#In which Rhodri Amell tires out

[wild-houseplant]

Have Warden, Will Travel- Chapter 17

Oh damn! I can’t believe it but Tenderness is starting to sink its teeth into Zevran good and proper now. Poor bastard. Just a little bit, of course, but still. Bite.

CW for the usual gore, body horror, and violence- now with graphic torture scenes, thanks to the Crow and the Sloth Demon. Full chapter here, AO3 if you prefer here. More under the cut!! You are gorgeous and should drink some fluids.

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Zevran had, in fact, died. Just as he'd suspected while he had been dying. He knew he was dead because he no longer had a solid body. He could see the floor through his ribs, which had never been a feature while he was alive, which meant he was a ghost. Handsome and charming as ever, no doubt, but indisputably deceased.

He looked up from his transparent torso and the stone floor beneath it. An ugly, choked gasp tore up his throat like a barb as his eyes fell on a very familiar door. Rippling and ghostly as it was, it was the same initiation holding cell door he had once hunched beside, identical down to its narrow grille window and the deep scratch marks in the wood around the lock.

That he’d even had the nerve to gasp had to be a sign of his months-long softening at the Warden’s side. What gall he’d had to indulge in kind words and soft nudges and pretend he nearly deserved any of it. The audacity of him to be shocked, the sheer effrontery of the tears swelling behind his eyes to find now that the Master had been entirely right about him.

But the eternity, it seemed, had begun, and with it, the re-hardening. What else was there to do? There was no hope of escape, and he didn’t deserve to be free even if there was. 

Zevran sat down beside the door and waited. The initiate holding prison struck him as an odd place to start the next life. Surely if the Maker had wanted him to truly suffer (and He no doubt did) He would have plonked Zevran into the week after Rinna’s death.

Ah, but then if Zevran was nothing, why would the Maker be overseeing this? No, the responsibility for his modest participation in afterlife misery had to have been delegated to some lesser being. One who undoubtedly had a taste for the more physically macabre side of life than the emotional side.

At this rate, the more pertinent question was: would he be reliving the same racking as the first time, or did he have the chance to fight back a little? After all, it wasn’t as though he’d be getting any deader if things went wrong.

… Or would he?

The lock clicked; he found himself cursing the quietness at which the jailor had come, just as they had the last time. No footsteps, not even a loud breath or a rumble of the key going into the lock. A Crow could open a spring-loaded latch silently, if they wanted. Zevran would have bet money they only made a noise to see if he would startle, and he was proud that he didn’t.

The door swung open, and the same two men from Zevran’s first initiation stepped in and grabbed him by the hair without a word to him or each other. Zevran was on his feet before they could pull too roughly, astonished by the way his arms stayed glued to his sides. There had been a plan somewhere in his head to do things differently. He'd reach for a knife, test the boundaries of the new world by shanking the jailors, but rigid muscles refused to so much as twitch. Those useless arms were down by his sides like they were painted on.

You coward.

“We’ve got it all planned out for you today, apprentice,” said the man to his left. He had a filthy grin and fingers like fish hooks that were making it their business to wrap firmly around Zevran’s wrists. “You won’t be worth a pinch of shit when we’re through with you.”

Zevran stayed silent, marvelling at his own uselessness as they wound him around corner after corner. Tiny windows– holes, really– in the corridors showed brief glances of the adjacent alleyway, a known place to stash fresh bodies. It was so narrow the sun barely got a look-in, and the stench of mildew and cat piss, overwhelming in the land of the living, had apparently managed to pass into the next life unabated too.

A hand wrenched his head back, cricking his neck in the process. It had to have belonged to the other jailor. Zevran looked over at him once the grip on his hair loosened, but the man was watching straight ahead with a smile on his face. Internally kicking himself for falling for the trick, he forced himself to look ahead again, and took the consequent second hair-wrenching with resignation.

The man on the left kicked a door open, and the rack sat just beyond, positioned in the middle of the tiny room like a guest of honour. His gaze lingered on the apparatus a little too long; a sharp joint to the back– a knee, Zevran guessed– propelled him the last way inside as punishment.

“I don’t care for delays,” the other man growled.

Zevran forced a smirk. “Forgive me. I was taking in her beauty overlong, I see.”

He got a backhander to the face for that. 

“Don’t like your attitude, either. Get on and lie down, you little shit.”

