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Ashalle had a smile on her face, so Orest knew he was in trouble.
It was a specific kind of smile, different from her look at you go, making me proud smiles or her you idiot, how do I love you? smiles or even her I convinced Radha to cook your favorite roast for dinner tonight smile. It was her I have good news that I think is good news to you, but it’s really only good news to me and Marethari and whomever smile.
Bad sign.
Really bad sign.
Fenarel had abandoned him at the door to the aravel as soon as he could, giving him a smile and a good luck before sprinting away like a halla with its ass on fire. That traitor! Orest had been right to assume that Fenarel knew more than he let on. Dragging me across camp for this… He hadn’t said why. Another really bad sign. He’d just been… giggly.
It wasn’t just Ashalle in the aravel. Beside her was Marethari and Merrill. The aravel wasn’t tiny, sure, but it felt way too small. Merrill was bouncing on her toes. She bumped into Silvhen’s moccasins where they sat on the shelf, and she quickly whispered an apology across the Veil to the former Keeper for disturbing his things.
Marethari thinned her lips as Merrill sneezed at the dust that had gotten into her nose. She cleared her throat, and both Ashalle and Merrill stood a little straighter.
Orest felt all of his muscles tense up. Fenarel, he thought, his eyes flickering toward the wall between him and the center of camp. You couldn’t even do me a favor and tell me why I’m in trouble? Come on! He was alone, surrounded by the Keeper, the First, and his Mamae in all but name. This makes sense, actually. Is a nineteenth birthday important? Did I miss something? Shit.
“Orest Mahariel,” Ashalle started. She took a step forward and held both of his hands in hers, looking up at him. “Before…” She glanced back at Marethari. “Just know that I am so proud of you, Da’lath’in.” My little heart.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Yeah, uh, you… too?” He smiled, but it felt more like a tooth-bearing cringe. He looked over at Merrill. Please, Creators, help me out!
She nodded at him, smiling just as widely.
Mythal’s fat tits, I’m screwed.
“Mahariel,” Marethari said. She had, maybe, two or three drops of Ashalle’s sweetness in her voice, which was actually a pretty decent improvement over her usual one. Or zero. “Why don’t you sit down?” As she said it, Ashalle nodded and let go of Orest’s hands, joining her and Merrill on the back bench of the aravel.
“I’m good, thanks,” he said dumbly. Oh, Creators. Sitting-down conversation. Maybe, if he stayed standing, it wouldn’t be as bad. That’s stupid. “Yep,” he muttered out loud.
Marethari looked at him like she was regretting something.
“Sorry,” he muttered. He could feel a cold breeze coming through the gaps in the aravel’s wooden boards, making him want to shiver just as much as the gazes of the two women and Merrill did. The floor rattled a little bit as Merrill’s foot bounced against it. Does she have to pee or something?
“No matter,” Marethari said. She took a breath and shook her head. “As you well know,” she began, “you’re not only one of the best hunters of your age, but you are the son of Keeper Mahariel.”
He nodded tightly. His stomach churned. “I know,” he said. The moccasins dangling just at the edge of his vision felt like they were taunting him. Thought you could go a day without me, eh?
“And with such a position comes responsibility.”
“I know,” Orest said again. You tell me that, like, literally all the time, he added, mentally. He swallowed. Come on, Marethari, just give me a number! One to ten, how screwed am I?
“Good,” she said. That wasn’t a number. “So, seeing as you are of an adequate age, I believe it is time you take on some of that responsibility.” She stood. There was a soft smile on her lips.
Oh, shit. He felt the urge to bolt start to crawl up his spine. He smiled that same wide, cringe-filled smile.
“And do your Clan proud,” she finished.
“I am… more lost than a dwarf in the Brecilian,” he said, laughing nervously. He watched Marethari let out a sigh she tried to disguise as a regular exhale. “Can you just…?”
“It’s time for you to Bond with someone!” Ashalle said, cutting through Marethari’s ceremonial halla-shit with a high, excited voice.
