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Evka crouches on a sandy riverbank, poking through the shallows with an ungloved hand, fingers stirring up silt as she picks up large pebbles, tests their heft, and drops them back into the water. Some distance behind her is a pile of darkspawn—a few hurlocks and an alpha, all dead—but the song is muted, the breeze is blowing the right direction, and the sun is shining. For now, life is good.
The water is freezing. She’s been at it for a while, having spotted some striped rocks that might prove quality candidates. She ought to leave off the hunt and go help Antoine with the—
“Evka, where is your striker? I cannot find mine.” Wet sand grinds beneath Antoine’s boots as he approaches.
Evka stands and shakes the water off her hand before flexing and clenching it to get her blood flowing. Antoine glances down, then tsks, removes his gloves, and tucks them under his arm. Evka can’t help but smile at him when he cradles her hand between both of his. He’s warm, always so. It’s part and parcel of being a Grey Warden. And convenient! he’d likely say on a night when it’s too risky to keep a low fire going.
“Small leather drawstring pouch, outside pocket of my rucksack, with the bandages,” she replies. “I bet yours is in the same place.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Because I put it there after the last time you couldn’t find it.” She had reminded him, too, but there are so many things burdening Antoine’s mind that the factoid has likely been crushed to dust beneath his thoughts.
“Ah, you’re right. I remember now.” Antoine smiles, the scar over his lip pulling, then bends partway down as he lifts Evka’s hand to his mouth. His breath caresses her skin.
“Antoine, I’m fine,” Evka says.
“I believe that. I’m just checking.” He drops a light kiss on her thumb, then a second one on her forefinger. “Okay. Congratulations! You have passed the checks. Let’s dispose of these darkspawn and make some dinner!”
He’s such a sap. Evka means this fondly. Really, she thinks Antoine is a wonder. It’s rare to meet someone like him, someone with a gentle soul and bottomless well of curiosity, but it’s even rarer to meet someone with those qualities who also burns with an unquenchable heroic fire. His love of life’s small things has made her less cynical, more open to optimism where once she would have scoffed and prepared for the worst.
Now she prepares for the worst, hopes for the best, and knows things will turn out all right, as long as she’s with him.
Antoine reacts much like Evka does when praise is directed at him, so she doesn’t voice her thoughts. Time enough for that later, anyway. But if she can, right before she heads to the Deep Roads and the end awaiting her, she’ll carve her love for him into the Stone and grant him immortality in the form of a song.
Evka lets Antoine lead her back to their rucksacks, where he releases her. She retrieves the striker from her bag as he pulls from his rucksack a vial of dark green ooze, then a waxed paper envelope of ingredients she can’t name, and finally a barely stoppered flask of naptha mixed with a liquid he’d drawn off from a distillery they frequent in Hossberg. She throws him an alarmed look, to which Antoine replies with a sheepish shrug that means Sorry, I’ll be more careful.
After that, they fall into routine: gathering kindling, pouring accelerant, lighting the flame, stripping themselves out of their armor while the fire catches, cleaning their weapons while wrinkling their noses at the stench of burning flesh and tainted blood. They shuffle around the conflagration to monitor it and stay upwind of the smell, which can get into clothes and hair and can even dampen Antoine’s cheeriness. Being Orlesian, he’s sworn that he’ll create a perfume to combat the stench, but, as Evka has argued, it’s covering, not neutralizing. And she’d prefer the neutralization. Antoine’s natural scent is too good to cover up.
The afternoon yields to dusk, which ebbs, dreamy, into evening. Evka hauls water for dousing while Antoine kicks dirt over the smoldering remains of the darkspawn. They then hike upriver until the darkspawn are well behind them, Evka glancing at Antoine every now and then, bothered by the streaks of blood on his jaw and neck.
“You keep looking at me.” Antoine turns an affectionate smile upon her.
The moons have assumed their stations overhead, and their light only serves to increase the contrast between Antoine’s freckled paleness and the dark smears marring it. She reaches out to touch one of them. “Are you hurt?”
He shakes his head. “You?”
“Nothing a few restful nights won’t fix.”
“Something to look forward to, then.”
They settle on a campsite. It’s not terribly cold for the Anderfels, and Evka can’t sense any other packs of darkspawn, so that means they can relax a little—after chores, of course. As the more senior warden, it’s up to her to log the encounter, which she does by the fire as Antoine sets up, shuffling from one spot to another, murmuring Ah! to himself occasionally.
At some point he pauses. The tent is half staked, only one bedroll is out, and the rations are sitting, still packaged, in the cold and lonely cookpot. Antoine stares into the distance. Then he begins patting his pockets with increasing agitation.
“Here,” Evka says, putting aside her logbook and getting to her feet. She reaches into her pocket, where several stones have been clacking about ever since they left Lavendel on their recon trip. She pulls one out—it’s oblong and decently heavy, its once-gritty surface tumbled smooth—and presses it into his palm.
Antoine closes his hand tight around the stone, then breathes out. Evka can feel more than see how he’s begun to worry it in his hand, pushing it into the webbing of his fingers, rubbing it with his thumb. She reaches into her pocket again and pulls out another stone, one she’d found outside the Merdaine and sent to a trusted rockhound in Hossberg, who then posted it back to her in Lavendel. She’s kept it, and many others, in reserve for this exact moment.
“Is that what you were looking for?” His words are punctuated by the soft clicking of the stones in his hand. “Earlier. I thought you were washing your hand.”
“Was hoping to find an agate for you. They’re pretty.” A moment goes by; Evka spends it gazing into Antoine’s brown eyes. “Last place we were at was all mica and gneiss.”
“I don’t want to lose these.”
“I’ll always have more. What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing,” Antoine replies quietly. “Just you, now. Thank you.”
“Go sit,” she tells him. “I’ll get everything else ready now that I’m done.”
“Are you sure?”
“You’ve already finished most of it. It won’t be much effort to do the rest.” She rises on her tiptoes and draws his face toward hers, then brushes her lips against his. And then, since there’s no reason to hold back, she gives him a proper kiss, long and thorough, the type that leaves one stunned. The type of kiss the Orlesian romance novelists write about and the type they’ve stress tested over and over. Experiment results must be repeated. Antoine says it often.
“Are we reading tonight, or . . . ?” Antoine tilts his head toward the river, where its waters are running silver and clean beneath the moons. He grins, his eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Or.” Evka grins back at him. She’ll make sure the Stone knows, too, about how Antoine makes her heart soar like a sparrow on the wing. “Definitely or.”