Chapter 4: A Final Taste of the Tower
The door to Leorah’s chamber was heavier than he remembered, or perhaps his hand was just that much slower to push it open. The soft, honeyed glow from within spilled into the dim corridor, along with the scent of lavender and ink. He stepped inside, closing the door with a final-sounding click.
She was at her desk, but not working. She sat very still, wrapped in a dark blue robe, staring at a blank piece of parchment. Her hair, usually a carefully arranged cascade of chestnut waves, fell loose around her shoulders. She looked exhausted, the delicate points of her elven ears seeming to droop slightly.
She didn’t turn. “I heard the bells. The alarm bells, not the hour bells.” Her voice was flat, drained. “Then I heard the running in the halls. Templars, moving fast. I assumed you were dead. Or Tranquil.”
“Not dead,” Daylen said, his own voice rough from the night’s tension. “Not Tranquil.”
Finally, she turned. Her eyes, a warm amber in the brazier light, scanned him from head to toe, checking for injuries, for blood, for any sign of what had happened. She found only a profound weariness.
“Jowan?” she asked quietly.
“Gone. He used blood magic right in front of Greagoir. Lily saw. She surrendered to the Chantry.”
Leorah closed her eyes, a faint tremor passing through her. “And you?”
“I confessed. Told Greagoir I helped him.”
Her eyes flew open, wide with alarm. “Daylen, why would you—”
“Because it was the truth,” he interrupted, more sharply than he intended. He took a breath, softening his tone. “It was Irving’s plan. The whole thing. A test for Jowan. I was the lure.”
The revelation hung between them. Leorah’s face went through a series of subtle shifts: confusion, dawning comprehension, then a deep, cold anger. She stood up, her robe pooling around her feet. “He used you. He put you in that position, risked your life, your standing…”
“He did what he thought he had to do to root out a blood mage,” Daylen said, though the words felt hollow even to him.
“And what did he secure for you in return? A commendation? A nicer set of robes?” she snapped, her composure cracking.
“A conscription.”
The word landed in the room like a stone dropped into a still pond. All the anger bled from Leorah’s face, replaced by a blank, stunned shock. She took a step back, her hand finding the edge of the desk for support. “What?”
“Duncan was there. He invoked the Right. I’m to become a Grey Warden. I leave at dawn.”
Silence swallowed the chamber. The only sound was the faint crackle of the brazier. Leorah stared at him, her mind visibly racing, trying to fit this new, impossible shape into the world she knew. The Circle was her entire universe—its rules, its dangers, its quiet rebellions. The Grey Wardens were a myth from the outer dark, a death sentence wrapped in glory.
“They’ll take you outside,” she whispered, as if stating the most terrifying fact of all. “You’ll… you’ll leave the Tower.”
“I will.”
She looked around her room, at the scrolls, the unlit silver lyre candle, the deep crimson silk on the bed. A life of small, curated freedoms. Then she looked back at him, and something in her broke. A single, clean fracture.
Her fingers went to the tie of her robe. She undid it with a slow, deliberate pull. The blue fabric sighed open and slid from her shoulders, puddling on the floor around her ankles. She stood before him, nude in the warm light, her slender frame both fragile and fiercely present.
“Then we don’t have much time,” she said, her voice low and thick.
She crossed the space between them, not with seduction, but with a quiet, desperate urgency. Her hands came up to his face, her thumbs tracing the line of his jaw. She kissed him, and it tasted like salt and farewell.
He responded, his arms encircling her, pulling her tight against the cool, hard leather of his armor. She made a small sound of protest against his lips, her hands pushing at the straps and buckles. “Off,” she murmured. “All of it.”
He obeyed. The swords, the harness, the armored coat, the reinforced tunic—each piece was shed with a clatter or a thud, a dismantling of the warrior until just the man remained. She watched, her eyes drinking him in, memorizing the lines of his shoulders, the definition of his stomach, the thick, heavy shape of his arousal already evident.
When he was finally bare, she took his hand and led him to the bed. The crimson silk was cool and slippery against his skin. She pushed him onto his back and straddled him, her weight a familiar, welcome pressure. She didn’t rush. She leaned down, her hair creating a private curtain around their faces, and kissed him again, slowly, deeply. Her small breasts pressed against his chest.
“I held hope,” she breathed, her lips moving against his, “a foolish, stupid hope, that after your Harrowing… we might find a way. That I could petition for a joint research assignment. Something in the library basement that lasted forever.” She gave a soft, broken laugh. “Stupid.”
“Leorah…”
“Shhh.” She silenced him with another kiss. Then she shifted, reaching between them to guide him. The head of his cock pressed against her entrance, already wet and warm from her need. She sank down onto him with a slow, controlled roll of her hips, a sigh escaping her that was equal parts pleasure and profound sorrow.
She was tight, gloriously so, and so hot he saw stars for a second behind his eyelids. He gripped her hips, not to thrust, but to steady them both. She took him inch by inch, her body opening to accept all of him, until she was fully seated, him buried to the hilt inside her. She let out a trembling breath, her head falling back, the line of her throat pale and beautiful in the low light.
