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Chapter Text

The confrontation in Blackthorne Manor had not gone according to plan.

The renegade necromancer Johanna Hezenkoss and her giant skeletal construct had loomed over the party, sickly green light pouring from her cursed lantern. The guests had been held aloft by its dark power, siphoning their very life essence, their forms contorted in the air.

Rook had come in strong, dashing around the room with her blades in pursuit of Hezenkoss, who kept ducking and weaving, launching torrents of toxic energy at the team. Emmrich had thrown in from a distance, firing bolts of magic—and pleas for sanity—at his former colleague. Backing them up had been Harding, holding back a seemly endless horde of undead that threatened to overwhelm the group.

It had been a close fight. And when close fights drag on, desperation seeps in.

Rook wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. A blast of energy from one side, matched with a response from the other. Magics tangling together in the heated air. A detonation no one expected.

One stone pillar had been caught up in the eruption, crumbling. Its fall had caught a second, and then third, and in the chaos Rook had spotted Hezenkoss trying to escape out a back door, and given chase.

She was almost out of the room when she heard Emmrich call her name. His, “Rook! Dearest!” was frightened, desperate, and she spun back towards him just in time to see the ceiling come down between them.

Her heart twisted. She hadn’t been paying attention. If he was hurt, or worse, if he was…

“Emmrich!” she called back. Her voice was swallowed by the thunder of the collapsing manor. “Emmrich! Are you—”

But she didn’t get a chance to finish. Something hard struck the back of her head, and all thoughts and worries ceased.

===

Emmrich returned to his senses one at a time, ears ringing, eyes pinched tight against dust and smoke, tongue laden with copper. Something was tapping his face.

He forced his aching limbs to respond—and oh, he would be feeling that tomorrow, the way debris was digging into the delicate places in his back—and rolled onto his knees. Faintly, he could recall younger days when he would wrap up a patrol of the Necropolis with a finger of some smoky liquor back in his apartments. Since joining Rook’s team, he’d been following his adventurous afternoons with a chaser of Elfroot tonic and as hot a bath as he could handle.

Squinting up, he discovered the source of the tapping: Manfred, hissing in a concerned fashion. The animate skeleton seemed undamaged at a glance, though filthy, and dancing from foot to foot with worry.

“I am all right, Manfred,” Emmrich said with a cough, which came up wetter than he expected. He dabbed a handkerchief to his lips and wiped away blood—in the absence of internal pains, he attributed it to a minor injury to his mouth or nose, of no consequence for now—and pushed to this feet. “Where are the others?”

As if on cue, Harding appeared behind a shifted stone column. “Emmrich!” She, much like Manfred, and much like himself, he suspected, wore a thick coat of dirt, which smudged across her face as she wiped the sweat from her brow.

“Harding! Are you well?”

“Not seriously hurt. You?”

He gave a quick nod, then cast his eyes around the room again. Not far from where he had fallen, he recovered his staff. But that wasn’t what he was really looking for.

“Rook?” he asked finally, a question to the room, to Manfred, to Harding, to any benevolent force that was listening.

The scout shook her head, and turned away to begin surveying the wider debris field.

Emmrich felt fear prick needle-sharp at his heart. The ballroom as it had been was shattered, columns toppled, walls crumbled, ceiling scratched open to the black night sky. The abhorrent construct could just be seen, motionless now, one massive skeletal hand outstretched and rising through the rubble. Though some of the manor beyond yet stood, Blackthorne as it had once been was no more. And though he had his allies had interrupted Johanna’s ritual, Emmrich knew that beneath the rubble lay the bodies of many of his contemporaries. And Rook—

Taking a breath, blocking out the disruptive energies of the terrible room in which he stood, Emmrich lifted his hands and opened his awareness to the Fade. It flowed about all of them at all times, and even here, where the Veil had been scraped thin by Johanna’s vile experimentation, he could feel the drift of it about him, like a pebble in the stream. And within that stream he searched for a wake. Just a sense of disruption, a place he had marked like folding a dog ear into the page of a book (an act he would never be so crass as to undertake), and there—

“She lives,” he said with certainty.

Manfred looked up from shifting masonry, hissing a question.

“Here.” Emmrich crossed the room, climbing rubble, his heart pulled along by knowledge beyond the rational. There was a pile here, in one corner, near where he’d seen Rook last, and it obstructed a still-standing portion of wall. He started to shift it, throwing his weight into the tumbled stones. Manfred came to help, and then Harding shortly after, but it was still rough work. If only Taash or Davrin had come, Emmrich thought, followed by, if only I’d read some heavier books.

But after what seemed like an endless stretch of time, Harding pushed a block aside and declared, “There’s a door here!”

“Johanna must have taken Rook.”

“Why?”

“I dare not imagine. Can we open it?”

A few minutes more and the answer, it turned out, was yes, revealing a stairwell down into the dark. There was a faint flicker of green lamplight, far below, and just on the edge of hearing—there. The moans of undead.

Emmrich turned to his ward. “Manfred. Listen to me. This path is fraught with peril, and I will not be able to protect you, here. You have already faced such dangers today and I am deeply, deeply grateful, but you cannot come any further.”

Manfred hissed in an upset way, which meant, Rook?

“We will find her.” His voice was firm. “But we may need more help. I need you, Manfred, to return to the eluvian and bring word to the others at the Lighthouse. And the Mourn Watch as well—they need to know the scale of what Johanna has attempted here. They will need to retrieve the dead. They…” He trailed off, and looked at Harding.

“I’m with you,” she said without a question.

Emmrich gave her a sad smile. “Harding. My dear friend. I cannot ask you to join me in this, but to attempt it alone, I—”

“I’m with you,” she repeated, voice somehow gentler but more determined at the same time, placing a hand on his forearm. “Rook’s important to me, too.”

Manfred put his hand on top of Harding’s.

Emmrich sighed. “He does so hate to be left out. Please, Manfred. To the eluvian. Do not get distracted. We are relying on you.”

As the skeleton finally ambled off, Harding gave him a smile, then patted Emmrich on the shoulder.

“Come on,” she said, “Let’s go get our girl back.”

===

Time passed.

Rook felt herself return to consciousness, floating back the surface of a fathomless dark ocean, hearing the distorted world just beyond her reach. In her half-awake state her body felt buoyed as though by waves.

But: sharp pain returned, pinprick by pinprick, branching up each limb. These aches tugged her towards reality, until at last her head cleared enough to take stock of her situation. Very quickly, three key things became clear:

1) She was bound. Heavy iron chains kept her wrists behind her back, and linked her ankles, with just enough slack for her to shuffle.

2) She was being dragged. Skeletal hands held her arms, shoulders, waist. A good half-dozen undead grasped her, their eyes glowing bright green but without any of the attentiveness Rook had grown used to in Manfred.

3) She was Hezenkoss’ prisoner. She could just make out the former Mourn Watcher’s small form ahead of her, holding aloft the cursed lantern, which spilled light ahead of them.

What made up the ‘ahead of them’ remained an unknown; Rook’s  hazy senses could tell there was dirt beneath them and above, but had no way of knowing how long they had been marching or how much further there was to go. They appeared to be in a tunnel. Not well-travelled. An escape route?

Something must have changed in her breathing because Hezenkoss spun on her then, pulling the lantern up to her face. The light caught between them, casting a pallid glow over the scene, reflecting off the necromancer’s hexagonal goggles. This was the first time Rook had seen her so close, and there was definitely something off with the woman. She was close in age to Emmrich but seemed decades older, her skin pulled taut in places where it shouldn’t be, and sagging deeply in others, as though fluid and fat had been sucked from her through a straw. Her skin was practically transparent, the black veins visible through her skin reminiscent of spiderwebs coating a haunted house. And there was—well, a smell, mouldering, chemical, and toxic.

“Look at that,” the necromancer hissed. “All full up on beauty sleep, are we?”

“Good morning,” Rook quipped, though the spit in her throat was thicker than expected, and it didn’t quite have the right sting. She gave a cough, then tried again: “Are you making eggs?”

“I would be happy to practice cracking a few.” Hezenkoss rapped her on the temple with a knuckle, hard, and Rook winced and had to bite back rising bile. Maybe one major head injury was enough for today, she thought.

“Where are you taking me?” Rook asked, the bite considerably withdrawn from her voice.

“Out,” Hezenkoss spat. “You and Volkarin damaged my lantern before it was finished gathering enough power. I need to repair it before continuing the plan.”

Rook squinted at the older woman. “Then… Why are you taking me?”

Hezenkoss answered through grit teeth: “Leverage.” She waved, then, to the skeletons, gesturing for them to follow.  As they proceeded, her hands made familiar motions through the air, spinning up currents of magic; where Emmrich wove his spells like a conductor, gentle and elegant, Hezenkoss pulled and sliced the air with violence. The magic dispersed around them, seeping into the earthen walls—and moments later, more undead, putrefied and skeletal, burst through the dirt. “Anyone that follows—attack. Bring Volkarin. Kill the rest,” Hezenkoss barked in command, and they stood at the ready, closing up the pathway behind them.

As the grim procession moved forward, the necromancer continued: “Enchanting this lantern took months the first time. I do not have that luxury now. Volkarin broke it—he’ll help fix it.”

Rook, uncomfortable and stumbling in the cold grip of the dead, laughed. “Not a chance. Not a chance he helps you.”

“Not even to save your life?”

Rook didn’t have an answer to that.

It was Hezenkoss’ turn to cackle, at Rook’s silence. “I’ve known the professor for many years. Such a promising intellect, hideously stunted by his bleeding heart. He is one of the few that could comprehend the brilliance and complexity of my designs, and perhaps the only one with the technical capacity to aid me in executing them. If that means I must resort to base emotional manipulation to secure that aid, so be it.”

Rook let this proclamation linger in the air for a moment, then spoke: “So are you paid by the word?”

“Maker’s breath, you’re irritating,” Hezenkoss snarled, goggles flashing. “No wonder you and Volkarin get along. He probably thinks you are so charming.”

Rook struggled against the chains that bound her, the clutching hands of the undead that dragged her along. “What can I say? He likes a woman who can get things done.”

Hezenkoss scoffed.

“You’re not quite measuring up there, are you, Johanna?” Rook rattled on, unable to do much else. “With your half-baked plans, your half-complete construct—I mean, you’re even only half a lich! I’ve heard of ambition with no follow-through, but really—”

“Enough!” The necromancer spun, holding up a palm to halt the marching undead. Her other hand, blackened and withered, began to weave a spell. “A hostage is helpful, of course, but you might be more trouble than you’re— Oh. Oh.”

At Hezenkoss’ sudden creeping smile, Rook felt a shiver on the back of her neck. “What?”

“He really cares for you, the doddering old fool. You must have quite a figure under that armor because it’s clearly not your mind that’s ensnared him. Hah!” Hezenkoss leered closer. “He’s put an enchantment on you.”

Rook tried not to let her confusion show. “So?”

“So that means I’m going to enjoy this even more.” Hezenkoss  gestured to the undead once more. “Hold her down.”

A dozen bony hands bore Rook to the rough ground at once, gripping her bound arms, her chained legs, even her hair. She struggled even harder, using all of her strength to try to roll, to kick out, gain the slightest advantage—but there was no escape.

To her surprise, Hezenkoss stepped over her, and came down to her knees, sitting astride Rook’s chest. The half-lich walked her bloodless fingers along Rook’s shoulder in a playful sort of way, hopping, skipping and jumping along her clavicle towards her neck.

“Don’t worry, I’ll bring you back in a minute. Can’t have Volkarin losing the trail. But in the meantime, try to remember what you can from the experience.” Hezenkoss closed the last of the distance, her goggles filling Rook’s vision. “It might make a good research paper someday.”

And just like that, Hezenkoss closed her hands tight around Rook’s throat.

Emmrich had once, in a very different context, bragged to Rook about his knowledge of the finer points of anatomy. In this moment, Rook came to appreciate that this was less a trait that was specific to Emmrich, but was instead shared by anyone who reached significant enough station within the Mourn Watch. Johanna’s hands had cut off Rook’s air with a practiced efficiency, her thumbs pressing on just the right spots to cut off all blood flow to her brain.

