Chapter Text
Madelena Trevelyan leaned against the railing of balcony that wrapped around her new private quarters, and let her eyes drift over the courtyard. Her courtyard. Of her castle.
It was still utterly surreal. In the span of two weeks, she had survived an encounter with a darkspawn magister who declared himself a god, an avalanche that she herself had caused, and a several mile trek through the snow with a head wound. And then, when the Inquisition had finally reached what would become their stronghold – they had declared the fourthborn daughter of a minor noble house, and a mage, their leader.
She kept waiting to wake up, to open her eyes in the snow as the life and warmth leeched from her body, her dream of survival the final respite that her mind had left to grant her broken body. That she had simply imagined the way that Cullen’s arms had felt as they’d lifted her from where she'd fallen, the voices of the Inquisition lifted in song, the weight of the ceremonial blade in her hands, the cheers of a people she now called her own.
Every morning, however, dawned clear and cold over Skyhold, and Madelena woke to the heavy weight of responsibility that had been laid over her shoulders. At least the mantle of Inquisitor felt less uncomfortable than Herald had — the title earned, rather than bequeathed by some stroke of luck that everyone around her believed to be divine providence.
She was more busy now than she’d ever been, but in her rare moments of quiet, her thoughts increasingly turned to one person, despite herself: Cullen. How ironic that she’d first struck up conversation with him out of a desperate attempt to distract herself from the reality of her situation in Haven, and now he was continuing to serve that purpose, quite against her will.
It was impossible to shake from her mind the anguish on his face as he’d realized she meant to sacrifice herself so that Haven could live, the pride as he'd rallied his men in her name, the way that he’d quietly sworn that he would never allow the tragedy of Haven to happen again. A vow that felt less like the Commander apologizing for his failure, and more like the man making a promise to someone he cared for.
Unless she was reading far, far too deeply into a few looks, mistaking simple comradery for something more.
Heaving a huge sigh, Madelena slumped over the railing and let her hands dangle over the side. Whatever the truth of things between them, she was definitely overthinking it.
As she stared into the distance, she noticed, as if by fate, the object of her distraction walking across the garden below. Squinting, she leaned further over the railing, trying to identify the object tucked under one arm, but thanks to her height and distance, she couldn’t make out much past his fur mantle. What she could see, however, was the fact that Dorian accompanied him, his body language all swagger and easy confidence.
A southern templar and a Tevinter mage, she thought with a faint smile. Now that’s an interesting friendship. The two of them dipped into the garden gazebo, and disappeared from her view, leaving her wondering what, exactly, brought the two men to a corner of Skyhold that neither often frequented.
It took only a few moments for curiosity to overwhelm apprehension, and Madelena forced herself to maintain a purposeful but not rushed gait as she ducked through Skyhold’s main hall. She had learned the hard way that if she didn’t look busy, someone – usually Josephine – would take it as a sign to approach her with some problem or another, and Madelena didn't intend to have her morning interrupted by her ever-present work. Not, at least, until Varric's "contact" was set to arrive later that day.
As she slipped through the door into the enclosed courtyard, she stopped, taking a deep breath. The garden was still rather wild and overgrown, and thus empty, save for the two men in the gazebo and the small dark-haired elf kneeling on the soil, pulling weeds.
Saeris Lavellan lifted her head as the Inquisitor stepped into the small portion of Skyhold she’d claimed as her own, a knowing smile quirking the corner of her mouth. “Hello, Elena. Come to check on your boys?”
Madelena dropped down on the wall next to where Saeris was working and wrinkled her nose at the Dalish elf. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Mm. I’m sure you don’t. The fact that you’re here has nothing to do with the fact that our good Commander is actually taking a small break from shouting orders and frowning early lines onto that handsome face of his. You know, for an ex-templar, he gets along remarkably well with mages,” she said with a wide grin, pale green eyes sparkling.
“Really,” Madelena muttered under her breath, “I hadn’t noticed.”
Sitting back on her haunches, Saeris tilted her head in amusement. “So are you actually going to go over there and say hello, maybe spend a little time with the man that is something besides 'doom' and 'hole in the sky' and 'near-death experience'? You deserve to have little fun, you know.”
