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Warmth blossoms suddenly on the skin over Gale’s sternum, underneath his robes. The sensation is so unexpected that he freezes in mid-motion, a heavy book in one hand half in and half out of his bag. The sending stone cut into the necklace he wears now almost constantly is heavy against the dull thud of his heart, echoing around in his chest, the warmth from the stone indicating a message is coming through. For a moment, he’s still, unable to move, unable to shake the surprise. Six months. It's been six months since the last time the stone sent him her voice. And now, on an ordinary day, a message. From her.
“Professor?” A few of his students linger past the end of class. One of them has caught the look on his face.
He trains his face into one of complacent calm. “Yes? Any other questions before I head out for the day?”
The student blinks at him, then shakes her head and goes back to her discussion with her friends. Gale turns his back to the rows of chairs and long tables, facing the chalkboard. His arm begins to ache. He realizes he’s still holding the heavy textbook and lowers it into his still open bag. Slowly, he takes the necklace in his hand, pressing it into his palm, absorbing the stone’s magical heat. The message is a simple one, words that drift across the plane of his mind, a whisper from some unknown distance: meet in city of the dead tonight.
Gale holds on until the heat dissipates and the stone sits cool and inanimate in his hand, rolling the words around in his mind until they’ve lost all meaning, standing before his chalkboard as the afternoon light pours into the classroom from the tall windows he always leaves open. He casts a simple spell to draw them closed today, lowering the blinds with the wave of his free hand, drenching him in darkness.
.
The City of the Dead. Forbidden to citizens of Waterdeep after dark, but the lock on the gate is easy enough to bypass, although Gale hasn’t had much need to since he was a student himself. He slips past the locked gate, closing it gently behind him, and clings to the shadows against the high walls that surround the ancient cemetery. The churn of magic can be felt plainly in the air, pocket dimensions rippling under his feet, neatly containing bodies upon bodies for infinite storage. Shadowheart has always liked visiting the cemetery during daylight hours, walking amidst other visitors, the black of her hair almost blue in the bright sunlight. Tonight, the moonless sky offers no chance of light to bounce off her hair. He wonders why she chose this place.
At some point, his feet slow to a stop, and his mind catches up with his body. The day had passed at once heartbreakingly slowly and so quickly that he can still feel the book in his hand and his student's eyes on him after class. He touches the stone that hangs from the necklace hesitantly, a message on the tip of his tongue, but he isn’t sure what he would even ask. ‘Where have you been’ may be an apt place to begin, although his way is to cushion unpleasantness with some flowy words. Perhaps he could compliment her hair, or her clothes. Perhaps he could downplay just how much he misses her. He looks down at his robes, wrinkled from sitting at his desk all day, and tries to recall the last time he looked into a mirror.
Footsteps behind him stop his train of thought. He turns slowly, still under the shadow of the high walls that cut the cemetery away from the splendor of the city. A figure approaches, thin and wispy, with long, dark hair. His heart leaps into his throat. Her name rises, unbidden, unrestrained, to his lips.
“Shadowheart.” His relief is as strong in his voice as the soft night breeze that blows between them, unmistakable. He can’t hide it even if he wants to. “Oh, Shadowheart.”
She takes a step closer. In the shadows, he can see her face, and warmth floods his body. He reaches forward. She takes half a step back. In the back of his mind, he registers this as odd, but his body lurches toward her anyway, his hand reaching for hers, already anticipating the touch of her skin, the familiar curve of her nails, the lines of her palm.
“You’re here,” he says, blinking away the burning in the corners of his eyes, willing himself not to cry in front of her. “You’re really here.”
Her eyes move over his face, he can see them flash in the dark. Her dark vision takes him in. He’s at a disadvantage, barely able to see past a silhouette and the softening of shadows on the tip of her nose, the outline of her lips. He tries to take her hand but she takes another step back.
“A wizard,” she says, almost to herself. Her voice is low. It sits between them for a moment before it drifts up into the air and disappears.
Gale’s heart pounds in his ears. He can hear his own breathing. “What?”
She holds out her hand. Her stone sits on her palm, cut out of the matching necklace he had made for her. It looks as unassuming as a marble in the pale light of the city glow around them, almost absorbing the darkness in the air, almost shining with it.
He reaches for it without thinking. “Is that why you haven’t spoken with me in six months? Did you lose the stone?”
She tilts her head to one side. Her hair falls over her shoulder. His hands almost burn with the effort it takes not to touch her, to run his fingers through her hair.
“Actually,” she says, her voice cold and distant, devoid of warmth, devoid of feeling. “I don’t know you. I found the stone hidden among my things. I’m here to figure out why that is.”
Gale feels a twinge in his jaw and realizes he’s clenching his teeth. He unclenches, taking a deep breath that sits in his throat rather than going down into his lungs. The air around them suddenly feels thin.
“I see,” he says. His voice is strained even to his own ears. “Well. Yes. I am a wizard.”
