Dragon Age One Shots

Regency Cullen 23

Smugglers.

Scoundrels.

His entire family?

Cullen smacks the back of his head against their prison, the flimsy bars rattling in the dirt. He's been chained to look out through a blind across the sea below. Well, chained is a reach. The best they could manage is a few knots around his wrists, none of these pirates certain how to treat this confounding Duke in their presence. Gwen, he fears, is another story.

He knows she is in the cage behind him, her voice silent. Save the occasional rustle of her dress, he'd fear that they took her elsewhere. Or that she'd escaped him at the first chance. And why wouldn't she? These were her people, the kind that trained her to pull rigging, to steal cargo under the dead of night. The people he was taught to apprehend, to put to justice.

The same people his father was working in conjunction with all this time.

"What am I doing?" Cullen moans to himself, his head collapsing to his hands perched upon his knees. When he bends, his back strikes the bars bringing a sneer of pain to his lips, but he feels as if he deserves it.

"Are you well?" his fellow prisoner calls, her tone surprisingly calm given the circumstances.

He could lie, the sarcasm rising like bile. Of course, everything is rainbows in my life. I'm about to be ransomed by pirates to my own estate at the behest of my dead father. Perfectly normal, a regular Tuesday. Cullen moans, sinking deeper into his lap, "No."

"You're worried," she surmises, still as calm as the ocean. Gwen is left with a view of the smugglers' comings and goings while all Cullen is afforded is his grimy hands clenching impotently.

"You are of them," he says, a low growl rising from her, "what will happen?"

"To you?" her anger doesn't subside, but it is the truth. She is, or was, the same as that peacocking Pavus. "They'll give it a few days, send a message to your estate, and wait for some payment to be exchanged. Doubtful it'll break your coffers, they don't want to get the royal navy involved, but they need to make it look legitimate as well."

Cullen hears another clank of chains and he can feel the warmth of her body pressing behind his. "Pavus isn't going to jeopardize his good deal. He's smart, smarter than most, and knows when to not stab someone in the back. You'll be back in your study in under a fortnight. Perhaps a bit thinner due to the atrocious pirate cooking, but safe."

Her certainty should soothe him, at least a touch. But he hones in on her comforting words to the ones she didn't speak. "What of you?"

A snort answers him, the clank of chains shaking him to the core. "I'm certain Dorian sent two messengers, one to Honnleath, the other to...my brother. Without a man to claim me, I'm as good as flotsam on the open seas."

Cullen's heart clenches at the dejection in her voice, how quickly she accepts this fate. "Your brother, is he...would he...?" He is no fool, he knows of men who are quick with their hand and belt, who care nothing for lashing their pain on others. And even if she is a criminal, she doesn't deserve that fate.

"Hm? No. He would never strike a woman. No, Zev is...I wouldn't say he believes in the life, but he's never wanted to abandon it either. It's all he knows. He was so young when I left, but I barely had the means to keep myself alive. I..." her aching tongue stills, Gwen's back pressing harder to his and the rustle of her skirts breaking over the crash of the waves below. "I'm certain he wants me back."

"Is that what you want?" Cullen whispers, confounded at his concern for her. She's made it rather obvious that she is a survivor who doesn't need his pity or help. But he cannot shake the feeling in his heart.