Blood Poison 27 and 28
After this I think it will be epilogue snapshots? Or should I just add them as chapters? Because there are Further Adventures. Also, can I add? Zevran is so hard to write. He's loyal! He's a liar! He's dangerous! He is kind of moral! He's funny, in a gruesome way! He's sexy! If I am screwing these up it's totally his fault and not mine! ;)
Summary: f!Surana/Zevran in Antiva!
Rating: M! NSFW! (mild, but apparently Neria and Zev get busy a lot?)
Archive: At LJ or at ff.net
Warning: Part 28 contains nonconsentual happenings.
"Brasca!" spat the Master under his breath. "Cazzone!" He was stalking around the room like a great cat as the other three Crows watched. Piezo, an elf with beautiful pale eyes, was the only one who seemed relaxed, his leg thrown over the wooden arm of his chair. He took a slow breath. "There is always the well to consider."
"We've been over that one. No, no." Arainai snapped his fingers quickly. "No, we are being stupid." He stalked to the door and opened it. "You-yes," he said to someone in the hallway. "Go and fetch Mistress Arainai. Yes."
He shut the door again and Taddeo said under his breath, "Oh, this should be good," to which Fosca laughed silently. The Master resumed his circuit of the room, but when he passed Taddeo, he slapped the back of the man's head. Taddeo grinned just a little.
The door opened a few minutes later and Saraid came in. Taddeo had to admit that she was lovely enough, as all elves were, especially wearing that fine gown with her red hair falling from the crown of her head-an exotic color in Antiva. Still, he had seen many elves more beautiful than she. "Yes, Zev?" One eyebrow raised as she pressed the door closed behind her. "Oh, you are in a mood, aren't you?" she said, amused, with none of the deference that Taddeo imagined a wife ought to hold for a very deadly husband (not that he himself had spent much time around married couples unless he was about to kill one of them).
"My dear," said the Master, with a flourished bow toward his wife. He took up one of her hands and kissed the back of her fingers. She was smiling and Fosca rolled her eyes at Taddeo. "I have had a setback and would like to have your considerable expertise put to the problem." He seated himself at one end of a long couch, crossing an ankle over a knee. "I would like Master Conti dead. Tell me what to do."
Fosca rolled her eyes to the ceiling again and Saraid caught this. "Fosca," she said with a sweet smile. Her accent, though understandable enough, was gutteral, as if all of the words crowded in the back of her throat. She cut off sounds abruptly instead of allowing them to flow naturally from the tip of the tongue. "Taddeo. And forgive me…" she approached the elf in the chair.
"Piezo," he told her, capturing her hand and pressing his own kiss with it, a dangerous gambit in Taddeo's opinion, but Piezo was rewarded with a smile from Saraid and it did not appear to upset the Master at all.
Saraid retrieved her hand and looked measuringly down at her husband. After a few moments of this, he nodded quickly at her and opened his hand. A signal?
"May I drink the wine?" she asked him.
He nodded again and she went to pour herself a cup while continuing to speak. "What is his house like?"
"Much like this one, except the courtyard is smaller and the building is larger. He has more interior hallways than I have."
Saraid turned away from the sideboard and Taddeo found himself the subject of her gaze, which slid over him from head to toe. He made his eyes go hooded as from desire out of habit. "And your Crows, Zev, they all fight in the same style as you do?"
The Master waved his hand. "Ah, you know, more or less. Some are better with poisons, some with intrigue, some with the bow, many of us with the seduction, as you were very fortunate to discover." Here Saraid gave a delighted laugh. She moved to sit at the other corner of the same couch as him. "But yes, more or less."
Saraid's eyes went back to Taddeo. He held her gaze as she slipped out of her shoes and set her bare feet on the couch in a vulgar way. "This is a bad thing. It is no good for a frontal assault. You and I were meant to strike at the enemy while he looks at the fellow with the big sword. Perhaps we could train some of your larger men to fight like.. a dwarf or a templar?" She glanced back to catch Arainai's eye and nodded aside at Taddeo. "I can do it too, as you know, if we need me to."
The Master was shaking his head but it was Fosca who answered, standing against the wall with her arms folded. "We don't do frontal assaults. We are Crows."