Looking down at her hands, her fingers twisting together in nervous habit, Madelena forced them apart and pressed them against the tops of her thighs. “Do you think I should? Do you think he’d want me to?” So stupid, to suddenly be so paralyzed, when she’d spent months gently teasing the man, but things had felt so much simpler then. Less… fraught. Less important.
Sighing, the other woman came to sit on her side of the dividing wall, leaning back so she was in Madelena’s eyeline. “Elena, if you can’t see that that man is crazy about you, then I clearly didn’t do as good a job as I thought when I healed your concussion. Just tell him you’d like to spend more time with him. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”
“Right. Just tell him that. Of course.” With a breath to steel herself, she ignored Saeris’s knowing grin and stood, walking around the half-wall to the path that led towards the gazebo, where she could hear distantly hear Cullen and Dorian’s voices engaged in the kind of taunting banter that men seemed to default to when left to their own devices.
“Are you sassing me, Commander? I didn’t know you had it in you,” Dorian was saying, the very picture of bravado on the near side of the chessboard that was situated on the small table between them.
Cullen, on the other hand, was attempting to cover his amusement with irritation as he leaned over the board, but Madelena’s boot scuffed a bit too loudly on one of the path stones, and both men’s eyes snapped in her direction. From Dorian she got only a lazy nod, but Cullen dropped the piece he was holding, hastily pushing his chair back and half-rising with a sudden greeting of “Inquisitor.”
Madelena shoved down the fluttery feeling in her stomach at the way he’d jumped up at her approach, schooling her face to pleasant neutrality.
Fortunately, Dorian’s laconic voice cut through the momentary awkwardness. “Leaving, are you? Does this mean I win?”
Cullen sank back into his chair, the threat of losing face in front of Dorian apparently enough to distract him for the moment.
Madelena leaned against one of the pillars of the gazebo, raising her eyebrows. Whatever she’d thought to find them up to, chess would not have been her first guess – though maybe it should have. Dorian’s involvement ruled out more physical diversions, and if she guessed right, his sharp intellect against Cullen’s keen tactical mind made them a good match. Though the Commander had won this round, if she read the board right.
“Are you two playing nice?” She asked with a faintly teasing grin, suddenly very relieved for Dorian’s presence. Easier to reach for light and breezy when he was there, setting the tone of the conversation with his acerbic teasing.
The Tevinter mage scoffed at that, waving a hand in dismissal. “Please, I’m always nice.”
The two men returned to their casual jabs as the game wound to an end – Cullen easily maneuvering Dorian’s king into checkmate, just as she thought he would. Though she hadn’t expected him to be so cocky about it.
It was, frankly, rather endearing. Cute, even. Madelena didn't know if she'd ever seen him enjoying himself so openly.
Dorian threw up his hands in the air as he pushed the chair back and stood. “Don’t get smug. There will be no living with you.” As he passed Madelena, he raised his eyebrows expectantly and inclined his head back towards the table, the message clear as Saeris’s words earlier.
Before she could make an annoyed face at him, however, Cullen’s voice snapped her attention back to him, the warm undercurrent still present from his victory. “I should return to my duties as well… Unless you would care for a game?”
Madelena’s heart suddenly jumped into her throat at both the invitation, and the blatant hope that she’d accept written clear on his face.
With a confidence she didn’t remotely feel, she smiled and tilted her head in acceptance of his challenge. “Prepare the board, Commander.”
As she settled across from him, Cullen reset the board with the swift, sure movements of a man who’d done it countless times, and Madelena watched his hands, entranced. “As a child, I played this with my sister. She would get this stuck-up grin when she won – which was all the time.”
Madelena suppressed a smile at that, shoving down the desire to point out that his expression when he’d beaten Dorian had probably looked very much the same. “Your older sister, I assume? They do love to gloat.”
“Yes. Mia. And Maker, she was impossible about it. My brother and I practiced together for weeks. The look on her face the day I finally won…” His mouth spread wide in the same smug grin at the memory, but it quickly faded, turning contemplative. “I haven’t seen any of them in years. I wonder if she still plays.”
He reached down and made his opening move, and Madelena responded, her mind only half paying attention to the board. The majority of it was fixed on the man across from her, and the easy leonine grace of him. His mouth was especially distracting, more relaxed and not fixed in its typical scowl, the scar that bisected his top lip granting him a faint hint of roguishness when he smiled. Which was often, and aimed directly at her.