She tried to fight. Tried to buck Johanna off. Tried to breathe.

But it took seconds.

She tried.

===

“This way, Harding!”

The scout fired another shot, dispatching another shambling corpse at their backs. The tunnels were like a labyrinth. Emmrich, however, seemed to be able to keep track of where they should be going.

“I’m really not sure I want to know where Hezenkoss got all these bodies!” Harding called, over a chorus of moans.

Emmrich shook his head, his staff in constant motion as he cast repelling blasts. “She stole a section of the Grand Necropolis, and likely took pains to bring all the dead housed within when she did so. She has always been—”

He stopped so abruptly that Harding ran into his back. “What? Emmrich? What is it?”

When no response came, Harding felt a chill. After a moment she grabbed his arm, spun him to face her.

His face was pallid, eyes wide and unfocused. His expression was a twist of—horror? Grief?—something so raw that it frightened her to see it.

“Rook,” he said at last, voice shaking with emotion. “She’s—her heart has stopped—I can’t feel—”

“What?”

Emmrich just sagged, grabbing his staff with both hands for support. Undead were gaining on them, pressing closer. Harding shot a few more, her fingers going through the motion of pull arrow, take aim, draw back bow, release, in a practiced, subconscious way that helped her not think too much about the words Emmrich had just said.

“Come on,” she urged at last. “You can’t know that. We have to keep going.”

“I know,” he said, voice low and strained. “Rook, I… I put an enchantment on her. So I would always know that…”

He couldn’t finish the thought.

Harding didn’t want him to.

“We don’t know,” she insisted. “Who knows what kind of messed-up necromancy that woman could—”

Emmrich abruptly cut her off again, his spine snapping upright. “She’s back!”

This time, Harding just gaped at him.

He shook his head at her, looking lost. “I don’t understand. I—we…” Resolution clarified in his eyes. “We must get to Rook.”

“Great! We agree,” Harding replied. “Now lead the way. Please.”

===

Rook’s first conscious breath was a struggle. Her body wanted to gasp, her lungs craving the air, but the pain in her throat was intense. Each inhalation caught in her swollen windpipe, a bright bloom of pain.

The hands upon her continued to pull and drag her through the dark. Undead stumbling after Hezenkoss and her floating, cracked lantern. In the quieter moments Rook swore she could hear faint screams from within that sickly glow, echoes of spirits brought to madness from pain.

Hezenkoss was humming, gently; she summoned more undead and sent them off back in the direction they had travelled.

Rook let herself lie limp for a moment, hair dangling around her face, eyes unfocused. Then she gathered herself. “Are we there yet?”

“Ah!” Hezenkoss turned to inspect her with ghost-green eyes. “I had wondered if you would return with all your faculties intact. Not, to be clear, because I cared.”

“Maker forbid,” Rook mumbled back. “Don’t worry, I didn’t confuse myself into thinking that was the case.”

“So? Any revelations, from your peek beyond the Veil? It was just a peek, you understand. Once a soul is fully separated from its body, as in death, it is impossible to reunite the two. But I have long theorized that stopping the heart would loosen that tether.”

Rook blinked, slower than she meant to, her reactions still stilted. “You killed me?”

Hezenkoss beamed with pride. “Yes! Temporarily. Then, when your soul commenced its exodus to the next realm, I healed your body just enough for it be a suitable vessel again, captured your soul, and forced the two back together. Isn’t that delightful?”

Rook just stared.

“I have managed what the great mages of the eons have always striven for!” Cackling and clapping, she declared, “I have mastered resurrection! Inform those cowards at the Mourn Watch, let them eat their words, for Johanna Hezenkoss is the true master of the necromantic arts!”

As Hezenkoss continued to chuckle and work her magic, Rook took a moment to push down the dark feelings that threatened to overwhelm her. She was well within her rights to panic, or perhaps weep, but that would have to come later—she simply didn’t have the time.

She’s insane. Slow her down, she thought. Rile her up. They’ll find us. Make her make mistakes.

“If you’re so impressive,” she rasped at the half-lich’s back, “Why do you need Emmrich to help fix your lantern?”

The chuckling stopped. “Need is too strong a word for it, whelp. It is my creation and mine alone. The Venatori are working towards a timeline, and I do not intend to miss the agreed-upon date.”

“So you need the Venatori, too?” Rook forced herself to laugh. It stung. “I could not tell you how many of those red-robed idiots I’ve cut down. We’ve been disrupting their plans all over Thedas. Minrathous, Arlathan, Treviso. You’re the latest in a long line of disappointing plans from the Venatori.”

“I. Need. No one.” Hezenkoss’ tone was cold; she raised another corpse, which pushed past Rook without acknowledging  her. “I have always worked best on my own.”

“Or with Emmrich, right?” When there was no immediate response, Rook added, “He said you were close, once.”

“Until he betrayed me, you mean? Yes.” The necromancer straightened suddenly, and folded her hands behind her back. When she turned to Rook her expression was calm, unreadable. “You have reminded me of something, from my training in the Watch. Volkarin was always very insistent upon it.”

Rook pulled herself upright as best she could, tugging against her undead jailors. “‘Be nice to people’?”

“‘Any arcane advancement worth the ink to write about is observable, verifiable, and repeatable.’ Need to make sure these things aren’t flukes, you see.” She stepped closer.

A chill went down Rook’s spine, but she clenched her jaw. “They don’t have your back. The Venatori, I mean. They’re using you, and they’ll abandon you as soon as you’ve overstayed your usefulness.”

“Everyone I ever cared for has,” Hezenkoss said, voice flat, raising her curled hands, “So I do not make that mistake anymore. Now, quiet. I want to make sure I do this right.”

===

There was no telling how long or far they had travelled underground, Emmrich lighting their way with Veilfire between blasts of spellcasting. He and Harding worked well together. Perhaps it was the difference in their statures, but they never got in each other’s way—her sharp eyes would call out opportunities with plenty of time for him to summon the power to react, and in between she peppered their opponents with bone-shattering precision strikes.

They came to a split in the tunnel. A crossed junction, giving them three different possible avenues of travel, and Harding skidded to a halt, breathing hard.

“Okay,” she said, “Okay. Give me a minute.”

Emmrich found himself grateful for the pause, despite his desire for haste. His own breath was hot in his chest, his shoulders sore from brandishing his staff. He let it take some of his weight for a moment, pressing his forehead against the metal plating, seeking that cold.

“She’s covered her tracks. That necromancer—she’s intentionally had undead walk up and down all over here.” Harding looked up at him, eyes shining in the dark. “Unless you can… feel something?”

He huffed air through his teeth, and gave a nod as he corrected his posture. The Fade was there, a vast ocean of consciousness and intent that ran under everything, and he let himself slip into it, seeking the soul that was linked to his own. He felt her always—a reverberation, like a low piano note being played at a distance. But when he took on a meditative state he could allow himself to be pulled by her, summoned by her song.

And she was there. A bright thing, a vibrant thing. But through the Fade there was only distance between them, a straight line, no further information.

Emmrich opened his eyes, allowing himself a brief moment of relief at knowing Rook was alive. To Harding, he shook his head.

“I’m sorry. It is not precise. I can tell she is ahead, but with the way these tunnels have been winding…”

The dwarf furrowed her brow with renewed determination, and pulled a torch from her pack. “Not a problem. We’ll do it the old fashioned way.”

As she made her way to the mouth of the first tunnel, lighting the torch and bending low to the dirt, Emmrich allowed the proper scope of his exhaustion to creep in. He propped his staff against a wall while searching in his pouches.

“Don’t move around too much!” Harding cautioned. “No new footsteps.”

“I’ll save my energy for the chase,” he replied, and pulled a vial of Lyrium potion from a case at his waist. It had been years since he’d taken any—as he’d gotten older, he found the next-day headaches weren’t worth it.

Johanna hadn’t been worried about that, apparently. It had been a few years since he’d seen her, but the frenetic pace of her work, her research, had evidently not slowed in the slightest. He had reached out, of course, and met with her once or twice since she had been expelled from the Mourn Watch. He had believed then—and continued to believe, for far too long—that she could still be redeemed. That she could recognize the error of her ways, find some sense of morality and empathy to drive her choices.

Now, guilt gripping his chest, he knew that he had been wrong.

As he threw the potion back, Harding called over, “So what is that… spell or whatever it is you’re doing? To find Rook?”

Emmrich hesitated. He dabbed the last of the potion from his lips, delaying the moment of his response. “It is… an enchantment I placed upon her. I am always able to sense her heart. Not her emotions, mind you. To say it quite literally: I can detect the presence of her beating heart.”

Not even looking up from her work, Harding tsked. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not saying everything?”

“Perhaps because you are unerringly astute, my friend.” Emmrich sighed. “I did this without Rook’s knowledge.”

“Emmrich…” Harding chided, as she paced back up the first tunnel and began down the second. “Why not ask?”

He placed his palms together, and looked at this hands. He could feel the thrum of mana returning beneath his fingertips, a heady rush. “Because of the nature of the spell.”

“Which is…?”

“Oh, Harding…” He closed his eyes. “You will think me a fool.”

“Andraste’s knickers, Emmrich, what is it? What could it possibly be?”

“The Rite of Two Souls Bound,” he recited. “It is not typically used outside of certain special ceremonies. That is to say, it is fairly uncommon, not that is overly complex. It is quite a simple enchantment, really, and—”

Harding rose to her feet, fixing him with a glare through the torchlight. “Spit it out.”

“It is commonly reserved for marriage.” He winced, hard, and pinched the bridge of his nose so he wouldn’t have to see Harding’s look.

“You married Rook without her knowledge?”

“No, no!” He began to pace forward—she pointed and shouted “Footsteps!”—and he retreated. “That is the most common use of the spell but it is not exclusively for that purpose, it was not designed for that purpose, the nobility like to use it in that way but it is more like a fad to them, they don’t understand the—”

Harding looked extremely unimpressed, but held up her hands to stem his flow of words. “Stop. Please.” She moved to the third tunnel without speaking, and bent to bring the torch low to the floor before saying, “You really care for her.”

“I love her.” The words slipped from him. He slid his back to the wall.

“But you didn’t want to ask her. About the spell.”

“I… didn’t want her to misinterpret my question. We did not meet under normal circumstances. Her life is in constant danger, and I am not always at her side. I wanted… I wanted to be able to know.”

“So you don’t want to marry her.”

He let out a laugh. “Oh, Harding. My dear friend. If she would have me, I think my heart would overflow with the joy of it. But the times right now being as they are… I am content to be whatever it is I am to her, for now. And if she someday breaks my heart—” He took a breath, shaky. “Well. It has been broken before.”

Harding gave him a look, brow furrowed with concern and something else he could not read. “Emmrich.” She opened her mouth to say something, stopped, then tried again. “I’ve known Rook a bit longer than you. Did you know Varric gave her that name? When she knows what she wants, she goes straight for it. I think that comes across as… uncomplicated. But—she took his death poorly. Never spoke of it once. And there are some other things in there, in her past, that she dances around—she told Bellara that she was doing all of this to atone for something she regrets. I’m trying to say…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t think Rook would pick you up and toss you aside. I just don’t.”

Emmrich felt a warmth rise in his chest. “Harding, I’m touched that you—”

And then it cut through him, as sharp as a physical blow, as evident as an alarm bell ringing in his ears. He fell to a knee before he could stop himself, fingers scraping against the dirt wall. He let out a choked, “Rook!”

Harding was at his side in a moment. “What is it?”

“Her heart—” He couldn’t bear to say it. How could he explain the certainty of the feeling, the sudden absence of her note in the song? It was like losing a limb.

“Again?” Harding was baffled. “That doesn’t—will it come back, again?”

Only this confusion kept him from weeping. Instead, he closed his eyes and counted, beneath his breath. At ten, he hung his head until it hit Harding’s shoulder; at twenty, improbably, the feeling of Rook returned.

He gasped a great inhale and drew back from the scout. “She’s back. She’s back.”

