Childish
The ride back to Skyhold is awkward. If Belassan notices the tension in the air as the two of you dismount, or the shame on your face, he doesn’t comment on it. He takes Ashi’lana back into the stables and you lead Revas in after him. Solas doesn’t follow.
You give yourself time to grieve as you unsaddle and groom Revas, lavishing him with strokes and attention far longer than is necessary to clean him. You find it hard to believe he has the reputation for having a bit of a temper; he stands calmly as you lay your weight on him and cry silently into his soft, thick fur.
It’s stupid of you to cry, and you certainly feel the fool for it. You only allow yourself the indulgence because you have a moment of privacy. You’ve experienced this dull stabbing of the chest before. You wouldn’t have made it this far in life if you hadn’t been able to push back against your idiotic crushes when it came down to it. You knew how to keep people at arm’s length, and you were generally good at it. But you’d let yourself get a little too close, this time, so the cut felt more raw. Solas’s disappointment had been written plainly on his face, and there was no room for alternate explanations here. And of course he was disappointed. You would be disappointed in someone who believed what you professed to believe. You would think them childish, simple-minded. Ignorant. Foolish. You had a somewhat justifiable explanation: trauma from your exposure to Tevinter magic at a young age. It’s a good enough lie that Solas might not hold your supposed prejudice against you.
But you had disappointed him.
And it stings.
You manage to pull yourself together shortly before Belassan comes to check on you. Concern is plain on the man’s face. “Emma, did Solas—” he begins, but your glare cuts him off. Not only does it silence him, it’s so potent as to leave him stunned. You simply shake your head, then jump the gate and head out of the barn. You see Blackwall as you storm past, but you have no patience for him at the moment.
You have some time before lunch. You privately apologize to Leliana, to yourself, and to the unknown Draconologist your work is for, but you can’t bring yourself to go straight to the rotunda and settle down to work as if you hadn’t just made an absolute ass of yourself. Instead, you head for the baths. Not even the human baths, this time… you don’t have the confidence at the moment. You slink into the elven baths like a kicked Mabari pup. You don’t soak, because the cold water would be a misery to soak in, but you use a rough sponge to scrub yourself until your raw skin threatens to break and bleed. This time, the pain does little to soothe you.
You putter about getting dressed into fresh clothes, wasting as much time as possible. But you have responsibilities, and in the end, not even your own mortification could lead you to let Solas go hungry. You fetch his lunch in the kitchen, once more taking your time. You make a smaller, simpler lunch for yourself, one that will be easy to carry should he not wish to eat with you. You wouldn’t blame him.
But when you enter the rotunda, there your little stool sits by his desk, as if waiting for you. Solas is reading the same tome he was when you entered that morning. It should be soothing, but the sight makes your chest ache anew. You steel yourself with a deep breath and head for his desk. He looks up from his tome as you set the food down before him, but you hesitate with your own plate. The stool is there. He had to have put it there, on purpose. But…
With a deep breath for courage, you set your food down his desk and sit. You’re back to trying to take up the least amount of space possible, keeping your plate perched on the absolute corner of his desk.
The both of you seem somewhat at a loss for what to say. You desperately hunt for something, anything, to discuss, and fall upon the utterly banal. Solas has a clean, fresh smell about him. He’s wearing a different sweater. He does not have hair to be wet, but yours is obviously damp and your clothes are just as changed.
“I see we had the same idea,” you say lamely and with forced cheer. “A bath before returning to our respective tasks. I’m sure yours was more pleasant than mine, though.”
Solas seems grateful for a subject to reach onto, even one so utterly stupid as this. “Oh?”
“The public baths aren’t particularly pleasant,” you say with a hopefully-believable chuckle. “But if I had one of those private baths, they would have to pay me just to leave the room.”
Solas looks surprised, and you realize that in your distraction, you’d just admitted something rather telling. Solas seems amused, however. “Tell me, just how far into my room did you snoop when you broke in…?”
“Oh, Maker, no!” you say, waving your hands in front of you for emphasis. “I swear! I just saw… That is… Iron Bull told me about them.” It didn’t seem smart to admit you’d bathed in Bull’s, or that you had snuck in and pranked Vivienne’s. Solas clearly isn’t buying it, however.
“I see. Bull just so happened to mention that Skyhold was in possession of enchanted bathtubs, and that I was in possession of one?”
“It’s more believable than it sounds,” you say with a wince. “You’re not the only one who likes to tease me.”