She remains silent. He squints in the dark to better see her face but can barely make out her features. A slow panic begins to build behind his rib cage. He holds his hands together, feeling his fingernails digging into his own skin. The pain settles him for a moment, clears his mind just enough to piece a few details together.
One, she hadn’t deserted him. The glaring silence and stillness of his sending stone, one of a lovingly crafted pair, hadn’t been a result of her abandonment of him. The nights he had spent laying awake in his bed staring at the stone as though hoping it would carry his thoughts to her, all that time pining and hoping she hadn’t chosen her faith over him, it wasn’t all in vain.
Or was it? His second thought, that her memories had been wiped once again, hits him full force. He takes an awkward half step back, staring at the ground, trying to steel himself to the possibility that she has subjected herself to this memory wipe herself. After all, she is the Mother Superior, the leader of her faith, and she makes the rules now. Doesn’t she?
He looks back up at her. The darkness drenches them both like a torrential rain. He wants to step closer but is afraid of what he may see in her eyes.
“Do you want to relocate?” he asks her. His voice quivers. He clears his throat and tries again. “People aren’t actually allowed in this area after dark. I wouldn’t want you to attract any unwanted attention.”
Silence. She turns her head to look at the gate a ways away. The circlet around her head catches some stray light from somewhere and shines in the darkness. Gale holds onto it, reorienting himself around it, facing her.
“Very well,” she says, her voice curt. “Lead the way.”
.
They step out of the cemetery and into the light filled street. As if emerging from a portal to another world, Gale’s senses are overwhelmed by the lights from nearby street lamps, pouring out of shop windows as people close up for the evening, the smell of salt in the air, the sounds of waves gently lapping at the nearby shore. He makes the mistake of looking over at her. Outside the ethereal darkness of the cemetery, his eyes adjust to the light and he sees her.
He sees her and looks away quickly, back at the street. His mind picks up at the first idea that floats through the churn of thoughts that spin so furiously, he feels as though he may be sick right here in the middle of the street.
“There’s a bookstore nearby,” he says.
In the corner of his peripheral vision, he can see her looking around, absorbing what she can see of the city.
“Fine,” she says shortly.
“Alright.” He starts walking. She remains one half step behind, just out of his periphery, so he has to turn his head toward her if he wants to look at her. He keeps his eyes ahead, on the cobblestone street, listening to their feet hit the stones, and the sounds of the ocean in the air, the city slowly going home for the night.
By his estimation, the bookstore is about an hour from closing and blessedly empty. The shopkeeper, a normally chatty older woman, spots him and starts to approach, until her eyes fall on Shadowheart behind him and her step falters. The shopkeeper gives him a conspiratorial wink and settles back in behind the register. Gale tries to smile back but his mouth feels like it’s encased in jelly, everything slow and uncomfortable, and not working the way it should.
Shadowheart follows him to the back of the shop, to the big squishy armchairs that he loves, under the wide back window that lets in enough sunlight to read during the day. At night, however, the back window is dark, and the lights within the shop turn it into a mirror where he can finally see himself, and himself with Shadowheart, for the first time.
He lets himself look. She’s wearing a long black cloak that covers the details of her body, turning her into a blank, anonymous thing. Her hair is pulled together at the nape of her neck, falling down over the back of the cloak. The only adornment she wears is a thin silver circlet with a black gem in the middle, right above the spot between her brows that he likes to touch when she frowns.
He catches himself before the thought of her brows can draw a deeper memory, afraid of what his face will show. He feels frayed, frazzled, not in control. He looks it too, his hair falling over his face, his hands clenching and unclenching, his robes still wrinkled from sitting around all day. He drops his bag on the floor by his usual armchair and takes a seat, sinking into the worn cushions. She stands for a moment longer, then sits across from him, on the very edge of the chair, and places her hands neatly on her lap.
“So,” he says, and he has no idea how to start. The slight frown on her face has him distracted. The slight wrinkle of her nose. It’s so painfully familiar that he feels his body lurching forward again, toward her, and has to fight to keep himself sitting in his chair. He pushes his hair back behind his ears for something to do with his hands. “You forgot me,” he ends up saying.
“Perhaps,” she says carefully. “You know me? We… communicated using this stone?”
“I—yes. We did.”
She mulls this over, frowning at her knees. He wonders how much to tell her. How much to reveal. Her eyes fall over him again blankly, not a flicker of recognition in them. He jumps to his feet and walks to the window, standing close enough to cast a shadow that he can look through, past the reflection of himself and the stranger piloting Shadowheart’s body.
“Do you provide magics for the temple?” she asks behind him. “The Evocation scrolls we have… is that you?”
“No, I don’t provide you with any scrolls,” he says.
“Then what…?” she trails, but the end of the sentence sits in the air: What did I need you for?
He looks at her reflection in the glass. She’s still staring down at her knees, her brows knit, deep in thought.
