Chapter 6: Sweet mother
The ride back to Highever was a blur of green and grey, the rhythm of the horse a monotone counterpoint to the chaos in his head. The memory of Sanga’s chambers—the sweat, the screams, the profound, unnerving quiet afterward—clung to him like a stain no bath could scrub away. It had been an execution, not a coupling. A violent expenditure of something he couldn’t name. It left him emptier than before.
Castle Cousland welcomed him with its familiar, echoing silence. His mother’s smile was warm, her questions gentle, but he could only offer terse, polite answers about the tourney’s success. The victory felt like ash. He ate supper in the great hall, the laughter of the few remaining knights and men-at-arms bouncing off the stone, failing to touch him. The ghost of roasted boar from the previous night’s feast still haunted the air, a greasy, hollow reminder of celebration.
He found himself, hours later, not in his bedchamber, but in the Castle Chantry. It was a smaller, more private version of the grand city chantries, with high, narrow windows of stained glass now showing only the deep blues of night. A few votive candles guttered, their light dancing over faded tapestries of Andraste’s sacrifice. The air was cool, still, smelling of old stone and melted wax. He sat on a plain wooden bench near the modest altar, his back to the statue of the Maker. He had removed his tunic, the fabric irritating the still-tender skin over his ribs where a tourney shield had caught him. The cold of the stone wall seeped into his bare shoulders.
That’s how Mother Mallol found him.
Her steps were soft on the flagstones, a whisper of sensible wool robes. She was a lean, upright woman in her forties, with dark hair streaked sharply with grey and pulled into a severe, but not unkind, knot. Her eyes, the colour of weathered slate, saw everything.
“Ser Kerr,” she said, her voice a low, calm instrument. “I thought I heard someone. It’s late for contemplation.”
“Or early,” he replied, not turning. His voice was flat.
She moved into his periphery, stopping a respectful distance away. She took in the sight of him: the powerful frame held too rigidly, the new bruises mapping his torso, the distant set of his jaw. This wasn’t the charming, mischievous boy she’d watched grow up. This was someone else.
“The castle speaks of your victories in Denerim. They say you were unmatched.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh that echoed softly. “I hit people with a hammer until they stopped moving. It’s not a complicated feat.”
“And now you sit in the dark,” she observed, gliding closer. She settled on the bench beside him, not touching, but present. “Does the victor require counsel? Or comfort?”
He finally looked at her. In the candlelight, her face was all gentle angles and deep understanding. “What comfort is there for a hammer?” he asked, the question more raw than he intended.
“A hammer is a tool. It does not bear the weight of the arm that wields it, nor the intent of the mind that guides it.” She folded her hands in her lap. “The burden you feel is not from the striking. It is from the choosing to strike. And the living with the aftermath.”
He stared at his hands, broad and capable, resting on his knees. They were quiet for a long moment, the only sound the hiss of a dying candle wick.
As they talked she could sense the tension in him. It was a physical thing, a bowstring drawn taut behind his ribs. Nineteen years old and already a veteran of border skirmishes, a taker of life in service of his home and the Maker. She sympathized with his plight. The world asked too much of its young lions and then wondered at their ferocity.
“You hold it all in here,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. Then she did something she had not done since he was a child crying over a scraped knee. She placed a hand on his bare shoulder.
It felt like stone. Warm, living stone, but unyielding. The contact was electric. Her heart skipped a beat, a sudden, disorienting lurch in her chest that had nothing to do with piety.
He stiffened further for a second, then a shudder went through him, so slight she almost missed it.
“The Maker did not build a man to house such tension, Kerr,” she said, her voice dropping to a intimate whisper barely audible over their breathing. “A vessel can only strain so much before it cracks.”
Her other hand came up, fingers gently sliding into the thick hair at the nape of his neck. She exerted a soft, undeniable pressure, pulling his head forward. He resisted for a fraction of a second, a final bastion of pride, then yielded. His forehead came to rest against the rough, simple wool covering her chest, right between her breasts. She felt the heat of his skin through the fabric.
“Breathe,” she commanded softly.
