Archive of Our Own ^beta

For years dawn meant dread.

And with it sleep never came easy - if it even came at all. Sleep was a trapdoor that plunged him back into Kinloch’s stone walls, or Meredith’s voice commanding the unthinkable. And always, always, he’d wake all the same: breathless, sweating. Fists clenching around ghosts before his mind had the chance to catch up.

But not this morning.

He came out of his rare, dreamless dark to something warm. Slow. Human. His heart stuttering into something suspiciously like peace as a warm breath ghosted up his inner thigh, over the faint aches of where her mouth marked him just hours earlier. Then a tongue came, slow and deliberate, further coaxing him from a drowsy half‑mast to aching attention.

He sucked a quiet inhale at the sight before him: pale‑gold dawn slicing cross along the Inquisitor’s tapestries, along her bedding. And Evelyn, striped in light, was knelt between his knees, ash-blond hair in a delicious ruin from the night with arse tipped high. Almost holy. Wholly obscene. A lesser man would have crumbled; the Commander felt himself perilously close.

Her eyes flicked up when she felt him stir, with that tongue dragging around the rim of his cock until she eased back to slip him free, playfully rested against plush lips as she spoke.

“Happy blessed morning, Commander.” A thumb skimmed idly along the thick vein of his underside, drawing a soft sound from his throat that wasn’t quite a moan - but not far off. “Thought I would spare you the standard horn‑blast.”

His laugh came out ragged, fingers curling into her strands as if they might ground him. “Blessed morning, indeed.”

She grinned before giving another swirl of her tongue, then trailing it down to nuzzle at the base before taking him deep into one smooth, practiced glide. Cullen’s spine arched, hips lifting off the mattress in helpless gratitude.

When she surfaced Cullen caught her chin before she could vanish again. Her damp breath ghosted over the pad of his thumb when her lips kissed it, the sight alone leaving him resisting its pull - just barely - yet with no real conviction. Every nerve screamed to let go, to have his cock spill down her pliant throat - only to then thank her for the privilege.

But he wouldn’t. Not when his mind barely managed to have his cock obey him, instead of her mouth.

“Easy,” he said, though perhaps more to himself, than anything. “We– negotiated terms. Remember?”

Evelyn lifted her head at that, toward the terrace doors that slightly jarred in the night, enough for them to see dawn already beginning its ascent over the Frostback Mountains in rose-white hues. He didn’t need her words. Her smirk was answer enough.

There.

The image bloomed in his mind’s eye: her palms braced on stone, back arched in a taut bow from his chest, nipples puckering in the chill as his roaming palms warmed every shiver out of her. It had been a half‑jest, half‑challenge - though mostly his own nervous stall, than anything. Now the very idea set his veins thrumming as lyrium once had.

Maker witness, he was going to make good on it.

A gentle tug caught her attention once more that she obeyed, drawing her higher up his body; the subtle glide of her skin and hair against flesh was enough to make his hips buck. When she closed in, he kissed her; albeit restrained, yet just greedy enough with tongue. The taste of himself in her mouth should have unsettled him. 

Instead, the answering throb in his cock made a mockery of the impulse.

Evelyn chuffed into their kisses, smug and half-feral, as she pulled back just enough to speak. “Strange,” she mused. “You practically wilted when I suggested it.”

“I was also half‑dead,” he countered. “Twice spent. Legs like boiled rope. Yet you wanted to parade me onto a freezing balcony for a third go. Forgive me for not leaping at the opportunity.”

Her grin widened, crooked and knowing, that little overbite flashing when her lower lip caught between her teeth. The gesture had no business being that enticing.

“And, now?”

Cullen answered by rolling her beneath him in one smooth motion, settling between her thighs like it was already second nature (perhaps even so, although that night was their first of many couplings.) One arm braced beside her head as she watched his other trailed down with unhurried insistence - fingertips grazing her breast and lower still, until it parted her thighs. She willingly parted for him, and it stole his breath.

“Now,” he drawled by her ear, “I’m wide awake - and you swore an oath, Evie.”

Her breath hitched. “Quoting me, are you now?”

Cullen gave the kind of smirk that would have made recruits snap to attention if they’d ever seen it. “I’m a quick study, Inquisitor Trevelyan.”

Her mouth opened - perhaps to protest, perhaps to tempt - but he stole the words with another languid kiss.

“Up,” he ordered softly, levering his body just enough for her to scramble upright.

