Chapter 38: Return to Camp
The return to camp was a silent affair, the weight of what they’d done settling between them like a third companion. The heavy sacks they’d filled from Flemeth’s hidden cache now sat by the central fire, a pile of strange, dust-laden items that smelled of deep earth and older magic.
Alistair nodded to him once, a silent transfer of responsibility, and went to clean his flail. The message was clear: This is your part now.
Around the fire, the others picked through the spoils with cautious interest. Leliana held up a delicate circlet that seemed to drink the firelight. Sten tested the balance of a black-bladed axe. Wynne clucked her tongue over a vial of viscous, shadowy liquid. The normalcy of it felt surreal, a bubble of life against the colossal death they’d just dealt.
Daylen waited until the distribution was absorbed into the camp’s rhythm. Then, with the simple, weathered grimoire tucked under his arm, he walked to the edge of the clearing where Morrigan’s tent stood, a dark lean-to against the pines.
She was outside, tending a small iron pot over her own low fire. The scent of dark spindleweed and embrium hung in the air. She didn’t look up as he approached, but her stirring slowed.
“I hear you made quite the mess in the mountains,” she said, her voice a careful neutral. “The ground still shivers. One might think a small avalanche occurred.”
“Something like that,” Daylen said, stopping a few feet away.
He held out the grimoire. She finally looked, her yellow eyes flicking from his face to the book and back. Her hand, reaching for it, hesitated for a fraction of a second before she took it. Her fingers brushed the cover, tracing the embossed runes worn smooth by time.
She opened it. The pages were not paper, but something like dried membrane, covered in a script that shifted and crawled before settling into a legible form. Her breath caught, just a tiny hitch. She leafed through a few pages, her sharp eyes devouring the knowledge held within. This was not the simple travelogue or spellbook she’d expected her mother to leave behind. This was a core text, a foundational record. It was her. It was everything Flemeth might have used to overwrite her, to reclaim the vessel she’d made.
Morrigan closed the book slowly. She held it against her chest, fingers pressing into the leather as if to absorb it through her skin. Her gaze lifted to Daylen’s. The usual mask of sardonic amusement was gone. In its place was a blank, vulnerable shock. The firelight danced in her wide eyes.
She was speechless.
He waited. The sounds of the camp—the clink of a bottle, a low laugh from Oghren, the crackle of the main fire—seemed to fade into a distant hum.
She had not known what to expect at the start of this journey. She’d seen his power in the Korcari Wilds, raw and startling. And then, after that first night where he’d made her dizzy with a string of orgasms she hadn’t known her body could produce, she’d felt drawn to him in a way that was unfamiliar, a pull that was more than just lust or curiosity. This, though, was different. He had done something profound. He had protected her from erasure, from a possession so complete it would have left no trace of her. And he’d done it with no expectation of reward, no bargaining chip held back. He’d simply gone and done the thing, and now he stood there, waiting for her to find her words.
He looked at her, patient, listening dutifully.
“You…” she began, then stopped. She shook her head slightly, as if clearing water from her ears. “You did not have to bring this. The true grimoire. You could have brought a copy. A decoy. Kept this for yourself. The power in these pages…”
“It belongs to you,” he said, his voice low and steady.
“Why?” The word was barely a whisper.
He took a half-step closer. The space between them charged with the scent of herbs and old magic and her own unique wildness. “Because while you may present a hardened exterior to the world, Morrigan, you are the most genuine person I have ever known. There is no falseness in you. No pretend kindness. When you smile, it is yours. When you kiss me, take me into your bed, I know it is because I have earned it, not because I bought it with pretty words or empty promises.” He held her gaze. “I value that. In a world so full of suffering and death, so full of lies and masks, I would protect that. I will protect it.”
Her throat worked. She looked down at the book, then back at him, her expression a storm of conflicted feeling. “This… this kind of sentiment,” she said, her voice regaining some of its edge, though it was frayed, “this will be our collective undoing, you realize. Attachment is a vulnerability. A fatal one.”