“You’re closer to South Reach now than you’ve been in years,” Madelena murmured as she moved a pawn into a defensive position. “I’m sure we could find a way to spare you for a visit.”
It wasn’t really true – though it might have been before Corypheus had shown up at Haven at the head of a templar army – but both of them ignored the obvious falsehood in favor of the sentiment. “Perhaps, after things settle down. Maker knows I don’t write as often as I should.”
Madelena wrinkled her nose in commiseration. “You’re not the only one. I have a whole stack of letters in my quarters from my sisters and grandmother, and no idea what to say to any of them.”
Cullen raised an eyebrow. “But not your parents?”
“Oh. Well. Father’s busy, and he’s never been much for writing. And my mother…” Madelena trailed off, shrugging. “We haven’t spoken in years. I don’t expect that to change any time soon.” Internally wincing at the path the conversation had gone, she quickly steered it back to safer waters. “My grandmother is the one I’m most worried about, though. If I don’t find the time to write back soon, she’s liable to show up at Skyhold personally. And I don’t know that any of us are prepared for that,” she said with a laugh. “Lady Katrine Trevelyan can be… formidable.”
A small smile was nearly hidden behind Cullen’s hands as he steepled them together. “That must be where you got it from, then.”
With a blush at the unexpected compliment, Madelena ducked her head and attempted to turn her full attention to the chessboard. “You should make sure to keep in practice for when you see your sister again,” she murmured, trying to turn the subject away from herself and back to the game.
After several moves, which had cost her nearly half her army, while Cullen’s remained mostly intact, the man broke the silence once again. “I do believe this is the longest we’ve gone without discussing the Inquisition – or related matters.” He leaned forward, and Madelena found herself caught like a butterfly under glass at the warmth in his expression. “To be honest, I appreciate the distraction.”
Saeris’s earlier advice loud in her ears, to stop thinking and just say it already, Madelena found herself responding with a rushed, half-breathless, “We should spend more time together.” Anxiety rose up as soon as the words were out of her mouth, and she almost wished she could bite them back, but Cullen’s head snapped up from where he’d turned his attention back to the board. Delight spread across his face, and Madelena had to press her hands between her knees to stop them from fidgeting.
“I would like that,” he said, without a moment of hesitation.
Madelena dipped her head, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, unable to stop herself from smiling. “Me, too.”
After a few moments of silence, the only sound the quiet click of chess pieces against the board, Cullen murmured, almost to himself, in a voice that was half awe and half giddiness: “You… said that.”
Her heart stuttering with a similar feeling of disbelief, Madelena couldn’t even look up, for fear her chest might explode. Maker, she felt like she was sixteen, disappearing behind a bookshelf with a boy for the first time. If someone had told her a year ago that she’d be this over the moon about an ex-templar admitting he’d like to spend more time with her, she would have laughed and called them a liar. But there she was, nearly dizzy with exhilaration over a man she hadn’t even kissed yet.
Face flooding with heat at the thought, the “yet,” as if she wanted it to happen, as if she expected it – she nearly missed Cullen’s quiet declaration that they should finish their game.
Madelena forced herself to nod, and tried to focus on strategy, but it felt as if her skin was buzzing with electricity, and she kept having to check and make sure that her magic wasn’t leaking around the edges of her control.
It was almost a relief when his king lightly tapped against hers, toppling it.
“And this one’s mine,” he stated with cheerful finality, grin a touch less cocky than it had been with his victory over Dorian.
“It seems luck favored you today,” she responded with a half smile, and swallowed at the way his gaze sharpened in return.
“So it has,” he murmured, clearly referring to something other than their game.
Suddenly unable to endure another moment of his regard and remain sane, much less composed, Madelena rose from her chair and laced her fingers behind her back. “It was a pleasure, Commander. I look forward to a rematch.”
“As do I.”
Turning, Madelena nearly fled the garden, dimly registering that Dorian hadn’t left at all. Instead, he was perched next to Saeris, both of them grinning like cats who’d gotten into the cream.
Sweet Andraste, there’d be no living with them after this.