The man said that as though Zevran had been given the time to comply. Both sets of hands shoved and dragged him onto it with far more roughness than there might have been had he simply been allowed to climb on himself. But then, this was an initiation. Why would anyone be sweet with him?

His arms were wrenched above his head, up and out, and once they were tied down, his legs got the same treatment. The backboard of the rack was still wet, cool on the backs of his thighs and the jut-point at the top of his spine that dug into the wood. Sweat, specifically fear sweat, had that fulminant, waxy thickness. The whole room stank of it, and Zevran refused to add to it. Not a drop.

And then the dialling started, and that put paid to any and all resolutions. He watched from the corner of his eye as the pawl slid over the rusty ratchet, filling the chamber with the slow scream of aged metal on metal until it fell flush against the edge of the next gear. Was it better to brace the muscles, or relax into it? Something would strain and tear, subluxate and then dislocate completely with the next click. There didn't seem a way to avoid it.

He compromised and tensed his belly. The first stretch was comfortable, the second burned like a kiss. Zevran racked his brains as he tried to recall how many clicks he’d had the first time around. Was it five? Six? Mercy, it wasn’t more than that, surely. 

The third came, and he already wanted to writhe. Armpits and hips and knees all pulled like a puppet held to attention. Rigid-hard, one more and he’d split at the seams–

It clicked again, though Zevran didn’t know if that was the ratchet or his joints at this point. One hip was suddenly weak and floppy, half-floating unhoused in the no-man’s-land of his upper leg, and he didn’t manage to stop the soft gasp from coming out.

The man to his left chuckled. “I think I saw him flinch.” 

The other man hummed delightedly. “We’ll make you scream yet, apprentice.”

“We’re not going to go easy on you, you know. Don’t think that for a minute.” Zevran caught the first man smiling from ear-to-ear as he moved the roller up another notch.

The hip was out properly now, and his opposite shoulder had left its socket in sympathy.

Zevran’s eyes shut tightly and he clenched his teeth until his head pounded from the pressure. An agonised grunt escaped him. “No…” he gasped, “I wouldn’t… want you to hold back. I’d be disappointed if you… did.”

“This one has spirit,” remarked the second fellow with delight. “It’s a shame we have to break him, really. Go on, do it again.”

The roller cranked again, and Zevran heard his name. In his head, no doubt, but it was loud. Louder than loud, and insistent!

“No– no! Hold on, Zev, hold on!”

He summoned the last of his courage to indulge the idea that this might have come from outside of his head– the sound had echoed a little– and cracked open one eye.

A sharp, pale fist connected with the cheek of the man operating the roller. He went to the floor, and the fist-haver followed him down there with a stream of menacing-sounding Tevene and leagues of black robe rippling out behind her.

In the haze of the agony, Zevran decided that now was as good a time as any to look properly. He forced his other eye open, seeing nothing but hearing plenty of strained grunts, and the sweet crunch of bones breaking under decidedly aggressive punches. It was quite a welcome distraction, really. The other guard was hastening around the rack to join in the fight, which meant there was no-one turning the roller–

The yet-uninjured guard flew over the top of Zevran and ended up on the other side of the room.

Zevran gulped; why had it only occurred to him now that if he was living out eternal punishment, that he would likely not be exempt from whatever was being meted out down there on the floor? Why had he been silently cheering on whoever it was seeing to the jailors when he was destined for something much more unpleasant?

With two unsocketed limbs and muscles in tatters, no less.

Long, frantic fingers appeared from below, snatching the pawl of the rack and bashing it to spin the ratchet in the other direction. The rest of the body came up, dark-haired and wide-eyed and remarkably familiar. 

"It's all right, Zev," she whispered rapidly. "I'm going to get you out of here." The ropes around him loosened, and his aching limbs sank down to his sides. "Get off the table and stay away from the fight."

Zevran groaned and squinted at her. "... Warden? It's you?"

The Warden's answer was cut off by a curse as the man across the room woke up and made for them, knives drawn, and Zevran was left to haul himself off the table.

There was something terribly unhinged about the whole scene. An overstretched man gingerly easing himself off a rack while the apparition of a Grey Warden threw her enormous shoulder into the spectral midsection of an Antivan Crow, sending the knives flying out of his hands. 

