On the nights Wyll cannot sleep, he stares at the roof of his tent and thinks about dancing. It does a hell of a lot more to calm him than counting sheep, particularly since that flock of disguised redcaps in the sunlit wetlands proved to be anything but soothing. While he’s heard (from Gale, as if that needed to be specified) that replaying lanceboard stratagems can help to bring forward the embrace of rest, he has found that thoughts of afternoons playing with his father tend to have the opposite effect. Besides, even if reducing the world to metre and measure (to eight-counts and marks of one-two-three) is never entirely enough to make him forget the feeling of a sending stone in his right eye socket, sometimes it proves just enough to slow his breath and let Helm or Selûne guide him into a fitful slumber.
Some nights, though, Wyll finds that thinking about dancing makes it worse. On the nights where recalling the steps of a galliard or the lift of a lavolta does nothing to bring him calm, Wyll finds that thoughts of dance inevitably lead to thoughts of home, and nights of dancing from the High Hall of the upper city down to the public greens of Rivington. Some nights, Wyll cannot sleep, and the sense-memory of a dance reminds him of other times, other places, other dances.
—
There are other kinds of dancing that Wyll thinks of, too. He thinks of the intimacy of a partner in his arms, of moving together with only the sounds of their heartbeats and their panting breaths to guide them. Sure, half of it is imagined, but the Blade of Frontiers has always had an appetite for fantasies and stories of true love and high adventure.
On those other nights, he takes himself in hand before he seeks his rest, and moves his fist in time to the music of dances he remembers. A bit of grease or oil, a stroke down the length of his co*ck at the first count and up at the second. The beat where the figure to cast off would ordinarily be called becomes the twist of his wrist on the downstroke, the beat where a couple might gallop down the line becomes the place where he moves his hand from his co*ck to scrotum to pay attention to the sensitive skin there (and the pleasant shiver it sends from the root of his co*ck to its head).
He had noticed the changes to himself wrought by Mizora’s most recent punishment long before he touched himself last night (on a night lit by gnomish fireworks and warmed by druidic wine)- but disconcerting though the changes were to his eyes in daylight, the bumps and ridges and the sensations they provided were impossible to ignore in the dark of the night with his breeches open. Even that which was most private was marked and made devilish through Mizora.
—
But, tonight, thoughts of dancing only make things worse. Wyll lies sleepless in his tent of green fulled wool, in the mountain pass that will lead to the shadow-cursed lands and Baldur’s Gate beyond. He stares at the fabric above him and remembers a wedding, held nearly a decade ago in the great hall of Eomane House in the Upper City’s Manorborn district. He recalls the smell of the pomade his father had insisted on running through his curls to neaten them, and how its scent faded amidst the scent of lamp oil and the intense perfumes worn by seemingly all the other guests to best honor their hosts. He remembers how many drow had been there- more than he’d ever seen before- the red eyes of the Lolth-sworn eerie in the fading daylight. Wyll remembers that neither Thom nor Mari had been there, and how, at only a tenday removed from their kissing games at The Blushing Mermaid, he wished he could share a dance with one of them and perhaps practice some more.
He remembers the bride, only a handful of years older than he, and the way her silk-net veil almost looked like a spider’s web.
There is plenty that Wyll does not remember of that wedding. He does not remember how much he had drunk by the end of the night- the cups of green wine brought by the bridal party had flowed freely and caused a rather nasty hangover the next day. He doesn’t especially recall a conversation he overheard between his father and a weapons dealer at the cusp of gaining political prominence discussing finding a new reputable bodyguard. Wyll does, in fairness, faintly recall the shouting match that took place between Nysene Eomane and her uncle, the bridegroom, but the memory is a faint one and is best-remembered, not from his presence at the event, but from his reading of the humorous retelling published by The Baldur’s Mouth Gazette three days after.
The thing that Wyll remembers best from that wedding was the dancing. There were the dances he knew, of course. He excelled then, and excels now, at the pavane and other courtly dances. He remembers the highly choreographed volta danced between the aged groom and his half-drow bride, and how no matter the polite chatter of the guests on the power such a union held, the mismatch between the two was clear as the eye in a beholder’s face. He remembers the dancing of the drow guests, too, how their music and steps could be divided into eight-counts and whose minor keys seemed to stick in his head for a few days after. He remembers trying his hand (his foot?) at it and feeling like a hill giant, compared to the grace of the drow as they moved in the dances they called the spider-step. The sarabande they danced after was a feather-fall in comparison.
