Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s an odd stillness as Rook walks around the apartment. Not just because the rooms are empty but because they feel like they shouldn’t be. Like they’re simply… waiting. An expectant glass of water next to an open book on the table, a blanket draped haphazardly from the settee onto the floor. A wicker basket of groceries sits untouched on the kitchen counter, waiting to be put away, while an umbrella rests against the backdoor as if poised for more errands. Signs of life everywhere – but no-one within.

“You should take a look at this,” Neve calls from further inside, drawing Rook down a long corridor. Lucanis following close behind.

It’s a bedroom – in surprising disarray. The bed unmade, the curtains still drawn. Shoes tumble from the ajar closet door while every drawer in the dresser hangs open, clothes rumpled and spilling loose.

Rook breathes a hiss of air through gritted teeth. “So what do you make of—” she gestures around the room. “—all this.”

The metal clink of Neve’s leg is dulled by plush carpets as she moves through the space, peering into the closet, circling around the bed. “No sign of forced entry anywhere in the apartment. No sign of a struggle. No indication of a robbery either with so many untouched valuables. This is the only room that looks disturbed and—” she shrugs. “—it just looks like they packed in a hurry.”

“So you think that’s it? They’ve just… left?”

“You think it’s something more sinister?”

“I don’t know, it’s just…” Rook walks to the window, pushes open the curtains to let the light into the room. As if a little extra illumination might reveal something they’re missing. “It seems out of character for Ludia to just… disappear. Without even leaving a note.”

“And did you know this Ludia well?” asks Lucanis from where he’s been leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed as he surveys the room.

“Well enough, I suppose. We were at the Circle in Vol Dorma together, though she was several years above me. And I frequented her shop in the Fountain District fairly often. It has been some time, though… since before I joined Varric.”

Neve hums in thought, a sceptical arch to her brows. “I’m sorry, Rook, but I just don’t think there’s enough here to go off. I can ask around, if you want. Maybe someone’s heard something.”

Rook sighs, looking around the room for anything they’ve overlooked. Finding nothing more than the mundane mess of a woman seemingly in a hurry. “Thanks, Neve, I appreciate that. She has a sister in Delfis I can probably find an address for. I’ll write. Maybe there’s been a family emergency and she didn’t have time to warn anyone of her departure.”

Lucanis darts into the room then, crossing swiftly to the window in only a few, long strides, peering out of the window with narrowed eyes. The curtain ripples as the air shifts around him.

“Something wrong?” Rook asks, surprised by his sudden movement.

A pause. Lucanis’s eyes flickering across the buildings that overlook the apartment. “No, it’s—it’s… nothing,” he says at length, though Rook can see the unease still shadowed in his eyes. “I thought I saw something.”

Rook steps a little closer, glances out the window herself – though she can’t see anything particularly remarkable. There’s a small courtyard right below the window then a crush of buildings just beyond, awash with activity as people move about their lives. Flashes of movement through windows, the blur of bodies hurrying along raised walkways. Just another ordinary morning in Minrathous.

“We should head back to Alba,” Rook says as she walks towards the door, “let her know what we’ve found. Or, I suppose, what we haven’t found.”

“I’m sorry, Rook,” Lucanis says softly as he falls in step behind her.

She smiles at him over her shoulder, trying to show gratitude – she suspects it looks rather hollow.

Rook’s friend takes the news well enough, with a stiff, thin-lipped grimace and a crease of disappointment between the brows.

“I really don’t think she would have just left without telling me. I mean, what about the shop?” Alba asks, gesturing to the room around them, the cabinets filled with neat rows of alchemical ingredients, the bookshelves bending under the weight of instructional tomes.

“I know, I thought the same,” Rook says, face drawn with a sort of frustrated helplessness. “But the detective and I have searched her apartments thoroughly and there really isn’t anything there that’s overly concerning. Odd, perhaps, but not alarming.” A pause; she wishes there was more to say. “I will write to her family, though, and Neve has some contacts in the city she can reach out to.”

“If I hear anything at all, you’ll be the first to know,” Neve reassures.

“So that’s it then?” Alba gives a dismissive wave of her hand. “You’re just going to push this on to someone else? You’re not sticking around to look for her?”

Rook shakes her head. “I can’t, Alba. I’m sorry but I’m supposed to be meeting with the Grey Wardens and… it’s important.”

“Ludia is important too.”

“Of course she is but… this is different.”

Alba sighs, lifts a hand to scratch behind her tapered, elven ear. Golden hoops line the entire shell of her ear and they flash with reflected light as they jangle. “Alright, alright. I understand. And I am grateful that you came, Rook. I didn’t know who else to reach out to and you’ve always been so—” She inclines her head towards Neve. “—well-connected.”

Rook offers a brittle smile as she pulls Alba into a hug. Repeats her assurances that she and Neve will reach out as soon as they learn more.

When they leave the shop, Rook visibly deflates with a full-chested sigh, face downcast as the three of them start making their way towards the Cobbled Swan. From beside her, Neve reaches out to squeeze her shoulder in comfort. “We’ve done all we can.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“If she’s so certain of foul-play, why doesn’t she report it to the City Guard?” Lucanis asks, walking in step slightly behind them.

Rook laughs, as brittle as her smile had been. “The City Guard won’t do anything about a missing elf.”

Ah. It makes a little more sense to him now – why Rook had insisted on taking the time before meeting with the First Warden to detour to this unfamiliar part of the city. Why Rook seems so frustrated with their failure to find anything conclusive. For the missing Ludia, Rook is all there is. And Rook wasn’t enough.

They fall into an uneasy silence then. Rook and Neve deep in their own thoughts as they lead Lucanis through the labyrinthine streets of Minrathous towards Dock Town. Lucanis content to keep his focus on the streets around them, the press of the crowd, the probing eyes of passing strangers. He’s not been to the Fountain District before; their work for the Shadow Dragons keeps them mostly in Dock Town while his Crow contracts had always taken him to the more… salubrious parts of the city. But there is an odd juxtaposition here. Smaller, run-down homes squeezed between larger manors. Elegant wine bars lining one side of the street while the other teams with hawkers manning their makeshift stalls.

“This way’s a shortcut,” Rook announces before ducking down a narrow street, a patchwork of awnings overheard to protect from the rain, open shopfronts on either side. Bookshops mostly, though the odd shop has shelves laden with kitschy bric-a-brac.

A strange prickling sensation starts to crawl up the back of his neck as they hurry down the alleyway, the hairs along his nape rising with a shiver. He’d felt this before, in Ludia’s bedroom; the strongest feeling of being watched.

Movement from a nearby balcony, a flash of light as sun reflects off metal.

“Rook,” he warns, hand darting out to snatch her wrist.

She stops, turning sharply with an inquisitive hmm.

But there’s nothing there.

No-one on the balcony, no faces peering from the windows above. Just shoppers leisurely browsing the stalls. A few people scurrying hurriedly passed.

“Never mind,” he mumbles, releasing Rook’s wrist.

She looks unconvinced by his dismissal, eyes crinkling in question, nose curled. Staring at him with an odd intensity, perhaps trying to decipher his expression. When she opens her mouth, he’s certain she’s going to question him further but instead she simply smiles, though a little tight, before she turns back to follow Neve.

He falls in step behind her as usual, feeling a growing frustration that his instincts seem to have led him astray once more. So certain that he’d seen something.

He keeps telling himself that things haven’t changed since the Ossuary, that he’s still the same capable professional he was before his captivity. But it’s hard to believe that when every day seems to bring more proof of his inadequacy. Movements stiff when he thrusts his dagger, a small catch in his knee when he dodges. Seeing things that aren’t there.

He must do better.

Chapter Text

Lucanis wakes first, as always. A flood of thoughts surging to the forefront of his mind as the peaceful nothingness of sleep makes way for urgent wakefulness.

A growing unease at reports of increased Venatori activity in Arlathan. His indecision over what to do with Illario beyond hiding him away in Viago’s villa. Caterina has sent him a series of reports to familiarise himself with before their next meeting, yet more information he needs to know as he steps into the role of First Talon.

And he’s pretty sure they’re out of onions again.

There’s a sudden pull of focus when Rook’s body shifts beside him. The cacophony in his mind quieting as his attention is dragged to the calm comfort of her room. When he opens his eyes, he half expects to see her waking, her honey-brown eyes blinking open to meet his. Instead, he finds her face still slack with sleep, body sprawled against him. The gentle puff of her breath ruffling his chest hair while a warm palm rests against his ribs. There’s a shimmer of green-grey from the aquarium dancing across her face and he watches, utterly transfixed, by the play of marbled light as it whorls against her skin.

She is just… so beautiful.

The thought causes something to stir in his chest. The light pattering of joy, of course, mixed with the blossoming warmth of comfort, the solid weight of gratitude. But beneath it all – a tight grip of fear. Fear that he might do something to mess this up. Fear that she might be driven away by the Crows or the Talons or Caterina’s lofty expectations. Fear that he might lose her entirely to any one of the many dangers they face while opposing the gods. A new cacophony of concerns stirring in his mind.

