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Their kiss goodbye did taste like a cup of coffee. It was heady, rich, and spiced lightly and sweetly with cinnamon, and already she was dizzy with longing for it to last. The scent lingered in the air near her even as he pulled his face away, kept only his finger under her chin. This familiar flavour suffused the cooling afterglow of his lips on hers.
His other hand was pressed against the small of her back, and their hips were still angled together, but it felt like she was losing him. However, it wouldn’t be for long. Already she knew that she would have to keep repeating this to herself for the time that they were to be parted.
Real. Still real. Solas was no longer in her head and now he was bound up in the very weave of the Veil. Elgar’nan’s last breath had been crushed out of his blighted, bloody lungs by her own boot. And Ghilan’nain—Lucanis had finished that job. For her.
Not a single one of these apocalypse-bringers could hurt her or her loved ones again.
She was real. Lucanis, who stood before her, radiating his heat against her, was real. Still would be real even if he was gone from her sight.
Dropping her hands to his chest, she settled them against his breast, and stilled. Finally, she felt his vital pulse.
As if he could see the burning lines of her thoughts perfectly—and maybe he could, after studying her with his keenly honed eyes, this fellow Crow—Lucanis tilted her head up to meet his gaze, then moved his hand to cup her cheek.
It was a steadying gesture, for both of them. His eyes were soft, warm like melting cream, but there was something shimmering in them that he could not hide from her, a little bit of guilt or something else he was trying to keep smothered. After peering at him for a moment, Rook thought she recognised the traces of a self-aimed critique in the fine lines of his face. As if, even as he was regarding her with such gentle affection, he might be chiding himself for the same feelings she was having: that he was being ridiculous because he was worried at all about being away from her for a scant amount of time.
Of course such feelings he would chastise himself for. But never her.
She hated how he held himself to such higher standards. Though she knew now why he did. She was, presently, sleeping under the same roof as the woman who had taught him to treat himself this way. Every day that she was with him, Rook was going to convince him that he deserved kindness. Kindness from others, and from her, and also from himself. This was a vow she one day hoped to speak to him.
Exhaling, Lucanis said, “It shouldn’t take longer than an hour to finish negotiations with the client.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” She asked, tipping her chin in a challenge of teasing bravado. “I could hide behind the altar. Or up in the rafters. Or maybe fold myself up into a niche somewhere. That fancy chantry has so many shady corners I might fit into.”
His eyes scanned down her slender body appreciatively. His hand skimmed from her back, to her hip, to her waist, then settled again right above her flank. “Oh, I know you’re quite flexible. But—on this, I can’t be. We can’t have our clients thinking we don’t trust them.”
“Right, it’s very unprofessional,” Rook said, and she smiled, and she tried to keep the sense of Viago’s disapproving stare from scorching the back of her head. Her Talon wasn’t anywhere near the Dellamorte villa, and he had given her plenty of leave to do with as she pleased, but, in some way, he was always with her. Always in her head, ready to reprimand her, trying to correct her behaviour before it got her hurt.
Rook did not shake her head. Still, she thought Lucanis might understand what she was trying to mute and displace. He hosted his own constant companion, one who had been with him long before Spite ever had the misfortune of being fed to him.
Lucanis squeezed his arm around her waist. Then, she placed her hand on his shoulder, and she gently nudged him away from her. “Go. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll be back.”
“You’re not wrong. I’ll see you soon.” He gave her a final kiss, at the very centre of her brow.
He pulled back from her—and, chasing after him, she placed one last kiss on the up-turned corner of his soft lips.
Colour crept up from his collar, rose into his cheeks. He turned such a sweet shade of pink. “Go,” she said, feeling her own grin spreading. “Before I make you unpresentable.”
A low and guttural laugh rumbled through him. It was far rougher than his blush, but no less honest.
Then, smirking, she said, “Spite. You take good care of him, you hear?”
“No-one else. Will get. Close.”
“Good. Thank you, dear.”
There came a flash of fuschia in his eyes, and then he really turned away from her. As he walked through and closed the gate behind him, Rook swore she heard him muttering something like, “She can’t hear you, but what if she could? —No, that kind of talk is only for private—”
Try as she might, she could not keep the hushed sound of his voice in her ears for long. Treviso, her beloved city, engulfed him.