“Do you feel anything?” he asks, desperate. His palms are starting to sweat. He wipes them impatiently on his robes. “Any tug of memory? Anything when you look at me?”
She’s looking at his back now. “Should I?” she asks.
Slowly, he turns around, facing her. “I think you should. I think you do.”
“Presumptuous of you,” she says. “If you know me, then you know what I am. What I represent.”
He nods, once.
“What use would I have for a wizard in another city?” she asks sharply. “Answer quickly.”
He doesn’t want to sugar coat it. If she’s lost to him, he can at least arm her with the truth. “We are lovers,” he says gently. “I made you that stone. I made myself one too.” He tugs his necklace out from under his robes. Her eyes drop to it, widening as they take in the stone that rests on his chest, the same as the one clutched in her hand. “I knew it, I knew something must have happened. You haven’t responded to my sendings in six months. I’ve been used to a week at most between messages. I thought—” thought she had left him, but that thought seems too pathetic to reveal now, not when something far worse has happened.
She jumps to her feet, startling him. “No,” she says.
Her quick dismissal pulls some hot anger from deep inside him, untangling from the churning fear. “Deny it if you want, but you must have hidden that stone somewhere you would still find it even when your memory has been lost. Somehow, despite not remembering me, you found it anyway. You tell me what that means.”
Something flickers over her face. A spasm of her eyebrows. She takes a sharp breath and holds it. Then, she leaves.
Gale watches her back as it disappears out of sight. The sound of the shop door opening and closing reaches him in his armchair, the jingle of the bell, then the silence. He stays in the chair until the shopkeeper comes around the tell him the store is closing.
.
Throughout the following week, Gale moves slowly. He seems to take twice as long to bathe as usual. When he lifts his arm from the bath, he watches the drops of water cling to his skin and slowly fall, each drop catching the light from the window, glittering like a diamond before plummeting to the surface of the water in the tub, creating the tiniest impact before sinking into the rest of the water. It takes him longer to get into and out of bed. His body feels like it has tripled in size, his knees aching with the effort of moving, his heart beating slowly as though his blood has been turned into slime, crawling through his veins, sluggish and tired and old. As he goes through the motions of leaving the house, teaching, coming back home, sleeping, he realizes he is grieving but can’t seem to muster up a cry. His eyes remain dry. Somehow he is never late to anything. He can freeze a smile on his face as his mouth moves to create the words he needs to make to teach a class of faces that blur as he paces by his desk, explaining something. It all feels like it’s happening to someone else, someone far away, someone outside of the body he finds himself in.
And then the stone embedded into the chain he still wears around his neck suddenly heats up, and he slams back into awareness, back into his body, as though dropped from a great height.
He blinks, looking around in surprise. He’s at home. The balcony door is open, and soft sea air drifts into the room, chased by the dull orange glow of sunset. He touches the stone, hesitantly at first, and then clutches it in his fist, receiving the message, somehow understanding the words despite the hammering of his heart in his chest: bookstore tonight.
A breathy sound hits his ears. After a beat, he realizes it’s coming out of his own mouth. The bookstore. The comforting smell of parchment and ink and the soft armchair he loved to read on. Despite the pleasant memories of the place, he feels an aversion to it now. As if she’s tainted it with her presence and her terrible act.
He gets up anyway. Puts his hair up. Slips on his shoes. Steps out the door, walking quickly, walking to her.
.
She’s sitting on the armchair when he gets there, still in her anonymous and unadorned black cloak. The circlet with the black gem is still affixed to her forehead. Her black hair is braided. The sight of it gives him pause. She looks just like she did in the beginning, before everything, when she was a cleric and he was a wizard and neither of them knew what the future had in store for them.
She meets his eyes and straightens up. He keeps going, taking a seat opposite her. To their left, the wide window acts as a mirror again, the darkness outside meeting the comfortable yellow lights within.
“I have questions,” she says without preamble.
He sits back in his chair. His body feels stiff from the sluggishness of the past week. He tilts his neck from side to side, trying to loosen the triangle of stress just between his shoulder blades.
“So do I,” he replies. “Perhaps we may take turns.”
“First, I need proof that you aren’t lying,” she says.
A laugh bursts out of him, sharp and sudden. She raises her eyebrows.
“Sorry, that is just a very you thing to say,” he mutters. “As if the stone wasn’t proof enough. Very well.”
She shifts in her seat. Her braid falls over her shoulder, the black contrasting with what he can see of her pale chest. The way she sits, the braid, her hands clasped on her lap, it tugs painfully at his memory. He focuses on the hem of her cloak, the road dust that clings to the cloth. He wonders whether she’s been in Waterdeep this entire time, in this very city as he moved around his usual haunts, thinking and worrying and dreaming about her.
“I was there when you became a Dark Justiciar,” he tells her.
Her eyes snap to his. The air between them seems to tighten, like stretched fabric.
“Yes,” she says slowly, her eyes never leaving his. “You were. You were there. You didn’t stop me.”