Cullen followed her off the scattered rugs that gave way to bare flagstones. The chill nipped at his ankles while the rest of him burned. The sun was still making its slow ascent along the Frostbacks; yet the overhead cobalt remained in the west. Below the fortress, distant waterfalls hissed, misty and constant.

Among that scenic hymn, Evelyn centered at its core, hoisting herself along the broad parapet just wide enough for her with room to spare. The hiss of the cold against her nethers was hard to ignore.

He huffed a soft laugh as he approached, finding nothing behind her but a thousand feet of sky and the valley below.

“Chilled?” 

“Only where you’re not touching me,” she said, hands already on his shoulders, knees opened to accommodate both him and the hands that slid along her thighs.

“Easily remedied –”

He bent for a kiss only for her to tip back just far enough to steal his balance and his breath. Years of Templarhood let him reflexively clamp an arm round her waist, yanking her flush.

*Gods above, she* trusts *him*.

Her heels locked at the small of his back, laughing, maddeningly unafraid at his reaction. “Worried I’ll take a spill, Commander?”

“Maker’s breath,” he muttered from his heart executing a neat little mutiny from little stunt. “ –Do that again and I may be drafting accident reports for Josephine along with condolences to half of Orlais.”

“Doubtful,” she shot back. “Months in the saddle and I’ve yet to be unseated.” Thighs tightened in demonstration.

“*Yet*.” He echoed in mock-censure, the hand in her spine now sliding carefully from to the hip, stopping where his fingers dug just enough to make his point. “And I intend to keep it that way.”

Her smile curled, sly and bright. “Is that an order, Commander?”

“*A strategic recommendation*,” he countered, all grave authority but none of the bite. That same hand now thumbed idle circles against her skin. “Inquisition protocol, you see.”

“*Protocol*?” She chuffed, catching his lower lip between her teeth; the groan she won fed her grin. “And here I thought we were being ‘adventurous’.”

“Protocol, adventure…” he drawled. “Yet lines blur when the Herald precariously balances a thousand-foot precipice above unforgiving valleys.”

He gave a chaste kiss, pulling them a little closer just so his heartbeat would stop hammering away at his ribs. “Humor me, Evelyn.”

“Only if you humor *me*, Cullen.”

“Terms?” he murmured, letting slow, nipping kisses wander along the column of her throat, coaxing her head back for more.

“Bury yourself in me,” she answered into his bed hair, voice low and avid, “Before the rest of the world barges in.”

A rough laugh cracked from his chest - half prayer, half surrender - cheeks warming like he was back in the monastery with contrition on his tongue as if he’d said the words himself: “Maker, preserve me-- consider it done.”

Her body yielded when he eased in with an unhurried glide. She shuddered, head tipping back as dawn’s first gold crowned her throat. As he stilled to let them adjust he bit gently at her pulse and she clenched around him in answer.

He drew nearly out, savoring her clutch, then eased deep once more - measured, controlled, carving a steady cadence of inexorable advance and retreat. Her fingers tangled in his curls, the other hand looping behind his neck to anchor them. Her breasts bounced in time with the motion, the tips grazing his chest each time he rocked her against the parapet. He bowed to capture a pebbling peak between his lips and she cursed softly into the wind.

“Still cold?” he said between tastes.

“Not yet,” she teased, breath skimming his ear, “but I’ve faith you can finish the job.”

“I’m nothing if not efficient.”

Both hands properly cinched her thighs to a higher degree by the knees. His stance widened, feet firmly planted, then began to drive deeper, faster. Each thrust gave way to another blissful grin from her lips, rocking her steadily down toward the parapet’s surface.

Soon that backward tilt had her shoulders arching over the edge. His heart began to lurch again when she stretched her arms out like a bird’s, fingers flirting with the mountain wind as it caught in her hair, waving it like a silver banner. 

But he didn’t haul her back this time, didn’t hush her recklessness. Instead, he held steadfast, hands still clamped at her knees, forearms welded beneath her calves to anchor for a slower pace. What he now lost in depth he instead made up for in a shallow, rolling pressure that rocked them both.

So he let her *fly*.

Even if the cold bit his skin, the stone bruised his knees, he welcomed it - needed it - because for the first time in too many hollow years, he felt alive. Not functional. Not commanding. Alive. Like maybe the trauma hadn’t burned everything good out of him after all.

So he watched her shed mortality, becoming Andraste’s myth made flesh; raw, sighing, incandescent.

