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If Illario had any decency, he might have been ashamed of how easy it was for Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain to buy his loyalty. However, one could just as easily view the simplicity of it all in a positive light; he wasn’t a greedy or complicated man, so why bother letting hubris get in the way of success? Was it not prudent, if not downright humble, for him to ask for so little? These were gods; a lesser man would have demanded the stars be reformed in his image and the tides rise at his whim. Despite how people chose to speak about him when his back was turned, his ambitions were more than fair. After all, there were really only three things he wanted:
The seat of First Talon.
The power of blood magic to hold it.
And Rook.
He couldn’t say what actually drew him to Rook in the first place. She certainly had none of the grace, glamour, or refinement he usually craved in a conquest, so the mystery of his attraction nagged at him for a while. Maybe it was simple jealousy; a deeply rooted inability to see Lucanis enjoy something he himself went without. The allure of scandal, perhaps? The Fifth Talon would certainly raise hell if he found House Dellamorte’s most infamous philanderer absconding with his favorite protege. Gods forbid novelty, or worse, boredom. It wasn’t every day a man is presented with a dimension-hopping would-be hero to pursue. He eventually gave up on trying to solve the riddle. It didn’t matter how he got here, only that he could no longer suppress the fervent desire that burned in his chest whenever she walked into a room.
And she didn’t walk in tonight per say, but rather… stumbled.
Illario was in the middle of losing a substantial sum of gold on a particularly bad hand of basetta when he noticed Rook heave her way down the stairs of the Diamond. She still donned her travel leathers, heavily weighted with mud and water, making her more closely resemble a drowned rat than a professional killer. Her damp hair, still twisted up with a pin, dripped small puddles onto the impeccable marble floor as she limped her way to the bar. She stood out like a sore thumb against the other off-duty Crows, most of whom at this time of night had transitioned to eveningwear, but her disheveled appearance was still not the most noteworthy thing about her. She was completely alone. No dwarf, no detective, and most importantly, no Lucanis.
He quickly folded the rest of his cards and strolled his way to the open seat at her side.
“Enjoy a late-night dip in the canals, hermosa ?” Illario chuckled, pulling out a silk handkerchief to innocently dab at the water still clinging to her face.
She swatted his hand away before he could make contact.
“Leave me alone, Illario,” she grumbled without looking up at him. “I’m drinking by myself tonight.”
He retracted his arm but didn’t move from his chair.
“It’d be a crime to let a woman like you be lonely on a night as beautiful as this.” And that earned him a glare.
“Go fuck yourself.”
A crooked smile twisted the corners of his mouth. I’d rather fuck you -on this bar in front of everyone if I have to- until Lucanis hears you screaming my name from wherever he’s hiding. But he kept the thought to himself. Just because he’d lost at cards didn’t mean Illario was done gambling for the night.
“Perhaps later, tesoro , but your leg seems to be in bad shape,” he said, his voice thickly laden with concern. “Tell me what happened.”
This was a game Illario played better than anyone else in Treviso. Getting between a target’s legs was easy; getting inside their mind took real skill. He knew from the slump in Rook’s shoulders that the cold and damp had sapped out most of the energy she’d need to stand a chance at outwitting him. The injury added to his advantage as well but the true gift was her solitude. If she willingly parted from her “Veilguard” (or whatever nonsense they called themselves), it meant something had happened… something to leave her emotionally vulnerable. He watched eagerly as one of her hands curled into a fist.
“It’s nothing,” she said through gritted teeth.
Illario crooned sympathetically like she was a wounded bird.
“I’ll make you a deal, Rook. Let me order the most expensive bottle of brandy Signora Cantori has to offer. Share one glass with me so I can make sure you don’t collapse in front of half the Crows who want you dead, and if after that you still want to be alone then I’ll take my leave for the evening. Is that fair?”
On any other night, he knew she’d be smart enough to say no. Viago trained her to know better than to be plied with drink and comfort. But she was freezing and hurt and far too exhausted to argue.
“Fine,” she relented with a tense sigh.
