Dragon Age Fucked Up Ships Week 2026 is now officially over. Thank you to everyone who shared their creations and interacted with other people's - we were amazed by the response to the event!
Though the event has concluded, we still accept late entries as long as they use the event tag (#dafuckedshipsweek2026) or @ the blog.
Make sure to check out the AO3 collection for more works centring fucked up ships and don't forget to add your own to it.
See all #dafuckedupshipsweek2026 works here!
by prompt: divorce・ manipulation ・betrayal ・power imbalance ・ major character death ・guilt trip ・last kiss ・missed chances ・codependency ・corruption・fix them ・make them worse ・blood ・secrets ・possessiveness ・ hate fucking・promptless
DA Fucked Up Ships Week: Apr 26 - May 2 | Prompts | FAQ | Ask The Mods
A late Illario/Lucanis entry for @dafuckedupshipsweek, clocking in at over 13,000 words:
"What's the matter, cousin?" Illario said, his voice too hoarse to properly turn it into a purr. "You've already told me my place is on my knees in front of you. If that's what you want, you only have to ask."
Lucanis is the only person with the authority to kill him, the only one who will still touch him, and the only person alive worth caring about. Illario just needs to convince Lucanis that he's worth keeping around.
Or, Illario tries to help. He cares less about the innocent lives at stake than about Lucanis's emotional well-being, which is only half the reason it goes poorly.
People Like Us
Game of Roses, Part 1
Explicit, CCNTW
Tags: Cousin Incest, Seduction, Consent Issues, Imprisoned Illario, Blighted Treviso, Post-DATV, Fucked Up Relationships, Open Ending, Unreliable Narrator, First Time, Minor Choking, Blow Jobs, Deep Throating, Dissociation, Touch Starvation, Antivan Crow Politics, Protective Spite, References to The Wigmaker Job, Third Person Narration, Illario POV
Prompts: manipulation, power imbalance, and codependency. You decide if this makes them worse.
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Solona Amell, Cullen Rutherford/Andri Trevelyan
Words: 1,121
Summary: Cullen has been searching for a chess partner who can match Solona Amell's skills ever since she left.
Originally, I started writing this for @dafuckedupshipsweek Day 4: Missed Chances, but I never finished it in time. The only real fucked up thing about this piece is the two lines about a desire demon, but in the context of Cullen's relationships… well… In some ways, Andri Trevelyan has a lot in common with Solona Amell. In other ways, she has a lot in common with Meredith Stannard. Cullen has a lot of confusing feelings-by-proxy about this.
“You would like Mia, I think,” Cullen told Solona on one of their weekly library chats. She would get out of her classes and head straight for Cullen’s early-evening guard post by the library doors, and they would pass the time before supper talking about anything and everything that crossed their minds. It was his favorite part of the week.
This week, Cullen found himself talking about family. Solona, who couldn’t remember her own family, hung onto his every word with the sort of fascination borne of ill-disguised longing. Cullen recognized it well from his childhood watching the templars at Honnleath’s chantry.
“She was a lot like you — not ‘was’ — still is, I assume,” Cullen said, wincing at his blunder. “I haven’t actually seen her since I joined the templars.”
Solona didn’t question that like some of the other templars did. It wasn’t as if he was disallowed time away from the Circle now that he’d taken his vows, but he was still new here, and he wanted Knight-Commander Greagoir to think highly of his work ethic, no matter how homesick it left him. Solona understood that.
“You must miss them all terribly,” she said.
“I do,” Cullen sighed. “We write often, of course, but… it’s not the same.”
He trailed off, and Solona let him fall silent, lost in remembrance of home. She leaned her head against the wall beside him, content to watch the memories flit across his face. A wistful smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
“You know what I’ve missed most, lately? The chess matches. No one here has any interest in it,” Cullen chuckled. “Mia taught me how to play… Maker’s breath, that was ten years ago now. She always used to lord it over me something terrible when she won, which was all the time.”
“And that sounds like me?” Solona said with mock-offense.
Cullen covered up a laugh with his gauntlet-ed hand. “N-no! I only meant you’re clever.”
Solona grinned like a cat who got the cream. “Tell me more about how clever I am.”
Cullen glared at her.
The next week, Solona arrived at their rendezvous spot with a chess board clutched to her chest.
“Teach me,” she said.
“W-what?”
