Chapter Text
Caterina Dellamorte sits at her table, celebrating the wedding of her grandson Lucanis and his irritating partner Rook. The wedding party was organized here without her explicit consent—it was only announced to her the day before it happened. After she had attempted to get Rook killed—rather unsuccessfully—she allowed the wedding to be celebrated here uncontested.
Caterina’s recent actions against Rook had created a debt of some sort, and even if organizing the wedding in her house cleared some of it, she was still absolutely against the marriage with every ounce of her being. Unfortunately, no amount of protestations would have stopped Lucanis from going through with it— she had neither given him her blessing nor denied him one—but it was the best she could do, which was admittedly not much.
Caterina has, naturally, reserved herself a seat for this unpleasant event. It may have been their wedding she was in, but this was her house, and the chair she sat on was hers. She was ready to defend this seat at the end of the table to the death– quite literally so. Until Lucanis stopped rebelling and accepted his role and responsibilities as the head of the House Dellamorte, he would never see the house moved to his name. However, she was continuously disappointed that none of this blackmailing seemed to work on him; he did not appear even to want the mansion if it came with the title.
The Dellamorte mansion was not decorated in any special way for this event. Without the magical display on the wall, it would not stand out from Caterina’s regular dinner party in any way. Candles and flowers decorate the corners of the dark-colored mansion where Lucanis had grown up. Lucanis had been a good boy all his life, until now– his travels with Rook had led to his ridiculous rebellion. He has recently shown an increasing amount of infuriating original thinking.
By Antivan Standards, the wedding is small. The guests at the tables are mostly their friends from all over Thedas and a few select Crows. It was apparently what the couple wanted, but Caterina sees this as unnecessary modesty. Undoubtedly this tiring restraint is related to the accolades they received after saving the world.
Caterina, however, is more concerned with what the giant crystal standing in her dining room is doing to her polished wooden floors, and the state they will be in after this ridiculous wedding is over.
Earlier on in the day, a charming, older gentleman named Emmrich, and the overtly chipper elven girl, Belladonna or some such, had knocked on her door asking for entry. The large blue stone stands where they were twiddling while talking gibberish earlier after she had reluctantly let them enter.
The stone’s purpose becomes clear to her as the memories of people are reflected on the wall for all to see from within the blue crystal. Caterina is impressed. It is a nice touch, but she would only ever admit that to herself. Everyone else would get a carefully curated frown and vigorous scoff.
She finds it hard to disassociate herself from the events on the wall, as the memories shown are directly or indirectly hers. As a result of the display, she is now experiencing some emotions, and if Caterina Dellamorte hates something– it is suffering any of those. She is uncertain whose memories they are currently viewing, but knows there are only a few people around Treviso who would remember her and her deceased children in such clarity.
She is not under any pretense; she is an ancient relic of the past and most Crows present in this hall are the future. As she looks at her much younger self and sees her kids still alive and well, full of vigor and dressed up in their finery, she feels the weight of the years on her.
Caterina is inspecting her unwrinkled, youthful face. Life’s twists and turns, including but not exclusively the loss of all five children, have been etched in her present face in ways no amount of time could carve. She was not one to generally indulge in long introspective monologues, but watching a younger and more radiant version of herself now has made her momentarily thoughtful.
Illario and Lucanis attempt to conjure memories of their real parents, but she suspects they are looking at the faces of strangers.
She, however, could recall them in perfect clarity, from the day they were born, to the day they were all assassinated.
She leans back to her chair, noticing she has squeezed hard on the handle of her cane during her musings, and relaxes her fingers.
Lucanis and Illario exchange words she cannot quite capture, but momentarily she sees reflections of their parents in their early middle-aged faces. Caterina leans her cane against the side of the table and reaches for her napkin.
She relives their births in quick succession in her mind: the burning pain between contractions– pain that seemed to last forever, and the immediate halt, culminating in the longest wait for that first cry, the clearing of lungs of the waters from the vessel where they grew, kicked and punched around for almost nine months. Brief, warm memories are replaced quickly by visions of their lifeless bodies, frozen in their last breaths. The memories should feel more painful, but life had dulled her pain long ago.
