Chapter Text
Fervour in the dark. Tiny, insistent tapping. Sleep unfurls itself from Lark and he turns over in bed, hand already wrapped around the hilt of the knife under his pillow. He doesn’t mean for it to happen, it just does. He turns and faces the shrine.
The wall is covered in undulating, mind-bending drawings, dots of black ink like flies making up the swarm, sketchbook paper tacked up and radiating like an eldritch halo around his brother. Sparrow is hunched over the sketchbook in his lap, cross-legged on his bed, black fineliner stippling the page. His bedside lamp switched on next to him, wobbling with the repetitive, heavy movement of his pen against the paper. There are packets and packets of the same pen covering his pillow and an ever-growing mound of empties on the carpet.
Lark watches as his brother’s pen stills and he tears the page from the sketchbook, reaches out and pins it up on the wall in the nearest available space, then starts drawing again.
It is four in the morning. This has been going on for days. The circles under Sparrow’s eyes look like bruises. Lark is scared. Lark is really, really scared.
A sharp breath in from across the room and Sparrow is shaking the pen in his hand furiously, then stabbing at the page, scowling. He tosses it, a flick of his wrist that means he doesn’t know or care where it’s going to land.
It clatters into all the other dead pens and Sparrow glances up at him. Sees him watching. Freezes, caught.
“Go back to sleep.” Sparrow’s voice is scraped red-raw.
Lark props himself up, hand still around his knife, hidden. He tells himself to let go and he holds on tighter. “Stop drawing it,” he says, voice sharp in the quiet.
Green light ignites at Sparrow’s fingertips and makes the ink-swarm crawl. “Sleep.”
His brother’s magic tastes wild and earthy and animal-eye amber, hits like a wolf’s jaws snapping shut around his throat, sharp teeth gliding through his arteries. He’s out before his head hits the pillow.
*
Today’s a bad day.
Well, they’re all bad days but, fuck.
He wakes up like he’s narrowly escaped drowning, bolt-upright and gasping for breath, cold sweat soaking through the old t-shirt and shorts he wears to bed (Mom made him stop sleeping fully dressed and armed to the teeth but he’s still ready-ish). His head is pounding and his heart is trying to break out of his chest, his hand already on the hilt of the knife under his pillow. Pure instinct.
White wall window posters – bands soccer movies – green walls bookcase mirror Sparrow’s bed, Sparrow. Lingering smell of incense. No screaming. California. Safe?
He looks at the wall behind his brother, all these undulating black drawings of the Doodler, chaos made ink, at his brother still drawing, unsleeping, and doesn’t let go of the knife.
This is the third time Sparrow’s cast that stupid spell on him, and the nightmares are so much heavier, so much darker, deadened with awful, suffocating silence. He can’t remember any specifics, just the fear. Dirty tactics, that’s what it is. Especially fucking egregious as Willy used to put them under constantly. So much so Lark actually got really good at fighting that shit off. But not, apparently, when it’s coming from his brother. Difference in magic, maybe? Willy’s was awful, smelled like damp stone, whiplike in its clean, brutal lines. Lark still cringes when he sees purple. Or a difference in, he doesn’t know, relation? His grandfather’s magic had that same earthiness to it, smelled like petrichor, had a heat but numbed instead of burned and was a war to resist. A war he couldn’t win but never stopped fighting.
His mouth feels dry. Throat closing. He feels himself turning inwards, skin clawing to invert itself. His hand tightens around the knife. He imagines his knuckles splitting and the underside of his pillow swelling with blood. Dark and red. Dark room, stone walls, seeing the sky through the gaps in the mortar. The cold. The tiniest flicker of rage in Bear Ry’Oak’s eyes that’s still the scariest thing he’s ever seen.
“Breathe,” Sparrow says quietly. Still that tapping, pen to paper.
He shakes his head. “ ‘m fine.” His chest feels funny. Like his ribs are trying to suffocate him from the inside.
“Didn’t ask.” Softer, “he’s not here.”
He’s not here.