“Teach me how to play chess,” she repeated, holding the board out in front of her. It wasn’t hers, he knew; apprentices weren’t allowed out of the Circle to shop for personal items, and she’d already confessed she didn’t have anything like it from home. She must have borrowed it from one of the other mages. “I’ve always wanted to learn, but like you said, there’s no one here to teach me. So teach me.”
She smiled at Cullen with that brilliantly cheeky grin of hers that always made him weak at the knees. He stared at her, his mouth hanging open inside his helmet. Had she really listened to him talk about how homesick he was without anyone to tease him over chess matches, and she’d gone out and found a board for him?
“I know I can’t replace family,” she said, her smile fading to something softer, “but maybe… it’ll be nice just to play again?”
Of course she had.
And so their weekly library chats turned into weekly chess chats.
He warned her that he might be a little rusty at first, but she just laughed and said that was perfect, because she’d never had any skills to gather rust in the first place. It hardly mattered, anyway; she took to the game with the same quick understanding and creative talent as she did her magical education. Soon, she was winning as many games as losing to Cullen. He had no doubt that, if they kept playing for much longer, he wouldn’t stand a chance against her.
He couldn’t wait.
Unfortunately, neither could the Blight.
Clawed fingers plucked Cullen’s king from the board and turned it this way and that, studying it. She smiled at him, predatory, like a cat who got the cream. Her eyes burned with purple fire.
“Checkmate,” purred the demon who wore Solona’s face.
He didn’t play a single game of chess in Kirkwall. It felt… wrong, somehow. He asked Meredith once if she played, but she never had the time to take him up on the offer. He wasn’t even sure he’d want to, if she had.
He was excited at first to hear that Dorian played. But Dorian, he soon learned, was only a decent chess partner when he wasn’t an incorrigible cheat. At least his cheeky smack-talk was a familiar distraction.
This match, Cullen could already tell he was cheating. While Dorian wasn’t looking, Cullen quietly replaced his mage that Dorian stole.
“Why do I even…” Cullen muttered. The sound of footsteps on the courtyard grass — Inquisitor Trevelyan’s footsteps — pulled his focus away. He dropped his piece and moved to stand up, his back straightening at attention immediately. “Inquisitor.”
“Leaving, are you? Does this mean I win?” Dorian said innocently.
Cullen sat back down.
“Please, don’t stop on my account,” Inquisitor Trevelyan — Andri — said, with just a hint of Dorian’s teasing tone.
Cullen had to fold his hands in front of his face just to hide the blush that always seemed to appear at the same time as Andri. “Alright. Your move.”
“You need to come to terms with my inevitable victory,” Dorian said, picking up his rook. “You’ll feel much better.”
Andri cleared her throat. “Wasn’t that piece further to the left when I got here?”
Cullen looked down. Sure enough, Dorian’s rook had moved a square while Cullen was distracted by Andri’s arrival, and his mage had mysteriously vanished again. His heart made a pathetically hopeful leap in his chest as he looked back up at Andri. “Do you play?”
“Do I? I love chess!” she said, beaming. “It was all the rage in the Ostwick Circle.”
Dorian groaned. “Great, there’s two of you now.”
Cullen caught Andri’s eye and laughed.
“Don’t get smug. There will be no living with you.” Dorian said. He glanced between the two of them with a sly look, then sighed dramatically, “Oh, fine, I’ll concede your victory. This time.”
And with that, he stood up, and it was just Cullen and Andri around the chess table.
“I should return to my duties as well,” Cullen said sheepishly. “Unless… you would care for a game?”
“Prepare the board, Commander.” Andri swept into the seat Dorian had just vacated, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear with all the grace of a noble-born mage. She grinned at Cullen, and he grinned back.
It was the most relaxed he’d felt since… well, since those weekly chats over a chess board in Kinloch Hold.
Before she earned the nickname Rook, Ariel Adina Mercar was a venatori, a true believer working underneath Calpernia. After months of research, a ritual is prepared; a tattoo to be engraved on Ariel's back using Calpernia's own blood.
Written (belatedly) for @dafuckedupshipsweek, prompt Blood.
Excerpt below the cut, hit the ao3 link to read the full things :)
The first stab of the needle is a surprise, despite all their preparations. She inhales sharply and fists one hand in the sheet beneath her and does her best to ensure that is her only reaction.