Hawke’s arrival marked a shift in the atmosphere of Skyhold, her presence and the information she brought providing a much-needed direction beyond the vague, nebulous goal of “become important enough that Orlais takes notice.” Varric had even narrowly avoided being throttled by Cassandra, though the Inquisitor had made the wise decision to include him on her planned trip to Crestwood, while the Seeker stayed at Skyhold to cool down.
Cullen himself had been so wrapped up in the necessary planning that he hadn’t seen the Champion of Kirkwall in person until two days before she was set to leave with the rest of the expedition party. So when he rounded a corner of the battlements to find the tall woman looking out on the courtyard below, he wasn’t entirely sure what to say.
Unfortunately for him, Rowan Hawke had only been rendered speechless once in her life, and there were no exploding chantries anywhere nearby, so he was subjected to her razor-sharp tongue once again. “Well, look who it is. Nice to see you, Knight-Captain. I’d say you look well, but frankly, you look like shit. I like the new hair, though.”
Suppressing a full body twitch of annoyance, Cullen crossed his arms and leaned against a crenelation. “It’s Commander now, Champion. How’s Kirkwall?”
The woman waved a hand, grimacing. “Oh, you know. The same as always. People constantly trying to kill each other. I’ve actually been gone as long as you have – it didn’t seem like the safest place for a known apostate, Champion or not.”
The dig at his ignorance of her being a mage for far, far longer than was appropriate for a templar rolled off of him, so familiar that he didn’t even dignify it with a response. “And your brother?”
He hadn’t liked Carver Hawke. Honestly, Cullen wasn’t sure anyone liked Carver Hawke. But he had respected the man, and hoped that he would have joined the Inquisition, rather than remain in Kirkwall or join the rest of the Order in Therinfal.
Hawke shrugged. “He’s fine. Helping Aveline keep the peace, from what she tells me. Says that someone has to, given how most of the rest of the Order abandoned their posts.” Sharp grey eyes noticed the tightness in Cullen’s jaw at the implication, and she smirked as he visibly forced himself to relax. “Lightened up a bit, I see. Good. You always were too stodgy for your own good.” Folding her arms on the low half-wall, Hawke nodded at the courtyard below them. “So, what do you make of your Inquisitor? It doesn’t bother you to have that much power in the hands of a scary, scary mage?”
Cullen blinked at the change in topic, then followed Hawke’s gaze downward, where Madelena was the calm center of a flurry of activity as she made final preparations for a likely long stay in Ferelden. “She’s well-suited for the position. Better than you would have been. Even-handed, fair, not given to impulsivity or rashness. And incredibly brave. That she’s a mage has little to do with…” He trailed off, because at that moment, as if she’d heard him, Madelena tipped her head back and directed her gaze upward until it met his, raising her hand in a small wave.
Words dying unspoken on his lips, Cullen felt himself smiling back at her, until she turned away after a long moment to continue her conversation with the Iron Bull.
A sharp bark of laughter pulled him out of the trance he’d momentarily fallen into, and Hawke clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Andraste’s lily-white ass. Varric was telling the truth, then, when he said you'd pulled the 'you can't treat mages like people' stick out of your ass long enough to fall for one. Have to admit, I was sure he was making that one up.”
Maker’s breath. Was it that obvious?
Stunned into silence, Cullen stared as Hawke chuckled, shaking her head in amused disbelief. “So. Have you told her?”
“I… no. I haven’t.” He wasn’t sure what made him speak the truth instead of brushing off the statement. Maybe it was the fact that if Varric knew, then doubtless all of Skyhold did. Maybe it was the fact that Hawke of all people had read him correctly so quickly, when she hadn’t seen him in years, and they hadn’t exactly been friends before that.
Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t want to deny it.
Sighing, Hawke slumped back against the wall and shook her head. “Well, I’m – sadly – rather well-versed in the art of being a mage in love with a man who has spent his entire life hating magic. It’s not easy, but you can do it – if you actually talk to her. Fenris made me wait three damned years while he figured his shit out, and those are years with him I’ll never get back. Don’t make her wait like that, hm? She seems like a nice girl.”
Cullen raised his eyebrows, reasonably sure this was one of the scant handful of times he’d seen Hawke completely serious. “I’ll take that under advisement.” Hesitating, he frowned, and then spoke again, haltingly, “I am sorry, for the things I’ve said over the years, about mages. They were not worthy of me. And while I have not always agreed with you, I have always respected you.”
