stream that morning. It was a far cry from the deep copper tub she’d enjoyed at Skyhold, with its steaming water and fragrant oils, but sufficed to wash the day from her skin before she put the dress on.
It still fit well, though doing the laces herself took twice as long as it had the night she’d first worn it, and she had to pin the left sleeve up. Tidying her hair as best she could, she slipped the mask over her face and tugged the ribbon to hold it taught. Istimaethoriel had fashioned it so it could be made to fit using just one hand. Ellana’s heart tightened with gratitude for her Keeper.
The Dalish kept few mirrors, yet Ellana had one, small and silver, as a keepsake from the ball at Halamshiral. It had been Leliana’s, entrusted to Ellana with a whispered, “Use it to check for anyone following you through the palace, Inquisitor. To them it will seem like you are ensuring your hair is just so and your cheeks pinched to blush. Nothing out of the ordinary in the empress’s court.”
It had proved useful then and did again as Ellana inspected her appearance, the fall of the velvet skirt around her bare feet. She wasn’t fit for the Winter Palace, or even for entertaining the Inquisition’s visiting diplomats, but for the autumnal festival of the Dales, she would do splendidly.
Casks of mulberry wine stood open when she entered the center of camp, where the bonfire licked at evening air and all of Clan Lavellan’s adults had gathered. By the merry volume of their voices, drink had already been flowing for some time. Ellana approached in silent, cautious steps, expecting the usual terse greetings, but upon her arrival at a broad-shouldered hunter’s side, he bid her a booming welcome and offered a full cup of wine. She took it and, raising it to his health, tasted the fruit flavor.
That was one thing she had missed about living among the Dalish: wine that wasn’t delicate Orlesian red grapes or too-sweet white Ferelden ones, kissed by the cold until they were pure sugar. Mulberry was her favorite—light and refreshing, with an earthy taste that grounded her. She took another, deeper drink of it.
“Ha! You’re eager for the night, lethallan,” said the hunter who had given her the wine. “Well met!” He too wore a half-mask, which left his lightly stubbled jaw exposed, as well as a gap-toothed grin and mischievous hazel eyes. Ellana recognized him as the carpenter, maker of their aravels, but put his name and his trade out of her mind, as prescribed, for the duration of the festival.
“Are you not also eager, lethallin?” she asked, arch. “From the stains on your lips, that cup is not your first.”
He barked a laugh, garnering looks from a few other masked faces. “It’s not, but I can’t claim to be disappointed to have drawn your gaze to my mouth.” His own gaze slid down Ellana’s dress, catching on her missing forearm. He knew her, too, but when their eyes met again, there was no reticence in his, rather a luminous sheen of want.
Ellana hid a shocked thrill in her wine cup. It had been so long since a man had looked at her with desire, she had all but forgotten how nice it could be.
“Perhaps you will drink your first cup in my company,” he said, “and if luck is with me tonight, your second.”
No particularly deft hand at flirtation, Ellana took one more fortifying sip of wine before she rejoined, “I don’t plan on whiling the whole night away in a wine barrel, lethallin, but if you can still manage your feet when we finish these cups, I’ll dance with you.”
“The very prospect sobers me,” he offered, but the solemnity of the declaration was ruined by a rakish smile.
Ellana laughed, breezy and earnest. “Then drink up, the music is starting.”
He proved an adept dancer, despite his breadth—almost that of a human’s. His fingers around hers were strong as they skipped and whirled to the strings, pipes, and drums. He only reached for a hand that wasn’t there once, and was quick correct himself by grasping her waist instead. She couldn’t contain a surprised exclamation when he lifted her off her feet in a swirl of skirts as if she weighed nothing at all.
Their lively dance drew the attention of others who might partner them both, and so they went their separate ways. Ellana danced next with a lithe man of middle age, who moved through the steps so quickly she struggled at the start to keep up. But as her pulse thumped with exertion, she caught her stride and matched his spirit.
After him came a man who had seen no more than eighteen autumns and blushed under his mask when Ellana complimented his footwork. A willowy hunter with streaks of white in her cropped black hair followed. She held Ellana closer than any of the men had, and while her admiration was flattering, she was sent off as they had been.
Ellana paused several times to pick at the food with no great appetite, partaking in more of the mulberry wine. Her head was light, but not swimming, which gave the night soft edges she found comfort in.
The children flitted between the trees, their sparklers in hand. Ellana was glad they were enjoying her gifts, and that she wasn’t the one to mind them after all. The joy of the festival had won her, and was much needed—if only as a reminder that delight was not beyond her reach.