Illario smiled and flagged down the charming elf working the bar for two glasses and a brandy so expensive she had to pull it from a locked safe. Rook barely moved as he heavy-handedly poured her first drink, staring down at her own hands like a novel was printed on her palms. A part of him almost felt remorse. Was it even really fair sport with her in such a sorry state? But that qualm was quickly replaced with lust when she finally lifted the glass to her soft lips. Gods, what he wouldn’t do to feel them wrapped around him while he twisted his hands in her hair and pulled her down until she choked…
“Now,” he continued casually. “What actually happened to your leg?”
“Antaam in the Drowned District. I was distracted and got sloppy,” Rook confessed.
Distracted. A good place to start.
“You have my word that I won’t tell Viago,” he said with a charming laugh and leaned in closer like it was their own little secret.
She gave him another glare but otherwise returned to sipping her drink so he used the opportunity to take in any other cues her body had to offer. The dark circles under her eyes were an easy indicator that she wasn’t sleeping well, and eating seemed to pose a similar challenge judging by how much looser her doublet hung on her shoulders than the last time her little posse came to Treviso. What a waste, he thought, to see her grinding herself down with this futile battle. One simple surrender to the Evanuris and he’d be able to take care of her properly.
“Should I be offended that my cousin doesn’t want to share in my company tonight? I can only imagine he’s avoiding me if he’d pass up the opportunity to visit the Diamond with you,” Illario asked when Rook was further along in her drink.
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
The answer was quick… too quick… like it had been waiting to burst out and finally escaped before she could stop it. Illario bit back another smile as the pieces fell into place. Lucanis was fumbling right as Rook needed him more than ever. An insubordinate Crow from a Fifth House was never going to be equipped to lead a resistance. And now the weight of it all was crushing down on her, but the famous Demon of Vyrantium was too afraid of his own feelings to help hold her up. For all his cousin’s fearless -bordering on stupid- actionability in the face of danger, he’d always been a coward in affairs of the heart. Even when they were young, he found it easier to pine from afar and eventually give up rather than learn the art of the chase. It was little surprise that nothing had changed after the Ossuary. Illario let a gentle silence settle so Rook had no choice but to simmer in Lucanis’ absence. His mind began to wander on its own as well. How many nights did she spend tossing and turning, burning with an insatiable need? Was she an exemplar of self-restraint or did she spend hours pretending it was his cousin’s hands on her body instead of her own?
“Then I suppose it’s my familial responsibility to make sure your leg is taken care of,” he finally said as if he hadn’t just left a nagging piece of bait in her brain.
“I told you, it’s nothing,” she snapped before throwing back the rest of her drink.
Rook stood back up, obviously planning to storm out indignantly, but her knee buckled as soon as she put weight on it again. Illario expertly caught her around the waist before she could stumble further. He was no stranger to catching a fainting maiden, though usually there was a knife in his hand to finish the deed himself shortly thereafter. She tried to flash him a resentful scowl but it got lost behind the veil of a pained wince. Something was definitely broken and the adrenaline of a solo fight against the Antaam was no longer strong enough to keep her upright. No doubt the Mintrathous mage she’d come to rely on could have fixed it with a wave of her hand had she not been alone. Sloppy work, indeed.
“ Pobrecita, you can hardly stand.” His voice was so low and smooth it almost sounded like a purr. “At the very least, allow me to escort you to one of Teia’s suites so you can rest properly.”
“Take your hands off me before you lose them,” Rook threatened, but made no physical effort to fight against his hold.
“As you wish… so long as you can safely walk on your own.”
A moment of pause hung between them as she realized her bluff had been called. He cocked his eyebrow in a silent well? to which she begrudgingly relented with a curt nod, but let out a surprised yelp when he reached down and literally swept her off her feet. Even with the extra grime clinging to her clothes she was still surprisingly easy to lift. Several sets of eyes turned to stare their way, inquisitive and suspicious in true Crow fashion. Rook’s face started to tint red as the onlookers whispered between each other. Antivans could take a secret to their grave if they wanted to. Illario had watched several good assassins keep their mouths shut under the kind of torture that would drive lesser men to sell out their own mothers. But when it came to scandal or intrigue, gossip spread as fast as a bird could fly. Rook’s glower warped into an outright snarl as he carried her toward the stairs with a smug grin on his face.