Orest’s eyes went wide, and he could feel the blood leaving his face. Oh. Wow, alright. The aravel began to sway a little. Am I gonna faint? Is this fainting?
“Orest?” Ashalle stood up quickly, rushing over to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. It only slightly helped to make the aravel stop spinning. “What’s wrong?”
What’s-? He blinked. What kind of question-? “With…?” He looked at Marethari. “With who…?” No. Wrong question. He tried to stand taller, to square his shoulders. “Don’t I get to choose that?” He forced his voice to harden, forced himself to look Marethari in the eye.
“As Keeper,” Marethari said, her voice way too calm, “I believe that it would be best for the Clan if our most gifted hunter were to Bond with my First.”
Orest’s gaze whipped over to Merrill, who was grinning so widely it wouldn’t surprise him if she managed to pop her vallaslin out of place. Her fresh vallaslin. The vallaslin she got early. She squeaked out a nervous, giddy little hi at him.
It was like someone had dumped icy water all over him and then kicked him in the balls.
“And with you being the son of one of the most talented Keepers Clan Sabrae has ever known-”
“No way!” He shoved Ashalle’s hand off of him. Merrill jumped at the sudden noise, her ears cringing, and Ashalle looked horrified. Marethari looked pissed. “No fucking way!” He pointed a shaking hand at Merrill. He felt like he was going to puke up his heart. Maybe a couple of other organs, too. “I am not Bonding with her!” The dizziness was back.
“And why not?” Marethari asked, trying to hide how furious she was under that stupid mask of calm and thick vallaslin. “She is a lovely young woman, a mage-” The anger started to seep past the mask. “My First-!”
There were a thousand reasons. And they were a thousand real reasons. Tamlen! His brain insisted. You’re in love with Tamlen! He nearly bit his tongue off trying to keep the thought inside his brain. Another one! “She’s, like, my little sister!”
Ashalle stepped between him and Marethari. “Give it time,” she said softly, putting her hands on Orest’s shoulders, “and you’ll learn to love her differently.” She smiled up at him. “Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you they felt the same way before their mind caught up to their heart.”
“Creators, I’m gonna throw up,” he said, swallowing back the spit pooling in his mouth.
“Orest?” Merrill’s voice was small and sad. He looked over at her and saw the tears pooling in her big eyes. Her ears were drooping. Sure, she was seventeen, but there was no way that she really knew what Bonding meant. That they wanted him to stick his dick in her and make her pop out his babies.
Congratulations, Orest, he thought bitterly, your first birthday with vallaslin! He was a man now. And it sucked. He took a step backwards. Ashalle tried to hold onto him, but he shook her off. Fuck this. Fuck all of this. He took another step back.
“Orest, please-”
“I- I need air,” he muttered before turning heel and sprinting outside into the snow.
He could hear Ashalle calling out after him, but he didn’t listen. He didn’t stop. He spotted Tamlen a few paces away and made a beeline for him, grabbing him by the back of his thick cloak without taking a second to stop.
“Orest!” Tamlen yelped as Orest dragged him along, stumbling as he ran to keep up without falling onto his ass. “Hey!”
Orest didn’t say anything back. His lungs were too busy sucking in breath after breath, the cold burning him inside and out. He didn’t let go of Tamlen, but, after a few halfway-heard yells about him being supposedly a little strangled, here, he accepted Tamlen’s hand, gripping it as tightly as he could. They ran deeper and deeper into the forest, past a frozen-over pond, past the ruins of some old shemlen outpost.
And then the snow was up to their waists. And then his feet slowed. And then it hit him again. And then he was crying. He fell into the deep drifts of snow, one hand still squeezing Tamlen’s tight enough to break bones and the other covering his eyes as he began to bawl like a baby.
“Creators, Orest!” Tamlen sank down beside him, the snow puffing up and falling all over Orest’s burning face. “What happened?”
