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There were a lot of things Lucanis would have been surprised to find when he turned around in his cell in the Ossuary. Zara on her hands and knees, begging for forgiveness
Would never give it.
Caterina with a plate of milk and cookies
Poison, must be
Andraste and the Maker, apologizing for making such a mistake, he was never supposed to be here, and they’d take Spite away and deliver Lucanis safely home right away
Ha!
Even Spite couldn’t think of something cutting to say at the sight of the beautiful woman who was standing there, more surprising than anything Lucanis’s imagination could have come up with, wearing more jewelry than fabric, raising an eyebrow at Lucanis like he was the surprising thing here.
“You must be who we’re looking for,” she said, her voice rolling out of her like the waves over the docks, her accent a mix of half a dozen like the shouts in the marketplace, and Lucanis felt a fresh stab of wanting to go home so badly it ached. “Lucanis Dellamorte?”
And she knew his name. Impossible. Desire demon? The ones Lucanis has seen had all looked significantly more demonic, but why else would-
No, Spite hissed, prowling around the edges of Lucanis’s thoughts, his attention fixed ahead; on the vial of blood they could sense, smell, on Calivan beyond it, on Zara’s death beyond him. No Desire. No Want. Watching us. Watching us. Lyrium in her veins, knows what we are-
“Who are you?” Lucanis demanded of the strange newcomer, one hand gripping the hilt of his stolen dagger hard enough to hurt. Whoever, whatever, this was, he wouldn’t let them push him back, wouldn’t let her trick him, wouldn’t go back in that cell, not while he was still breathing, not back where Zara would return, with her cruel laugh and the piles of corpses and the constant press at the backs of his eyes.
The woman who Spite seemed to think was human even though why would she be here, looking like a treasure hunter’s wet dream, grinned at him, held up a roll of black leather, and tossed it to him.
He caught it on instinct, still gripping the dagger, but the material was so familiar he nearly dropped it out of shock.
His. He could feel himself on it, in it, through it, and he unrolled it to find his armor, his dagger, his rapier, all the things he’d thought sunk to the bottom of the ocean or repurposed amongst the Crows, never to fit in his hand again.
She had to be a trick. Had to be, even as he discarded the stolen dagger for the one that had been smithed with his fingers in mind, its weight as familiar to him as the smells of Cafe Pietra, the sounds of his own footsteps over the rooftops of Treviso.
“Caterina sent us,” the woman who couldn’t be real said. “Though it looks like you hardly need our help.” She nodded to the dead Venatori scattereed around them, which Lucanis had all but forgotten about. A surge of fresh hatred and pride went through him at them being dead when he wasn’t. His or Spite’s. Didn’t matter. Not now. Not when freedom was so close. So close. So close.
“You’re not a Crow,” Lucanis said, because if he was sure of nothing else he was sure of that. No Crow would wear that much gold. She’d glow if you put her in a dark corner.
“And you’re possessed by a demon,” she replied, all smiles. Dangerous. “So I guess we’re all getting surprised today.”
“…It’s complicated.”
Spite laughed his cruel bark of a laugh, because it really wasn’t. Impossible, yes, complicated, no.
The impossible walking treasure chest of a woman snorted a laugh and pushed her hair, blue as the ocean, back from her face. One eye was equally blue, the other gold as a coin. “Honestly, it might help. We have a couple of very powerful mages that need killing. We hear you’re the expert at that. Caterina offered your services to our team if we got you out of here.”
Saying Caterina had sent her was as impossible as everything else. Why would Caterina send this stranger instead of a Crow? Viago, Illario, Teia? Why had it taken so long? Had she known he was here, left him to rot, taught him a lesson it’s for your own good, my dear boy, you’ll thank me for this lesson one day-
Spite snarled and Lucanis breathed in the smell of blood and metal. “I can’t leave yet. They have a vial of my blood; they can use it to control me.” Us. “And I have a contract to finish.”
“Let’s get moving then. This place looks like it could collapse in on itself any minute.”
“It always looks like that.” Slaves, piled up, more use dead, blood like rivers, strengthening the walls, do you think they grow on trees-
He was revolting, would kill for a bath - would kill for a bath, for a cup of coffee, for the sky over Treviso - but his armor went on like he was stepping back into his skin for the first time in a year.
Almost free.
Almost free. If he could believe that any of this was real, that he hadn’t fallen asleep and dreamed of a beautiful, wealthy woman arriving to take him away from this place.