The Dellamorte family has paid the blood price of status many times over, and Caterina’s share had been especially steep. Death is a comfort to her now. She has led the Antivan Crows for a long time and now enjoys in her later years almost uniform approval, but she knows that she is unlikely to die on her bed of old age. Instead, she will certainly expire against a pointy end of the dagger. It was not a matter of ‘if’ but rather ‘when’.
Caterina admits to herself a cold, hard truth as she looks at her beautiful children reflected on the wall; by making Lucanis her heir, she has doomed him to die prematurely. Further on, if she would allow Lucanis to refuse the title of First Talon proper, his fate could be different– he could just be an assassin, without a target on his back and he might be able to avoid his parent’s fate - and the fate of most of the Dellamorte family before them.
Enough mulling, she tells herself once again. Her self-reflection is getting tedious and is unlike her. She takes her glass of red wine and downs it with one gulp. She is here to protest against this laughable union between her grandson and Rook. This should be the only thing that matters tonight - the present, not the past. And with that, the dead lay in their graves quietly again.
As the main course is brought in front of Caterina, she watches as young Lucanis, in his teens, around fifteen years of age by her estimation, walks on a red brick wall in the back alley. He is swinging his dagger around, practicing his knife work using moves almost exactly as Caterina had taught him. At that age, Lucanis had already shown lots of natural talent– her success in the future was not all due to her excellence in teaching him. But she would never concede that to anyone.
Illario can be heard in the background speaking in his high-pitched voice, “She’ll meet me tonight!”
Lucanis stops and performs an adequate pirouette by Caterina’s standards, turning to his cousin, “How are you going to get past Caterina?”
“I’ll climb the trellis, she will never know,” confident Illario declares in the memory.
“I know now, Illario,” Caterina says, dipping a piece of her steak into the sauce on the plate.
Despite all her surliness, the following memory makes it hard for her not to drown in her thoughts.
Lucanis and Illario are at the tailor’s to get Lucanis’ clothes fitted to his slim frame. Lucanis must have around sixteen in the memory she estimates, as she remembers the suit. His features resemble his current face with high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and sharp arching eyebrows, but it has none of the masculinity he has now or the dangerous edge to his glare.
It is clear whose memory it is as the guests see him often flirting with himself via a mirror.
“How often did you have to check yourself out from the mirror during this fitting, Illario?” Lucanis inquires of his cousin and points at the young Illario winking at himself again.
“As many times as it is required of everyone here to see that I was already the more handsome cousin back then!” Illario responds immediately.
As the cousins verbally spar both in the past and present, their voices fade to the background and Caterina’s vision focuses on the man in the memory. He is the only man she has ever cared for; an old Crow, who chose life instead of death and became a tailor.
Considering that his tailor shop today is a time capsule of this very era, it may have been accurate to say that neither of them had forgotten their past.
Due to his unusual origins, Gio is a masterful tailor who creates magnificent pieces of formal wear, but also is highly proficient in altering and mending leather and cloth armor. He had been a Crow and her lover, and he walked away alive from both of those roles and she had allowed him.
Gio had been an exception to her rule; normally Caterina’s lust burned out like a wildfire across the grass, but he– the younger man she sees on the screen– had been her lover in the true sense of a word. She had been a lot younger and all the years of hardship hadn’t eaten away at her emotional capacity until nothing was left, yet. Her emotional distance was not as carefully guarded by the walls of her mind and for a while she had been happy with him.
Ultimately, they had come to an end when he chose to leave the Crows to taste life and live it, and she continued walking in the footsteps of death and became unable to live it. His life was not hers to take away.
Caterina listens intently as Rook whispers to Lucanis, “Isn’t that the Crow-who-turned-tailor you told me about?” He nods and gives a kiss to his new spouse, gently and caringly. Caterina no longer saw value in such gestures. It had been different then. Their stolen moment had been caught in Illario’s mind; the tailor held her hand briefly in the background of the memory.
Lucanis did not miss the gesture. He was now staring at her with his dark eyes, looking for confirmation of what he already knew to be true. Caterina will not give him any such thing. What happened in the past stays there.
