The Inquisitor doesn’t want to hear a word. When Dorian mentions his near return to Tevinter, Adaar holds mage’s fingers, brings them to his dry lips and begs him not to stay here with him, in the dilapidated fortress, where the sheets smells like fungus, and little by little the books in the meager library are being supplanted by Tethras’ opuses; no, he just begs Dorian to take him away − away from the iced stairs in the bathhouse and the vapid literature. Dorian’s laughing in a pleasant way. He’s happy as a naughty boy can be, who escaped the deadly punishment after having broken the dozen of rules. He’s happy as the person, whose hands are kissed by the fearless mercenary − by the ferocious monster, as it was being told in the childhood, …show more content…
He harks and observes much more than he drinks, and when the one’s being carried out to sleep themselves sober, he’s barely tipsy to play some new mischiefs with Sera or, sneaked out of the bookshelves all of a sudden, to swoop Dorian up under the knees and to smile complacently, while the mage is twitting this extreme impishness, having no idea how to get down. Adaar is soft and compassionate for a tal-vashoth, who once cut someone’s throats, and the humans he was growing up with haven’t infected him with vanity, hubris, acrimony. He is doubtful of gods and is not proud of being chosen; it rather seems as if he is ashamed of it, almost afraid; he tells Josephine that he doesn’t intend to lie to peasantry and nobility: let them stare at him with fear, let them disdain him and fib unflattering stories about his life − he will swallow it all. “You’re such a noodle,” Dorian chides him, stroking his slightly pointed …show more content…
Dorian couldn’t do it, but some hard-bitten beast did it playfully, at least Adaar claims the dracolisc was just playing rather than trying to define the proper use of its claws and tushes. Dorian couldn’t do it though he was entirely serious when he bit and stung painfully to be sure; to make Adaar steer clear of him; to make himself, the son of Pavus, sleep peacefully while the Inquisitor wanders somewhere in the company of clumsy warriors and daring or short-legged archers − but without mages. And now he has to sting again. “Look at yourself,” purrs Dorian, cursing the Imperium for these words but promising himself that one day nobody will ever have to say such things, “Even if you could expound Vyranion’s Theorem in plain language, at formal court you will be immediately caught and hung on the wall together with the boar’s heads, if only you brush a chandelier with your horns.” Adaar shrinks away from Dorian’s guilty touching, Adaar becomes gloomy, there’s a deep dark wrinkle between his brows, he looks through the mirror which he has brought here specially for Dorian, and the mage, snuggled up to Adaar’s shoulder, looks at the reflection