“Of course, I didn’t.” He doesn’t like dwelling on that, on the dark violence of the moment, how that action rippled across space and time to affect everything that came after. “So you do know me, in some capacity. But have forgotten the specifics of our… relationship.”
She nods slowly. “Yes.”
Her proof in hand, she sits back in her chair, waiting for his question.
“Did you come here from Baldur’s Gate?” he asks.
It’s a few moments before she responds. He sees the walls between them plainly and remembers the work that was done to break them down all that time ago. The work that now lays still ahead. This stranger, this Shadowheart, so close and yet still so far away. He wants to touch her. He wants to run home and lock all the doors and windows.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m staying at the temple in the city.”
A Sharran temple in Waterdeep. Of course there is one, some dark smudge against the city’s sparkling beauty. He’s never seen nor heard tell of such a temple but of course it exists, and of course she would stay there. But he allows himself a brief burst of relief that she hasn’t been in the same city as him this entire time without knowing how close he is.
“Who do you serve here?” she asks him.
He frowns. “I don’t serve anyone. I’m a professor.”
“A professor,” she repeats. The way the word falls from her lips is as though it’s in a language she doesn’t speak.
“Just an ordinary professor,” he says. “Nothing exciting here. I’m sure that isn’t what you expected.”
“No, it isn’t,” she says, half under her breath. That line has reappeared between her eyebrows. He clenches his hands to keep himself from reaching for her.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he says. A lick of hot anger rises within him once more, breaking through the numb shock he’s been drifting in and out of since he last saw her. “But you once thought I was worth the danger of a secret relationship. So perhaps I am not as boring as you think.”
Her eyes narrow as she looks at him. Something in her expression makes his heart stutter. “That remains to be seen.”
He gets to his feet. She looks up at him, exposing the soft line of her neck. The anger is now simmering in the pit of his stomach. He can’t stay here, he can’t stay here and look at her and see nothing in her eyes when she looks at him.
“I have just one more question,” he says. “Did you do this to yourself? Did you erase me? Or was this done to you?”
She throws her braid over her shoulder and straightens her back. He knows when she does this that there’s a little arch to her lower back now, and the memory of the last time he had his hand there sits on the edge of his consciousness.
“I did this,” she says firmly. “I am the leader of my cloister. No one can subject me to anything I don’t want.”
He starts to say something and realizes there aren’t any words coming out. He closes his mouth. Somewhere else in the shop, someone flips through pages of a book loudly, and the sound of papers shifting together fills the dead air.
Shadowheart stands. Her eyes search his face. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for.
“You allowed yourself to be in a secret relationship with me,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, and the conspiratorial nature of it sends a wave of goosebumps over his arms and chest. “Knowing full well who I am first and foremost devoted to. And now you think you’re hurt by my actions. I think you have always expected this to happen. I think I did too,” she adds, and her face softens just a little as she says it, the lines of her mouth smoothing out. He’s stepped closer to her as she was speaking and finds himself close enough that if he lifted his hand, the tips of his fingers would touch her wrist.
“You’re right,” he whispers. The anger in his gut has solidified into something cold and heavy. He is weighed down once again, moving in slow motion. “When I met you, when you were a cleric without a memory, I loved you. After that, I’m not sure. Perhaps I was only clinging to a memory of you that you now can’t even remember.”
His words strike some unseen chord within her. He can sense the change in the air instantly. Even after everything, he’s still attuned to her, to her mood, to the thoughts she’s always had trouble hiding from her face.
“And you…” he pauses, his fingers drifting toward her, and although he doesn’t make contact, he can feel the warmth from her skin touching the warmth from his. “Perhaps you’re clinging to the same memory. By hiding your sending stone. And finding it after you thought you had erased me. And coming here tonight, to meet me.”
She takes a breath, as if to speak. Everything feels suspended, still. Even the flipping of pages nearby has stalled. The tips of his fingers barely brush the inside of her wrist, trailing over her soft skin and her racing pulse.
Her breath comes out in a rush, touching his face. He takes a quick step back, outside of her bubble, away from her warmth and her breath.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’m aware it’s over. Between us. And now I have a taste for the loss your patron lady deals in. The gods always win.”
“Wait,” she says just as he turns to leave. “Tell me your name.”
A shiver slips down his spine. “It’s Gale,” he says, his voice shaking. “My name is Gale.”
He leaves quickly, feeling her eyes on him until he exits the shop. It isn’t until he gets home and crawls into bed that he realizes he never took back her stone.
He takes off his necklace and throws it across the room. It hits the opposite wall with a clatter. The sound seems to echo in the emptiness that follows.
.
His voice echoes in the expanse of his classroom as he calls out, “Reports due after the holiday!” to a quickly exiting mass of chattering students. A few linger, as always, sitting in small groups, their voices drifting over to his desk, so he only catches snippets here and there. He packs his textbook and shoulders the bag. When he turns to the door, ready to go home, he pauses. Someone is there, standing in the threshold of his classroom.
