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Possession had a scent.
It’s a fact Rook discovered years ago, on an expedition she tried not to replay during the early hours when her subconscious was feeling cruel. Possession smelt metallic and powdery. Like blood made smoke.
She wondered, not for the first time, if that’s why Lucanis decided to hole up inside their pantry. With all the cheeses, spices and coffee they kept in there, it masked that distinctive metallic scent. Mostly.
As Rook turned the corner into the cupboard, she smelt Spite before she saw him. And Spite did too.
“Smells like parchment. And tea leaves!” He barked. His voice was always that harsh. A warped version of Lucanis’ own, but there was no gentle, Antivian lilt. It was deeper, strained, as though the words were being pulled from his throat.
Spite was perfectly still, with Lucanis’ back sat impeccably straight on the edge of his cot. A stranger might have simply thought he had great posture until they saw his eyes: supernaturally glowing, seemingly from deep within, in a shade of purple that she’d only ever seen in the Fade.
“Finally. We get to talk,” he said as Lucanis’ face split into a too-wide smile. “We never get to talk to Rook.”
It wasn’t that Spite frightened her. Demons were familiar creatures after all her adventuring through the years. Abominations too. There was something about seeing Lucanis’ features twisted. His usually subtle, stoic expressions warped into ominous grins. It felt unnatural. Unsettling. Which was saying a lot, considering unnatural and unsettling things had been her life for at least a year now.
It made every hair on her body stand to attention. Her awareness spiked, making her keenly aware of every step forward Spite took as he closed the space between them slowly.
“So long as you promise not to try any more sleepwalking getaways, we can talk.”
A growl, more animal than anything else, rumbled in Spite’s chest. “Lucanis. Made a deal. He hasn’t kept,” he bit.
“What deal?”
Rook watched as Spite clenched Lucanis’ jaw, the muscle popping in frustration. “Break our chains. Kill. Escape our prison. And live.”
“Isn’t that exactly what happened?” It felt like speaking to a child on the knife-edge of having a tantrum.
“No!” He roared, so close to Rook that they were almost touching, the metallic smell overwhelming her senses. “I want out!”
“I understand that,” Rook said with every ounce of calm her body had. Her hand pressed against his chest in an attempt to force him back - to no avail. “I’ve been researching the Orlesian possession methods that might have been used in the Ossuary. If you just wait until we can figure out how you were put in Lucanis, we can -”
“No! NO!” The light of Lucanis’ eyes flashed brighter. “No waiting! He promised!” His strong hands grabbed her shoulders with a force too tight for mortal muscle. “Tell him! Make him!”
The moment Spite grabbed her, the glow of their eyes frantically flashed between honeyed brown and ghoulish purple. His grip loosened and then tightened harder, all in the smallest space of a second, before Lucanis snapped his body back with a shout.
Silence fell as the shout bounced around the small space. Then…
“Rook?” He asked, his tone tender.
“Hi,” she gasped lamely, the echo of his grip still singing on her shoulders. “You were sleepwalking.”
“Spite was sleepwalking.” There was a whisper of resentment in his tone. At Spite, for taking control. At himself, for not keeping him at bay.
Rook couldn’t bear to see him look so crestfallen. “Here,” she said as she reached for a well-stocked shelf. Lined up neatly like soldiers were bars of Antivan chocolate. She broke off a square and held it out.
“Your blood sugar dips after coming back, right? It’s why you feel shaky and disoriented. There’s a study I found about it in the back of this really interesting -” She stopped herself. “Never mind, just take it. It’ll help.”
His hand extended slowly, reluctantly, but extended all the same. Though his eyes tried to stay firmly away from her the whole time, they darted briefly to meet hers when her ink-stained fingertips brushed his calloused palm.
The silence stretched.
“I didn’t want you to see that,” Lucanis said on a breath. “Again.”
Sometimes, stolen away in quiet moments, he looked at her with impossibly tender eyes. Like a hunted, doomed animal with just enough sentience to know it.
