Chapter Text
There would be a certain degree of irony, eventually, in the fact that Dorian’s first meeting with Molly Bell began with him shoving her bodily out of his bed. The irony would have been a great deal worse if, in the fashion of some melodramatic novel, she had struck her head falling and been left in some sort of coma, or been so injured as to cause a miscarriage.
In fact what she did was hit the rug by Dorian’s bed with a solid, fleshy thump and a hiss of "Maker’s balls, I was only trying to wake you."
Dorian, still dragging himself back to reality as he woke, required a moment to realize that what sounded strange about the words was that she was speaking Trade, with a decidedly Soporati accent. He hadn’t heard anything but Tevene, mostly in the household elves’ subdued murmurs, since he’d been dragged back to his father's household and made a prisoner in this lavishly appointed suite.
She was not the first woman who had introduced herself into his rooms or his bed in the months of his captivity; his father seemed to believe that if Dorian could only be tricked into touching a naked woman he would be cured of his scandalous inclinations. Or perhaps he imagined that Dorian’s preference was only that--a preference, which he would set aside when he was sufficiently starved for sex. Whereupon he would apparently overlook not only the gender of the person in his bed but the fact that she had been hired by his father to accost him in his sleep and gladly discover the joy of fucking women.
This woman, Dorian realized, as he moved to the edge of the bed--an expanse that did necessitate climbing on if one wished to reach him, sleeping in a tight defensive curl in the center--was not naked. She was also very obviously pregnant, and very pale, and vaguely familiar.
Dorian made a little gesture and then groaned at the sensation of his nonexistent mana and the utter failure of lights to appear.
"My name is Molly Bell," she said, moving to perch on a chest so that they were more nearly at eye level, but making no move to light a lamp. "Belli, when we're trying to be Tevinter, but I'm not going to be trying that much longer, one way or another."
Dorian's lips moved around the shape of that deeply Fereldan name; surely he would remember if he'd ever met...
"Halward," Molly added grimly, "calls me Melea."
The recognition clicked, then. The black-haired woman with very pale skin, perhaps five years younger than himself, richly dressed and jeweled, who he'd seen sometimes in the vicinity of Halward's rooms. This was his father's current paramour, clearly. Not a slave--it would be distasteful to bed a slave regularly--but whatever they called the arrangement, she was doing a job for pay, as much as any of the women who had tried to crawl into Dorian's bed on his father's orders.
"Makes me color this, too," Molly went on, running a hand over her braided hair. "Bit of Ferelden is exotic, but red hair is just vulgar, apparently."
Dorian nodded, his gaze slipping down to her belly again as realization settled into place. "You're... that's his..."
"Oh no the fuck it's not," Molly hissed, setting one hand protectively on her belly. "She's mine and he can go to hell."
Molly was, Dorian realized, not only not naked but dressed for travel. He raised his hands, placating, even as he started to wonder what she was doing here. Why would she delay her flight to speak to him? Unless...
Dorian sat up properly and focused on her even as he began to mentally pack a bag, working out what he had to take and what he could bear to leave behind.
Molly relaxed a little now that she had his attention, though her hand stayed on her belly. "When I first caught I figured I'd do what everyone does about that, which is tell the magister and get it taken care of quick-like, so it's no inconvenience to anyone. Only he says, hang on, not yet. And then he's busy all the time. And then you're dragged home. And then he tells me he wants me to keep it, says he sees a way this could be a good thing."
Dorian's eyebrows rose. Alti might fuck slaves or Soporati or whomever else they liked, but they did not muck around combining bloodlines with them. Bastards and other undesirable crosses were, as Molly had said, to be promptly aborted. The alternative would be in no way a good thing in his father's eyes.
And yet, here was Molly and her obviously advanced pregnancy. The only way that could have come about was with his father's cooperation--at his father's insistence.
And he had had Dorian hauled back here--though he'd ignored Dorian's behavior for more than a year by then--only when he knew of the pregnancy. Dorian tried desperately to make sense of it, but nothing fit.
"And like a fool," Molly went on, seeming to speak more to herself than Dorian now, "I thought he meant, I dunno, he'd acknowledge her--he did the scry to see which it was, even, and I thought that had to mean something, if he cared whether it was a boy or girl. She couldn't be any real threat to you, but I thought he'd use her as leverage somehow, try--"
Molly shook her head sharply, and dropped her gaze. She drew her knees up, curling herself protectively around her belly; it looked very much like the way Dorian felt nearly all the time in his father's house. She didn't meet Dorian's eyes.