Stop crying, his brain tried to insist. You never cry in front of Tamlen! Not like this! That just made it worse. I’m crying, and it’s not even manly crying. “They-” He was babbling. “They want- They want me to- to Bond, and-” He took in a big, stupid, wet breath. “And Tamlen, I- I can’t!” He was wailing, drawing out the word can’t for way too long.
“Bonding?” Tamlen repeated. “What?” Orest could hear Tamlen sinking down more beside him, making a two-man-wide basket out of the snowdrift as he lay down. “What happened? I could hear yelling, but-”
Orest cut him off with another wail.
“Orest…” Tamlen sighed. He wiggled himself halfway on top of Orest’s shaking body, protecting him from the cold and muffling his voice as a heavy fur cloak came to rest over the top of them both. He nuzzled his face into the base of Orest’s neck, his breath warm and familiar as it washed over Orest’s cold-burned skin.
“I-” Orest choked out. “I love you!” It was stupidly obvious, and sounded desperate. He took his hand away from his eyes as he tried to wipe away the snot that was pouring down his face almost as bad as the tears.
“I- I know,” Tamlen said back. “I love you, too, and-” He grunted a little as he reached downward with the hand not still wrapped up in Orest’s. “Here,” he said, pulling out a rag and offering it up. “You’re covered in snot, lethallin.”
“I know,” Orest muttered. “Thank you.” The tears wouldn’t stop, but he could, at least, wipe his face off a little and blow his nose. His back, his ass, and his legs were freezing, snow melting and creeping into his clothing wherever it wasn’t stopped by the furs’ tanned skins, but his front half was warm, the air beneath Tamlen’s cloak heated up by their breathing. Beyond it, the wind whistled, and clumps of snow fell, tapping against the cloak like someone’s fist hitting an aravel door. Orest swallowed, tasting his own tears and snot.
For a bit, neither of them said anything, but as soon as Orest’s crying turned into sniffles and the occasional rolling drop, Tamlen spoke up. “So, uh… you mentioned…” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Bonding?”
Orest nodded. “With-” He wiped his nose again. “With Merrill.”
Even in the dim light beneath the cloak, Orest could see Tamlen’s eyebrows raise. “Merrill? Seriously?”
Orest nodded. Now that he thought about it, it was obvious. Gross, but obvious. “She’s the First,” he said. “Marethari definitely still thinks that my father’s magic just skipped a generation.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. The rag was soaked. “Skipped me.”
“But she’s, like… our sister,” Tamlen cringed. “That’s…” He shivered and gagged a little.
“You think I didn’t mention that?” Orest felt sick again. “Because, yeah! No shit! It’s disgusting!” His stomach churned.
Tamlen wiggled a little, propping himself up on his elbow, the snow creaking beneath them as he moved. “It’s like they’re trying to turn us into flat-ears,” he huffed. “Didn’t- Creators, what’s his name? P-something?”
“The one from the shemlen, uh, the city? Pol.”
Tamlen nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right,” he said. “That’s flat-ear shit, these arranged Bondings, isn’t it?” He huffed. He sounded a little stuffy, too. “We’re Dalish. We get to choose shit.”
“But we have responsibilities.” Orest spat out the word.
“Still,” Tamlen said. “They’re rational.” He pressed his forehead to Orest’s. “Just tell them no, and they’ll-”
Tamlen didn’t get it. His parents were still alive. He was special for being Tamlen, not Lathinhalei and Halen’s kid. It was a bitter thought, a mean thought.
“No, no, Tam,” Orest drawled. “But think about it.” He rolled his stinging eyes. “I could have magical seed in here.” He weakly thrust his hips. “So it’s my sacred obligation to shove my dick in Merrill’s-” He gagged. He couldn’t even joke about it.
Tamlen cringed. “Did Merrill say anything, or-?”
“Creators, Tam,” Orest sighed. “No, she-” He swallowed. “Mythal’s tits, she looked excited.” He looked over at Tamlen. His eyes were wide, like he couldn’t believe it. “I’m serious.”