Above her, the night had swallowed nearly all of the day’s light. A few swathes of darkening pastels remained, clustered around the stony jaw of the mountains. But these huddling bits of colour were orphaned now, soon to disappear. Stars were waking and coming to claim their spots of splendour. The moon had yet to show herself. Tonight she would be shining with only half of her silvery light.
With no wind rising off the water, there was still enough warmth in the air for it to be fairly balmy. It would be a good night for anyone with plans to be out and about. But Rook hurried inside. Alone, with an infernal wordless whisper creeping over her skin, she was suddenly overcome by the irrational certainty that something was going to happen to her.
There were no ill portents or suspicious things she had seen today. No lurking shadows. No accidental steps taken on any cracks. No unexpected variances within the fixed orbits of celestial bodies. The sun had not disappeared from the noon sky.
This unease was just a feeling. Something churned up by a clenched, stressed gut.
Most of the estate’s staff had already left for the day. She heard the occasional disembodied voice or errant step that was not her own heels tapping over polished marble or ebony-stained wood, but nothing she didn’t expect in a house of this size. Illario was—not here. Only the Maker knew where he was now. If he were present on the property, she was sure she would have heard him.
Dinner they had planned to have after Lucanis returned. It would be a chance to commemorate the acceptance of this new extensive and lucrative contract that would end with the eradication of Venatori agents in Antiva. There was a cell of them operating in the shadows of Antiva City, keeping their fellows supplied with all manner of goods down in Orlais. It was a contract Rook looked forward to fulfilling. While she wouldn’t be part of the negotiations, both her spells and her knives would be employed by it.
She may not have been a Dellamorte yet….
But inter-House collaboration was common on contracts like these. And there was no reality in which she would let Lucanis just go to Antiva City, for what could be weeks, without her to watch his back.
Not wanting to spoil her appetite for the meal to come, Rook choose to forego a snack, and wandered into one of the villa’s many sitting rooms. This one was populated by hundreds of books roosting upon dozens of mahogany shelves. Rook selected one she had begun before—a romance about a scullery maid who had to somehow find a way to free her lover from the tight-fisted clutch of the Circle and its templars—and settled herself upon a velvet-cushioned settee. Like so much else in this house, it was dark purple with gleaming silver accents. She tucked her knees under her, sunk deep into the generously stuffed pillows, and opened the novel to a page bookmarked by a slip of blue ribbon purchased with gold earned from the completion of her first contract.
She had made it three pages in when she heard the approach of distinctly uneven footsteps. A step, a thump, a step.
Caterina, of course. The lady of the house. The Mistress of the House.
Rook placed her bookmark and closed the novel before Caterina could find her. And she stood when Caterina, resplendent in dark samite and a garland of rubies, appeared in the doorway. But Caterina did not enter the room, as Rook thought the older woman would.
So she stood there awkwardly, waiting for something to happen. For Caterina to continue on, or give her leave to sit back down and resume her attempt to relax.
Finally, Caterina cleared her throat, and said, “You’re still here?”
Rook laughed affably. But only once, because Caterina’s eyes narrowed, and abruptly the laughter strangled to a broken sound in her throat. “Ah. Yes. Lucanis didn’t want me to go with him.”
“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing in my house.”
Silence, sharp and lethal, settled against the back of Rook’s neck. Meanwhile the edge of Caterina’s gaze was lodged against her jugular.
She had to be careful. She tried to think about what Viago would do, but she realised he wouldn’t have put himself in this situation. He would have clarified exactly what his position was in Caterina’s household. He would have asked before presuming that he could stay. Even if Lucanis had told him he could, Viago would have thought to ask. He would have thought things through. Unlike most Antivans, he did not let passion and a flimsy hope for the best inspire his actions.
Viago wasn’t the breathless, fluttering-pulse sort. He was more likely to nurture a grudge with the same dedicated care used to milk his adders.
He was also very much not relevant to her current predicament.
Rook swallowed, and then she said, “I am staying with Lucanis for the time being.”
“This will be my home until the day I die. You are a guest here.”
“I—I know. I’m sorry, I should have asked permission to stay.”