That couldn't be right, though. No Crow would simply let go of their knives because they were tackled. No Crow would let themselves be tackled. In fact, that punch shouldn't even have connected on the first man's face. The Warden would have been dead before she could come within a bull's roar of either of them had they been through genuine article. Surely the afterlife wouldn't be so slack on such details, especially if the goal was to cause suffering.

Had Zevran not died, then? Was this a dream? As if challenging whatever had willed him here, he dared his joints to fix themselves, and he lost a breath as they did. 

Remarkable. 

His hands shook as he pulled the rope off himself, knees barely supporting his weight as he slid off the table and onto the ground. Somewhere in the back of his head, a voice was reminding him to heal the rest of his smarting body, but he paid it no mind. 

An arm's length away from the rack, the Warden seized the would-be Crow by the back of the head and drove it down into the edge of the table. The neck of the Crow, ghost, whatever it was, snapped, and the room went silent except for the thud of a fresh corpse meeting the ground. 

It took the Warden hurrying over to him for Zevran to realise he had been standing there, numb and quivering like a child the entire time. Not a single offer of help; not even a shout of encouragement. His shame shut his eyes for him. 

"Zev." A hand went on his cheek. "Zev."

Zevran forced his eyes open. Rhodri was bent down to eye level with him, watching him pleadingly. Her fingers and palm covered the entire left side of his face, stroking with the gentleness one might afford a mouse. He could feel the skin flushing under the attention.

Zevran gave a chattery laugh that sent a look of bafflement over the Warden’s face. 

"Nothing like a good racking, is there?" he offered weakly.

He could have kicked himself as her mouth fell open. Determination to keep things moving along pushed another sentence out: "And so what now, my lovely Grey Warden? Dinner? Dancing? More murder?"

The joke went over her head. She watched him gravely.

“We’re trapped in the Fade. The Sloth demon, it’s imprisoned us. We need to kill it here, and then we– oh, shit!”

Zevran glanced down to where Rhodri’s wide eyes had darted. His body, incorporeal as it was, was fading, and she and the room were following suit.

“Wh–? But I wasn’t injured! I– I am fine!”

“Listen.” Rhodri’s hand went onto his other cheek. “I will find you again,” she said, as firmly as if she had given an order. “I won’t stop looking for you.”

Zevran gulped. Her voice softened with each word, and she was fast approaching unintelligibility.

“Do you hear me? I will find you, Zev.”

She had said more, but one of them was gone. Knowing his luck, it was probably him.

  Zevran decided, once he re-materialised, that he wouldn’t take any more of this Fade business seriously. Certainly, he would do his utmost to ensure that he and the Warden (and the rest of the party, he supposed), emerged alive. But really, if the best it had to offer was counterfeit Crows and a disappear-reappear trick, the Sloth demon might as well give up now. How embarrassing that a dimension held in such reverence by the Chantry was, in fact, the stage for amateur hour. 

If only they knew. 

He wandered in the nauseating mirage-rippling green for a stretch of time he didn’t bother estimating. Though eyes were on him, nothing gave him any trouble, and so he marched unaccosted until he dissolved again (he went much more willingly this time) and reappeared in a clearing with Rhodri and the rest of the party.

And a demon. Of course, how could he forget the demon? 

Though he dared not say it to anyone at the time, Zevran did consider this demon to be quite forgettable. The five of them vanquished the enormous thing with what he would have called mild to moderate elbow grease. Nothing more demanding than the thick end of a multiples contract, really. He’d treat himself to a cask of wine when all this was over.

It only occurred to Zevran when he woke up that the Warden hadn’t used any magic to free him. She was as implausible as his jailors, but she didn’t wake up looking demonic, so it wasn’t as though she had been possessed. Was it a show of power, perhaps? A wordless encouragement for him to toe the line?

It seemed unlikely. He couldn’t imagine why else, though, and put the entire thing out of his head before his stomach could drop any further.

  The mage named Niall didn’t survive the departure from the Fade. The only thing that had even vaguely surprised Zevran was that Niall’s physical body hadn’t died sooner. The thought of magic being used to prolong death– and that was all it had been; there was no extension of life in the act of keeping Niall in the Fade– was revolting. Zevran didn’t let himself dwell on it. 

With the Litany in hand (it had been the scroll Niall was clutching!), the party took the stairs, and after making the brief acquaintance of a young, magically-imprisoned Templar who hated demons and mages (in that order), approached the door he was trapped next to.