“It’d be less humiliating to crawl,” she muttered under her breath.
Illario smirked but said nothing and continued on until they made it to the second floor. The Seventh Talon had transformed the Cantori Diamond from an obscure den of vice into a bustling headquarters for the Crows in the few short years since she was promoted. The casino itself funded their House’s operations almost as much as their contracts did. With so much money coming in, she made sure to have a variety of lavish offices and opulent suites available for other Talons and high profile clients to use free of charge. It was good business, after all; made allies and enemies alike easier to spy on. He carried Rook to the rooms set aside specifically for the Dellamortes and laid her down as gently on the bed as he would a priceless piece of porcelain.
“...Thank you,” she grumbled, like it hurt her to say it.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Illario replied. “Lucanis would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you in his absence.”
He watched her eyes closely as he spoke. The shift was subtle, almost undetectable, but her gaze briefly flitted around the room avoidantly. Whatever his cousin had done to upset her was fresh enough that she was still running from it. Her nerves seemed to calm however, as weariness overtook anxiety. Rook’s head began to loll back against the plush pillow, eyelids opening less and less with every blink. Sleep was mere moments away, and Illario briefly considered letting it take her. Briefly.
“Your clothes, hermosa,” he chimed and she jolted out of her lull. “You can’t sleep in wet leather.”
“I’ve done worse,” she replied defensively.
Illario tsked like she was a fledgling who just gave a wrong answer to her guildmaster and reached for the boot on her injured leg. She tried to shrink away but wasn’t fast enough to do so before his fingers deftly undid the laces (practice really did make perfection). With the heel firmly in his hand there was no moving her leg without aggravating the broken bone, and she tightened her jaw to keep from crying out in pain when she tried to no avail. If he wanted to truly be a good servant of Elgar’nan, this was his chance. She was immobilized and distracted; it would be effortless to put a dagger in her chest and deliver her heart to the Evanuris on a silver platter. One of those Venatori fanatics would have jumped on this opportunity in a blink. Was that not proof enough that he could be trusted? That he deserved her?
While she was staring up at the ceiling, pridefully trying to hold back any hint of weakness, he pricked his finger on one of her old boot hooks.
“ Relax. ”
A lightning-like shock of power pulsed from the small cut on his hand and expelled in a beautiful cloud of corrupted Fade. It drifted like smoke up Rook’s body until it clouded around her face, drifting into her eyes to turn them a lovely shade of red. It wasn’t a powerful spell by any means, but it was just enough to ease her into a state of complacent serenity. The tension she’d been building up all evening visibly melted away and she let out a deep, maddening , moan of relief. It simultaneously scratched an itch in his longing and left him aching for more.
“What… what was that?” she asked dazedly.
Illario smiled softly as he got to work gently removing her other boot.
“Just a healing technique I learned on a contract in Minrathous. Very useful to take care of injuries in the middle of a job.”
If they were to split hairs, it wasn’t entirely a lie. He’d been sent to Minrathous to kill Zara when she showed him all the power the blighted gods had to offer. Blood magic held more applications than there were mages in Tevinter, not all of them inherently destructive. The answer seemed to satisfy her weary mind and she sank further down into the bed with unresisted acceptance.
“It’s… nice…” Rook sighed.
It was oddly foreign to see her look so at peace. From the day they met and every one thereafter she carried the burdens of leadership in every part of her body. Unwanted responsibility in her shoulders. Loss in the bags under her eyes. Determination in her calloused knuckles. Ragged, bruised, and battered hope in the forced curves of her smile. Rook almost seemed like an entirely different person without them. He wondered if this was what she looked like when she was still just another one of Viago’s underlings, back when his life was some semblance of normal and he never would have given her a passing glance.
“You could feel this way more often,” he offered innocently as he pulled away the drenched cloak from over her shoulders, his hand lingering at her neckline. “Even heroes sometimes need a release .”