Lark’d probably kill everyone and then himself if anything like this happened in public. Even in front of Grant or Terry Jr. or Nicky. They would understand, he knows, and that’s sort of the thing. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Because if he talks about it, that gives it power, right? He swore he’d never be afraid of anything again but he’s constantly on edge because what if, what if, what if – what if that purple glow starts humming around him again and then he’d be back in that fucking tower and he might not get out this time. He even feels weird about it happening in front of Sparrow. But, you know, they can more or less read each other’s minds. And Sparrow was the only other kid Grandfather really sunk his claws into. There’s Grandma, sure, and he jokes about it with her when he feels like joking about it, but there’s Dad, too. Just always there. Hovering. Wanting to talk about feelings but never about it.
Sometimes, Lark wonders what the turn was. What specific action or inaction poisoned his image of his father and pulled the love from him like blood into a syringe. Or if there was a turn at all. If things were always going to be this way, and twelve years was long enough to be without hate, if he just ran out the clock.
It is seven in the morning. He is in California. He and his brother are safe.
Today’s a bad day.
He showers, gets dressed and doesn’t wear his own clothes, instead pulling on one of Sparrow’s experimental DIY tie-dye screenprinted wolf t-shirts and his cargo pants, ratty Converse. Sparrow isn’t being Sparrow so someone has to be.
Downstairs, past all the family photos that he doesn’t look at anymore, not after the catastrophic fight that came after Lark scribbled over his own face in all of them – magic to get the ink off, because that solves everything – and over stacks of books and clothes littering the stairs. There’s so much stuff in this house that trying to get from one place to another necessitates doing a weird little dance. He nudges a pile of freshly-ironed shirts with the toe of his shoe so they unravel and flop down to the floor. He’s not sure what he was expecting that to do for him, but it does nothing.
In the kitchen, all natural light and herbs and warmth, Grandma is pouring tea into two mugs, one reading ‘WORLD’S BEST GRANDMA’ and the other ‘#girlboss’. She looks up, spots Lark, and holds out the WORLD’S BEST GRANDMA mug to him, handle first.
“Come on, it’s hot,” she says.
This is their ritual before school. They drink tea, they use these same mugs, they snip at each other, and it’s okay. Lark likes routine, creates these tiny ceremonies where he can. He also kind of regrets teaching Grandma what girlboss means, but he can let her have this one. Her wild red hair is loosely pinned up, and she’s wearing a blue floral shirt, patchwork skirt, has her huge knitted orange-red-yellow cardigan draped over her shoulders. Since getting out of Faerûn, her clothes slowly became more colourful, brighter, and so did she. The weeks Lark spent with Bear Ry’Oak were horrific, but they were weeks. She was with him for decades.
Mom is at the table with Sparrow, an untouched plate of toast in front of him. She watches him drawing with concern on her face. Dad fusses around between nine different things, alternately cooking and cleaning and adjusting, never still for more than a moment, mug of tea in hand. Classical music gently drifting from the radio. It’s normal. It’s California. It’s San Dimas. It’s safe.
Lark is the eye of a hurricane.
“I don’t want your fucking tea.”
“Lark!” Dad scolds.
She rolls her eyes, setting the tea down. “One of those days, is it?”
“One of those days, is it?” he mocks.
“Charming as ever.”
“What are you drawing, baby?” Mom asks Sparrow, voice louder than it strictly needs to be. She’s doing that thing where she tries to indirectly derail the upcoming argument instead of fighting it. This has worked maybe twice. Maybe.
“Doodler.”
“Art is a great way to express yourself. Pointillism is such a precise style, you’re really improving.”
Lark is going to burn this fucking house to the ground.
From across the room, Dad, now still. “Apologise to your grandma, Lark.”
“Get fucked.”
“It is seven in the morning,” Grandma says, “even for you, this is a lot.”
“What’s a lot is Sparrow being so obviously sick and none of you are doing shit about it.”
The room falls silent and turns to Sparrow as one. It would be funny if it wasn’t so bad. Soft violins from the radio, the tapping of pen to paper.
Dad frowns, pressing a hand to Sparrow’s forehead. “Are you okay, Birdie? You look a little peaky.”
Birdie.
“Yes, Father. I am fine.” Sparrow looks Lark in the eyes. Lark barely recognises him. “Brother is merely being overprotective.”
Dad ruffles Sparrow’s hair and gives Lark a half-smile, and he wants to punch it straight off his stupid face. Sure, everything’s fine, Sparrow would never lie, he’s not the crazy one, it’s just the twins being codependent, don’t worry, you’re not a bad father.
