Chapter Text
Chapter One
Between the Weave and the Word
The fire in camp had burned low. Only embers pulsed among the ash, glowing faintly like half remembered stars. Gale sat close, trying to look as though he were simply warming his hands, but his mind was nowhere near the flames. His thoughts drifted back to a moment two nights ago. Weave summoned and shaped in tandem. Tav’s breath mingling with his own. The imagined kiss. The spark of something that felt both marvellous and precarious. It was enough to unmoor even a seasoned wizard.
He pretended to read. Anyone watching would think Gale Dekarios was thoroughly engrossed in the complex diagram of arcane circles mapped on aged parchment. In truth he had not turned a page for fifteen minutes. His eyes had been fixed on one line, tracing it again and again without seeing it.
Tav sat across the fire, speaking quietly with Shadowheart. She leaned in to listen, expression unreadable in the flitting light. Gale swallowed hard. There was no obvious awkwardness there. Tav had been perfectly pleasant to him since the weave date. Almost maddeningly polite. She had not mentioned the imagined kiss or the way Gale’s heart had almost stuttered to a stop in his chest.
He replayed it often enough to make his own head ache. The scene as Tav pictured it. The brush of lips. That intoxicating possibility. Then a return to composure. He wondered if she regretted it the moment the magic dissipated.
Better minds than his had been undone by uncertainty. Better hearts too.
Karlach had laughed over the matter when Gale tried to frame it as a hypothetical concern. Hypothetical in the very loosest sense. The tiefling smiled in that easy way of hers and told him that if someone was bold enough to imagine kissing him, it probably meant something. Probably. Possibly. There was flexibility enough in vague encouragement to fuel a wizard’s fears for a week.
Wyll was no help. The Blade of Frontiers claimed he could not recognise flirting even if it danced past him with fireworks. Gale felt a peculiar combination of insult and relief. At least no one was loudly gossiping about it.
Night settled deeper over the woods. Gale closed his book. The goblin camp awaited at dawn and a man ought to sleep before testing his luck against a crowd of vicious creatures with very few boundaries.
He breathed out and felt the pull of tomorrow in his bones. The pull of magic, danger, and the same question gnawing through his caution like acid. Did Tav want him or had she simply been overtaken by the weave and politeness?
Gale rose, brushed ash from his sleeves and headed for his tent. He rehearsed a few entirely reasonable greetings. He could say good night. He could casually refer to tactics for the morning raid. He could pretend the weave date never happened and suffer in silence until a goblin did him the courtesy of ending his confusion permanently.
It would be easier. Certainly tidier. He would not look foolish if he never risked clarity.
Though the ache of uncertainty might kill him long before goblins ever had a chance.