Caterina’s eyes narrowed again, her jaw tightened. Then, she came into the room, and she sat herself down on a couch across from Rook. Facing the younger woman, she glanced at the empty fireplace, then looked back at Rook expectantly. And she was not a woman who was used to waiting, or being denied.
Rook was a guest, but she would make herself useful.
Rook went swiftly over to the hearth. It had been swept clean of ashes, so all she had to do was add a handful of logs. Then, without any thought of restraint, moving before uncertainty could even stir, she snapped her fingers to conjure a spark just hot enough to catch on the desiccated bark. A sweet-scented puff of smoke arose. For this little bit of magic she could draw on her pooled mana alone, provoking no notice nor urges from the curious denizens of the Fade.
Rook then went to resume her seat. She nodded to Caterina, who looked not a bit impressed, nor even a little moved. She had merely received the bare minimum of what she was owed.
“So. You are my grandson’s guest. You are staying with the First Talon.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Caterina’s expression did not change. But something soft and dangerous laced into her words. She did not snap at Rook, she merely told her, “Don’t call me that.”
Caterina’s gloved hands flexed on the cane she held between her narrowly spaced knees. Emerging firelight caught in and could not escape from her many jewelled rings. Immured in tiny gemstone prisons, the light flickered furiously, sharp and bright, intensified. “Unless you mean to imply my grandson would pick a partner so far below me. Below him.”
“No, I—” Rook seized herself where she was, battling her desperate urge to stand up. Instead she buried her hands in her lap and twisted at the silken fabric of her trousers. Better she have to fight those wrinkles later than show weakness now. She had already roused Caterina’s contempt enough. “I didn’t mean anything by it, other than a poorly thought out attempt to convey my respect for you.”
“If you respected me, you would have made yourself known to me before taking up residence in my home, and taking up with my grandson.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re not really just a guest, are you?”
In truth, Rook didn’t know what she was. She was still so exhausted from everything that had happened. She still wasn’t sure when she would be able to stand the feel of the Fade washing over her, seething against her skin, mind, and soul. For a week now, she had gone nowhere else. Nor had she talked to a spirit. Spite was an exception, not because he was a demon, but because he was an exception to many things. The Fade and spirits, those infinitely varied residents floating in the dreaming sea: both of these things were irrevocably tied to her magic, this thrumming spark tucked beneath her heart. She couldn’t deny these things, never would she be parted from them, but even from them she needed a break. There was very little to comfort her in her dreams just now.
A sharp rap of Caterina’s cane against the floorboards froze the course of Rook’s rapidly unspooling thoughts. Unable to do anything else, she gave Caterina her attention, her back and shoulders and legs held so straight her entire body was brittle with tension.
“I don’t like to repeat myself, my girl.”
It wasn’t a warning, nor a threat. It was just the way things were.
Rook answered, “I don’t know what I am. I will clarify it with Lucanis, later.”
“What are you doing with my grandson?”
Rook stared at Caterina from across a void that may as well have been the entirety of the Fade itself. All her words fled from her—the clever ones, the unclever ones, the ones that never would be helpful, because how was she ever going to tell this woman that she had thought she had held Lucanis’ dead body in her arms? That his flesh had been cooling against hers, his lips were already shading blue, there had been no light in his lovely eyes. This had been the work of the elven god of trickery, and she had believed it, and, though she knew better now, some part of her still believed it. If she didn’t hold herself together, if she didn’t keep her fingers entwined and full of the sleek watery fabric of her trousers, she would feel him again—
A sharp rapping ripped Rook from her thoughts. Starting, her surged fear and erupting heartbeat washed over her, nearly dragging her along with them out to sea. It was a fight to focus on the woman before her, who looked displeased with her.
She had been starting at Caterina too long.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”
Caterina frowned. It was a burgeoning grimace.
Rook rushed to answer, leant forward, “I am with him. We are together.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I love him.”
“That’s it? His contract with you is done. And yours to your own House has been fulfilled. Yet here you are, still at his side, though you have nothing to offer him.”
Rook scrambled to keep up with the swift flow of Caterina’s mind. The eddies were smooth and the waters quick, but she sensed dangerous currents beyond her sight and ken.
What in the world was Caterina talking about?