“Now that I can believe,” Solas says with a chuckle. You breathe a small sigh of relief. The conversation continues through lunch, slightly stilted as both of you avoid the subject of magic entirely. The thought that you may never be able to beg another magical demonstration out of Solas cuts you, threatening to bleed you dry. The smile on his face when he’d conjured veilfire out of seeming nothingness. The way the greenish fire reflected in his eyes. That brief moment where you’d pretended you could have something more than the solitary. You try to beat the thoughts away while you force a smile and continue your conversation with Solas. By the time he’s finished his meal, you’ve exhausted yourself. You’re ready to run right back to the barn and drown yourself in wretched, stupid self-pity. Instead, you calmly gather the plates and leave to return them to the kitchen. You have no intention of returning to the rotunda.
You can’t just wander around Skyhold or sulk in the barn, however. You need to at least pretend to get something useful accomplished. You head up to the library, taking the longer route to avoid Solas’s rotunda. You meander about the library for a little, looking for Thea and pointedly avoiding Helisma. You can’t find Thea, but Dorian seems to zero in on your almost immediately.
“You look like someone just drowned kittens in front of you,” he comments. “Trouble in paradise?”
“Something like that,” you mutter. You have no energy for the Tevinter’s odd sense of humor right now. Then you eye him anew, an idea forming in your fogged mind. “Say, Dorian, why don’t we discuss that tome you lent me? Outside. In a place that’s not here.”
Dorian’s eyes slide over to the railing, where Solas rests some twenty feet below. “Say no more,” Dorian says cheerfully. “I can tell you’re just dying for my company.” He steers you out of the door onto the walkway around the library. From here, the two of you can walk onto the battlements and avoid the Great Hall altogether.
“Did you actually want to talk about that tome?” Dorian asks curiously as you begin meandering your way towards the outer battlements.
“To be honest with you, I’m not even halfway through,” you say with a sigh. “I can barely understand it. I think it’s a bit above my education level.”
“That’s not really surprising,” Dorian says. “I doubt they gave you much of a magical education in Seheron.”
You glare over at him, but it lacks conviction. “No, my education in Seheron was decidedly non-magical. It mostly involved chess and Qunari.” You pause. “Although, I once translated a missive that detailed the disemboweling of a Magister. Is that the sort of education you mean?”
Dorian wrinkles his nose. “Ugh. Definitely not. Why do Qunari write that sort of thing down?”
“The same reason some Vint wrote down how best to bind a hunger demon into a corpse. If you want to do it more than once, it helps to have instructions.”
“My, but you’re morose today,” Dorian says dryly.
“Maybe that will help me understand the tome!” you declare. “I just have to get into the right mindset. Let’s find some black robes, go into the Undercroft and begin chanting.”
“Maker, no. No robes, no Undercroft, no chanting. If Dagna saw something like that going on, we’d never escape her.”
“Dagna?”
“Oh, you’d love her. She’s a non-mage who’s obsessed with magic. You’d have so much to talk about!”
“Really?” you say, intrigued despite yourself. You’re not actually the same, but it would be a very interesting perspective.
“Yes, she’s a dwarf, actually.”
“W…what?” you say, laughing. “A dwarf who studies magic? Now that is bizarre.”
“You have no room to throw stones,” Dorian says with a snort. “Up here asking me about necromancy…”
“Fair enough. Is she an enchanter, then? I mean, she must be, right?”
“Mmhmm. Have you ever considered studying enchantment, Emma?”
You wonder idly if Dorian is a clever enough person to notice the trap he just laid. Had he done it on purpose? But after a month of playing with Iron Bull, Solas, and Leliana, Dorian’s efforts seem clumsy. “Don’t be ridiculous. Only dwarves and Tranquil can do that,” you lie dully.
“Not true!” Dorian says, seeming delighted to be able to educate you. You’re glad you let him have this one. Not only is his cheerful patronizing annoyingly endearing, there’s only so much education on a subject you can justify by throwing your hands in the air and yelling “TOMES” very loudly. “Although they’re best at it because of their resistance to lyrium. But in Tevinter we use non-magically inclined slaves to—” He freezes mid-sentence. “…Um.”
You imagine you must look intensely unamused. “No, no, Dorian, by all means, continue,” you say sourly. “Expound to me the benefits of a slave-driven economy.”
“I… I wasn’t-” he begins, but you cut him off with a smile.