Naturally, now Caterina Dellamorte does not believe in love. This ridiculousness with Lucanis getting married is a whim, and he should have gotten over it sooner. Instead, she has to sit here, eating an -admittedly wonderful- second course Lucanis himself has cooked with that Belladonna elf girl.
Marriage, to her, is an unnecessary chokehold– human connection with another, is a foolish notion as she trusts nobody– not even her boys, after what transpired with Illario.
She acknowledges that, to her chagrin, Lucanis does not seem to agree with her. Whatever emotional reservations she had attempted to instill into him, had evaporated as he had met Rook.
Caterina had endeavored to save him from this mistake but her plan had backfired majestically.
She had hired a dozen Crows to dispose of Lucanis’s precious arm candy, but Rook refused to die. Afterward, instead of reconsidering the marriage, Lucanis no longer cared what Caterina had to say about the matter. He proposed to Rook regardless and received a regrettable, resounding yes as a response.
All through his life Lucanis was always obedient enough and more easily malleable than Illario. His notions of independence were easily quenched, and he became a useful tool for Caterina. Lucanis accused her recently of raising him as a weapon, but Caterina had no intention of denying it– he was indeed her finest creation.
Meeting Rook- the unfortunate obstacle in Lucanis’ bright future- had changed him and he had become far harder to control. He would never reach Illario’s level of disobedience but to Caterina’s disappointment, he showed more initiative and self-awareness than before.
When her assassins almost caught Rook, she was surprised when her nemesis appeared behind her door bloodied– a lamb ready for slaughter.
“Señora Dellamorte,” Rook had said weakly, bleeding profusely on her floors and despite making a career out of bleeding people out, Caterina did not welcome someone doing it in her entrance hall. Blood and wooden floors were a terrible combination, and she had second-guessed her selection of material many times when someone dared to spill their blood on her well-maintained floors.
“Rook,” Caterina had felt rather disappointed in her hirelings– there had been many dependable names on the list of hires, and yet their target was here, albeit barely standing. Naturally, she concluded that all those good assassins she had given the contract were now dead– if Rook hadn’t killed them, Lucanis would have hunted them down by now.
Caterina had received word that Lucanis was told about assassins going after Rook, and he had immediately sprung into action. News coming after that were updates on their thinning ranks, but she received no news that Rook would be dead.
“Are you going to get me killed because of what happened in the Opera?” Rook had tried to find a reason for her hunt. Caterina had descended the stairs after observing Rook struggling with their uncooperative, wounded body.
“I would say, Rook, that I have almost succeeded.” Caterina had watched as the pool of blood on her floor grew larger. The injuries on Rook were severe- the blood loss was twitching her adversary’s body like a marionette.
“Why? Why go through all this?” Rook had asked her and instead of pity Caterina had felt nothing. Rook had taken her malleable boy away and filled his head with sickly sweet dreams about the future, a future not dedicated to the family and the Crows. Lucanis would be better off without his Rook, Caterina told herself.
She wanted to kill Rook right there and to this day she still regrets she did not do so. She wouldn't have to sit here pretending to be happy for them. She pushed her plate away and scowled at the service coming to pick it up immediately.
Lucanis is her weak spot. She has searched for answers to why she hates Rook so much but has struggled to understand it. Eventually, she realized it was how Lucanis looked at Rook. Caterina felt replaced, like the world was slowly substituting her with the younger people as she herself got older. Lucanis would not need her.
Caterina had watched her as Rook struggled to breathe, still lying on her floor. She would soon again be all Lucanis ever required.
“You took Lucanis away from me.”
“How have I done that?” Rook had whispered to her from the ground.
“He is my legacy. He will replace me.” She had offered the obvious excuse. There was no way she was willing to bring her feelings about being left out in this and give dying Rook even a brief satisfaction. She had heard through mutual acquaintances that Rook was a nice person, but nobody was nice if given such a morsel of vulnerability, they would have used it against her. Caterina was a cynic, but the world drowned all kindness underneath evil intentions.
Rook spat out some blood on her precious floors again. “What does this have to do with me? I have nothing to do with him not wanting to be your replacement.”