“You’re too handsome for such a frown,” comes a sleep-muffled voice, surprising him when he realises that Rook is awake. Maybe has been for some time, going by the fondly exasperated look in her eyes, the knowing smile curling at her lips. Too distracted by his own thoughts to notice.

“What are you worrying about?” she asks, lifting her hand to smooth the pad of her thumb between his brows.

He catches her wrist, brings it to his lips so he can press a lingering kiss to the pulse point there. Breathes in the citrus-sweet of her perfume. “Nothing at all.”

“Liar,” she accuses gently, stretching over his chest until she can press a kiss against his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. She has to wriggle a little until she can reach his ear, kissing just behind it before whispering, “perhaps you need a distraction from those worries.”

Her breath against the shell of his ear makes his spine tingle, a frisson of anticipation that prickles all the way down to his groin. He chuckles, a little tight with tension, placing her captured hand against his chest so she can feel his thudding heartbeat. He loves it when she’s like this – loose and playful. “And what kind of distraction did you have in mind?” he asks, eager to indulge her.

She laughs, loud and bright, as she slings a leg across his hips, rising to her knees to straddle him. “Oh, I can think of a few things,” she purrs before leaning forward to kiss him, the gold curtain of her hair falling forward to surround him, blocking out the rest of the room so that all his senses are filled with only her. The touch of her hands where they cradle his jaw, the slight tug of calluses against his beard. The gentle press of her lips so maddeningly tender.

Rising onto his elbows, he surges into the kiss, building the intensity with a sudden push of force. Tongue pressing eagerly against the seam of her mouth, an urgent moan signalling his impatience. With a breathless giggle she opens for him, his neediness only spurring her own as she grinds down into his lap.

He knows this is how she prefers it in the morning. All dizzying force and frantic energy. Desperate pants for breath and the sharp nip of her teeth against his bottom lip. He saves the slow, languorous kisses for evening.

The blankets are bunched up around her waist and she pulls them aside so she can reach the hem of her sleep-shirt, lifting it off in one swift motion before tossing it into the corner of the room.

If she was beautiful before, she is stunning now. All tight muscle and soft curves, tanned skin that glows in the candlelight, rising above him like some divine idol cast in gold. She’s smirking down at him, breasts heaving as she catches her breath, looking at him with such unabashed desire, he can feel his cock stir from half-hard to aching.

He knows exactly what to do then, techniques he’s learned through careful observation each time they’ve done this – catalogued away with the sort of dedicated professionalism that comes to him so easily.

Leaning forward to mouth against her breast earns him a moan. Raking the edge of his teeth against her nipple earns a pitching roll of her hips against his still clothed cock. When he lifts a hand to cup her cheek, bringing her face to his for another searing kiss, he lets his fingers caress against the nape of her neck – smiling with satisfaction when she sucks in a quivering breath. A strange sort of comfort in knowing exactly how her body reacts to his touch.

Without breaking their kiss, her hands drop between them to pluck at the strings of his linen trousers, tugging them open impatiently before pushing them down just enough to free him. He shudders when she wraps her fingers around his shaft, pants into her mouth as she pumps him. Long, firm strokes from base to tip, a slight twist to her wrist with every turn. A tight pressure that builds and builds and builds until—

He chokes back a whine when her hands leave him, hips rising off the chaise in search of her touch. But then her palms are braced against his shoulders, keeping her balanced as she lowers herself onto him, breath hitching as she drops—agonisingly slowly.

Lucanis groans as the wet heat of her envelops him, at the slight pull of friction as he slides in to the hilt. Familiar enough now that the sensations don’t feel quite so overwhelming, don’t surge quite so quickly to the edge of release. Instead, a slowly banking pleasure that gives him the time to enjoy this, enjoy her.

Enjoy the way she digs her hands into his hair when she kisses him. The way she grinds against his groin as she rides him. And Lucanis is just trying to remember what to do as that pleasure grows and grows. Keep his tongue sliding against hers, drive his hips in time with her thrusts, remember exactly where against her skin to caress his fingers. It takes a few moments for him to get it right but when he does, it is perfection. Their bodies moving as one, a hand braced behind him for leverage as he meets every slide of her body with a snap of his hips. The rumbling moans deep in her throat when he gets the angle just right.

He always knows she’s close when her legs start to shift, restless little spasms out of rhythm with the roll of their hips. It’s his cue to snake a hand between them, to find the nub of her clit and rub with firm, tight circles. Her fingers fist in his hair almost painfully hard as he works her, her breath coming in quick sharp pants that he swallows down hungrily.

When she comes, she does so with a high-pitched cry, head falling back as her back arches, changing the angle of her hips as he continues to buck up into her.

There’s a plaintive cry when she lifts herself off of him; Lucanis so close to release. But then her hands are on his cock again, grip firm and tight as she pumps him once, twice. One final deliberate twist against his cockhead and he’s coming across his chest with a ragged growl, abdomen twitching as he paints white stripes across his olive skin. A surge of heat and pleasure and relief sparking along his nerves until he’s left shuddering and boneless.

He's sure he must look utterly wrecked. Sweat-slicked and heaving. His spend clinging to his chest hair in thick ropes. And yet as Rook looks down at him from her seat in his lap, she just looks delighted. Expression soft as she takes him in, lazy smile curling at her lips while her eyes gleam with bristling affection. He’s not sure how to handle the sudden rush of joy at the sight of her, chest tight with the effort of holding it in.

He will never know what he’s done to deserve her.

She leans forward carefully to kiss him, just the quickest peck to his lips before she’s rising from the chaise to fetch the pitcher and cloth from atop the nearby dresser. She always looks a little sheepish at this part – as they clean each other up after their mutual release – but it’s one of his favourites. The tender worship of her body as he wipes her clean, the gentle way she manoeuvres him as she cleans him in return. The kind of mundane intimacy they never mention in his romance novels but he revels in all the same.                  

“I’m going to make Orlesian toast for breakfast,” he tells her later, as they dress.

“Fancy,” she teases, slipping a fresh shirt over her head. “Any special occasion?”

He shrugs, hands abandoning the laces of his trousers to help her tie the ribbon at her neckline. Dextrous fingers forming a perfect bow. “Bellara brought brioche back from the market. And I know you like sweet things.”

“You spoil me.”

He presses a kiss to her forehead, both hands lifting to cradle her face. “Not nearly enough.”

He knows he looks uncharacteristically dishevelled when he finally slips out of Rook’s room, yesterday’s clothes heavily wrinkled from their night spent on the floor, hair falling into his eyes without any pomade. He plans on tidying himself up once he’s back in the pantry, while the water’s boiling for coffee, before anyone has a chance to spot him.

So it’s a little startling when he bumps into Taash on the library’s landing, her eyes widening as she takes in the messy tumble of his hair, the rumpled collar of his shirt and missing cravat. He braces himself for some sort of lewd comment, is pleasantly surprised when she only gives him a firm nod, smile almost proud as she simply says, “nice.”

 And – yes – he supposes it is nice.

It’s still only late morning by the time they all gather around the library table. A pile of missives in Harding’s lap and an array of haphazard piles on the table in front of her.

“Myrna’s report says there’s another haunting,” Harding reads aloud as her eyes flit down the letter in her hand, “this time in the Hossberg Wetlands.”

Emmrich shakes his head. “Oh dear, the spirits have been restless since Solas’s ritual. Does she give any indication of the kind of spirit involved in this possession? It’ll help evaluate the urgency of her request.”

“‘Fraid not,” she says, turning the page to check she’s not missing anything on the back, “but I think—ah, there—” She pulls another piece of paper from a nearby pile. “Evka’s latest report says there’s heightened darkspawn activity in the area as well. It sounds like the Grey Wardens could use our help too.”

“Alright, so the Hossberg Wetlands might be our first priority,” Rook says, leaning forward to take Evka’s report from Harding, quickly scanning it before placing it back in its pile. “Unless anyone has anything else?”

Bellara raises a hand. “Oh, I have something!” she says, holding aloft several pages tied neatly in twine. “Strife says the Veil Jumpers are still searching for those missing Dalish. And he’s included all sorts of helpful notes from their scouts. Some of them look quite promising actually, and… well, he doesn’t ask for help but—” Her voice has fallen soft, concern clear in the tight set of her shoulders, the slight tremour at the end of each word. “—he could probably use it.”

“Right, of course,” Rook says, feeling her own unease stirring. Reminded of the heavy knot of anxiety that’s been sitting in the pit of her stomach from the moment they learned of the missing clan. She wants to remain optimistic, she does. But every time she thinks of them, the images of all the dead Dalish they’ve already found in Arlathan surge unbidden to the forefront of her mind. Too many burned aravels, too many petrified faces.