Well, if it wasn’t real, he’d get dream practice for driving a dagger through Calivan’s heart. Could kill him every night and it’d never be enough. If only Zara was here.
Azure, the woman called herself. Like she was describing gemstones or the Amaranthine ocean under a perfect sky. A mage herself, but her magic didn’t make the air tremble, didn’t press on the backs of Lucanis’s eyes until he thought they might burst.
She chimed when she walked; her jewelry clinking gently together, tiny bells lining her shoulders, sparkling bits of treasure woven into her hair.
Not dreaming, Spite snarled, annoyed at repeating himself. Not a spirit.
Desire Demon, dream-wish, a mermaid that had swum in through the cracks of the Ossuary. All made more sense than her being real and sent by Caterina to rescue him.
She was a very nice dream to look at, even if the thought made Spite groan. Her golden boots made for beautiful reflections when she stepped through puddles, and when she called up her magic she was like a treasure ship in a storm, ripping the dream-Venatori to shreds. And if she was a Desire demon, Lucanis was pretty sure he could only be possessed by one demon at a time.
And killing Calivan was good. So good. So satisfying, the fear in his eyes, his voice, his anger at his inability to stop it, this is what you did to us and we will pay you back, pay you back with interest, Crows remember, keep their contracts, pay their debts-
One down. Zara left. Never over while Zara breathed.
Lucanis stopped when he felt the open air, almost thrown back into the Ossuary with the force of it. The smell of water, fish, wood of boats, spices in the air, things that weren’t blood and rot and flesh and death and chains-
Free, Spite crowed, and Lucanis tilted his head back and considered the possibility.
Azure looked a little more real under the dark pre-sunrise sky than she had in the artificial brightness of the Ossuary. Still golden, bejeweled, beautiful, but a more human slant to her smile, to her watchful gaze. Under this real sky, he could believe her skin was tanned from sunshine, that the gold was real and earned, that when she’d laughed at their exit it had been relief and not mockery that he had believed it over. “Bet it feels good to be out of there, yeah?”
Good did not convey it. He was a Crow with his wings returned. “It will feel better to drink coffee again.”
Spite quivered like a taut bowstring. That was what demons wanted, wasn’t it? To experience the world? However Lucanis felt about the experience of being an abomination, he could hardly deny Spite a cup of coffee. Surely even demons would be improved by a good cup at Cafe Pietra.
He wasn’t sure if Azure’s story about evil elven gods was proof she was real - Lucanis’s imagination was surely not so strong - or proof that he was dreaming, the logic collapsing, any moment he would look down and realize he had forgotten his boots and Illario was expecting him for a job on the other side of Antiva, and then he’d be back in the cell, back in the Ossuary, nothing but water and ruin wherever he looked-
Spite snarled so loudly that Azure straightened, eyes widening. He’d made himself heard, and Lucanis wasn’t even sure if he’d used Lucanis’s mouth or something had pulled the sound from the fade.
Lucanis crushed Spite down, harder than he ever had before. Spite might wake him up from this dream, or turn his rescuer into his new jailer. Spite growled in protest.
But then he was quiet. Blissfully quiet as they crossed familiar rooftops, through familiar windows, down into familiar rooms, and-
And Caterina was dead. Zara. Zara snapping at his heels, laughing in his ears, one step ahead even now, even in this farce of freedom, circling him with chains of blood, their little game not over yet, not until her heart shuddered its last around their blade-
Azure’s hand on his shoulder, mis-matched eyes soft. “Do you need to stay here for a bit? To take care of some things for you grandmother?”
Here? No. Caterina was dead and this place was now as corrupted as the Ossuary. As tight. As strangling. Somewhere else. Anywhere else.
He followed her, his dream-friend, the Desire demon, the only real thing in a world where his prison had followed him past its walls, and she led him to a building in the fade, less real even than he’d first thought the Ossuary was.
He found the pantry, shut the door tight behind him, breathed in the smell of coffee.
Impossible gods. Impossible buildings. Impossible women in impossible golden armor.
Zara’s death calling to him. The smell of coffee. His dagger’s hilt under his fingers. Azure’s hand on his shoulder, her low-tide voice saying his name.
Spite, growling and prowling the walls of his mind. Caterina, dead. Illario wanting to share his rightful kill, as though he knew what it was to be bled, to see Zara smile, to have his mind pried open like the hinge of a broken chest-
Freedom?
A contract. Coffee. Gold on brown skin. A dagger’s hilt. And a target on the horizon. That, above all else, could be trusted to be real.