"I agree, my dear, if we had our old friends with us, we would make short work of Master Conti, but I do not need to tell you that we do not." Arainai was watching Saraid with calm eyes. She was looking down at her cup, turning it in her hands for a while before drinking. Fosca shifted impatiently.
"I could get this Conti away from his people," Saraid said quietly. Fosca looked at her with eyebrows raised and a smirk and Taddeo turned his head away to hide his face as his own eyes rolled. If this could be done by them, it would have already been done.
Piezo, however, smiled indulgently. "And how would you do that?"
Saraid was looking only at her husband, her finger trailing on the wet rim of her cup. "The spell that I would use on our larger enemies." She ducked her head a little, watching the Master intently. "But it has a rather… obvious casting, yes? I would need to be quite close to him to keep from getting caught."
Arainai sucked in a breath. "And he would just.. go with you, would he not? As if you were a trusted friend. How long are you able to keep that spell up?"
"Perhaps fifteen minutes." Saraid took three long swallows of wine, her eyes cast down. "I've gotten to practice it more than when I last used it on front of you."
"This would work, too." The other three Antivans switched their eyes to their Master. "Though it would put you in enormous personal danger. Brasca!"
Neria slept and Zevran did not. He rolled to his side and looked at her, grey in the darkness. He tucked his arm and leg around her and pulled her close until her head was under his chin, her breath fanning across his collarbone. She shifted with a sigh and drew her own leg comfortably between his knees. He kissed her hair, kissed it again, and then rested his cheek against the top of her head.
Neria unhooked the earring and fed it into Zevran's hand. He held her head against his shoulder and stroked her back. Mia dolce, mia bella, mia forte signora. Her hands rested on his hips, her thumbs stroking against the skin of his belly.
The door opened and Piezo placed his hand in the small of Neria's back as they left. He glanced behind him and Zevran's gaze was like a dagger of cold iron.
His broad hand on her throat was not tight enough to mark her, but it was enough to bring panic to her placid brown eyes. The air against her skin felt cold and there was a thump of her elbow against the wall. He dropped her and went for the laces of his breeches as she scrambled back against the wall. Her heart stung against her ribcage; she pinched her eyes closed.
Sunlight pierced bright shafts in the leaf-canopy and she had been deliberately teasing Zevran for three days, refusing him. The birch bark beneath her hands was smooth and her legs shook a little as his calloused fingers traced rough circles just below her waistband. Her back arched when his touch slowly moved to tease at the hair between her legs and he had bent his knees to fit his hips snugly against her bottom. His teeth gripped the side of her neck, worrying her skin gently. By the time that she had finally bent over -
He thrust roughly into her, too large, too quick, and though she didn't rip open she still gave a squeal of pain, bucking against his filthy body. Her head hit the floor and his hand gripped her mouth. She breathed in over his fingers, feeling tears shivering at the corners of her eyes.
With both fists she deliberately closed her line to the Fade and imagined lightning burning his broad body, ice shattering in his bones.
Zevran's hands were tightly clasped and he was staring at his own white knuckles when Taddeo entered the room. He unlaced his hands at once and sat back as if relaxed. "Good evening, my friend."
Taddeo went to the fire and stirred it. "If you do not think that she can do this, then why did you let her go?"
Zevran gave a quick snort of laughter and looked toward the darkness in the window. "This doubt that you have is a weakness of yours, though I realize that it would not seem so to you."
"Yes?" Taddeo stood and moved toward the table. "I thought that perhaps you were doubting, not I."
Zevran's eyes are level on the reflection of the black window, watching Taddeo move through the room. "Then perhaps it is a weakness of mine, that comes to me when I am not with her."
Vimone Conti kissed the dark-haired elf roughly, biting into her lip until he tasted blood. She gave a whimper and snaked her legs around his waist. He pulled back, trying to think through the loud music and the flickering light of the lamps. He took her by the wrist and dragged her away, snarling at his men when they tried to stop him.
Zevran Arainai stepped into the moonlight and Conti pulled the dusky girl behind him. Master Arainai is your friend and you will not hurt him.
"No!" Vimone whirled and backhanded the girl. "Witch!" She fell to the ground.
Knives were hooked together within Conti's ribcage when he died, and the last thing he heard was Zevran's voice hissing in his ear.
