fae

The note arrives in a small burst of blue light. It appears beside Deia just after dusk, folded neatly upon itself and sealed with a flicker of silver-blue magic that smells faintly of parchment, rain, and Gale. She arches a brow before she even touches it.

“Dramatic,” she murmurs.

The seal opens beneath her thumb.

My love,

Should you be willing, meet me beyond the old western stones after moonrise.

Dress in whatever makes you feel most yourself.

I find myself very eager to see her.

G.

Deia reads it once. Then again. By the third time, her mouth has curved despite her best efforts.

“Ridiculous man,” she says softly.

Then she dresses. The gown is black, or nearly black, until light catches it and reveals the glimmering thread beneath, small constellations stitched through lace and shadow. It clings where it wishes, reveals where it dares, and turns every movement into a quiet threat. The sleeves are sheer with dark branching patterns, delicate against the pale line of her arms. The bodice laces down the front with a scandalous confidence that feels less like ornament and more like a challenge.

For a moment, Deia stands before the mirror and looks at herself. Really looks. The horns. The scars. The black mouth. The silver eyes. The body she had once treated like a battlefield left behind after slaughter. Tonight, it looks like hers. She touches one earring into place, lifts her chin, and goes to meet him.

Gale has chosen a ruined overlook above the water, where broken stone rises in uneven teeth around a stretch of open ground. Beyond it, the world falls into dark distance. The night smells of moss, cold rock, and candlewax. He has spread a blanket across the ground and weighed its corners with books because of course he has. Cushions rest along one side. A bottle of wine waits beside two cups. Covered dishes sit near a small enchanted flame, and a paper cone of flowers lies half-open near the edge of the blanket, as though he had set it down and then rearranged it three times. Candles burn in little clusters across the stones.

Above them, an aurora moves. Blue and violet light rolls across the sky in impossible curtains, shimmering between the stars and the jagged silhouettes of the ruins. It is illusion, surely. Beautifully made. The kind of magic that cannot help confessing the hand that shaped it. Grand. Tender. Completely unnecessary. Completely him.

Gale stands when he hears her approach. He is dressed simply by his standards, which means he has still managed to look as though he belongs in some poem about doomed scholars and moonlit vows. His shirt is dark, open at the throat, sleeves loose at the wrists. The orb glows faintly beneath his skin, softer now, quieter, like a held breath that no longer rules the room.

He turns with a smile already forming. Then Deia steps into the candlelight. The smile falters. His hand tightens once at his side. The aurora spills color over her shoulders, over black lace, over the silver ornaments near her horns. She watches him take her in. She watches his careful plan vanish from his face for one bare, helpless second, leaving only awe behind. Deia’s mouth curves.

“Well?”

Gale exhales through his nose, almost a laugh, almost a surrender.

“You look…”

“Yes?”

He looks at her for another breath, eyes dark and bright at once.

“Like you came here to ruin me.”

“Did I?”

“I would accuse you of it, were I capable of forming a sufficiently elegant charge.”

“How tragic. I dressed up for eloquence.”

“You dressed up for an ambush.”

Her smile turns wicked.

“And yet you invited me.”

“That,” Gale says, taking her hand as she reaches him, “speaks rather damningly of my judgment.”

His thumb moves over her knuckles. Slow. Warm. Certain. He lifts her hand and kisses it, then keeps hold as he draws her toward the blanket. There is confidence in the way he touches her now, a steadier fluency in his hands, as though he has learned the shape of welcome. He still watches her. Always. His care remains, stitched into every glance, but he no longer moves as if affection requires formal permission at every breath. He knows her. He knows when she leans. He knows when she yields. He knows the difference between a wall and a door left open in darkness. Deia lets him guide her down beside him. The blanket is soft beneath her palms. The candles tremble in their glass. Overhead, the aurora folds and unfolds like silk beneath water.

“You made all this?” she asks.

“I arranged all this,” Gale says. “The sky, admittedly, required some embellishment.”

“Some.”

“A modest amount.”

She looks up at the luminous sweep above them.

“Gale.”

“I have been very restrained this tenday.”

“You decorated the sky.”

“After eight days of heroic self-denial.”

Deia laughs, and he looks so pleased with the sound that she has to look away first. They eat. They drink. Gale tells her what everyone reported back to him with varying levels of usefulness. Wyll praised the kitchen day with suspicious dignity. Karlach provided a breathless summary involving dancing, wine, and the phrase “friendship hostage.” Astarion claimed his day was the most refined, which Gale took to mean there had been theft. Halsin sent a note that smelled faintly of wildflowers. Shadowheart admitted nothing and somehow sounded proud of it. Lae’zel said only, “She performed adequately,” which Gale has begun to understand as alarming praise. Scratch delivered a stick to his tent at dawn and seemed satisfied that the message was clear. By the time Gale finishes, Deia is laughing into her wine.

“You made them all conspire.”

“I invited them to participate.”

“You made charts.”

“Only one.”

“Liar.”

“Three,” he admits. “One of them was more of a flexible outline.”

She gives him a look.

“It had columns,” he says.

“Gods.”

“In my defense, affection benefits from structure.”

“Your affection could invade a small kingdom.”

“For you, perhaps a large one.”