And it’s too much to say He doesn’t fucking talk like that anymore or He hasn’t slept in days or Can’t you see your fucking son, the one you actually like, is losing his fucking mind? all in one go and his brother, his brother, is, is, is, is betraying him. That’s what this is. There’s no smaller word for it. Cuts like a butcher knife, cuts him from his already-fraying tether. He’s supposed to be able to calm himself down but he can’t, he’s so angry he feels like he could split the world in two, now Mom and Grandma are looking at him, waiting for him to explode so they can pick up the pieces and tell themselves it’s just teenagers being teenagers – he’s sixteen he’ll grow out of it – and the sky is red and he swears he can feel the Doodler’s eye boring right through the back of his skull and he tears himself away from the room just in time to punch the wall instead of someone else.
*
In the back of Dad’s car. Earphones in, music loud, Lark is slumped low and half-buried in his camo jacket. His hand hurts. He focuses on it because it’s easier, a simpler kind of pain, a simpler kind of functioning. Just hit whatever’s in front of you until it breaks or you do. He tries not to think about how he’s going to get through a school day with a hand he can’t really move. He’s broken enough bones to know what it feels like, and it feels like he’s massively fucked himself over. He probably should’ve seen that coming.
In the front, Dad is talking at Sparrow, who responds in monosyllables or monologues, no inbetween, and neither make a lot of sense.
Dad’s started doing this thing where he drives them to school and watches them physically enter the building, which is irritating at best but right now, when his brother absolutely should not be in school, is making him feel insane. Is everyone else sleepwalking?
The car rolls to a stop and Lark is too busy staring out of the window, trying to will himself to be anywhere else, to notice Dad leaning back and taking his hand before it’s too late.
Green light, a little darker, a little more vivid than Sparrow’s. Dad brushes a thumb over his knuckles and he feels the bone glow as it melds back together. He yanks his hand back, flexes his fingers. Perfectly healed. As if nothing happened.
“It was fine."
“I’m not gonna let you run around with a broken hand, buddy. Not when you have a full day of school.”
“Fuckin’– whatever, Henry.” Henry to dig the knife in again, just a little. Dad hates it but tries to pretend he doesn’t mind. He’s a bad liar.
Lark opens the car door, and Sparrow mirrors him in the front seat. They get out in unison. That makes him feel a little better, like pulling out a splinter.
“Have a good day, my beautiful boys.”
“Goodbye, Father.” So formal. So final.
Lark doesn’t say anything. He just walks away.
*
Grant is leaning against Sparrow’s locker in the busy hallway before class, his first Monster Energy of the day in hand. He looks exhausted, as he always does, and has that stupid Minecraft hoodie on he’s had since he was twelve. It actually fits him now, instead of being massively oversized. Nicky’s next to him, gesturing wildly at nothing, one earphone in. He throws up the horns when he sees the twins.
“Ah, fuck,” he says to Grant, “can’t tell them apart again.”
Nicky, now firmly post-Narcolas, got annoyingly cool about six months ago and keeps shoving it down everyone’s throats. Messy, dark dyed red hair and Glenn’s old leather jacket and just enough black smudged around his eyes to make it look like he woke up in it. Which, to be fair, he probably did.
Lark shoves him aside to get to Sparrow’s locker. “The fuck are you looking at?”
Nicky, unphased, turns to Grant. “That one’s Lark.”
Grant gives a non-committal mm-mhm in response. There’s no point trying to get more than noise out of him before midday.
Lark puts his brother’s books in his locker, hands him what he needs for the day. Anger doesn’t simmer in him, it blisters, swells and burns all over his skin. It hurts. He looks at his brother. Sparrow is whispering something, fingers frantically tapping at his sides, staring so hard at the ground it looks like he’s trying to telepathically set it on fire.
Lark digs around in the locker and pulls out a blue-purple plastic tangle, pushes it against Sparrow’s chest.
Sparrow looks up, tilts his head a fraction to the left.
Lark applies the tiniest bit more pressure, and Sparrow takes it. He starts fiddling with it immediately, some of the tension leaving him.
“Stop twin-speaking, I feel left out,” Nicky says, “TJ’s off with his theatre gang like, jerking each other off or whatever. I dunno why he’s so stressed.”
Grant lightly kicks him in the ankle.
“Referee! That’s probably broken, I’ll never play soccer again.”
“You don’t play soccer now.” Lark doesn’t mean to sound as bitter as he does.
“Yeah, because I chose not to. Unlike you.”
