Chapter Text
For all that the Antivan Crows valued cunning and initiative, Illario couldn't help but notice that such qualities were frowned upon whenever he bore them. It really should be his own exploits celebrated this night. The toast raised in his name.
It rankled that instead his cousin's name filled the hall and not his.
<"If we have to be here, grab one of those crab pastries. I want to enjoy myself even if you don't,"> came a bored voice from the fringes of his mind.
"I've lost my appetite," Illario muttered in reply, his stomach turning at the mere thought of food.
<"What about my appetite?">
"If I don't have one then you don't, either, Gana. When you have your own body you can eat as much as you wish."
<"I won't be so picky as you. When I have a body I'll eat every crab in the estate.">
Illario did not fancy the spirit sharing his body choosing gluttony as her new aspect to personify, unmoored as she was from her former one. He drained the last of his wine and set the glass on the tray of a passing waiter. Across the room he could see his grandmother standing alongside her favored grandson and his newly betrothed. Illario slipped out into the courtyard.
A wave of laughter from inside followed him into the cool night, and Illario lamented having not drunk more. However, he did not dare chance inebriation when Caterina threatened swift retribution if he made a scene. Now, sobriety only tested his patience further. Life had never been fair, but never had he been quite so aware of that fact. Just this once, this one single time... the night should have been his.
Illario ripped the pin bearing the House Dellamorte mark from his lapel and threw it as far as he could. It landed with a distinct 'plunk' somewhere in the towering fountain across the garden.
"Good throw."
With a start, Illario shied away from the unfamiliar voice.
<"She's a sneaky one. Or were you not paying enough attention?"> Gana said, voice sweet as honey yet cold as ice in his mind.
By the time Illario's vision had adjusted enough for him to make out the figure seated among the rose bushes, he'd fully regained his composure. "It was a good throw, wasn't it?"
The woman shrugged, turning her attention back to the small case in her lap. She was halfway through packing a smoking pipe. "I've been told that some of the Crows in House Dellamorte throw coins in. Getting one in the top level is good luck on one's next contract. Did you get it in the right one?"
"I always do," Illario said shortly, straightening his coat with a sharp tug.
<"We could show her. If I can't have a crab, I would like her instead.">
For once, even satiating that particular appetite did not appeal to him at the moment.
Pausing briefly, the woman glanced back up to him. "You're the First Talon's grandson, aren't you? I thought you would be giving one of Master Dellamorte's speeches right about now."
"Lucanis," he said flatly, for he would never deign to call his cousin by that title, "has plenty of speeches lined up for him already."
"Yeah. I'm sure he does." She sounded rather disappointed.
<"I am so cold,"> Gana said with a sigh. <"She and I could warm each other.">
The woman settled her pipe in her mouth. She lit it with a subtle wave of the hand, but no flash of demon light brightened her eyes.
Illario blinked slowly as he registered what he had seen. "You're a mage."
"Yep."
"So, you can hear my demon."
"She has a pretty voice, doesn't she? Some sort of desire demon?"
In times like these it paid to have no shame. "Ambition, more specifically," he clarified.
<"Not anymore. Lust sounds nice now.">
The woman studied him then, nursing her pipe all the while. "With that mad stunt you pulled, your ambition would have gotten you killed if Master Dellamorte weren't so forgiving. I can see why your demon's too afraid to embody that aspect now."
It really was only a matter of time before the entirety of the city knew about that 'stunt', let alone the Crows. For a guild that dealt so intimately with secrets, they gossiped far too much.
"Gana is simply considering every available option." In truth, Illario was of a mind that his demon would become bored with whatever choice she settled on and eventually return to her previous state as a demon of ambition. That was in their best interest if they wished to maintain a harmonious relationship.
"I've always wondered what it's like to have a demon in one's head," the woman said as she pushed herself to her feet. She picked up the Crow-styled coat on which she had sat and draped it over one arm. "You're lucky."
"That's why I don't throw coins in the fountain. I already have all the luck I need." Though Illario did not believe luck had anything to do with his being paired with Gana. It had always seemed to him that it would be 'luckier' to have been naturally born with magic. Then a demon wouldn't have been needed to acquire it secondhand.