Lucanis loved her, and she loved him. They made each other happy, they watched each other’s backs. Together they had saved Caterina, and even Illario—their combined strength had kept what little remained of House Dellamorte from backstabbing itself into extinction.
What more could there be?
Then, Rook remembered that Caterina was old. An old Crow, an old Antivan, an old woman. She was someone to whom legacy mattered most of all.
Carefully, but not as cautious as she should have been, Rook tried, “It is true that I have no great fortune to my name, and even my name is not so feared nor storied as yours.”
Caterina remained utterly unmoved by the flattery.
“But, if you’re asking me what I could offer as my dowry, I am a De Riva. I can offer your House a good alliance.”
Caterina scoffed. “I am not stupid, girl. I know what Viago and Teia are to each other. And neither are you the Fifth Talon—it is not your alliance to grant.”
“I am a godkiller. I have brought fame to my House. I could be an asset to yours.”
“I already have a godkiller, who is also the best magekiller amongst the Crows. There isn't that much demand for your illustrious services.”
“Well—I could convince Viago to come to the negotiation table. And Teia. House de Riva, House Cantori, and House Dellamorte—that is an alliance no-one would dare go against.”
“No. Such an alliance would threaten everyone not a part of it. Especially other Crows. Of the three Houses you propose, Dellamorte would be the one most likely to be targeted for breaking.” Caterina shook her head. “I admit, I expected more from the girl who turned my grandson’s head. Lucanis has always had a soft heart, but his resolve—his devotion to his family—was like dragonbone. Even his passing fancy of Viago I could understand. But, you? They say you saved the world. Maybe that’s true. I don’t think Lucanis would lie to me. But I don’t understand how you managed anything, let alone surviving your fledgling training.”
It was the most she had ever heard Caterina say at once.
There was no malice vibrating in the air. There was no disgust. Staring at the other woman, Rook wondered if Caterina even actually felt half as strongly as she had just expressed her disdain.
Salt and heat stung her eyes. But Rook didn’t cry. She reached for the book she had set aside and held it in her lap. Poor shield that it was, it was something between her and Caterina.
With Lucanis, she had always been herself. Or at least the person she wanted to be. The only games she’d ever played were silly gambits meant to make him smile. She had never tried to manipulate him, never tried to control him. To imagine she had somehow seduced him—with, what? The devastating charm of her in-vain confidence and lack of proper planning?
But Caterina wasn’t wrong, exactly. In fact she was very rarely not right. She had survived her own life until now, after all. Of the three Houses Rook had listed, Dellamorte was by far the easiest to extinguish. That this was Caterina’s fault, a result of decades of her costly reign, Rook didn’t dare to say.
Rook could barely drag air through her clenched and closing throat, but she said, “Then give me a chance. I will prove myself to you.”
With no subtlety at all, Caterina stood up, closed the distance, and snatched the novel from Rook’s hands. She flung it into the fire without breaking eye contact for a heartbeat. “You may be a silly girl, but I take the matter of my family very seriously. This is not like one of those frivolous stories you and Lucanis both waste your time with. I don’t want promises. Words have no value to me. Not unless they are penned in ink on a contract I’ve signed.” Caterina took one measured step backwards. It wasn’t an easing, it was barely space enough to breathe. “But you did return my grandson to me. A chance—that I can give you. If you can handle being serious.”
“Right,” Rook said, fighting all of herself and all of her instincts to crumple up and disappear. To flinch away from this woman of steel and dragonfire. "I’ll work on delivering.”
“You better get to work, then.” Caterina replied, as her way of giving a fare-thee-however-it-goes parting.
Caterina did not say anything else. Caterina did not look back as she stepped and tapped away to be somewhere else in her cavernous home.
Rook made it to the master bedroom without anything in her head other than a smooth and blank impression of red-tinged black, like she was seeing a hot light through her closed lids.
She closed the door. She fell into bed.
And she wept. The tears kept coming until she eventually found exhaustion encroaching upon her. A wash of vertigo through her, and she felt herself adrift in a motionless sea.
Eventually, a little bit of light came into the world. Warmly hued, like a taper being lit.
Then his warm hand was on her back, shaking her with a gentleness that almost verged on reluctance. “Rook? Are you all right?”