Once again Caterina had to listen to the same old song Lucanis and Illario had been telling her all these years. Why wouldn’t Lucanis want to be a powerful First Talon– did he just lack courage in this matter? This Rook, who knew nothing about their sacrifices, was further distracting him from his purpose.
Caterina had lost her cool and stomped the ground with her cane. It was an automatic reaction to her elevated emotions. “Lucanis is making the same mistake as his parents— being all loved up and becoming so weak for it. They died for an idiotic ideal of love.”
Caterina recalls her earlier thought about her choices being the reason why Lucanis would likely meet his parent’s fate as she ate a cherry from her dolce. She jerks as the stark realization hits her. It was not the love that killed her children, but wars of succession. It is Caterina herself who insists on keeping Dellamorte on the seat of First Talon. In her memory, Rook’s body was now shaking. It would not be long now, Caterina had delighted.
Had they used their last moments discussing the merits of love, Rook would have perished without any chance of shifting Caterina’s opinion.
After all her life Caterina had loved men like Illario loved women: as objects of lust or convenience. Like Illario, Caterina discarded them after they had served their purpose.
Unlike Illario, who had only killed one of his lovers– as far as she was aware of– Caterina did not let her used-up men walk the streets of Treviso free, but disposed of her lovers– all except the tailor Gio.
Gio was her special case from a different time when she still believed that love may bring meaning into life, making it fuller than the Antivan Crows ever did. As an afterthought, she also realizes now as she watches the party go on around her, that she did indeed have one trustworthy person– the tailor she loved once upon a time.
Caterina looks across the table to Lucanis, who is different from her and his cousin. She could not say whether he had always been like this or whether this sentimentality was a new development. There was a lot she did not know about him. Their relationship was never built on having a heart to heart by the fire, but instead on achieving grueling work for a goal: survival and excelling in a job.
True, there had not been a stream of men or women at their doorsteps of this mansion to see Lucanis. He had been fascinated with Viago at some point, but unlike Illario, Lucanis had not shown interest in distractions. Illario frequented taverns like a common whore and came back with a spotted neck and well-clawed up back after every weekend.
She returned to her memories, leaning forward on the chair and placing her elbows on the table. Her eyes freeze on the idle blue crystal nearby.
She had thought Rook was to be forever out of their lives. Lucanis would rage, but then refocus his efforts to become her successor and this time thrive without distractions.
An arrow had flown down from the second floor and pierced Rook’s stomach.
Amongst the Crows she had hired Aster was the most sought after. It gave that day great glee that Aster had been worthy of her reputation, seemingly being the one to bring Rook down.
Caterina had rejoiced and a small crooked smile had found her lips.
Aster would be paid, but at the last moment, she decided this kill should be personal. “Stop,” Caterina raised her hand to the assassin on the second floor. “I will kill Rook myself.”
Rook had still found some last-minute defiance as coughed-up blood hit the floor. “So your legacy is more important than your grandchild’s happiness. You sacrifice him for your dream.” With that, the brave heroic nonsense collapsed.
'Sacrifice.’ The word rings in her skull as she watches Lucanis gently touching Rook’s cheek and Illario saying no doubt lecherous things about them. Lucanis' eyes flash momentarily purple. How repulsive– his demon is present.
Caterina makes a disgusted sound and falls back into the past events turning her back on the abomination.
Just as she was about to get rid of Rook, she suddenly heard a loud thump beside her as a body fell from the second floor—it was the last assassin, Aster—and on her, Lucanis, still holding a bloody knife. Her body had created a bizarre, gory carpet on the wooden floors. She would have more mess to clean after this unpleasantness is over– after Rook is gone– Caterina had thought.
She had looked at her grandson and bristled a little. The Dellamortes were not a family of magic and did not encounter supernatural beings often in their jobs either. Most of their contracts were silent kills before any spells were cast and their clients were only everyday dullards who had angered someone else similarly boring and ordinary with a heavy coin purse.
Lucanis' demonic wings were out, his eyes blazed with purple flames and his face was twisted in an unnatural smirk. Caterina had never seen his demon so clearly. What did Lucanis say it was? Ah, Spite, or Determination?
Caterina had followed Lucanis with her gaze as he calmly walked to a still Rook– there had been no movement since their collapse after their unfortunate attempt at defiance, nor did Rook react to his arrival. Caterina truly believed the problem had been sorted out permanently.