He let out a long, shaky breath he seemed to have been holding for days. She began to stroke his hair, her fingers moving in slow, rhythmic passes. The rigid cable of his spine began to soften, increment by increment. His breathing deepened, matching the slow cadence of her hand.
Her own breath caught as her other hand, the one that had been on his shoulder, drifted down. It moved over the hard plane of his chest, down the tense ridges of his stomach, and dipped below the waistband of his soft breeches. He inhaled sharply but didn’t pull away. Her fingers closed around him. He was already thick, semi-hard, a formidable weight in her palm. She began stroking him, a slow, firm, upward pull.
“Relax,” she breathed into his hair, her own pulse hammering in her ears, a sacrilegious drumbeat against the quiet chantry. “Just let it go. I will help you find your release.”
His hands, which had been limp at his sides, came up and gripped her hips. His breath was hot against her chest, puffing in ragged bursts. Under her ministrations, he grew impossibly, painfully hard, a thick, veined pillar of heat that made her head swim just holding it. With a low grunt, his arms flexed. He lifted her from the bench as if she weighed nothing, turning and placing her on her feet before him.
Understanding flashed between them, wordless and urgent. Her fingers fumbled with the simple ties of her robe and the plain dress beneath, pulling the layers apart just enough. She hitched her leg over his knees where he still sat, and guided him to her. Then she lowered herself.
The sensation stole the air from her lungs. An audible, shuddering gasp broke from her lips as he filled her, a slow, inexorable stretch that burned and completed in the same instant. She had to pause, eyes wide, body trembling, simply adjusting to the overwhelming fullness.
“We must not be heard,” she managed to whisper, her voice strained. “The others… they would not understand.”
He nodded, his face now buried in the hollow of her neck, his arms locking around her waist, holding her flush against him. She began to move, a slow, deep grind of her hips, keeping him buried to the hilt within her. Each subtle rotation sent shocks of pleasure spiraling out from her core. His embrace tightened, his mouth open against her skin, breathing her in.
Her lower half began to shake, tremors of building ecstasy warring with her desperate need for silence. A full-body orgasm approached, a wave gathering force from the depths. She bit down on her own lip, the sharp pain a focal point as the peak hit her. It tore through her silently, a convulsive, inner pulsing that milked him and left her vision spotted. She rode it out, grinding slower now, feeling another begin to build almost immediately on its heels.
His breathing changed, becoming ragged, purposeful. She could feel the tension coiling in his own body, the telltale hardening of the flesh inside her.
As she feels his release build she rides quickly, a frantic, short-paced rhythm designed to tip him over the edge. Then, with a wet sound of separation, she dismounts, sliding off him to kneel on the cold stone floor between his legs. She took the head of him in her mouth, her tongue making urgent, wet circles around the crown before drawing him deep. She sucked furiously, one hand working his base, the other braced on his thigh.
He made a raw, choked sound in his throat. His hips jerked. His seed smacked the back of her throat in hot, thick pulses. He unloads into her mouth and she moans around him, the vibration drawing out the last of it. She swallowed, once, twice, the act itself a final, profound intimacy. She rested her forehead against his knee for a moment, catching her breath.
Gently, she cleaned him with her tongue, then rearranged his clothing. He was pliant, his head lolling back against the wall, eyes closed. His face, for the first time since his return, was smooth, the grim tension utterly dissolved.
She stood on unsteady legs, refastened her robes, and smoothed her hair. She leaned over and placed a soft, lingering kiss on his sweaty forehead. He didn’t stir.
He drifts off into a nap as she leaves him in his relaxed state, his large form slumped in the shadow of the altar, finally at peace. She slipped out of the Chantry, the heavy door closing with a soft, final click, leaving him to the silence and the forgiving dark.
She slipped out of the Chantry, the heavy door closing with a soft, final click, leaving him to the silence and the forgiving dark.
He woke to the chill of stone against his back and the confusing weight of profound relaxation in his limbs. The air was still, the votive candles now cold. For a long moment, he just lay there on the bench, staring at the shadowed vault of the ceiling, trying to place the strange calm inhabiting his body. Then the memory of soft wool, firm hands, and a sacred, silent absolution surfaced. He sat up quickly, a hot flush climbing his neck. He was alone.