Wyll remembers asking the bride for a dance. That memory, truth be told, is more fuzzy than he would like, tinged green by drow-wine and faded with nine years of tragedy, adventure, and the unwelcome insertion of a tadpole. He wishes it were clearer. He wishes he had thought to pick it apart and remember every detail of that night, and that dance, and the woman-girl in his arms. He wishes he had spoken to her, had listened to her. He wishes he had known then what he suspects now.
—
Wyll doesn’t remember if he took himself in hand that night with thoughts of the blushing bride in his mind. He had not taken part in the bedding that both Patriar Eomane and the stern-faced drow matron insisted was tradition- Duke Ravengard did not approve of the crass and antiquated practice (a trait inherited by his son), and no doubt Ulder saw the way the bride’s breath caught when the groom announced the evening was coming to an end.
He might have found his hand beneath his sleeping trousers at some point late that evening- he was, after all, in that freshness of youth which boils the blood such that completion might be found multiple times a day- but if he touched himself, it was to the memory of a silk-clad woman in his arms and the idea of forever-after fresh in his mind. He had never expected to remain chaste, and certainly not chaste of his own touch, until his marriage; few in Baldur’s Gate did. Virginity, or a lack of it, did not tend to feature in his fantasies. Devotion, on the other hand… Wyllyam Ravengard had been raised on a solid foundation of fairy tales, where love conquered all and the hero’s heart and arms (and, in the tawdrier tales, had other things) filled by their newly-rescued beloved. And oh, how Wyll wished (and wishes still) to be the hero.
How easy it would have been for him to imagine whisking the bride away from an aged, cold groom. How easy it would have been to imagine the softness of her skin, the perfection of her mouth and lips and…
If Wyll did not touch himself to the thought of the Patriar’s wife that night, she certainly featured in some of his fantasies in the nights after. He would see her, from time to time, over the course of the next two years, at gatherings in the homes of other patriars, at Wyrm’s Rock, or the High Hall. He had even danced with her again at the party Patriar Eomane had held in honor of Wyll’s father’s ascension to Grand Duke, not terribly long before he found his life and soul literally condemned to the hells. She was impossible to look away from- a figure of mystery and a (more or less) blank canvas upon which the young man might project his dreams and desires.
—
At fifteen, Wyllyam Ravengard thought himself a man, or near enough. At seventeen, with his pact signed and eye gouged out, he felt both a child and a man grown before his time. At twenty-four, Wyll sees himself for the boy he was then.
At fifteen, Wyllyam Ravengard thought the bride clad in silk a woman grown, her skin faintly painted in designs which glowed from the nightlight essence that formed the ink, with moonstones and star-sapphires on her brow and neck and wrists. At seventeen, he thought the young woman stunning, and her eyes sad, and her lot in life unjust- like a maiden from a fairy-story. At twenty-four, Wyll sees her as she was: barely more than a child herself and trapped in a web as tight and inescapable as any phase spider’s.
He sees her now, across the fire, nearly as changed as he in the nine years since that first dance.
—
When had she recognized him? Wyll wonders if the spark might’ve taken to tinder amidst the flames of Waukeen’s Rest, when Councillor Florrick revealed the connection between him and his distant father. Was there any possibility she recognized him sooner, despite the way the best part of a decade had changed him? Beneath the beard and twists, before the horns and mismatched eyes, without the scars- did she see him both for the boy he was and the man he became? Or had she seen only the man, the foolish boy left behind and buried in Baldur’s Gate?
Or perhaps had she not remembered him at all? It was on her wedding day that they had met, after all, and etiquette dictated she dance with any who asked and who gained approval from her husband. While Wyll had spent a hungover morning after the wedding discussing the politics of the underdark with his father, and debating why Patriar Eomane would ally himself with House Orl’Tavv, a house newly in ascendancy as they climbed Menzoberranzan’s ranks, surely the bride did not spend the first morning of a new marriage picking apart the actions of the hundreds of guests at Eomane house.