That’s when the clarity struck him: this razor’s edge was now Evelyn’s sanctuary. Her lean into the abyss, arms wide, shed the weight of sainthood and impossible expectations, trusting the wind as surely as the stone beneath her spine and the mortal man anchoring her steady... all while basking in that private freedom.

Then, somewhere between his reverence and rutting, she uttered something decidedly less divine:

“Fuck, Cullen –”

He almost laughed then - Maker, he wanted to - but that selfish, fragile ache rose sharply, unbidden. He meant to hold back. But the sight of her gloriously unshackled, bare to the sky's dawn and the Maker Himself, broke through every barrier, leaving him rasping a half-plea, half-moan:

“Evie – please. Look at me.”

Her eyes fluttered open, glazed and heavy until they found him. When he felt her knuckles grip the edge of the parapet he began to drive deeper in earnest. Her thighs tightened, heels digging hard into his backside with a fierce counterthrust that found their bodies in an unrestrained, blessed synchronicity that erased all thought.

“Maker, Ev – I…” Cullen words meant for reverence only dissolved into a strangled moan, the last of his control disintegrating. His hips stuttered, shuddering as she ground mercilessly against his him with a feral keen - and that was all it took for stars to spatter behind his eyes, his world narrowing to her pulse around him, her heat, the impossible rightness of them.

Release ripped through him, untangling years of dread in one white‑hot rush.

The first true peace he’d known since his life went to hell in Kirkwall.

Since it left him a shell of a man at Kinloch

Since–

“Still with me?”

He’d held fast, buried deep, palms braced against the ledge as he the aftershocks rolled through him. Only when frosty palms met the column of his neck did the tremors in his spine begin to wane.

“I– I am,” he rasped, at last finding his voice, blinking away the stars still swimming behind his vision. “I will be.”

She kissed him, lips gentle and savoring, patiently waiting for him to collect himself.

She caught his chin before his head could bow, the other hand stroking his cheek, soothing, grounding. He tried to swallow around the knot in his throat. And failed. “I haven’t... finished like that. Not since–”

“Since...?”

He swallowed again into the refuge of the kiss she gave. He owed her truth. But the words, Maker, the words.

“Kirkwall. The Order.”– His head shook. –“I could not. It was not right. Not after...”

She leaned back, eyes searching for permission before her fingertips brushed his temple. He gave a slight nod. The touch came so, so lightly against his forehead. “I'm so sorry, Cullen. What you've endured–”

“No.” He caught her hand, pressing it to his heart. “Please, no pity.” Not from you, he thought. Maker, anyone but her. “What I want is to feel alive.”

“Then you will,” she promised, all fierce, bright, and terrible. “If I have my way? I swear it.”

Open-mouthed kisses planted along the column of her throat until meeting her mouth. The wind may have carried pine and snow, but beneath it her skin still held last night’s musk, salt, and something faintly sweet he couldn’t name but craved.

“Let us get you back inside, Evie. You’re shivering.”

She winced when her feet hit the flagstone, spine straightening. “Ow–”

“Easy–”

“Just stiff,” she muttered, stretching with a grimace. “That was more than I bargained for.”

He laughed, low and breathless. “Not the part where you hanged precariously off a castle’s ledge?”

She thumbed his bottom lip. “You did say you wouldn't let me become unseated.”

“So I did,” he murmured, leaning into her hand with lingering kisses at her fingers. “–I am glad to have held to my word, then.”

“Thank you, Cullen.” The words came soft and sincere, a little smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “For humoring me. I know that wasn’t exactly your first choice of activity. Or location.”

“Perhaps not,” he granted with a smile. “But I can’t say I’m complaining. You were... incredible.”

“You weren’t exactly a slouch yourself, Commander,” she teased, fingers carding through his mussed locks.

He snorted. “Not a slouch? How very eloquent of you.”

“Fine. A paragon of virility. A stallion among mares. Truly, you’ve ruined me for all other men.”

He chuffed, cheeks flushing redder than when he’d been mercilessly rutting into her. “I was going to offer to carry you. Now I’m reconsidering.”

She arched a brow. “You mean you can’t?”

“I can,” he said dryly, gesturing to his aching thighs and the tremor still humming in his knees. “I just may never walk upright again.”

She grinned, smug and sore. “Coward.”

He gave her a look, then promptly scooped under her knees without warning, reveling in the undignified squeak she let out.