Ariel has watched Calpernia practicing for weeks, observed slaves as they brought in pig carcasses while Calpernia learned how deep to press the needle. She oversaw those same slaves personally, when Calpernia progressed to living subjects, as she discovered how to adapt to something that felt pain and adjust the angle and depth of the long bone needle to those movements.
“You’re doing well,” Calpernia assures her after a few repetitions. She stands at Ariel’s left, a small tray floating near her hip laden with the tools needed. The heat of the blood pooling on her back is soothed by a swipe of a cool towel. Ariel pretends that Calpernia does so with great care, that the thumb tracing the contour of her back is not methodical but instead intent.
The tenth stab comes and hurts just the same as the others. But Ariel can endure. She must endure, for the Elder One, for Tevinter, and for Calpernia.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Belatedly posted for @dafuckedupshipsweek is this little Sprookanis piece in which word gets out that the First Talon of the Antivan Crows is an abomination (it kind of happens when you bust out your WINGS to take out your treacherous cousin in front of a giant assembly of assorted Crows and Venatori) and an Orlesian Templar makes a very poor decision.
MIND THE TAGS.
The part I'm posting to Tumblr is fine, but it does get graphic in several ways after you follow the link.
********
The templar sitting on the other side of Lucanis' desk was Orlesian. No Antivan templar would be foolish enough to march up to the gates of Villa Dellamorte with a company of knights, demanding a meeting with the First Talon. It wouldn't even occur to them to parade into the First Talon's office, lining up threateningly against the back wall while their commander spoke with Antiva's most powerful Crow.
No, if the local Templar Order wanted to be rid of him, they'd place a contract with another Crow House like reasonable people. This spectacle was both rude and unseemly. Lucanis didn't appreciate a disturbance outside his home, so he had invited them inside. That they had mistaken his hospitality for vulnerability was not his problem.
He nearly laughed to think that they'd taken for granted the lovely elven servant who had given them tea before escorting them to her "master's" office. She was nobody's servant, nor had she ever been. Southerners.
"First Talon Lucanis Dellamorte," the templar commander addressed him, a stern cast to his features that Lucanis found amusing. As though anyone could command him here in the center of his power. "I am Knight-Commander Gustave Montbelliard, on assignment for Val Royeaux. Word of your situation has spread far and wide."
"I should certainly hope so. A new First Talon of the Antivan Crows has repercussions for Thedas as a whole," Lucanis gave him a dry smile. The templar did not return it.
"Not your… ascension. Your possession." He spoke with his upper lip curled in disgust. "I am here to divest you of your passenger."
He's FUNNY! Spite manifested, sitting on the edge of the desk, swinging his legs. Thinks he's in CHARGE here.
Lucanis mentally acknowledged Spite's remark, giving no outward sign of the demon's activity. Don't use magic, Spite, he thought. He'll notice. I don't want you harmed. We will protect you.
"I'm given to understand that there is only one way to separate Spite from me. Bold of you to venture into the heart of Crow territory and threaten the First Talon with death." Lucanis folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. Spite stuck his tongue out at the man. Lucanis' lips twitched in amusement.
"It is necessary, you understand." Montbelliard blustered on. "Surely you do not wish to consider what will happen to the Antivan Crows when that creature you host consumes you? I have heard you are a man who puts his duty first, and I offer you the opportunity to escape your predicament at a time of your choosing, with minimal pain."
"Is that so? And if I refuse?"
The Orlesian snorted. "This is not a situation in which you have a choice, First Talon."
"Oh, I believe I do. Spite and I are perfectly happy the way we are."
"Then things are worse than I'd hoped. The demon is already influencing you."
Lucanis chuckled. "Please, do call him Spite. He has a name, and I don't appreciate people disrespecting my husband." Lucanis wiggled his left ring finger at the man. It boasted a traditional onyx and silver wedding ring in the Antivan style, but above that ring was an indigo tattoo, a feathery design that wound around his finger.
Montbelliard's face turned beet red, his wheat-colored mustaches trembling with shocked rage. "You did WHAT? You believe you have married a demon?"
Lucanis gave him a toothy grin. It was not a friendly expression. "Would you like to know how it happened? I'll warn you, the details are likely to be rather shocking to any of your men who have made a vow of chastity."
Read the rest on Ao3!
Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Summary: Illario had always been Rook's weakness. Even now - seduced by blood magic and a traitor to both her and his family - she can't resist the temptation he presents.