“Yes?” he says, raising his voice just a little over the din of chatter and movement that bounces off the high walls.
The figure steps in, and between the clasped shut black cloak, he can see two slippered feet moving, and he knows it’s her right away. His eyes slowly move up the length of the cloak, falling over her hooded face just as she lowers the hood and meets his gaze.
“Professor,” she says, her eyes darting over to the scattered few students that have lingered after class.
He struggles to find a word to say, anything to do other than stand with his hip leaning against his desk for support.
“Clear the room, please,” he says quickly, without looking away from her, lest she disappear in a puff of smoke and he realize this is all just a hallucination.
A few students grumble but the room is filled with the sounds of chairs shuffling and footsteps as they make their way to the door. The last one out closes it behind her.
Behind Gale, the bright afternoon light pours in from the wide windows, throwing his shadow out long before him, and Shadowheart stands perfectly centered within it as light surrounds her. She isn’t wearing her circlet. Her hair is braided. Despite the shadow she stands in, her eyes are clear and seem to shine, catching the sunlight anyway.
She looks beautiful. As beautiful as the last time he saw her, six months earlier. And as beautiful as the time before that. He realizes it’s been a full year since the last time he touched her. This close to her, he feels his body urge him to close the distance between them. For a moment, he forgets the obstacles she let her goddess place before them, and lets himself feel relief at seeing her again. Then the moment passes. He stands up straighter, unsettling the shadow she stands in. A ray of sunlight hits her face. Her skin is pale but glows in the light.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. He’s surprised by how steady his voice is, how much he’s holding back.
She looks around the classroom, taking in the high ceilings, the diagrams he’s drawn out on the chalkboard, the mess of papers he still hasn’t graded on his desk. “There aren’t actually many professors named Gale in this city,” she says.
“You looked for me?”
“I…” she trails, her voice catching. “You weren’t answering your stone. I sent a few messages over the past months.”
He doesn’t respond. The space on his chest where the familiar weight of the stone would press is now conspicuously empty. He knows exactly where the stone is, gathering dust in a corner of his room on the floor just where he had thrown it after their last meeting. He didn’t have the heart to pick it up, to touch it again, to hope and pray for it to warm with another message from her.
She steps out of his shadow and toward his desk, leaning against the chalkboard, the only stretch of unmarked black in a sea of white scribbling, words he can hardly remember writing there now. Over the years, he had imagined her in his classroom many times, many ways. Held over his desk. Over by the window. More innocently, simply having lunch with her between classes. It had never been possible before, her duties always eclipsing any needs he had to be near her in a less secretive way. Now, her being here is almost an insult.
He crosses his arms over his chest, a barrier to hide his heart behind. “Why are you here?” he asks.
There’s an air of uncertainty that surrounds her. It reminds him so much of their tadpole days, roughing it in the wilderness, brushing with death at least ten times a day. Not knowing which moment would be their last. It was that sense of doubt that gave him the bravery to pursue her in the first place. His heart gives a painful squeeze as the memories flood through him. He averts his gaze. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her clasping and unclasping her hands in front of her.
“I’m not really sure,” she finally says.
Somewhere outside his classroom, he can hear another lesson ending, footsteps echoing in the hall, young people going home for the day. He feels old suddenly, very old. Very tired.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he says slowly.
“I… want to understand. What I did. Why I did it.”
“So, you’ve come to study me,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. “Like some animal in a cage. Who is this person you loved enough to keep a secret from your underlings, but didn’t love enough to keep in your head? Whether or not you find the answer is of no consequence to me. I’ve already accepted that you’re gone. And still you come to drive the knife in deeper.” He realizes he’s yelling only as he stops, when the end of his sentence bounces around the high ceilings of the empty classroom. A solid something has lodged itself in his throat. He speaks past it in a whisper, “You had a choice and you made it. There’s no going back. What does it matter whether you understand the reasoning behind a decision that can’t be reversed?”
He hates the quiver in his voice, the way it cracks and breaks around his words, how needy and pathetic he sounds. He clutches the edge of his desk for support, hoping he doesn’t fall over in front of her. Everything is heavy, the clothes on his back, his hair, his own broken heart. He can’t bear to look at her face and keeps his eyes on the floor, on the tips of her shoes and the hem of her cloak.
“You’re right,” she says. “There’s no point. I don’t understand why I’m here but I’m here. You mentioned, the last time I saw you, that I had hidden my stone somewhere I could still find it even after I had forgotten it. Forgotten you. I think I am drawn here because, just like with the stone, you are hidden in some part of my mind that I can always find, even though it’s all gone now.”
He’s stepped toward her while she was speaking, his legs moving of their own accord. Now that he looks her right in the face, he realizes she isn’t wearing any makeup. Her eyes are clear, her skin soft and bright.