Quirking an eyebrow in surprise, Hawke grinned, immediately back to her normal self. “Save it for your Lady Inquisitor. You’re wasting your sweet-talking on the wrong girl — and Andraste knows you don’t have much of a well to draw from. Might be a better plan to skip the talking altogether, really.”
At his confused blink, she leaned in close, eyes sparkling conspiratorily. “Kiss the girl, Cullen. I promise it’s not hard, as long as you don’t overthink it to death. You templars are repressed enough, it’d be good for you to indulge a whim or two now and then. And you really don’t want to let her leave for a month or more without doing something, do you?”
Resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose and sigh, Cullen settled for a simple, “Take care of yourself, Hawke,” ground out through gritted teeth.
The tall Marcher woman waved him off, then turned and headed towards the corner tower where she had her temporary lodgings. “Yeah, yeah. You too,” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared through the door.
As soon as she was gone, Cullen rubbed a hand over his face. Talking to Hawke always felt like wading through fire, and the fact that she had turned that acid tongue on his personal life was not a welcome change.
She had a point, though. Time was slipping quickly away from him before Madelena departed, and the idea of allowing her to leave without saying… something – or at least spending a bit more time with her, as she’d requested – was intolerable.
He spent the walk back to his office turning over ideas in his head, discarding each as too forward, too presumptuous, too desperate. Especially Hawke’s final suggestion, which his mind kept circling back to.
Cullen had spent a larger amount of the past month than he’d like to admit imagining what it might be like to kiss Madelena Trevelyan, usually in entirely inappropriate places. Like the middle of the war room. He’d found it difficult to look at her at times, with his mind overlaying the helpful image of her perched on the edge of the table, leaning back as he covered her mouth with his own. Every time she left his office, he was seized by the impulse to grab her hand and stop her, looping an arm around the small of her back as he pulled her flush against him. Even his dreams had become a strange mish-mash of old nightmares and new desires, Madelena’s face appearing in them more and more often. Not that he even knew if that was something she'd welcome, if it was what she wanted…
Lifting his hand to rub the back of his neck, Cullen had almost convinced himself to put the matter aside and think on it later, when he was – hopefully – less distracted, but all his thoughts came screeching to a halt as he pushed open the door to his office and laid eyes on Madelena herself, hands clasped loosely together as she stared out the window, clearly waiting for someone.
Waiting for him.
Ever since she’d caught Cullen looking at her earlier that day, the intensity of his gaze enough to draw her attention even from so far away, Madelena hadn’t been able to shake the desire to actually go to him. After agreeing that they’d like to spend more time together, they’d both immediately become so busy that they hadn’t had time to lay eyes on each other outside of the war room or the occasional brief meeting in his office. She’d attempted to make it a habit to drop by every few days – once he had confessed his attempt to break his lyrium addiction, and another, she had successfully managed to suss out that there was no one waiting for him back in Kirkwall – but it was never long before one or the other of them was pulled away for some duty or other.
In that time, she hadn’t found the time nor the strength to ask him the question that had been consuming her thoughts for well over a week, but the idea of not knowing, not having an answer for Maker only knew how long… That level of distraction, set against what her scouts reported as being no less than a lake full of undead, was a recipe for utter disaster.
There were a hundred small things that needed her attention, but she ignored them all, making for the tower that the Commander had claimed for himself. She was surprised to find the office empty, and almost immediately the anxiety began to creep in around the edges of her determination.
Rather than listen to her doubts, though, she turned towards one of the narrow arrow-slit windows and stared out over the valley that cut Skyhold off from the surrounding mountains, letting the cool breeze ground and anchor her. He’d be back soon, she was sure – the man was never far from his work.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, the door to the battlements scraped against the stone floor, and Madelena turned to see Cullen silhouetted in the doorway, hand frozen behind his neck as he blinked at her in surprise.
After a moment, however, he stepped farther in, closing the door behind him. “Inquisitor. Was there something you needed?”
His voice was neutral, business-like, but the way his eyes kept flicking towards her and away, as if he both was embarrassed to be caught staring and couldn’t help himself, was anything but.
Taking a deep breath, Madelena nodded. “I thought we could talk. Alone?”
Clearly taken off guard by both the request’s audacity and its personal nature, Cullen stammered slightly through his response. “Alone? I… I mean, of course.”
