Chapter 184: Reluctant Return

We finally separated, scrambling out of the hammock with a lot of giggling and touching and kissing until we were both decent. And then Alistair picked up my parents’ journal, wrapped one arm around my waist, and pulled me sideways into the hammock so we could cuddle and swing.

“Want to talk about it?” He lifted the journal and waggled it at me.

I snuggled closer, pressing my face against his chest, soothed by his soft heartbeat beneath my ear. “They visited here a lot.” I let out a shaky breath. “Like, almost every year, I think.”

He squeezed my shoulders silently and pushed the hammock with one foot until we were swinging again.

“I was ... I am ... Elissa Cousland.” I hadn’t said it out loud yet, and it felt strange. “I still want to go by Sierra though. That’s okay, right?”

He hummed. “I think you can go by whatever name you please. I’d find it rather strange to start calling you Elissa, I admit.”

I swung for a moment, the words I wanted to say stuck somewhere in my chest. “They...” I gestured at the book. “They loved me. They really did. I wasn’t abandoned, just ... lost.” I swallowed thickly.

He held me tighter and kissed my forehead. “And now they’re gone. I’m so sorry, love.”

Relieved that he understood – that maybe I wasn’t totally crazy – I buried my face in his shirt and let the tears flow one more time. Of everyone we knew, I thought Alistair might understand what I was going through the most; his parents had loved him and yet not been around either, and he had only someone else’s word for it. When we get back to Ferelden, I’m going to find someone to track down his mother if it’s the last thing I do.

We sat together until suppertime, cuddling and reading each other snippets from the journal. There were a few tears and a lot of laughs, and all of it was bearable with Alistair holding me like he’d never let go. Avanna finally came crashing through the underbrush – extra loudly and slowly, which made Alistair and I both start laughing uproariously – to inform us that if we wanted to meet Aedan and Zevran for dinner, we needed to get moving.

Getting out of the hammock turned out to be harder to do than getting in, when you were sideways; after several near misses with the ground below us, Avanna ended up having to pull me up while Alistair pushed, and it took both Avanna and me working together to get Alistair disentangled. By the time we had smoothed out our clothes and stopped giggling like a couple of teenagers, we were late and didn’t have time to change before dinner.

Alistair thwarted any plans I had to try to sneak into the dining room unobtrusively; he yanked the door open with a bang and tromped inside unapologetically, getting a dramatic eye roll from Aedan and a smirk from Zev. In fact, the only one who appeared bothered was Fergus, and he scowled at us as though we’d insulted his mother. My mother. I nearly choked on a slightly hysterical laugh and sank down into a chair without a word.

Dinner was strained; I guessed that Aedan and Fergus must have had some sort of argument, because Aedan wasn’t speaking to our older brother even more zealously than before, and Fergus kept on throwing little barbs at Aedan whenever he got the chance. Zevran and Alistair tried to keep conversation going, but it was difficult with no one else helping. You could cut the tension with a knife right now ... Awkward!

Finally Aedan had had enough; he stood up, leaving his plate half-finished, kissed my forehead, and left, with Zevran trailing behind him, shooting Alistair and I apologetic looks. Losing my own appetite, I pushed my plate away with a sigh.

“Fergus, can I ask a question?” Alistair used a tone I’d never heard before – authoritative and unforgiving. I decided, especially given the lack of title – despite his position as Prince, he usually deferred to Fergus and called him ‘your Grace’ – that this was Alistair’s ‘prince voice’.

He looked down his nose at us, surprised, I assumed, by the familiarity of the address. Alistair took his silence as permission.

“Do you still truly believe my wife is an imposter? Despite the staff here recognising her and the tattoo and the coincidental timing of when Elissa began disappearing?”

Fergus looked at Alistair briefly then turned to me, our gazes connected as though by magnetism. I was afraid to move or even breathe, waiting anxiously for his response. There was a pregnant pause – I almost caught myself counting the seconds – and then without a word, Fergus stood up, turned, and left.

Alistair looked at me once we were alone and shrugged ruefully. “Sorry.”

I crawled into his lap and rested my head on his shoulder. “It’s okay. I wanted to ask too – I guess now we know.” I wasn’t surprised – nor was I that upset. I can’t change it; might as well learn to live with it.

Surprisingly, I slept well that night – for the first time since Fergus had suggested coming to Lhanbyrde – and woke early, refreshed and smiling. After an enjoyable romp in the sheets with an adorably sleepy Alistair, I was lying naked on the bed as my husband got up and said he was taking a shower. I saw him reach into a small bag that he kept his personal items in – like his straight razor, comb, and a jar of some sort of hair product – and pull out a small, familiar vial of grey powder. I remembered back to when Zevran first gave him the bottle of contraceptive powder before the first time we slept together in Denerim a lifetime ago. A flashback of my miscarriage a few months prior hit me, and while it was still sad, it didn’t devastate me like it once had.

I sat up, and I must have had a strange expression on my face, because Alistair paused, looking at me curiously.

I climbed out of bed, crossing the room slowly as if in a dream. He wrapped one arm around my shoulders as I pressed myself to his side, and he let go as I took the bottle from his hand. It wasn’t big – around the size of a pill bottle on Earth – and weighed next to nothing. The powder was a uniform grey colour, and flowed like sand as I tilted the container. I opened it, sniffing carefully; it smelled earthy and unpleasant, and Alistair laughed as I wrinkled my nose.

“Tastes worse,” he told me, chuckling.

I stared at the open bottle for another moment, and then abruptly turned and hurled it out the nearest window.

Our room overlooked the blue water of the cove and the beautiful beach; there was no one outside at that early hour, and the bottle sailed through the air to land on the wet sand with a plop that I probably imagined rather than heard. Another second passed before a small wave lapped against the shore and tugged the vial – and its contents – out to sea.