—
“Power.” Ulder Ravengard had stated, his voice decisive and with confidence borne of years spent climbing the ladder to the highest echelon of Baldur’s Gate. “House Orl’Tavv’s Matron-mother wants it, and will do anything to get it.”
“Wyll,” he said, voice firm enough that Wyll knew no mention of his exhaustion nor gesture towards his eyes (still tinted green from the amount of drow wine drunk the night before) would broker him a reprieve from questioning. “What is one of the most valuable things in the underdark, something that cannot readily be made or mined there? What has power in a place of darkness?”
“Light.”
—
He had certainly not recognized her when they met once more, her back to the sun as she stood on the jagged rocks near the entrance to the Emerald Enclave. The guiding bolt she cast alerted him to the danger of the knife-wielding goblin on his blind side. He was grateful then- he’s grateful now- but he had not recognized her.
He had not recognized her when he first saw her face, when their shared parasite had formed that psionic link to share his hunt through the hells and the way she was pulled from a pilgrimage to a pod aboard a hells-bound nautiloid. In all fairness, she, too, was not unchanged by the nine years since they’d met or the seven years since he had seen her last. Her hair, which he had known to be white and worn in long and intricate braids, was now shorter, growing darker over the course of the weeks since that first battle, in a way that suggested that its natural color was far blacker than usual for drow and it was prone to curling from the sweat that gathered on her brow and the nape of her neck. Her red eyes (as the romantic that Wyll knows himself to be, he’s tempted to call them rose-colored) were rarer amongst half-drow born on the surface; besides, it was almost unheard of for a half-drow to be born amongst the Lolth-sworn.
Wyll, too, knows himself well enough to be honest. In that regard, the scars that now trailed from her brow, to her lips, to her chin, and down her neck, were initially so distinctive and distracting that they were the first thing to stick in his mind. Those scars seemed to tell a story of tragedy, of suffering as her skin split to the edge of whatever implement had made from. They were a part of her face as much as the claw marks across his left cheek were.
Besides, she had introduced herself as Octavia, Cleric and Novice Mortarch of Kelemvor, and was newly host to a mindflayer tadpole behind her right (rose-colored) eye. Any spark of recognition was extinguished at an introduction like that.
Wyll only recognized Novice Octavia, who Karlach had taken to calling Tav, as Lady Iostea Orl’Tavv Eomane the morning after the party thrown to celebrate the destruction of the goblin threat and the tiefling refugees’ departure towards the hoped-for safety of Baldur’s Gate. Their initially motley (and surprisingly competent) company, brought together by infection, had traveled together for several tendays at that point, yet it took half a bottle of wine, the offer of a dance, a lost opportunity for a kiss, and sheer dumb luck for Wyll to realize.
Idiocy, forgetfulness, and luck. Hardly the stuff of great tales.
—
She had offered him a dance. She had sought him out, though he wallowed in his devilish deformities, melancholy in his loneliness, and she had listened. She had told him he didn’t unsettle her, that despite his form she knew him to be no devil. She had offered him a dance and he, fool that he was, had declined. He had, for a moment, deflected with stories of past sarabanes- then imagined aloud standing as her dance partner, at the head of a ballroom and calling a dance. He had fooled himself for a moment, imagining a life blocked to them both.
Her smile then had been sad, her hand extended towards him, and her heart kinder than so many others, and she had suggested they pretend, at least for that night.
He should have kissed her- properly, like in the stories and in the way she so utterly deserved. Instead, his lips only brushed the corner of her scarred lips, close enough for him to feel the heat in her cheeks (so flushed from the wine) and to smell the incense of Kelemvor’s rites that lingered in her hair, with its dark roots and darker streaks. He should have kissed her, could have swept her off of her feet. He had said there would be a time for them later, fool that he was, instead of taking the hand she outstretched and using the time they had then, the quiet of an evening before them.
Idiot, coward, fool. How ashamed he should have been to stifle his moans in his bedroll, the beach abandoned save for him and the lights that came from tiefling magic and gnomish artifice emanating from the camp beyond. How repugnant a thing, to close his eyelids and pray that the stone embedded in one socket could not broadcast his thoughts to Mizora- especially when his thoughts were of Tav. He thought of her lips, how plush and soft they might be between the scars. He thought of her hair, how silky her curls might feel between the calloused fingers of his sword-hand that, even then, rubbed against the new bumps down the underside of his co*ck. He thought of the freckles newly-formed on her sun-kissed shoulders, how he wanted to count them, to run his tongue from one to the next as he traced them like constellations down to the swell of her breasts.