“Aneth ara, lethallan.”
She might’ve started at the words—a man’s and spoken very close by—but the greeting was a friendly one among her people, and closeness was expected when they had to speak over the din of music and chatter.
He stood at her shoulder: long-limbed and tall, with an elegant sweep of neck displayed by an open collar. Long honey-blond hair was plaited down the middle of his head, the sides shorn close to the scalp. The mask he wore, made with curls of ivy, covered most of his face, save for lips and a dimpled chin. In the restless firelight, Ellana couldn’t make out the color of his eyes.
“Aneth ara,” she replied as she tried and failed to place him. Likely, he was one the hunters who spent more time away from camp than in it, but there was something strangely familiar about the way his presence pressed at the confines of the space he occupied, as if he could barely be contained by his lean form.
Her missing arm throbbed like the Anchor when it sensed a Fade rift.
Tucking his hands behind his back, the hunter asked, “Are you enjoying the festivities?”
Ellana blamed the wine for the fluid quality of his voice: shifting and unusual, his accent both the Lavellan lilt and something more refined.
“I am,” she said. “More than I thought I would.”
“Indeed,” said the hunter, casting a glance over the dancers as a new song began.
Ellana, puzzled by his sudden arrival and then near silence, said, “Are you enjoying them?”
One side of his mouth lifted. “More than I thought I would.” She cut him a sardonic glance, and he gave a chuckle in a husky baritone, pleasing to the ear. “Forgive me, but I have never found these frolics very engaging.”
“Not inclined to fun?” Ellana teased, albeit shot with genuine interest. This peculiar hunter had caught her attention and held it.
“No,” he replied. “At least, not recently. I have been absorbed by my work.” He tipped his head to the side, the light of the bonfire catching the defined line of his jaw. “In my youth, I was fond of revelry.”
By Ellana’s reckoning—by what she could see of his features—he wasn’t old, even if he chose his words with an elder’s formality. But appearances, she’d learned, could be deceiving.
“Your ‘youth,’” she said. “Shall I call you hahren?”
“And make me feel my age? I would rather you did not.” He looked at her through his mask, and she felt his regard like a physical weight. “Are we not to put such things aside tonight, anyway? They make no matter, if we are enjoying each other’s company.”
“So,” said Ellana, “you enjoy my company, but not the festival?”
“That remains to be seen, should you choose to needle me further.”
If he meant it as a true admonishment, there wasn’t enough bite. Ellana suspected he was baiting her, waggish regardless of his restrained demeanor. Excitement bubbled to life in her belly at the challenge.
“I’ve never been good at needlework,” she said. “Just as likely to prick my finger as to stitch or embroider.”
“I cannot imagine you sitting still long enough for either,” said the hunter.
She stuck a hand on her hip. “And how would you guess that after only a few words between us?”
“You forget that we are of the same people,” he replied, “and have seen something of each other before. But if I am using tonight as my measure, I have watched you spend most of it dancing. Even when you stop for refreshment, you stay on your feet, weaving amongst the others like a restive spirit at the threshold of a dream.”
For a moment, Ellana was distracted by the prettiness of the comparison, but to hear a hunter speak of spirits was uncommon, to say the least. “What do you know of such things?” she asked.
“As much as anyone who dreams,” he replied, lifting one shoulder and letting it fall. “We all walk the Fade when we sleep.”
Ellana could concede that, but didn’t entirely believe the casual dismissal.
“This festival is dreamlike, in its way,” the hunter went on, gesturing to the flame-lit trees, starbursts of sparklers, ribbons floating from branches, the circling dancers. “Masked figures ecstatic and fetterless under a breathless moon, wrapped in the blue veil of night.”
Ellana’s lips parted on a short breath in.
He caught her out, turning with a pleased smile. “You are lovely in surprise, lethallan. Not expecting poetry?”
“Not from a hunter.”
“Can one not be eloquent? With words as keen as his arrows?”
“I suppose he—you—can be. Our Keepers can’t be the only storytellers.”
His playful humor dimmed at that, posture tightening as he once again looked out over the revels. The dancers were applauding the end of the song.
What wrong step she’d taken, Ellana couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t want it to spoil the conversation and chase the hunter away. As the musicians began the next strains, she proffered her hand. “Will you dance with me, lethallin?”
To her relief, his smile returned. “I would be honored.”
The skin of his palm, when it slid over hers, proved tender. No rough patches from pulling a bowstring or handling a skinning knife. Such hands would be soft against the planes of her sides, the lengths of her thighs—and between them.
