Chapter Text
Perhaps, Cordelia Trevelyan muses to herself as she negotiates the uneven ground of the yard, she is overthinking things. She squints, unsuccessfully attempting to discern any divots in her path, before taking another step forward. They are in a dead space of sorts right in the center of the fortress; neither the light from the keep proper nor the watchers’ torches on the wall reaches here. The moon, hardly the width of a thumbnail held up against the sky, is no help tonight, either.
She can create her own light, of course, but announcing her and Cullen’s presence rather defeats the point of sneaking away. Irritation begins to flare in her yet again at the thought that she’s been reduced to slinking about in the shadows of her own home. This whole thing is so ridiculous, has been from the start, and she had said as much to Josephine, but the ambassador had insisted, insisted that yes, it must be at Skyhold, everyone is so curious about the keep, and it is neutral ground besides, not to worry, Inquisitor, it will be a lovely time, nothing like Halamshiral and–
Suddenly, she sees a hitch in the stride of the man just a meter in front of her, and before she is able to react, she finds herself tripping over Cullen’s prone form with a yelp.
“I’m sorry!” she whispers as she hits the ground. “Are you al–”
“Cora, are you al–”
“–right?”
“–right?”
Their words tumble out and over one another just as their bodies had moments before.
“I’m fine,” she says after a beat. “Are y–”
“Fine,” Cullen whispers. They disentangle from one another, then he offers her a hand up.
“This is ridiculous,” she says, dusting the twigs and dirt from her backside. “We ought to have just stayed. It must be two in the morning; they can’t possibly go on carousing much longer.”
“Have you ever known the Orlesian gentry to turn in for the night if the wine is still flowing?” She can hardly make out his face, but she swears that she can hear him smirking.
“True enough,” she says. Hand-in-hand, they carefully make their way toward the glowing sconces of Cullen’s tower.
They once again lapse into silence to remain undetected. Perhaps they are being overly cautious, but, Cora figures, there are at least a handful of couples spread amongst the many dark nooks and crannies of the grounds. She can picture it now: some minor lord from Starkhaven pulls his head from beneath his paramour’s skirts and, catching sight of the Inquisitor and her commander, approaches them with a rousing greeting, too drunk to mind that his cock is hanging out. No, thank you, she thinks, blinking the unwelcome image away.
Silence, then, as they creep slowly toward the stone steps leading up to the battlements. Silence, and her mind drifts back to dinner earlier that evening. Silence, and she is regretting the whole infuriating celebration all over again.
After she had accepted that Corypheus was gone – really, truly gone – Cora had hoped that she might be able to turn her back on the world outside Skyhold for a time. Autumn was already upon them, and traversing the Frostbacks outside the protection afforded by the keep’s ancient Elvhen magic was an icy nightmare. Last winter, there had been no other choice – Corypheus and his people were actively wreaking havoc across the land – but this year could be different. The Inquisition needed time to plan its next move, after all, and its people deserved rest.
“A fine idea,” Josephine had replied with her usual indefatigable cheer when Cora had said as much. “It won’t be any trouble to effectively close the keep to benefactors, ambassadors, and so on for the winter; most are disinclined to travel in the cold anyway. I shall make it known after the banquet.”
After the what? Cora had noticed, when she had turned back to make sure the ambassador wasn’t having her on, that Cullen was also looking at Josie with poorly-suppressed dismay. The Inquisitor had wracked her brain for any memory of this banquet to which Josephine was referring but had come up empty. Frustrating, but unsurprising. Cora had felt like she was sleepwalking much of the time during those first weeks after the last battle, and she was only just beginning to return to some semblance of normalcy.
“Speaking of which,” Josephine had continued, oblivious to all of this, “we have already received a fair number of replies to our invitation…”
Thus had the Inquisitor learned that what she had hoped would be a relatively small gathering of supporters was, in fact, going to be a massive affair. Every aristocrat who had contributed coin or supplies to the cause; representatives of every sovereign power, large or small, that had supported the Inquisition; every self-important lordling that had so very magnanimously allowed Inquisition troops to set up camp overnight on their land – all of them had been invited to Skyhold for a grand celebration of the victory over Corypheus. Cora had thought that it sounded like a special kind of hell, but Josephine had been so genuinely excited that the Inquisitor had bitten her tongue.