He thought of her as he climaxed, alone, down by the river.
—
Iostea, eighth daughter of House Orl’Tavv. The then-newlywed wife of Patriar Eomane. Half-drow and more than comely in the way the children of such unions often are, her dusky, purple-gray skin a contrast to the whiteness of her hair, so elegantly dressed and topped with combs of silver and gem and the silk veil that reminded him of a spider’s web.
She had been a feature in Wyll’s youthful fantasies. He had kissed naught but her hand, touched her only in places prescribed by the dance figures called by the mistress of revels, but the memory of her had been in regular rotation amongst his fantasies in those last two years of his youth, before a devil, pact, and pain had sundered the person he is from the person he was.
He was changed by the passage of time. She was too. And, without realizing it, in the past tendays she had become almost as central to his world as his pact, his feelings towards her as much a part of his identity as being the Blade of the Frontiers was.
—
“Clever-” Wyll had been excited, been eager to share his insights with his father. Whether acting more in any given moment in his role as father or Blaze of the Flaming Fists, there was little more Wyll longed for than to see his smile or gain a nod of approval. His father, the man soon to be a Grand Duke, gave both now. “Clever to ally with the man who controls the flow of whale oil to the whole of Western Fâerun. Other patriars might mock him for a fortune built on ambergris and spermaceti, but people need light in a way they will never need diamonds, or silver, or dye.”
Ulder had smiled, the warmth of it reaching eyes the color of the coffee he sipped. “Right you are, son. The Matron Mother wants power, and gains it through the material Patriar Eomane supplies. But what does he want?”
—
Romantic fool that he is, Wyll can only fault himself for not remembering her. Were he fairer to himself (a trait which his companions-turned-friends might point out is not his wont) he might reflect that it has been seven years since his ignoble exile, and that much of that time has been spent fighting for the Sword Coast, to say nothing of his survival and soul. Wyll would not blame them, were their places exchanged, for not thinking of him over the course of seven years of hardship or remembering him after he’d changed so much. But he is human in his hypocrisy, and blames his own fool self anyway.
He had hardly thought of the vast majority of patriars since his unceremonious exile. He cannot help but think of them now, lying awake in the mountain pass. Tav- Iostea- she had been married still when he had been exiled. When had she left the city? What had happened to her? To her husband? To the life she had lived? How had she taken her vows? What could have brought her into the novitiate of the clergy to a god of death?
Wyll supposes she could ask the same of him, but she hasn’t. She had offered him sympathy when he realized that Mizora had deceived him about Karlach, kindness when his form had been changed against his will. She had listened to his council when it came to protecting the grove, both from Kagha within and the Cult of the Absolute without. She had offered him a dance and a kiss in the sand of the riverside beach.
She’d not offered him her story, her pain. How can he press for it when she has been kind enough to not press him for his own?
—
Wyll is less confident with the answer he gives next. “Well, the underdark is a captive audience, is it not? If he controls the flow of lamp oil beneath…” he stops himself, the architecture of his thoughts taking form into something more concrete.
“No, that’s only part of it. Money is power, but so is prominence. And this marriage is making people pay attention to him. Now he’s not thrice-widowed Eomane, his fish-fortune to be split between his brother’s heirs. Now he’s the Patriar with the only drow wife this side of the underdark. He has an explicit alliance with one of the Houses of Menzoberranzen, and everyone will have to wonder what made him the first Patriar to manage it.”
Ulder grinned at that, pouring his son, the boy he felt would one day be the pride of the Gate, a cup of coffee for his hangover. “Right you are.”
—
Gods above and hells below, he had thought of her. He had thought of her and touched himself, one hand over his mouth to muffle his cries as his hand and co*ck danced together to completion. He had thought of her as a youth, and last night, and more times than he would like to admit since their reintroduction on the cliff.
