I've never loved a darker blue than the darkness I have known in you
There is a part of Leliana that knows it is the height of selfishness to ask him to wear a crown that has become too heavy for her to bear. It is the height of selfishness to ask him to take over because she is weary when she knows that he does not hunger for such things. But she cannot help but feel a seed of hope planted in her chest that this will be a redemption for him. He had not meant all of the things that had happened during his last rule. He had not meant for the bloodshed and the sorrow and the grief.
“You inspire greatness for me,” she whispers against him as he returns the kiss, as they tangle around one another and find home in the curve of their neck and the press of their mouth to each other. She has never tired of the feel of him—no matter whether it was the feel of his scales or the feel of him now. She has never found him anything but extraordinary or desirable; never found him anything but perfect.
She reaches up to kiss his cheek.
“I know that you are what Tephra needs right now, Vul.”
Concern touches her eyes, traces lines around her mouth as it grows a little taut. “I don’t think the war is over. I don’t think we’re safe.” She can feel the tension like a physical thing now, the way that it surrounds their home, the way they are left hanging—subject to the wind and the water.
“Tephra needs a general who can lead her through war. She needs you.”
She would still be there. Her protective magic still surrounding the place, but she was not the woman who had met Loess that day they rained fire down on them. She does not have the anger. She does not have the uncontrollable power raging through her. She does not have what it takes to stand up to an army.
She presses her lips together and then presses her forehead into his neck.
But he does.
like fire weeping from a cedar tree, know that my love would burn with me