“Watch yourself, Illario.” She was obviously trying to sound intimidating, but it came out as more of a mumble.
“I’d rather watch you finally surrender.”
He let his gaze drop and his voice deepen from its caring filter to the seductive rasp he’d been containing all night. Rook sensed the shift immediately. Her eyes widened and she tried to push herself upright, but her muscles were still minimally responsive under his magic’s influence. The heave of her chest, the sweat forming on her brow, the twisting of her fingers for any purchase in the sheets… Illario had her dead to rights, completely at his mercy. He leaned over to cup her chin with his right hand, tilting it ever so slightly so she had no choice but to look deep into his hungry gaze. Her body might still be trapped in its relaxed state, slowed and weakened, but adrenaline alone was bringing her mind closer to full awareness. Closer being the operative word.
“If I were a lesser man, Rook,” he murmured with the deliberate draw of a tease. “I would simply fuck you now and leave you for Lucanis to find in the morning.”
Her breath hitched, and when her lips parted ever so slightly he slipped his thumb between them until it rested on the very tip of her tongue. She expectedly tried to resist, struggled to push him away, but he simply let out an amused chuckle and pushed deeper in until he almost reached the entrance of her throat. He pressed sharply downward and watched a prick of tears form at the corner of her eyes as she fought back a choke. Gods, it took every ounce of willpower in his body to keep to his word. All he could think of was how beautiful she’d look with her head over the edge of the bed, swallowing him whole.
“Although, it might teach you both a lesson,” Illario continued, moving his other hand to cradle the back of her neck as if they were lovers already. “He’ll never give you what you need, amorcita, not like I can…”
It was a bluff, but he knew from the panic in her ever-widening eyes that she couldn’t risk playing against it. Despite the reputation that some of the more voracious Crows spread throughout Thedas for distastefully sating their lascivious appetites on contract targets, force wasn’t his typical style. Definitely not his preference if it could be helped (outside of a specific client request, of course). To take without finesse was lazy, easy, with no real skill required. No, the fun was in the chase, the tease, the slow but sure seduction that wasn’t over until the object of his efforts came begging. His approach with Rook was just more… elevated than usual. He curled his thumb and self-indulgently began stroking her tongue so there were no illusions about what he wanted as he spoke to her again.
“Listen very carefully, Rook. I’m willing to let you go and make you fall into the deepest sleep of your life where you can dream about my useless cousin all night. But you need to do something for me in exchange. Nod if you understand, hermosa. ”
Her brows furrowed and eyes narrowed. A few moments passed as her still hazy mind measured his expectations, but she finally shook her head ‘yes’ with a bitter suspicion. He grinned and leaned in next to her ear. The smell of elfroot oil somehow still clung faintly to her hair even after crawling out of the Drowned District’s murky waters, and it entangled with the smell of her sweat to form a fragrance that would be burned into his mind for the foreseeable future.
“Say my name like you need me. I want you to know how it feels for when you come crawling back.”
She let out a muffled sound that felt similarly like the cadence of fuck you. He laughed against her neck.
“Of course, tesoro , if you need inspiration.”
He removed his left hand from the back of her neck and dragged it down the front of her chest until it came to rest at the waistband of her trousers, refusing to avert his gaze as his fingers tugged ever so slightly at their laces. A threat. A promise. She glared up with a resolute rage. Ah, there it was again; that weight of struggle in the face of the impossible. Illario wondered if that was what Lucanis really fell for: a clever but suffering killer with a heart of gold who refused to give up. Could it be he proved too weak to fight his way out of that prison enough to love himself, so he latched on to the next closest thing? Delightfully pathetic if true, and even more of a reason to lure her from his side. It was only when Illario unknotted the cord completely that she finally relented with a frustrated groan.
“ Good girl, ” he purred and withdrew from her mouth at a decadently slow pace, making sure to swipe his thumb messily on the side of her cheek as an extra tease. “Now-”
Rook spit in his face before he could finish the thought.
“I said… take your hands… off me…,” she hissed, almost back to her full speech. “Or you’ll… lose them.”