And she hates it. Hates how cynical she’s grown. Hates how each new loss reminds her so agonisingly of her own clan, picking at the scab of a wound she’d long thought healed.

She startles a little when she feels something brush against her knee. Looks down to see Lucanis’s hand simply resting there, though his attention remains on their companions around the table. Just a gesture of gentle comfort in defiance of her encroaching doubts.

Her heart clenches in gratitude, still so unused to his easy thoughtfulness. Not entirely sure what she’s done to deserve him.

“So we’ll split then,” Rook decides, trying to use her ‘leader’ voice despite her lingering uncertainty. “Harding can go to Arlathan with Bellara – your tracking skills will probably come in handy. And Neve too; no-one knows the Venatori better. The rest of us can go to the Hossberg Wetlands to help with the darkspawn – as well as this haunting,” she adds with a nod towards Emmrich.

“If I may,” Neve interrupts, looking unusually agitated as she passes an envelope across the table to Rook. “I got a letter today from Tarquin, asking for my help with a murder case in Minrathous. It’s a fellow Shadow Dragon, Rook. And it all seems rather… odd. Normally agents get killed on a mission or taken by the Venatori. I don’t know of another agent who was murdered in their home like this.”

 “Shit,” Rook mutters as she slips the letter from its envelope, reads the hurried scrawl of Tarquin’s writing. “Alright, alright – new plan – Lucanis and I will go with Neve to Minrathous. See what we can find out about this murder. Harding and Bellara will go to Arlathan. And everyone else to the Hossberg Wetlands.”

Neve leans forward again. “Actually, Emmrich might be useful – in case this Shadow Dragon has a final message for us.”

“Do you mind joining us in Minrathous then, Emmrich?”

“It would be my absolute pleasure to bring some justice to this poor soul,” he replies with a gentle incline of his head towards the letter in Rook’s hands.

“That’s decided then. Let’s grab our kit and be ready at the Vi'Revas in 15 minutes.”

Everyone rises from the table with nods and words of assent, parting ways to head to their respective rooms around the Lighthouse. Only Neve lingers, waiting for Rook as she shuffles through a pile of more personal correspondence.

“I wanted to say thank you,” Neve says, stepping closer, “for following up on this lead. Given everything that’s going on right now, I know this is a low priority.”

It hurts a little, the surprise in Neve’s voice. As if she expected Rook not to care about a fellow Shadow Dragon. As if it doesn’t kill Rook every day to think about all the other Shadow Dragons who’ve already died because of her. Because she failed to stop Ghilan’nain’s blighted dragon. Failed to stop the Venatori from taking power.

“Of course. Anything for the Shadow Dragons,” she says, reaching out to give Neve’s shoulder a squeeze, noting with some pain how the gesture makes Neve tense.

As Rook heads back to her room to fetch her armour, she tries to ignore the part of her that wishes she was going to the Hossberg Wetlands instead. How much easier it would be to face the hordes of darkspawn rather than the disapproving glares of her fellow Shadow Dragons. How much warmer her welcome would be from Antoine and Evka compared to Tarquin. How much simpler it would be… to help her allies without being surrounded by constant reminders of her failure.

Rook wonders whether a day will come when she can return to her home without feeling the immense weight of her guilt.

Chapter Text

The first thing Lucanis notices is the smell. Rotten fish and rusted metal. A heavy sourness so thick in the air, he can almost taste it at the back of his throat.

The second thing is the blood. A wide stain of brownish-black stretching across the floorboards, dry and flaking at the edges – and another soaking into the bedsheets. Far darker than what he’s used to, thick and clumping.

It turns out death is a lot more palatable when it’s fresh.

He steps aside to let Neve into the room and, behind her, Rook, looking decidedly uneasy as she takes in the scene. The room in disarray, the pool of blood far too large for anyone to lose and live. There’s a tight pull to her lips, as if she’s trying to keep them from quivering, and a downward slope to her eyes as they flit between floorboards and bed. A part of him wants to reach out in comfort, a brush of his palm against the small of her back, a gentle squeeze to her elbow – but he knows Rook doesn’t like him fussing over her in public. Prefers to play the part of leader in front of others then seek comfort from him later, when it’s just the two of them.

Neve seems unbothered though, crouching down by the bed, leaning forward to inspect the indent in the mattress where the body must have been. She gingerly lifts the blanket, the pillow, in search of anything hidden beneath – shakes her head when she finds nothing. When she stands, she stares at the blood on the floor for longer than Lucanis would consider reasonable.

“The killer watched while he bled out,” she says to no-one in particular, eyes still trained on the floor.

“How do you know?” Rook asks, stepping forward to the edge of the stain.

“There,” Neve points, “an indent in the blood. From the toe of their boot. They stood there and watched them bleed, and then they left. Look – you can see some blood smears from the boot soles. It’s hard to see now that it’s dried.”

Rook’s nose curls in disgust. “So they’re… some kind of sadist?”

“Could be a professional,” Lucanis offers, “waiting to make sure the job is done.”

“But what about all of this?” Neve asks, gesturing to the room’s general disorder. The clothes spilling from the open chest at the end of the bed. The drawers hanging loose from the dresser. Bottles and books and trinkets all toppled in place. “Like someone’s staged it to look like a burglary. But too sloppily done for a professional.”

“How do you know it’s staged?” asks Rook.

“Those boots in the corner are expensive. As are the gold hoops left in the top drawer of the dresser. There are too many valuables left behind for robbery to be a motive.”

“It could be a sloppy professional,” Lucanis says, walking towards the dresser to see what Neve had spotted so quickly. “Not everyone can afford the Crows.”

Neve hmmms in vague agreement, attention already back to the room and its contents as she slowly paces back-and-forth. Suddenly she drops to a squat, hand reaching out to stroke across a pale spot on the floor. “There’s scuff marks here in the wood. And some more – there, there… and there. I wonder what caused—”

“A chair,” Lucanis answers before Neve can finish her thought, reaching out to grab the narrow wooden chair tucked under the desk at the window. When Neve moves aside, he places each of the chair’s legs at one of the scuff marks, each aligning perfectly. “The victim was tied to the chair. They struggled against their bonds. That’s what caused the scuff marks.”

“How did you know that?” Rook asks, brows curled inquisitively.

He shrugs. “I’ve tied a lot of people to chairs.”

Rook opens her mouth as if to ask another question but Neve steps between them. “So it was… some sort of interrogation,” she says, circling around the chair. “Likely wanting information about the Shadow Dragons since, well… as far as I know, Rufus didn’t have much going on outside the Dragons.”

Rook nods. “He was pretty dedicated. Whatever information the killer was after, I doubt he gave them anything.”

“Agreed.”

The two women fall into silence then, matching grim expressions as their thoughts linger on their fallen comrade. Lucanis can understand their pain, to an extent, remembering suddenly the dismembered Crows they’d found along the Rivain coast several months before. The searing anger he’d felt when faced with the antaam’s butchery. But it feels different too, somehow. There is a certain… expendable quality about Crows. Their lives so characterised by violence and danger that an early death is largely seen as inevitable, only briefly mourned. But Rook and Neve think of their fellow Dragons as family, both feeling each death so keenly – he can scarcely imagine what a burden it must be to think that way.

“I’m going to speak to the landlord,” Neve suddenly announces, grief quickly banished from her face as she schools her features into a sort of brusque determination. “And whoever rents the neighbouring rooms, if I can. Rook, why don’t you fetch Emmrich from the morgue? See what he was able to get from the body. We can all reconvene later at the hideout, see if we can put together some answers.”

“Right, yes, I can do that,” Rook says.

“And I’ll go with Rook to the morgue,” Lucanis adds.

Neve smirks just a little, eyes warm as she looks at him. “Of course you will.”

She takes one last lingering look at the room as she turns to leave, the blood pool with the boot’s imprint, the staged mess, the chair sitting ominously at the centre. He can see her cataloguing it all away as her eyes narrow in concentration. When she heads towards the door, she lets her fingers brush lightly against his arm in what he assumes is gratitude. “Good luck. I feel like we’re going to need it on this one.”

And with that Neve exits the room, leaving Rook and Lucanis and the lingering smell of sour fish behind.

Rook is unusually quiet as they make their way to the morgue. Normally she likes to tell Lucanis about her favourite spots to eat, or unusual points of interest from histories she’s read. Since he’s started borrowing Bellara’s serials, she likes to point out places from his books – the bridge where an embittered magister threw his rival to his death, the public gardens where a pair of secret lovers held an amorous rendezvous. He loves it. The way her whole face lights up when she spots something she thinks he’ll find interesting. The way she gestures as she talks, with such unabashed enthusiasm.

Lucanis could listen to Rook talk for hours – about anything, in all honesty.

Which is why her silence now is so unsettling.