“I won’t hold it against you every time you happen to bring up Tevinter’s slavery. I’ll make a face, but I won’t hold it against you personally. So they have non-magical slaves enchanting? Doesn’t that drive them mad?”
“If their master isn’t careful, it can, but for the most part, they’re regularly rotated out. They spend two parts researching or doing other work to one part enchanting,” Dorian explains. “To keep the lyrium exposure down. The less magical inclination they have, the longer they can work safely.”
“Fascinating,” you lie. In truth, you knew all this already. The ancient elves had no Tranquil that you know of, and their enchantments were some of the most elaborate and long-lasting. Tevinter stole many things from the Elvhen, and their theories on enchantment were among them. You’ve read both Elven and Tevene tomes on the subject.
But Dorian’s animated explanations are entertaining. He seems to enjoy educating, enough that you feel bad he’s telling you things you already know. You steer the topic back towards the necromancy tome; he’s more than happy to explain in great detail how one binds spirits to corpses, the theories behind the magic, and what spirits are best for what uses.
You wonder if he’s friends with Cole. You wonder if he hears himself when he talks, really. He talks about spirits the way he talks about slaves. Like they’re things. At least he’s peripherally aware of you as a person and an ex-slave, but he seems to have some serious cognitive dissonance in that area. You suppose most Vints do. They’re not all monsters, and how else could a good and decent person justify that to themselves? By lying about the reality of it, even to themselves. By not thinking about it at all, not really.
You don’t dislike Dorian. In fact, you would be more likely to say you pity him. He clearly patronizes you due to your apparent lack of magic, but that affectionate pity he has towards you is mirrored in your own honest emotions towards him. Poor dear, you both likely think of each other. Just doesn’t know any better. No hope of comprehending the reality.
Although you’re still more than willing to listen to him wax poetic about magic. He’s a Tevinter-trained altus. That he knows more about magic than you do is simply a given. Your knowledge has been stolen and swiped over barely more than a careful, cautious decade. You have nothing on even the youngest of Circle mages, not really. You listen carefully, committing his words to memory. It’s almost humorous how willing Dorian is to ramble on about semi-forbidden magics. Vints. And to think, you’ve been spending all your time downstairs, attempting to squeeze even a drop of magical knowledge out of Solas. It’s just a shame you’re not actually interested in binding spirits. Particularly not into corpses.
The two of you idly walk about the battlements as you talk, and after one time too many the two of you are given the stink eye by one of the guards, Dorian sighs. “Of course, now that I’ve been seen in public with you, rumor will have us sleeping together by dinner.”
You can’t help it; you burst into laughter. “You’ve noticed that too, have you? I’ve utterly lost track of how many men I’m supposed to be sleeping with at this point.”
“Between one and seven, by my last count,” Dorian says mildly. “You must be very busy.”
“Incredibly. I never have time to sleep,” you say without a hint of irony.
“Were you actually listening to all that rambling?” Dorian asks curiously. “I’m afraid I have a tendency to get carried away.”
“‘For purposes of spreading chaos, the traditional choice is the hunger demon, of course,’” you quote. “‘But personally I find that a rage demon is the easier option for those apprentices just starting. They break down faster, but they’re less clever.’”
Dorian whistles; you’d just quoted him word for word. “It really is a shame you’re not a mage,” he says, voice full of genuine regret. “A brilliant mind, wasted.”
You glare sourly at him as the oblivious Vint realizes what he just said. “Well… not totally wasted, obviously,” he says quickly, and you simply roll your eyes. Privately, you agree with him more than you should. A mind like yours would be wasted were you not a mage. After all, you would probably still be a slave. There’s no greater waste than that.
You glance out at the sun, setting over the mountains, and realize you’ve flitted away another day without completing so much as a page of work on your actual job. You’ll have to get some work in after dinner, no matter how awkward you feel around Solas. You’re being childish. Haven’t you debased yourself in a hundred worse ways than this? So he takes you for someone superstitious. You’ve let people believe much worse about you for the sake of your safety.
“Thank you for the company, Dorian,” you say with a smile. “But I’ve put off my duties long enough. If I’m late with his dinner, Solas will be cross.”
“Why do you do that, anyway?” Dorian asks curiously.