Harding just shook her head. “Something’s gotta be messing with your spell. Right? This doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes…” He doubted it. He doubted it very much. But to consider the other possibility would mean letting himself drown. He clung to Harding’s suggestion like a life raft. “Yes, it must be that.”

She helped him to his feet. “Well, listen. I think I found something. Give me a moment to confirm.”

He took up his staff as she went back down the tunnel, stepping further into the darkness than before. She stooped, fingers ghosting above the ground, then shuffled along and stooped again.

“Here. Drag marks. Off and on.” She held up the torch, looking down the dark pathway, then back at him. “This way.”

And they pressed on into the black.

===

Rook woke to a unique feeling of stillness. For once she was not being pulled along like a puppet, but instead on the ground, her cheek resting on cold, damp earth. She could hear the gentle lapping of water.

As the shapes in the dark came into focus, Rook saw undead standing above her, watching her for movement. Beyond, there was Hezenkoss, still accompanied by her lantern, sorting through some bags and crates. She stood upon a wooden dock; the tunnel beyond opened into a stone cavern, which stretched up into the dark. They were at an inlet, it seemed, a finger of some larger body of water that jutted into this cave. The perfect location for a hidden exit.

Rook rolled a little, eyeing her undead guards to see how much she could get away with. They let her turn over, wiggling against her bindings, her neck screaming in pain with every twist. Eventually, she could spot back in the direction they had come. There, the stone wall was marked by a door, heavy and banded with iron, barred with a crossbeam.

No easy way out.

Rook closed her eyes, let her head rest in the dirt. The beating of her heart felt difficult, like the organ itself was overstressed and uncertain. The act of breathing was like pulling air through a bed of nails. According to what Hezenkoss had been saying earlier, Rook had been taken apart and reassembled by crude necromancy—and she felt every inch of it. A deep sleep in a shallow grave was sounding pretty good right now.

She gently tested the tightness of her bonds again, as Hezenkoss wandered near, picking up books and equipment.

“There she is!” the necromancer crooned, sounding chipper. “The woman of the hour. You’re a tenacious wretch, you know that?”

“Yes…” Rook let the syllable roll out slow, wincing at the vibration of the vocal chords in her throat. “He loves that about me.”

Hezenkoss made a disgusted sound, before returning the packs. “Well, it shouldn’t be much longer before your beloved arrives. I will finish preparing my equipment for the journey, and some smooth talking—and a knife to your throat for good measure—will ensure he joins us. If you can cease your mindless prattling until then, I may not even have to kill you again.”

Rook stared up into the dark. Emmrich was coming—her team was coming, if they hadn’t been killed when the manor collapsed. She both longed for it and hated it, knowing they were charging into danger, knowing that she was a liability, in no shape to fight. Not a rook in this moment, but a pawn to be sacrificed, allowing Hezenkoss to take a greater piece.

She stood at a crossroads. Act, and take the consequences. Or wait, and let fate unfold as it would.

But she had never regretted anything as much as inaction.

“You’re making a mistake,” Rook wheezed.

Hezenkoss looked down on her with contempt. “I imagine people at risk of being murdered say that often.”

Rook shook her head as best she could, given her bindings. “Not with me. With Emmrich.”

“Volkarin? Hah! What is he going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Rook said it with a note of curiosity. “I honestly could not tell you. You see, Emmrich is a good man. Despite whatever you might think of him, he is a good man. He knows darkness. He understands ambition. But what you’re doing… what you’ve done tonight… that is evil. And I don’t think Emmrich has ever truly seen evil before. I don’t know how he’s going to respond to it.” She fixed Johanna with a look. “Do you?”

A beat. Hezenkoss’ reaction was almost impossible to read: she did not breathe, and therefore did not hold her breath, nor sigh; behind her opaque goggles she had no eyelids to narrow. But after a moment she put down the equipment in her hands. She hopped down from the wooden planks of the dock. She stepped closer to Rook, taking hold of the straps of the taller woman’s armour, lifting, and pushing her until her back hit the stone.

“I should like to give you a thought, child,” the necromancer said, voice quiet and conversational. “A final thought, as it were. And it is this: long, long before he met you—before your father had gotten up the bravery to even hold your mother’s hand—Volkarin knew me. We worked well together. We ran circles around mages from families with far more wealth and privilege than we, and we spent years considering the boundaries of our vocation and how they could be pushed.”

Hezenkoss slid her hands from the straps to Rook’s collarbones, and Rook felt the panic begin to rise within her again. When she tried to push free, she met the rock-solid, inescapable pressure of half-lich strength.

“No,” she shook her head, arms straining in their chains, “No no stop, you don’t have to do this again, you don’t—”

Hezenkoss continued, unbothered. “He would say I’m his friend,” she said, “He would say that I’m his best friend. That I have been for over thirty years. So tell me, between you and I…”

Her hands met at Rook’s throat.

“Who would he really choose?”

===

Harding was in the middle of kneecapping some skeletons when she heard Emmrich’s cry of pain for the third time. She spun to face him, but aside from a grimace and a hand pressed to his chest, he was still fighting.

(That was one of the things that Harding admired most in her friend, in fact. A compulsion to press all of his shirts just so, but zero hangups about getting them dirty when the moment called for it.)

She sent an arrow into the eye socket of an attacker rising from his blind side, then moved in closer to him for support.

“Again?” she called.

“Again,” he offered in grim reply. She heard him begin to count the seconds, keeping good time even as he twirled his staff and launched another necrotic volley at the next shambling corpse that appeared in the tunnel. He got to thirty-six, voice growing more clipped with each number, before taking an inhale of relief.

Harding didn’t love the sound of that. She hoped she was right about the spell being interfered with, but magecraft… even with her new abilities, she didn’t claim to understand it. Thirty-six seconds felt like a very long time to have a heart not beat.

“Are you good to keep moving?” she asked, a hand on Emmrich’s upper arm.

In the green Veilfire light, the bones of his face caught the shadows, making his somber expression appear more skull-like than ever. “Harding, I will not allow anything to stop me.”

There was a short reprieve from the undead, as they came to the end of their passageway and found a wooden stairway down. The dirt of the walls here was interspersed with jutting stone. When Harding dragged her index finger along it and rubbed it against her thumb, she could feel a slickness, signs of faint moisture. “We’re getting closer to water. Not sure what kind yet.”

They descended the stairs as quietly as possible. There was a moan, inhuman, from further ahead in the dark, and Emmrich snuffed the light on his staff. They moved in silence until the next curve of the tunnel; beyond, they could see a room lit in faint torchlight, filled with the largest horde of undead thus far, milling around the shape of a Pride Demon.

Pulling back around the bend and out of sight, Emmrich and Harding crouched low, against the tunnel wall.

“We may need to consider our strategy,” Emmrich whispered.

“I think I have one or two special arrows left,” the scout replied, voice barely above breath. “If I send one in, you could detonate it with your magic. Might take out a group of the more fragile skeletons.”

He gave a nod, and began to move, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Emmrich. That spell…”

“Harding, is this really the time to shame me further?”

“No, no. Could another mage detect it? Could Hezenkoss tell it was there?”

He looked at her, the faintest silhouette of him visible in the dark. “It was not cloaked. It would not be immediately apparent, but if Johanna was checking for magic…”

Harding frowned, and felt something churn in her gut. A thought had come to her. It wasn’t a nice one, and she didn’t feel nice for thinking it.

“Why do you ask?” Emmrich hissed, put off by her silence.

“I just wonder…” She trailed off, then steeled herself. “That woman really seemed to hate you. Maybe it’s not… that she’s messing with the spell to mess with you.”

He said nothing. Harding had hoped maybe he would, and she wouldn’t have to finish elaborating.

But: “Maybe she’s messing with Rook, to mess with you.”

There was another pause from Emmrich. Then he rose, unfolding in one long series of fluid motions, until he stood at his full height, posture impeccable. And he strode out into the tunnel without a word.

“Emmrich? Emmrich—!” Harding scrambled after him, whisper-calling his name.

But he’d given up on stealth and subtlety. The next passageway filled with an eerie green light, brighter than she’d seen, causing her to fall back and shield her eyes from the glare. She could just see his pace, unhurried, and his arms gesturing without pause through the air. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Her next breath clouded in the suddenly cold air.

In the room beyond, she heard a burst of power, and the groans of a dozen undead suddenly silenced. And yet the light just grew brighter.

“You’ve done it now, Lace,” she muttered to herself, and snatched up her bow to follow.

===

There seemed to be no line any longer between Rook’s state of being awake and unconscious. She heard water, and felt like she was drowning. She was motionless and floating, she was wracked with pain and at complete peace. She was nothing more than a spark trapped in a cage of blood and meat.

And there was a thumping throughout, like a knock at the door. It seemed polite, knocking in pairs, then pausing, and knocking twice again. But it was so insistent that it was driving her mad. Maybe it was Emmrich. Maybe it was death.

Eventually she realized that the noise was her heart.

A boot kicked her in the ribs, then, and her entire form coiled around the spot of pain. But the moan that escaped her hurt almost as much as the blow.

“I know you’re awake,” Hezenkoss spat from somewhere above. “Your soul nearly didn’t want to come back, this time. Sad to think that our little experiment might be coming to an end.”

Rook’s eyes fluttered. She was on the dock, beside a row boat laden with packs. Hezenkoss has been busy while she’d ben out.

The pounding of Rook’s heart in her ears was almost enough to drown out everything else, but there, there at the very edge of perception, she could hear faint sounds of magic. Crackles of energy, explosions, the tumble of rocks.

Johanna cackled, and rounded on Rook once again. “Oh, now, do you hear that? Sounds like your paramour is finally arriving! We should get ready for him!”

She pulled Rook by the collar to the edge of the dock platform, and it took great effort for Rook to not cry out as the leather of her armour caught against her damaged throat. Hezenkoss dragged her to her feet and pulled her back, tight against the necromancer’s chest. One arm snaked around Rook’s shoulders and she felt her jaw held tight and lifted, baring her neck. And just there, the faintest prickle of the edge of a blade.

“Be good, my dear,” Hezenkoss purred, sing-song voice a parody of Emmrich in Rook’s ear. “Cutting you open is a lot harder to reverse than putting you to sleep.”

Rook said nothing. Her body, overwhelmed from the process of being brought past death and back again over and over, had little left to give. Even if it had—Johanna’s hold on her was fast with lich-strength, and felt as inescapable as the iron shackles that bound her.

She was bent, back arched, caught in the grasp of the much shorter Hezenkoss. But she dare not let her legs give way. The dagger at her throat was a very real promise.

Even while she threatened Rook’s life, again, even while the sounds of battle drew nearer, Hezenkoss was prattling on.

“That soft-hearted fool. He was always lacking vision, you know. Happy to just let the nobles fund his playdates with the wisps. Trying to understand things. I always told him,” she curled her fingertips into the skin of Rook’s jaw, making her gasp, “I’m more about the empirics. Who cares about the studying the Veil when there’s unlimited power to be found on the other side?”

There was a heavy thud at the door.

“‘What draws spirits to a person or place, Johanna?’ Who gives a damn? Knowing where the rain might fall doesn’t get you anywhere. Building a canal, a dam, that’s control. That’s authority. The spirits will go where I tell them.”

Another thud, so strong it shook dust from the ceiling.

“He’ll see. They’ll all see.”

“It’s been an honour,” Rook choked, feeling the line of the dagger vibrating against her vocal cords, “Being front row at your final lecture.”

The door, heavy and iron, blew off its hinges in a burst of green flame and hit the floor with a clang like a chantry bell. The hallway beyond was obscured by smoke, rising in curls.

Johanna clutched Rook closer to her chest, a cruel chuckle in her tone. “Volkarin! Nice of you to join u—”

The blast of magic that decapitated Johanna Hezenkoss came so sharp, so strong, that Rook felt the heat on her cheek before she even saw the flash. A second later there was boom, delayed like the rapport of thunder. And a moment after that, the body that had been holding Rook up collapsed, pulling her down with it.