The event had been pleasant enough, all things considered. Josephine had even let Cora sit beside Cullen at dinner. This choice had been less about magnanimity and more about stoking intrigue about their public-but-not-publicized relationship, but Cora had been grateful nonetheless.
“This is ridiculous,” Cullen had grumbled under his breath as the first course was served. The pair had been drawing covert, knowing glances since they had taken their seats. “You ought not be subjected to this…this being paraded around for gossip.”
“Cullen,” she had said, hand in front of her mouth in an attempt to hide her grin, “I don’t think I am the one being paraded here.”
He had looked at her in confusion and then, perhaps recalling the half-dozen marriage proposals that had arrived for him after their return from Halamshiral the year prior, consternation. “You can’t be serious.” When she had only smirked in reply, he had continued, “But…you’re the highborn one!”
“I think my being a mage rather cancels out any perceived benefit from my very minor nobility,” she had said, dipping her spoon into the bowl of squash soup in front of her.
Before Cullen had been able to reply, the woman sitting on his other side had pulled him into conversation. Her shimmering cobalt mask might have given Cora a hint to her identity, had the Inquisitor bothered to give more than a cursory skim to the guide Josephine had prepared for her prior to the banquet. She had wondered, while trying to glance discreetly across Cullen’s shoulders for a better look at the woman, whether the proximity was a strategic choice by their ambassador or the result of a request from the Orlesian aristocrat herself. Either way, there was certainly a great deal of coin – a former investment, a potential future one, or both – involved.
“How lovely to find myself at your side tonight, Ser Cullen!” The woman’s words had been difficult to parse thanks to the mask jutting down over her upper lip, her distance from Cora, and the noise of several dozen conversations echoing off the stone of the great hall. A moment later, the guests surrounding the Inquisitor had begun eagerly peppering her with questions and praise, which made eavesdropping all but impossible.
The meal had passed so unexpectedly pleasantly for Cora – the people beside and across from her had been a jocular Rivaini merchant and his wife, a sculptor of some renown – that she had almost felt guilty for Cullen. Each time she had managed to catch sight of him in her periphery, he had looked increasingly uncomfortable. She hadn’t known why until dessert was announced.
As the apple tart was being served, there had been a natural lull in the conversation at the table. The Orlesian noblewoman had not adjusted the volume of her voice to account for this, and, while wondering what it must be like to have no self-awareness whatsoever, Cora had heard:
“...nothing wrong with remaining a consort” – at this, Cullen had choked on the wine he had just brought to his lips – “of course, but it does seem rather limiting when many of the great families of Orlais – and elsewhere! – would happily offer you the legal and social protections of marriage, to say nothing of the finan–”
“Ah, but this tart is absolutely divine, Inquisitor!” the artist across from Cora had gushed, and that had been the end of the Inquisitor’s eavesdropping for the evening. In spite of their proximity throughout the celebration, she and the commander hadn’t been able to exchange more than a word or two again until they left the main hall. She had spent the intervening hours playing the masked woman’s words over and over again in her mind, with one in particular gnawing at her like a hungry gnat.
Consort. That a stranger, and an ostensibly sober one, would be capable of behaving so imprudently… but then the Orlesian gentry were not known for their restraint. Still, however unsurprising such a comment might be, she had found herself gritting her teeth to the point of a headache.
She had decided, once the hour had grown sufficiently late, that she could not abide another moment of this too-warm room full of too-loud revelers. After trying and failing three times to extricate herself from a one-sided conversation about Antivan goat husbandry, she had begun concocting potential excuses that might allow her to escape not only the man currently lecturing her but the event as a whole. Cullen had appeared at her side a few moments later like a wish fulfilled.
“My sincerest apologies, my lord,” Cullen had said, inclining his head slightly toward the goat enthusiast, “but I am afraid a rather urgent matter has arisen, and I must steal the Inquisitor away.”