He had seen her in her vulnerability- seen how she managed to stand calm and collected and stripped down before the priest of Loviatar to receive that so-called blessing of pain. He had not egged her on with admiration and an undercurrent of lust, the way Shadowheart and Astarion had, but he had looked. He had seen how the skin of her back, reddened and welted by the priest’s implements, was marred by old, thin scars. Clerics of Kelemvor are no Loviatans, flagellating themselves in the ecstasy of worship. These were older; these were personal. Knowing now what he does, he cannot stop wondering what was a remnant of a childhood within one of the drow’s great houses, and what was inflicted by members of a noble family known for sadism?
He had seen her fear before that drow woman- before Minthara- how she had shivered in her robe and seemed to shrink before her cool, red gaze. He had heard Nightwarden Minthara disparage her for being only half-drow, how those words bit into Tav in a way that seemed expected, but no less painful for it. He saw how that pain came through in her magic, how the spell that knocked Minthara across the rock wall of the room seemed to come from a well of magic different from that which she called upon as a cleric. He had tried to support her, through that palpable fear, when she rushed them through searching that chamber.
Usually one of their party would confirm the death of an enemy, but their goal of driving out the forces of the Absolute had been pressing enough that they never quite got around to it. The hobgoblin was undoubtedly dead, the priestess was too. No doubt the Nightwarden was the same.
Wyll still, sometimes, doubts. He doubts even as he thinks about his friend’s fear, her suffering.
—
“What about the bride?” asked Wyll, brown eyes surveying the board his father, ever the lanceboard master, had set up. By the time he was fifteen, the then-newly-proclaimed Duke had mostly given up on his dream of raising a prodigy at the game, but old habits die hard and it was still very much the norm for Wyll to spend a morning with his father playing lanceboard.
“What about her?” Ulder had said, sipping his coffee and moving his pawn into position to either take Wyll’s cleric, or push it into the path of another of his advanced pieces.
“What does she have to gain from it? Eomane gets prominence, and status, and- well- a pretty wife, and the Matron-mother gets power and an in into the city for whatever wider web she’s weaving.” Wyll moves his castle, disliking how close one of his father’s other pawns draws to his king. The cleric, he can admit, is a lost cause. “Baldur’s Gate gets an influx of green wine and trade with Menzoberranzan, while that city gets enough whale oil to turn the underdark to daylight and to keep their enslaved at work for who knows how long. What does she get?”
Ulder had paused at that, looking at his son appraisingly. Certainly he was not blind to his idealism, his yearning to be the hero of a fairy-tale. Heroic, his son was. To be as such is not without its dangers. “Hard to say, as of yet.” He lifts the pawn, taking the castle and landing on the highest tier of the opposing side. Now queened, the incantation on the lanceboard pieces engages, the piece transforming before their eyes. “Of course, a pawn in the game may not always remain as such.”
—
It was only this morning, tendays after their party had formed, when the pieces on the proverbial lanceboard slid into place, revealing the play before Wyll. He was tired, sure, his back a little sore from the sands and his imperfect adjustment to sleeping with horns, but the high of his org*sm and their almost-kiss ran through his veins still. He found himself grinning ear to ear as he helped pack the camp. Hungover though most of them were, with dawn and the departure of the refugees, and save for the new presence of Halsin, the morning was much like any other for their party. Astarion was complaining about something inconsequential, Gale griped about his knees, and Karlach stood by a little awkwardly as everyone helped gather and pack the implements her touch would surely burn through.
Where sometimes early morning conversations turned towards what Gale was planning to make for breakfast, or the great beast Lae’zel claimed to have driven away while at watch the night before, or at the all too cute antics of the owlbear cub and Scratch, today the conversations were more personal, flirting with the edges of their individual lives, whether the pages remained firmly shut like Shadowheart’s or open without a hint of guile like Karlach’s. That was, in the end, how Wyll realized.
—
The last time he saw Lady Iostea was only a month before that night on the hill, when he would fight with rapier in his hand and a contract, signed, sealed, and sitting like a stone around his neck. For weeks now the Ravengard men had been invited to countless parties, to dinners and balls all designed to celebrate the proclamation of his father as Grand Duke. The Portyr’s party had been first, an obvious attempt by Duke Dillard to ease the transition of power, but the parties seemed only to get more opulent and ostentatious from there on. Patriar Eomane’s was not an exception.