"Why do you do these things?" Zevran had Neria in his lap and she was shaking with tears wetting her face. He had locked them into a storeroom and the air smelled of dust and grain. "Why did I agree to it? Why did you come back if you thought I was dead? Why did you let them hurt you?"
Neria nudged her cheek against his and on her breath was ice, freezing his ear. Her lips followed and brushed away the frost, tracing the curve of his skin as she spoke, voice thick, "When you confess your sins to Andraste's priest, do you tell her of your love for a blood mage?" Her teeth closed gently over the point of his ear, skin softening from her warmth. His whole body shuddered and she gave a tiny sound of need.
He slipped his hands beneath the flimsy dress that Conti had seen fit to clothe her in and adjusted his own armor just a little as he stroked her. His voice was rough. "When you abandoned the people of Amaranthine, did you tell them it was for your love of a murderer?"
He licked her lip where Conti had bit her, then caught her cry in his kiss when he slid into her warmth. His eyes rolled up and he groaned against her wounded mouth.
Later as she slept, head against his chest, he carefully slid the earring back through her skin and stroked the smooth gemstone with the pad of his thumb.
The afternoon light slanted into Arainai's courtyard and Crows were filtering in, some still squinting through their hangovers. The Master came out with Saraid on his arm. The dye had not entirely washed from her skin or hair, giving a dark tint to her fiery coloring. He leaned across his balcony, hand on her waist.
"What shall I do with this thing, hmm?" He lifted Conti's ring, a flat ruby in gold, and smiled wolfishly, turning it in the light. Conti's Crows watched, expressionless, as he picked up Saraid's hand and slid the large ring onto two of her slim fingers together. She laughed and put her mouth to his ear, whispering something too hidden for anyone to read, then fit the ring on his hand instead.
Her gaze fell down and she pointed at one of Conti's men. She murmured, but nearly everyone below could read the words on her lips. That is the man who raped me.
Hold him, came the Master's reply. She made a twisting gesture with her hand when the man tried to back away. Magic carried him from the ground and the Master slipped a dagger from his boot. It whirred through the air and struck with a deep thump in the man's chest.
"Let us go inside for wine," he said as magic still carried the suspended corpse. Blood dripped into the water of the fountain. "I wish to learn of your contracts."
Summary: f!Surana/Zevran in Antiva!
Rating: M! NSFW! (mild, but apparently Neria and Zev get busy a lot?)
Archive: At LJ or at ff.net
Warning: Part 28 contains nonconsentual happenings.
"Brasca!" spat the Master under his breath. "Cazzone!" He was stalking around the room like a great cat as the other three Crows watched. Piezo, an elf with beautiful pale eyes, was the only one who seemed relaxed, his leg thrown over the wooden arm of his chair. He took a slow breath. "There is always the well to consider."
"We've been over that one. No, no." Arainai snapped his fingers quickly. "No, we are being stupid." He stalked to the door and opened it. "You-yes," he said to someone in the hallway. "Go and fetch Mistress Arainai. Yes."
He shut the door again and Taddeo said under his breath, "Oh, this should be good," to which Fosca laughed silently. The Master resumed his circuit of the room, but when he passed Taddeo, he slapped the back of the man's head. Taddeo grinned just a little.
The door opened a few minutes later and Saraid came in. Taddeo had to admit that she was lovely enough, as all elves were, especially wearing that fine gown with her red hair falling from the crown of her head-an exotic color in Antiva. Still, he had seen many elves more beautiful than she. "Yes, Zev?" One eyebrow raised as she pressed the door closed behind her. "Oh, you are in a mood, aren't you?" she said, amused, with none of the deference that Taddeo imagined a wife ought to hold for a very deadly husband (not that he himself had spent much time around married couples unless he was about to kill one of them).
"My dear," said the Master, with a flourished bow toward his wife. He took up one of her hands and kissed the back of her fingers. She was smiling and Fosca rolled her eyes at Taddeo. "I have had a setback and would like to have your considerable expertise put to the problem." He seated himself at one end of a long couch, crossing an ankle over a knee. "I would like Master Conti dead. Tell me what to do."