Her smile softens before she can stop it. The night deepens around them. Somewhere below, water murmurs against stone. The aurora paints them in shifting violet and blue, gathering in the hollow of Gale’s throat, touching the curve of Deia’s cheek, turning the candles ordinary by comparison. Eventually, Gale reaches beside him and draws a book from beneath a folded cloth. It is large, leather-bound, and worn already at the edges despite the newness of its pages. Deia recognizes the look of something handled often by restless hands.

“What is this?” she asks.

Gale sets it across his knees, then opens it between them. The first page is full of sketches. A garden seen from above. Pathways marked in neat lines. Notes crowded into the margins. Flower names. Soil questions. Small diagrams of trellises and stone borders. A corner labeled morning sun. Another marked shade for reading. Several possibilities for seating, all of them crossed out and redrawn with greater care. Deia’s hand stills over her cup.

Gale turns the page. More sketches. Wisteria trained over a wooden frame. Heliotrope near a low wall. Herbs in raised beds. A question beside cherry tree, impractical? followed by investigate anyway. Another note reads, ask Halsin about drainage. Beneath that, in smaller script: leave space for Deia to sit with bare feet in grass. Something in her chest closes around the words. Gale watches her see it.

The book is messy in a way his work rarely is. Plans have been abandoned and remade. Ink blots mark places where thought outran tidiness. Several notes argue with earlier notes. One page is almost entirely occupied by a sketch of climbing flowers around a window, with no practical measurements at all, only the line: perhaps here, if she likes morning light. Deia touches the page with two fingers.

“You are serious,” she says quietly.

Gale’s voice gentles.

“Yes.”

Her throat works. She looks through the book again, slower this time, as though each page is a door opening onto a life she had mentioned only once while standing at the edge of leaving.

“You asked Halsin.”

“I did.”

“And likely three gardeners.”

“Four.”

“Gale.”

“One was more of a horticultural philosopher. I regret that consultation.”

A laugh escapes her, small and wet around the edges. Gale closes the book halfway, leaving his hand resting on the cover. Then he lifts his other hand to her face. His palm settles against her cheek. Warm. Steady. Familiar. He brushes his thumb once beneath her eye, though no tear has fallen.

“I do not think I thanked you enough,” he says.

Deia looks at him.

“For what?”

“For keeping me grounded.”

The aurora moves above them. The color slips over his face, and for one aching moment she remembers another Gale: desperate, frightened, reaching for godhood with both hands and calling it salvation because he could not bear the shape of loss. This Gale sits beside her on a blanket with ink on his fingers, a ridiculous sky overhead, and a book full of soil, flowers, benches, sunlight, and effort. The difference nearly undoes her.

“You chose that,” she says.

“Yes,” he answers. “Because you asked me to look honestly at what I was choosing.”

Deia’s eyes sting. She breathes through it.

“I am glad you stayed,” she says.

Gale’s expression softens until it hurts to look at him.

“So am I.”

Her fingers curl around his wrist, holding his hand against her cheek.

“Your humanity suits you better anyway.”

“Does it?”

“If this tenday of ridiculous affection, logistical tyranny, and candle-based excess is any indication, yes.”

His laugh comes out short and quiet. It trembles through him more than it sounds.

“Logistical tyranny,” he repeats.

“You know what you are.”

“I had hoped for devoted.”

“That too.”

His eyes search her face. Deia lets him.

“I love you,” he says.

The words enter the night with no grandeur at all. They need none. They are lower than the aurora, warmer than the candles, steadier than every god whose name has ever passed through either of their mouths. Deia’s grip tightens around his wrist.

“I love you too,” she says.

Gale kisses her. Slowly at first. His hand remains at her cheek, fingers sliding into the dark spill of her hair, careful around the curve of her horn. He tastes of wine and warmth and something trembling beneath control. Deia leans into him, and the book slips a little between them, pages whispering in the grass.

When the kiss breaks, neither of them moves far. Gale’s forehead rests near hers. His breath brushes her mouth. His thumb strokes once behind her ear. Deia looks at him for a long moment. At his flushed mouth. His loosened shirt. His dark eyes trying valiantly to hold softness and hunger in the same careful hands. Her lips twitch. She exhales through her nose.

“Come here.”

Gale barely has time to blink before she catches the front of his shirt and pulls. She lies back against the blanket, drawing him with her. He follows with a startled laugh, bracing himself above her before his weight can fall too heavily. The aurora spreads behind him in violet fire. His hair slips forward. His expression is bright with surprise, fondness, and a sudden, unmistakable heat.

“My love,” he says, voice lower now, “there is dessert.”

Deia’s hand slides up his chest, over the open collar, fingers curling lightly at the back of his neck.

“I’m sure it can wait.”

Gale glances toward the covered dish with heroic regret.

“I was rather proud of the pear tart.”

“Then it will taste excellent later.”

His eyes return to hers. The air changes. Still playful. Still them. Yet warmer now, closer, threaded through with the sweet danger of having nowhere else to be and no wish to be anywhere else. Gale lowers himself enough that his mouth brushes hers when he speaks.

“You are a terrible influence.”

Deia smiles against him.

“And yet you keep inviting me.”

“I have always been a scholar of dangerous subjects.”

“Then study.”