"Someone would notice," Rosie tried to shake away the foolish idea, her entire chest aflame in the blush. The assassin's easy going nature faded to a coolness that matched the storm struggling through a second round. "Because I can't be trusted to dress myself. There's always people around me, doing...things."
At that, Anjali's laugh reverberated up through her chest, once again inviting Rosie to look over. She really should stop doing that. Her assassin curled a finger down along Rosie's round jawline and tugged her face up. Planting her chin into Anjali's chest, Rosie stared up into those bottomless umber eyes.
"You are too beautiful for words," she whispered, a satisfied smile playing with her lips. While Rosie struggled to think of a response, Anjali curled her hair back behind her ear. "What about hashmarks?"
"Hashmarks?"
"As a tattoo. To represent your kills. You took down quite a few darkspawn."
"I had help," she laughed, feeling silly about the whole disaster. "Like, say, a charming assassin watching over me." Climbing higher, Rosie inched along the grass with her hip while her fingers walked against Anjali's chest. "Protecting me."
Forgetting her fears, Rosie slid up to fully straddle Anjali, her hands pressing down into the soft dirt while she lost herself in those beautiful eyes. Hands cupped against Rosie's stomach, curling around to shield her waist and eventually working around to that bum Anjali wanted to tattoo. "It's rather romantic really," Rosie whispered while bending towards the woman.
When their lips met, a great roll of thunder reverberated through the night's sky. She felt Anjali stiffen a moment below her, but Rosie plied her away from the weather by the use of her tongue. Running her calloused hand up to hold Rosie's cheek, Anjali muttered a string of Rivani words before kissing her lips once more.
"I'm afraid I don't know..." Rosie began, blinking madly in the waning light. All they had left was a single lantern, its oil already waning. Soon it'd be two warm, naked bodies clinging together in the dark.
Anjali popped her lips a moment, her nose scrunching up in thought, "It's not easy to translate. Um, a beauty as sharp as you is rarer than a lizard in the ocean."
"I take it that doesn't happen often," Rosie asked, a chuckle in her throat.
"No," her assassin laughed back, "no, it does not, Sapheela. And you have not disagreed to the hashmark tattoo."
"They are lovely," she mused, circling her thumb along the one on Anjali's eye, "but my mother would string me up if I did."
"What of your father?"
"Ah..." she paused and snorted. "He'd probably insist we get matching ones."
"The King of Ferelden with a great facial tattoo."
"Probably get one of a mabari leaping over a flaming wheel of cheese or something like that," she laughed at the nonsense because it was easy. They were both two silly girls that...were wrapped around each other. Nothing more to it.
At the mention of her father, Rosie curled back down, laying her head across Anjali's chest. Through the woman's ribcage she could hear her heart thumping strong and proud. May it never break, Rosie wished foolishly. Rather than groan at the excess weight, Anjali snuggled her arms tighter around Rosie and buried a kiss into her hair.
"Do I...there's not say a law that states whosoever deflowers the princess will be strung up by her ankles until ravens pluck out her liver, is there?"
"No," Rosie snickered.
"Good."
Her eyes fell down, the facade of how easy this could be cracking in half. Wanting to release everything off of her chest, Rosie whispered to herself, "You didn't."
"Didn't what?" Anjali seemed to hear her, and wanted to know more.
Taking in a deep breath, Rosie revealed a secret she'd kept pinned inside for years. "You weren't the one to 'deflower' me."
"Oh, I'd only," Anjali seemed to be panicking as if she feared she'd hurt her, "When you said you weren't...I thought."
"I've never been with," sweat beaded upon her brow, Rosie's palms turning bright red at the cauldron of emotions bubbling over in her gut. She should stop this, get dressed, return to her tent and a few pointed questions. "A woman. Not with...not like this, or anything even approaching it."
"Ah, I see. But you have been..."
"There was a boy. I was away in Cumberland, at one of many finishing schools. Lots of higher noble girls were there to learn our proper roles in the future. They kept laughing about how the stablehand had an obvious crush on me."
