Lady Inquisitor Esfir Siofra Lavellan!
Necroseer of the Green Dales, Vanquisher of the Rebel Mages of Ferelden, Crusher of the vile Apostates of the Mage Underground, Champion of the Blessed Andraste herself!
art by @igrraine, tysm again >.<
Cullen found her by absence before he found her by sight.
She was not where she was supposed to be, no quiet corner near the ambassadors, no polite semicircle of attendants orbiting the Inquisitor. The room felt… off, like a ship missing its anchor. He excused himself with practiced ease, murmured something about reports and timing, and followed the faint tug of instinct down a side gallery where the music softened and the air cooled and his confirmation was the soft white moth that nested near a window.
Esfir had claimed a long chaise as though it had personally offended her and she had decided to win the argument anyway. She lay stretched along it at an unladylike angle, arms lifted and folded behind her head, posture loose in a way she almost never allowed herself in public, not since Haven. One leg was bent, the other draped over the edge, green silk pooling like spilled wine. Her head was tipped back slightly, eyes half lidded, expression hovering somewhere between boredom and mild, tipsy amusement.
Maker, help me.
She looked simply beautiful. Not ceremonially so, not painfully composed. Warm. Alive. The tension that usually lived in her shoulders had slipped away, and the mark was quiet enough that even Cullen could feel the difference. Her hair had loosened, curls escaping their careful arrangement. A faint flush warmed her cheeks, the sort that came from wine taken too quickly and relief taken too rarely.
Her eyes slid sideways, sharp even now, and then softened. “There you are,” she said, voice low, fond, and entirely unsuited to the Winter Palace. “I was starting to think Orlais had eaten you.”
Cullen stopped a careful distance away, arms folding loosely. “You disappeared,” he said, though there was no reprimand in it. “I was looking for you.”
She hummed, rolling one shoulder languidly. “I got bored,” she admitted. “Someone spent ten minutes explaining a tapestry to me like it might confess its sins if I stared long enough.” Her mouth curved. “It did not.”
Against his better judgment, Cullen laughed. Just a little.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” he said, automatically and then softened it. “At least not where they might notice.”
“They won’t,” Esfir replied, entirely unconcerned. She glanced around the quiet gallery, then back at him, eyes bright. “Everyone important is very busy pretending to be important.” She shifted, patting the edge of the chaise with her foot. “Sit. You look like you’ve been bracing for impact all night.”
He hesitated. Then, because he trusted her judgment more than the court’s rules, he did. Up close, he could smell the wine on her breath, faint and sweet beneath the herbs she favored. The glow of candlelight caught on her skin, softened the hard lines the world kept trying to carve into her. She tilted her head, studying him with open curiosity.
“You’re very serious tonight,” she observed.
“Someone has to be,” he replied dryly.
She laughed, quiet, unguarded and for a moment the Palace seemed very far away. “You’re doing wonderfully,” she said, reaching out just enough to brush her fingers against his sleeve, brief and innocent and devastating. “I promise.”
Cullen swallowed. “And you?”
Esfir shrugged, arms returning behind her head. “I am surviving,” she said lightly, then, after a beat, softer: “And I am very glad you found me.”
He looked at her then, not as Commander, not as courtly necessity, but as the woman sprawled on a chaise, a little tipsy, entirely herself, bored of politics and vapidness despite it all.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “So am I.”
They stayed like that for a few stolen minutes, the world held at bay, until duty inevitably came knocking again.
“Don’t disappear again but do find me if you decide it.”
She watched him, eyes bright. “Why of course, Commander.”