She’d thought he would simply lock the doors, but instead he simply led her outside onto the battlements. It made sense, she supposed – everyone in Skyhold knew to look for him in his office, and it would have been ungentlemanly of him to bring her to his personal quarters, as much as she’d secretly hoped that the surprise of her request would make him forget decorum for a moment.
“It’s… a nice day,” Cullen said, his voice cracking a little, as they walked out into the cold air. Madelena was so caught up in rehearsing exactly what she wanted to say that she jumped a little at the unexpected derailing of her thoughts.
“What?” She asked, and then kicked herself as his eyes dropped to the side in embarrassment.
Maker, they were bad at this.
Still, he soldiered on, and she could have kissed him for his bravery.
“It’s… there was something you wished to discuss?”
There was a part of her that wanted to run screaming into the mountains, but with the way he was looking at her, all hope and the same sick nervousness that had settled in her own stomach, there was nothing left to do but to say it. “Cullen, I care for you, and –”
She cut herself off with a small sigh, her carefully planned phrasing nearly spoiled by her haste as she grasped for what she’d planned to ask him. Somehow, admitting her feelings had become the easy part.
After a moment of hesitation, he leaned forward a bit, his gentle “What’s wrong?” equal parts apprehensive and encouraging.
The rest spilled out in a rush, words tumbling over each other. “You left the templars, but – can you trust me, knowing that I’m a mage? Could you ever think of me as anything more?”
His answer was instant, immediate. “I could. I mean, I do… think of you. And what I might say in this sort of situation.”
Madelena could hear her heart beating in her ears, blood rushing as she replayed the words I could, I do over and over in her mind, filling her with giddy adrenaline.
“What’s stopping you?” she murmured as they came to a stop on a quiet corner of the wall, hands balled into fists to keep from reaching out for him.
There was an ache in his voice as he took a step closer. “You’re the Inquisitor. We’re at war. And you… I didn’t think it was possible.”
She had a thousand rebuttals for his arguments – I’m only Inquisitor because you gave me the title; I won’t let Corypheus take anything else from me; do you really think that little of yourself? – but she just shook her head. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
Voice going soft and intimate, Cullen stepped into her space, a half-step at a time, and Madelena gave up ground to his advance until her back pressed against cold stone. “So you are... It seems too much to ask.” His eyes dropped from her own, and a shiver of lightning ran down her spine as she realized he was staring at her mouth like a man starving. “But I want to –”
The way he lingered on the word want, like it encompassed every desire he’d ever had, drove the air from her lungs, leaving her dizzy and breathless. Her eyes fluttered closed as he leaned in, close enough to feel his breath against her lips, his hands coming to rest on her hips, every nerve in her body strung taught and crackling with energy. She barely dared move, for fear of shattering the perfect stillness of the moment.
Of course, fate intervened to do exactly that, and a shout of “Commander!” echoed across the walls. Cullen’s head snapped back with a frustrated growl, and Madelena slumped back against the stones like a marionette with cut strings, the tension that had been holding her up abruptly released. Of course duty called. When didn’t it? Embarrassment rushed in to fill the gaps left by desire and her hand rose of its own accord to fiddle with her hair, vainly shielding her face from the world as she tried, desperately, to find the composure she’d left somewhere in the vicinity of Cullen’s office.
She was dimly aware of Cullen releasing her hips and stalking toward the hapless scout, but she was too caught up in her own thoughts to register much else. Every doubt, every misgiving she’d ever had about the wisdom of her course – of the choices that had brought her to this moment – chased themselves around in circles in her mind, so loud that she could barely think. Madelena shifted her weight from one foot to the other, fidgeting nervously as the interruption ceased and Cullen turned back towards her.
He was busy, they were both busy, she shouldn’t take up his time like this. It was unfair, selfish. Dropping her eyes to the ground, and knowing in her heart that if he left now she’d likely never pluck up the courage to take this step again, she started to give him the chance to back out with both their dignities intact. “If you need to –”
Before she could react, before she could think, a gloved hand slid against her cheek, the other sinking deep into her hair, and then her gasp of shock was swallowed up by Cullen’s mouth on hers – fierce, desperate, hungry.
And – oh, Maker.