“To Bond?”
“And she looked, like… crushed when I said no- ‘Cause I did. I did say no, and they- They didn’t care.” His throat felt tight all over again. They didn’t care. Another bit of snow hit the top of their cloak-tent, and he jumped before he realized what it was. Just snow.
“Listen,” Tamlen said, putting a snow-chilled hand on Orest’s cheek, forcing him to turn his head a little and look Tamlen in the eye. “Sure, she’s seventeen, but she’s… Merrill. She’s smart, but…”
“I know,” Orest said. “But, like… what if she did?” Ashalle’s words made his skin crawl. Maybe Merrill had loved Orest like a sister, but if Marethari had explained what Bonding was, told Merrill all about the birds and the bees, about her own stupid duty turned love story with Sarel and how sad it was that she never got to have magical Dalish babies with him before he died. After all, he thought, I used to think of Tamlen like a cousin… He swallowed. Fuck.
“No way,” Tamlen said. He sounded way too certain.
“She’s not even related to me,” Orest pushed back. “She from fucking, what? Nevarra?” He looked away from Tamlen, his eyes stuck on the cloak above them. “So even if they let up now, Creators know they’ll just try again. And again. And again.” He bit down on his lip, but he spoke again the second that Tamlen started to speak. “And it’s not like you’re nobody,” he continued. “You’re-” You’re Tamlen. You’re incredible. Anyone would… “You’re just as good as I am with a bow.”
“I’m really not, Or-”
“Fine,” Orest said, cutting him off. “You’re almost as good. That better?”
“Orest-”
“What happens when we’re, like, twenty-five and they still think we’re…” He swallowed, hard, unable to finish the sentence out loud.
“They can’t force us,” Tamlen insisted. “Nobody is going to make us Bond with someone else.”
With someone else. Not just… with someone. Orest’s heart squeezed. Someone else. His hand was still in Tamlen’s. He held it tighter. “But…”
“They can’t.”
Orest pressed his lips together. “I used to tell Ashalle that I wanted kids,” he murmured.
Tamlen snorted a little.
“What?” Orest looked over at him. Tamlen was smiling. “What’s so funny about that?”
“The Keeper must be out of her mind if she thinks you and Merrill would be good parents together,” he said, almost giggling.
“Hey!” Orest puffed out his cheeks. Tamlen kept laughing, though, and Orest couldn’t help but start to smile, too.
“I mean, Elgar’nan’s balls,” he laughed. “I’ve seen you lose a boot the second after you put it on.” He snorted. “And Merrill couldn’t find her way out of an aravel half the time!”
Orest groaned. Tamlen was right.
“I love you, but Creators!” He buried his face in Orest’s neck. “Sorry!”
“No, you’re not,” Orest laughed. “Asshole!” He reached up with his hand, ruffling Tamlen’s soft, blond hair and probably smearing dried snot and tears into it. “I may be an idiot,” he declared, “but I’m a handsome idiot! A breathtakingly handsome idiot!”
“My handsome idiot,” Tamlen added. He brought his cold hand up to Orest’s face again, drawing back just enough to capture Orest’s lips in his own.
Wrapped in each other, the cloak came to rest, draped over them like a shared blanket in their snowy basket. Slowly, Orest let go of Tamlen’s hand in order to wrap him up entirely in his arms, pulling him on top. Pressed between Tamlen and the snow, the wind beyond the cloak felt far away. The Clan felt even further. His lips moved along with Tamlen’s, making him feel warm from the inside out. Tamlen’s rough, perfect, slender hands tangled up in Orest’s snow-wet hair. Their noses bumped, pressed against each other’s cheeks, puffed warm, wet air against each other’s skin.
“How come you weren’t born in the spring?” Tamlen asked, breathless, as soon as their lips parted for a mere second. “It’s freezing out here.”