Suddenly and against all odds, Illario stumbled. He felt himself pulled in too many directions all at once. ‘Gods, she’s gorgeous when she’s angry’ warred against ‘how dare a de Riva stray insult the future First Talon like that?’ ‘Just fuck her like a cheap whore and be done with the whole thing’ urged him one way but ‘I want to chase her more than ever’ another. The only thing that compelled him above all else was the irresistible urge to kiss her. He crashed his mouth to hers like a desperate, dying man. She startled at first with being taken by surprise, but didn’t take long to bite his lip hard enough to draw blood. Illario moaned without restraint. She still tasted like brandy, now mixed with an incendiary tang of copper. He wanted to consume every part of her and drive away any last trace of Lucanis until nothing but them remained. Careful not to put any pressure on her broken leg, he climbed onto the bed so he could delve deeper into the kiss.
“ Te amo, mi cosita perfecta,” he panted without fully pulling his mouth from hers. “ Quiero hacerte mía.”
Illario couldn’t have strung together a sentence in Common if his life depended on it. The side of him she released was too raw, too primal, to parse through language. He found himself grinding his hips against hers, reaching for something - anything- to find relief from the overwhelming fire threatening to ignite them both.
“Go. To. Hell.”
A shock of sharp pain suddenly bloomed in his neck. He pulled back to see Rook holding her hair pin in her shaking fist, the tip now coated in his blood. Like every Crow, he’d been stabbed more times than he could count. He was intimately familiar with the usual sensation… and this was not it. Searing heat spread from the wound across his skin in every direction, seizing the muscles of his entire upper body as it went. It felt as if his lungs were collapsing in on themselves. He struggled to breathe and couldn’t help but reach for his own throat in a futile attempt to catch any air possible. At least he did, until his hands began to freeze. Now immobilized and barely harnessing enough air to breathe, he had no way to recast even the simplest spell. And the original had worn off.
Rook gave him an exhausted but assured shove off the bed, sending him toppling helplessly to the floor. She took a shuddered breath before heaving herself up by the bedpost to put all her weight on her good leg until she seemed to stand as tall as an Evanuris herself. A goddess of vengeance and beauty.
“Concentrated deathroot extract and gurgut venom make a potent paralytic for anaphylaxis,” she explained coldly. “If you’re lucky enough to survive, it won’t wear off until long after I send Teia and Viago to find you.”
She leaned over even though it obviously caused her pain.
“I won’t kill you now for Lucanis’ sake, but if you so much as breathe in my direction again, they’ll be fishing your unrecognizable corpse from the Grand Canal.”
The corners of Illario’s vision began to haze over with encroaching darkness from the continued lack of oxygen. It was his own fucking fault, letting himself lose focus when it mattered most. Even weakened, injured, and enchanted she still managed to best him. He underestimated her, and the last thing he thought before falling into unconsciousness was that it would never happen again.
—-
When Illario ducked out of Lucanis’ path to flank his cousin from behind, he found himself mere inches from Rook’s rapier. She looked savagely resplendent with a deadly hatred burning in her eyes and loose pieces of hair perfectly framing the rage in her face. Most of the Venatori around him already lay slain; only a few strong mages remained and even they were quickly becoming overpowered by the Veilguard’s necromancer. His options were shrinking by the second. He needed to get a lucky strike, or run to fight another day, or be ready to die on the spot. Anything to avoid giving his cousin a satisfying victory, but all he could focus on was Rook de Riva as she raised the tip of her blade toward his throat. Everything he was promised had been so close at hand until Lucanis and his demon kicked open the opera house door with her trailing just behind them. It was only then that he realized his fantasy was a doomed one. She would stand by his cousin’s side if it killed her and now he had to. Even if it was his last action before the rest of the Crows closed in, at least he would gain a singular final victory over Lucanis. She would finally be his, and only his.
“You picked the wrong Dellamorte,” Illario said loudly enough for all her allies to hear.
This time it was Rook’s turn to smirk.
“Ready for me to make good on my promise?”