—
“Hey, soldier!” Karlach had grinned at Tav, whose head was almost buried in their chest of foodstuffs as she searched for some ingredient for a hangover remedy Gale apparently swore by. “What were underdark parties like, then? I’ve always assumed that they were either creepy as all f*ck or deeply, weirdly, sexy.” Karlach’s laugh was infectious, loud enough to catch Wyll’s attention from where he stood with Lae’zel and Halsin trying to chart the position of the crèche against the maps they’d found. While Lae’zel seemed content to ignore the party’s discussions of gatherings, he noticed how carefully Halsin seemed to be listening for Tav’s answer. There was something there, he thought, between the druid and the underdark. He’d have to think more about that later.
“How’s my guess?”
“I’d guess you’re right, but if I’m being honest, I’ve not been to any.” Tav answered, pulling a frankly improbable amount of garlic from the chest and passing it along to Gale. “No one was bending over backwards to invite someone like me, and I was taken to the Gate when I was still pretty young.” She stretched, the sun dappling her skin in the kind of way that Wyll desperately wished he knew how to paint. “What about parties down in the hells?”
—
The day had been long, and had left them bone-tired between the uphill climb and battling the undead. It had been a hard battle- the stench of the ghast would have been nauseating enough without the detriment of being hungover, and Wyll knew the speed of his reactions, of his rapier and eldritch blast, could have been much better. Lae’zel had cursed at him, but it was clear enough that the battle rattled her almost as much. After all, amidst the undead were the bodies of githyanki.
Tav had shone, her quarterstaff and dagger alight with radiance and her person surrounded by Spirit Guardians. There was, perhaps, no better place to fight the undead than alongside a cleric of Kelemvor. They might guide souls to the plains beyond, might care for the dying as a midwife cared for the laboring, but they, too, were a scourge upon the undead, uncompromising and unyielding. Wyll had seen Astarion flinch at the reminder, the nature of his existence, his undeath, something that ought to have been anathema to the cleric before them. But Tav did not advance upon the spawn with her radiance, nor had she staked him when he revealed his nature, and, based on how many mornings Wyll saw Tav mutter “te absolvo” with her hands pressed to the side of her neck, she let the spawn feed from her often enough.
She is awash in contradictions, a woman Wyll admires as much as desires. And, as exhausted as Wyll is, what he now realizes he knows about her will keep him from his night’s rest.
—
It was perhaps an hour later, after Gale had told them of a party thrown within the dormitories of Blackstaff Academy, and after Shadowheart had admitted some half-memory of getting through most of a cask of wine with some otherwise unremembered friend that the conversation turned back towards Tav. Wyll thought it a natural progression of the topic- postulants had dormitories to be sure, and while the worship of Shar and Kelemvor were quite different, both gods required a great deal of devotion from (and control over) their clergy. Besides, Wyll had admitted to some of his adventures in The Blushing Mermaid, and told the story of the party thrown for him by a halfling town after he slew a Minotaur. It was her turn, as Astarion was quick to point out, and Tav wasn’t the type to leave any of her friends and companions feeling inequitable.
“I’m sure there are some acolytes of Kelemvor who…”
“f*ck sh*t up?” Suggested Karlach.
“Imbibe overmuch?” Said Gale, almost simultaneously.
“Whatever they did, I wasn’t invited.” Admitted Tav, taking a sip of the broth in the bowl she held. “Then again, I was in a queer kind of position, having taken my vows as a novitiate before training alongside the postulants. I don’t think they knew quite what to do with me!”
“It seems a strange thing to do,” agreed Shadowheart. “I don’t think many would invite someone in that position of authority to any kind of gathering that might look to skirt the limits of what’s allowed. I certainly wouldn’t have.”
There was a lull in the conversation at that. Loneliness could well have been said to be as unifying to their group as the tadpoles that linked their minds at inconvenient times and, much like the tadpoles, was hardly a pleasant thing to be reminded of.
Tav stood and began to gather the empty bowls of Gale’s hangover cure. If Wyll could cook even a fraction as well as the wizard, he’d have to ask for the recipe. Whatever it was certainly seemed to have worked. When Tav took his bowl, their hands touched for a moment. His heart raced. Her smile was as bright as the sun in the sky overhead.