"You have to believe me," she said, very softly. "I wouldn't--I wouldn't make up a story like this, it would be mad if it weren't true. It is mad. But we have to get out of here, you and me both, because tonight he said enough, hinting around, that I knew I had to find out what he wanted with my baby and her Pavus blood. And then I did."
Dorian shook his head a little--all the possibilities that crossed his mind just weren't possible--but Molly reached into a pocket and drew out a folded sheaf of paper. When Dorian took the pages from her hand she stood up and went to the lamp on his bedside table, lighting it but keeping it turned down low.
Dorian didn't need much light to recognize his father's handwriting; he couldn't make himself read it properly, and it was mostly scraps of notes, scribbles, half-recorded thoughts, but he could see the direction of it, even before he reached the final page, which was a mass of writing, crossed out and reworked over and over. The goal seemed to be clarity, specificity, and a lack of exploitable ambiguities, so there was very little possibility of misinterpreting.
The result of that work, written at the bottom of the page in an unhesitating hand, was precisely what his father meant to ask a demon to do to Dorian, after it had been paid with the blood of an unborn Pavus bastard. The blood of her Soporatus mother was to be thrown in gratis--a negligible addition.
Dorian raised his head and met Molly's eyes, which looked as wide as his felt; he couldn't hear anything but the thundering of his heart until she said, "Didn't read it wrong, did I."
Dorian shook his head. "We're leaving. You and me both. Now."
Molly nodded, and pulled something else from her pocket: a vial of lyrium. It wouldn't instantly reverse the effects of being dosed with magebane for weeks--months now--but it would give him something to work with.
Dorian did not linger long enough to pack anything that didn't fit in his pockets.
What followed was a series of days and nights that blurred together into a waking nightmare.
There was no chance for the other kind, because every time he closed his eyes Dorian saw his father's handwriting forming phrases like, chance of mental incapacitation and ability to perform biological functions. Even if he'd been willing to risk himself to the Fade with all that crowding in on him, the sick jolt of adrenaline pushed sleep back again and again.
There was little enough time for sleep, anyway. There were wards and barriers to set, hiding himself and Molly from detection as he coaxed his mana back to something like its usual strength. There were miles to walk through back ways and along fence lines, and then jewels to pawn--Molly had left with her pockets even more full than Dorian's--and transport to arrange and so very, very many thoughts to push away at every moment.
Molly did her share as well; she could adjust her voice and manners to pass as anything from a Laetan lady to a Fereldan fresh off the Imperial Highway from the Bannorn. She taught Dorian a little of it, in the hours when they huddled together in whatever shelter they settled in for the night, neither of them sleeping.
Dorian wasn't any good at Southern accents, but Molly's determined efforts made him slightly more able to seem less exactly what he was, when he chose to.
They didn't talk about what they were fleeing from. He didn't ask Molly what visions kept her eyes snapping open whenever they drifted shut. He didn't ask her, every time she brought out another jewel to trade or sell, when his father had given it to her, or what she had exchanged for it.
He tried very hard not to ask, when she put a hand to her belly and frowned down at it. But the frown didn't ease, and she didn't take her hand away, and Dorian's endurance ran out all at once. "Are you--is she--"
Molly looked up before he stumbled to the end of the question, and she smiled, weary but genuine. "Kicking, that's all. Not much room left and she's got herself a nasty angle on my insides and--oh."
Dorian's gaze dropped back to Molly's hand, and his senses all seemed to crystallize, everything going clear and sharp and focused, like surfacing out of the murk of the last several days. Molly was pregnant, but that wasn't just a fact about Molly: she was carrying a child who would soon come into the world and be someone of her own, someone very real. Someone who would be even more vulnerable to the danger at their heels than he and Molly were.
"Dorian?"
He jerked his gaze back up to meet Molly's worried look. "My apologies, I--" He groped for some polite way to dissemble--but why lie, to Molly of all people? "I just... realized that she's her own person, I suppose," Dorian said, not quite knowing how to put it into words. "Or will be soon, at least."
Molly's look faded into a wry smile. "I know the feeling. For the first months, it's just like an illness, and your body is strange but only in that way. But then--I felt her move, and it was someone else moving, not me."
Dorian nodded. "What will you..."
He trailed off. Among the many things they hadn't spoken of was what they would do after they were sufficiently away. It was a long time since he'd seen any particular plan for his own life beyond avoiding what his father demanded; he had no idea how he would live outside of Tevinter, though he was sure he would manage. His odds had to be better anywhere else than they'd been at home.