Orest kissed him again, smiling. “If you wanna go back to the aravel and watch Ashalle tan my hide…” He laughed and kissed Tamlen again. “Just say so.” He let out a soft moan as Tamlen ground their hips together, sending waves of good feelings up Orest’s spine even through their thick winter clothes. “Because- Oh, Creators, I’m gonna die.”
Tamlen settled into an easy straddle and sat up, a rush of cold air hitting the two of them as the cloak fell away. The sun was almost entirely set, and the last rays of light glittered in Tamlen’s pretty blond hair, made his skin such a beautiful warm-pale. “Should we just run away into the woods, then?” He joked, rolling his icy blue eyes. “Away from the Dalish, no shems, just the two of us?” He was being sarcastic, but…
Orest laughed. “Who knows?” He ran his hands along the sides of Tamlen’s thickly-covered waist, his hips. “It could be fun!” He looked up at the snowy trees above them. “Just the two of us…”
Tamlen rolled his hips and tightened his grip, knees digging into the sides of Orest’s hips.
“Wandering the forest,” Orest continued. “And doing… whatever we want.” A few birds left the branches, sending a small flurry of snow down toward them, flakes landing on Orest’s face. “Whatever we want,” he sighed. “Sounds… nice.”
“It sounds impossible, lethallin,” Tamlen said. Orest looked at him. Tamlen was frowning. “Seriously. I was joking.”
“Still nice, though,” Orest said. He looked away from Tamlen, even if his hands still rested on Tamlen’s waist. “I wonder if I could stay here forever.” He let out a breath, watching it swirl upward in the last beams of the setting sun.
“Give it an hour,” Tamlen said. “You’ll start freezing your ass off and spend the next week crying for Ashalle to make you soup.”
“Not here-here,” Orest chuckled. “I meant, you know, with the Dalish. Out in the Brecilian.”
“Are you fucking insane?” Tamlen’s voice landed like a slap to the ear.
“Uh…” Orest smiled a little nervously up at Tamlen. “Pretty sure your name is Tamlen, and I’m not having an affair, so-”
Tamlen’s actual hand landed an actual slap on his ear.
Orest let out a yelp of pain. “Tamlen!”
“What are you, a fucking flat-ear?”
“No!”
“Yeah! So it hurt, didn’t it?”
“Yeah!” Orest took a hand away from Tamlen’s waist and clutched at the side of his face. “Mythal’s fat fucking tits, Tam!”
“Don’t say that shit!” Tamlen’s voice cracked. “Leave the Dalish? Over some stupid Bonding? Stupid Bonding that isn’t even gonna happen!”
“I told you-!”
“They can’t force you to Bond-”
Orest’s eyes welled up with stupid tears again. “I love you,” he whispered, shutting Tamlen up. A hot tear rolled down Orest’s cheek, growing cold as it dripped down to his stinging ear. “I was talking to Pol, and he- he mentioned the arranged Bondings, but-” The tears started flowing faster. What is wrong with me? “You don’t have to. There’s- He said- he said there were too many elves, anyway, they don’t-” His vision was blurry. “They don’t need-” He blinked, hard, trying to clear the blurriness. When he did, he saw Tamlen’s face just in time to watch as a teardrop slipped off of his pink face and fell onto Orest’s forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“You- you can’t leave,” Tamlen said. “This is where we belong,” he insisted. “We’re elves. Real ones.”
“We both have our vallaslin,” Orest said back. Falon’Din and Dirthamen. Twins. Death and Secrets. “Isn’t it time we thought for ourselves?”
Tamlen sank down back onto Orest’s front, pulling the cloak over their shoulders. “I can’t leave, Orest,” he whispered. “All that shemlen shit, I… At least here, we’re… we’re free to be elves.”
“But not us,” Orest whispered back. “If they found out…” Marethari would kill us. Ashalle would cry herself to death. Merrill’s heart would break if she realized what we were… “I don’t wanna fight with you,” Orest continued. “I just-” He sighed. “I just wanna be with you.”