Fosca rolled her eyes to the ceiling again and Saraid caught this. "Fosca," she said with a sweet smile. Her accent, though understandable enough, was gutteral, as if all of the words crowded in the back of her throat. She cut off sounds abruptly instead of allowing them to flow naturally from the tip of the tongue. "Taddeo. And forgive me…" she approached the elf in the chair.
"Piezo," he told her, capturing her hand and pressing his own kiss with it, a dangerous gambit in Taddeo's opinion, but Piezo was rewarded with a smile from Saraid and it did not appear to upset the Master at all.
Saraid retrieved her hand and looked measuringly down at her husband. After a few moments of this, he nodded quickly at her and opened his hand. A signal?
"May I drink the wine?" she asked him.
He nodded again and she went to pour herself a cup while continuing to speak. "What is his house like?"
"Much like this one, except the courtyard is smaller and the building is larger. He has more interior hallways than I have."
Saraid turned away from the sideboard and Taddeo found himself the subject of her gaze, which slid over him from head to toe. He made his eyes go hooded as from desire out of habit. "And your Crows, Zev, they all fight in the same style as you do?"
The Master waved his hand. "Ah, you know, more or less. Some are better with poisons, some with intrigue, some with the bow, many of us with the seduction, as you were very fortunate to discover." Here Saraid gave a delighted laugh. She moved to sit at the other corner of the same couch as him. "But yes, more or less."
Saraid's eyes went back to Taddeo. He held her gaze as she slipped out of her shoes and set her bare feet on the couch in a vulgar way. "This is a bad thing. It is no good for a frontal assault. You and I were meant to strike at the enemy while he looks at the fellow with the big sword. Perhaps we could train some of your larger men to fight like.. a dwarf or a templar?" She glanced back to catch Arainai's eye and nodded aside at Taddeo. "I can do it too, as you know, if we need me to."
The Master was shaking his head but it was Fosca who answered, standing against the wall with her arms folded. "We don't do frontal assaults. We are Crows."
"I agree, my dear, if we had our old friends with us, we would make short work of Master Conti, but I do not need to tell you that we do not." Arainai was watching Saraid with calm eyes. She was looking down at her cup, turning it in her hands for a while before drinking. Fosca shifted impatiently.
"I could get this Conti away from his people," Saraid said quietly. Fosca looked at her with eyebrows raised and a smirk and Taddeo turned his head away to hide his face as his own eyes rolled. If this could be done by them, it would have already been done.
Piezo, however, smiled indulgently. "And how would you do that?"
Saraid was looking only at her husband, her finger trailing on the wet rim of her cup. "The spell that I would use on our larger enemies." She ducked her head a little, watching the Master intently. "But it has a rather… obvious casting, yes? I would need to be quite close to him to keep from getting caught."
Arainai sucked in a breath. "And he would just.. go with you, would he not? As if you were a trusted friend. How long are you able to keep that spell up?"
"Perhaps fifteen minutes." Saraid took three long swallows of wine, her eyes cast down. "I've gotten to practice it more than when I last used it on front of you."
"This would work, too." The other three Antivans switched their eyes to their Master. "Though it would put you in enormous personal danger. Brasca!"
Neria slept and Zevran did not. He rolled to his side and looked at her, grey in the darkness. He tucked his arm and leg around her and pulled her close until her head was under his chin, her breath fanning across his collarbone. She shifted with a sigh and drew her own leg comfortably between his knees. He kissed her hair, kissed it again, and then rested his cheek against the top of her head.
Neria unhooked the earring and fed it into Zevran's hand. He held her head against his shoulder and stroked her back. Mia dolce, mia bella, mia forte signora. Her hands rested on his hips, her thumbs stroking against the skin of his belly.
The door opened and Piezo placed his hand in the small of Neria's back as they left. He glanced behind him and Zevran's gaze was like a dagger of cold iron.
His broad hand on her throat was not tight enough to mark her, but it was enough to bring panic to her placid brown eyes. The air against her skin felt cold and there was a thump of her elbow against the wall. He dropped her and went for the laces of his breeches as she scrambled back against the wall. Her heart stung against her ribcage; she pinched her eyes closed.