It’s a sore spot for the twins. They used to be left and right wingers to TJ’s centre forward, until Sparrow started seeing Bear Ry’Oak in the crowd. He wasn’t there, obviously, but Sparrow couldn’t handle it. Went straight on the attack and Lark followed. Lark got thrown out instantly and Sparrow quit, even though he was just given a suspension. Spell codependent backwards.
Sparrow’s shaking hands take the tangle apart, letting the pieces drop to the ground. Nicky’s got this you-won’t-do-anything smirk on his face. There’s that arching, red feeling; you could build cathedrals with this anger. Lark shoves him again, harder, sends him stumbling back.
Nicky’s hand slams against the lockers for support. “Chill out. You’re being even more of an asshole than usual.”
“Watch your fucking mouth.” Does he mean it? Does anyone mean anything.
Nicky rolls his eyes. “See you Grant, Sparrow.” He pushes off the locker and slips into the crowd easily, as if he’s not inhuman.
Grant just looks at him. The sky just looks at him. He crouches down and picks up all the pieces of the tangle, offers them back up to his brother, hand flat and open. See? No harm, not here, not from me.
The bell sounds. Sparrow walks away, leaving him with a handful of plastic pieces and no want to put them back together.
*
In class he’s listless. Distracted. Has to keep bouncing his leg or tapping his pen or he’ll rip someone’s head off. Maybe his own. Worry chases fear around and around inside him, dogs howling. Mind’s somewhere else. Sparrow. Sparrow , unblinking, on fire . Why does no-one see it? There’s been a detaching, something coming loose between them. Lark can’t think like his brother, understanding failing, his brother can’t think like himself. They are unmoored. No-one is looking.
They’ve been split up in class since day one but Lark hears his brother’s name whispered and that’s it, he’s gone.
*
Mrs. Alveston takes his sketchbook telling him to concentrate so he starts on the desk then she sends him the stand outside the classroom door so he starts on his hands dots crawling up his arms when she comes out to check on him she takes his pen and lectures about blood poisoning he tells her our blood is already poisoned me and my brother we did this I feel the endless slowly killing me I see its eye in your eyes she tells him see me after class he starts in pencil graphite pressed deep skin raising red and grey a surge inside him and he snaps the pencil in half and again and starts with his fingernails picking away skin to reveal yellow-red flesh in dots ants marching in lines up to his bicep under his sleeves class ends and they come streaming out and he knows they know Gabe who sits two rows in front and hates him starts speaking but Sparrow goes for the eyes and at the other of end of the hall he sees Lark—
*
—Lark sees his brother lunge for this kid, sending them both crashing to the floor, and starts running. A crowd forms, baying, blocking him as he tries to push his way forward, frantic, nothing and no-one will give. They want the fight. Phones held high, flash recording. Someone grabs the back of his t-shirt, pulling him off-balance as he hears the crack of head against floor, and yanks him from the crowd. It’s TJ telling him it’s not worth it, calling him Sparrow, saying Lark can hold his own.
“It’s me!” Lark shouts over the din, as if that means anything.
TJ’s eyes widen as a teacher forces his way through the crowd, tears Sparrow from the kid bloody on the ground and hauls him away, calling him Lark Oak, another helping Gabe to his feet and leading him off. The crowd dissipates. Lark’s hands are shaking.
“Your brother is such a fucking psycho,” a girl laughs, her friend looking scared behind her, pulling her away quickly.
“What… I don’t— what?” TJ says, but Lark is already gone.
*
The blood on Sparrow’s knuckles and the blood under his nails belong to different people he was told to sit outside the Principal’s office until his dad can come pick him up but he can’t sit still he paces picking at his skin he wants his brother he’s scared maybe he’ll grab the wheel and crash the car his hands are not his hands he’s a puppet what happens when he cuts the strings what happens when he cuts the strings what happens when the puppet
*
“Lark. Lark!” TJ calls after him, jogging to catch up. He falls in step beside him. Fuck him and his stupid long legs. “What’s—”
“I told you something was wrong, I fucking told you.”
“Woah, catch me up to speed?”
Right. The play. They’ve barely seen each other. “Sparrow’s sick. Really sick.”
“Okay,” he says, putting on his therapist voice. “In what way?”
“Fuck off.”
“No talking, got it.”