He'd had the vague idea that Molly was headed for family, people of her own, but she would surely have mentioned it by now if she had some specific destination in mind. She would be giving birth within a matter of weeks--where? With what assistance? And how would she support and protect herself and a child, a Pavus child, for years to come?
Molly visibly gritted her teeth, raising her chin a little. "I'll manage."
Dorian nodded slowly. He couldn't argue with her; she'd been the one to save both--all three--of them, however much he'd contributed to their escape since. Surely she would manage the rest. And yet Dorian found he couldn't bear the thought of letting her walk away and never knowing, never doing anything more to be sure that his father couldn't hurt them.
But what use could he possibly be to Molly or her child? His hand went automatically to one of the few items of any value he'd brought away with him, the jeweled amulet that signified his Pavus birthright to those without the ability to read the true mark he carried. He couldn't even show it to anyone, since it would leave an obvious sign for his father's men to track down later on.
"I owe you a debt," Dorian said slowly. "And the House of Pavus owes you..."
Legally, of course, the House of Pavus owed them nothing--barely Molly's own life and certainly not her child's. But legally Dorian's father was also entitled to keep his heir a prisoner; Dorian wasn't particularly interested in what the law decreed just now.
If there were a just law, if there were real justice to be had, what then would they be owed?
The false promises made to Molly ought to mean something; the false hopes his father had given her to convince her to keep the child ought to be fulfilled somehow. Dorian's father could never be made to acknowledge or support the child, of course, but--
The solution struck Dorian all at once, bright and sure as any bolt of lightning or ball of fire he'd ever drawn from the Fade to do his will.
Halward would never offer Molly the support and protection of House Pavus, and would never acknowledge her child. If Dorian wanted to make that right, however--Dorian could. Dorian could do that and more.
"Molly," he said, a wicked smile spreading across his face, to somewhat alarming effect judging from Molly's expression. "I must beg, most ardently--I must tell you it is my dearest heart's desire--that you marry me, and make our lovely and hopefully red-headed daughter my extremely legitimate heir."
Molly's jaw dropped. Dorian only half succeeded in restraining a laugh that might have been more of a hysterical giggle if given full voice.
"It's perfect," he insisted. "You're a Pavus, then, precisely as much as I am. She's a Pavus, heir to a seat in the Magisterium, through me. And my father cannot compel me to marry and father an heir when I already have a wife and child."
Molly blinked at him. "And, what, we all go to Minrathous and say so?"
"Oh," Dorian blinked back, coming back down to earth. "No, no. Fasta vass, no. I don't know how much testing it would bear, really, if we tried to push the idea in his face. I doubt we could even find a chantry willing to marry us without my father's consent, here. But as insurance for our flight, just in case... it would hold up better elsewhere than in Tevinter. We'd have legitimacy to claim against any harassment from my father, should he track us down."
And it would give Dorian some way to express the responsibility he really did feel to Molly and the child, however little it was worth just now. Later on, after he'd established himself somewhere in the South, he'd be able to repay this debt, and have a route to do so. Considering that, he added, "She is a Pavus, you know. I don't know what half an Altus' worth of magical inheritance is, but it's not likely to come to nothing at all. She ought to have a father to turn to for help with that, when the time comes."
"Turn to," Molly said cautiously. "From... how far away, exactly?"
"Oh!" Dorian spread his hands. "However far you wish, of course. It would be best if we knew how to contact each other, but... my father would likely find it easier to find me than to find you, if he comes looking; I'll certainly stand out more in the south than you will. It would be best if you and the child were at some distance, likely. This need not alter your plans, for the most part."
Molly's expression turned thoughtful; she glanced down at herself and then met his eyes again and said, wryly, "But whatever will I wear for our wedding, Lord Dorian?"
"Anything you like, my lady," Dorian assured her grandly, and this time Molly laughed first.
The plan decided their direction, more than their previous headlong flight toward any border they could reach; the chantry at Colina Campo, barely over the Antivan border, was well known as the destination of choice for Tevinters fleeing to make marriages they couldn't within the Imperium. Dorian had cherished the occasional mad fantasy of running there with--he quickly blotted actual names and faces from his mind--with another boy, or another man, as he grew older.