Dazed, she managed to look up just enough to see a skull—a clean, fleshless skull—rolling past her on the wooden planks, a faint green glow in its eyes. Taking a weak breath, she mumbled, “I warned her.”

Before letting the dark claim her.

Chapter Text

The stars moved.

Rook had rarely kept her eyes open long enough to view it herself, but in this moment, she could almost see their paths laid out, like threads embroidered in black silk. If she lifted her hands, she could play cat’s cradle with each constellation. The depths of the void called to her, willing her to join them, to be pulled into that profound, eternal night and let herself unravel until there was nothing left but stardust.

But the dirt at her back had different plans. As slowly as the spinning of the stars, Rook was sinking. She’d lived on the dirt, walked the dirt, eaten the fruit that grew from the dirt, made her home on the dirt, and now it was reclaiming the whole of her, body and soul, exactly what was owed.

She could not bring herself to blink, nor to move, but felt caught between these two forces, sky above and soil beneath.  Given long enough, given eternity, she was certain one side or the other would capture her soul.

Until then, all Rook could do was decay.

She woke with a start, hands going immediately for her blades, coming up empty, and getting tangled in soft bedsheets.

“Rook!” A startled voice beside her: Harding. The scout shoved aside the letter she’d been writing and moved to Rook’s side. “Thank the Maker, you’re awake. We were worried about you.”

Fingers clutching at her hair like she could somehow pull her headache out by its roots, Rook winced. “I don’t—” The phrase was choked off almost immediately by sharp pain in her throat. When Rook coughed, that pain blossomed into agony, as though she’d just taken a blade to the neck, and she fell back against the infirmary bed, spine arched.

Harding was there, one hand resting upon Rook’s upper arm, trying to soothe. “I know—I know. Don’t do too much. Don’t try to talk. There was only so much we could fix while you were out. Here,” she said, pressing a cool glass vial into Rook’s hands. “Elfroot. It’ll hurt like hell the first time you try to drink, but every sip after that will feel better.”

Afraid to speak, Rook just blinked gratefully in response, and took a tentative drink. Harding had been right: the important tissues and muscles that usually made something like drinking simple were over-stressed, and deeply damaged. Rook choked down the first taste, savouring the faint tingle of peppermint on her tongue, and did her best to let the liquid slide back without actively swallowing.

Instantly she felt bruising fade, and swelling decrease. Breathing came a little easier. She hummed, a quick experiment, and it still stung but no longer felt like she was breaking herself open.

“Thank you,” she managed, voice barely more than a whisper, and took a moment to look Harding over.

The dwarf was bruised and bandaged. She had marks, blows and scrapes, on her forehead and cheeks. Rook could see the edge of a wound dressing beneath the neck of her tunic. She’d washed and changed her clothes, Rook could tell, but had done it in a hurry, a smear of dirt still visible along Harding’s neck just behind her ear.

“You all right?” Rook asked.

The scout barked a laugh, incredulous. “Rook. Yes, I’m fine. I’ve had much worse. The biggest damage was to my quiver. I’ll be restocking arrows the next time we’re in Treviso.”

Rook gave her a slant smile, then twisted her fingers in the bedsheets. “Emmrich?”

“He’s okay too.” A beat. “He wasn’t hurt, I mean. He would have been here—he hasn’t left your side since we found you. Not until about ten minutes ago.”

Rook tilted her head in question.

Harding waved her hand, looking a combination of exasperated and apologetic. “He was a mess. The building collapse, the muck of those tunnels, the toxic gunk or whatever it is undead like to throw up on you… But he refused to leave. I kind of had to force the issue.”

“You had Taash,” briefly interrupted with a cough, “chuck him in the fountain?”

“Physical force? Never. He wouldn’t listen to my advice to leave, but he would listen when I told him to drink and eat, as long as I brought it here. So I’ve been refilling his water glass every twenty minutes for the last six hours.”

Rook raised her eyebrows. “Emmrich wouldn’t let you relieve him, so you made him… relieve himself?”

“Trust you to make a pun of it,” Harding said with a grin of faux exasperation. “I just thought if he saw himself in the bathing room mirror, he might recognize his need for a wash. And given how long he’s been gone, I think I was right.”

“Tactical genius.” Rook smiled, and closed her eyes to relax against the pillow. Talking like this, it was nice. It still hurt, but it calmed her. She could almost begin to forget what had happened.

But Harding’s tone changed, her posture stooping. She pulled closer to the bed. “Rook… What did that woman do to you? Emmrich said she—” Hesitation.

Rook took a steadying breath, but fixed Harding with her eyes, wanting that thought finished.

“He said that she stopped your heart. That you were dead, Rook, not just once. But she kept bringing you back.”

Rook made a small noise of assent. She brought her hands to her neck, crossed and claw-like, and mimed strangulation, sticking out her tongue in a pantomime of death. Then shrugged and rolled her eyes.

Harding just shook her head. “Maker’s breath, Rook, that’s not right. That’s… depraved.”

Rook just looked at her hands in her lap. There were red welts on her wrists, where she’d been chained. Mud beneath her fingernails. “It happened. You got me out of it. I’m here now.”

To her credit, Harding seemed to detect the rawness of the wound, and busied herself tidying supplies on the bedside table. Water was refilled, Elfroot vials replenished, until these small acts of care had smoothed the tension between them.

“Actually,” the scout eventually said, settling back into her chair, “There was something I wanted to mention to you. About Emmrich.”

==

Running a thumb along the line of his jaw, Emmrich could feel the sting where he’d cut himself in his haste to shave. It was not a mistake he allowed often. The daily act of checking the blade, raising a lather, and running the razor over the planes of his face was something of a meditative practice, one that helped him organize his thoughts for the day. But he’d been distracted.

The previous day, when he and Harding had finally caught up with Johanna and Rook, he had been… furious. Beyond words or reason. The sentiment had congealed inside his veins like a venom, had made him forget all his caution and good sense.

Johanna certainly hadn’t seen it coming.

But even now the feelings mixed hot in his core: anger, shame, justification. Perhaps he could have done things differently. Better. As he thought about Rook, however—a wheeze in her lungs and neck painted black and purple in the infirmary—he realized the one way he did not feel was sorry.

Manfred awaited him with a trolley of cups and saucers at the bottom of the laboratory stairs, a steaming pot ready in his skeletal hands. “Teeeeeeehhh?” he hissed.

Emmrich’s double-take jolted him out of his malaise. “You are speaking!”

Manfred bobbed excitedly, tea sloshing over the top of the pot. “Teeeeeeeehh!”

“Oh, goodness—” snatching up a tea towel, Emmrich patted his ward’s bony digits, blissfully immune as they were to burns. “Manfred, you are a wonder! How you have grown since we met at the Necropolis. I haven’t forgotten how you helped us at Blackthorne Manor.”

“Get help,” Manfred said in agreement. “Save Rook!”

Emmrich’s heart thumped against his ribs. “Indeed you did.”

A hesitation then, as Manfred looked around the room, at the pot in his hands, at the two cups of tea—set as per usual for the mornings—and then at Emmrich. “Rook safe?”

“She is here, at the Lighthouse. The people you alerted helped bring her back, and clear out the danger. No harm will befall Rook here.” Emmrich checked the straps on Manfred’s packs, loosening and then tightening again, keeping his hands busy. “But she needs time to recover.”

“Rook hurt,” the spirit hisses, low and concerned.

“Yes. Rook is hurt.”

A pause.

“No tea for now, Manfred, thank you. I must go to her. I have left her side long enough.”

Emmrich strode across the library balcony with his head bowed, hands clasped behind his back, caught in spirals of thought. He did have to admit that he felt better after a change and a wash, and though he hadn’t yet slept, he felt newly enabled to continue his vigil.

So it was to his great surprise when he opened the door to the infirmary and saw both Harding and Rook turn to look at him.

“My dear!” He closed the space between himself and the bed in the span of one breath, dropping to his knees beside it and resting a hand atop Rook’s. “You’re awake! I wanted to be here when…”

“It’s all right,” she said, and threaded her fingers into his. Her voice was a rasp, a painful scrape of sound that made him wince to hear. But she gave him a smile. “Happy to see you.”

“And you,” he replied. He wanted to close the space between them fully, to wrap her in his arms. He wanted to kiss each part of her, run an inventory of each bit of skin to ensure it had been properly recovered and returned to her. But she seemed so fragile, in a way he had never seen: voice quiet, eyes downcast. So he hovered, instead, giving her the space she seemed to need.

Harding spoke. “Rook just woke up a couple minutes ago. I’ve given her some Elfroot, and some water, but that’s it so far.” Then, to Rook: “Are you hungry? You must be hungry.”

Rook shrugged, then nodded.

“I bet Lucanis has an absolutely mind-blowing soup recipe tucked away somewhere. Something with pesto and parmesan. Does that sound okay?”

Rook gave her a crooked smile. “I could manage soup.”

Harding patted her arm. “I’ll go chat with him. You two can… catch up.”

===

Rook watched as Harding shuffled off, feeling an unexpected thrill of nerves as Emmrich rounded the foot of the bed and took the scout’s now-vacant chair.

“Darling,” he said, voice hushed, “There are no words to express how sorry I am. My mind races with the possibilities. If I had been able to stop that detonation, if I had been faster in my pursuit, if I had been able to convince Johanna to give up her reckless ambitions years ago—None of this would have befallen you.”

She frowned. “Wasn’t your fault.”

He was looking at her with eyes too honest, too open. Emmrich took her hand again, and she gave it a squeeze, held for a moment, then slipped away. It pained him, she could see it instantly: that shock of hurt in his eyes.

“Sorry.” She said it quickly, haltingly. “Sorry. ’S just. Everything feels. Too much.”

Emmrich nodded, and seemed to understand, though the pain in his eyes changed to a different kind of hurt. He sat a little straighter, giving her some room, eyes drifting over her.

Rook had missed the part where they’d both been filthy, bloodied and unwashed. Now he sat there with his starched collar his and meticulously-chosen accessories and his aftershave (which she adored) and she… stank. Though her team—perhaps Emmrich himself—had taken off the outer layers of her armour, and someone had wiped the grime from her face, she still wore the stained fabric undershirt and leggings she’d been wearing the day before. They had probably been afraid of moving her too much, further injuring her neck. But in this moment it just heightened her discomfort. She fiddled with the blankets some more, then looked back up at Emmrich.

Emmrich’s gaze lingered on her neck, brow drawn with something like guilt.

“Darling, I… I could provide some healing, should you wish it. I may be able to undo some of the more severe damage to your trachea and larynx. It would improve your ability to breathe and to—to speak.” A beat. “You do not need to speak to me, but I should like you able to voice any needs that may arise in your recovery.”

Rook did not answer right away. There was something tender there, more than muscle and sinew, and it gave her pause. But in time she gave Emmrich a slow blink of consent.

He moved closer to her then, bringing a chair right next to her bed, and turned his torso alongside her own. In that manner she so often admired, he lifted his hands and began to gesture through the air, summoning spirits of healing, letting his fingers spark with a gentle glow. And he leaned forward, those same hands reaching up—

Rook caught his wrists before he could touch her. Her grip was iron-tight, her heart racing, breath staccato.

Emmrich, to his credit, withdrew immediately. “No. I’m sorry, darling. Not like that. I am so sorry. I had not considered—” The pain on his face was as plain as an open wound, but after a breath, he tried again.

This time, he lifted one hand only, and when the ghostly flare of magic wrapped around it he pointed a single index finger. Instead of reaching for her neck he took her hand, and placed it upon his own.

“Guide me.”

Calmer now, Rook understood. She placed both her hands on his, capturing his fist and leaving one glowing finger free. Then, with great care, she drew it to the side of her neck, where the pain was less intense. Under her guidance he touched her lightly, but where their skin connected she felt instant relief.

She led him, slowly, methodically, down to the line of her collar, up to her jaw. All along that stripe she could feel the balm of healing seeping into her skin, and after a moment she drew a second, just a half-inch closer to the centre of her neck, still far from where she was most raw.

He was staring at her neck with a sharp concentration; magic this delicate required a great deal of focus and skill, she knew. But being subject to this level of attention was too much for Rook in this moment, and she let her eyes drift shut.