“A multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that I get to fetch two meals from the kitchens. You friends of the Inquisitor eat better than us peasant masses,” you say with a smirk. You wave goodbye to Dorian as you head directly to the kitchens. You take time to make sure the foods he like are the only things that make their way onto his plate, and swipe some freshly baked tarts more or less directly out of the oven. They’re the sweetest thing you can find. You feel the need to apologize, and delivering him stolen sweets is about the only way you know how.
“I was worried I would have to fetch my own dinner,” Solas comments, but you see laughter behind his eyes. He’s not cross with you, thank the Maker.
“Well, we can’t have that. Gaston would have fits at the sight of you in his kitchen. All the girls would faint, and afterwards they’d think you’d cursed the roast with blood magic,” you say dryly. “Best to have a go-between for something as delicate as fetching dinner.” You unload your tray and sit down on your little stool with no small amount of relish. No matter how much you may have diminished yourself in his eyes, it isn’t so much that he doesn’t want you around.
“Where were you all afternoon?” Solas asks after the two have you begin eating. You hope this is mild curiosity and not the precursor to scolding. You should have been here working.
“I was off with Dorian, discussing the tome he lent me,” you reply, seeing no reason to lie. “Time got away from us. Dorian is predisposed to lecturing.”
“I’m surprised you’re comfortable with the subject of necromancy.”
“Well… comfortable is a strong word,” you say with a nervous chuckle. “It’s kind of… creepy. Okay, it’s very creepy. But as long as he’s not actually raising a corpse from the dead right in front of me, I can listen to the theory.”
“Have you ever seen the undead?”
“No, thank the Maker,” you lie. “They sound terrifying. And smelly. I don’t know how Dorian does it,” you say with a scowl. “He’s such a clean fellow; how did he come to play with corpses?”
“I’m sure they have different standards in Tevinter,” Solas says with a faint smile. You snort.
“Hah, I’ll say. Here, I got these.” You pull out the hidden tarts, which you’d wrapped in a dish towel, and lay them out on the table.
Solas actually chuckles, and the sound makes your heart skip a beat. “Famin da’ahlras.1” His tone is scolding, but you really don’t care. You would behave very badly to hear more Elven out of him. “Can you go nowhere without resorting to petty theft?”
“The nobles here won’t miss a few tarts,” you say with a grin. “It’s not stealing if it’s from rich shems.”
“No wonder you and Sera get along. Where did you learn that?”
“Same place she did, I’d bet. Denerim orphanage. Our hahren would have disagreed, but he wasn’t going to feed me either.”
“You grew up in the orphanage, but I’ve heard you speak of your mother before,” Solas says, one of his questions that isn’t a question.
“I remember her from when I was very young. Before the orphanage.” Only half a lie.
“Did something—” Solas is cut off as you rather rudely push a tart towards his face. You shove it right up to his lips, although you stop short of attempting to cram it into his mouth.
“They’re best when they’re warm,” you say pointedly. You will not be speaking of your mother this evening, or any other. Fortunately, Solas takes the hint and the tart. An image of him plucking it straight from between your fingers with his lips flashes through your perverted little mind, but Solas takes it rather politely with his hand before eating it. It’s probably better this way. If Solas started actually flirting with you, you doubt your poor, strained heart could take it. It’d probably explode right then and there.
The subject turns back to Dorian, and from there, to magic. The two of you rather delicately tiptoe around the subject of mind-magic, and you know you won’t be able to ask for any more demonstrations, but at least Solas isn’t turned off from discussing the subject with you entirely.
“I don’t know if Dorian will ever recover from his disappointment over my lack of magical aptitude,” you comment dryly. “Just today he said my mind was wasted.”
For some reason, your words have Solas eyeing you sharply over his drink. “Do you find you garner that sort of reaction from mages often?”
You’re a little taken aback by the question. Does he suspect something? You’ve been awfully careful, and he must have checked you for magic half a dozen times at this point. Surely he’s satisfied by now? Perhaps not. “If you share his opinion, you’ll be the second one,” you say, making your face look puzzled. “Why?”
“Mm. Nothing, I’m sure,” Solas says, returning to his drink. You pout. He does that often, saying something incredibly leading and then refusing to explain further. If you were half as frustrating as he was when he asked questions, you’d have been thrown out of the rotunda on your ass by now. “Will you be working on your tome this evening?”