“But, before I took my vows, I went to this one event that was… well, it was something.” Tav offered, breaking the silence as she moved on to grab Lae’zel’s bowl. “It was one of those occasions where no one seemed to be having much of a good time until someone drank enough to start embarrassing themselves.”
—
It’s been hours. Where Wyll could once see a sliver of the moon through his tent’s east-facing entrance, only darkness remains. It must be high above them, now, perhaps closer to daybreak than dusk. He has tried to sleep, tried to count sheep and play lanceboard against himself, tried to remember the steps to complex minuets. His thoughts come back to her, again and again and again.
—
She had not been explicit in her description of the party he knows now to have been her wedding. She had been vague in a way he knows to be outside of her character, she being usually so precise in her wording as to leave no space for misunderstanding. She spoke of green wine, how the great and good of Baldur’s Gate made fools of themselves deep in their cups. She spoke of how the drow guests weren’t immune from drunkenness, underestimating the power that more than a dozen cups of “weak, surface dregs” could still hold. She spoke of a shouting match between an old bridegroom and his niece, and how she kept a newspaper clipping that immortalized that patriar’s excess in both print and pen-drawing.
Wyll’s eye, demonic in its red color, had made contact with hers, beautiful in the same. He remembered.
Tav- Iostea- she had a way with words. She could shape them into spells that harmed and healed, and used them to great effect to convince Kagha to break with the shadow druids. She was a talented storyteller, drawing her audience in even as she told a tale that managed to stay two steps away from the truth at its heart. The others had laughed, had traded ribald jokes about drunk bridegrooms who couldn’t keep it up- hells, even Astarion had volunteered a story afterwards about a stag night at a flophouse he bore witness to.
Wyll had not known what to say. Elves have souls reborn time and time again, had the capacity to find those they loved in lifetime after lifetime. Perhaps an elf would know how to tell another that they had met in another life, had shared two dances in a city whose distance sometimes felt insurmountable. Wyll was no elf.
—
Wyll rises from his bedroll, from the pillows he has ever-so-carefully arranged to cushion his head and newly-sprouted horns from the rocky ground that forms their campsite on the monastery trail. Sleep will not come to him, not through any stratagem he knows. He has struggled with perceiving distance since the loss of his right eye all those years ago, but based on the way shadows fall from his tent-pole, guesses that the night is late enough as to properly be called morning. Gale should be on watch, and, if sleep is to elude Wyll tonight, the wizard will be a pleasant enough conversationalist.
There is a figure, backlit by the fire, visible when Wyll exits his tent. He does not raise his voice in greeting- it would hardly do to wake the rest of camp- but his feet, confident in the dark, lead him quickly to the fire, his hand outstretched to touch his friend’s shoulder in greeting.
Perspective can, Wyll thinks, be a bitch. It’s not Gale’s watch, not Gale in front of the fire wrapped in a few extra cloaks, not Gale whose face turns to greet his, eyes shining- it's hers.
—
“Hey,” she says, with a voice that warms his heart as much as the fire does his hands. “Can’t sleep?”
Wyll nods, a little sheepishly, giving her shoulder the slightest squeeze as he sits beside her on the rock Karlach had proclaimed ‘a damn good seat for a watch there, soldier, because you can see the whole sh*tting valley.’
“I couldn’t.” He confirms aloud, wanting to look anywhere else, and unable to look away. “I thought I’d come out here, maybe see if Gale wanted company.”
“You’ve just missed him, I’m afraid. I think today was rougher on his knees than he was letting on. He let me use my last spell to try and ease the pain, but it took some convincing.” She smiles at Wyll, her gaze open, and he thinks for a moment that he would trade what's left of his soul if it meant getting to see her smile more often. “I’m no great Wizard of Waterdeep, but I’d gladly take your company, if it's on offer.”
“Of course it is. It always is, for you.” Perhaps his words are too true, too vulnerable. Perhaps he is risking too much, sitting next to her by the fire, their hands half a motion shy of touching. Perhaps he is a fool. But her smile does not fade, and she extends her arm as if to welcome him into the nest of cloaks she’s constructed to stave off the near-autumn chill. If he’s a fool for drawing closer, for sharing their body heat beneath an improvised blanket, then so be it.