By the time she was ready for the third line, she allowed him another finger. Two knuckles, now, down the other side of her neck. If she let herself forget the context it was almost like a caress. One more line—and then there was nowhere left to hide.

Rook held his hand, still gripping it like a weapon, and let herself blink at him.

Sensing her hesitation, he met her gaze, eyes soft. “We do not need to continue if you are not comfortable…”

“No,” Rook rasped, barely audible. “It’s—She put her thumbs. Here.”

Here was where the bruises would be darkest, Rook knew, where vital arteries that Emmrich would be able to accurately name sat, where Hezenkoss took particular delight in digging in with withered fingers and plunging Rook into the black.

Rook tried to pull his hand closer again, but she was shaking, and couldn’t find the strength to close the gap.

Emmrich’s voice was dark and deep. “She will never touch you again. As long as I walk the earth, I vow: never again will anyone make you feel that way.”

She looked at him, then, met his eyes and held them, and nodded. Instead of her neck, she pulled his hand to her lips, and laid kisses along his knuckles until her nerves stilled. Then she lay back, her head against the pillow, and led his palm to rest on her throat.

Now it was his turn to seem shaken, overwhelmed by the trust she had demonstrated in him, and she saw him take several steadying breaths before focusing in on the magic again. With his full hand against her now, the effect of the healing was less like a trickle and more like a wave. The first dark knot of pain came untangled beneath Emmrich’s ministrations, then the second, and the effect of it washed over her entire body, raising goosebumps on her skin.

He shifted his hand lightly, gently, to brush the base of her windpipe and send his magic there. Breathing was coming easier, and her lungs gulped air gratefully until she felt lightheaded.

Finally his fingers brushed higher, resting just below her chin, at her voice box.

And this felt different, somehow, to Rook. The healing took hold but she didn’t feel the discomfort fade in the same way. She crumpled the bedclothes in her tight fingers, letting her filthy nails scrape against the linen. Her face was wet.

Emmrich’s eyes were upon her, his look a mix of care and concern. “Dearest…”

Finally the sob that had been caught in her chest escaped. One, and then another, and then another. Deep, desperate drags of air which came out as the cries of a wounded animal.

Emmrich pulled closer, offering his arms, and Rook accepted them in an instant. Here, in the circle of his warmth, she let herself weep, let all of the anger and hurt and helplessness and fear flow out of her with each tear, each keening note. He held her against his shoulder, not seeming to care that she was marking his vest or rumpling his shirt.  Laying kisses into her messy hair, he whispered words of kindness and affirmation against her skin, letting her know she was safe. And that she was loved.

It took a long time before Rook felt calm again. As if a poison had been extracted, her body was lighter, her shoulders less slumped. She did not pull free from Emmrich, but pressed closer, closing her swollen eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Whatever for?”

“Healing. Listening. Existing.”

The low rumble of his chuckle shook his chest against her cheek.

“Saving me,” she added.

“I brought you there in the first place.”

“It’s not—”

“My fault,” he finished for her. “I know, you have said as much. But it will take time before I am able to forgive myself as readily.”

Rooks breathed him in, in silence for a moment. Then, “I didn’t care much for your friend.”

“She has become something… unrecognizable. Or perhaps that is my own self-concern talking; perhaps she is what she always was, but more so.”

“I can’t imagine that you, of all people, would have abided that kind of… callousness. I don’t just mean towards me. Those souls she tortured—all those people she invited to her party—”

“I like to think I wouldn’t have.” Emmrich let his gaze slip into the middle distance, unfocused, as Rook watched his eyes. “If I had followed her, joined her on her path. I like to think I would have stepped in earlier.”

“Or maybe she would have started with you,” Rook said plainly.

Emmrich had no immediate answer to that; Rook saw his brow furrow and felt possibilities churning in the back of his mind. So she ran her hand up his back until her fingertips could scratch at the short-cropped hair at the back of his neck.

“I’m a mess.”

That drew him back down to earth. He blinked at her, then drew her close again, with a loving smile. “Your beauty never wavered for a moment, my dear.”

“I’m gross.”

“You are radiant. Perfection made flesh.”

“My flesh stinks. My flesh is going to rub dirt all over your fine dress shirt. Look, you’re going to have to do more laundry now.”

He laughed. “The primal force of gravity only wishes it had as strong an attraction as I have to you.”

Rook kissed him, hard, until the room started to spin, forcing her back down into the bed. “I want a wash,” she said. “And a proper rest.”

“Of course.”

“I might… need help.” The phrase was serious, not suggestive. Her brow furrowed. “I haven’t tried standing yet. Will you…”

“Of course,” he said again, but this time he poured compassion into it, in a way that made her heart thump louder.

His hands hovered around her as she started to move, touching the crook of her elbow, her shoulder, her back, moving to support and steady even before she could waver. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, letting her toes brush the cold floor. Unhurried, she took calming breaths, taking note of how the aches and pains had evolved through her body. The soreness in her neck wasn’t so sharp, but it was still present—there was some healing only time could do. Her lungs felt greedy, as though there was some fear embedded in the tissues that made them think they would be short of air again. And her heart was tired. Off-beat. Sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow, as though it had forgotten how to keep time.

Emmrich placed a hand out in front of her, palm-up, and she hesitated only a moment before taking it. Then she got to her feet.

Almost immediately she began to tip to the side, only balanced by Emmrich’s arm catching around her waist. Her head bobbled, having lost track of the horizon, until her eyes refocused.

“Okay,” she said.

“As slow as you need, my dear,” he murmured.

And it was slow, at first. One step at a time, with her weight against him.

===

Emmrich held Rook close against him. He grasped her as tight as he dared, wanting her supported, while swallowing down the fierce protectiveness that wanted to scream its way out his throat. There was a complex tangle of feelings within him. It itched at him like a puzzle unsolved, like a particularly tricky research question—but unlike those questions, the more he tried to apply his logical, thinking brain, the more the answer seemed to twist away.

With his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist, and her free hand in his, they proceeded down the hallway like dance partners embarking on a formal promenade. He could almost hear the music. The tune was intercut with Rook’s laboured breathing. He dipped his head, let his nose nuzzle against her hair, just for a moment.

And then the heavy door—and the library—

There was a sound from below, the murmur of gentle conversation, a shifting of attention, and then a chorus of voices.

“Rook!”

“Rook, you’re awake!”

“How are you feeling, Rook?”

It was the team, the full team, gathered below on the couches. It was clear from the nervous energy in the air that they had been waiting, for her presence or for news, good or bad. And without saying anything Rook’s posture changed. She slid her hand to Emmrich’s side and pushed gently free of him, her spine straightening, her hair sliding back over her shoulders, a grin overtaking her face.

“What are you idiots doing sitting around out here?” It was playful, affectionate. “You didn’t have anything better to do?”

“Harding told us you were awake,” said Neve, tossing aside a small notebook as she gave Rook her full attention. “We wanted to see how you were.”

“We were taking bets on how long it’d take you to get out of bed,” Taash added. They leaned on the back of one of the couches, behind where Harding was curled.

Rook puffed a laugh. “In hours or days?”

Davrin shook his head, one hand ruffling Assaan’s feathers to keep him from leaping up. “Minutes.”

“Flattering! So who won?”

Bellara raised a hand, full arm extended as she bounced excitedly against her seat. “Lucanis said I was being overly optimistic!”

The assassin, leaning against a shelf, crossed his arms and glowered. “You were.”

“Well Rook is up on her feet and you lost the bet!”

Lucanis huffed as Harding tossed a throw pillow at him.

Rook laughed, leaning forward with her palms on the cool stone of the bannister. “Yes, punish him! Punish the disbeliever!”

As the team erupted into a full pillow fight below, Emmrich stared at Rook from a few steps back, in awe. There’s something quite indomitable about you, he had told her once. It inspires. He had seen many kinds of magic before, but none quite like what she weaved: infinite tenacity, enough willpower to make her unconquerable.

He knew, he knew, that her body was fighting every movement, every gesture. That up until a few minutes ago, when he had channeled every bit of his knowledge of spirit healing into restoring the integrity of the tissues in her throat, she had been barely able to breathe, let alone speak, or walk, or laugh. No wonder Lucanis had been skeptical—the man had probably committed any number of asphyxiations in his time, and understood the toll that such brutality placed on a body.

And yet, here she stood, captivating the room, putting her team at ease. Emmrich was humbled.

He heard his name, then, and came back to reality, stepping up next to Rook to look down into the room. “Apologies, I missed what was said?”

Neve was looking at him from through her eyelashes. “Just that it’s no surprise Rook was feeling much better after your… ministrations.”

Lucanis joined in. “He does have a certain vested interest in your body, Rook.”

Emmrich covered his face with a hand, but Rook just rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes. And now he’s going to take me away for a bath and some bedrest. So go on, get it out. Get it all out.”

“I think it’s very sweet! Having someone tend to you in your time of need…” Bellara said.

Darrin hardly needed the encouragement. “He’s gonna put the ‘neck romance’ in ‘necromancer’.”

“You guys are gonna fuck,” said Taash, matter-of-fact. At that, the rest fell silent while Harding burst into laughter.

“Great. Good talk,” said Rook, and patted Emmrich on the arm. “Let’s get away from these reprobates, what do you say?”

“Indeed,” he replied, and offered her his arm. She took it, hooking her elbow in his as though they were off on a pleasant stroll, not at all the way she’d been relying on his weight before.

As they turned to leave, he glanced down into the room and met Harding’s eyes. For a moment, he saw her expression become pinched, brow drawn and lips pursing, before relaxing and giving him a nod. Of course, she alone had seen how Rook had been. Perhaps she alone understood what he knew: that things were not as well as they seemed.

He nodded back.

Emmrich pushed the heavy laboratory door shut, one hand on the handle to ensure it slid gently but firmly into place, awaiting that final, secure “click” that promised true privacy. Only when he heard that sound did he breathe a sigh of relief and turn to Rook. “Well. I shall draw that bath for you, my dear. I am sure that you—”

She had stopped, just steps into the room. He could see the shape of her back, slightly arched, and her head, listing to one side. The fingers of one hand twitched.

And he was there in a moment, catching her slumping form in his arms as her knees gave way.

“Rook!”

Her head lolled against his shoulder, but then she lifted a hand and fisted it in his sleeve, pulling up to her feet again. With her forehead pressed into his chest, she groaned. “Too much. Too fast.”

“You are remarkable, my love.” He was unwilling to let her go again. She would have to physically push him away. “So, so remarkable. Have I told you that?”

“Maybe once or twice.”

“Not often enough.”

She lingered in the hug a few breaths longer, then pulled back. “I’m all right. Honestly. I overextended there. But I can still walk.”

They headed together for the bathing room, resuming their earlier stance: his arm around her for support, hers around him for balance. He spoke softly, “Our allies are kind, compassionate people. I don’t think you need to deceive them, Rook.”

She took a slow breath before answering. “We all have jobs on this team. Yours is to understand what’s happening with the Fade. Lucanis’ is to stab gods. Taash’s is to slay dragons. Harding’s is to know the lay of the land—and by land, I mean all of Thedas. Mine… is to do impossible things.”

“Darling…”

“I mean it, Emmrich. The odds we are facing are insurmountable. Our opponents are infinitely more powerful. Their forces are legion, and endlessly loyal. We are nine troubled people in a broken-down building floating through a void of dreams and magic. But we must win. We cannot lose. There is too much relying on us. Everyone out there needs to believe in the impossible. So,” she gave a shrug, under his arm, and broke into a rasping cough, through which the rest of her sentence was delivered, staccato. “I show them impossible is within reach.”

He stopped, then, and she a step later, turning to look at him. He took her in, all of her, as though seeing her for the first time, unable to hide his admiration, overcome with emotion.

Perhaps she was expecting him to argue, because she said, “Emmrich, you don’t have to agree, but—“

“Remarkable,” he interrupted. “Utterly remarkable. Please. I would like to kiss you.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh. All right.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You couldn’t,” she breathed, and pressed herself against him anew.