The other Crow regarded him thoughtfully. "Yet you threw something, and you said you never miss. Do you think you'll get lucky tonight?" She ran a finger over the low neckline of her gown with all the subtlety of a brick through a window.
So that was how it was. Silently willing Gana to not rat him out, Illario stepped toward the woman. With her closer to his eye level, he could more easily see her pointed ears. The flare of her pipe illuminated distinctly elven grey-green eyes. She was not the same calibre of singular beauty as his cousin's Tevinter betrothed, but most Antivan Crows were at least pleasing to the eye if nothing else.
"I know I will," Illario said, tilting her chin up. He pushed any complaints of how short she was to the back of his mind as he leaned down the rest of the way.
She was nipping at his bottom lip before he could even properly kiss her.
The indignation of the night's proceedings began to slip away and with it the muzzle on his own desires. Gana's presence thrummed through his very soul. Needy. Hungry. An insatiable flame despite her earlier complaints of a chill.
Bitterness from the pipe smoke filled his senses as Illario dipped his tongue into the other Crow's mouth. He could feel enterprising fingers hook into his belt just as a cheer rang out from the hall. Illario tossed his head back with an agitated cluck of the tongue.
"Let's take this to the library," he said, nodding toward the nearby door. Away from the light. Away from the sounds of adulation.
Once safely within the quiet stillness inside, the elf curled her fingers into a fist, magically extinguishing the contents of her pipe. Where she put it Illario did not notice or care. The sound she made when he lifted her onto the writing desk, however...
Illario had the skirts of her gown pulled up over her thighs and her smalls tugged down in record time. All it took was two fingers and a few deft strokes to hear that sound again, though infinitely sweeter now. He smothered the next one in a kiss, drinking in the residual ghost of a moan as if it were the wine he so craved.
A hand wound into his hair, pulling it more and more free of its tie with every desperate clawing of her fingers. He lost track of her attentions elsewhere until he could feel her loosening his belt. With a practiced hand, she palmed him to return the favor he so thoroughly bestowed on her, and if he weren't fully aroused before he was now.
In time her body seized with a final burst of pleasure, and it was only then that he drew his hand away. She all but melted against him, rolling her hips with an insistent groan. It took so little to make an already willing body want him even more than he wanted her.
"You were luckier than I tonight," Illario said, and he meant every word of it.
"Why's that?"
He didn't answer, more interested in tending to his own burgeoning desires. Illario brushed her hand away, shifted to find the proper angle, and buried himself in her. It wasn't the perfection he had wished for this night, but it was close enough. Every thrust drove that sentiment deeper into his mind, and soon he wasn't sure what he had originally wanted in the first place.
At some point Illario decided he wouldn't mind if his demon chose to take lust as her aspect. It always wound up so much more rewarding than any other. The heat, the exhilaration, the dizzying need grew gloriously out of control and spilled over in one crowning moment.
Then it was over. The glimpse of perfection began to fade. Gana, previously so attuned to his passion, slowly stirred back to a semblance of her own individual consciousness.
Illario could feel the elf's breath on his collar bone, nails in his skin where she had snaked a hand under his shirt. Once he had collected himself, he untangled her limbs from him, tidied himself until he thought he was passingly presentable, and stepped away. "Don't stay here overlong, cariño."
Then he left to liberate a bottle of wine from the party and took it to his rooms.
--------
The next evening Illario found himself at the doorstep of House De Riva, his most despised of Crow houses if only due to his disdain for their Talon. To think he should have been raised as heir to the First Talon the night before only to find himself at the mercy of the Fifth now. It was poor comedy.
An adder, eyes glowing with blue demon light, stared at him from the nearest window sill.
<"I am glad my body will not look like that,"> Gana said with a haughty sniff.
"I'm glad the beast is on the other side of the glass." For now.
The door opened then. Large grey-green eyes, pale against olive skin, stared up at him. "Are you bothering Emil? He's just enjoying the sun."
Illario narrowed his gaze as he studied the familiar elf, very aware of the alarm bells rousing a racket in the back of his mind. "Oh, and what is the Fifth Talon's scaly little fiend saying? I can assure you he's exaggerating."
