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We crossed into the shadow-cursed lands. Elminster’s warnings lingered, Mystra’s edict inhabited my every thought. Yet what consumed me was not fear, nor dread, but a raw, aching need—relentless as the curse itself, insistent as the Orb burning in my chest.
In the grim light of the shadow-curse, she moved beside me like the other half of my own spell. Her blade carved arcs of silver fire, and my incantations twined around her like music. It was not battle—it was an erotic tango wrought from pulse and breath, as thrilling as the first kiss of magic itself. I thought then: nothing could turn my heart from her, not even the gods.
I once read a book that explained in some detail the effect a brush with danger has on one’s desire for other forms of stimulation. The theory was tidy, persuasive even—that fear quickens the pulse, and the body mistakes terror for hunger. I wondered if that might be the case.
With her, it was no base instinct—it was knowledge, inevitability. Standing at her side, steeped in such darkness and disrepair, I felt the truth break through me: I loved her, wholly, helplessly.
After the first skirmish in the cursed woods, when shadows themselves rose clawing at us, I thought only of the way her breath tore from her chest as she stood victorious. That ragged exhale haunted me, and I imagined stealing it with my lips, swallowing it in a kiss before it left her mouth.
By day, her movements haunted me. The sway of her hips as she strode ahead became a rhythm that throbbed through me, each step an unspoken invitation. The tilt of her head when she listened spun itself into a thousand indecent fantasies—her lips grazing my ear, her breath hot against my skin as she whispered what she wanted of me. And the way her chest rose and fell after battle, sharp and uneven, as though she held back a cry trembling on the edge of ecstasy—gods, it undid me. I imagined that sound breaking free under my hands, under my mouth, coaxed from her in gasps and moans until she could no longer hold anything back.
By night, she conquered me. In the solitude of camp, my dreams became a battlefield of another kind: in one vision she claimed me with ferocity, dragging me down into her hunger until I yielded utterly. In another, she surrendered with equal certainty, laying herself beneath me not in weakness but in offering, her body and her magic opening to mine as though she would give me everything. Both visions consumed me. To be mastered by her, or to master her in turn—each was ecstasy, each a union of power and abandon. For in truth, there was no victor, no vanquished; whether she yielded or claimed, we burned as one.
I meant to tell her. “Talk to her,” Karlach said, as if there were words that were adequate, that were worthy.
I dreamed of what would follow my confession. I imagined her smile softening, her fingers brushing my cheek, her whispering back the words I craved. And then—I imagined asking her for more. Not in plea, but in promise.
I pictured us alone, the night silent save for our breaths. She would come to me as she does in battle: sure, unafraid, her eyes shining like starlight. I would touch her as though she were spellwork itself—carefully, reverently—yet with the hunger of a man long starved. My hands would find her waist, her shoulders, the delicate line of her throat; I would trace her as one traces glyphs, searching for the melody of her body’s music.
She would answer me not with words, but with movement—the way she moves in bladesong, fluid, unstoppable. Her lips would find mine with that same blend of ferocity and grace, of savagery and splendor—and every kiss would be a spell unleashed, every sigh a summoning. I imagined her pressed against me, the warmth of her thighs as I laid her on a bed of stars, her hair like poured silver as she yielded and yet commanded in equal measure.
My mind wandered to thoughts of us lying together, skin against skin, her breath against my throat, her body arching as though straining toward the heavens. I imagined her whispering my name, not as incantation but as invocation, and I thought of answering her with every fragment of devotion I had—my mouth upon her skin, my hands claiming every secret place, every trembling shiver of her.
I longed to show her that no goddess could rival her, no Weave could contain the wonder of her body against mine. That when I entered her, it would not be conquest, but creation—two currents fusing, no victor, no vanquished, only joy.
And yet—how could I? For what was it Mystra had commanded of me, if not to become a weapon? To detonate the Orb lodged in my chest, to reduce myself to ash for the sake of balance and fate. To bind myself not to love, but to ruin. What cruelty it would be to draw her near, to taste her lips, to entwine her life with mine—knowing that at any moment I might be torn apart, and take her with me.
I wondered if silence was the truest kindness I could give her. If to keep my love unspoken was to shield her from the selfishness of my longing. To tell her might be to bind her to a doomed man, to place in her hands the same weight that had already crushed me. And so I dreamed instead.
I rehearsed my confession a hundred times as the days unfolded. While stirring the fire, while walking in silence beneath the shrouded boughs, while she polished her moonblade until it gleamed with pale fire. I love you, I whispered in my mind. Come to me. Let me show you. Yet the words caught like a spell half-cast, burning on my tongue, waiting for courage.
After we cut through Ketheric’s cultists at the roadside, her moonblade slick with their ruin, she wiped her brow and gave me the barest smile. That smile undid me; in my mind I had her pressed against the nearest wall, her laughter breaking into gasps as I covered her in my hunger. And when the clash of steel had gone quiet, I imagined leaning close enough to taste the salt of her sweat, edged with the faint metallic tang of blood. Bitter, yes—but gods, how I wanted it: to trace her collarbone with my tongue, to linger at the hollow of her throat, savoring the alchemy of battle upon her skin. In my mind she pressed against me, arching, letting me drink that mingled salt and iron as though it were the sweetest nectar, until the taste of her became indistinguishable from the taste of desire itself. The taste was violence, but so was my hunger: sharp, unrelenting, primal. I wanted to claim her as she was—bloodied, feral, alive—and devour every breath she gasped into the dark.