The Harrowing Chamber (Wynne had named the room behind said door as such while they were climbing the staircase) didn’t sound like a particularly welcoming place. Certainly, given the circumstances of their sweep of the Tower, Zevran hadn’t expected a welcome with lillo flutes and minimally-clad dancers, but would it have killed them to call it something else? The Friendship Chamber? The Chamber of Cooperation? Or, at the very least, the Chamber of Strained Civility? He would have to take this up with a figure of authority later. The Tower was already a miserable place, and this didn’t help the mood at all.

In all fairness, though, the name appeared well-deserved once the door was kicked in and the party was greeted by the sight of yet more mages doing terribly illicit things to other mages with their blood. A tall, bald human in red (of course) robes in particular looked like he was having the time of his life as he suspended a writhing human in mid-air. Zevran presumed the unfortunate fellow to be a key figure of some sort; the other Tower mages all wore either blue, gold, or red robes, and this one was wearing a handsome green set. The First Enchanter, perhaps? Was it Irvine, they said his name was? Ian? … Ibsen?

Said important man fell to the floor, and several other similarly suffering mages in the vicinity relaxed from tortured positions as Rhodri began to bark out something in rhythmic, commanding Tevene. Judging by the expressions of the perpetrators, it didn’t appear that they had meant for that to happen.

The bald man’s gaze snapped over to the party (they were approaching him in a run, after all), and his lip curled.

“Well, well!” he crowed. “And what have we here? The eternal botherer Wynne, and…? Ah!” The man chuckled and shrugged at Rhodri with one hand. “Irving’s star Tranquil, of course. Uldred didn’t think much of either of you then, and I certainly don’t see your appeal, myself.”

Wynne shook her head in disgust. “You always were weak, Uldred. And now look at you!”

“I,” Uldred touched a hand to his chest, “am so much more than Uldred ever was. Mages are but the larval form of something greater, but together Uldred and I have become something glorious.” He smiled broadly. “This could be yours, too, Wynne, you know.”

“Stop him,” the man in green gasped from his heap on the ground. “He… is building… an army…”

Well, that was perfectly obvious. Zevran credited the man that perhaps he had been unconscious for that part of the conversation. It was kind of him to try.

And frankly, it hadn’t looked as though Wynne had been tempted by the offer. In fact, she recoiled a little, looking like she’d be sick if she didn’t steel herself enough.

Rhodri, who had been holding her staff in a white-knuckled grip the entire time, pointed it at Uldred. 

“There will be no negotiation,” she snarled. “You accident. You utter freak–”

“Now, now, there is no need to brandish your stick at me,” Uldred said with a mawkishness that set Zevran’s teeth on edge. “I was trying to have a civil conversation, and here you are–”

A head-sized boulder emerged, somehow, from the tip of the Warden’s staff, which Uldred didn’t manage to entirely dodge as it clipped one of his shoulders.

He gave a grimacing smile, clutching the shoulder with the arm that wasn’t rendered useless.

“All right, then,” he purred. “Negotiations over. Fight if you must!”

Not that anyone had asked his opinion on it, but Zevran was getting tired of the way monsters were either invading or erupting from people’s bodies. If it wasn’t the mages, it was the Templars, or some other unappealing Fade beastie. If he knew the name of the Arl in this part of the country, he’d be writing to them as a concerned (and very inconvenienced) citizen.

He shelved that thought upon remembering the state of the Arl of Redcliffe who was, in fact, the one responsible for this part of the country. Why he had even entertained the thought of a useful noble was beyond him.

Useless and/or dead upper-crust individuals aside, whatever had taken up residence in Uldred’s body had been absolutely right: Uldred was indeed Uldred “but more.” In fact, Zevran would have confidently asserted that it was Uldred plus another. The other resident ended up winning whatever internal battle might have been occurring, because the erstwhile Uldred grew into a frankly enormous creature with arms and legs like tree trunks and enough eyes to make a spider feel inadequate. Horns on the head (of course), and most interestingly, another set coming out of the elbows that were at least three times as long as the cranial ones. The ultimate villainous entity, according to the mumbles of Rhodri and Wynne, was known as a pride demon. 

Wasn’t that just marvellous.

The fight began. They were unquestionably outnumbered, by both blood mages and abominations (though it had to be said that other abominations were lesser than Uldred’s kind. Wasn’t it always the way? One could be great, so long as one didn’t out-great the leader). Alistair, though not a fully consecrated Templar, was still very adept at dispersing some of the blood mages’ harmful magic, and whatever Rhodri was reciting while she sent spell after spell at Uldred seemed to handle the remainder of it. 