It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her to leave. He thinks ahead to the end of another day, laying in his bed with the lights on because he doesn’t want to be alone in the dark, with the necklace he made somewhere on the floor of his room, drawing his attention like a beacon. And then another day. And then another day. On and on, forever.
He had always known this relationship would end in a way that satisfies only Shar, with loss and pain and darkness. The gods always win. And mortals are only their playthings. Gale finds himself biting back a bitter laugh at the way he’s allowed a goddess to bring him to the brink of ruin not once but twice.
The tips of Shadowheart’s fingers suddenly touch the backs of his knuckles, silencing all thought. Her skin is cool, his hot and flushed. The contrast sends a shiver through him that he can’t hide. He turns his hand and gently takes hers, moving slowly, as if in the presence of a wild animal. He can feel her tense as he holds her hand. For a moment, he thinks she might run away. And then she relaxes, her fingers intertwining with his. Warmth spreads from their contact point. He brings their hands up to his face and brushes his lips to the back of her hand. She watches him, her eyes wide, absorbing the action. Her lips part. A tiny sigh breaks past. Gale feels almost feverish.
“Is there a place we can go to talk?” she asks.
He speaks with his mouth against her skin. “My home. Let’s go.”
.
The sight of her in his living room hurts. He feels it deep in his chest, a persistent ache. He sighs to relieve some of the pressure, keeping his eyes on the couch, watching her step around his furniture from the corner of his eye.
She unclasps her cloak and places it over the arm of the couch. Underneath, she’s wearing a plain black tunic and matching tightly fitting pants. The shape of her calves catches his attention, of all things. He keeps his eyes averted but they jump up to her legs, along the line of her thigh, up the curve of her hip, as if enchanted, or cursed.
She faces the balcony, catching his reflection in the glass door, meeting his eyes there. He finds it’s easier to look at her image on the glass. Through it, he can see the loveseat and the little table on his balcony, and beyond that the sea and the purple and orange sunset that cuts across the black she wears.
She doesn’t turn, her eyes moving over his reflection, observing him observing her.
“Do you hate me?” she asks, her voice soft.
He thinks about it. In the glass, the green of her eyes mixes with the purple in the sky and creates a brand new color. He tries to give it a name but can’t think past the way her braid falls right between her shoulder blades, touching that soft skin he knows is there. The knowledge of her body feels like a burden now.
“Yes, a little,” he says, honestly. “Does that surprise you?”
“No, but it sounds like it surprises you.” She reaches forward to open the balcony door, then stops short and looks at him for permission.
He nods. She opens the door, brisk evening sea air lifting her hair from her face and his hair from his shoulders. They both take a deep breath at the same time.
“This is familiar,” she says. She takes a step outside and peers over the edge of the balcony. “Did I spend much time here, before?”
He nods but doesn’t elaborate, suddenly unable to speak. Despite not physically being in the space at the time, he always considered the balcony to be the place where they first made love, that first special kiss on what he thought was one of his final nights alive. Often, he replays the memory in his mind, a treasured moment, and now he’s the only one who remembers it.
He takes another deep breath and holds it, trying to keep it together. She sits on the edge of the loveseat. Her braid falls over her shoulder as she turns to look at him.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t…” he trails, taking another breath. “This isn’t easy for me. Can you just tell me why you’re here? Please? Can you please just tell me what you want?”
His voice is rising again. He shuts his mouth, his teeth clicking together with the force of it. Shadowheart places her hands neatly on her lap, one over the other. Her injury is stark on the back of her hand, plainly visible against the paleness of her skin. A reminder of what she chose over him.
She raises one hand over the other. In the pale glow of sunset, a thin shadow is cast over her skin.
“Light,” she says, just barely over a whisper. He has to step out onto the balcony to hear her over the background noise of the ocean. “My Dark Lady values darkness above all, but you need light in order to cast a shadow. In my mind, I can feel myself reaching for that light. There is… doubt.”
She lowers her hand back onto her lap.
“There has always been doubt,” he tells her. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have continued seeing me.”
She looks up at him. His heart lurches hard enough that he is propelled forward to her, sitting on the opposite end of the loveseat, a mutiny of the body, his limbs moving almost independently of his mind. “Gale,” she says, a whisper this time, swallowed beyond their little bubble into the sounds of the ocean and the city. “I erased you because I wanted to remove that doubt. I wanted to devote myself utterly to my Lady. I still want to. But that darkness in my mind is… incomplete. Something is missing.”
He realizes he’s holding his breath. She lowers her hand, back onto her lap, the scar visible again, ugly against her pale skin.
“Something,” he repeats.
She looks over at the edge of the balcony. The sun is almost completely set. Night falls quickly over Waterdeep, bringing a smattering of stars to sight. He can see them reflected in her eyes.
“What do you expect me to do with this information?” he asks. He sounds helpless. He can’t help it.
“I don’t know.” She addresses the shifting waves beyond the balcony. “I should go.”