Madelena had been kissed by a dozen boys in the Circle, but never, never like this, like he couldn't help himself, like she was air and he was drowning, like he wanted to consume her. A shudder of white-hot desire rippled through her, making her fingertips tingle and toes curl, burning her from the inside out, and she regained just enough control of her body to fist her hands in his mantle and pull him closer, tighter against her.
A heartbeat or an eternity later, he slowly released her, and she could breathe again as he leaned back a few inches, though she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to.
“I’m sorry… that was… um… really nice,” Cullen mumbled, a lopsided grin transforming his features with a boyishness utterly at odds with the way he’d kissed her.
A small, half-hysterical giggle bubbled up from her chest, and Madelena shook her head. “For the love of Andraste, don’t apologize, just do it again. Please.”
The way his expression sharpened with intent made Madelena’s knees go weak, and this time when his lips captured hers, she was ready. He was slower, softer, this time, but the fire was merely banked, not extinguished. Rather than combust, she melted, wrapping her arms around his neck and committing to memory every sensation – the softness of his lips; the scrape of his stubble against her face; the warm leather of his glove as his thumb stroked over her cheek; the way his other hand had moved to press against the small of her back; the sharp gasp of surprise when her hands found the bare skin of his neck beneath the fur mantle; the quiet, needy little noise he made in the back of his throat when she briefly caught his lower lip between her teeth.
In that moment, she wanted him in every single way she’d ever wanted a man, and a few new ways that she didn’t have names for.
A loud crack of sound behind her made them both jump, and Madelena half-turned her head to see a large fissure in the stone she’d been shoved back against, that eventually spider-webbed out into smaller fractures.
It was a pattern she was intimately familiar with, having seen it on the ground after every battle – the after effects of a bolt of lightning. Thank Andraste that she’d instinctively channeled it away from both of them, into harmless stone.
“Ah – Madelena... Did… you do that?” The breathless fervency in Cullen’s voice was quickly replaced with an edge of concern, and Madelena felt her face turn bright red as she nodded.
“Um. That’s… that’s never happened before. Maker, this is embarrassing, I haven’t electrocuted anything by accident since I was seventeen and I melted a washbasin full of cutlery – I’m so sorry, you must think –”
Cullen’s mouth cut short her half-panicked babbling, and her mind went blessedly silent for a moment. When he pulled back again, he was wearing the same cocky grin she’d seen when he’d beaten her at chess, and the sight of it made her heart jump into her throat.
“– That you enjoyed that very, very much?”
Mutely, Madelena nodded, a small smile forcing its way onto her face through the dismay. “You… could say that.”
In a low voice that sent shivers down her spine, Cullen murmured, “So did I.”
Forcing herself to release the breath that she felt like she’d been holding from the moment she stepped into his office, Madelena’s nerves slowly settled, smoothed over by the apparent lack of fear or accusation at her momentary loss of control. He had said that he trusted her, after all.
Confidence rebuilding itself brick by brick, she tipped her head and grinned at him. “So. How long have you wanted to do that, exactly?”
Cullen chuckled and rested his forehead against hers for a moment, long, pale lashes sweeping down over his eyes. “Longer than I should admit.”
Distant shouting rang out across the courtyard, followed by the ring of steel on stone, and both of them sighed in unison. There was no more time to be stolen, it would seem. Madelena slowly extracted her hands from beneath Cullen’s mantle, smoothing out the spots where she’d gripped it as she did so. Cullen stood up straighter and looked over his shoulder towards the sound. He flicked a glance back to her, eyes lingering briefly on her lips as if contemplating the wisdom of kissing her one more time, then shook his head. “I should…”
“Go on. Maker knows this place wouldn’t survive an hour without you.” She’d meant the words to be light-hearted, but they were underpinned by resignation. It was, unfortunately, all too true at times.
Face twisting in a too-familiar scowl, Cullen muttered, “It will damn well have to learn how to,” before leaning in and brushing his lips over her cheek, chaste and sweet. “Come find me again before you leave?”
Madelena nodded, then watched Cullen walk back to his office, fingers lifting in a small wave when he glanced back at her, warm amber eyes full of longing. As soon as he was out of sight, she slumped back against the cracked stone behind her, pressing fingers to swollen lips.
Andraste preserve me, she thought as the cold leeched into her bones, I think I might be in love with him.