She didn't remember him well, grey eyes, a tawny cap pulled so low only a lock of brown hair escaped, and he always smelled of horse. That didn't seem right, to have almost no memories of your first, but it was all she had. "I didn't see it, didn't get it. Nineteen years old, I'd danced with hundreds of boys and I still could not understand how to court. How to swoon as the other girls did. How to spot the cute boy in a pile of rough. I thought..."
Her story fell silent a moment, Rosie trying to bury her face tight into Anjali's chest as if she was some coward. A child too terrified to face up to who she was, what she was. When fingers smoothed down the small of her back, Rosie risked a glance up to find only sympathy in Anjali's eyes.
"It was strange. Not terrible, but, I kept thinking 'this is it?' This is what makes my friends do idiotic things? This is what drives them to devote hours to ranking the most attractive children of the Arls and Banns? It hardly seemed worth the effort of getting undressed."
"Ouch," Anjali winced, "That bad?"
"He was an eighteen year old boy," Rosie sighed, with a bit more age on her realizing how foolish her plan was.
"Who deflowered a princess no less."
"I doubt he knew. We didn't bother much with titles there, thankfully, and if he did I imagine he'd have stayed away." That was why it never worked, she told herself. So many boys were terrified of her title, of how she'd one day be queen and they'd be something less than that. The fact she didn't want them was only fair for how many didn't want her.
But they did. Perhaps not as a courting partner, but she knew when their eyes would drift over her body. It came in early, Rosie still in the 'fighting imaginary dragons' stage when one day she woke to discover her chest expanded overnight. She wanted to stay the foolish girl running in the mud and waving her sword, but she couldn't. Her breasts required a corset, or they'd bounce and bring pain. Or worse. The looks, the obvious eyes shifting up and down the newest womanly body amongst them.
"Have you...?" Rosie began, suddenly staring at her only example of the something else lurking inside her. "Um, been with a boy? Or man?"
"No," Anjali shook her head. "Though I'm no virgin either."
"I could tell," Rosie said, a satisfied smile curling up her cheeks. Then her mind played back how that sounded and she gasped, "Not that I think, I mean, you're very, it...buggers."
For a breath Anjali chuckled, then she rose up a bit, concern bobbing in her eyes. "Did you...I hope you enjoyed it?"
Rosie's eyes misted and she breathed, "It was the most amazing experience of my life."
"Wow, well, I hope you don't mind if I put that endorsement down on my business card." Her assassin laughed, plopping her head back to the ground while her hands cupped warmth up and down Rosie's naked body. After a moment, she gripped tight, her eyes screwed up as she breathed, "Do you regret it?"
She wanted to insist that no, of course not. Rosamund went full in. A 'but' weighed down upon her tongue, flattening it in Rosie's mouth and letting no such assurance escape. She felt Anjali staring at her, the woman trying to slide out from under her. Of course she wouldn't want to remain if she wasn't wanted. It was logical, and you're being cruel, Rosamund.
"Anjali," she breathed her name, trying to stop the woman from fleeing. "My whole life my future's been decided for me."
The woman who ran from the same tipped her head and sighed, "Doesn't mean you have to take it."
"But I want it, some of it. Yet, I have to take all of it or none of it."
"Seems to me you don't have to
get married, or have to have children. Look at Orlais."
Yes, a fine example of how boxed in Rosamund was. Empress Celene never wed, never bred, her lover an elf that nearly toppled her empire. And when she died, she left a massive civil war that was tearing their country apart. If Rosie did the same...she couldn't. She wouldn't. Also... "I want children, which would probably surprise my father who said I was more prone to beheading dolls than playing with them."
Anjali laughed a moment at that, her warm breath passing over Rosie's hair as she whispered more in her native tongue. Never before had Rosie regretted learning Tevene instead.
"And that requires..." her words deadened inside her mouth. She'd ignored the siren call rattling around inside her blood because what would answering it solve? She had to be married, she had to produce children. The throne was always in a precarious position, only her and Cailan capable of continuing the line. If they didn't create more, everything their father suffered for could fail in a generation.
"Sapheela?" Anjali whispered, her hands trying to rouse Rosie from her silent turn.