==

A short while later Rook lounged on a high-backed upholstered chair, flipping idly through a book she’d stolen from one of Emmrich’s many shelves, when he re-emerged from the bathing room in a cloud of steam.

“Your tub awaits, my dear,” he told her, giving a little bow.

“Thank you, my love,” she replied, then sniffed the air. “Eucalyptus?”

“I picked up some the last time we were in Rivain.”

“For me?”

“For, and because of. I know you favour it.” He crossed to her side, and extended an arm for support. Gesturing at the book: “And which of my volumes has captured your attention?”

She flipped it, showing him the cover. “Histories and Traditions of Nevarra. Not from the main collection, I expect. Hardly any pictures of dead bodies in this one.”

Leaving it behind, she took his arm. The bathroom was a delightful sensory experience, warm and humid, pleasant on her sore lungs. A panelled privacy screen separated off a section of the room which held the claw-footed tub, a small stool and a clothing rack. The bath itself was steaming, a foamy topping of bubbles floating on the water. It looked like heaven.

Rook gestured to the screen. “I appreciate the thought, but honestly… I may need your help.”

“Whatever you need, my dear. I would never assume…”

“I know, I know.”

In the end he did help her undress, mostly with socks and the last few inches of pants tangled around her ankles, but she noticed how he kept his gentlemanly gaze averted whenever he could. She held his hand as she stepped into the tub, and even as he moved to sit around the other side of the screen, she kept hold of his fingers.

Rook let the warmth rise around her, let it soak into her exhausted form. Each bruise sang its own song, each strained muscle sounding a farewell as it faded in the heat. She hummed a long note of relief as she let her head fall back and rest against the edge of the tub.

“Is all well with you, dearest?” came the voice from behind the screen.

She squeezed Emmrich’s fingers. “All is well.” Another few happy moments of adjusting to the heat, and she squeezed again, then pulled her hand free. “I’m going to tackle this grime.”

“I left a washcloth and a soap bar off to the side, there.”

“Ah, thank you.” She started broadly: swipes of her torso, armpits, knees. Soap and then washcloth, scrubbing extra anywhere that felt gritty or itchy or uncomfortable. Arms, legs, back, bellybutton. In time she got to her feet, rubbing the heels until she felt old skin flake away, between each toe until she could wiggle them freely.

She had been bathing in silence for several minutes this way when she paused. “Emmrich?”

“Yes, darling?”

“What’s going to happen to Hezenkoss?”

“Johanna?” She heard him shift and cross his legs, perhaps an indication of discomfort.

“She was partly a lich, wasn’t she? So even after… what happened… she’s not actually gone.”

“You are correct. A full lich is essentially unkillable. Their body is no longer mortal, requires nothing to sustain it, and cannot be harmed by virtually any means. They become a deathless soul, piloting a deathless form. A half-lich is not quite the same. Johanna severed the link between her soul and her body, and possessed the husk; that husk, however, remained vulnerable.”

Rook focused on cleaning under her fingernails. She wanted the conversation, needed the information. But she needed another task at the same time. Almost as though she could trick herself into thinking this was a mundane chat. “I was pretty out of it, in the moment. But I think I remember you… blowing her head off?”

More awkward shifting from the other side of the screen. “That is accurate.”

“I say ‘head’ but I mean ‘skull’. I think you necrotized her flesh?”

“I did.”

“I wasn’t aware that was something you could do.”

A beat. “I was… upset.”

Rook paused, looked at his silhouette through the linen panels. “Well. I was pretty upset too.” She ran the edge of the cloth under her middle, then ring fingernail. “If I hadn’t been bound up, if I’d had my blades—the word ‘vivisection’ comes to mind. I saw that in some of your notes. It’s a good word.”

Emmrich hummed.

“I suppose what I’m saying is that I don’t mind that you were upset. It was an understandable feeling, given the circumstances.”

“I appreciate that.” He sounded like he meant it, relieved. After a second or two, he added, “I don’t know what will become of Johanna’s remains. She may prove difficult to confine, especially given the security lapses at the Necropolis of late. I imagine I will hear from Vorgoth and Myrna on the matter soon enough.”

Rook let the weight of that settle on her, and put it aside in her thoughts as the last of her fingers was washed clean. She put aside the cloth, and her hands sank back to the bottom of the tub. She wanted to touch Emmrich again, intwine his fingers with her own.

A memory of the heat on her cheek as his precise and deadly magic had seared by drifted up, looping in her mind. His power had always dazzled her, while others had feared it. Even now she felt no concern: he hadn’t wanted to harm her, and so he had not. She sank in the bath water, up to her upper lip, and wondered why the thought of him, fierce and protective, alight with fury, made her feel… sad?

“Not sleeping, are you, my dear?” His voice came again from the other side of the divider.

Rook lifted her head above the diminishing clouds of bubbles. “No, still here.” She came back to herself, considered her situation. “I might have to skip doing my hair.”

“Oh?”

“Yes…” She thought aloud as she sat further upright, pulling her tresses from where they hung over the edge of the tub. “It’s thick, it gets very heavy when wet. If I lean back to dunk it, that’s a lot of weight on my neck…”

There was only the briefest hesitation from Emmrich before he said, “I could wash it for you.”

Rook let out a huff of breath. “Have a lot of experience with chest-length curls, do you?”

“More than you might expect,” he said. “One part of the duties of a Watcher is to prepare corpses for interment. As the goal is make them seem as they were in life, for the comfort of the families, that includes grooming.”

“Oh. Would you be comfortable? Doing that for me?”

“Rook, there is absolutely nothing I would not do for you. But no, it would not bring me discomfort. Would it you?”

“Only if you forget that I’m not your usual clientele. Working nerve endings, that sort of thing.”

“Then, it would be my honour.” He saw his shadow stand, and put one hand on the edge of the privacy screen. “May I…?”

She gave her assent, and he came around, bringing his chair, setting it up by the bath, behind where she sat. She half-turned in the water and watched him gather bottles of cleansing agents, lotions and oils onto a tray. Then, the unthinkable: he removed a ring.

Rook watched, transfixed, as he took the circle of gold from his little finger and placed it neatly upon the tray. Then, the ring finger, then the middle, and the rest. Once all of the rings had been removed from his left hand, he began stripping the bracelets from his wrist.

As he started on his right hand, Rook hissed in a mock whisper, “Am I allowed to see this?”

He glanced up at her, then smiled warmly, returning to his task. “They are important to me, dearest, but they are not attached.”

Clink, clink, clink. It echoed in the tiled room.

The rest of his Grave Gold placed aside, Emmrich stood again, rolling his shirtsleeves and circling the bath. He continued his preparations, narrating to Rook as he went. He reached in and let out some of the lukewarm, dirty water, making way for the fresh water he would use on her. Then he filled a pitcher from the tap (the Lighthouse was a marvel!), lit his hand ablaze, and dipped it into the liquid until steam rose about his wrist. Finally, he took his place behind Rook, folding a towel over and resting it on the edge of the bathtub, giving her a soft place to rest her head, with a vessel on the floor beneath to catch drips.

“Are you able to lean forwards?”

She replied by moving as he asked, drawing her knees up toward her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

His hands moved over her slowly, gently, pulling hair back over her shoulders. He took his time with the pitcher, pouring it over the ends of her hair first, letting hot water cascade pleasantly down her back. When it came time to dampen the hair around her face and ears, he moved to her side, and placed a hand against the base of her skull, letting her lean back with his support. She arched into it like a trust fall, closing her eyes as warmth spilled over her forehead.

When at last Rook’s locks were fully saturated, Emmrich directed her to lean her head over the edge of the tub, resting where he had folded the towel. And there she stayed, enjoying the feeling of his strong fingers as he worked through, massaging cleansing oils into her scalp.

She breathed low and slow, beginning to drift again upon a cloud of soothing sensations. Drowsily, she muttered, “Is this what you thought it would be like?”

“Hm?” He paused his ministrations.

“Being with me.”

Emmrich leaned into her field of view, perhaps trying to gauge the nature of her question. But the only clarification she offered, as she half-opened one eye to peek at him, was a soft smile.

He pulled back again, his fingers continuing to card through her hair, taking special pains to smooth each tangle. “I had no expectations. I still have none. Your attention came as a surprise, Rook—an unexpected gift that I will continue to cherish for as long as you deign to give it.”

She hummed happily. “I lured you in with the promise of academic research. And then: romance! The ultimate rug pull!”

“I fell right into your trap, darling,” he conceded, with a soft laugh.

“I just meant that… a few kisses aside, today has been a day of strange intimacies. Healing, crying, bathing. I think most couples at this stage are, I don’t know, leaving some spare clothes in each other’s drawers.”

“Am I not…” He was trying to keep the hurt from his voice, she could tell. “Is this not… what you expected?”

“Oh, no, my love, no.” She reached back and took one of his hands from her hair. It felt strange and naked without its rings, but she kissed each soapy fingertip. “Not like that.”

Rook held his hand close to her face a while longer, and he halted his work to rest there, his thumb stroking across her cheekbone. The moment felt like a held breath.

“I imagine us meeting in a different time. A different world. With no angry gods, no spreading Blight, no Veil to protect. We could have gone for walks and given each other flowers. Maybe you would have taken me to a nice dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Minater and I would have taken all day before changing my mind about what to wear, and I wouldn’t have spent a second thinking about which swords to bring. I think of a version of us in a kinder world, where we can be soft, gentle people all the time, not just to each other. You deserve that.”

By the end of this speech Rook’s voice was choked with emotion, and Emmrich closed into her space, his hands framing her face. He laid kisses on her forehead, and soothed the pinched lines of her expression.

“We will make that world, dearest.” He whispered each syllable, lips brushing her skin. “We’ll create it together.”

She sighed. The heat had seeped out of the bath water, and she shivered now, against his touch.

“I can rinse your hair and get you out of there,” Emmrich said smoothly. “I imagine you are in want of a nice, fuzzy towel.”

“Yes, please.” Rook replied. “I’m tired.”

===

Emmrich slept with his nose full of the scent of Rook’s hair, one arm curled around her, their fingers intertwined. Until something woke him.

Magic had its definite benefits. In his daily life, Emmrich reminded himself that the skills he possessed weren’t available to everyone, that some people were still wary of magic—and that casting too often would be draining, anyway. But there was something about his love, his Rook, which made him want to be exuberant with his magecraft. He would call Spirits to dance, he would turn flowers into fireflies if it would make her smile.

If having a towel hand-warmed by arcane flame would bring her comfort, she would have it.

She had said little after her pronouncement in the bath. Whether this was due to the emotion of it, or because this had overtaxed her still-raw voice, he wasn’t certain. But she had leaned into him as he had helped to dry her hair, and let him run the towel over her limbs as well. It was not the first time he had seen her nude form, but they were not so comfortable that he would take it for granted—he was quite certain that he could never, ever take the sight of her for granted. Still, he had kept his more lecherous thoughts at bay by taking note of the myriad fresh marks of violence that still covered her body.

Though it was not a given that she would sleep in his bed, he had been pleased to see her shamble over to it after she’d been dried and dressed in fresh smallclothes. She’d fallen against the mattress like a stone dropped in a river, and he had hovered, uncertain of how much personal space she desired, until she had waved a beckoning hand.

And after he had joined her, just as she had pulled his arm around her waist and whispered, “Please hold me,” he had snuffed the lights with magic, too.

So now here he was, blinking slowly in the dark. He had no way to be sure how long he had slept—perhaps minutes, hours, or even a full day. And he could not be certain what had woken him. Until Rook whimpered.

She twitched, lightly, in his arms, her fingers spasming against his. And he could feel it, this close, through the link he had made: her heart rate was pounding as though she was in a full sprint. Unease wracked him: should he wake her? Try to soothe her? Or remain still in the hopes she would pass deeper into sleep?

But then she cried out again, a pained sound. And her voice spoke, sleep-drunk and slurred, “Let me go. Let me—let me—stop. Stop.”

