Work Text:
For hunting halla.
That had been his crime. That had been the claim.
He had violated Arlathan in countless ways. His deceits were innumerable, his assaults upon its foundations meticulous and sustained, his betrayal of the Evanuris finding their way into legend, his name whispered. But none of it could be proven, and armed with only suspicion, none of the Evanuris would condemn him. Not openly, at least: they waged a strange war, with respects paid in the polite halls of the city and its court.
Much of this was because he remained haloed in Mythal's grace, her protection. He knew it. He loathed it. And he relied upon it. But to be so shielded by the one he had loved, the one he yet loved, the one he had tried to aid, tried to sway, and ultimately betrayed, it ached. Nevertheless, her reach was vast and her favor powerful enough to protect him from punishment based on suspicion alone.
But this? This was no crime he had committed. Of all the things he could be rightly punished for, this was a pure fabrication. Yet the punishment was not public. It was the most private of all. A secret. A whispered threat, veiled and dripping with knowing contempt. The huntress and her hunts. This was not the public punishment of the courts, of the Evanuris debasing one of their own number. Nor was this murder, an absence that could not be explained. No, this was private.
He had seen the way Andruil craved her. Craved the woman who had stood alone, face unmarked, one of those who existed outside Arlathan's siren call. The huntress had encountered her by chance, or so the stories went. She had been captivated by the young woman's power, and had insisted that she had a place here. But where Andruil had approached with a possessive intensity, a fervent desire to hold the subject of creation in her own bloody palm, Solas had been drawn to the newcomer in a different way. Outsiders, both. Interlopers, both.
Ghilan'nain's touch was life. Effusive and beautiful. Her power was a wild thing, unrestrained and organic and joyful. He had been drawn into her gravity, into the rush of vitality that suffused her. And she had been drawn to something in him.
They had stumbled together, caught in a riptide, clumsy with a foreign familiarity, something that felt so natural but so unfamiliar. Falling with her into the tall grasses had felt as intuitive as breathing, the way their bodies slotted together as simple as the rush of air across their bare skin, the way she had gasped into his mouth at her crest as natural as the sun warming the plane of his back as he shuddered.
She was beautiful. She was free. She was external. She saw; she saw the Evanuris as they were, saw the vallaslin as it was, saw the Elvhen as they had become, slaves to tyrants who had once sought nothing more than gentle leadership. He saw her burn with the same passion that had been smoldering for so long within him.
But the huntress had hunted. She had wanted. Desired. Sought. Ghilan'nain and Solas alike were her prizes, and she wanted a victory, not a submission. She wanted to chase and pin her prey down and watch it recognize its fate.
In truth, she was merciful to the animals she slew, their deaths quick and efficient, practiced and perfect. Meat and hide went to Arlathan, a provision in which she was skilled. It was her kindness, her type of generosity, her offer of the sharp reality of life and death. But this? This was not as she would hunt prey. This was a conquest. He did not know if she ultimately sought their tired broken willingness or their biting defiance, if she wanted to press their wrists into the giving earth and have her fill or if she wanted to make them serve her on their knees by their own will. He did not know, and he did not care to speculate. All he knew was that he was afraid of her, afraid of her as he was not of the other Evanuris, save Elgar'nan himself.
Andruil had something of the All-Father in her. A frightening similarity, one that he knew too well had its cruelties, its twists and turns, its inborn complexities and mazes and its own wanton satisfactions. But he had never been as privy to it as he was now, her accusation strung in the cold night air between them, a threat as tangible as a cord looping around his throat.
She owned neither of them, but she wanted to. She wanted life in one hand and a predator in the other. She wanted conquest over all things, all beings. She wanted Elgar'nan's throne, but would satisfy herself this night with Solas' promise.
She would not be satisfied this night. For he was a predator, he was a snarling, biting wolf, at his most clever when caged, vicious and cunning and crafty. She had snared him, but he would always find a way free. He must.
He had not hunted. And if it could be called a pursuit, it had been a mutual one. But in her eyes, he had been caught in the act of violation. But even as it invoked Ghilan'nain's name, this claim, this supposed violation was only being used as a tool for Andruil to gain this moment.
What would she say to Ghilan'nain? What crime would she fabricate? Had Ghilan'nain hunted wolves, as he had supposedly hunted halla?
The image of Ghilan'nain in his place, of Ghilan'nain so threatened by Andruil, of Ghilan'nain's body being bought as recompense for a lie of a crime... it risked destabilizing him in truth. In this, in being threatened, he held his ground. He was calm, if cautious. But to think of her so pursued, so pressured, so claimed, it appalled him.
He did not doubt her strength. And he did not doubt her eyes. She would see the snare as it closed around her. He had to put it out of his mind, to remember her strengths and trust in her self preservation, for he must in this moment exercise his own.
He could not agree. He could not even feign agreement. If he did, if he said yes as a lie, she would feel justified in whatever harm she could cause him. But so far her interest had been of an entirely personal nature, her awareness of his rebellion—the open secret awareness all of them possessed—had seemingly been dismissed. But if he lied to her, she may turn her attentions to unraveling his rebellion in order to hurt him.
He needed to deny her... or better yet, not answer. But that option was fading fast. He needed to accelerate the moment...
What luck, then, what strange luck, to hear the rustle as another emerged, to see Anaris' strange mask gleaming dully behind Andruil's shoulder.
Potential.