He grabs her wrist, a reaction that surprises him. She looks at him sharply, her eyes darting from his face to the viselike grip he has on her. For a moment, he thinks he may have overstepped. But his thumb slips over the soft skin of the inside of her wrist, pressing down, and he feels her pulse, a jumpy, fluttery thing, like butterfly wings.
They look at each other for a moment in silence. The sound of the water covers up his heavy breathing. In his mind, he moves his inner map of this mess they’re in around and around, looking for a way out. But his mind is clouded and compromised. There is no thought that strikes him that isn’t tainted with longing and regret, with the need to hold her closer, and the equally strong desire to push her far away.
She doesn’t get up. And neither does he. He holds her wrist, measuring her heartbeat, as the sky grows darker and darker, until the purple light of sunset is replaced by pale moonlight that falls over her face exactly how he remembers it.
.
She stands by the front door. Her cloak is back on, anonymizing her again, covering the shape of her body from him. She has a hand on the door knob but doesn’t turn it, doesn’t move to leave.
There’s an ache in his chest, close to where the orb once was before Mystra removed it in exchange for the crown. In times like this, Gale wonders what things would’ve been like if he hadn’t given up unlimited power. Certainly, at the very least, he wouldn’t be standing in his own living room, feeling utterly lost. He wouldn’t be holding his hands into fists at his sides, holding onto the warmth of the touch of her wrist between his fingers. He wouldn’t be so close to asking her to stay, please stay, don’t leave him again.
He keeps his mouth shut. There is still some pride in him somewhere, buried deep but still there. He has given up unlimited power, but the man that may have chased it is still here. Slowly, he takes a few steps forward, toward her, watching her eyes follow him cautiously. He stops just short of the door, reaching by her waist to take the door knob, still warm from where her hand rested on it. The backs of his knuckles brush the cloak, and through it he can feel the warmth of her body.
He pushes the door open. A cool gust of air pushes her hair from her face, revealing more of her slender neck, the pale skin he’s kissed every inch of. He turns to leave.
“Gale.” Her voice is so quiet that the night breeze filtering into the house almost swallows it.
He stops, but doesn’t turn, doesn’t look at her.
“Can I stay tonight?” she asks. Her voice is halting. Stopping, starting again, like the words are stuck in her throat.
Gale stares at the wall ahead. He starts to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of saying yes or no, but any list he draws up is interrupted by a wave of heat that passes over him as he thinks on the curve of her neck, the exact color of her eyes, the shape of her so well known to him that he can trace it over the shapeless cloak she wears. To see it again. Just one more time. To hold her like he used to, to kiss her on all the places she likes. Liked. He rubs his face with both hands.
“Why?” he asks, perhaps to buy time.
She shifts behind him, the fabric of her cloak rustling. “I want to know,” she says. “I want to know what I gave up.”
“Won’t Shar be pleased,” he says with a bitter laugh that sounds almost like a bark. “The loss I feel now. And what you feel, surely. I suppose this would be like prayer to you, staying with me and then leaving in the morning anyway. Like prayer.”
“In a way,” she replies, her voice just above a whisper.
He laughs again, an ugly sound. “Shadowheart, you don’t know how to be cruel.”
She closes the door. The sound of it closing is loud in the sudden quiet.
“This way,” he says, and starts down the hall, hearing her footsteps behind him.
He leads her to his room, and she walks in and around, moving slowly, looking at the furniture, the window, the bed, her eyes lingering there, narrowing, as though hoping to extract memory from it, memory of bodies moving together and whispers in the dark. Gale sits on the edge of the bed and can almost feel the imprint of their bodies on it, as though the memories have come to life and left their weight behind, sinking into the bed, shifting and slipping over each other. Oh gods, I can’t do this, he thinks suddenly, a panic seizing him at the base of his skull, cold and frightening.
“Shadowheart,” he begins, his voice cracking.
She removes her cloak, draping it over the armchair by the window. Moonlight streams in and touches her dark hair, making it almost seem white. She looks at him expectantly.
He takes a deep breath and removes his shoes, kicking them off one at a time and leaving them where they land by the bed. She goes next, removing her shoes, her feet pale against the worn wooden floor. He takes off his tunic, and she takes off hers, and their eyes trace each other, his moving over the familiar curves of her, her collarbones, the pink of her nipples, the flat plane of her stomach. She takes off her leggings next. He takes off his pants. His heartbeat seems to echo in his ears.
“Here,” he says, almost a breath with the hint of the invitation, barely even a spoken word. He puts his hand out. She’s reaching as she walks toward him, her hand slipping over his, palms touching, fingers wrapped around each other. He pulls her on top of him, her soft thighs on either side of him, and he wraps his arms around her middle and buries his face into her chest.
Her hands weave through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. He undoes her braid, deftly navigating the hair ties, pulling each one off and placing it beside him on the bed. Her hair falls around her shoulders, between them, on his face.