“Rook!” Emmrich pulled himself up, leaning over her form in the dark. “Darling. It’s a dream. It’s just—”

She spasmed again, and then surged up with a wild shriek, throwing an elbow into his chest to thrust him violently aside. He fell back against his pillow, and struggled to catch his breath from the blow even as she ran from the bed. Stumbling into the room, she moved through the dark in a panic, and he heard her crashing against furniture as she continued to shout. “Get away from me!”

“Rook,” he coughed again, and with a twist of his fingers, lit each torch and candle in the room with green Veilfire.

Now he could see clearly her form, frozen in the space, eyes over-wide from fear, hands balled into fists. She looked, his aching heart noticed, much like an animal caught in a trap, ready to bite any hand that strayed too close.

And just past her, he saw the door open as Manfred crept in, drawn by the noise.

“No—” Emmrich called. “Manfred, give her space, don’t—”

But the curious spirit couldn’t help his nature. When his skeletal finger tapped Rook on the shoulder, she responded just as Emmrich had feared: with a fist.

Manfred tumbled to the floor, hissing and whistling as Rook descended on him, shouting half-coherent, furious noise. With little thought to his own body, Emmrich surged from the bed and grabbed Rook around the ribs, hauling her off his ward with great effort.

She turned on him then—of course she did, she was a trained fighter, he’d seen her take down Antaam warriors that weighed twice what she did; he was a man who did morning calisthenics before reading far too many books. Even though Emmrich had been expecting her to react against him, she moved almost impossibly fast, taking hold of his wrist and twisting it back as she spun around him. As his balance began to tip, bending back to escape the pain, she kicked out his knee, sending him to land hard on his shoulder blades against the carpet.

Under other circumstances, he would have thought affectionately about the number of ways she could take his breath away, but this was not the moment. Rook raised her fists, and he could see her eyes looking past him, transfixed by the green light of the torches, even as she prepared to strike.

“Darling,” he pleaded, “It’s me. You’re safe. You’re not—“

“Fuck you!” she spat, seeming not to hear him at all. She threw a punch but it wasn’t up to her usual standard; he caught it and pushed her hand aside. “Don’t touch me. You’re not going to have me—I’m going to end it—you and your fucking lantern—“

Oh.

Oh no.

When next Rook threw herself at him, Emmrich caught her arms and used all his strength to shove her back from him, which was just enough to push her onto her back foot. Then he raised his hands—

—and in an instant every flame and torch in the room was extinguished, the sickly green glow gone. In its place, bright white butterflies took flight, gathering together toward the dome of the ceiling.

That seemed to catch her off-guard. She blinked in the light, head shaking, confused. Coming out of a dream.

Emmrich tried again, brows drawn with concern. “Rook, my love. You are in the Lighthouse. I am Emmrich. There is no danger.”

“Emmrich?” She was panting, hands flexing. He could feel the desperate race of her heart. “I thought I was…”

He risked sitting up, but she did not lash out at the movement. “A dream, I fear. Dreams seem much stronger, here in the Fade…”

“A dream.” She said it like she was discovering the concept for the first time. “Oh.” Then she swayed, and fell to her knees. She heaved a breath—a full, proper breath—and he felt her pulse begin to slow. “Maker’s breath, Emmrich, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I—“

“Shh,” he murmured, and crawled to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “You weren’t yourself.”

“I tried to kill you,” she shuddered, pain evident in her voice.

He tilted his head. “Perhaps, but not very well.”

The unexpected offence she took was enough to have her let out a dark laugh. Then, crestfallen, “Oh—I hit—“

She looked up about the room. In the commotion, Manfred had knocked over a side table and hidden behind it; the very top of his skull and goggles peered over it now.

“Manfred!” Rook called. “Are you all right? I’m sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

The spirit looked to Emmrich, who gave a nod, and then emerged from his hiding. “Rrroooook?”

“Yes—Did you just say my name!?”

“Rookrookrookrook!”

“I meant to tell you,” Emmrich said with a smile he couldn’t restrain. “His elocution has been improving leaps and bounds since we returned from the manor.”

Rook grinned at Manfred, tears shining in her eyes. “You clever boy! I—I’m so sorry I hurt you. There was a terrible woman who had a lot of skeletons and—I was confused and I—“

Manfred crouched down next to Rook, looking at her arm, criss-crossed as it was with bruises and scrapes. Lifting a skeletal hand, he lined it up with one particular set of marks, which matched the shapes of his phalanges almost exactly. Emmrich watched, struck mute with wonder, as Manfred gave a low, sympathetic whistle.

“Yeah, buddy,” Rook said eventually. “It was a bad time. But I’ve remembered you’re you, now.”

“No lasting damage?” Emmrich asked, putting a finger under Manfred’s jawbone and adjusting him this way and that. “Your anatomy seems intact. We’ll check the soundness of the enchantments in the morning, Manfred. You are overdue for a checkup at any rate.”

Manfred nodded, then peered back at Rook. “Rook okay?”

She patted his skull affectionately. “I will be, sweetheart. Don’t you worry. Go back to bed.”

As the skeleton shuffled out of the room and shut the door behind him, Emmrich watched Rook instead. He could almost see her pulling a veil over her emotions—see how the warmth and pride at Manfred faded to shame as he departed, how the grief and pain that must have still ran raw through her heart were smothered. She looked down, then seemed to notice him watching, and hurriedly rubbed the heel of one hand against a tear-filled eye.

“I must have scared you. I apologize.”

He frowned, and pulled her hands away from her face. “It did not frighten me to see you affected by what happened. I would be more concerned if it hadn’t.”

“Still,” she muttered, “What good am I if I can’t make it though the night without attacking the people I…” Unable to finish the word, she dropped her head, taking a shaking breath.

His heart ached for her. “My dearest. Your value to me is not so changeable that it could diminish from this. I am not your opponent, nor your judge: you do not have to prove yourself to me. I am with you, at your side, always. The troubles you face, we face together.”

Rook tilted her face toward him, but her eyes were shut tight, brimming with tears, her jaw clenched. She squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, until finally she let out a gasp of an exhale, all at once. “I died,” she said. It was the first time either of them had said it. “Three times. I was gone.”

“I know, I know.”

“I know you don’t like to think about that, really, about dying. I suppose I don’t either. Or I didn’t.” She was babbling. “It happened, and I was just… helpless to do anything about it. Wasn’t even a god or an archdemon, just some insane woman with a grudge. And I am. Defeated.”

He didn’t say anything. A fierce urge to shout was building in his chest, but that wasn’t what she needed now: he held it back. Just brushed hair from her forehead, and studied her face while the the white butterfly lights danced above.

“Everything that’s happened until now, it’s just made me want to fight back harder. With Varric, with Minrathous getting torched, with the Wardens at Weisshaupt. It was: okay, on to the next. But this, Emmrich, this…”

She met his eyes at last, and he felt like he could see her soul laid bare before him.

“I’ve never wanted to quit before.”

Gently, gently, he lifted his hand to cup her cheek. “I know you haven’t. I know you haven’t, dearest, and that is what is so extraordinary about you.”

She sniffed, brows drawing together.

“Rook. Don’t you see? Everyone in our team follows you because they could not do it on their own. With nothing to drive them, each of them would have had a moment where they would have turned and walked away. When Bellara lost her brother, or Taash their mother; Davrin would have abandoned everything and gone into the Deep Roads, chasing griffins; Neve outright left after what happened with Minrathous. But she returned—all of them remained true to the cause. Because of you. Because you, my dear, do not quit.” He gave her a soft smile. “But you are allowed to want to, from time to time.”

She put a hand to his chest. “And what about you? Did you ever want to quit?”

Emmrich’s face fell, serious. “When I felt—when you were hurt, today. When you… died. I don’t know that I would have…” He steadied himself, and continued: “Nothing could ever make me give up on you, my love. But if we hadn’t been able to recover you, my commitment to our venture may have wavered.”

Looking touched, she leaned her head against his hand, and let her fingers slide over the planes of his chest muscles. “I understand. You’re in it for the booty.”

“Rook!”

“A powerful motivator.”

“I am in it,” he corrected, drawing her close, “Because it is a just and worthy cause. And for the romance of a lifetime.”

And they kissed, there, curled up on the floor of his bedroom, forms mingling until there was scant space between them; Emmrich did admit, just to himself, that the ‘booty’ was an excellent perk.

After several minutes’ diversion, he finally broke from her to catch his breath, as they held each other. “Don’t quit, dearest. In time, I think you will find that you do not truly wish to do so.”

“Okay,” she said, her head on his arm, fingers dancing in time with the butterflies above. “But I’m going to take a day off.”

“You’re going to take several days off. I insist.”

Rook sighed theatrically. “Give a man a doctorate and he thinks he can start handing out doctor’s orders.”

Emmrich laughed, lips pressing against her forehead. “Should we return to bed? I suspect we both need some more rest.”

“Sure,” she said, but as he got to his feet and held out a hand for her, she paused. “Actually. There is one more thing we should talk about.”

“Oh?”

“The Rite of Two Souls Bound.”

Emmrich was a planner. He had a tendency to overpack, to think out conversations before he had them, to keep notes on important dates weeks and months and years in advance. He did his best to be ready for any situation, and thus, never find himself unprepared.

And this was why, when Rook said these words, he froze on the spot and replied with a voice a full octave too high: “Pardon?”

Rook fixed him with the kind of look a lepidopterist, with pin in hand, would give something fluttering. “Hezenkoss mentioned an enchantment. Harding gave me the name. The remaining details…” she pointed, “I gathered on my own.”

He followed the line of her gesture, until his eyes rested on the high-backed chair near the bathroom door, and his still-open copy of Histories and Traditions of Nevarra.

Emmrich stood there, dumbstruck, for long enough that Rook eventually said, “This is not a conversation you can avoid just by not speaking, love.”

He shook his head, then, and looked at her with a mixture of embarrassment and fondness. “Oh, dearest. I’ve been a fool in so many ways. Foremost by thinking I could keep anything from the woman who regularly goes toe-to-toe with the ancient Elven God of Lies.” He added, “Second to that is thinking it was wise to try.”

She smiled with one side of her mouth. “Funny you should mention Solas. He’s a great example of a reason I don’t like having spells put on me without being asked.” As he nodded, she added, “Sit. Explain. Start with why.”

Emmrich took to the carpet again. He had many far, far more comfortable pieces of furniture in his collection, ones which were kinder on his knees, but he dare not argue with Rook right now. He was prepared to concede anything she asked. He was prepared to grovel, so starting on the ground felt apt. After shifting a few times, attempting to find a balance between comfort and piety, he extended his legs before him, crossed at the ankles, a ten o’clock hour hand to her noon.

“The idea came to me after Weisshaupt,” he began. “You need no reminder of that day, I am sure—It was chaos such that I have never seen. The fortress under attack from all angles, flame, smoke, violence, screams. Every wall and structure Blighted…” He shook his head, trying to recapture the thread of the story. “There were several moments, as we fought our way through, that I lost sight of you, in the madness. Perhaps enemies had come between us, or you had—as you have a tendency to do—slipped into their back lines to disrupt a powerful mage or ranged attacker who would dismantle us from afar. And I do not say this to question your strategy, my dear: we, the team, are an extremely potent fighting force under your guidance.

“But your wellbeing is ever on my mind. And as we fought the archdemon, we were driven apart on the battlefield—its many heads kept lunging at us, you recall. Well. I saw you. And you had taken a few hits. Too many. I think you had gotten caught in a burst of its toxin…”

Rook nodded, brow drawn, but let him continue.

“You were… flagging. As soon as I saw this, I sent whatever spirits I could muster to give you a burst of healing energy. It strengthened your reserve, and thank goodness it did, because a scarce moment later a Hurlock brought its axe down upon you.” Emmrich glanced at her, but had to look away, blinking fast. “If I had been an instant later, that blow would have killed you outright. As it was, I had only bought enough time for Davrin to make it to your side and dispatch the immediate danger.

“And after that day… I had developed two new, clear certainties. First, that the war we were waging had stakes far beyond what I had foreseen. And second, that I was unprepared to serve you adequately, as an ally in battle. The idea that you could have been killed while I was distracted by some bothersome darkspawn was… unacceptable.”

