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The first time he sees her in battle, he is frozen by the sight. She whirls like a dervish, all flashing blades and blurred leather. Her eyes glint like well-polished steel, hard and cold, but as blood spatters onto her face her lips twitch into a smile.
A roar from behind has him turning quickly away from her, bringing his shield up to protect him from the swing of a Hurlock. Before he can raise his sword, a blade rips through the beast’s throat, silent and slick, meat and bone glittering hot and white in the sun.
As the corpse falls unceremoniously to the ground, she twirls her ornately hilted dagger around a finger and raises a brow at him. Her tongue darts out to lick a stray drop of blood from the corner of her mouth – tainted blood, thick and almost black, and he wants to tell her stop but for some reason his throat is strangely tight. And before he can say a word, she has sheathed her dagger and turned away, moving forward to scavenge the corpses.
And he knows, this woman is going to be the death of him.
-
His hands are stained, blood dried in the calluses on his fingers and he scrubs the steel of his blade as if he can make it new again. Make it clean. Turn back time and never go to Redcliffe, never feel the crack of a child’s ribs under the weight of a finely sharpened sword.
Time, it is what she had said they didn’t have – time to go to the Circle, time to plead for help, time for anything other than what she had asked him to do, time in which (she argued) the village would have surely been burned to ash.
His hands still as he feels her approach. She carries a weight in her presence, though her steps are so light as to be nearly silent. To him, she shines like a beacon, or a flame – and he is the moth who dances too close. She touches the back of his hand, gently but her skin sears his and he jerks back. Anger and shame roil in his gut. He looks up, she looks down at him – face impassive. Not a flicker of guilt in her eyes.
“How can you look so calm.” It is not a question, and his voice is much quieter than he intended it to be. He meant for these words to hold fire and castigation, he imagined her eyes softening and her face crumbling (he imagined her falling into his arms as he stroked soothing circles on her back and she wept for the choices she had made. He imagined her soft and repentant. He forgot who she was.)
Her shoulders move, a motion too small to even be a shrug, and he feels a trail of heat on his thighs. She has not moved her hand, and the slight shake of her shoulders has caused her fingertips to ghost across his thigh. His splintmail is no guard against her touch.
“I did what I had to do.” Simple, firm, unapologetic. Her hand moves from his leg, arms arching as she begins to uncoil her braid, her body stretched and tightened and he sees a sliver of milk-pale flesh peek out from the edge of her tunic.
Something churns within him, sharp and hot and his hand is on her arm, his grip tight and he can feel her muscles and bones and heartbeat under his fingertips and that feeling twists lower –
“You could have tried!” Anger (it has to be anger, what else could this be) turns his voice to gravel and she stills. Her gaze falls to where his fingers press red and white into her skin, and he thinks he sees her mouth curve ever so slightly.
“So could you.”
He steps back as if burned, hands clenching at his sides as the strange swirling in his stomach becomes heavy and leaden weight. He remembers – remembers her placid face, her cold and clinical assessment of the dangers, her daggers being pulled from their leather sheathes. Remembers the child’s face twisting, yawning wide as crackling energy exploded around the room, and his sword raised before he could think – blade sinking home in one quick thrust before she could be touched.
She hadn’t asked.
He turns away to lose his dinner in the grass, body pulsing and throbbing like he is the one possessed. And when he rises, shaken and pale, he sees her form retreating into the canvas of her tent.
-
When he awakens to find her in his tent, he is sure he is dreaming. It has been weeks since Redcliff, weeks since her touch branded his skin and he has begun to dream of her as often as the Darkspawn. He has not followed her since, has watched her lead the others out of camp with shoulders rigid and his hands have twitched on his scabbard, unsure whether it is relief or disappointment that he tastes on his tongue. But she has visited him almost nightly, his mind swimming with dizzying images of warm flesh and hot blood and raging, throbbing want.
She is peeling off her leathers, her skin is streaked with crimson – splatters on her chest, her arms, streaking across her cheeks where one might wipe a hand after battle. She is a goddess, a dark idol, and she is coming closer. He freezes like a stag before a hunter, eyes frozen on the sway of her hips, and suddenly she is standing inches from him. His breath catches, his eyes roam over her blood-stained skin and this close he can feel the hum of magic in the air. It tugs at him, pulling – lyrium. All at once, he remembers where she has been this night and he knows this is no dream and he shifts back, fear sour in the back of his throat –
But she is on him like a cat, her knees between his legs and all he can feel is heat as her tongue dances across his bottom lip. His mouth opens – he swears he doesn’t mean for it to but she is an inferno and he is burning too – and she is inside him, and her tongue is smooth and tastes like metal and salt and strangely like chocolate and he has never felt more alive. (He has never felt more.)
He is falling back onto his bedroll, his tongue moving with hers now as she settles atop him, her wet center brushing against him through his trousers and his hands ache to touch her, to push her off of him and pull her closer and bury himself inside of her skin and tear apart her insides the way she has torn apart his but he clenches his fists around the linen under them and hears her chuckle darkly against his lips.