The sudden spike of lust brought her up short, so much so that she trod on the hem of her dress and lurched toward the hunter. Adroitly, he caught her against him, his body a sturdy wall despite its slightness.
“If you wished to be nearer me, lethallan, you had only to say.”
There was levity in his tone, but beneath it a purred satisfaction that stoked the desire that had nearly felled her. She shivered when he brushed her upper back, under the hair she had let grow too far.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No,” she managed to reply around the distracting scent of his clothes: piquant and more than a little bitter. Felandaris, a spiny weed that grew only where the Veil was at its thinnest.
“No,” she said again. “I’m fine.”
“Then we had best join the dance,” said the hunter, “before our song runs out.”
Ellana let him lead her to join the other couples moving around the bonfire. With the sureness of experience, he fell into step, drawing her with him with her right hand in one of his and the other at her waist. His hold was not as insistent as the lady hunter’s had been, but he was far from tentative. She found she quite liked being in his arms.
Unlike the leisurely pace of Orlesian court dances, which were tailor-made for the loaded conversations of the Game, Dalish ones were too spirited for talk. The rolling thunder of the drums demanded constant movement, and the high string melodies had Ellana spinning under the hunter’s arm in dizzying, exhilarating rounds. But each time, he pulled her back to him so that they were chest-to-chest, his thighs trespassing on the material of her skirt. Had either of them been poorer dancers, the proximity would’ve sent them sprawling after their knees collided.
In the rush of it all, Ellana didn’t mark the hunter putting distance between the two of them and the rest of the dancers until they were at the forest’s edge, under the sheltering arms of the trees. When the song came to an end, they stood in a pool of yellow lantern light, entirely alone.
“You dance beautifully,” said the hunter. His hands went to her upper arms, sliding down to the elbow joints. Ellana braced for a show of discomfort when he reached the terminus of her left arm, but he cupped it gently and without aversion. “Does it pain you?” he asked.
“It was far worse before.” She added a droll twist—habitual to put people at ease with an amputated limb. Most saw it and could think of little more than the fear of losing their own.
But not the hunter. Instead, he said, low and at the border of anger, “Have these people given you reason to make light of this?” Another gentle touch to the end of her elbow, even as he snarled, “Have they dared to look at you with disgust?”
Ellana balked at the vehemence, but he kept a steady hold on her so she couldn't retreat. “No, of course not,” she said. “It can be awkward sometimes, but the questions stopped a long time ago. About how it happened, if it’s difficult to live with.” She lifted her eyebrows, whether or not he could see them under her mask. “If it pains me.”
Hearing his own question thrown back at him, his hackles smoothed down. “Ir abelas. Temper was unnecessary. You do not need me, or anyone, to defend you.”
“Maybe I don’t,” Ellana said, “but”—she laid her hand against his pectoral—“it can be nice to have someone who will.”
The hunter stroked his thumb over her elbow joint. The other hand he raised to her cheek. “You deserve nothing less.”
Warm anticipation filled her breast as he leaned in, bringing his lips near to hers. But a riot of laughter from among the trees arrested him. He and Ellana both turned their heads to see Lanissa leaping across the forest floor with her hands held clawlike, chasing a pack of children. They screeched in mock-fright as she growled in her girlish register, “Run, run or the Dread Wolf will catch you!” She swiped at the nearest little girl, who broke into a fit of giggles, throwing the sparkler she held in her rush to escape.
The twig landed close to Ellana’s skirt, sparks arcing over the ground and onto the velvet. The hunter moved quickly to kick it away.
“It’s all right,” said Ellana. “It won’t do any harm. It’s not real fire.”
“No?” the hunter asked, peering at where the twig still ‘burned.’
Stooping, Ellana retrieved it. By way of demonstration, she touched her fingertips to the source of the sparks. “It’s called veilfire. Old elvhen magic. A trivial spell, but it’s popular with the children.”
The hunter mirrored her touch to the twig’s tip. “You made these?” When she nodded, he said, “How very clever.” Curling his fist around the twig, he smothered the fire. His palm, as he unfurled the fingers, was uninjured. “Very clever indeed.”
The timbre of his voice had shifted lower, heat-infused. Ellana let the twig tumble from her fingers as he bent his head again. In his proximity, she could finally see the color of his eyes: lovely blue-gray, and radiant with desire.
“Ellana,” he murmured, putting his long fingers into her hair.
Any reply she might’ve had was lost in the kiss.