She glanced over to where the adder basked, placid as ever. "He says you called him names. Also, he's telling Viago that your demon still has not manifested her own body and therefore you are not worth Viago's time."
"Charming little serpent. Shame he's wasting his metaphorical breath." Illario pushed the door open the rest of the way, stepping into the foyer. He eyed the demon adder before turning his attention back to his companion. "I didn't realize you were a De Riva."
"You could have asked."
"I could have."
<"Taking pleasure from each other is better than exchanging names.">
The elf shrugged. "Sure. Anyway, Viago will know you're here now. You should probably go see him now before he decides to track you down himself. That'll put him in a right foul mood. He's in his office."
Illario figured the Fifth Talon would be in a poor mood either way. It was begrudgingly that he made his way down the hall.
"So, are you going to ask me my name now?" the woman asked, apparently intent on following him. Or not wishing to leave him unattended in House De Riva's sanctum.
"I'm afraid to say that I wasn't planning on it, no." Previously he attributed that entirely to disinterest, but now he added wariness to that as well. Surely Viago had not sent someone after him at the party, had he? Even if he had, to what end? Not to have Illario killed, at least. The Fifth Talon feared Caterina too much to threaten her family. Even her least favorite family member.
Then he remembered that Viago's demon had manifested a body by finally committing itself as a demon of ambition.
This was not a place to lower his guard.
Illario did not knock, instead opening the office door in one grand, sweeping gesture. "Viago de Riva," he greeted, easily slipping into some semblance of ingratiatingly good cheer that Viago did not at all deserve. "How so magnanimous of you to have accepted the offer to oversee my exile from House Dellamorte."
Viago, his sharp features immediately twisting into a scowl, glanced to the grand clock over the mantle. "You're six hours late."
"Oh dear, I must have lost track of time."
<"I did enjoy the pretty barmaid for lunch."> Thank the Maker that Viago could not hear Gana, but the elf at Illario's side chuckled low in her throat.
Sighing, Viago set his quill aside and stoppered his ink well. He grabbed his cane and pulled himself to his feet. As he made his way around the desk, he looked older than his forty years. His movements slower. The shadows across his face deeper. "I only took you in because your cousin is more merciful than he is sensible. See to it that my respect for him outweighs my contempt for you."
"The First Talon says Illario is competent in the field if not anywhere else," the elven woman supplied as if trying to sound helpful.
Illario was almost surprised to hear that Caterina admitted even that small amount of praise for him.
Viago scoffed and grabbed a thin stack of parchment from the edge of his desk. He considered it before offering it to his subordinate, though when he spoke he addressed Illario again. "Your first job. I've already briefed Rook properly, but you did not deem it fit to be here for that. After you've completed the contract, she will be writing a thorough report on your performance. If it isn't up to my standards then Lucanis will have to find another house to put up with your traitorous incompetence. If any will."
That thought loomed in Illario's mind long after Viago had thrown them out.
"So, what kind of magic can you two use?" the elf—Rook—said once they were safely away from the gloomy confines of the De Riva estate.
And was that question meant for the purpose of working together on a contract or something more nefarious? Illario glanced to her from the corner of his eye. "The most rare school of magic. Blood magic," he said eventually. When he could sense that Gana wished to provide more detail, he mentally all but screamed at her to keep it to herself.
Rook nodded. "And what shape does your demon let you change into?"
<"The most beautiful one,"> Gana said quickly, the preening evident in her tone.
"I doubt you will have cause to see it, so there's little use in dwelling on it." Besides, the thought of Gana developing an interest in vanity did not thrill him. It was only then that he realized just how many appropriate vices there were available to them, and not a one compared to the ambition he still coveted.
"I'm sure you're very pretty, Gana. Even if Illario is embarrassed."
"Oh, is that how you think I feel? Obviously my demon would give me a most stunning form to complement the attractive visage I already bear. I've no reason to be embarrassed."
Rook stared at him for a long moment. "Maybe not now. Anyway. Let's go. I want this guy dead as soon as possible," she said, holding up the dossier in her hand.
"I agree. The sooner we're finished, the sooner I can tend to more interesting diversions." Illario already had a specific tavern in mind.
If only he had known then how long the night would turn out to be.