For a long moment, she didn’t move. She just held him there, fully sheathed, feeling the pulse of him within her, the absolute fullness. Her eyes were closed, her brow furrowed in concentration, as if committing every sensation to memory.
Then she began to move.
It was a slow, grinding rhythm, a deep claiming rather than a frantic fucking. She rose until just the tip remained inside, then sank back down, her inner muscles clenching around him. Each descent drew a gasp from her lips. Her hands were braced on his chest, her fingers digging in slightly with the intensity of the feeling.
“You feel… Maker, Daylen… you feel like you’re in my throat,” she whimpered, the words broken by her breathing. Her eyes fluttered open, meeting his. They were clouded, unfocused. “Don’t look away. Please.”
He didn’t. He watched her face as she moved, watched the play of pleasure and anguish, the way her lips parted, the flutter of her lashes. He could feel the coil tightening low in his own belly, but he held it back, focusing on her, on the slick heat of her, on the desperate, rolling cadence of her hips.
Her pace increased incrementally. The slow grind became a steadier rocking, her breath coming in shorter gasps. One of her hands left his chest and slipped between their joined bodies, her fingers finding the swollen nub of her clit. A sharp cry tore from her, and her rhythm stuttered, became more urgent.
“I’m… I’m close,” she panted, her movements losing their precise control. “It’s too much. You’re too much.”
He finally moved, meeting her downward thrust with one of his own, driving up into her. She cried out, a sound of pure, shattered bliss. Her body clamped around him like a vise, wave after wave of sensation wracking her slender frame. Her eyes lost all focus, rolling back slightly, her mouth open in a silent cry as the orgasm tore through her, relentless and overwhelming.
He held her through it, his own release held stubbornly at bay, letting her feel every last ripple and aftershock. When she finally collapsed forward onto his chest, boneless and spent, he rolled them over, still buried inside her.
Now he set the pace. Slow, deep, powerful thrusts that had her gasping into the silk pillow. She was overly sensitive, each movement sending new shocks through her nervous system, but she wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, demanding more.
“Again,” she whispered, her voice ragged. “Make me feel it again. Make me feel nothing else.”
He obliged. His thrusts grew harder, faster, driven by the impending loss, by the raw truth of her beneath him. The bedframe groaned in protest. Her cries grew louder, less structured, just raw sounds of pleasure-pain as a second peak rushed toward her. This one was sharper, brighter, a shattering of glass instead of a rolling wave. She arched violently under him, her back bowing off the bed, a choked scream caught in her throat as she came, her vision blurring at the edges, consciousness flickering.
He felt his own control snap. With a final, driving thrust, he buried himself as deep as possible and let go. His release was a thunderclap, emptying into her with a force that made him see white. He stayed there, locked inside her, as the pulses slowly faded, his forehead pressed against her shoulder, his breath hot on her skin.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their breathing and the pop of the brazier.
Slowly, feeling returned. The cool air on his sweat-slicked back. The beat of her heart against his chest. The damp heat where they were still joined.
He moved off her, careful not to hurt her. She made a small, bereft sound at the loss, but didn’t open her eyes. He lay beside her, pulling a corner of the silk sheet over them both.
When she finally spoke, her voice was a threadbare whisper. “Dawn?”
“Yes.”
“Then sleep,” she said, turning into him, her face pressed against his neck. “For a little while. Just sleep.”
He held her, listening to her breathing even out into the soft rhythms of sleep. He didn’t sleep. He watched the brazier’s light dance on the ceiling, feeling the warm weight of her in his arms, memorizing the scent of her skin mixed with lavender and sex.
The dark outside the single window began to soften, to turn from black to deepest blue. He knew the moment the first predawn bell would sound in the distance. Just before it did, he carefully, slowly, extricated himself from her embrace.
She stirred, her hand clutching at the empty space where he had been. Her eyes opened, bleary and disoriented for a second before understanding flooded in. She didn’t cry. She just watched as he dressed in the grey light, buckling on the swords, the armor. He was putting on a new uniform already.
When he was ready, he came back to the bedside. He bent down and kissed her, once, softly, on the forehead.
“Goodbye, Leorah.”
She reached up, her fingers brushing his clean-shaven cheek. “Don’t die a hero, Daylen,” she whispered. “It’s a terrible waste of good men.”
He straightened, gave her one last look, then turned and walked out of the room, shutting the door on the honeyed light and the scent of lavender forever.
The corridors of the Tower were silent and grey. He passed no one. His footsteps were the only sound. He didn’t look back at the doors to the library, the phylactery vault, the apprentices’ quarters. He walked down, level by level, until he felt the damp chill of the ground floor, then the salt-tinged air of the dock level.
Duncan was waiting at the end of the long wooden pier, a dark silhouette against the paling sky over Lake Calenhad. The waters were calm, reflecting the first pink streaks of dawn.
Daylen walked toward him, his boots echoing on the planks. He did not look back at the Tower rising behind him, a sentinel of stone and secrets. He kept his eyes on the horizon, on the small boat waiting to take him away, on the shadowed future ahead.
“Ready?” Duncan asked as he approached.
Daylen took a final breath of Tower air—cold stone, ozone, and deep water.
“Yes,” he said, and stepped into the boat.