You wince guiltily. You should have been working on it all day. “Yes… Probably late. I don’t have practice with the Iron Bull tomorrow, so I can sleep in,” you explain quickly as you see the tiniest frown form at the corner of Solas’s lips. You wish you could understand why it displeased him so. If he were your master, or even your employer, you could make some sense of it. But he’s just… Well, you don’t even know what. Something between a friend and a boss, is how it feels. “I’m going to drop the rest of these tarts off with Thea, first, then I’ll be right back to get to work,” you promise. Solas has eaten his fill of the sweet tarts, and they really are better warm. Plus, you really need to check in with and bribe Thea. The last you’d seen her, you’d snapped at her rather roughly.
You wrap the tarts back up in the dish towel and take them up the stairs. Fortunately, Thea is easy to find this time. She’s on a ladder, restocking some books back up onto the shelves, likely trying to create some semblance of order in the chaotic library.
“I come bringing gifts,” you call up to her. You glance sidelong to your right; you’re standing relatively close to Helisma’s desk. She’s working as studiously as you ever have, with an unwavering focus you almost envy. But the thought of why she has such a dedicated mind quickly sends a chill down your spine, and you return your focus to Thea, who’s climbing down the ladder.
“Thank the Maker! I could use the break. Requisition is givin’ Mahvir a hard time, and you know I’m caught in the middle of it because none of them want to talk to a kniiiiiiice elf?” she attempts to finish, eyes widening halfway through the word.
“Nice catch,” you say dryly. She grins apologetically.
“Sorry. S’been a long day, and I’ve been hearin’ the boys toss that one around like it’s goin’ outta style.”
“If they’re giving Mahvir a hard time, I suppose that means I can expect my tomes sometime next year,” you say with a scowl. “If it weren’t for the damn war, I’d ride out to get them myself. I can’t finish that damn dragon book until I get the supplies I need, and I can only put off certain sections for so long!”
“You’re preachin’ to the choir, Emma,” Thea says with a sigh. “I’ve been wrestlin’ with them since Haven and it’s only gettin’ worse, honestly—”
“Since Haven?” you interrupt, surprised. “You’ve been with the Inquisition for that long?”
“Sure have!” she says proudly. “I was a pilgrim, y’know. Got kinda caught up in it. I’d be runnin’ this library if Mahvir weren’t… well, just plain better at it, really.”
“If you were at Haven, then you saw what hap—”
“I’mma stop you up right there, Em,” she says with a scowl. “You know all about havin’ awful stuff you don’t wanna talk about, right?” You nod sympathetically, although you’re still curious. You’ve heard rumors about the destruction of Haven, about Templars and Tevinter cults and darkspawn and dragons, but you’re not really sure which one actually did the damage. Not darkspawn, surely; everyone would know if there was another Blight on, especially so soon after the last. You sincerely doubt dragons were involved, either.
After a bit of pleasant small talk with Thea, you head back down towards the rotunda… but you slip one of the tarts onto Helisma’s desk, first. It’s stupid. You don’t even know if she’ll know to eat the damned thing without being explicitly told, but… you still feel badly about how you treated her. How you know you’ll continue to treat her. When in doubt, bribery. It’s worked for you well up to this point.
You head straight to your desk upon returning to the rotunda, but Solas waves you over before you can sit and begin your work. Curious, you approach him. Wordlessly, he snatches your right arm, pulling it towards him. You manage not to flush bright red, knowing nearly immediately what he’s doing, although you really wish he was a bit more self-aware. Asking you to strip, manhandling you, taking you out on rides through the countryside… You must be a completely non-sexual entity to him for him to act like this. Frustrating, but probably for the best.
You fight off chills as he pushes your sleeve up your arm. He runs his hand along the skin there, as if admiring his handiwork. Fortunately, you gained no new bruises that low on your arms during morning practice. If he could see your shoulders right now, he wouldn’t be so calm. You manage not to shudder as you feel his magic pushing under your skin, wrapping around the muscles and sinews in your arm, strengthening, stabilizing. Your own aura stays wrapped obediently in your gut. You wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to mingle your aura up against his. Obviously, you’ve never had the opportunity (nor the desire, particularly) to do that with someone.
When Solas is done enchanting your wrist, he releases you. “Don’t use that as an excuse to push yourself to work late into the night,” he chides. “Or I’ll make you go without for a week.”
“Yes, ser, of course, ser,” you say sarcastically, but Solas doesn’t seem to notice. Perhaps he’s a little bit closer to “boss” than “friend.” But, while you have him… “Solas… you said you were with the Inquisition since the beginning. You helped seal the first of the rifts.”