I slapped my hand over my mouth as I stood there in Alistair’s stunned silence. What was I thinking? Clearly I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want to look at my husband, too horrified by the fact that I’d just taken away his choice without even asking. He didn’t let me get away with it though, and I felt his fingers on my chin as he turned me to face him. I kept my eyes averted, not wanting to see anger on his handsome face.

“I’m sor—”

I didn’t get the chance to finish my apology as his lips crashed down onto mine, a growl rumbling through his chest as he yanked me closer to his nakedness. His kiss was hungry and desperate, his tongue plundering my mouth, his teeth nipping at my lips even as he crushed me to him. And I couldn’t help but respond, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him back like it might be the last chance I ever got.

With his hands on my shoulders, he pushed me away just far enough to see my face. “Are you sure? Are you really, really—”

I didn’t need to hear the rest of his question. “More sure than I’ve ever been – of anything. I’m ready. Is that okay? I should have asked, rather than—”

I stopped talking and backed up when he advanced on me until my calves hit the bed – and then he pushed me back, crawling over me even as I scrambled into the middle of the mattress. He kissed me again and again, murmuring endearments into my mouth, pledging his love even as his hands wandered down my body, stroking and tweaking and arousing until I was gasping and writhing under his ministrations.

And then it was like he couldn’t wait even one second longer; he hooked his elbow under one of my knees, lifting my leg to press against my chest and opening me up for him, and I let out a guttural groan as he sank into me in one, smooth thrust without stopping the movement of his lips on mine.

Our coupling was quick and urgent and hot, his need mating with mine until there was nothing left but pleasure and burning desire and – and and and the possibility of a tiny spark of life growing within me, planned this time and so very wanted. We lasted for all of about two minutes until I was nearly sobbing beneath him, and he cried out his own release loud enough I was sure the entire facility heard us.

When we finally caught our breath and curled up together, legs intertwined, stuck together with sweat and not caring in the slightest, I snickered. “It’s probably not going to happen today – you know that, right? I imagine it’ll take a while for that powder to get out of your system, and I’m not even at the right part of my cycle.”

He kissed me, languidly at first, but becoming more urgent as it went on. Astonished, I felt him harden against my hip, and felt a stirring of my own in a corresponding location.

His tone was amused – but also husky. “And what, exactly, have you got against practice?” He pulled me until I straddled his waist and started sliding my dripping centre southwards.

I giggled. “Practice does make perfect, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t see Fergus for the next couple of days, though I heard rumours that he’d had more arguments with the Chancellor, the nurses, and Aedan. There’d even been some sort of discussion with the facility’s mage healers – who I hadn’t seen – to determine if magic could disprove my identity. They reportedly refused. He seemed to be avoiding me, and I wasn’t upset not to see his scowling face. Instead, I apologised to the nurses for my outburst the day before, and convinced them to come back and tell me stories about my parents visiting the island when I was unconscious. I read the rest of the journal, spent time studying the portraits they’d left in my room, and giggled at the knitting attempts my mother had made – she was apparently good at other skills like embroidery, but couldn’t knit to save her life, though she tried every time she came to see me. Usually she’d give up in frustration and the nurses would end up saving the results when she tried to throw them out.

I ended up having a long conversation with the Chancellor where I confided in her what had happened to me – and where I’d been for the first twenty-four years of my life. I didn’t see any way around it; she kept pestering me about how I’d left the island, and was worried other patients might do the same, and the amnesia story just didn’t hold up very well. Besides, I trusted her; she’d kept the secret of my existence for years before my parents had been killed.

She was fascinated, which wasn’t a shock; what did surprise me was how little I had to do to convince her the story was true.

“Well given that I’ve spent over a year trying to figure out how you could have gotten off the island, and not come up with a single plausible theory ... At least your story makes sense, even if it is rather terrifying.”

We also took some time to relax; the four of us went swimming in the cove in just our smalls; Aedan was embarrassed at first – and Alistair gave Zevran a number of dirty looks when he pretended to ogle us both – but the smalls we wore covered more than a typical bikini back on Earth, so they didn’t bother me any, and the water was beautiful. Apparently, the maze of boulders leading to the cove kept out any larger predators, though there were plenty of fish, turtles, and other marine life to watch and enjoy. I wished for a scuba tank – not that I knew how to use it, but it would be the perfect location – or some sort of magic that would allow us to breathe underwater. Or Gillyweed...

Finally it was time to leave. We weren’t visiting any patients – not really – and we all had lives to get back to. I’d managed to confirm with Levi via sending stone that the Peak was still doing fine, but Highever was another matter, and the Wardens needed their commanders back. I still had recruiting to do and agreements to forge with the templars, and I had no doubt that Highever would suffer without its Teyrn. I packed up the things from my hospital room to bring back to the Peak, but we asked the Chancellor to leave the room empty – just in case. We didn’t know what would happen to my body when – if – I went back to Earth in the future.

Several other visitors had come and gone from the island during our visit, and we were lucky enough to be the only ones leaving on the day we boarded the small boat. I was sad to leave – Lhanbyrde had been the vacation of a lifetime, not to mention the place that proved my identity. I still sometimes struggled to think of Bryce and Eleanor Cousland as my parents, but it was getting easier; what wasn’t easier was dealing with an angry, bitter, irrational Fergus. In my head I knew I might never have the relationship with him that I wished for, though my heart still ached at the thought. But I knew I couldn’t force him to love me, or even accept the truth of my bloodline; the best I could hope was we would manage to redevelop a professional working relationship once we weren’t forced to see each other constantly.