He flexes his hand a little as he walks beside her, lets his knuckles brush feather-light against her fingers. Rook may not like being comforted in public – but in the bustling crowds of Minrathous, there’s a degree of anonymity that feels almost like privacy. There’s a long pause (perhaps she didn’t feel him) until finally her index finger strokes slowly against his, once, twice. The barest whisper of a caress before her whole hand slips into his palm, her fingers weaving between his own.

He gives her hand a slight squeeze, feels a brush of relief when she squeezes back.

“So this Rufus was your friend?” he finally ventures, not sure how best to break the silence but eager to try anyway. Normally Rook is the one helping him when he’s too stuck in his own head – teasing apart his storm clouds with gentle questions and her relentless cheer.

“‘Friend’ is maybe a bit strong,” she replies, tone a little duller than usual but at least she’s talking. “I knew him, obviously. Everyone knew Rufus. He was so… passionate. He’d been a slave himself – on one of the big merchant ships. He was so grateful to the Shadow Dragons for freeing him. Wanted to make sure that every slave got the same chance at freedom. He deserved better than what he got.”

“People rarely get what they deserve,” he says with a slight shake of his head.

Rook huffs a hollow laugh. “Is that some… Crow adage?”

“No – just… an observation based on experience.”

She hums in agreement before falling into another silence. Brows still furrowed, mouth still pinched, though he likes to think there’s a touch more warmth behind her eyes now.

“We’ll find whoever did this to your friend,” he continues, trying to match her usual tone of unshakeable confidence. For some reason, it sounds a little less convincing when he does it. “We’ll bring them to justice.”

“You just said people don’t get what they deserve.”

“This isn’t about who deserves what. This is about you—” He squeezes her hand. “—being utterly relentless. And Neve too.”

There’s a sceptical little grunt from the back of her throat. “You certainly have… a lot of faith in me.”

“I’ve seen you kill an archdemon. And two blighted dragons. I think my faith is well-founded.”

“Yes, well, I distinctly recall you were there too for both of those. I didn’t do anything on my own.”

“And I’m here for you now as well.”

For the first time since they left the apartments, she raises her head to look at him, smiles with just the barest lilt of her lips – tentative but there. “You Crows and your smooth words,” she says, nudging her shoulder against his with a playful push. “You always know exactly what to say.”

He laughs – as he always does when she accuses him of being a smooth-talker. An accusation that had never been levied against him before Rook. Illario had always been the one with the silver tongue; Lucanis had always been… a little clumsier with his words. Yet, somehow, he keeps managing to find the right ones for Rook.

When they fall again into silence – a gentle smile on Rook’s face, her palm warm against his – it doesn’t feel as unsettling anymore. It just feels – comfortable.  

The morgue reminds Rook of the Grand Necropolis, in a way. The distinctly medicinal smell hidden poorly under the spice of burning incense. The heavy stillness in the air – like the room is holding its breath, waiting impatiently for the next arrival. But it’s different too. Quieter without the easy chatter of the Mourn Watch. Stuffier without the soaring ceilings of the Necropolis’s majestic architecture, without the gentle breeze that drifts from room-to-room in seeming defiance of all logic. Instead, the space is short and squat, hidden away under the curved arches of a Dock Town bridge, dark and claustrophobic.

Emmrich is easy enough to find, in a small private room at the back of the building, Rufus stretched before him on a wide stone slab. Rook hesitates a little at the door as she enters, catching a little at the sight of Rufus’s slack, expressionless face, his greyed skin, the tattered remains of his neck.

“Maker’s breath,” she whispers, “what did they do to you, Rufus?”

“Well, quite,” Emmrich replies, disdain clear in the slight upturn of his nose, “a most barbaric display of violence.”

She makes her way slowly to where Emmrich stands at the head of the table, Lucanis trailing behind her.

“Were you able to speak with him?”

“I was actually just about to start. I’m afraid I’ve been distracted all this time, conversing with his family.”

Rook feels a sharp clench of surprise. “He had a family?” she asks, a flush of shame bringing a tinge of pink to her cheeks; all these years working beside him, and she didn’t know.

“A sister and a nephew. Not biological, I don’t think. But that hardly matters. They were… very distraught, obviously. But I think I was able to be a comfort to them.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh, the sister asked the usual things family asks at a time like this. Did I think he suffered in his final moments? Did I know where his soul resides now? Nothing I can answer conclusively, of course. But I reassured her that he was at peace, and that he was lucky to have been loved enough in life to have so many people mourn him now.”

“He will be sorely missed by all Shadow Dragons.”

Emmrich gives a sharp nod. “Quite right.”

Stepping forward, Lucanis bends his head slightly to look up and down Rufus’s body, brows knit in thought. “Have you investigated the body, Emmrich?”

“Well… no, not yet,” Emmrich replies, looking slightly taken aback by the question. “I confess I didn’t think to carry out a thorough investigation when the cause of death is so clearly evident. And I kept the body mostly covered during his family’s visit given—” he gestures to the flayed skin along Rufus’s neck. “Is there a particular reason why you think an investigation is warranted?”

“We think the killer was after information,” Lucanis explains. “We found evidence that Rufus was tied to a chair shortly before his death. I thought there might be signs of… interrogation. If a professional was involved, there might be a distinct signature.”

“Oh, fascinating,” Emmrich muses as he casts his eye along the body, one hand raising to stroke along the line of his moustache. “Well, he certainly has his fair share of cuts and bruises but then I’ve been led to believe that he was an active field agent for the Dragons so that hardly seems notable. All three of us likely have similar injuries thanks to our rather… vigorous vocations. There certainly could have been some ante-mortem bruising along his neck that has been obscured by the rather over-zealous slicing. But there’s no way to know for certain now.”

“Unless we ask him ourselves,” Rook points out.

“Right, of course. That is why we are here, after all.” Emmrich repositions the bangles hanging from his forearms for a moment before lifting his arms in preparation for casting. “If you don’t mind, Rook, I think it would be best if you ask the questions. He might find it more comfortable talking with a fellow Dragon.”

“Yes, of course,” she says, embarrassed by the slight waver in her voice as she steps closer to Emmrich’s side.

It’s not that she’s uncomfortable with the necromantic arts; she actually thinks it’s quite beautiful, in a way, watching Emmrich perform his corpse-whispering. But it’s one thing to witness someone practicing their talents and another thing entirely to take part in them. And Rook is not thrilled at the idea of talking with what remains of her brutally murdered comrade.

There’s a lilting, almost balletic quality to Emmrich’s movements as he starts to draw on the Fade. Elegant loops and sweeps of his hand that summon loose tendrils of green, quick sparks of silver-white that undulate and swell before slowly falling over Rufus’s body. “Let flame rekindle your sight,” he chants as the magic pulses and brightens. “Let breath and light rise again.”

Something pulls, a shift in the air as if someone is moving around her. A slow shiver rolling up her spine as the body starts to glow with an eerie cast of green. Rufus twitches, just a small scratch of a finger against the stone slab, then a full-body spasm that makes Rook jump. The chest rises and falls as if breathing, head moving from side-to-side as if trying to take in the room – an odd facsimile of life that leaves Rook feeling deeply unnerved.

Emmrich looks at her from the corner of his eye, inclines his head towards Rufus in invitation.

She takes a half-step forward, bends over the table so that Rufus can see her, remembering too late that he definitely can’t. “Hi Rufus. It’s me, Eleri,” she says, trying to keep her tone soft and friendly despite her unease. “Do you remember?”

“Eleriii,” he rasps, the sound coming out as a long wheeze through the frayed skin of his neck. “You bought me candles… from the market in High Town, after I said I liked the smell.”

The memory stirs, bringing a smile to her face (and a flinching twinge of grief to her chest). “Yeah, yeah, that was me.”

“You were sent away—from Minrathous.”

“I was, you’re right – but I came back, Rufus. I came back because there’s important information I need to know.”

In her peripheral vision, she catches Emmrich nod at her encouragingly.

“Rufus, do you remember the last person you saw? Was it someone you knew or a stranger?”

The head lolls atop its ruined neck in a fitful shake, face contorting with distress. “He knocked on my door. I thought it was the landlord – he’s always coming ‘round to complain.”

“But it wasn’t the landlord,” Rook presses, “do you remember who it was?”

His features contort even further, sliding his expression from distress to horror. Mouth gaping open around a silent scream. Eyes falling wide in desperation, even while they remain blank and dulled. “He… hurt,” he whispers, “I was so afraid. But I didn’t give him what he wanted. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

“I know you wouldn’t, Rufus. What did he ask about?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“The Shadow Dragons – he wanted to know where they are. The hideout. I wouldn’t give it to him. I wouldn’t.”

Numb fingers claw at the stone slab beneath him – as if pantomiming some final fight with his attacker. Rook almost wants to take his hands in hers, squeeze them in comfort, but she can’t quite bring herself to touch him.

“You said ‘him’, Rufus,” she continues. “So it was a man. Do you remember anything else? What did he look like?”