In the beginning, she thought she’d been imagining it. They had only been quick glimpses before they were gone, after all. An Antivan Crow of such renown couldn’t have looked so vulnerable. Assassins had every inch of softness sharpened from them since childhood.
But then, when they were alone, it was unmistakable. A small glance in a group was easily shirked away. Written off as her overly romantic, wishful subconscious. In candlelight, with only their own voices to contend with, there was no brushing it aside.
And now, he was looking at her again with those eyes. They made her want to collapse into his arms with mouthfuls of assurances that everything would be okay.
Instead, she said, “Nothing I’m seeing makes me want to look away.” It was dangerously close to the line, almost a suggestion of genuine feeling, so she followed it up with, “The whole brooding assassin thing makes me want to look more, if I’m honest,” and smiled in a way she hoped looked easy.
Lucanis’ small smile in reply is the very definition of easy, a world away from Spite’s vicious grin, and it made her heart stutter.
“How do you always do that?” He asked.
“Do what?”
“Break apart my perfectly gathered clouds of doom.” The bright smile sank back into something more sombre before he sighed, “You deserve better than my mess.”
The frantic urge to make him laugh reared its head again.
“You think you’re a mess?” Rook scoffed cheerfully. “I have some expedition stories that would make all this look squeaky clean.”
Lucanis was generous with his smiles and laughter when it came to Rook. She considered herself a decent conversationalist. Would even stretch to calling herself witty at times. Which, considering she’d spent the majority of her adulthood in the company of books and libraries until recently, was fairly impressive. With Lucanis, though, you’d have thought she had the raw charisma of a beloved politician. Teasing a sly smile from him was as easy as breathing and she expected that time to be no different.
His face (his scowl, to be more exact) did not budge. From his expression alone, you’d think that she’d informed him his family had befallen some great tragedy. Or that she’d burned the bottom of his favourite cooking pot. Maybe that she’d swapped out his usual coffee beans for decaf.
Though, upon second glance, Rook concluded that he didn’t look angry. His features were set with a degree of determination that she rarely saw outside of combat. It was resolve that had hardened his features. The intensity of his look made her throat dry, and only then did she understand.
A precipice lurched beneath them. Months of small, stolen glances. Of protecting each other on the field. Of shared campfires and shared horror. Of him, making sure she was fed when she was lost in her research. Of her, watching over him while he stole moments of sleep on expeditions. Somehow, some way, it all condensed down into that moment. Their blooming, tentative affection. They were staring it in the face.
And she leapt at it.
“You’re more than what you’re going through, Lucanis.”
Rook’s pulse thrummed in her throat.
“And you wear it well.”
Lucanis stepped towards her.
Her back pressed against the pantry’s shelves.
His arms rest above her, on either side, crowding her space.
The smell of freshly ground coffee, a hint of soft leather, and thyme.
“This isn’t a good idea,” Lucanis’ voice dropped low in a way that made her stomach flip.
“Says who?”
“Anyone with sense.” His eyes didn’t waver from her lips. “You like to walk a little close to the edge.”
“I’m a Veil Jumper,” she said, her voice whisper soft, like anything louder might push him away. “What’s your excuse?”
Slowly, more careful than she’d ever seen him, his face inched closer to her’s. She could feel the heat drumming off him. Her eyes fluttered shut, body utterly still, afraid that any movement might shatter the moment into a million pieces.
All at once, Lucanis retreated. The movement was sharp and sudden, as though someone had slapped him across the face.
“I -“ His shock mirrored her own. “I need to clear my head. Excuse me.” Though he turned to leave quickly, Rook still managed to catch the blood beginning to drip from his nose.
The grand wooden doors’ heavy thud sounded Lucanis’ exit. Left in the flush of it all, Rook was too busy catching her breath to even think to feel a sting of rejection. It would settle in later, she was sure, but in that moment, she couldn’t fight the excited flutter in her stomach. It seemed her wishful, romantic subconscious wasn’t as entirely deluded as she first thought.