Even so he scarcely believed that those stories were true until he actually saw two men--both Soporati, he judged, by their clothing and accents--sitting on the chantry steps to wait their turn, hands clasped tight between them. He felt a strange sharp dart of pain at the sight of them, cutting through the grim exhausted haze. If only--he could have been one of them, if--if--
But he could also be a drooling imbecile married off to some obedient Altus broodmare, and Molly and her child could be dead, and a demon loose in the world as their only legacy. Instead they were all here in the sun, with a Chantry sister smiling and taking their names for her records before leading them into a chapel.
The process of getting married--willingly! to a woman!--was a much simpler affair at Colina Campo than the ghastly panoply it would have involved had his parents had their way. He found himself grinning at Molly as they exchanged their vows, not even entirely in irony. She was, very truly, the only woman he could imagine ever making such promises to, and he would be fiercely glad to keep those promises as well as he could, and to name her daughter as his. She grinned back in much the same spirit, he thought. They were nearly giddy by the time they'd finished and signed their names to two different ledgers and two copies of the marriage record to take away with them.
Colina Campo was well acquainted with couples who wished to make very sure that their marriage could be thoroughly verified as legitimate but brought no actual witnesses of their own.
A few other couples stood by to witness their wedding, in fact, and were formally recorded attesting to it; Dorian and Molly lingered when their own brief ceremony was completed to return the favor for a few others. The two Soporati men were among them, and Dorian turned his brightest smile on them and wrote his own name down in witness, boldly and clearly.
The sight of Molly's new name beside his was arresting: Lady Molly Bell Pavus, lately of Qarinus. Somehow it seemed even more real, on this record that had little to do with them, than on their own marriage records. This was what they had wrought together; this was who Molly was now, to him and to the world.
After that, Dorian soon spotted the wordless signs of Molly needing to get off her feet, pee, and eat something, and they left the chantry for one of the many local inns that did a brisk business in renting rooms for wedding nights. The inn had a register, too, ready to testify that this or that couple had undeniably spent a night together in a room with only one bed and absolutely no chaperones.
Everyone around them went through these motions with cheerful smirks--consummation was obviously a bit redundant when the wedding was to be followed by a birth only weeks, or possibly days, later--but they went through them all the same. It was no good being married if they left any opening for the marriage to be questioned.
Of course, for a member of House Pavus, that wasn't only a matter of witnesses and documents.
No Altus paterfamilias would stoop to consulting mere paper, or the testimony of foreign Soporati, to know who was a member of his House. Even the birthright amulet Dorian carried, which would pass as proof to most people, would be neither necessary nor sufficient to demonstrate the truth of his marriage, and the legitimacy of his child, to Halward and his peers in the Magisterium. They would require a true mark, like the one Dorian had borne from his father since he was an infant--and like the mark whose shadowy dark shape he had once or twice glimpsed in the same place on his father's chest, when the cut of his clothing chanced to almost reveal it.
Molly, presumably, had seen it directly, and that seemed as good a way as any to raise the subject to her, once they were alone in an inn room for their wedding night.
There really was just the one bed, though Molly had parceled out enough coin that it was clean and large. The room around it was not much larger, however; there was no chair he could reasonably curl up in for the night. There was barely even enough floor to stretch out on.
Molly huffed and elbowed him out of his calculations. "We can share, Dorian. We are married, after all."
He glanced at her. "I thought you might have had enough of sharing with a Pavus."
"Well, now I am one, and so is she," Molly pointed out, pressing a hand lightly to her belly. "There's still room in the bed for one more."
Dorian still hesitated, and Molly added, "I'm not afraid of you, or what you'll do. I trust you. We can share."
She sat down, partly emphasizing her point and partly just needing to get off her feet, as far as Dorian could tell.
Dorian gave a jerky nod and perched at the foot of the bed so he wouldn't loom over her as he said, "I am both honored and grateful, dear wife, but--there is actually a wedding night matter to sort out."
Molly raised her eyebrows.
"Not sex, obviously," Dorian hastened to add. "But..." He touched his hand to his chest, where his mark was still hidden under his robes. "There is the matter of fully establishing your membership in House Pavus."
Molly's eyebrows climbed higher, and she folded her arms, the gesture in no way softened by the way they rested on the upper curve of her belly when she did so. "Don't tell me I have to have a great ugly black snake tattoo in the middle of my chest."
Dorian grimaced, and rubbed the heel of his hand against his own mark; he couldn't really fault the description, except in one respect. "It's not a tattoo, in fact. And it need not be on your chest--a woman's usually isn't, unless she's the heir of her House. And... it need not be ugly, I think. I know the design isn't identical from generation to generation, so presumably I can make it different--hopefully even something worthy of you."