“Tall, dark. Talking, always talking. Even when he wasn’t asking questions. The Light shall shine upon all of creation, if we are only strong enough to carry it.”

Rook blinks in surprise, turns her head to look at Emmrich. “That sounds like the Chant.”

A hum of agreement. “Apotheosis, I believe.”

“Anything else, Rufus?” she asks, and this time she does touch him, though not quite brave enough to take his hand fully. Hoping it enough to simply brush her fingers against his knuckles.

“A smell,” the body moans. “Bitter metal. Burns at the back of my throat.” He starts to convulse then, Rook snatching her hand back as his limbs thrash against the stone. “He’s holding me down now, dagger at my throat. That smell. Can’t see, can’t feel – only that smell. Then nothing. Oh Creators, why is there nothing?”

It’s hard, watching the body as it shakes and fits, sinew and bone remembering their final moments of struggle. Rook gives Emmrich a pleading look.

Emmrich’s hands still, whorls of magic beginning to fade as Rufus’s body slowly gentles. “Thank you, Rufus, for this final act of service. May your passage to the beyond be peaceful.”

Rook thought she’d feel better once the body stopped convulsing but instead there’s an odd sense of heaviness, an inescapable feeling of finality. The feeling that now is the moment she truly lost her friend, not when she read Tarquin’s letter, or saw the pools of blood in his room, not even when she saw the dead body for the first time. And with that realisation comes doubts – that maybe she should have said something different when Emmrich brought him back. A proper farewell, a heartfelt I’ll miss you. Not that empty platitudes really matter now. The best she can do for Rufus is find his killer, make sure he doesn’t kill anyone else.

Emmrich carefully rearranges the body while Rook grapples with her thoughts, lining up each limb so he looks more at peace, like he’s merely sleeping. A thoughtful gesture, though one that Rook is too distracted to really notice. Mind churning over every word Rufus had shared.

“A smell like bitter metal, he said. Emmrich, doesn’t that sound like lyrium?”

“Yes, I suppose it could be,” he replies.

“And he was quoting the Chant…” A pause, as Rook pieces together her thoughts. “I think… I think Rufus was killed by a Templar.”

“I thought Templars didn’t take lyrium in Tevinter,” Lucanis interjects.

Rook nods. “They don’t, which means it must have been a southern Templar.”

“Why would a southern Templar want to come to the Tevinter Imperium to interrogate and murder a non-mage former slave?” Lucanis asks, confusion clear in the furrow between his brows. “What would the Chantry even want with the Shadow Dragons?”

Rook feels her face scrunch in frustration. “I have no fucking idea.”

Chapter Text

The new hideout is smaller than the one at the shop, although perhaps by design given there are fewer Shadow Dragons now too. Tucked away in the basement of a long-abandoned warehouse, there’s an earthy, rotten smell in the air. Patches of damp spreading rust-limned along the walls despite someone’s best efforts to hide them under brightly painted murals – smears of brown just visible beneath the teal and gold dragons. Most crucially, though, they still have access to the catacombs here; the warehouse having once been part of an old smuggling ring. Secret entrances now used to evade Venatori, rather than Dock Town levies.

But while the space certainly feels similar to the old hideout, Rook never feels entirely welcome here. Not like she used to back at the shop. Because it’s not just the hideout that has changed but the Shadow Dragons too. Ashur may always greet her with the usual smile but the others remain wary – not as openly hostile as they were immediately after the dragon attack but there’s still something there, some lingering barrier that prevents them from fully trusting her. Not anymore. Maybe never again.

It hurts, though she won’t admit it to anyone. That after everything she’s done – felling the Desperation demon, helping the buskers, Aelia. All the slaves she’s helped free over her years of service. None of that seems to matter when people need an easy target to shoulder their feelings of frustration and helplessness – and Rook is so conveniently there.

“A Templar?!” Tarquin asks with disbelief as they gather around the large round table that dominates the main room. “What would a Templar want with Rufus?!”

“A southern Templar, specifically,” Rook clarifies, “Rufus said he could smell lyrium on his attacker.”

“And how reliable can he be? He’s dead.”

Emmrich’s face flickers with a scowl as he raises a pointed finger. “Well actually, from my experience, the dead do not intentionally deceive when brought back through necromantic means. Although they can be rather cryptic. And that can often lead to… misinterpretation.”

“Alright, then how reliable is Rook’s interpretation?” Tarquin asks.

Rook bristles a little at Tarquin’s sceptical tone but doesn’t quite find the conviction to defend herself. After all, the Templar idea is just a theory. And one based on rather flimsy evidence at that.

“It’s as good an interpretation as anything else we’ve got right now,” Neve points out, and Rook feels a small swell of relief at her defence. “I’ve spoken to Rufus’s landlord, his neighbours. No-one saw or heard anything suspicious either on the day of the attack or in the preceding days. We’ve got nothing else really to pursue other than this Templar angle.”

“What do you recommend as the next course of action then?” Ashur asks, leaning over the table to read the notes that Neve’s been able to put together so far. There’s not many.

“I have a Templar friend who might be able to help us,” Neve replies.

“I’m a Templar friend,” Tarquin points out petulantly, “and I haven’t got the foggiest idea how you’d find a southern Templar here in Minrathous!”

“Well then it’s a good job I have other friends who might.”

Tarquin opens his mouth to argue further but hesitates when Neve lifts a brow in silent warning, fixing him with a pointed glare. He’s been curt with her all meeting. With everyone really but especially her. Perhaps disappointed that the detective has not been able to solve Rufus’s murder as easily as he’d hoped. An unfair expectation – as if anything in Minrathous is ever easy.

Ashur takes a step closer to Tarquin, hand stroking against Tarquin’s forearm for just the barest moment of comfort before he hands Neve her notes. “Given the southern Order was largely disbanded during the Inquisition,” he muses, “it’s unlikely this man is operating here under any official capacity. That means some unknown puppet-master is pulling the strings. We should make sure that in pursuing this killer, we do not blind ourselves to the bigger picture.” 

“You’re right,” Neve agrees with a nod, “we’ll keep our eyes open. And I’ll report back as soon as I’ve heard anything from my friend.”

The conversation veers away from Rufus after that. Updates on the comings and goings of Minrathous, the latest crackdown from the Venatori regime. Rook listens and nods and adds more tasks to the mental list of things she needs to do. Tries to keep smiling even as the sheer enormity of her responsibilities begins to settle over her like a shroud.

It's a relief when she finally leaves the hideout several hours later. Head tilting to find the meagre light, eyes falling closed as the rain patters steadily against her upturned face. There’s no-one else in the alleyway, her companions still making their way up from the warehouse basement, and it suddenly strikes Rook that – for the first time in a long time – she is completely alone. Unobserved. A few precious, fleeting seconds where no-one is looking to her for advice, turning to her for answers.

She takes a deep breath, lets her mind go blank, and for this brief, blissful moment – thinks of nothing but the rain.  

The rain is heavier by the time Neve reaches the Templar offices. A steady downpour turning the cobblestones slick and bringing a clean sharpness to air usually pungent with the smell of fish – even here, several neighbourhoods north of Dock Town. Neve tries to angle her fascinator to keep the worst of it out of her face, her gait even more hurried than usual as she picks her way across a wide, dirt-packed yard. Not that it makes much of a difference now; the rain soaked through her favourite jacket around the time she was crossing the Museum District.

The Templar offices are a lot simpler than the Circle they flank – short squat buildings arranged around a series of parade squares; clean lines devoid of the usual ornamentations one would expect from Minrathous architecture. Although there is something about the polished jet-black stone that gives the whole compound a certain sense of grandeur. Imposing in its severity. A dark bulwark standing in defiance of magical misuse.

Not that the Templars ever really seem to live up to that ideal, Neve muses as her prosthetic clacks noisily up the entrance steps. More likely to take a bribe from a blood mage than detain one.

No-one stops Neve as she marches confidently down the corridors to Rana’s office. She is, after all, a reasonably common sight around here given how regularly she picks up odd jobs from Knight-Captain Jahvis. She does get a few wary looks, though. Either due to the stony fierceness of her expression or, more likely, the fact that she looks like a drowned rat.

“Maker’s breath,” Rana sighs when she opens her office door to reveal a rather bedraggled Neve, hand still poised from knocking. “Get in.”

Neve smiles as she enters the office. “It’s good to see you too.”

“Go,” Rana orders, pointing to the narrow stove in the corner of the room, “get warmed up before you catch cold and die.”

Neve rolls her eyes at Rana’s stern tone but complies nonetheless, circling around Rana’s desk to the stove as instructed. There should be a chair here, she thinks as she raises her palms to soak in the heat. Desperate for something soft and cosy to sink into after a long day spent running around, searching (fruitlessly) for witnesses.

“You look tired,” Rana says as she comes up behind Neve, giving her jacket collar a few tugs until Neve peels the sodden garment from her body.