There was no hesitancy in the press of his mouth, no mild test of lips he’d never tasted; he delved into her fiercely, as if starved. Ellana, potent want surging in response, slid her arm around his neck for purchase. He hauled her against him hard enough to push what breath remained in her lungs out through parted lips. He nipped at the lower before soothing it with his tongue—exactly the way she liked.
The scent of felandaris mixed with the woodsy aroma of the forest, as ensconcing as the hunter’s strong arms. Ellana drew it in through her nose, unwilling to break away for anything. The hunter shifted the angle, scantly avoiding scraping their masks together, and deepened the kiss again. Ellana's hum of approval was met with one from deep in his chest.
Last she’d been kissed, Ellana had been on her knees in the scrubby grass of the Crossroads, tears on her face from the agony of the Anchor’s collapse—and from the awful revelation of Solas as Fen’Harel. What little hope had remained that she would find him the same man she’d loved lay in tatters around her boots, but when he’d crouched before her, his gaze shining with whatever new power he wielded, she had reached for him in reckless sentiment.
“This will take the pain away, my love.”
He’d meant the Anchor, which his magic had indeed soothed, but for a fleeting moment, when his lips met hers, the truth of his betrayal had faded and he’d been Solas again, kissing with an intense ardor his usual restraint concealed. She had poured all of her devotion into returning the kiss. It would not change his mind or his course, but she had wanted to ensure he understood what he was giving up—what he was destroying. It had been a brief kiss, and chaste, but she had clung to it since, along with the shattered dream of Solas.
Until this night and this hunter, whose company had done what Ellana had said the sparklers would: chased off the shadow of the Dread Wolf.
Taking a fistful of the hunter’s shirt, she drew him to the broad trunk of a tree. As her back landed against its tough bark, he covered her body with his, bracketing her legs in a wide stance. Lust blazed between them as brilliant as veilfire.
The masks were an imposition, yet before she could reach for the ribbon of hers to remove it, the hunter guided her head to rest against the tree trunk, affording him the opportunity to trail damp kisses over her pulse point and down her neck. He dipped his tongue into the hollow of her throat, causing a throb between her legs.
She wanted him—powerfully, frantically—and yearned to know if he felt the same.
Words were impossible, however, as he returned to her mouth and slipped his skillful tongue into it. Rather, she sought her answer with her thigh, slotting it between his legs. He groaned when she found the hard evidence of his arousal. She pressed to give him friction, and he took it greedily, in hard rolls of his hips.
Despite of the coolness of the autumn air, Ellana’s dress had grown overwarm, a heavy barrier between her and the hunter she wanted gone. In a delicate balance of keeping her leg in place for him to use while bracing herself against his shoulder, she put her hand between them to tug blindly at the laces of her bodice.
At first, the hunter didn’t notice the struggle. He panted in humid puffs between kisses, absorbed in rutting against her thigh. His abandon only made her need to undo the laces more urgent. But the knot held firm.
Fumbling to catch his wrist, she said, “Help me.”
He raised his head to fix her with bewildered, lust-bleared eyes. That her attentions had addled him so made her want to preen, and to see him lose himself even further in pleasure.
She set his hand against her breast, over the laces. “Help me loosen this. Please.”
He looked down at the neckline of the dress, her flushed skin above it, and traced its edge. “You know not what you ask.”
Even in a haze of desire, she couldn’t contain a short laugh. “I most certainly do. You can’t think I haven’t done this before.”
He glanced up to her face, his mouth set. “Of course not, but this was not my intention when I came to you. I fear I lost myself.” Bringing his fingertips to her lips, he grazed where they were plush and wet from his kisses. “You have a singular ability to command my attention.”
Satisfaction rushed through Ellana, spurring her lick at the pad of his forefinger. She was rewarded with a sharp indrawn breath and a jerk of his hips against her thigh. He was hard enough now that it might’ve pained him.
“It wasn’t my intention, either,” Ellana said, “but we’re here, and it can just be for tonight. The festival. Tomorrow, we can be as we were.” Though as she said it, her stomach tightened with trepidation. She had never been good at dalliances, one night or otherwise.
His hand left her lips, quick as a cat, and curled around one side of her face. The touch wasn’t hard, but his stare was. “No. If I lie with you, nothing will ever be as it was.”
Ellana tried to draw a breath of her own, but his conviction stole it. Chest still and heart thumping, she said, “Viran se lan'aan? Who are you?”
The hunter’s thumb moved against her cheekbone, almost regretful, but he drew away to pass a hand over his mask. Ellana blinked against a burst of magic that tingled over her cheeks. When she opened her eyes again, the mask, and the pretense, was gone.
“Ma vhenan,” said Solas, “I have missed you.”