Now that they came to it, Dorian wasn't entirely sure how it worked, making such a mark. Was this something he was meant to learn from his father on the eve of his wedding? But he knew a fair bit about the workings and theory of the House-marks, having spent a certain amount of time morbidly researching how his own bound him to his father and what would happen to it if he was disowned.
The answer he'd found for the former question was irrevocably but also not very usefully--his father would always have some sense of Dorian's location and continued life, but no more than that, and actual tracking would require Halward himself to be within a few miles of Dorian. It seemed unlikely that his father would personally take to the road to find him, so that was an academic concern at most.
For the latter, it appeared to depend on how vindictive his father was feeling about the disowning--something to look forward to, perhaps, in future years.
"It's magic," Dorian added. "It shouldn't hurt, or require any time to heal, or anything like that. We just have to decide where, and what. It is best if the meaning is quite obvious."
"Will it work?" Molly asked. "I mean--if it's magic, do I have to be magic for it to stick on me?"
Dorian blinked, considering that obstacle, but quickly shook his head. "No, no, that's no bar. My friend Maevaris--Magister Tilani--she was married, not really legally, but--she was married to a dwarf, and I know she gave him a mark and he bore it until he died, and he hadn't any more magic than most dwarves do. At least, being human, you have some connection to the Fade."
Molly nodded, frowning a little pensively. "I think... maybe more than I used to. Not--not that I can do anything, but... my dreams have been strange, since I first felt her move. A different kind of strange."
Dorian stiffened, and Molly looked up to roll her eyes. "Yes, my lord, even Soporati know not to accept any bargain they're offered in a dream."
"Of course," Dorian agreed, thinking uneasily of how rich a target a pregnant woman and her unborn child must make to a demon--even if the child wasn't Altus, or magically gifted, the opportunity to enter the world in a form a demon could shape so thoroughly...
Well, there was no more protection he could offer Molly and the child than this, so he might as well get on with what he could do. "Would you rather it be colorful than black? I know Mae's own mark, and the one she gave Thorold, were quite vivid. I think the black is a matter of... tradition. And we're obviously throwing that out the window."
Molly nodded a little. "I don't really like snakes, but I don't suppose there's a way around that."
"Mm," Dorian said, drawing his birthright amulet out to show Molly what he was thinking. "The snakes are an element of our crest--though the actual emblem also includes the stylized fan, for our surname..."
"Hell," Molly said. "Is that why you always had a pack of those wretched screaming birds in the gardens and no one would touch them? I thought it couldn't be only because they were pretty."
Dorian nodded. "So I can't see any objection to using a peacock, or perhaps a peacock feather, as a mark. That would be rather pleasing to look at, wouldn't it?"
He could imagine the design, the rich colors of the feather, the way that it would flutter when he touched it, responding to his magic.
"Where, exactly, would I be looking at it?" Molly sounded dubious all over again. "I've heard of women having them on their faces..."
Dorian grimaced. "That... would certainly not be unheard of, for an Altus who took a Soporatus to wife--it being assumed that she would have to constantly prove her membership in her husband's House. A hand would be the more magnanimous equivalent. Otherwise... it's generally a matter of status. A man marrying a woman of essentially equal status would place his mark--" Dorian gestured around his midsection, winning a sardonic smile from Molly as she echoed the gesture, rubbing her swollen belly.
"Ah," Dorian said. He'd never pictured before just how directly such a mark would stamp a pregnancy as the property of the House. "Yes. Well, so. A man marrying a woman of higher status than himself would place the mark lower--calf or ankle, perhaps even her foot, if he was particularly willing to humble himself to her--to her father, really, but... in any case, I think that when it comes to a feckless, penniless Altus marrying the woman who singlehandedly saved him, herself, and their daughter from being victims of blood magic..."
Dorian let his gaze move over Molly from her head to her feet, which she had hauled up onto the bed, and he finished, "Foot, certainly. The sole of the foot, perhaps, if it would console her to be grinding House Pavus under her heel with every step she took away from Tevinter."
Molly snorted, then shook her head a little. "Like you said, my daughter's a Pavus, and I am--and you are. The best parts of our House don't belong under my heel, thank you. But on my foot, that'd be all right. I'll even be able to see it for myself, once my belly's out of the way."
"It shall be done as you say," Dorian assured her grandly, and, thankfully, doing the actual magic turned out not to be much more complicated than that. He wrapped his hand around her foot, thinking very firmly and clearly of the desired result, and that was that.