“I did very little, in truth,” Solas says. “The mark on the Inquisitor’s hand did everything.”
“But you were there,” you insist. “You were at Haven. So you know what happened.”
Solas looks grim. “I was, yes. Why the sudden curiosity?”
“There’s nothing sudden about my curiosity, Solas. It’s a steady constant. But about this, well… Thea mentioned it, and I don’t honestly know what happened. I’ve heard the most ridiculous rumors, but I have only a vague outline of what really happened. Haven was destroyed. It was either cultists, rogue Templars, darkspawn, or dragons, from what I’ve heard.” You laugh, but Solas still looks quite serious.
“It was all of those, in part.”
You’re… kind of dumbfounded by that. “Whu… Y-you’re being serious?” you stammer. You’re not sure which is stranger, the darkspawn or the dragons.
“Just one darkspawn. He claimed to be a Tevinter magister, one of the first darkspawn. A man who walked physically in the Fade.”
You scoff before you remember you’re supposed to believe that to be true. “Surely any such creature would be long dead,” you say as a cover.
“Perhaps he’s merely mad, but that is what he claimed,” Solas says. “With him was a dragon, possibly an archdemon, although there were no darkspawn other than he himself. He also commanded an army of red Templar and Venatori cultists. We were wiped out in quick order. It was only due to quick thinking and a heavy risk by the Inquisitor that we managed to escape at all.”
You… genuinely don’t know what to say. “I thought… I thought all the talks of that ‘Elder One’ were just superstitious nonsense… or just part of the cult,” you say, a bit shell-shocked. “I didn’t think…”
“Few do, even now. The hardest job the Inquisition has is merely having their claims taken seriously. It doesn’t help that they seem so outlandish,” Solas says solemnly. You’re quiet for a time.
“…Thank you for telling me, Solas. I… might not have believed it, coming from anyone else,” you admit. If Thea had told you, you’d have thought her a superstitious fool, to be sure. Solas likely knows that. Thea likely knows that; it could be part of why she didn’t want to talk about it.
You settle in at your desk and begin working. The words seem to fly by, as they always do after Solas has enchanted your wrist. In truth, his threat of making you go a week without would actually be quite devastating to you.
Solas reminds you of it one more time when he leaves for the night. You don’t know that he would have any way of knowing if you spent the whole night here working, but you’re absolutely not going to risk it. You put in another few hours before calling it a night. Your candle is burning low and while you’re not sore yet, your body is as tired as ever. You could stand to lie motionless for a few hours, and you’ve plenty of reading material.
Unfortunately, it’s another night where you can’t get to your room unmolested. It’s enough to make you seriously consider just sleeping in the damn rotunda, consequences and embarrassment be damned.
They catch you halfway between the building that houses your quarters and the Great Hall; it would be difficult for you to dart all the way to either. Fortunately, it seems the men have more mischief in mind than violence.
“Look, it’s our resident riding-elf!” one of them chortles. There’s three in all, enough that for you to be worried if their intentions turn darker than taunting. “Taking a break from mounting mercenaries? Tell me, are you on your way to or from a fucking? Or do they all blur together?”
The other two chortle. You simply try to keep walking, but one quickly steps into your path. “Do the Chargers have claim on you, or is it a free for all?” the man in your way asks.
“Maybe she charges, and they’re the only ones who can afford her rate?” another jokes.
“No way she charges; you think that knife-eared apostate could afford shit?” the first one exclaims with a laugh. You see red flash before your eyes, and you can hear and feel your aura roaring in your ears. You could turn all three to ash before they could blink. But it wouldn’t be satisfying. You’d like to hear them scream. You entertain the thought of the man on his knees before you, burning slowly, long enough to calm yourself slightly.
“Have you nothing better to do, Lawrence Underhill?” you say sharply, turning to face him. “Of course you don’t… you were taken off the caravan job entirely. This sort of behavior is no doubt why the Commander thinks you can’t even be trusted to watch a bunch of elven brats.”
The man flushes bright red, and you fear for a moment you may only have provoked him into escalating, although part of you begs for the excuse. But instead, he spits at your feet, seeming to think better of spitting in your face at the last moment. “Ah, fuck this knife-eared bitch. Not worth any one of us. C’mon, boys.” The others scarper off with him, thank the Maker. No matter how much you might long to dangle them off the battlements, that would spend the end of your time here.
With a sigh, you turn back towards your quarters.
- Wicked little thief ↩︎