“You can participate, you know.” Her mouth brushes against his as she speaks, her voice low and dangerous in the dark. She rolls her hips and he fights not to buck against her, her tongue touches his softly but he feels it straight to his core. “Unless you don’t know how. You know, Chantry raising and all,” her words are punctuated with a slight tightening of her thighs around his and his world flashes white and his hands are on her hips as he rolls them both and then he is towering over her and her eyes are sparkling and impossibly bright. She is smiling at him like the cat who ate the canary and he hates her, Maker he hates her and he crashes his mouth to hers with bruising force.
She purrs, brushing her thigh against the inside of his as she arches her body up, her chest tight against him and he feels smooth flesh and the hardened tips of her beasts and he groans into her mouth as her hand works its way down the center of his body. She grips him tight and fast and he breaks away from her mouth to inhale sharply into the curve of her neck. She is pulling him free of his trousers and he finds himself pressed against her, his tip brushing against the smoothest and wettest skin he has ever felt. He freezes, their breathing the only sound in the night, as she cups the back of his neck. It is almost tender, her fingertips gently twining into the hair at his nape, and he relaxes just slightly. “Elissa, I –“
And then her leg is hooking around his hip and her hand tightens in his hair, the pain a sharp pressure, and she bites the tender skin of his neck as she moves her body up and words disappear. He is surrounded by tight, slick heat – he has never felt so hot, surely he will not survive it – and then she is moving and he cannot think.
His body is clumsy, his hips snapping to hers a second too late, but she is breathing hot and fast in his ear and he feels something building, roaring inside of him like a caged animal and he grits his teeth and tries to hold it back but his chest feels like it will explode and he can feel her around him and smell her in the air and something snaps. The world is white and red and bright and brilliant and every nerve in his body is alight and his voice is screaming words he didn’t even realize he knew.
His body sags, suddenly, as he hears his own breathing and the crackling of the fire outside and he opens his eyes to meet hers. She smiles up at him, and he tries to pretend that the curve of her lips reaches her eyes. He tucks his head into her shoulder, shame settling on his shoulders, and she tugs gently at his hair.
-
She is gone when he awakes the next morning. He finds her at the fire, tightening the laces on her boots. She nods at him, casual, but a smirk tugs at her mouth. He wants to be sick. He wants to shake her, to kiss her, to walk away right now and forget he ever met her.
He is silent. And when she asks him to join her in the Brecilian Forest, he follows her with his sword in hand.
-
She cuts a bloody path across Fereldan. The smell of death seems to linger permanently on her skin. It tastes like copper under his tongue, as she curls around him and he falls apart inside of her.
Occasionally, he acts as if he would leave. He curses and screams and shakes her. He tears at his hair and throws down his sword and swears, he swears he will not do this any longer.
She only smiles, eyes flashing steel in the firelight. She knows he will not, she stays silent and still until he falls to her – she is gravity, he cannot help himself – and kisses her, hard. Teeth and tongues collide as he pours himself into her and he sighs into her mouth.
His hands are no cleaner than hers.
-
She lets him make the kill, of course she lets him. She nods when he asks but her eyes glitter and he ignores the twist of unease in his gut. Loghain deserves to die, and if he enjoys the wet sound of his sword breaking through flesh, if he pushes a little deeper than necessary and if he doesn’t mind the hot spray of blood on his face – well, it doesn’t make him a monster. This is justice, and there is no shame in enjoying seeing justice done.
And if he feels a flush in his skin, a coiling tight in his body as he pants over his fallen enemy and meets her eyes – bright as fire now, her cheeks pink as if feverish – there is also no shame in that.
She had told him once, Everyone is out for themselves. The sooner you learn that, the better. And he had swallowed it like bitter medicine, and it had grown under his skin and planted itself deep and dark into his heart. If this was the world, he would adapt. It is your duty.
When the Landsmeet has ended and he can already feel the phantom weight of a crown upon his brow, he pulls her into his bedchambers and slams her against the door, caging her body with his and pinning her arms above her head. She looks at him from under her eyelashes, coy and demure as if he cannot see her smirk. Something hot and dark is inside his chest and he tightens his grip on her wrists. He is rewarded with a slight gasp of air, almost silent, and her eyes rise to his dark and challenging. He kicks her legs apart and presses his hand into her smallclothes. She grinds into his palm and he growls, ripping the fabric away and tearing at his armor to free himself. He is so hard it hurts, the kiss of air on his delicate skin causing him to groan, as he guides himself between her thighs. She twists, just slightly, and he pushes her arms up higher above her head as he drives into her in one smooth, hard thrust.
He pushes into her, again and again, his thrusts causing her body to be pushed tight against the door but she is moaning and her lips are on his neck, teeth scraping and tongue licking, and when he feels his body tightening he moves his free hand to rub where they are joined and she clenches around him. He roars with his own release as he pushes himself against her.
They sink slowly, boneless, to the floor as he softens inside of her. She laughs softly as she nuzzles his neck.
“You’re going to be a great king.”
-
Months later, she kneels before him in a gown of cream and gold as he places a wrought golden crown atop her head. He takes her hands and pulls her up and when she meets his eyes her smile is bright but sharp.
When he kisses her lips they taste of blood and ash.