“One night, belleza,” he crooned and kissed her neck again. “One night with you is all I ask. No one has to know. This can be our little secret.”
Written for @dafuckedupshipsweek and inspired by @corinnesin amazing art here . Thank you to Corinnesin for letting me use her art in the header.
day two (again) (betrayal) and day seven (blood) for DA Fucked Up Ships Week 2026, featuring Kalais Mercar
canon universe, age gap relationship
rated T for power imbalance, life-threatening injuries, the blood and gore is all kind of vaguely referenced
——
His ears rang so loudly he could hear nothing else, and he clenched his teeth to keep from screaming. He wasn’t sure it worked. Making loud noises on a battlefield was a sure way to draw attention to yourself, especially when the field had comprised himself and one Qunari commander. He thought he might still be in the commander’s tent, but he couldn’t see anything apart from a sea of white and swimming black dots. Staying here would be suicide when he didn’t know where the Qunari was: he tensed his abdomen to sit up and lost whatever tenuous grip on consciousness that he had.
When he woke up again, only his right eye blinked open; the left struggled against some adhesive that bound his lashes together. He gave up trying and panned his head back and forth as fast as he dared to take in his situation. Sky above him, of a deepening shade that suggested the sun had set and the rest of its light was folding into the blanket of night. He’d confronted the commander before dawn. Had he lost one day, or more? He had no way to tell. Tall grasses surrounded him, not the packed earth and canvas of the commander’s tent. His head throbbed, and it would be a quicker catalog for him to list which parts of his body were not viscerally protesting their lot. The fight had not gone well.
(continue on ellipsus or under the cut)
He lifted his head to take better stock of himself and his surroundings and quickly dropped it back to the ground as his vision tilted nauseatingly and threatened him with fainting. The skin of his face crunched as he grimaced. Sunburn, on top of everything else; he could almost laugh if he wasn’t sure it would hurt. He had to move somewhere less exposed, another laughable prospect since every motion he made sent pain spiking through him. He’d figure it out in the morning, he thought, his eye drooping closed. If he made it there.
The worst of it was concentrated on the left side of his torso and thigh: his arms and right leg were, if not painless, then at least somewhat useful if he limited them to small movements. With the rising of the sun, he could tell directions even if he wasn’t sure exactly where he was. He knew a lot of the terrain around Massa—the second rule to being the Legion’s most powerful secret weapon was to know your enemy, and that included their location—so he could fairly confidently say he was on the southeastern side, the opposite side of the city from the Nocen coast and the Legion. That wasn’t news: the commander’s tent had been on the southeastern side along with the rest of the army of Qunari flooding down from Ventus to press their advantage. He wasn’t within the camp still, unless the camp had packed up and moved around him. And left a Legion soldier alive, no matter his condition? Unlikely. That meant he was farther away, somehow. Fine by him. He didn’t want to go back that direction anyway. There were outlying towns in the area; he’d try for one of them.
He spread his arms slowly to avoid aggravating what wounds he had there, and dragged himself southward on his back, inch by agonizing inch.
It rained. Whatever had been holding his left eye shut earlier washed away with it. He lay motionless with his mouth open, swallowing as much as he could until he filled his stomach. When the rain stopped, he carefully spread mud across his face and neck to save his skin from further damage and kept moving.
He came to a road and waited. “Please, I need help,” he called in Tevene at the first passing cart, but the driver looked at him in confusion and didn’t stop. He spoke in Trade to the next. They visibly recoiled at the sight of him and hurried on their way. He pulled himself farther onto the road and set his head down, closing his eyes. If a cart would not stop to help, perhaps the next would simply run him over and be done with it. He slept, too tired and hurt to care much what might happen.
He was moving when he woke again, the unsteady rocking of a cart with an imbalanced load. If his transporter meant him harm, they’d have done it already; he went back to sleep.
The two men who picked him up out of the cart dropped him in shock when he spoke to them, each accusing the other of not realizing the corpse was alive. “Please,” he whispered, his voice scratchy and faint, “help.” They retrieved him from the ground and sent for a stretcher, bearing him into a building and depositing him onto a pallet in a room with other barely moving forms. He was questioned about his injuries, cleaned, and poked and prodded. He was bandaged, his head shaved, and a kindly looking older elven woman spooned tasteless mush into his mouth. He slept again.
