#@ferocious-notes

My dearest Avis,

I made your tea this morning, only to find you were nowhere in sight. I drank both cups out of spite and immediately regretted it. You always steep it longer than I do. I don’t know how you make it taste better, but I suspect it’s witchcraft. The subtle kind. The sort that starts with herbs and ends with someone rearranging their whole routine to match yours.

You’ve done that to me, you know. Shifted things. Small at first. A change in how I plan my day. The way I pause now before speaking, not out of caution but because I want to hear what you think first. I find your pages tucked into my books, always half-folded, always scented faintly of something sharp and lovely. I caught myself smoothing one out the other night and realized I was smiling at it like a fool.

And yes, I know what you’d say. That you are hardly responsible for my descent into romantic absurdity. But you are. Entirely. I was doing rather well before you started leaving your dried flowers in The Ethics of Necromantic Practice and your stitched bookmarks in my lecture notes. You knew exactly what you were doing. And now look at me—writing love letters when I should be cataloging bones.

There is something deeply unfair about how you move through the world. The rest of us make plans. You just are, and things rearrange themselves accordingly. I have watched even Taash soften in your presence. A little. Very little. But it counts.

You make everything feel less heavy. Even the end of the world. Even myself.

I still want nothing from you but time. Not all of it, just the pieces you feel like offering. I will give you every quiet moment I can in return. My hand, always ready. My ear, even when I pretend not to be listening. My firewood, though I maintain you are spoiled beyond reason and have no idea how to stack it properly. And if the world insists on tearing itself apart, I’ll keep stitching it together one evening at a time, so long as you’re beside me.

You are the comfort I never expected to find. And I hope you know I would not trade you for anything. Not even for uninterrupted sleep, which is saying quite a lot these days.

To my storm-born heart,

There’s thunder in the air tonight—not literal, not quite, but the kind that hums beneath the ribs and sets the blood stirring. I imagine you know it well. I always think of your magic when the wind shifts—how it gathers in your shoulders before it ever leaves your hands, like the storm is waiting for your permission. I could swear I’ve seen clouds change course just to match the tilt of your brow.

You were lightning long before I knew your name.

I told myself I had no business wanting you. That you’d never look twice at a man who speaks in footnotes and spends his evenings in conversations with the dead. I told myself you would think me ancient, absurd, irrelevant—just another fussy academic left to haunt the edge of your life. But Maker, Avis, I looked anyway. And what I saw—what I still see—has brought me to my knees with more force than any spell I’ve ever conjured.

You are brilliance in motion—a Grey Warden, yes, but also a mind sharp as cut glass and a heart far too generous for the world you’ve been asked to bear. You walk into danger without hesitation, offer a healing vial without a word, press a leaf into my hand with a note about where you found it and what it might cure. I find traces of you everywhere: pages from your herbarium tucked into my books, scraps of embroidery, little bundles of herbs labeled with dry wit—one tucked into Fade-Borne Phenomena read “for headaches caused by mages who think they know better.” I keep them all. I can’t seem to part with anything that’s passed through your hands.

And when you touch me—Maker. The first time, I thought I imagined it. I’ve seen you wrap arms around shoulders, press kisses to cheeks, bold and warm with everyone but me. With me, you hesitated. For a long time I thought it was revulsion. That you saw me as untouchable in the worst sense. But now I think—hope—that it was something else. That I mattered more. That your hands waited not because they didn’t want, but because they did.

There’s a hush to the way you move when we’re alone, as though some part of you still believes you must hide what you feel. But I’ve felt it, my love—in the stutter of your breath, in the way your fingers clutch at me when you forget to hold back. You’ve had to be careful for so long. Too long. If you’ll let me, I would give you the kind of safety that doesn’t require silence. Not through promises, but through reverence. Through time. Through every brush of my mouth against your skin until your body sings without restraint.

I think about having you beneath me—often, and in far too much detail. The way your thighs tense when I grip them. The soft part of your belly I want to kiss until you’re writhing. How you’d sound if I held you open and used my mouth the way I’ve been aching to. I want to watch you fall apart, slowly, again and again, until you forget how to be quiet. Until all that careful control gives way to want.

And now I’ve gone and let my thoughts stray further than I meant to. I was going to write you something respectable. Instead, I’m sitting here flushed and ridiculous, thinking about the way your legs would feel over my shoulders.

You see what you do to me?

I will not ask for forever. We are both sworn—to duty, to fate, to the end of things. But in this moment, I am yours. Entirely. And if all I have is a string of moments lit by your presence, I will spend each one writing your name into the marrow of this life.