“This is why I keep it in a braid,” she says, pushing her hair behind her, where it slides down her back like a waterfall.
“I know,” he says, his mouth moving against the skin between her breasts. “I like it this way.”
“What else do you like?”
She’s tugging at the waistband of his underwear, the last piece of clothing on him. He leans back on his palms to see her better. Without her makeup, she looks younger, smaller, much smaller than the image of her he holds in his mind, the all encompassing vessel for the feeling he holds for her. He lets his fingers trail by her hip, by the familiar freckle there, and watches goosebumps rise along her arms and chest, watches her nipples stiffen and peak. His breath catches at the sight.
“You,” he says, and it feels like a confession all over again, although he’s told her so many times that the words “I love you” had become easier to say than anything else.
His hand moves up slowly, hesitantly, his thumb brushing the curve of her breast, earning a sigh so soft it seems to melt in the very air between them.
“Did we sleep together often?” she asks.
He lays back on the bed, and her thighs twitch around his waist as she readjusts, straddling him, looking down at him with her hands on his chest to steady her. Her hair falls around her shoulders, long and straight.
“Yes,” he says, trying to keep his tone neutral. “We did. Often. It felt always like a push and pull, even though I never felt that I was doing enough pulling.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asks.
He touches the ends of a lock of hair that falls by his belly. “I mean, we were not on equal footing. I gave up my chance to take power. You didn’t. Every part of our relationship, such as it was, felt touched by that difference. Even in bed.”
Her fingers trail over his arms, raising goosebumps. “The pressure of keeping this relationship a secret, as the leader of my cloister. I am not entirely sure why I did it.”
“Could it be because you loved me?” he asks.
She blinks down at him. Lowers herself slowly, her hair falling around him, her chest brushing his chest, until their faces are close together. He touches her thighs, his fingertips pressing down.
“Yes, could be,” she says.
She kisses him, her mouth hot against his, her lips moving slowly. Then she pulls away. Gale forces himself to breathe. The air feels like mud, heavy in his lungs.
“We don’t have to do anything,” she says. Her voice is breathy. Her heart is pounding against his chest. She’s nervous too.
He could say no. Push her off of him. Push her away. He should. The rational part of his brain screams for attention, a part he’s been neglecting. There has never been anything rational about the way he loved her, even after she disappeared and reappeared and lays draped over him now, her body warm and familiar against his. There is nothing rational about how he cranes his neck and kisses her, about the gasp that’s stuck in his throat and comes out as a groan as she grinds against him softly. There is no logic in how desperately his hands move over her, her neck and her shoulders and her hips and the secret, soft skin of the insides of her thighs.
His brain has stopped thinking in words and lists and ordered arguments, suddenly becoming a mix of sight—her eyes, green and bright, heavy lidded as he moves her onto her back, black hair flowing around her, creating a dark halo—and sound—their skin slipping over each other, her mouth curving around soft sighs, his hand between her legs slipping into her, earning more soft noises—and touch—pushing himself into her, tight warmth, her body like water, pliant, easy. No more thought. He holds her as close as he can, his hips moving of their own accord, his hands doing something he can’t even keep track of, her breath hot against his face, pressing kisses into her open mouth, feeling her thrust back up against him, finding their rhythm. They always found it, moving together easily, despite everything.
Gale holds his weight on his arms, propped on either side of her, watching her come back down, her face and the skin of her neck and chest pink and dotted with beads of sweat that seem to shimmer in the moonlight. There’s a catch in his throat that he can’t seem able to speak around. Her breathing slowly evens out, and his does too. He pulls himself out of her and falls onto his back beside her.
Thought comes rushing back. He feels the tears burning in his eyes and tries to rub them away.
“I knew that was a terrible idea,” he manages to say.
He feels her hand, small and warm, slide into his. This only makes the tears come faster. He swipes at his face with his free hand. They lay in silence for a while, until he takes a deep, shuddering breath and blinks away whatever’s left that slides back into his hair. Then, he lets her go.
Her hand is back, small in his, but holding his fingers tightly. He turns a little to look at her. She’s already looking at him, her face still a little flushed.
He wants to ask her what she thinks she’s doing. It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask. And it’s a question he’s asked her many times in their one sided past. She has never had an answer. He doesn’t expect one now.
If he closes his eyes and thinks hard, he wonders if he would be able to feel Shar’s eyes on them now. Perhaps she approves of this, this guilt and disappointment and regret that courses through him. Perhaps this makes him a Sharran too, this desire to chase the loss, the dark imprint Shadowheart will leave behind when she does it again, forgets him, forgets them. Perhaps this, then, is prayer, the whisper of warmth of her still on his body, the hand in his, the echo of her sighs still ringing in his ears. Even when she’s still in bed with him, laying beside him, he feels as though she’s already gone.
She brings his hand to her mouth and drags his knuckles over her lips, swollen from kissing, pink and beautiful.
“Like prayer,” he whispers, and he kisses her again.