Rook folded her fingers together. Her expression was that of study, of concentration, not stern judgement. “So you did it to keep track of me.”

“Not in an intrusive way—I know how it comes across. I was not looking to control you in any way, or to overstep your privacy. The knowledge it gives me is an instinctive sense of your cardinal direction.”

“The book mentioned something about, ‘knowing a lover’s heart’…?”

Emmrich pulled a face. “Fanciful language for an effect that I’m afraid is quite literal. I am able to hear your heartbeat. Which, for my purposes, knowing when danger befalls you, is helpful.”

“So yesterday…” Rook tilted her head. “You heard it stop.”

He couldn’t reply, eventually dropping his chin.

“Okay.” She was still steadfastly neutral: he found it almost impossible to tell exactly how she was taking all of this. “Emmrich, why that spell?”

He let out a huff of breath, half-laughing at himself. “Convenience. I researched other methods for achieving my goals, but most of the rituals were too complex, or the effects too short-lived, or they took autonomy from the target—not what I wanted. I had been at a dead end, but took a break to clean my rings: I find that is often a helpful, meditative practice.” He held up his hand, and pointed at one adorned with a red gem. “This was my father’s. It gave me the idea. Perhaps I… if I could be honest with myself, I would say I also found a certain… poetry to the idea. It did feel… romantic.”

She broke her stare, looking down at her own fingers, and he felt compelled to add:

“I am ashamed, to say as much now. It is the thing of you that I love, not the idea. Romance is found in what we share, not what I project. I overstepped. And Rook, I am truly sorry.”

Drumming her fingers on her knee, Rook asked, “Is it difficult to dispel?”

He felt his throat tighten. “N—No. Not at all.”

“Okay.” She said, “Remove it.”

He couldn’t respond. No words came to his lips, and perhaps he didn’t deserve any. He lifted a hand, and a delicate strand of light appeared between them, tying one chest to the other, pulsing softly in time with her heart. One more gesture, and a whispered word, and the strand shattered like glass.

The room felt strangely quiet after that, empty. Her song had left him. Shame and loss, hot and uncomfortable, crept up his neck: he should never have tried to hear it.

“Good,” Rook said after some breaths. But then she moved closer to him, crawling, and placed her hand upon his where it rested. “Now let’s do it properly.”

His head shot up. He gaped at her, jaw slack, eyes wide in the dark of the room. “Rook.”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean—”

“Yes. No—wait, sorry. No. I mean what I said, and just that. I understand the context where the spell is normally used and this is not… that.” She wound her fingers between his, knitting them together.  “You’re right, the world is a dangerous place and we are doing stupid, brave, unsafe things in it. But I love you. Deeply. I want a part of you with me at every moment. I want this.”

He got to his knees before her, and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Darling… I should have asked you the first time.”

“Yeah, you should.” She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “What do I need to do?”

“Take my hand when I present it to you. That’s all. As I said, this ritual is not complex.”

Emmrich allowed himself a breath to take her in: the soft, conspiratorial grin on her lips; the bright, clever gleam in her eyes; the strength of her posture; all the things he loved most. He thanked the spirits for his fortune in finding her. But he dare not keep her waiting a moment longer.

He lifted his hands and began a soft chant, his eyes fixed on hers. As he had told her, the ritual was not particularly complex, though it did take some time, and the language used was more florid and emotional than an everyday incantation. He spoke of rocks unworn by the tides, of trees ever-growing in times of sun and rain—and as he spoke a new light began to fill the room, a golden light, emanating from each of their bodies. It poured out of them in rays, gentle at first, but growing stronger, brighter. The rays became tendrils, seeking, and where hers met his they wound together; and with each new connection they could hear a tone, resonant like a bell, until the air was filled with vibrations harmonizing with his voice.

Rook’s eyes were fixed on his as if entranced, and he felt the same energy drawing him to her: he could not have looked away if he wanted to. His mouth, his arms were operating on automatic, completing the motions of the ritual, pulling raw power from the Fade around them, weaving, stitching, binding. Finally, he raised his hand before him, and Rook grasped it firmly. It was like the completion of a circuit, like a jolt of lightning shared—Emmrich’s body seized, muscles locking into place, and he saw Rook gasp. The tendrils of light about them snaked along their arms whip-fast, encircling their joined hands, criss-crossing and overlapping and tying knot upon knot in a moment. This was no gentle strand of binding, but a web, an intricate lattice, and it spread and spread until their forms were covered in a Mandelbrot pattern of glowing lace.

Then he spoke the final word and the light snapped into place, sinking into their skin, and the room was dark again.

For a long stretch of instants, Emmrich could barely move. Every inch of his skin was prickling with pins and needles, each nerve dancing. He felt the warmth of Rook’s hand, still clutching tight to his, and held to it like a lifeline.

“That was,” he said, when he was able, “more intense than when I cast it previously.”

“Oh,” she replied, weakly. “I was wondering why you didn’t warn me.”

“I should have expected it—such magics are amplified when cast in the Fade, I’ve found. And having your soul before me is a much more potent anchor than some strands of your hair.”

“Where did you get—Never mind.” She inhaled, suddenly, and put a hand on his knee. “I hear it.”

He knew what she meant. The tones of her heart, ringing out like Chantry bells, reverberated at the edges of his awareness. When he let his thoughts still and focused on the pulsing notes, they filled his mind edge-to-edge with a feeling of safety, of belonging, of love. The effect was so potent it nearly brought him to tears.

Rook moved closer into his space, placing her hands on his cheeks. “I feel you.”

“And I you,” he murmured, winding his arms about her waist, overcome with a need to maintain contact.

Her breath hitched as he touched her. “Oh, this is…” She let her fingers rove over his back, and the motion felt like trails of flame. “Is it going to… stay like this? It’s going to be very hard to… do anything at all if we…”

Emmrich tugged her into his lap, and delicately kissed along her collarbone. Without removing his lips from her skin, he managed, “The effect should diminish with time,” he kissed again, “I think.”

Rook tangled her fingers in his hair and tugged him away from her. The effect was electric. “Are you still tired?”

“Not in the least.”

“Do you want to go to bed?”

“Oh, yes.”

===

It was several weeks later, as Rook returned from a routine visit to Arlathan with Bellara and Davrin, that she sensed Emmrich’s disquiet. The feeling washed over her as soon as she stepped through the Eluvian into the Lighthouse. She was becoming accustomed to that: the steady beat of his heart, the innate sense of knowing where he could be found, and, when they were both present in the Fade, a faint knowledge of his state of mind at all times.

She must have trailed off mid-sentence, because Bellara gave her a look of concern, head cocking to one side.

“Sorry. What was I saying?”

“You were theorizing about how we could help repopulate the Halla… Is everything okay?”

Rook rubbed the back of her neck. “I think so.”

But Bellara’s eyes were already widening with delight. And Davrin’s were rolling.

“Oh!” Bellara began, “It’s—“

“Emmrich,” Davrin said in concert with her, in a considerably different tone.

“—Isn’t it? Is he in trouble?”

Rook shook her head, pointedly ignoring Davrin. “Just annoyed, I think. I’ll check in with him shortly.”

Bellara sighed as they ascended the stairs into the main library. “I just think it’s so romantic, the way you two trust each other enough to be so synched up, to be so open with one another.”

“I think Emmrich would phrase it similarly.”

“And you?” Davrin asked, following at Rook’s other side. “Do you find it romantic, having an old man whose best friend is a bag of bones poking around in your head?”

“My head is not usually where the poking occurs,” Rook sniped playfully. They had reached the front doors, where their ways would be parting, but she paused in front of her companions, hands steepled in thought. “Let me put it this way, Davrin. You can think it’s creepy, and I’m sure you will, no need for me to give permission. But on my end, well. I guess I finally understand the idea of turlum.”

At Davrin’s laugh, she gave a wave and departed from her companions, heading up the next stairs towards the Laboratory. Emmrich was there. She knew it already.

In fact, he met her at the door, having sensed her approach. She had anticipated his worry would lessen, seeing her, but instead as he stepped into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him, she was surprised to see a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“What is it, my love?”

“Rook,” Emmrich said, and pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head. “I’m glad to see your safe return.”

“Thanks.” She was undeterred. “Something’s bothering you.”

He sighed, and fidgeted, pressing his palms together as he sometimes did when he was unsure what to do with his hands. “I received word from the Mourn Watch. They have an answer to the Hezenkoss problem.”

She bit the tip of her tongue to keep from responding right away. Finally, she asked, “I’m not going to like that answer, am I?”

Emmrich pulled a face. “Johanna’s bodily remains have been divided up between several different wings of the Necropolis. Each part is entombed separately, deep in warded, enchanted, trapped, and protected vaults. Anyone who wishes to restore her to power will have to assemble all of those parts, at great difficulty and personal cost. But…”

“But the Venatori don’t really care about personal cost.”

“And they have delved the Necropolis before,” Emmrich affirmed.

“All right,” said Rook, “So… So what? What’s the solution?”

Emmrich latched his hands behind his back and began to pace in front of the door, agitated. “If one vital part was kept separate from the rest of the body, reassembly would be impossible. Particularly a part that could… inform the rest of the project. Particularly if that part could be kept on another plane of existence.”

The furrow between Rook’s brows began to smooth itself as she went from frowning, to revelation, to disbelief. “Emmrich? Darling? Let me into the lab.”

He halted his pacing, and stepped in front of her, as if to protect her. “I haven’t had a chance to respond, but I’ll talk to them, I’ll send her back. It requires a senior Watcher to maintain the wards but there are others, there must be another solution—“

Rook simply took her hands, placed them on his shoulders, and shifted him to one side. Then she stepped through the door.

As she walked into the lab her eyes darted around, trying to find the unfamiliar thing in a well-known place, but it was a laugh that drew her attention before anything else. That sound, witchy and rasping, full of gleeful malice, still echoed in her darker dreams, and she spun at once to see the source. And there it was: a skull, resting upon a glyph-covered cloth, with pinpricks of ember green light glowing in its empty sockets.

“Oh, it’s you!” the voice of Hezenkoss spoke, coming improbably from a mouth devoid of lips, tongue, or flesh. “The brat who disrupted my ritual.”

“Johanna Hezenkoss.” Instinctually, Rook’s hand went to the hilt of the blade at her waist, but she let it drop. “How’ve you been? Eating right? You’re looking a little thin.”

“Volarkin’s tragic paramour. I should kill you again, in front of him this time.”

Rook felt the threat rest upon her. But it had been a few weeks. And her voice no longer rasped when she spoke, with conviction. “You think you can hurt me?” She waved both hands. “You and what armies?”

Emmrich had followed Rook in, and the skull directed its next barb at him instead. “Volkarin. I still cannot believe you have shackled yourself to this child.”

He stood by Rook’s side. “This child, as you call her, has already led to the death of one archdemon, not to mention your monstrous creation, Johanna. I would ask that you treat her with the respect she deserves.”

“Oh, I don’t need her respect,” Rook said as the skull scoffed. “It wouldn’t be mutual, after all. I just need her to understand that I can make her long life very, very miserable.”

“What could you do, whelp? You don’t even wield magic. Do you think I’m frightened by your little knives and poisons? Do you think I—“

As Hezenkoss ranted, Rook crossed to her, moving nonchalantly until she could lean forward and rest her elbows on the desktop right next to the skull, chin cupped in her hands. “Johanna.”

“You’re not even—what?”

And Rook whispered something to the skull. And grinned. And walked away.

Emmrich looked at her with awe as Hezenkoss sputtered briefly in the background, then was silent; when Rook came closer he asked, “Whatever did you say to her?”

Rook lifted a hand to his chin and ran a thumb along his jaw, calm and affectionate. “I have my own magic. Have you had dinner?”

He just shook his head. Through their link she felt his bafflement, but she knew, in this moment, that her heartbeat was steady, and her soul was radiating peace.

“Then take me to dinner.”

And for one evening, at a table somewhere beneath the stars, they enjoyed each other’s company, and made plans for a better world.