“Oh, indeed?” the man had replied, eyes wide. “But of course, of course!” After that, it had been as simple as politely taking her leave, putting on a look of grim determination, and striding meaningfully away with the commander at her side. It had taken a fair amount of restraint not to pull him in for a kiss right then, which she remedies as soon as they are safely behind closed doors in Cullen’s office.
She grips the sides of his arms tightly and presses first her lips and then her torso against his. The tension begins to melt from her frame immediately, and, from the way he almost sinks against her, the same seems to be true for Cullen. After a long while, they pull away and smile at one another, drunk on relief and exhaustion.
“I have been longing to do that all night,” he says, pressing his forehead to hers.
“Not as much as I have,” she replies, giving him a final peck on the lips before turning toward the ladder that leads up to his room. “Shall we?”
“After you, love.”
The sweetness of finally taking him into her arms begins to dissipate as she makes her way up the rungs. Consort does not necessarily have a negative connotation. It isn’t uttered with the same (unjust, she thinks) derision as concubine. It’s merely a title, right? Wasn’t Alistair the King Consort even after marrying Anora, prior to his official coronation? For the second time tonight, she regrets not having paid more attention to Josephine during her briefings on Thedosian monarchs.
Still, Cora gets the sense that a measure of disrespect was intended in the aristocrat’s labeling. Consorts are powerful, even well-respected, but they are, by definition, comparatively less important than their partners. That’s the whole point of the term, is it not?
Is it her and Cullen’s (intentional) avoidance of overt public affection that lends the relationship an air of…of illegitimacy? Or perhaps the lack of some sort of official announcement? But that would be bloody ridiculous; they are colleagues leading an independent extra-national organization, not monarchs. And it isn’t as though they’ve tried to hide it, not really – not since he kissed her on the battlements in broad daylight a year ago. She chews at her bottom lip as her palms flatten against the floor at the top of the ladder. Is it perhaps their living arrangements, this coming and going they do in the night and early morning? But it isn’t as though she summons him to her quarters each evening. Maker’s breath, had they not slept in this very room nearly all summer?
When they reach the top of the ladder, Cullen draws her in for another kiss. This one is longer, deeper, more intentional. She has just parted her lips for his tongue when that stupid woman’s voice begins rattling around in her mind yet again. With a cry of disgust at her own capacity for rumination, she pulls away and regards him.
“Cullen, about what that woman said at dinner,” the words rush from her mouth before she has even decided what she wants to say, “I–”
His face is filled first with confusion from the sudden breaking of contact, and then dismay. “Oh, then you heard…that is...which part?”
“Andraste’s tits, how many tactless comments did she make?” she asks. He lifts his eyebrows and looks meaningfully at her. Orlesian nobility, darling, his eyes say. She sighs and nods. “Of course. I only heard the bit about your being…well…” She gnaws for a moment at her lower lip, then sighs again. “Being my…consort.”
“Oh, Cora, I…” he says, eyes widening in alarm, “I…ought I to have…cut her off, or corrected her? I was trying to be, you know, to be diplomatic, to hold my tongue, but…” He drops his gaze, and she sees his eyes flit around to different points on the floor as he begins replaying some perceived mistake in his mind. “I was thinking of myself as the Inquisition Commander, not as…Maker’s breath, by letting her carry on so about…I let her insult you to my face, and I said noth–”
“Cullen, what in the world are you talking about?” She regards him with confusion, wondering how he could possibly think that he had done something wrong.
“I am sorry,” he says, meeting her eyes again and looking disgusted with himself. “I could have…steered the conversation in a different way without…without insulting her, or causing a scene, but I…that was cowardly of me. I am sorry.”
“Cullen,” she says again, this time more softly, as she brings a hand to his cheek. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. I think you handled the whole thing splendidly. You could field a thousand marriage proposals – with me standing beside you, even – and I wouldn’t care a whit for what it meant about how the nobility thinks of me.” She lets out a chuckle before growing serious once more. “My only concern is how she was talking about you.”
He thinks on this for a moment, relief brightening his features again, and places a hand over hers. “Surely you know by now that the opinions of the gentry mean less than nothing to me.”
“Yes, but…you deserve more respect than being called my…my consort.” She utters the last word with quiet disdain.