Lucanis had been holding Rook. The strange purple and pink wings curled around them, almost as if in an embrace.
That abomination in front of her was Illario’s doing, Caterina had seethed quietly. He had tainted Lucanis with a demon. Lucanis had always been tormented, but his eyes were focused.
He stood out if he wanted to– but rarely did. Prancing around like a peacock had always been Illario’s delight. She had trained Lucanis to be a perfect predator: quiet, invisible, and efficient.
Caterina watched now as her predator cried silently, still holding a dead Rook with demon wings fluttering behind him, skin glowing with a disgusting purple glow.
“Lucanis,” Caterina had said and moved closer.
Her tears may have died a slow death years ago, but seeing Lucanis being able to cry was making her uneasy. There was, however, no fear of the tears catching.
Caterina remembers herself as a teen Crow in her father’s schooling. She stood on the pavement of this very mansion in the rain. She had failed a dodge. As a punishment she sported a bruised rib, had not eaten since the sun came up the previous day, and what did she feel?
She tried not to feel her feet aching, her soiled pants and the rain making her shiver. Her then dark hair was falling flat along her face, but she was not to move at all, so she could not swipe it off and tried not to feel the tickling. Her knees and lower back ached, but she attempted to block them out too.
“Have you learned your lesson, Caterina?” She finally heard her father's voice. He held her lunch on a colorful tray. She knew what being obstinate would do. Her father would drop the tray and she would achieve nothing but more hunger and further pain– she had made that mistake in the past and was not going to repeat it. “Si, Señor,” she replied instead. His father nodded to her, handed her the tray, and she sat down in the garden to eat the food.
She could smell herself and once she sat down, she was unlikely to get up again, but it had been easier than the last time. The key was not to feel. Tell yourself enough many times that your mind is like a box, and you can hide all those emotions within.
Her eyes are drawn to the painting depicting her father hanging above the fireplace as the party around her gets louder after every course.
Lucanis had cried, all hollowed out by pain– Caterina did not know how to process this as it was not what she had taught him.
Caterina had missed several details that day in her quest for vengeance.
The arrow protruding from Rook’s side had missed the major arteries and internal organs– Aster would have never missed that shot from where she was. Caterina also neglected to see Illario perched on the second floor or hear a scuffling noise before Aster fell onto her floor. Caterina had been so hell-bent on seeing Rook dead that it had not connected. “Lucanis,” Caterina had repeated instead.
“Why, Caterina?” Lucanis had looked up to her.
“I am old, Lucanis. Who will continue our work after I am gone?” She had watched him closely as his eyes occasionally flickered in a purple hue.
“Not me. I have never wanted to. You are just too stubborn to accept it. When I said to you all those times I did not want to be the First Talon, I meant it. All this could have been avoided. You ruined Illario’s life and you ruined mine,” Lucanis had responded, still holding his precious Rook.
“Illario could have never become the First Talon!” Caterina had said stubbornly. This was a well-trodden conversation and she had little patience for it anymore, having heard it for over thirty years from both of them. She was sick and tired of explaining herself about this matter.
“And that is on you. You decided it yourself early on and never trained him for it. You fulfilled his prophecy before you gave him a chance to prove you wrong,” Lucanis had responded sternly. He appeared to be unwilling to back down this time.
“Rook made you weak,” Caterina had pointed at the dead lover on his lap, with her crow-headed cane. “Wanted you to be a good boy, a lap dog. Seduced you and kept you clean. You would have stopped being Lucanis Dellamorte, the mage-killer, the Demon of Vyrantium. We are not good people! Our hands have been covered in blood for generations.”
“Rook wanted no such thing! Rook loved me as I am. Unclean. A half-demon. An assassin. And damned if I knew why!” As he swore his face had twisted briefly into a toothy smile and his eyes struck out a flaming stare. The demon was there again– Caterina did not know who she was speaking to, but Lucanis’ voice was his own.