“We’re together now, aren’t we?”
“You know what I mean, Tam.”
Tamlen was quiet for a long moment. “I know,” he said, barely even making enough noise to count as a whisper. His face was buried in the front of Orest’s coat, and he grabbed at Orest’s shoulders with shaking, and certainly freezing, hands. “I’m sick of this halla-shit, too.” He let out a rough breath. “Maybe… one day…”
“That’ll be my deathbed confession,” Orest said, half-heartedly half-joking. “I, Orest Mahariel, son of Silvhen Mahariel, fucked Tamlen of Clan Sabrae.”
“Shut up, lethallin,” Tamlen said. There wasn’t any of his usual bite. Just… cold sadness. “One day… One day, there’ll be enough Dalish that people like us… we won’t matter any more. We could do whatever we wanted.”
“I’m probably not gonna be alive in a thousand years, Tam.”
“I know.” The last rays of the sun were disappearing below the horizon. Clouds had started to roll in. “But maybe… if we tell them. Later…”
“Maybe.” Later. In a thousand years.
The wind started to whistle again. After a few minutes, it started to snow. A not-so-small part of Orest wondered if, if he and Tamlen just stayed put, if they let the snow fall and fall and fall and bury them, if they’d slip into uthenera. Maybe they’d wake up in a thousand years and they’d be right. It wouldn’t matter. Everyone who ever knew them would be dead. There’d be nobody left to disappoint, nobody left who remembered Silvhen Mahariel. Nobody who remembered Tamlen or Orest.
But only a half an hour passed. Maybe an hour. Their fingertips ached, their feet were numb, their ears were starting to freeze. Tamlen’s lips were getting a little blue, but he didn’t yet force Orest up and out of their snowy basket.
It couldn’t last forever. The Brecilian was no Arlathan. If they fell asleep, they wouldn’t wake up. Not in an hour, not in a thousand years. Tamlen forced Orest up, a wave of powdery snow falling off of him in the places where it hadn’t started to form clumps on his furs and in his hair. They wiped any dried tears off of their faces and walked back toward the aravels hand in hand. Orest’s heart sank, like he knew it would, as Tamlen—for all his talk about his belonging, about telling them all—slipped his hand from Orest’s as the light of a torch shone between the trees.
Ashalle sprinted through the snow, dropping the torch and killing its light as she wrapped Orest up in her arms, sobbing into his shoulder. He hugged her, rubbing circles into her back. He was sure her joints were killing her. There was no telling how long she was wandering in the snow looking for them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tamlen give him a small wave and a nod before he kept walking toward the camp.
“I’m so sorry,” Ashalle whimpered into Orest’s chest. “By the mercy of Mythal, Orest, I thought you’d be-” She choked on a sob. “Your mother’s son, and I-”
“I just needed to… clear my head,” he said, his voice hollow. He could feel a weight in his stomach, a clawing pit. He’d scared Ashalle half to death. Leave it to him to find a way to drive both Myriani and his actual Mamae to their deaths on the same day.
“I promise,” she said. “If Marethari ever asks again-”
He nodded. “Thank you.” His voice cracked. “So much.”
She led him back to the aravel. Both of them were halfway carrying the other, worn to the bones from the cold. He caught a glimpse of Tamlen by the fire, swarmed by his Mamae and Papae and a good dozen others. Halen had his son by the ear, probably hissing about how stupid he had been to let Mahariel’s boy drag him off to freeze to death in the middle of Haring.
Merrill and Marethari weren’t in the aravel, thank the Creators. Ashalle re-lit a small fire and all but spoon-fed Orest left-over stew until he could finally feel his fingers and toes and ears again. Late into the night, she ushered him into his hammock, gently kissing him on the forehead. He kissed her back.
Beyond the wooden walls, he could hear the wind still whistling as the snow kept falling. When he dreamt, he felt warmer, another body asleep beside him in the hammock.
Perhaps next year.