In his dreams he reached out for a shadowed figure who turned away from him. Starbursts bloomed around him, each one increasing the distance between him and the figure. He reached still, crying out, and fell.
They questioned him about his master next, and he did not answer. The first rule to being the Legion’s most powerful secret weapon was that no one could know. He had been told many times over the years that his use evaporated under scrutiny and that if he were to be caught and held under suspicion, he would not be claimed. It was the cost of utility. He had done more for the Legion and Tevinter than anyone besides him and the centurion who gave him his orders would ever know, and it had been satisfaction enough for him to see Titus’s pleased face after each successful mission. There would be none of that waiting for him now. He had failed in his mission, and the Legion had no place for useless tools.
Titus would not be pleased to see him now, would not tell him he’d done well. He would be left to rot or die of his injuries in this rural hospital. He knew that, and still he dared to hope that as they left the room after their questions to alert local slaveholders of one matching his description that Titus would care enough for him and come anyway. They were all each other had: his family had abandoned him after leaving him with the Legion, and Titus was by his position elevated and set apart from the rest of the cohort. Surely…
They had shared much these last five years, wine after a well fought victory, maps and strategies and the cramped confines of a Legion-issue bed that required them to get creative about their late night activities. He knew the feel of Titus’s hands on his flesh as well as his own, could trace Titus’s body with his lips from memory. “The rest of them could learn from your devotion,” Titus had told him, and he waited patiently to see that devotion rewarded.
My contribution to @dafuckedupshipsweek, because @chalkituptofate dared me to. You're welcome. (And I'm sorry? Maybe not.)
Here, have some T-rated, messy Solavellan, for your reading displeasure. The latest chapter in my Anathea Lavellan fic. (Fair warning Solas is not endgame for this fic. This girl will flirt with a lot of people.)
TW: Character death, fire, some very in-game and very not in-game swearing.
-------
Anathea wakes to smoke. At first, she's irritated at her sister, or perhaps one of her friends for wasting firewood in the middle of the night. Then she hears the screams. Tearing her covers off, Anathea whisks the tent flap open, peering out into the night.
The smoke immediately brings tears to her eyes and the heat of the flames pool sweat under her tunic. A hand grabs her wrist, yanking her to the right. "Anathea, we have to leave, now."
She licks her lips, coughing. "Mother?"
"What's going on?" Nina, her sister, asks blearily, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"We've been attacked. Get your boots."
"But what about—?"
"No time!"
It's always like walking through a muddy field, this. It's all Anathea can do to grab Nina and go—by the time she gets her sister from their tent—it collapses in flames, and their parents are nowhere in sight. The entire time she hears their screams, and there's nothing she can do.
Sometimes the nightmares allow her the joy of seeing the flames eat them alive. Her magic does nothing—just fizzles out in her fingers, and her staff is currently burning up in her tent. Novice mistake. Nina—on cue—wrenches her wrist, trying to get to them on foot, but it's too late. It's always too late.
"Is this what you dream of every night?" Solas stands next to her, his eyes focused on the ever-burning bodies of Anathea's dead parents. His head is quirked to one side, and he frowns as if he just found bird shit on his favorite tunic (Does Solas own more than one tunic? If he doesn’t, does he ever wash them? Or does he just will the smell away? It would be rude to sniff him to make sure. Definitely. Elven though he is—Solas is not Dalish and seems as stand-offish as any city elf. But he's not a city elf, is he?)
"Maker's balls." Anathea coughs again, though the air seems to have cleared. How? The flames are still—really still—as someone stopped time. No—
Solas's frown twists into the slightest smirk. "A strangely Andrastian phrase for one such as yourself." He turns his head to watch her, as if he just watched a heron take off from a pond, and not one of the worst moments of Anathea's life. "You're not planning on converting, are you?"
"Gods no." Solas. In one of her nightmares. And it's not like he—ahem—hasn't shown up in her dreams before. But this is different. This dream is not about him. And it's not merely a dream. "I'm making fun of the Maker. It's different."
"And yet acknowledging His existence, are you not?" He's definitely smiling now. Fucker. Anathea's had several dreams start off around these same lines—Solas smiles in a way that makes her skin itch, and then Anathea proceeds to wipe that smile right off his perfect little face in a variety of ways. But.
"This isn't a dream." Anathea stops herself, already half-way to closing that distance between them.