Desire became my constant companion, sharper than hunger, heavier than sleep. It clung to me when we fought, when we marched, when we made camp beneath the sickly glow of cursed trees. I let longing devour me. When she slept, I watched the rise and fall of her breath and thought of what it might be to share that rhythm, chest to chest, until night yielded to dawn. When she smiled across the fire, I imagined her lips brushing mine in the same quiet, unguarded warmth. Every graze of her hand against my sleeve sent fire down my arm, until I ached to take that hand and draw her against me.
I told myself I was waiting for the right moment. That words like I love you deserved quiet, deserved safety, deserved more than blood still drying on our skin. But safety never came. Each night bled into the next, filled with the same dread—the Orb burning in my chest, Ketheric’s shadow pressing near, the gods themselves whispering at the edges of the Weave. I began to wonder if there would ever be a moment untainted by peril. And if not—what then? Would I die with the words still buried in me?
It was not fear that stayed me. It was devotion. I wanted her not as one snatches at life in the jaws of death, but as one lays down his life in offering. I wanted her to know, when the words finally passed my lips, that they were not born of danger’s thrill, but of truth unshakable. That when I asked her to love me, to come to me, to share with me that first night of ecstasy, it was not desperation but destiny.
The Orb in my chest ticked like a clock toward calamity. Each spell I cast might be the last. And if I fell—if death claimed me without her knowing—I would have robbed us both. I needed her to know.
And after the battle at Last Light—gods, when her silver fire carved a path through the shadow-cursed undead—I could scarcely breathe for want of her. My blood still thundered with spellfire, yet all I felt was the ache of her. I imagined her straddling me, her hair tumbling forward, her thighs gripping me with the same mercilessness she used to drive back our foes. She claimed me without hesitation, without fear, her hips pressing down, steady and relentless, finding a rhythm that unmade me as surely as any spell. Her skin was slick with the heat of battle, the salt of her sweat mingling with the sweetness of her mouth as I kissed her until she gasped against me. She moved with the same ferocity as her bladesong—each thrust a strike, each cry a victory—and I yielded utterly, glorying in the dance of mastery and surrender until I could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
No curse, no goddess, no death itself could master us but her. She was triumph made flesh, desire unbound, and in that imagined joining I felt what I had always feared to hope for: that we might be infinite, even in a world built to end us.
Until at last, the shadowed land itself seemed to conspire: a pause in the fighting, a silence thick with possibility. And in that silence, I knew—there would be no more waiting.
That thought changed everything. I could not go on holding my tongue, could not go on rehearsing confessions I might never speak. Desire was no longer enough; fantasy no longer sufficed. I needed truth. I needed her.
Because by then, I knew what it was I loved. It was the curve of her body in motion, the lithe grace with which she turned violence into art. It was the tilt of her head when she listened, the faint press of her lower lip between her teeth as she considered, the quiet exhale she gave after victory that sounded to me like pleasure withheld. It was the way her hair spilled silver over her shoulders at night, tempting my hands to bury themselves in it, the way her scent clung to me after a fight—steel and rain and something sweet and ancient that I could never name.
It was the sharpness of her mind, the way she sparred with me in theory as deftly as with her blade—never yielding, never afraid to challenge me, never allowing me the comfort of illusion. And it was her tenderness, rarer but no less real—the warmth of her hand at my back when shadows pressed too close, the quiet weight of her trust when she let me shield her. She undid me without even knowing it—how the graze of her fingers against mine could summon a shiver greater than any spell, how the brush of her cloak when she passed left me trembling with hunger.
When she raised her blade, the air itself seemed to laugh, to sing, to shiver with wild delight. No leash, no decree—only freedom. Her bladesong was not a summons to obedience but an invitation to abandon. To fight at her side was to taste the chaos of creation itself, to feel the Weave unshackled, racing through my veins like desire unchecked.
So my thoughts of her became inseparable from spell and song. I imagined her bladesong as foreplay, each note a brush of her hand against my skin, each step a graze of her lips along my throat. I imagined her spells as kisses, burning and radiant, pulling me deeper until I no longer knew where she ended and I began. To imagine her body yielding to mine was to imagine the wildest magic I had ever known: not conjured, not commanded, but freely given, unstoppable as a storm.
Lily was power unbound, and yet she would share it with me—not as goddess to servant, but as woman to man, as lover to lover. To join with her would be no surrender, but a union. Not sacrifice, but liberation.
I resolved that the next moment we had, the next pause between chaos and pursuit, I would tell her. I would conjure something small, something selfish, a sliver of beauty amidst ruin. And when that moment came, I would not falter. Not for fear of the Orb, nor for the gods who watched, nor for the shadow pressing close. For what is magic, what is fate, what is doom itself, beside her? I had lived too long with silence as my only companion. I would not let it claim me now.
If love was selfish, then let me be selfish. If devotion was dangerous, then let me be damned. For she had become the only truth that mattered—the one spell I longed to cast, the one incantation I could never master until it passed my lips: I love you.
And so I carried those words like a flame unlit, waiting only for the stillness, the silence, the night when I could finally let them burn.