“Mmm.” Unbidden, Caterina’s disappointed scowl came back to her, filled up her chest and her mind, and Rook kept her eyes closed and pressed her head into her pillow as if she might bury her own face and her problems there. The roughness in her voice was not in any way improvised. “Just feeling a little under the weather.”
“A fever?” His hand moved to her shoulder, brushed the hair from her neck. The intimacy of the gesture made her shiver. It might have convinced him a little more of her claim. Might have made him a bit more concerned. “Let me check.”
“No,” she said, her voice both gruff and muffled. “I just want to sleep. You can enjoy your meal without me, I trust.”
“Rook,” he said, and she could hear the way his frown shaped his words. The curve of them hooked into her heart. “How can I enjoy myself knowing that you’re not well?”
"How could I rest knowing you're worried about me?"
Pausing for a moment, he made several long, soothing strokes down her back. “All right. How about this: I will make something for you. Whatever you might like.”
“I’m fine. Not hungry.”
“If you’re sick, you should eat something.”
How easily he could get her to bend. How easily his care for her made her fold.
“Fine,” she said, and then coughed, because there was so much dried up phlegm in her. “Just… whatever you like when you’re not feeling well, that will be okay. I would like that. But, please, go enjoy your dinner with Caterina first. I’m sure she would like your company, at least.”
His hand stilled on her.
And she bit her lip, deeply, knowing that she had slipped up.
A long, profound silence stretched throughout the room. Began to crack with fissures from its drawn-out expansion.
Finally, he asked her, “Rook. What happened? What did she say to you?”
Her response was slow to come. She still did not raise her head to look at him, which must have worried him further, but she could not bring herself to face the mercy of his soft gaze and tender concern. Not yet. Because she didn’t deserve it, or him. She knew that. Caterina had been right.
Who the hell did she think she was?
He got onto the bed with her. He was so close to her, so very near.
But, for the first time in her life, Rook demonstrated some self-control. Lifting her head up an inch off the pillow, out of its dirty cradle of crusted snot and salt, she said, “We had a conversation while you were gone. But I really am just feeling a bit unwell, Lucanis. You don’t have to worry about me. I just need some sleep.”
And some time to think. There were a lot of too-sharp thoughts and murky feelings she needed to sort through. Up from the dredged silt of her mind, a lot of things were starting to bubble and surface. Quite a few of them she needed to sink again, or drown.
Lucanis, the man whom she would call the love of her life, lowered himself, and he kissed the crown of her head.
She turned to him, then, and wrapped her arms around his neck. The low light in the room meant he wouldn’t be able to glimpse much of her present state. Not the nuances, nor all the shades of her ruined face. There was a tremor through the smile she offered him, the one she pressed into the side of his neck.
And then, she hid her face again. “Go on. I don’t want to breathe on you. I don’t want to get you sick.”
He watched her tug a blanket over her head. Then, after a while, he said, very softly, “All right. Talk later, if you’re still awake?”
“Sure.” She could agree to that easily. Because she didn't think she would be.
She heard him rustling about the room. The soft slide of wood against wood. He started a fire in the hearth.
He came back to the bed, and laid something light next to her.
“If you can, you should change for bed.”
And then, he left, leaving her alone with herself and the cheerful flames.
Oh, she wanted to cry, but she was tired. Quite so.
She availed herself of his kindness, changed into the satin chemise and silk dressing gown he had chosen for her, laid out for her, and also bought for her. When he had asked her to stay with him, to sleep with him in his new big bed so neither one of them had to face the night alone, she had come to a bedroom already stocked with clothes in her size. There wasn’t a hoard of them, but they were all exceedingly nice, and suited to her taste. Not to mention how well they fit her. He hadn't once asked her for her measurements.
Had Caterina really not noticed all these things being brought into her home?
Rook didn’t dwell on it. Instead, she left her discarded clothes scattered about the floor in a petty act of defiance, cleansed her face with the cooled water in the washbasin, rebraided her hair, ate a golden apple from a bowl of fresh fruit, and then settled in for the night.
She didn’t wait for Lucanis. She was nearly floating when he came back, placed a dish on her nightstand, kissed her shoulder, and then quietly readied himself for bed.