"It is," Solas turns—is that a blush spreading across his cheeks? "And it isn't." He frowns again, kneeling down to wipe the soot from her mother's face. The fire does not burn him. "This happened when you were younger."
Anathea realizes with a start that she no longer feels like she's melting inside her clothes. "Yes." She shivers, rubbing her arms as cold rain comes down, putting the fire out. "Well…some of it did." Is Solas—? No.
"I'm sorry." He reaches out, grasping her Marked hand, squeezing it ever so gently. And yet—what is he apologizing for?
"You're—here." She twists her hand, grabbing his forearm to pull him closer. "In my nightmare."
"Does that bother you?" His frown deepens, and as Anathea opens her mouth her raven caws.
Anathea shoots up in bed, her sheets damp with sweat…and her thighs wet with something else entirely. Was that the first time Solas showed up personally in her sleep? Does he know about her other dreams involving him? Andraste's tits.
Pairings: Illario Dellamorte x Meira Van Morovich, Lucanis Dellamorte x Meira Van Morovich, Lucanis Dellamorte & Illario Dellamorte
Rating: M
Summary: A few months ago, Lucanis Dellamorte cut and ran from the Crows. He followed Meira Van Morovich halfway across the continent to join "the Aviary," Divine Victoria's secret military organization, intent upon finding a just cause to fight.
His cousin Illario is dispatched by Caterina to get him back, by any means necessary.
Meira finds herself caught in the crosshairs.
Read on AO3
Excerpt below the cut!
The knock at the door was unexpected, and the visitor even more so. It was the wrong Dellamorte cousin.
“Illario.” Meira blinked several times. “Is everything all right?”
“Of course. I just thought you might be lonely with my cousin out of town.” He produced a bottle of wine. “Have a drink with me?”
Meira narrowed her eyes. “Please don’t tell me you stole that from the wine cellar.”
Illario looked scandalized. “What sort of barbarian do you take me for?”
Meira debated telling him she had barely gotten Lucanis to stop stealing food from the Grand Cathedral’s kitchens. She thought better of it.
“I understand this is a very fine vintage from one of the most celebrated wineries in Orlais.” Illario chuckled. “My family owns a number of vineyards in northern Antiva. I always like sizing up the competition. Join me?”
Before Lucanis had left for his current field mission, he told Meira — in between strapping knives into compartments in his trunk she didn’t know existed — in no uncertain terms: One: do not trust Illario. Two: do not talk to Illario. Three: do not let Illario drink alone. Meira realized now this was contradictory advice, because how was she supposed to keep him from drinking by himself if she didn’t talk to him?
Note: So this whole deal -- which started as me brainstorming what to do this week and texting my BFF something like "if Elissa and Nathaniel Howe had hate sex it would burn down Vigil's Keep" -- accidentally took over my entire brain and wants to be a 100K slow-burn enemies to lovers super smutty adultery blah blah blah that spans the length of Awakening. WHOOPS. So unfortunately that resulted in no actual hate sex during actual DA fucked up ships week buuuuuuut look out for the novel-length smut- and angst-fest coming to AO3 sometime this year if the hyperfixation doesn't leave me (big if). Thanks to everyone who read about these two absolute lunatics this week. MWAH. And a giant thanks to @dafuckedupshipsweek for organizing this and also ruining my life.
Hissing darkspawn surrounded him. They were everywhere he looked — rising up out of the water, dropping out of the trees, running at him from the riverbank. How had he lost track of the other wardens? They had been just ahead of him — he tried to call their names, but the sound died in his throat.
"Nathaniel. Nathaniel."
Elissa's voice came to him, low and insistent. He couldn't tell where it was coming from. She sounded so calm — wasn't she frightened? Could she be behind him? He tried to turn but was completely unable to move, arms pinned to his sides. He could hear her right next to him but he couldn't see anything— the darkspawn were pulling him down into the water—
"Nathaniel. You're dreaming. Wake up, Nathaniel. Nathaniel."
His eyes flew open, but it barely made a difference in the total darkness of his tent. His right arm and left shoulder were anchored to the ground by something heavy; worse, something was covering his mouth. He groped wildly with his left hand, but couldn't get his elbow off the ground.