“No need to flatter me, Rana, I’m already yours,” Neve drawls, earning an indulgent chuckle from Rana before she’s leaning forward to brush a quick kiss against Neve’s temple. Just the barest press of warm lips against her skin but Neve is certain she already feels less chilled from the rain.

Rana hangs Neve’s jacket on the coat-rack by the door, next to her own cloak, before returning and pushing the desk chair towards her. “Sit. And take your boots off too. It’s not good to have wet feet.”

“You’re being awfully commanding today,” Neve notes, pointedly not sitting.

“Yes, well, my partner has appeared at my office looking like death warmed-up – so excuse me while I make sure she’s taken care of.”

“She sounds like trouble.”

Another indulgent little chuckle. “Unfortunately for me, I suspect you’re right.”

This time it’s Neve’s turn to lean forward, angling her head just so to slant her mouth against Rana’s. Lips slotting together seamlessly in a gentle press. The kiss just a little too chaste for Neve’s liking (but then she supposes they are in Templar offices).

Rana pulls back with a frown. “Maker, you are freezing.”

“I walked here from Dock Town.”

“Why didn’t you take the funicular?!” she scolds.

“Walking helps me think.”

“Working a case?”

Neve nods, finally dropping onto Rana’s proffered chair with a weak groan. “And I feel like I’m missing something important. I was hoping you might be able to help, actually.”

“Alright.” Rana takes a half-step back until she can sit on the lip of her desk, crosses her arms as if readying herself for bad news. “What can I do for you?” she asks.

“I’m looking for a Templar.”

“You’ve come to the right place then.”

“A southern Templar. I think he’s involved in a murder.”

Rana’s face pinches in surprise. “It seems strange that a southern Templar would end up in Minrathous of all places. They don’t see us in a particularly favourable light down south.”

“He might not have had a choice. With the disbandment of the Templar Order, maybe this was the only place he could find work.”

“So you think this is a professional hit?”

Neve shrugs. “It’s a distinct possibility. Though the crime scene was rather… muddled. If he is a professional, he’s not one of the high-paid ones. We think he was after information.”

“What makes you say that?”

She raises from the chair to retrieve her notes from where they’ve been tucked into her waistband, hidden under her shirt (thankfully only slightly damp). Handing them to Rana, she points out the rough transcript she had written after Rook returned from the morgue. “A necromancer friend has spoken with the body. The killer was asking questions about the Shadow Dragons.”

Rana grimaces. “Necromancers gives me the creeps.”

Neve tries not to imagine Emmrich’s affronted expression, ends up snorting when she fails. “Certain necromancers have their charms.”

The two women fall quiet while Neve gives Rana the time to read through her notes, only the crinkling sound of Rana’s fingers rifling through pages and the gentle crackling of the stove filling the air. There’s the occasional hmm or surprised huh, and then a sudden frown as Rana asks, “what’s this?” pointing to a hastily drawn sketch.

“That’s the crime scene,” Neve explains, “as best as I could capture it. You know I’m not much of an artist.”

“What about the chair? Right in the middle of the room?”

“We think the victim was tied to it before his death. Presumably for an interrogation. There’s scuff marks under each leg. He struggled.”

“I’ve seen this before.”

“What?!”

Rana turns to a tall cabinet in the corner, searches for a moment before returning with a short stack of papers. “When we were searching for Aelia, I reached out to… well, everyone I could think of. Including some friends at the City Guard. They shared some unsolved cases with me – in case it was Aelia’s doing. Some of them seemed promising but most of them I just ignored when it was clear that Aelia wasn’t involved. But look—"

She spreads a series of crime scene sketches across her desk, all featuring a lone chair sitting at the centre of a room. She plucks out a few more pages. Not drawings this time but detailed descriptions, all mentioning either a chair or peculiar scuff marks.

“Oh shit,” Neve mutters as she bends over the desk to take in the details, eyes flitting across the pages. “This could be a lot bigger than one murdered Shadow Dragon.”

“You think this is all the same killer?”

“It could be. Can I have these?”

“Of course.”

Neve starts gathering the papers from Rana’s desk. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Rana frowning. “Something wrong?”

“Should I be worried about you?”

“Not any more than usual, I don’t think.”

“You said the killer was after information about the Shadow Dragons. You’re a Shadow Dragon, Neve.”

“Yes but I’ve been away from Minrathous for over six months. Not even I can acquire enemies from the other side of Thedas.”

Rana hmms sceptically. “I still don’t like this.”

“Well… you’re going like this even less,” Neve admits once she’s collected all the folders, tucking them under one arm. “I need to find a lyrium supplier. Someone… unofficial.”

It’s clear from Rana’s tight scowl that Neve is right; Rana doesn’t like this. “You mean a smuggler?”

“This Templar is getting his lyrium from somewhere. And with the collapse of the southern Order, it’s unlikely he’s getting it from anyone sanctioned. If I find the supplier, I find the Templar.”

A deep sigh rattles the air between them, Rana’s scowl fading into a look of well-worn resignation. “I can probably get you the information you need,” Rana says, “but it might take me some time. And it won’t be easy!”

Neve huffs a laugh. “It never is!” She leans forward to press another quick kiss against Rana’s lips. “But I appreciate this. I really do.”

When Neve tries to pull back she finds she can’t, Rana’s fingers having snuck into her belt to hold her close. Neve arches a brow in surprise, Rana arches hers back in challenge, and then their mouths are crushing together once more. This time with the kind of heat that Neve’s been craving the whole time she’s been in Rana’s office. Nothing chaste about the way Rana’s tongue licks into her mouth, the way her moans rumble at the back of her throat. Enough to leave Neve light-headed with the intensity of it all.

There’s a smirk on her face when Rana finally lets go of Neve’s belt, stepping back to gesture at the door with a shrug of one shoulder. “Now go on. I can tell you’re dying to dig into those files.”

Neve chuckles, still a little breathless from the kiss when she says, “you know me so well.” Brushes one final kiss goodbye to Rana’s cheek as she makes her way out, grabbing her damp jacket as she goes.

“And take the damn funicular!” Rana calls after her.

She does – if only to protect her new files from the rain.

Rook’s kitchen smells amazing. A heavy, butter-sweet smell from the vegetables in the oven paired with a crisper, smokier smell from the oil and spices cooking on the stove. A pleasantly sharp, almost heady fragrance likely spilling into every room in the townhouse, small as it is. Good, Rook thinks. It would be nice to banish the stuffy, slightly musty smell that has started to fester since Rook left with Varric.

It's a bit cramped as Lucanis and Rook try to work around each other in the small kitchen. Shoulders bumping as Lucanis leans over to add rice and lentils to the pot, elbows jostling as Rook pours in the water. But there’s a delightful intimacy to it all as well, leaving Rook giddy with the easy joy of their clumsy maneuverings – soft giggles every time they accidentally brush against each other, fingers lingering as they pass the spoon between them.

Rook adds some turmeric to the pot followed by a healthy dollop of cinnamon and then, on a whim, a splash of paprika too. Delighted as the rice and lentils take on an enticing terracotta colour, the perfect warm shade to counteract the rain-wash of grey outside. She can tell Lucanis is fighting hard to keep his mouth shut as he hands her the salt cellar. Although clearly not fighting as hard to keep his expression neutral too. His discomfort towards her more slapdash approach to cooking clear in the downward slope to his brows.

“Don’t give me that face,” she chides as she adds a half teaspoon of salt – then a half teaspoon more when he arches a brow in silent judgment.

“What face?”

“That face,” she accuses with a point of her finger. “The one you’re making right now.”

“I am not making a face. This is just what my face looks like.”

“Lucanis. If your face looked like this all the time, I never would have grown so fond of it in the first place.”

He smiles, brows softening as his eyes take on that glassy sheen they always do when she gives him even the smallest of compliments. “Fond, you say?”

Her lips curl into a smirk as she takes a step forward, craning her neck to kiss the underside of his jaw. “Extremely fond,” she murmurs into his ear, delighting in the way his whole body shudders at the whisper of her breath against his skin. Feeling a little shuddery herself just from the way he looks at her – as if he can’t believe she’s real.

“You two better not burn that stew!” Neve calls from her spot by the fireplace, curled up in a large armchair with glass of wine in hand. “I haven’t eaten all day and I’m starving.”

Lucanis clears his throat with a nervous cough, always a little uncomfortable when someone catches them being affectionate, though Rook only grins, looking over her shoulder to glare disapprovingly at Neve for interrupting the moment. Neve grins back.

“If you’re so concerned about the stew, Neve, perhaps you would like to help as well?”

“And if I did, would you kiss me too?” Neve asks, tapping one slender finger against her jawline.

“Depends how good the help is.”

Neve laughs. Lucanis too, brushing a quick kiss to Rook’s temple before stepping back towards the stove and giving the stew a vigorous stir. Rook picks up her wineglass, takes a long sip of her drink as she watches Lucanis add another half teaspoon of salt, some freshly diced tomatoes from the cutting board nearby. When he starts chopping a handful of coriander, he does so with a speed and grace she knows she could never hope to emulate, no matter how skilled she is with a blade.