There is a lot of laughter in Caterina’s dining room this evening and many happy faces sharing their joy. The Tevinter woman in the flat hat is talking to Rook about the wedding threads– to Rook’s credit, the topic is a dead duck. Despite their disconnect of interests, they seem to skate smoothly to the next topic and have fun with it. There is levity in the conversation that Caterina herself rarely experienced with people. Most people were too afraid of her, which stunted the conversations to happen mostly out of necessity. People did not come to her to be entertained. She preferred it that way.
Lucanis is mid-conversation with Viago. Caterina notes that the latter has not run the food of this wedding through his usual poison detection kit, showing a somewhat implicit trust in Lucanis’ cooking. All the people here in this room are giving Lucanis the benefit of the doubt, despite his demon, except her.
Caterina sits at her table, wiping her mouth after a hearty four-course meal, wondering if her feelings towards Lucanis have changed since the demon had been implanted within him. She had seen those purple wings and eyes that day and felt repulsed. Today she turned her back on him in disgust. To add insult to her injury she remembers how Rook reacted to his flashing purple eyes, with a warm smile. She crumples her napkin and throws it across the table.
There had been a long silence. Lucanis stayed behind with Rook and Caterina had walked off and canceled the contract without beneficiaries, as every assassin who partook in the kill was dead. Caterina was certain Rook was dead– only to see the next day the assumed corpse walking into her home with Lucanis. Caterina Dellamorte had been outplayed; she could not walk back to the Crows and renew a contract, or she would have to admit she had made an outrageous error and would lose face– so she let it be.
“I may have made an error,” she had said as she saw Rook. It was as close to an admission of a mistake as Caterina would ever get. Delivering even this open-ended acknowledgment was harder than it should have been. Her grandchildren had outmaneuvered her, and she mostly felt pride. Of course, Caterina blamed Rook for their boldness– they would have never attempted this otherwise, but as indiscretions go, this was not to be punishable by death.
As she sits at the table, Caterina realizes this affair of antagonizing Rook has gone either too far or not far enough. She stands up knowing exactly what needs doing. She steadies herself with her cane. Her trusty cane, or its various iterations has served many functions; they’ve killed, hurt, and punished but now, at the end of its life and the end of hers, she needs it to keep herself stable. Her leg tends to be unreliable now, but she refuses to attribute it to her advancing years– Caterina Dellamorte was formidable, not weak.
“I would like to propose a toast,” Caterina calls, raising her intentionally empty glass to the happy couple. It was naturally meant as a slight. “I am vehemently against this marriage.”
Illario appears to be perking up in his chair– the cretin is no doubt waiting for the hammer to fall and drama to ensue, Caterina muses. Lucanis’ face on the other hand gives her nothing and Rook appears to be…smiling, but Caterina could not even comprehend why.
“But I cannot help but tip my hat to my unfortunate grandchild-in-law for having been such a thorn in my side. Not many would dare,” Caterina says slowly, tipping her glass towards Rook.
“Rook is not good enough for Lucanis.”
Lucanis looks as if he is ready to stop the speech and as amusing as it is, Caterina continues, “But nobody would be.”
Caterina is ready to bring this ridiculousness to a conclusion, even though she is still absolutely adamant this wedding should have never happened. She hears herself say:
“Welcome to the family, Rook. Provisionally,” raising her empty glass to the couple. Then she sits down and pours herself another glass because it appears even the waiters have given up on this marriage before it is even a day old.
Amongst the many tables, there is muttering, shocked whispers, and some nervous laughter and still Rook appears happy. “That’s it, Lucanis married a crazy person,” Caterina thinks as she leans back on her trusty comfortable chair. Illario starts clapping slowly, grinning at Caterina, and gets up from his chair.
“Caterina. Such an emotional speech.”
“Shut up, Illario,” Caterina responds and watches in horror as Rook approaches her. No. No. No. Absolutely not.
“We shall never speak of this again,” Caterina says sternly as Rook relinquishes her from a hug– and Caterina Dellamorte does not hug.
Oh no, you don’t. No!
As Illario and Lucanis release her from a group hug, she cringes out of disgust. Andarateia Cantori snickers way too loudly.
Caterina Dellamorte is not a Nonna, or a hugging grandmother and never will be. She pushes her boys aside and goes to get a stiffer drink.