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Out of the cacophony, the chaos, the sounds of bodies dropping to the sandy floor of the Ossuary and blood dripping onto the sand and Spite hissing in his ear, goading him, out of the noise he hears a voice.
“You must be the reason why we’re here.” The voice is gruff, casual, aloof. A woman who has already seen it all. In his memory, the reflecting lights filtering down through the magic that holds back the sea mix with the voice. In the future, he will always tie hearing it to the relief at the sound of something other than Venatori scheming and Spite’s rough and incessant chattering in his ear.
The voice introduces herself, and a colleague behind her. It takes him to his own blood. He hears her speak as the pressure of blood magic releases him. Lucanis ties the voice to the relief that follows, to freedom, to escape.
“Thank you, Rook,” he says, and the voice says, “Vissenta,” and the consonants are soft in her mouth, twisting carefully around vowels, slipping past wide pink lips like a sigh, and her voice doesn’t sound rough now, it sounds soft and it sounds tired.
.
The voice pulls him from the dark, the place where Spite places him, a restless sleep, a nap that offers no respite, no relief. He wakes as tired as he had been dropped into it, fighting his way back to awareness, shoving the demon back into his mind with effort he doesn’t have. Her voice holds him steady.
“I hate having you see me like this,” he says, and her voice cuts him off before he can finish the thought, “Don’t say that. You’re more than what you’re going through.”
It doesn’t feel like that, most of the time. But Lucanis remembers a life lead before the demon came, perhaps not a full life but a life nonetheless. More than this. More than this.
“How do you do that?” he asks, haltingly.
Her eyes are sharp as they meet his. There is a scar on her face, the blunt cut of her dark fringe, the set of her jaw, features that should combine to create something like a warning but her voice isn’t a warning. It’s inviting. It’s beckoning. “Do what?”
“Break through my carefully collected clouds of doom.”
She smiles, silently. Oh, say something, Lucanis pleads, and inside him the demon is quiet for once, waiting with bated breath, waiting as uneasily as Lucanis is, the quiet heavy in his ears.
He wants to hear a come here, come closer, come to me, but lifts it instead from the smile and he does, he walks slowly over, he leans against the wall and Vissenta places a hand on his chest and her voice is soft. It reaches his ears gently.
.
Her voice leads him in battle. Before this contract, Lucanis worked alone. The only voice he followed was his own, in his thoughts, singular and solitary. On rooftops in Treviso, he would perch like a bird and wait for his prey. The wind would blow around him, and the only thing he would hear would be air moving, hair shifting over his clothes, and the occasional hum as he made a sound just to listen to it.
Spite is loud, but Vissenta is louder. Her voice cuts through blades slicing through the air and through Venatori and demons and Antaam. It pulls him, a beacon, a magnet, irresistible, predictable. He follows, follows her lead, her direction, he is a blade, he strikes where he is pointed. In the aftermath of a fight, he sees Spite project itself close to their leader, unseen by her, standing too close, watching her. When Vissenta speaks, Spite brings her voice to Lucanis as though she’s speaking directly into their mind.
“You know, I never suspected a Crow to be so good at following orders in the field,” Vissenta says as she crouches before a Venatori in the woods, in the city, in the rain, in the dark.
Lucanis raises his eyebrows. Spite barks out a laugh, harsh in the uneasy quiet following a fight.
Vissenta rolls her dark eyes. “I meant it in a good way. You’re good to fight with. Alongside.”
The tips of her ears are turning pink. Lucanis knows her voice goes soft in times like this, when she’s flustered, when she’s a little overwhelmed. He presses, keeping his eyes on her, trying not to smile.
“Obviously, you’re good in a fight and don’t need orders,” Vissenta says impatiently. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.” Lucanis’s eyes drift to the flush that crosses the bridge of her nose, settling onto the apples of her cheeks, imagining the warmth there, warmth that seeps into her voice as she looks at Lucanis with a funny little smile and says, “You’re doing this on purpose.”
Spite laughs again, a harsh sound, but eats the end of it so they can both hear Vissenta’s own laugh, a soft chuckle, small and sweet and only for them.
.
In the pantry, as Lucanis struggles not to fall asleep, Vissenta speaks, standing a respectful distance away, and Lucanis listens.
“Your voice,” he says, lets slip, slip past his exhausted defenses, tired and confused and too weary to police his words.
She looks at him, waiting.
“Can you please speak, say something. Anything.” He’s pleading, and Spite is smiling with his own mouth in a shifting purple projection that stands too close to her.
“And if I say that you look tired?” she asks. “If I ask you to get some rest, and I can watch over you?”
“Just keep talking to me.” He lays down, already half asleep. “Your voice.”
“What about it?” Her voice drifts in and out of his mind as he drifts between sleeping and waking.
“It comforts me.” There. There. How ugly, this reliance on another person is. How needy. He closes his eyes, hiding from her gaze.
Her voice settles him, growing soft again in that way it only seems to do around Lucanis. “My voice. All I do is bark orders and yell at darkspawn.”
“Your voice.” Lucanis is falling asleep. His words are trailing. Dangerous. “The first thing I heard. In the Ossuary. When Spite takes over. In battle. Your voice is a comfort. An anchor.”
“Lucanis.” Closer now, a whisper, a breath in the air.
He falls asleep and imagines, or maybe not, a calloused hand on his forehead, warm and heavy, a touch as undeniable as the familiar and present sound of her voice.