"Hush, every bandit from here to the Hinterlands is going to know where we're camped," Elissa whispered. There was no irritation in her tone, only patience. Her lips were right by his ear. He realized the thing covering his mouth was her hand; that her knee was on his wrist. He stopped struggling. His heart was pounding, half from the nightmare and half from the feeling of her on top of him. He could smell the smoke from the campfire on her hair. He had to check a sudden, wild impulse to lick her palm.
After a moment she withdrew her hand. "You were yelling in your sleep," she said. She rolled her knee off his wrist, freeing him.
"Sorry," he rasped, sitting up. He was covered in cold sweat. "You must think I'm a coward," he blurted out.
"Not at all," she said. "Last night Anders had to wake me because I was screaming. I was so startled I swung at him. Almost broke his jaw."
"Is that why you—"
"Pinned you down? You're stronger than I am, I couldn't take the chance."
Nathaniel was still trying to forget the sensation of being completely immobilized while she whispered in his ear. Her hand on his mouth— Maker's breath. Or had that been part of the dream?
"You're drenched," she said. "I'm on watch, come sit by the fire with me so you don't freeze." She had ducked back out of the tent almost as soon as she had finished speaking.
She was right — the damp chill of Vigil's Keep had builtto a raw, wet cold as they got closer to the Blackmarsh. He pulled his boots on and followed her outside. He could barely decide if he would rather sit close to her, or far enough away to look at her. The alarm that had been sounding in some part of him since he returned to Vigil's Keep was growing louder, and a pang of guilt struck him as he realized he was going to continue ignoring it.
She looked up at him and moved ever-so-slightly to the side, tacit permission to sit by her. He told himself that it must be because it was cold; or that it would be easier for them to hear each other without waking the others.
He made sure not to sit so close that they were touching. They both stared into the fire.
"What was the dream?" Elissa asked, without turning to him.
"Just darkspawn. Too many of them. No way out."
He saw her nod out of the corner of his eye. She poked at a log with a long branch, releasing a cascade of sparks.
"But it wasn't that… it was that I was alone. Utterly alone. Like suddenly I was the only person left alive in Thedas."
Pairing: Female Cousland x Anora Mac Tir
Rating: Explicit
Words: 3.5k
Tags: power imbalance, proxy sex, hate sex, vaginal fingering, dildos, fake cock sucking
written for @dafuckedupshipsweek free day :) | divider credit
read in full on ao3 ->
Preview:
It wasn't the first time Fenella had found herself summoned by the Fereldan queen. Anora had always had a presumptuous streak, even when she'd still worn her father's name and her hair in braids, when they'd been but girls. Mere children mimicking the politics of their parents. It had been well known, back then, that Anora had been meant to marry the young prince Cailan—a fact Fenella had never cared much about until years later, when she'd stood in front of the newly widowed Anora discussing the future of Fereldan. How drastically their situations had changed. How desperately Fenella had wished to be anywhere else.
Rain lashed at the window, echoing Fenella's mood as she stood before the fire, contemplating whether it would be worse to suffer whatever it was Anora wished to speak with her about than to face the consequences of ignoring her altogether. The storm, she thought, would provide more pleasant company this night, though perhaps the comparison was a little unfair to the storm. There were few things Fenella enjoyed less than an audience with the queen or, these days, the king. A mouthful of glass would have been more desirable.
But when the queen summons, even the warden commander must answer.
So there she stood, in her drying leathers, rainwater collecting at her feet from her cloak weighed down by damp from her arrival just as the skies split open. She'd have removed it if she'd expected to be there any longer than it took to hear Anora's purpose in summoning her. As it was, it would serve well enough as a reminder that she was not here at her leisure. Though she'd been shown to the queen's personal sitting room, Fenella refused to make herself comfortable. An impossible task, anyway, when she loathed everything about the room, from the upholstery to the furniture to the tapestries.
It could have been yours, a small voice hissed, a familiar oil-slick feeling slithering into her gut. Her jaw tightened, the hand on her pommel with it. She'd long since discarded recriminations for her choices. They were hers and she would not regret them—even if they'd come with the unforeseen consequences of being kept near enough that she could not go even a day without being reminded of them. It had been her idea for Alistair to marry Anora, after all, convinced as she had been then they would not survive to see it done. She'd had her chance to undo it, even. But a Theirin ought to sit on the throne and Maker knew she was not fit to be queen. Anora possessed more poise and diplomacy in her little finger than Fenella could ever hope to muster and she would freely admit to that—and hate the other woman for it, too.