They walk in silence. TJ does this thing where he tries to be the group mediator, parroting his mom instead of sounding like himself. It drives Lark up the wall. If he wanted therapy, he would go. And he doesn’t want, so he doesn’t go.
Rounding the corner, Lark nearly collides with his brother. Sparrow jerks back as if electrocuted, his hands clenched into fists, still for a moment before his nails find his skin. Lark takes him in. The terror in his eyes. His mouth moving but no sound coming out. Blood on his knuckles. Blood in his hair. Dots in ink, dots in pencil, dots in flesh, from his hands to under his sleeves.
From behind him, TJ whispers oh fuck.
Finally, fucking finally, someone who sees. Like a river breaking its banks, relief floods him entirely, so strong it hurts. Then… shit, what do they do now? How do they fix this? Adults listen to TJ because he speaks calmly, doesn’t like fighting, has the attention span to get lost in books. Maybe if he said—
Sparrow keeps drawing blood, his long sharp nails picking, picking, picking.
“Where’s your sketchbook?” Lark asks. Stop that, then fix this.
Sparrow glares daggers at him, green light simmering in his fingertips, shining from inside out.
“Not here!” TJ hisses.
The light expands. Sparrows jerks his head towards the hallway behind them.
“I am trying to help,” Lark says in his best impression of calm. It comes out wrong.
“Teacher took it.” He flicks his hand out, a jet of green flame rushing towards them. Before Lark can blink, there’s a glimmer of powder blue and it’s gone.
“Seriously,” TJ says, “not here. Lark’ll go get your sketchbook. We’re on your side, we’re your friends.” He not-so-subtly gestures at Lark then towards the hallway. Message received. Lark doesn’t particularly relish being given orders, especially when it comes to his brother, but let TJ play therapist. He’s good at talking people off the ledge where Lark would just push.
Luckily, the classroom is empty and the sketchbook is still on the teacher’s desk. He flicks through it. Pages on pages on pages of dots, spiralling, rolling like black waves. Thousand of flies to make up a swarm, the kind that goes beyond nature and becomes divine punishment. It makes Lark’s head hurt looking but he can’t seem to look away. Sparrow didn’t see the Doodler like he did, so how does he know? Lark refuses to talk about it, has never talked about it. What it felt like. Even thinking about it feels like a hand unseen taking a paring knife to him, splitting open nerves. He snaps the book shut. Tries to blink the tight feeling from his eyes. He doesn’t think about it. He never thinks about it. He only does. Autopilot but not quite. He’s here, but not quite.
The door opens, Mr. Warren and his terrible thin moustache appearing. “Sparrow,” he says, confidently wrong as ever, “where should you be?”
He goes to tell him to fuck himself, but Sparrow wouldn’t. Well, he would, but everyone thinks Sparrow is the nice twin, so any indiscretion is automatically Lark’s. “Uh, art.”
“Go on.” He holds the door open.
It feels like a trick. This will be used against him, he can feel it, he just doesn’t know how. When he first came back to school after Faerûn, he couldn’t have his back to anyone. They let him sit next to the door in all his classes, but their patience is wearing thin if it isn’t already worn out. He is trying. He goes through patches of getting better but they never last, there’s always something or someone to tip him into the fear again. The second and last time he ever went to therapy, a woman with big hair and a blue cloud pattered cardigan tried to convince him that his heightened senses post-Faerûn were actually symptomatic of PTSD, as was his unshakable belief that something bad was ever-lurking, waiting to happen. He just stared at her cardigan. Yarn in a pattern was the closest thing they had to the sky and it was his fault. He robbed them of it. He did, no-one else. It’d kill him if he stopped moving.
“Sparrow, go.”
He hesitates, then rushes from the room fast as he can without running, clutching the sketchbook like a life raft, so tense he feels like he’s about to snap, panic and surety that he’s going to get hurt, get into trouble, he can smell the damp stone, the purple, and then he’s down the hallway and he’s fine, heart in his throat and stuttering.
Sparrow is sat in the chair outside the Principal’s office, pen furiously tapping on the back of one of TJ’s notebooks, and it half-clicks for Lark how much TJ actually cares. He’s the most anal person in the world about his school stuff being neat and tidy. It’s colour-coded, all in cursive, and Sparrow is ruining it. Lark pushes the sketchbook into his hands, and he lets the notebook fall the floor, not blinking, picking up his drawing where he left off.