He stood on unsteady legs, tied his breeches with fumbling fingers, and stumbled out into the castle’s night-shrouded corridor. The stone was cold under his bare feet. He moved without conscious direction, a specter in his own home, guided by some half-asleep instinct or a nostalgia for simpler comfort. He found his hand lifting, knuckles brushing against the familiar, worn wood of a specific door deep in the servants’ wing.
A gruff, sleep-thickened voice answered his knock. “What in the Maker’s name? It’s the dead of night, you daft—”
The door opened to reveal Nan, her hair a wild silver cloud around a face etched with a lifetime of kindness and petty grievances. Her irritation vanished the moment she saw him, shirtless and looming in the dim torchlight from the sconce down the hall. Her eyes, sharp as tacks, traveled from the fresh bruises on his torso to the lost look in his own.
“Kerr?” Her voice softened, all the frustration gone. “Lad? Can’t sleep?”
He simply nodded, words failing him. She sighed, a sound of exaggerated put-upon exhaustion, but her eyes were warm. She stepped back, pulling the door wide. “Well, don’t just stand there letting the draft in. Come on. And for Andraste’s sake, get those off,” she said, pointing at his breeches as she shuffled back toward her bed. “If you’re going to keep an old woman up, she’s getting hers first.”
He obeyed, a faint, real smile touching his lips for the first time in days. This was a language he understood. He dropped his breeches and joined her in the narrow bed, the familiar scent of lavender and lye soap enveloping him. Her hands, work-roughened and sure, found him immediately.
“There’s my boy,” she murmured, her touch both practical and tender. She stroked him to full, aching hardness. “Always were a well-made thing. Now, give it to old Nan. Let’s have none of that brooding. I want that warm, sticky sweetness of yours. Been too long.”
His body responded as if it had been waiting for a direct order. He moved over her, careful of his weight, and entered her with a slow, deep push that made her gasp. Her arms wrapped around his broad back, her nails lightly scoring his skin. “That’s it,” she breathed into his ear, her voice shaking as he began to move. “Just like that. Maker, you feel like summer.”
He took care of her exquisitely, finding a rhythm that was patient and deep, a world away from the frantic, punishing pace he’d set in Denerim. This was a homecoming. She moaned, a low, continuous sound of pure pleasure, her body arching under his. She grew wetter with every stroke, drenching him, her breaths coming in short, sharp pants. “Oh, yes… yes, Kerr… just there…”
Her climax took her suddenly, a wave that lifted her hips off the bed. She cried out, a short, sharp sound, then went utterly boneless beneath him, her eyes rolling back as she passed clean out from the intensity of it. He finished moments later, spurred by the fierce, final clench of her inner muscles around him. His release was a warm flood, and he collapsed onto his side, spent.
For about fifteen minutes, he drifted in a blank, peaceful void. Then, as it always did, the restless energy stirred again, pooling low. He shifted on the narrow bed. Nan slept on, breathing deeply. Gently, he turned her onto her side, facing away from him. He spooned behind her, his hardness nestling against the curve of her backside. Still mostly asleep, she made a soft sound of approval and shifted her hips.
He guided himself into her from behind, a smooth, slow entry that made her gasp. She was slick with their mixed spendings. “Clever lad,” she mumbled, half-dreaming. She reached a hand back between her own legs, finding his heavy sac and massaging it gently as he began to move again. He filled her slowly, completely, each stroke a lazy, decadent push.
“Get it all out,” she whispered, her voice thick with sleep and pleasure. “Whatever you need, my boy. Empty it here.”
He did. They moved together in the dark, a slow, ancient rhythm. Their collective juices made a soft, wet sound with each movement, dripping down the length of him. This release was slower, deeper, a full-bodied surrender that left him feeling hollowed out and clean. He sighed into her silver hair, his body finally going slack.
He woke her twice more that night. The third time, she was already awake, waiting. She climbed atop him, her older body moving with a confident, hungry grace that left him breathless. She rode him until they both shuddered into a final, exhausted finish.
As dawn began to bleach the edges of her small window, he finally fell into a true, dreamless sleep, his face buried in the familiar scent of her neck, one large hand resting possessively on her hip.