Now it is the commander’s turn to let out a laugh. “Is that what worries you? Because I can assure you they call me much worse behind closed doors.”
“That’s my point exactly!” she fumes. “You’re the Commander of Inquisition Forces, not some…some kept man, or…a pretty thing to be fawned over and grabbed at and spoken of like an object!”
“Oh, my love,” he says calmly, the scar above his lip quirking upwards in an easy smile, “I appreciate your concern for me, I do. But I can assure you that, however frustrated I might be when forced into certain company, it has nothing to do with feeling insulted or slighted. I have the respect of everyone that matters, and the love of the one who matters most. And that is more than enough.”
Cora searches his face for the assurance that he is not simply trying to placate her, then almost begins laughing at her own doubt. He has never spoken to her with anything but honesty. Fortunate for him, she thinks, since he’s the worst liar she’s ever met. She returns his smile and runs her thumb across his cheek. He leans down to kiss her and then, pulling away just enough to meet her eyes, says, “Now, where were we?” before moving his hands to the buttons of her jacket.
---
They awaken in the late morning to a sharp, sudden whistling noise. Cora half-sits, blinking the sleep from her eyes and looking around the room. Cullen, characteristically, has already launched himself from the bed and taken a defensive stance by the time she turns in his direction. Andraste’s icy tits, it’s cold, she thinks, reflexively pulling the duvet up around her bare shoulders. One second more, and her logical brain seems to wake and catch up with the rest of her. Wind. Just the wind.
Cullen, his posture relaxing, seems to have the realization at the same moment as she. His messy morning curls dance about as another gust dives down from the hole in the ceiling. He shudders and wraps his arms around himself, then turns back to her.
“Come back here!” Cora cries, half-laughing as the naked commander plunges back onto the mattress. She opens an arm, duvet corner in hand, and he scoots eagerly back into the warm cocoon she’s made.
“Haven’t the leaves only just begun to turn?” Cullen asks, huddled against her. She wraps both arms around him, covering them both in the blanket.
“Your third winter in the mountains, and it’s still taking you by surprise?” she teases.
“Until recently, we were rather preoccupied,” he says drily.
“How did you manage not to freeze last year? If it’s this cold in here at the start of Harvestmere…”
“Well, I never had reason to fall asleep without a stitch of clothing on, for one,” he says. She feels a warm exhale against her neck as he chuckles. He brings a hand to cup her breast, thumb brushing against her pert nipple.
She smiles and threads her fingers through his rumpled locks. As she opens her mouth to ask whether he might let her, at the very least, enchant the tower to keep out the wind, another thought occurs to her. It isn’t a new idea; she has considered it numerous times before, but it never felt like the right moment to ask. And there is a part of her, even now, that worries how he might respond.
“Cullen,” she ventures, “I was…well…do you sleep more soundly here, in your own bed? With the ceiling open, I mean, and no closed doors?”
He shimmies up slightly so that his head is next to hers rather than tucked under her chin. The “thinking crease” (as she has taken to privately calling it) appears on his forehead. She adores this, the way he considers such a question, the care he takes, before rushing to answer. “No,” he says after several moments of consideration, “no, I do not think so. I did, at first. That is, when I first began…staying with you, some nights. But not for many months. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve been thinking,” she says, glancing away from his face in a rare victory for the anxious part of her mind, “with winter nearly here – and then the convenience of it, of course – and…well, I thought perhaps you might want to…to stay in my quarters. Permanently, I mean. That it could be…you know…our quarters.” She dares a look at him before losing her nerve and turning her eyes once more to the ceiling. “You’re not under any…any obligation, of course, and I more than understand if you prefer it here, or if you wish to have your own space, or be nearer to your office, it would make all the sense in the world, and–”
“Cora,” he says, and she feels the calloused pads of his fingers on her chin before he turns her head to face him. His smile is soft, but the creases at his eyes and faint flush on his cheeks betray utter pleasure behind it. “Are you proposing that we live together? Properly?”
She lets out a breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Yes.”
“I would like that very much,” he replies, smile broadening. “Very, very much.” And then his lips are on hers, and she is melting against him with relief and joy and the not-unpleasant trepidation that comes with taking a leap into the unknown.