They sit for long minutes, three red eyes between them tracing the path of the stars and the moon in the clear night sky. Beneath their shared blanket-cloak, their breaths rise and fall as one. They have rarely been closer- save for the abortive kiss the night before and dances shared a lifetime ago. Wyll cannot stand it. Before a battle, when the adrenaline is high and the only thing left to do is wait to see who strikes first, he always finds his sword hand itching. Its only cure is to strike. Wyll feels almost as though his whole body itches now, his tongue itching to say something, his arms itching to wrap around her, his palms itching to connect to hers in the way pilgrims’ might, or partners in a dance.
“May I-” his voice does not crack the way it did at fifteen when he asked a pretty young bride to dance with him. His heart feels like it might instead, if this goes wrong. “May I tell you about a party I remember?”
—
A seventeen year old Wyllyam Ravengard had once asked a sad-eyed woman for a second dance, two years after their first at her wedding. Her smile had not reached her eyes when she said yes. He knows what her smiles mean, now.
—
“When my father became Grand Duke, it felt like the parties were never-ending. It seemed like everybody in the Gate wanted a moment with him, wanted to curry his favor in whatever way they suspected might work. I never knew my father to like parties, but he knew how to handle himself at them. He didn’t drink to excess and tried to be a gracious honored guest.” He pauses, taking a breath to steady himself. “I don’t think I was half as gracious at those parties. They were exciting at first, I suppose, and I swelled with pride to see my father recognized as a great man and leader. The food and drink were almost universally excellent, and sometimes there were people my age with whom I could have a grand time. And there was almost always dancing. I liked that the best.” She does not look away from him when he speaks. He tries to draw courage from it.
“There was this one party in particular I remember. It was one the Eomanes’ hosted, and it was more extravagant than most. I was seated at one of the lower tables, but could see my father in the place of honor, near the hosts and his heirs.” He can hear her breath catch, but her eyes do not leave his. “There was green wine aplenty, and the decorations! Gods, but they were giving the Umberlants a swim for their gold, with the amount of mother-of-pearl and coral for their centerpieces. There were these sea-silk hangings, too, and…”
“It was spider silk, dyed to that golden color.” Her voice is quiet when she speaks, but there is no tremor to it. Wyll feels as though he could shake enough for them both. “Everyone was meant to think it was true byssus, but my-” her voice falters, unsteady for only a moment. “My husband could get a better price if he sold it directly to the Water Queen’s House.”
And there it is. Wyll’s suspicions proven true, his memories confirmed.
“We danced. Do you remember?” Wyll asks. He remembers. It was an allemande, danced in the less-typical triple-metre. Her hands had been so soft when he held them, the lace of her chemise tickling his wrist in a way that had him briefly worried he was allergic to something. He wasn’t, as it turned out, just hot-blooded and, in his own youthful way, trying to hang on to every moment of the experience.
“I don’t.” Now her voice has a vein of worry running through it. “I know you were there, that we addressed the invitation to His Grace the Grand Duke and the Honorable Wyllyam Ravengard. But I don’t…” Her gaze breaks with his, she pulls away enough that the cloak opens around them, and there is a shine to the corner of her eyes that suggests to his own that there are tears within. “Ever since the burning inn, when we saw Florrick and I realized… I have been trying to remember. I am sorry.”
“What for?” He wants nothing more than to reach out, to cup her cheek and meet her eyes again. “You must have danced with dozens of people that night. I know you did at other parties. I always admired it, to be honest. I loved the dance, but even my feet would tire after a reel. You always kept going.”
She laughs slightly. It is not a happy sound. Wyll cannot help but be glad that he can tell the difference. “I would have been called an ungracious hostess if I did not dance, would have felt more whispers at my back and in my ear if I stayed at the side.” She finds his eyes. He was right, there are tears in hers. “I wish I could remember you, because if you were half as kind then as you are now, then that would be something worth remembering.”
She wipes away a tear with the back of her left hand at the same instant that Wyll reaches out, his arms open. There is a moment of hesitation, his heart catching in his chest as he, for a moment, fears her rejection of him (not for his present but for his past). And then she moves into his embrace.
—
A tenday and a half later, he offers her a dance again. She accepts it, and this time remembers.
![Allemande - adrezarach - Baldur's Gate (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8/h8AAvMB+NzmkbcAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)