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Honestly, the city of Val Royeaux had some nerve.
The muddled sky was dropping a heady mist over their heads. Not quite enough to call rain, but damp and gray nontheless.
And yet, Val Royeaux was still beautiful.
The blue banners were saturated a deep cobalt, and instead of their cheerful flapping, they draped with a stately solemnity. The white stone, gilted in gold, the pretty blue shutters, the artfully trimmed greenery, all glimmered through films of warm condensation. The Chant lilted and rose over the roofs, and the idle elite collected under the cafe awnings laughed and chattered.
It was still hard to watch clouds darken the sun, darken the world with rain, fill it with the muffling, hushing, insistent roar of water on stone. It was hard to watch rain and not think of Kirkwall.
“Should we depart?” Cullen said. He said the word depart as though he was going to add something. Inquisitor. Or maybe Magda?
She looked at him. He was studiously studying the patter of rain.
Lately, they had dropped the Rutherfords and the Inquisitors when speaking to one another in public. In private, it was Cullen and Magda. In private, it was kiss me and more and please . But they didn’t quite know what to do with one another in public. Neither of them knew the protocol on what came next.
In the Circle, relationships usually amounted to furtive, stolen sex with desperate eyes and fearful mouths. Such relationships began with the ending already in sight. No future could form in such sterile halls. There was nothing so opulent as marriage, no tender looks in public, no hand holding. Neither Cullen nor Magda knew how to indulge in the luxury of publicly acknowledging their relationship. A luxury that everyone else seemed so competent at.
Cullen was looking at her.
“No, let’s stay a while,” she said.
Magda turned away from looking at Val Royeaux’s prison, to walk slowly down the covered path, lined with the open doors of various market shops. Cullen followed. He matched her stride, holding a polite, formal arm behind his back.
“Do you want to talk?” he asked.
About Blackwall. About Rainier.
She should be angry, she should be sad, she should be disappointed. But she didn’t feel much of anything just yet. Maybe she was thinking about Cullen to avoid confronting it.
“No,” Magda said.
For no particular reason, she entered a furniture shop. There were a few browsers pondering the buttery-brown wooden beds, the silken poufs of ottomans, the marvelous long-ness of heavy brocade drapes. The shopkeep was sighing about the humidity and the woodwork.
This was not her childhood. This was not the gray granite, the bare harsh edges, the sickeningly clean smell of lemon and mint and cold.
Magda thought of her room, in Skyhold, and how it had been empty when they arrived. She had left on some mission, and Josephine had magically arranged it with an enormous bed, bookshelves, a desk, sidetables, cushions-- more than Magda had ever had in her life. Her old barracks dorm could have fit in the corner.
And Magda thought of Cullen, and his office, the furniture that was functionary, and lacked personal touch. And his loft above, so barren. A bed, a trunk, an armor stand. The templars had lived like the mages did; doubled up and packed in tiny rooms, given enough to survive, but never allowed room to stretch, to accomplish self-actualization.
Magda ran a hand over the nap of silk. She sampled the dizzying amount of varieties of incense. Patchouli, sandalwood, lilies. She touched the seductive warmth of soft furs. She admired the undulating thighs and arms of settees.
Cullen followed her, quiet, sensing her pensive mood. So concerned, his brow wrinkled, his eyes watchful.
She loved him so fucking much.
They stopped before a great beast of a chair, almost the size of a bed. It was rounded, oval, with a league-deep seat. Magda could imagine falling into it and never climbing out. The dark wood was night and mirrors, the dozens of decorative pillows -- a luscious bunch of cherries, the hills of goosebumped, aroused flesh.
He stood at her side and she didn’t want this to ever change. Not this moment, not this feeling. Looking at him, she slid her hand into his.
“Cullen,” she said.
His breath caught. His eyes flickered, and he smiled self-consciously, little scar pulling up.
And then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he put an arm around her waist and pulled her near. They stood like this, amid the chattering Orlesians, the sighing rain, and then Cullen was leaning in, his eyes betraying no fear, no timidity. And she was tilting her feet upward, to meet--
“It’s gorgeous , isn’t it?”
The shopkeeper was smiling expectantly.
Cullen and Magda, despite themselves, grinned at each other, looking away shyly.
“Yes, it’s perfect,” Magda said. “Do you gift wrap?”
Later, when Josephine was done fretting about how in Blessed Andraste’s name were they going to get the chair up into the Inquisitor’s tower, and yes she was glad Magda was finally spending her wages, but really it’s a bit much wasn’t it, and they finally settled on pulling it into Cullen’s office. And then after that, when Magda and Cullen were lazing in the chair, naked, he said,
“We should buy things more often.”
She laughed. “We should.”