"There," Dorian said, looking down in bemused pride at the richly colored feather for a moment before he summoned a mirror to let Molly see what he'd done. "Now you're really a Pavus."
They relocated to humbler accommodations after their wedding night, which qualified as a restful night's sleep for both of them, after the last several frantic days and nights. It was probably no more than exhausted wishful thinking, but Dorian found himself sure, as he lay down beside Molly in that big bed, that they would be some protection for each other against the Fade now that they were so inextricably bound. Whether he was actually right about that or they were both simply too exhausted to notice any enterprising demons visiting, neither of them were aware of any dreams that night.
Other concerns pushed to the forefront after that; Molly visited a midwife recommended by one of the chantry sisters, and learned that the backache she'd been ignoring was possibly a sign of impending labor. Dorian felt vaguely panicked at that--surely they had to do things to prepare for that. Surely they were meant to have more time?
Molly and the midwife both rolled their eyes at him. Apparently this was a common and risible reaction from fathers-to-be.
Dorian set himself to be very calm, after that, which lasted through Molly really going into labor, and demanding that he come into the room so that she could clutch his hand and harangue him, and being sent away because she didn't want to look at him, and brought back again because she needed him.
By that time Molly was quiet and focused and hardly seemed to notice him other than bracing herself on his arm while she moved into one bizarre position after another. He was grateful that she was still clothed in a billowing linen garment, even if it was sweat-drenched and therefore nearly transparent. It still more or less veiled the most intimate details of what was happening from his sight, which he thought might matter, sometime when Molly was more aware of anything outside her own body.
Dorian thought that there were probably people more qualified than himself to do what little he was doing, but by then it had occurred to him that he was the person Molly knew and trusted most in all of Antiva and possibly all the world. Whatever family she had had back in Tevinter, she hadn't gone to them for protection or help in fleeing, after all.
And she was a Pavus, now, she and the child both, so they had a right to whatever use they could make of him, even if it was only his ability to keep his arm steady while most of Molly's weight rested against it. Dorian struggled to at least appear as calm as Molly did, but there was a moment when the midwife disappeared on some errand, and Molly looked him directly in the eye, abruptly as present and lucid as Dorian himself.
"If I don't make it," she said. "Swear you'll keep her away from him. You must never let him even know she exists."
"I swear," Dorian said, and then glanced down at the lack of visible torrents of blood, and the doorway through which the midwife had departed in no apparent rush, and struggled not to show that his heart was suddenly racing in surprisingly abject terror. "Is that... likely?"
Molly shut her eyes and let out a gritted-teeth sound that escalated, terrifyingly quickly, into a scream.
Dorian was tempted to join in for a wild instant, and then the midwife came rushing back in with another on her heels. It happened fast after that, or at least everything seemed to be happening all at once. Dorian couldn't have said how much time actually passed; suddenly there was a tiny, blood-covered howling baby, pink-skinned and with a shock of black hair.
"Oh," Dorian said, very softly, watching one of the midwives pass a hand over her and feeling the brush of some very mild sort of magic--not healing, but a kind of scrying. Checking for something? Would they realize that he wasn't--that the baby wasn't--
But the midwife looked up and took in Dorian as well as Molly with her pleased glance, obviously seeing nothing amiss. "You have a healthy daughter. She'll make a mage, I think, too."
Dorian realized that he was beaming besottedly, and turned to look at Molly, who was exhausted but smiling--and then her face went tight with pain. "Molly? What--"
"Just a little more work to do here," the midwife not holding the baby said from between Molly's legs, one hand on Molly's not-particularly-deflated belly. "You can hold the baby, if you want to be useful, Sister Linna's hands are more needed than yours."
"Ah," Dorian said, raising his hands in a vague warding gesture that Sister Linna willfully misinterpreted, coming over and pressing the little squirming bundle of linen-wrapped baby into the crook of one arm and against his chest.
"Grip firmly, she's used to tight quarters," Sister Linna said, still beaming at him as she folded his arms into place, manhandling him with an ease and authority that he would have liked from someone who was not a chantry sister showing him how to hold a newborn baby--his newborn daughter, and heir in the line of the House of Pavus.
Dorian looked down at the baby, who was blinking up at him with dark eyes, and it all felt alarmingly real.
"Salve, filia," he whispered, and he didn't look away from her until she was scooped out of his arms to be handed over to Molly and he turned out to be entirely superfluous once again.