When he lay next to her, within an arm’s reach, she murmured, “Might want to stay away. Might get you sick.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
A light whimper. “Slow down your contract.”
“And I would get to spend a few days in bed. With you.” There was no lust in the words, but there was yearning. A sound that made her heart ache for what didn’t seem like such a bad time after all.
Heat rising to her cheeks, Rook said, “Caterina told me I can stay here, in her house. But I think I should have asked her for her permission first.”
He shifted next to her. He rolled over, and he moved so that he could slot himself against her back. His arm came to rest around her waist. He held her to him, so very firmly. After a moment, she heard his heartbeat.
He felt like a just fed-furnace, like a star that had just expanded. Maybe she really was coming down with something. But she didn’t move away from him. There wasn’t a chance that she would.
His breath was the tip of a feather passing over her ear. Still, for all their careful lightness, each word impacted her like a tossed stone. “Rook, I am so sorry—I should have spoken to her on your behalf. I assumed… well, I am not sure what I assumed. But since she passed her title to me, and she charged me with the villa’s upkeep, I thought she was letting all of it pass into my hands.”
Rook realised then, quite suddenly and alarmingly, she wasn’t just close to an edge. She had woken up to find herself out on a wire halfway between two buildings, with nothing beneath her to break her fall. Nothing would catch her if she failed.
Oh, Lucanis would try, but she couldn’t do that to him. Relying on him for that, for his intervention, his support—if he took sides, that would be a wedge driven into an already deeply fractured family. She wouldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t. Maker knew she hated Caterina’s cane—what it had done to Lucanis, what she had just learned it could do to her today—and she wanted to snatch it away, snap it, and hurl its broken halves into the flames of a bonfire, but Lucanis loved his grandmother. Despite everything. Even though he couldn’t bring himself to call her grandmother, instead of addressing her as Caterina.
Very lightly, she touched her hand to his arm, where it was girdled around her. His forefinger uncurled to catch on hers. She brushed her heel over his ankle. When he began to shift to accomodate her, she hooked her ankle around his, tangled their legs together. The hand that he was carding through her hair she reached for, held, and then moved so she could cradle it against her chest.
Rook said, “It’s okay. She hasn’t welcomed me yet, but she didn’t kick me out. I think I can stay so long as I live up to her expectations.”
“What else did she say to you?”
“I—I would rather talk about it tomorrow, if that’s okay? Would you just hold me for now?”
Tucking her head under his chin, he whispered, “I’ll hold you as long as you’d like, Rook. I’m here with you.”
“I’m here, too.”
They did not bid each other good night. She lay in his arms—their firm shelter—and listened to the slowing rhythm of his heart.
He stirred. He nuzzled his nose into the hollow of her neck. Inhaled, long and deep.
He was filling himself with her scent.
Spite was.
Knowing it was a demon now holding her, Rook exhaled softly. Asked, “You want to say goodnight for Lucanis?”
Spite spoke against her skin. Pressed Lucanis’ lips against her temple, displaced strands of her hair with his breath. “She is. A lot. A different kind of strong.”
Rook very much did not want to discuss Caterina Dellamorte with a demon of Spite, who of course naturally would admire a woman who had kept living despite all of her many, many enemies.
But then Spite shivered as if he felt a snarling chill, and he confessed, “I smell. Fear and salt. Rook. She scares me, too.”
“It’s okay, Spite.”
“No.”
“But it will be.”
“You are. Sure?”
“I’ve always figured out a way through, haven’t I?”
This seemed to be enough for Spite. To comfort him, to give him something to think about. He sunk back into Lucanis, who gave a soft sigh as he relaxed into Spite’s release.
Alone again, Rook set her resolve. Instead of indulging in more tears, she tried to think of how she would prove herself to Caterina Dellamorte, the former First Talon, and the current owner of the villa Rook was probably going to—or at least hoping to—move into.
In the end, she got a migraine, and very little sleep. She would have canyons gouged under her eyes tomorrow. And, very likely, she was going to end up ill with something if this kept up.
But, she thought, Viago would be proud of her. She was finally thinking. She had not quite been able to walk out of the flames she had willingly thrown herself into. But, here she was, trying to think of a way through before she was too badly burnt.
. . .