Fandom: Dragon Age the Veilguard
Pairing: Rook Mercar/Illario Dellamorte
Rating: Mature
Summary: Rook embodied his favorite things in life: beauty, death, power. She set fire to everything around her. It was a good thing Illario loved to burn.
Words: 859
Additional Tags: Blood Magic, Self Harm, Blood CW, Venatori Rook, Canon Divergence, Minor Character Death
Some Illario/Rook, Venatori AU, for @dafuckedupshipsweek
Read on AO3
Zara Renata lay dead at the feet of the only woman who ever mattered to him.
With hot blood streaming down her arms, dripping from outstretched fingers to the muddy ground, she stood over the magister covered in a crimson that matched the magic still swirling in the air around her. For a moment, when her amber eyes sought him out across the battlefield, fear coiled in his gut. No matter how little the magisterium thought of her, she was more powerful than some of their highest ranking members. More formidable than even the man who taught her how to control her magic.
More dangerous than the man who controlled the Shadow Dragons.
Ariadne Mercar was terrifying to behold: bloodied and beautiful. In fact, he preferred to see her covered in blood, whether it was her own or an enemy’s, her honey colored hair and golden eyes gleaming like the fire that roared inside of her, that burned him whenever he got too close.
He didn’t mind burning if he got to be the man she chose.
Mine.
The thought danced through his head as she released the hold on her magic, the blood from her magic falling across the ground, leaving no place untouched. Zara lay nearly unrecognizable, whatever spell hiding her true appearance fallen away to reveal the truth beneath. She’d served her purpose, though the memory of her lips on his as revolting as the reality of what he’d done to gain Zara’s power, to gain control of her Venatori forces.
But it’d been for Ariadne, and in the end, it was worth the risk to see the former Shadow Dragon at the height of her power. The Venatori were hers to control, just as the Crows were his. And now, they could finally get everything they’d worked for. Everything they deserved.
The cuts on her arms were healed before she reached where he stood, the blood drying against her golden skin, and when she glanced up to see his face, a smile pulled at her red lips. With a cruel grin of his own, he reached for her hand, no resistance from her as he brought her knuckles to his mouth, biting hard enough to claim her, but gentle enough to not break the skin.
“Vida mía. You are radiant.” Illario whispered, enjoying how her gaze darkened at the touch of his lips against her skin, promises spoken between them with nothing more than a look. And as much as he’d love to take her apart in the middle of the battlefield, even covered in blood and sweat (and if he was an honest man, seeing her in such a state was as arousing as seeing her dressed in the most expensive silks Antiva had to offer). But there were other responsibilities they both had to attend to. Of the Crow and Venatori nature, though the celebrations later would be spectacular.
Every part of Ariadne Mercar was soft curves combined with sharp edges. She lived and breathed violence, nearly as much as he did, and whenever he saw her in a fight, he fell more in love with that violence. She leaned closer, her breasts pressing against him in a way that’d distract him the rest of the day, the grin on her lips softening infinitesimally.
“You’re teasing me.”
His fingers brushed against the scars that peppered her cheek, each wound a reminder of how easily mortal life could be taken. Still, they persevered despite the odds against them. The Veilguard still fought, his own cousin trying to become a hero, but the Crows did not trust him. Not with the demon attached to his body. Soon, they’d all fall like the vermin they were.
“I can do more than tease.”
Gripping her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he maneuvered her in the perfect position, closing the distance between them without hesitation, his lips meeting hers in a breathless kiss. She gasped against him, her fingers curling into his shirt, tugging him closer as if there was still space to do so. Her mouth was hot, needy, and he ignored the sudden desire to push her against the nearest wall, the battle forgotten in favor of devouring her.
But she’d always been better than him.
When she pulled away, she took his bottom lip between her teeth, biting down and drawing blood, a sharp pain erupting beneath his skin. Other parts of his body still held the bruises from other times she’d sunk her teeth into him, and he did his best to ignore the flair of desire at the reminder.
There’d be time for that later.
She released him, golden eyes on the drop of blood as it formed on his lip, running a finger across her own mouth, unsurprised to find her skin coming away with crimson on it. Then she smiled, slipping her hand in his, and he felt her magic as it buzzed against him, a whirlwind of chaos he loved to see unleashed.
Rook embodied his favorite things in life: beauty, death, power. She set fire to everything around her. It was a good thing Illario loved to burn.