She felt a foolish laugh churning in her gut, her eyes darting over to the woman cushioning her body -- the woman comforting her. "I used to tell myself I wasn't enjoying a pretty face, merely admiring a woman's use of a pigment. I don't lust after her fine figure, only find the dress fascinating."
Below her, Anjali began to slide out from under Rosie. She tipped to the side, letting her go. In truth, she couldn't blame her, Rosie's thoughts sounding even more childish as she voiced them. But Anjali didn't dress quickly and flee into the night. She sat up, her legs crossed in a casual position.
"I'm wearing no makeup, and there is no dress upon me either. Not that you can get me into one," she sighed to herself before curling her palm against Rosie's cheek. "Look at me. What do you see?"
Her eyes canvased the pillowy lips she feared she could never get enough of. Those stark cheekbones, her thin, feminine neck, down the square shoulders, breasts Rosie wished to rest inside her palms, a trembling stomach pooched in her sit that made it appear soft and inviting, and her legs. Rosie ached to wrap them around her head, to return the favor Anjali bestowed upon her.
"Beauty," she gasped, her eyes tearing up at the simplicity of it. "Ache, want, need. When I touch you," she drew her fingers slowly down Anjali's arm, trailing the bend of her tricep until it met with an elbow, "my skin feels electric, awake for the first time in...forever. Kissing you is," she lapped her lips, trying to find the words, "terrifying but perfect. My heart throbs at the thought, while my soul knows it's, thinks it's... I'm being foolish."
"What?" Anjali gasped, pricks of tears rising in her eyes. "Oh Sapheela, you are so far from foolish. You're...ah, I wish I knew your tongue better so I could say it properly."
"Just say it."
She flailed her hands in the air, her eyes sparkling as Anjali with great emphasis tried to tell Rosie what she thought of her. Sadly, Rosie didn't catch a single word of it, but she watched the flush rise to the woman's cheeks. Felt her hand caress up and down her skin. Couldn't cease falling into the excited umber of her eyes. It didn't really matter what she said, Rosie could read it all across her skin.
Leaping forward, Rosie pinned Anjali against the back of the tent. Her lips silenced the Rivaini, the final rolling vowels slipping with Rosie's tongue while both women wrapped themselves around the feminine bodies they craved. Panting in a breath, Rosie slid back, her eyes lost in a wash of Anjali's care.
She slid her pinkie around to try and draw back Rosie's hair from her face. "Perhaps you should let yourself have what you want, Sapheela."
Her shoulders burned at the thought of giving in, of letting herself damn the consequences and taking a woman to her bed, to her side officially. Perhaps it was only Anjali she wanted, for now. There could yet be a man who might burn in the back of her eyes the way this woman did.
Rather than voice any of that, Rosie sighed, "What does Sapheela mean?"
"You don't know?" she scoffed and Rosie shook her head. "The fact you never asked, I assumed. In Rivain, there is this white flower...a bit like your rose, but with the most fragile petals. One touch can cause the entire flower to break. And a scent sweeter than the ripest fruits of late summer."
Rosie lay her head against Anjali's chest, the assassin stroking her hair while she clung tighter to her legs. Maybe she did want this. Maybe she needed this.
"It only blooms by moonlight, the closed off petals opening to our dear Satina so the lunar moths will flit light through its flower parts. There are no other flowers in Rivain more beautiful than the Sapheela. It is small, but breathtaking."
"You know," Rosie tried to wipe away the sentimental tears burning in her eyes upon Anjali's chest, "you could be lying to me."
"True. It could be the name of a particularly obstinate goat I had as a child. With patches of white hair missing from its flank." Anjali chuckled at the idea, her bright smile lifting Rosie's as well. After a beat, she glanced down at the woman in her lap, "I suppose its up to you to decide which it is."
She sucked in a breath from the look, Rosie feeling as if her entire soul just trembled. Tucking in tighter, her body searching for the warmth of Anjali's, she whispered, "I suppose I shall."
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Bad Penny
"Don't take this the wrong way, Henry," Rosamund smiled at her cousin who paused in stretching beside the library window. His crystal blue eyes darted over to her so she could continue, "But I will be glad to resume the road tomorrow."