She supposes, perhaps, it might be better to take on a more… supervisory role for the rest of the evening.

“It does smell awfully good,” Emmrich remarks as he fusses with setting the table, decorative candles bursting to life with a sharp snap of his fingers. “Have you always been a keen cook, Rook?”

Rook shrugs. “My brother taught me the basics when we were young. He’s always been an excellent cook. He’s one of those people who can look at a near bare cupboard and somehow come up with a full meal. And then I got a lot of practice when I went to the Circle. Every corridor had its own small kitchen and we would often make these big meals for everyone rather than go to the dining hall – it felt a bit more intimate that way. Like we were all one big family.”

“That does sound lovely,” Emmrich says as he folds a napkin into an elaborate lotus shape. “You know, if it’s not too much of an intrusion, I have been meaning to ask you more about your time at the Circle. The Imperium’s approach to mage education is just so different compared to Nevarra’s, it would be fascinating to learn more about your experiences.”

“I would be happy to! Although I imagine you’d rather speak with Neve about the Minrathous Circle. The Vol Dorma Circle is a bit more… unconventional.”

His brows lift, curiosity piqued. “Oh? How so?”

“The curriculum is a lot more hands-on than what you’d get at the other Circles. Not so focused on the theoretical. I do think you’d find it interesting though, Emmrich. I made an arcane trebuchet for one of my classes – and it was a pretty unique application of primal magic, if I say so myself!” She takes a long swig of wine before adding, “although I did nearly explode the groundskeeper’s shed.”

“Goodness.”

“Remind me to not to leave you unsupervised with Bellara anymore,” Neve says as she rises from her armchair to join the others in the kitchen.

“Why not?” Rook asks with an exaggerated pout, “trying to stop us from having fun?”

“Oh, I can think of plenty of other ways to have fun.”

Rook is opening her mouth for another retort when she feels the brush of Lucanis’s palm against her lower back. “I believe dinner is ready,” he interrupts, “unless you two want to flirt some more.”

Neve laughs, moving towards the table. “Jealous?”

“Absolutely,” he responds without missing a beat. “You know I could never compete with you, Neve. Now sit down before the stew burns.”

There’s more laughter as everyone takes their seats. A few good-natured eye-rolls from Emmrich. Rook ducking quickly into the pantry to fetch a fresh bottle of wine while Lucanis serves up the plates, quickly topping up everyone’s glasses once she’s returned.

She’s just about to take her own seat when she pauses, straightens again as a strange urge suddenly takes her. “I, uh… I think I’d like to make a toast actually.”

The others look at her surprised; Rook’s tendency towards talkativeness has never translated into a toast before.

“I know we don’t normally do this. But today has reminded me just how… lucky I am to be here. Here with all of you. And it’s not just the people in this room. But our friends back at the Lighthouse. Friends across Thedas. Friends who are still with us – and friends who aren’t.” She lifts her glass. “So I would like to raise a toast tonight to Rufus. To Lorelai, Hector, Brom. To all those people who have made our lives richer simply by being a part of them.”

There’s a gentle chorus of “here, here.” Some nods, some solemn smiles as they raise their glasses. A moment of thoughtful silence as they take those first sips and remember those they’ve lost – followed by a bawdy cheerfulness as they all start sharing stories. First over dinner, then long into the night as Rook pulls out another bottle of wine.

It’s not until later, when she’s finally getting ready for bed, that Rook realises with no small amount of relief – she hasn’t thought about bloodstained floorboards or the morgue’s heavy incense for several hours.

Lucanis wakes with a start, eyes flying open as his body tenses with a sudden rush of adrenaline. His hand slides instinctively under his pillow to grasp the dagger already waiting there, fingers curling around the pommel until—

He pauses.

The bedroom is still. Peaceful. Bathed in the undulating blue-green glow of the bookshop’s sign across the street. No sound except the steady susurrus of Rook’s breathing. No interlopers. No threats of any kind except those he must have imagined half-awake.

He looses a long, drawn-out sigh. Slowly unwinding his grip on the dagger as he feels the tension ebb from his muscles. The bright-sharp edge of his alertness beginning to dull.

There’s nothing. It’s nothing.

And yet – some needle of disquiet remains.

Rook is wrapped so tightly around him that it takes a moment to untangle himself. Movements slow and measured as he tries desperately not to wake her. He settles the blanket back around her as he slides free of the bed, presses a kiss to her crown before padding across the room to the window.

The curtains are open, revealing a sleepy residential street below – just as expected. He knows there’s a small park to the north, a tiered stairway down to the markets to the south. No movement in the windows, no figures in the street. Just the soft white glow of the streetlights and a tabby cat sleeping in the doorway a few houses down.

The prickling is still there, though, a tight frisson of sensation running along the back of his neck. The all too familiar feeling of being watched. So unyielding in its intensity that Lucanis can feel Spite tensing at the back of his skull in anticipation of a fight, pulling himself taut like a bowstring.

A threat, Spite rumbles at the back of his mind.

I don’t know, Spite. I can’t see anything.

Doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Lucanis hmms in agreement, lingers unmoving in the window in the hopes that he might catch sight of something yet. So focused on the street outside that he doesn’t notice—

“Luca?”

He jumps a little at the sound of Rook’s voice, turns to see her shifting beneath the covers, an arm reaching out across the empty mattress. “I’m here, Rook.”

She clumsily pushes herself upright, a smile slowly spreading across her face when she finally catches sight of him, though he can see the weight of her fatigue dulling her usual brightness. “You’re not in bed,” she says with gentle disapproval.

“Something woke me up.”

“Bad dream?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know what it was. We left the curtains open – maybe it was the light from the street.”

A pause. Perhaps considering, or perhaps just fighting the urge to fall back asleep. “Come back to bed, Luca.”

When she leans forward a little, a shaft of light catches along the slope of her nose, glancing against the high curve of her tattooed cheekbone. It shimmers a little every time she moves, skating down the column of her neck on every inhale, across the slope of her collarbone on the exhale. A shard of silver painting a luminous stroke across her skin like the tail of a comet across the sky.  

“Luca?” she prompts, a furrow creasing the skin between her brows when he doesn’t move.

A slow grin pulls at the corners of his mouth. “My apologies, I was just—you are… breathtaking.”

She blushes, as she always does when he tells her how beautiful she is, the prettiest bloom of pink underneath her delicately branching vallaslin. He should remember to tell her more often; he thinks it all the time.

“And luckily for you, I’ll still be this breathtaking in the morning. Now come to bed.”

He laughs at her insistence, pausing only long enough to close the curtains before stepping across the room to slip back into bed.

Her hands are on him the moment he’s settled under the covers, pulling his back against her chest, smoothing along his flank, his ribs, as she wraps her arms around his chest. He laughs again, the sound sinking into a satisfied sigh when he feels the brush of her lips between his shoulder blades, feels the weight of her leg settling around his hip. He suddenly can’t remember why he ever got out of bed in the first place – how anything could have induced him to leave the warm circle of Rook’s arms, the comforting weight of her against his back.

I will keep watch for threats, Spite reassures as he flutters behind Lucanis’s browbone. Keep you and Rook safe.

Thank you, Lucanis thinks before falling soundly back to sleep.

Chapter Text

Rook is not surprised to find Lucanis already making coffee when she enters the kitchen. Nor is she surprised to see Emmrich putting away the last of the previous night’s dishes, now pristinely clean. She’s not even surprised to see that someone’s already been to the market this morning – a platter of artfully-arranged fruits and pastries waiting on the marble counter next to the stove.

She is surprised to find her table completely covered in a blanket of paper – some pages written in a stranger’s neat script, others in Neve’s familiar scrawl. There are some drawings amongst them, a few maps. Even some carefully torn articles from Dock Town papers Rook doesn’t even remember having in the house. And, looming above it all, Neve. Hair pulled back in a messy bun, pencils tucked behind each ear, still only half-dressed with her night chemise bunched up over her always impeccably tailored trousers.

“Maker’s Breath!” Rook exclaims, “what in the Void is all this?”

Neve’s head jerks up. “Rook – this is so much bigger than just Rufus.”

It is not the early morning greeting Rook was expecting, a sudden lurch in her stomach at the sheer chaos of it all. “Wait, wait. What do you mean—bigger?”

“Look!” Neve cries as she jabs at what looks like some sort of formal report. “I have reports of over a half dozen murder investigations from the City Guard, all with the exact same signature as Rufus’s. Victims tied to chairs, their throats slashed. Homes or businesses poorly staged to look like robberies. It’s the same killer.”

“You have murder reports from the City Guard? How did you even—?”

“Rook! It doesn’t matter where I got the files. What matters is that we have a serial killer on the loose and they’re after the Shadow Dragons.”