Optimism grew as Zevran dipped back into the many shadows around the room, opportunities to take the lackeys abounding as they became absorbed in their spellcasting. In one swift movement, he was out by a pair of blood mages, and with another, he had slit their throats and sent them crumpling to the floor. The victory lent him the rush of energy he needed to slip out of sight again, the only sign of life he gave being a low chuckle as he sent another blood mage to her death. 

He cast his eye around the room when he hid again, and the situation appeared in their favour, if dire on both ends. Only Uldred and two blood mages remained, and the latter of those were clearly exhausted. So, however, was Wynne, and Alistair was also tiring. Rhodri, who had been exclusively fighting against a weakening Uldred, had been going between reading off the Litany and casting spells the entire time, many of them still wavering between invisible and all-too-visible. She either had larger reserves than Wynne, or the chanting had demanded little of her, because she at least seemed to have enough in her to continue for now.

As Zevran prepared to emerge and backstab the mage Wynne was handling, Rhodri caught sight of her flagging and let out a shout of alarm. She shot a spell at the Senior Enchanter and turned back in time to be struck hard in the arm and shoulder by Uldred’s giant hand, and went flying across the floor. 

That changed plans somewhat. Zevran darted out of the shadow to make for her. He turned briefly to slash the neck of Wynne’s blood mage as he did; Rhodri and Uldred were on the other side of the chamber. If Wynne was free to cast, a spell from her would reach them faster than Zevran and his knives. 

It seemed, however, that an exhausted Wynne had taken too long to get her bearings, as no spell came, and Uldred leaned over Rhodri, arm high and ready to deal another blow. 

To his relief, however, Rhodri was sitting up. He heard her growl through gritted teeth as she pointed her staff at the monster and sent a fireball at him that exploded on impact. The resulting energy surge tore through the chamber, blasting those standing off their feet, and sending anyone on the floor into a roll. 

Zevran hadn’t lost consciousness from that– so far as he knew. He remembered hitting the floor with a force that jolted every whisper of air out of his lungs, and he was sure he had landed in the same position he was in now. He didn’t remember feeling quite as much pain in his hip as before, but in all fairness, it was the second part of him to hit the ground.

The memory of the moments before him leaving his feet in the first place was slower to come back. There had been a spell…

His eyes cracked open–

An urgent spell…

Zevran looked around wildly and found Rhodri lying on her belly of all things, facing the newer iteration of Uldred (was that bastard still alive?). The latter party, though winded on his knees, was in a decidedly better state than the Warden, whose gasps could be heard even from where Zevran was.

Zevran was on his feet, knives out, in a limping run. His hip was screaming and the Warden still hadn’t managed to peel herself off the floor.

Her name came out of Zevran’s mouth in a shout. “Move back!” he hobbled a little faster. “Rhodri, move back!”

Uldred shambled closer; Rhodri was white as a sheet, drenched with sweat, and not moving back. Or forward. In fact, the only thing she was doing was giving him that apologetic look again, and inducing an unnerving urge to whimper that Zevran would mentally deny when he had a moment to.

Zevran blessed the Maker that he was quicker than either of them. With a growl, he sprang with the better of his two legs and in three hacking motions, Uldred’s head was falling in one direction and his body in the other. Neither landed anywhere near the Warden, who had still not managed to so much as raise an arm by the time Zevran was on his knees beside her.

He ducked his head down. “Rhodri?”

A soft, slowly crescendoing hubbub was starting up behind him; he glanced long enough to ascertain that the party and the surviving mages were coming-to, and turned back.

The Warden tipped her head so that her chin was no longer propping her face up, and it flopped down so that one of her ears was against the floor. She looked up at him remorsefully.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered between breaths. “Are you… all right?” Her eyes went down to the hip he hadn’t realised he was rubbing.

Zevran stilled his hand and nodded quickly. “Full of vim and vigour, my Warden,” he soothed. “You seem to be doing less well.”

“I’m fine,” she panted. “Just lost control… of my magic. No mana left. What about… the others?”

He glanced behind him again, mostly to humour her. “Mmm. All well. Five mages are being seen to by Wynne. Alistair and Leliana are coming over now.” Zevran gave a reassuring wave to Wynne, who had caught them between spells and pointed at Rhodri. She nodded and went back to work.

