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“You’re jealous.”
Lucanis startles. He hadn’t realized that Spite was… well, right there, was too hyper-focused on the way Viago touched Rook’s arm to notice anything but. Her shoulder is badly sprained, her freckled skin mottled with dark, ugly bruises. It looks like someone had picked her up by the arm and swung her around like a ragdoll. Viago handles her like one wrong move will make the arm fall off.
It takes another moment for Spite’s words to register. Jealous. He’s… jealous? No, that… that couldn’t be right. He barely knew Rook. How could he be jealous? And yet, seeing Viago touch her so freely, regarding her with a familiarity that bordered on intimacy, made his stomach twist into knots. He remembers the way she’d smiled at him in the Ossuary, how being held in her mismatched gaze had filled him with a sense of life that he hadn’t felt since before he’d fallen victim to the Venatori’s experiments. He’d never expected to escape from his underwater prison—and certainly not with the aide of an angel. But that was what’d happened. And now…
She smiles that same smile at Viago, teasing him in clumsy Antivan—it’s endearingly bad, especially in her thick, Free Marcher accent.
And then Teia comes and starts fussing with her hair, and Lucanis’ heart sinks, as if weighed down by a ton of bricks.
“You’re mistaken.” Lucanis says, his voice firm. The demon giggles, but doesn’t comment. And then, as if to add insult to injury, one of Rook’s companions—Neve, Lucanis believes her name was Neve—chimes in with:
“It seems like there’s a bit of… history here.” Rook turns red as a beet, and promptly attempts to hide her freckled face behind a curtain of golden-blonde hair. Teia’s answering grin threatens to split her pretty face in two as she teases Rook in fluid Antivan, before supplying:
“Lilin is our little tesora.” Rook grumbles something unintelligible beneath her breath, “Thank you, again, for watching out for her. She has a terrible habit of getting herself into trouble… Viago was worried that something had finally done her in this time.” Viago pulls a face—he does not worry, thank you. He just… needs to take extra care with her arm, because injuries like this could impede her usefulness to the Crows later on down the line, is all.
“It’s nothing. Just a bit of first-aid.” Lucanis continues. “She’ll be fine in a moment.” And then Teia and Viago can stop touching her. He turns away, attempting to focus on something—anything—else. But every time his mind begins to drift, it’s brought back to the present by the whisper of Teia’s fingers through Rook’s hair, or the sound of Viago’s hushed whispers as he applies salve to and binds her bruises.
They share a bond, a history, that he’s not part of. And somehow, it feels like a knife twisting in his gut.
Spite is speaking again, but Lucanis isn’t listening. After so long spent trying, desperately, not to feel anything at all… his mind is a whirlpool of emotion, and it’s making him dizzy. He’d felt something for Rook, yes… but he didn’t know what to call it. Love? How could he love someone he scarcely knew? Lust? He could admit that the idea of being with her was… tantalizing—that he would likely spend many a night during their travels fantasizing about the sounds she would make when he pulled on that beautiful, curly hair. But… odds were, the reason why he couldn’t put a name to what he felt for her was because there was no name for it. He’d just… latched onto the first friendly face he’d seen, simple as that.
But that didn’t explain why every time he saw her, his chest tightened, and his heart sped up. It didn’t explain why it felt like her mere presence in his life filled a void he hadn’t even known existed. Not to mention… though Spite is relatively harmless, mages know better than anyone the dangers associated with possession. The fact that she doesn’t look at him like an absolute abomination, that, despite shouldering the seemingly impossible task of saving the world, she also wanted to help him… is nothing short of a miracle. He should be grateful. And yet, each time his eyes drifted to Rook, Teia, and Viago, it felt like he’d been stabbed in the heart.
“They do love her, don’t they?” Spite remarks. Lucanis fixes him with a look, which is promptly ignored.
“What would you know about love?” He fires back. Something in Spite’s expression shifts then—he eyes Lucanis coolly, before vanishing without another word. Lucanis cannot help but feel as if he crossed some sort of invisible line, “Mierda.”
“Are you alright?” How Neve had managed to sneak up on him, he doesn’t know—perhaps all of that time in the Ossuary had dulled his reflexes. (Would he truly be the asset this “Veilguard” believed he would be? Or would he just be a hinderance—a baby fawn who was just learning how to walk on knobby little legs?). “Is it the demon?”
It is. It isn’t. He doesn’t know how to explain this, and so he doesn’t. “I’m fine.” It’s not quite a lie—as a Crow, he’s become well-accustomed to making himself be okay, even when he is not. He’ll get through this, and come out on the other end stronger for it. At least, that’s how his grandmother had always painted the picture of suffering. He’s no longer sure whether or not she was correct.
His eyes flit to Rook, Teia, and Viago again. Jealous? Absolutely not. And since when did he start seriously listening to what Spite had to say, anyway?
“I’ll just… be outside. Come and find me when you are ready to leave.”