Rather than grumble at the slight, her cousin smiled wide and let a soft laugh escape, "Given the rising tide of...all of these requests, I do not blame you." He tipped into one of dozens of petitions for the Arl to deal with the darkspawn problem. Most came from Banns concerned about loss of revenue, but a few were delivered by the mouths of those who lost homes or worse in this sudden scourge.
"In fact, I am almost tempted to trail you to...the New Dales, I believe?" he turned to her in the chair swamped by all the parchment she could leave behind. Her cousin did not seem to be of the same mind as Cailan, who'd already written up his estimates on the costs of answering each one and considered the matter settled.
"Yes," Rosie nodded her head, "the New Dales."
"Delightful, we can see what new waterwheel their head elf will proudly show off," her brother complained. He'd fallen sideways onto a chair, one mud stained boot dangling off the armrest while he kept fiddling with a small gear that rotated with each flick of his finger.
Rosie sighed and tipped back to the arched ceiling, "I could always leave you behind. There's reams and reams of paperwork I'm certain Henry would love to bury you in."
Her brother's ice blue eyes rolled over to her, the sockets darkened as if the man was up the entire night. She really didn't want to know why. "You jest but it's tempting. Far better than having to sit on the ground, listen to their ear shattering songs about dead gods, and eat bugs for dinner."
"The Dalish are not..." she began when Cailan flopped to the side and glared at her.
"It's been, what, forty years since they had their scrap of land yet somehow the concept of a town eludes them. Father suggested they try walls along their borders and what do they do? Plant a bunch of trees! Then stick up some of those dog carvings as if that will solve the problem. It's foolish."
Her brother banged the back of his head against the chair and sighed, "It's simple math. Their population has expanded beyond the nomad lifestyle, so blighted well behave like it."
"Cailan!" Rosie hissed, well aware that in a lot of ways the New Dales was one of their father's favorite projects which he oddly kept out of. Though, he'd often try to swing by and see how things were going. The New Dales was always on the itinerary as if it was as important to the crown as Highever or Redcliffe. Even Gwaren wasn't getting a stop this time, the Teyrn laid up with another round of gout, poor man.
Her brother didn't answer her chastisement, simply dar
ted his hands through the air as if he was weaving with them. That'd be the day. Trying to take command of the subject, and suddenly aware there were a good dozen others in the room with her, Rosie turned to Henry, "Have you visited the New Dales?"
"On occasion. They're not wild about us humans popping by, but the Keeper is more open than most. The waterfall there however is breathtaking," he stepped beside Rosie, his hip perched upon the desk at a friendly distance, but the man paused and his eyes darted over to the dark form leaning upon a slice of empty wall. Anjali cut through him, her arms crossed in anger, until Rosie smiled and the assassin faded to an easy stance.
As if she had a scratch, Anjali drew her thumbnail against her cheek, until reaching her lips. Puckering them, she imprinted a kiss onto her thumb and locked eyes with the Princess. Doing her damnedest to not blush, Rosie spread her fingers over the pile of work as a distraction. Being on the road would make it much easier for her to slip her handlers, another very good reason to be excited to leave Redcliffe.
Three of those handlers sat around her, Evie in top form as she began to berate a few of Teagan's servants for some slight. Tess sat on the opposite side, often blowing her hair up in annoyance because that blighted cousin was at it again. Rosamund prayed every day for Evie to finally find a husband and leave her service, but all the men seemed to be onto the woman's peccadilloes and wisely stayed away. Was that to be her curse? She'd be trapped with her blighted spinster cousin until both were wrinkled and grey?
Trying to shake the foolish thought away, Rosie let her eyes drift towards the dark woman with her shoulders leaning onto the wall, her hips thrust out for balance. What she wouldn't give to be able to grab onto her thighs and part those legs. The improper thoughts brought a real flush to her cheeks, Rosie trying to wave it away while she began to wonder if maybe Myra's idea of using the kitchen wasn't such a bad one. If they were careful, and avoided the fire, or any errant knives.
She moved to stand, when the door to the library burst open. Rosie barely glanced over, assuming it to be either Karelle, one of the knights, or the Arl himself looking for his son. When a lip curling voice coughed and called out, "My Lady," her head snapped up.
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