The templar was first to arrive, and he (and then Leliana) were given the same reassurance the Warden had supplied Zevran with.

“Think you overcast on that last spell, Rhod,” Alistair mumbled, taking her limp hand and squeezing it. 

Rhodri sighed. “I did, forgive me. You’re not harmed, you two?”

They both shook their heads. The Warden smiled weakly. “What a relief,” she murmured. “Please, can you take the last of my lyrium and give it to Wynne?”

“What about for you?” Leliana crouched down, and Zevran could have kicked himself as she swept the soaked hair off the Warden’s face. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

Rhodri smiled weakly. “I’m only at risk if I try to cast any more spells. I’ll rest here until I can move again. Nothing to worry about. But please, help the others if you can. Any other potions she needs, you can take from me.”

Alistair shook his head. “Wynne’s got plenty of everything except the magic juice.” He and Leliana took the last of the lyrium out of Rhodri’s satchel and ferried it to Wynne.

Alone again, Rhodri looked over at Zevran. He stretched out on the ground beside her, giving her a cheerful eyebrow waggle. 

He gestured up at the tiny shaft of light coming down on them through the window. “I always did find sunbathing was better with company.”

She gave a wan laugh. “Zev.”

“You called?”

Rhodri’s eyes went back to his hip. “Take a red potion from my satchel and drink it. It’ll give you some relief from that hip.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “And for you…?”

“We can talk about me when you’re attended to.”

Zevran couldn’t help but smile. “No room for debate on that?”

She didn’t smile back. “None.”

“Ah, ah.” He reached into her satchel and pulled out two apple-red potions. “I know when I am defeated. I shall make this quick, then…”

Zevran uncorked the bottle, downed it in a few gulps, and wrinkled his nose a little. “Elfroot. Tastes like bad tea– ah!”

“Don’t scratch,” Rhodri mumbled; Zevran stilled the hand that was getting ready to scrape the bark off his hip.

“Caught me,” he chuckled weakly. “How long does it last…? Oh.” Zevran bounced his legs up and down– perfectly painless. He let out a sigh of relief. “Not long at all. And now we will attend to you, yes?”

Her face hardened. He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I…” she closed her eyes and puffed out a breath. “You can just leave it there. I’m… not quite spry enough to hold the flask right now.”

Zevran smiled and screwed the stopper out of the flask. “It would be more efficient if we worked together, though, no? We will get back to the children a little faster, sí?”

Rhodri gulped. “I… yes,” she sighed. “Yes, you’re quite right.” Her eyes darted up to him, and away again. “If you have a moment, that would be very kind of you.”

He nodded with a flourish. “My dear Grey Warden, I have all the hours in the day! Now, if I may…?” he reached a hand out near her face. “To steady you, you see.”

She swallowed again, looking rather more like he was about to hit her than assist her. “... Thank you, yes,” she whispered.

Zevran fixed her with a winning smile. “It will be the work of moments,” he assured her, sliding his fingers under her cheek and tilting her head away from the stone. The skin was cool and clammy, smooth as glass, and a perfect, soothing weight in his hand. Did she like to touch other people's faces for that reason?

He shelved the thought as soon as he realised he was having it, bringing the bottle to her mouth and held it steady as the Warden drunk it dry with long, deep draughts.

Her fingers were the first things to move, flexing and tensing, and the rest of her upper body quickly followed suit. It was only when her head left the floor that Zevran realised he had been holding it the entire time.

Rhodri swung upright before the panic could eat him alive, and stretched. Her legs inched around until she was about to stand, and when she was on her feet before him, she extended a hand and pulled him up with her.

She looked down at him with a small, sad smile that made his belly surge into his throat 

“Thank you for being gentle with me,” she said softly. “You’re so kind, Zev. So kind.” She held a hand out near one shoulder, and when he nodded, she took it and squeezed it. “Pretiotus.”

Zevran’s mouth went dry. Precious.

Another squeeze, and she gestured at the rest of the company. Zevran nodded and fell into a numb stroll beside her, hoping he would know to stop walking before an obstacle, like a wall or a sickly mage, would force him to.

#Have Warden Will Travel #HWWT #In which Rhodri Amell tires out #(and thinks Zevran is going to belt her for fucking up god bless I was sad about it too) #Rhodri Amell #sooooooooooooooooooooon