TJ picks up his notebook, winces, and gently slides it back into his bag. “Does your wrist not really hurt?”
“Bad,” he says without stopping.
TJ and Lark exchange glances. Lark is at a loss. He crouches down in front of his brother, tries to mimic gentleness, hand on Sparrow’s shin. He can’t think of anything to say. What could he say? What is he supposed to do?
“Should you tell them he’s not you?” Evidently, TJ doesn’t know what to do either. When he can’t solve a problem in its entirety, he moves on. He considers himself pragmatic, Lark stubborn.
Lark shakes his head. “I’m trying to get him out of here. Can you be on Henry-watch?”
“Sure.” He trots a little way away, his lookout.
They stay put: TJ’s eyes searching, Sparrow conjuring with Lark at his feet, wordlessly pleading. Maybe this’ll do it. But then he realises the flaw, if ‘Lark’ is getting sent home, that means ‘Sparrow’ is fine, because ‘Sparrow’ can do a full day of school without ripping someone’s face off or else having a complete meltdown so if he’s more or less functional, there’s nothing wrong with him, then Lark hears footsteps and TJ is frantically gesturing at him and he figures, fuck it, all in now, he takes off his jacket and drapes it over Sparrow’s shoulders, struggling to force his arms through the sleeves, Sparrow trying to push him away, Henry getting closer, jacket on, marks covered, swap their phones, and he takes his twin’s face in his hands and thinks I’m sorry as hard as possible, fuck knows he’d never say it out loud, and slips away soundless in the opposite direction.
*
In the passenger seat and it is eating him from the inside out this evil this eye this mouth he feels it open like spider’s spindly legs across his back and spread wide he itches at the sketchbook clenched in his hands he is trying to be Lark but there is a black hole in his chest but the jacket is smothering him Dad lecturing next to him eyes off the road but hands always on the wheel what happens when the puppet cuts the string what happens when
*
Is this what Hell feels like? He’s so anxious. The clock isn’t moving. It feels like he could take a handful of his hair and pull all his skin off in one like a bloody sock. It’s all just what if what if what if. Say Sparrow dies. Say Sparrow kills someone. Kills himself. Runs out of paper and moves onto his skin again and it gets infected and magic won’t touch the sides of it. Say Sparrow leaves and doesn’t come back and he’s alone without his brother. Then the funeral, the coffin, the indents it would leave on his shoulder, the grave dirt under his nails. His empty bed. The stuffed toy wolf untouched. There’s a stone in his throat. What if it kills Sparrow and he couldn’t stop it?
“Lark.”
He looks up at Grant, sat opposite him, books, worksheets, highlighters scattered on the table between them. All Grant’s, obviously. Lark doesn’t try, doesn’t see the point.
“You’re spiralling.”
“’M not,” he mumbles, still caught in the loop of what if, funeral suits and wreaths and his brother smiling awkwardly from the order of service flickering in his head.
Grant rolls his eyes. “D’you want to go outside?” He barely finishes his sentence before Lark says yes.
They do laps of the school in silence. It helps and it doesn’t. Grant next to him, counting footsteps.
When the bell rings, Grant walks him to Sparrow’s class. “He always gets a bit… you know, around the anniversary.”
They all do. Argumentative and repetitive and neurotic all the way down. They’re all unbearable but they bear each other because no-one else understands. That was the one thing they had: understanding.
“Not like this.”
*
The rest of the day he’s only clock-watching, a live wire.
*
The school bell sounds, an end, finally, finally. He is held back after class because of course he is, almost manages to sound like he means it when he says he won’t do it again, it being the sharp words and the broken pencils and the fight, simmering. Running through the corridors, getting yelled at to stop, slowing, starting again. Out the door, out the gates, a little way down to where his mom usually picks him up and she’s not there, a text telling him she’s running late. Sparrow’s phone is slapped out of his hands.
In front of him, Gabe. Gabe’s friends. There is dried blood under Gabe’s chin, little flecks of it. There is no-one else around.
He doesn’t go down without a fight. It’s funny. Sparrow wouldn’t have either, but everyone seems to forget it. A lovewolf is still a wolf. Kill or be killed: this is the way of it all.
Lark wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, tastes the blood fresh again. This shit never would’ve flown in Faerûn – he’d just be dead. These fucking idiots would’ve killed him.
And when he gets his hands on them, he’s going to make them wish they did.