Sunlight pierced bright shafts in the leaf-canopy and she had been deliberately teasing Zevran for three days, refusing him. The birch bark beneath her hands was smooth and her legs shook a little as his calloused fingers traced rough circles just below her waistband. Her back arched when his touch slowly moved to tease at the hair between her legs and he had bent his knees to fit his hips snugly against her bottom. His teeth gripped the side of her neck, worrying her skin gently. By the time that she had finally bent over -
He thrust roughly into her, too large, too quick, and though she didn't rip open she still gave a squeal of pain, bucking against his filthy body. Her head hit the floor and his hand gripped her mouth. She breathed in over his fingers, feeling tears shivering at the corners of her eyes.
With both fists she deliberately closed her line to the Fade and imagined lightning burning his broad body, ice shattering in his bones.
Zevran's hands were tightly clasped and he was staring at his own white knuckles when Taddeo entered the room. He unlaced his hands at once and sat back as if relaxed. "Good evening, my friend."
Taddeo went to the fire and stirred it. "If you do not think that she can do this, then why did you let her go?"
Zevran gave a quick snort of laughter and looked toward the darkness in the window. "This doubt that you have is a weakness of yours, though I realize that it would not seem so to you."
"Yes?" Taddeo stood and moved toward the table. "I thought that perhaps you were doubting, not I."
Zevran's eyes are level on the reflection of the black window, watching Taddeo move through the room. "Then perhaps it is a weakness of mine, that comes to me when I am not with her."
Vimone Conti kissed the dark-haired elf roughly, biting into her lip until he tasted blood. She gave a whimper and snaked her legs around his waist. He pulled back, trying to think through the loud music and the flickering light of the lamps. He took her by the wrist and dragged her away, snarling at his men when they tried to stop him.
Zevran Arainai stepped into the moonlight and Conti pulled the dusky girl behind him. Master Arainai is your friend and you will not hurt him.
"No!" Vimone whirled and backhanded the girl. "Witch!" She fell to the ground.
Knives were hooked together within Conti's ribcage when he died, and the last thing he heard was Zevran's voice hissing in his ear.
"Why do you do these things?" Zevran had Neria in his lap and she was shaking with tears wetting her face. He had locked them into a storeroom and the air smelled of dust and grain. "Why did I agree to it? Why did you come back if you thought I was dead? Why did you let them hurt you?"
Neria nudged her cheek against his and on her breath was ice, freezing his ear. Her lips followed and brushed away the frost, tracing the curve of his skin as she spoke, voice thick, "When you confess your sins to Andraste's priest, do you tell her of your love for a blood mage?" Her teeth closed gently over the point of his ear, skin softening from her warmth. His whole body shuddered and she gave a tiny sound of need.
He slipped his hands beneath the flimsy dress that Conti had seen fit to clothe her in and adjusted his own armor just a little as he stroked her. His voice was rough. "When you abandoned the people of Amaranthine, did you tell them it was for your love of a murderer?"
He licked her lip where Conti had bit her, then caught her cry in his kiss when he slid into her warmth. His eyes rolled up and he groaned against her wounded mouth.
Later as she slept, head against his chest, he carefully slid the earring back through her skin and stroked the smooth gemstone with the pad of his thumb.
The afternoon light slanted into Arainai's courtyard and Crows were filtering in, some still squinting through their hangovers. The Master came out with Saraid on his arm. The dye had not entirely washed from her skin or hair, giving a dark tint to her fiery coloring. He leaned across his balcony, hand on her waist.
"What shall I do with this thing, hmm?" He lifted Conti's ring, a flat ruby in gold, and smiled wolfishly, turning it in the light. Conti's Crows watched, expressionless, as he picked up Saraid's hand and slid the large ring onto two of her slim fingers together. She laughed and put her mouth to his ear, whispering something too hidden for anyone to read, then fit the ring on his hand instead.
Her gaze fell down and she pointed at one of Conti's men. She murmured, but nearly everyone below could read the words on her lips. That is the man who raped me.
Hold him, came the Master's reply. She made a twisting gesture with her hand when the man tried to back away. Magic carried him from the ground and the Master slipped a dagger from his boot. It whirred through the air and struck with a deep thump in the man's chest.
"Let us go inside for wine," he said as magic still carried the suspended corpse. Blood dripped into the water of the fountain. "I wish to learn of your contracts."