A faint, tired smile touched his lips. “Morrigan, I have been undone ten thousand times over. By the Circle, by the Blight, by things I’ve seen and things I’ve done. To be undone in this way?” He looked at her, really looked, seeing the witch, the woman, the fierce and fragile truth of her. “To be undone by something genuine… that is something I would feel lucky to experience.”
She stared at him. Then a laugh burst from her, short and startled and real. “You are a fool,” she said, but the words held no bite.
“Probably,” he agreed.
Her smile softened, turned into something private and warm. She took his hand, the one not holding the grimoire, and pulled him gently toward her tent.
“Come,” she said.
“The grimoire can wait,” he said, though it was not a question.
“It has waited centuries,” she murmured, ducking inside the darkened tent, pulling him after her.
The space was filled with the smell of her—dried flowers, deep moss, animal musk. She set the precious book carefully on a small travelling desk and turned to him. He was already there, his hands coming up to frame her face, his lips finding hers.
The kiss was not gentle. It was a claiming, an affirmation, a hot and desperate seal on everything that had just been spoken. She met it with equal fervor, her arms winding around his neck, her body pressing against the hard planes of his armored chest.
He broke the kiss to trail his lips along her jaw, down the column of her throat. His fingers worked at the fastenings of her leathers, methodical and sure. She made a weak sound of protest against his shoulder. “The grimoire… I should… I need to study…”
“Later,” he breathed against her skin, his voice a low vibration that went straight through her.
He had her breastband loose, her leggings peeled down over her hips. She helped with clumsy urgency, kicking the leather aside until she stood bare before him in the dim light. He guided her back onto the piled furs of her bedroll, his own armor dissolving into ether with a thought, following her down.
His mouth was on her before she could form another thought, another half-hearted objection. He kissed the inside of her thigh, the softness of her belly, and then his tongue found her core. She cried out, a sharp, bitten-off gasp, her hands flying to his shaved head not to push him away but to hold him there.
All protestation left her. The grimoire, Flemeth, the Blight, the world outside the tent—it all burned away under the relentless, skillful stroke of his tongue. He knew her body, knew the rhythm that made her back arch, the spot that made her thighs tremble. He licked and suckled until she was writhing, until a first, sharp orgasm tore through her with a gasping sob.
He didn’t stop. He gentled his touch, letting her shudder through the aftershocks, then began again, building her back up with relentless focus. The second crest came slower, deeper, a rolling wave that pulled a moan from her very depths.
When he moved over her, she was liquid and pliant, her eyes glazed. She felt the thick, impressive length of him press against her, and she opened for him, a wordless plea. He pushed inside in one slow, devastating stroke, filling her completely.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, her nails scoring his back. He set a pace that was punishing and perfect, each thrust hitting the spot that made her see bursts of light behind her eyelids. The third climax gathered and broke quickly, a cascade of sensation that left her breathless, chanting his name into the fur beneath her head.
He slowed, kissing her throat, her lips, letting her breathe. “Again,” he murmured, a command and a promise.
“I can’t…”
“You can.”
He shifted his angle, leveraged his arms, and drove into her with a new, deeper intensity. The fourth peak was not a wave but a detonation, a silent, soul-shaking burst that snapped the last thread of her consciousness. Her vision whited out, her body seizing around his in a final, endless clench before everything went dark and soft and far away.
She came back to herself by degrees. The first thing she felt was his weight, solid and warm atop her. The second was the pleasant, deep ache between her legs. The third was his breath, steady against her temple. He was still inside her, still hard, but motionless, letting her float back.
In the dark, with the smell of sex and pine and their mingled sweat thick in the air, Morrigan opened her eyes. The grimoire was a vague shape on the desk. A totem of a past that was truly, finally, hers. And the man holding her, his heart thudding against her own, was a present she had never dared imagine.
She let out a long, slow breath, and her arms, which had fallen limp, came up to hold him. It was a simple, yielding gesture. For her, it was a revolution.