Lucanis steps up beside Rook, gently squeezes her elbow as he hands her a cup of coffee. “Do you understand all this?” Rook asks, inclining her head towards the table.

“Neve explained some of it. But we’ve been waiting for you.”

Rook takes a long sip of her coffee, feels a sudden burst of pain at the back of her throat as she swallows – it needed a little more time to cool. Still, there’s something about the sharpness that seems to focus her. A bright ache to cut through the lingering softness of recent sleep.

“Alright, well I’m here now,” she says, stepping closer to the table, letting her posture straighten, her shoulders fall back as she summons her leader guise. The others turn to look at her. “Let’s start from the top then. We have a series of murders that all look connected. The motive of which appears to be information-gathering. Neve – obviously Rufus was a Shadow Dragon but what about the others? What’s the connection there?”

“I haven’t figured out the connection for all the victims but I recognise several of them. This Chantry official has given tips to the Dragons on a number of occasions,” she says, tapping against one of the reports. “And I recognise this dockyard worker. He would help smuggle freed slaves onto ships to get them out of the city.”

Rook’s eyes flit across the papers as she tries to follow Neve’s explanation, struggling in places to decipher the handwriting until she spots a familiar name. “I know this man,” she says, pulling out a report. “He’s a former Templar. Worked with Tarquin. I met him at the pub a few times.” A thought dawns. “Do you think the target is Tarquin? He was close with Rufus too.”

Neve’s nose curls, unconvinced. “More likely, the target is Ashur. We’ve already speculated that the killer may be a professional – and the bounty on Ashur is substantial.”

“We should warn him,” Emmrich comments, face stuttering with surprise when both women snicker in response.

“What are we going to warn him about?” Neve asks with a smirk. “‘Ashur, someone’s trying to kill you’? Someone’s always trying to kill him. He knows he’s under constant threat. This new threat won’t change anything – he’ll still be as reckless as ever.”

“It might not change his behaviour but he’d want to know anyway,” Rook points out. “He won’t be afraid for himself but he’ll be angry that innocent people are dying because someone is trying to reach him.”

Neve nods. “Yes, fine. Let’s head to the hideout then. Share what we’ve learned. Warn Ashur. I bet if we ask around, the other Dragons will recognise more of these victims.”

“Agreed.” Rook lets out a long, wearied sigh. The leader guise slipping for just a moment as the true enormity of their situation takes shape. “Let me… quickly throw on some clothes and then I’ll come with you to the hideout.”

There’s a quick catch in Neve’s expression as Rook speaks, a little flicker of discomfort. Only brief but enough to make Rook wary. “What is it?” Rook asks.

Neve looks to the side, down to her notes, back at Rook. An apologetic slope to her eyes when she explains, “I’ve been trying to think of the best time to say this but… I think your friend Ludia might be related to all this too. I think she might be another one of the victims.”

Rook tenses. “We never found a body.”

“I know but we never found her alive either. My inquiries found nothing. And she has links to the Shadow Dragons – not just through you. Plenty of agents used her shop.”

“But it doesn’t match the other murders. There were no signs of struggle! You investigated her apartments and said yourself – no sign of foul play!”

“I know Rook but, in light of what we know now, I think it’s worth looking into again. Maybe I’m wrong! But we should speak with Alba. She might remember this Templar coming into the shop – someone tall, dark, smelling of lyrium.”

Neve’s right, of course. It’s too much of a coincidence for someone with such close links to the Shadow Dragons to disappear at the same time as all these murders. Doesn’t make it any easier for Rook to accept though. Even after all this time, after all her letters had returned no new leads, there was still a part of her that was certain Ludia was alive and well.

“I’ll… go speak with Alba,” Rook concedes. “But I think I should bring Emmrich along this time. I think she’ll find his manner… comforting.”

Emmrich inclines his head. “I will of course do whatever I can to bring comfort to your friend, Rook.”

“That’s it then. Emmrich and I will go speak with Alba. Then we’ll come join you two at the hideout. Agreed?”

Everyone nods, expressions solemn, then parts to finish their morning routine. Fetching fresh coffee or a plate of pastries before moving from the kitchen to gather their things and finish getting ready for the day. Everyone except Neve, who pauses a moment longer at the table. As if answers might suddenly come to her if only she looks at her notes hard enough.

“Neve,” Rook prompts, stepping up from behind. “Have you had any breakfast yet?”

“I will—later.”

Elbows bump as Rook places a cup of coffee on the table, slides a plate of knafeh alongside it. “Eat, Neve,” she says, fixing Neve with a pointed glare that will likely be ignored before turning to make her way back to her room.

She’s already leaving the kitchen when Neve calls after her, “thanks, Rook, and… I am sorry. If I’m right about Ludia.”

Rook nods. “I know. I just… I hope you’re wrong.”

“I hope I’m wrong too.”

Rook picks up her spellblade from the chest opposite her bed and slips it into its sheath, tugs on the leather straps a little until it rests more comfortably alongside the lyrium dagger. Then a pair of smaller knives, tucked into a secret compartment inside each vambrace. When she reaches for the knife she normally hides in her boot, Lucanis stops her, his hand blanketing hers. He has never liked that one. The balance poor, the haft too clunky.

Instead, he takes one of his own knives – an elegant stiletto in glossy silverite – drops to his knees to slide it neatly into her boot. Comforting, somehow, to watch the silver blade disappear inside the leather, knowing that she will have it with her. He lingers. Though he hadn’t meant to. Forehead falling to rest against her thigh as his palms skim along her calf. He knows he’s been there too long when he feels her fingers sink into his hair, scratching gently along his scalp.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. He doesn’t need to look at her to know that she’s frowning. “You have a sort of… nervous energy about you that’s very unusual.”

“It’s nothing just—” He presses a kiss to her thigh before looking up. “—I just didn’t sleep well.”

Her frown slips into a sort of exasperated smile, eyebrows lifting as she looks down at him pointedly. “Liar.”

A soft chuckle at having been called out, another kiss against her thigh before he’s rising to his feet. “I suppose I do not enjoy this—” He gestures, searching for the words. “—piecing together of clues. All this work just to find a target. I would prefer a straightforward contract – with a clear name.”

Her smile broadens into a teasing grin. “If only everything in life was as clear as a Crow contract?”

“Exactly.”

She lifts a hand to cup his cheek and he leans into it instinctually, nuzzling the scratch of his beard against her palm. “We’ll find this killer soon enough,” she says, fingers stroking idly behind his ear. “Neve seems close now. And then you can just… stab him – and we’ll be on our merry way!”

A quiet huff of a laugh. “You always make everything sound so simple.”

“Isn’t it?”

He looks at her upturned face. The brimming affection in her warm, dark eyes; the playful curve to her mouth. Reminds himself of what he’s already known for quite some time. That all he really needs to do in life is keep Rook safe and kill whomever she tells him to. “Yes. I guess it is simple.”

She leans forward to kiss him. Just the barest press of her lips against his before she’s pulling back again. A needy whine rumbling at the back of his throat as she does.

“Neve and Emmrich are probably already waiting!” she chides with a giggle. 

He kisses her again anyway. This time with a little more force, hands curling into her jacket to pull her closer. A feverish push-pull of slanting mouths until her lips part on a sigh, and his tongue darts in to taste her. The hand that had cradled his cheek slides back to grip his hair, holding him in place as she angles him just right, humming in approval as the kiss deepens

It is selfish, perhaps, to take his pleasure while the others wait. But Lucanis has so rarely taken things for himself – and there’s still some uneasiness from his fitful night that makes him think he should savour this kind of quiet moment while he can.

They’re both panting when they finally break the kiss, foreheads resting against each other because he’s just not ready to part from her yet.

“Be careful,” he murmurs urgently into the space between them. Wholly inadequate for what he means to say. But he hasn’t quite figured out the words to express the things that he feels – terrifying in their enormity.

“I’m just going to Alba’s shop,” she dismisses.

“Be careful anyway.’

“I am always careful.”

He scoffs. “You are rarely careful.”

“Fine,” she grazes a quick kiss to the tip of his nose. “I will be very careful this time.”

It will have to be enough – her steady assurances. The confident ease in her expression. But as they finally step apart to grab their equipment and rejoin the others, Lucanis can’t quite seem to shake the suspicion that things are about to get… complicated.

Portable Potents sits between a florist and a millinery on one of the Fountain District’s most popular shopping streets. Perhaps not as grand as some of the apothecaries in Hightown, it is still the best-stocked store for alchemical supplies this far down the city’s tiers. And there is a sort of grandness there, in its own way – in the sophisticated forest green of its storefront, the elegantly looping script of its signage.

Ludia has taken great pride in turning her shop into the kind of place where even a magister would not look out-of-place – should they deign to venture this far down the city.

Which is how Rook immediately knows something is wrong.

Not just because the shop is closed in the middle of a busy shopping day – but because there’s a dullness to the place that looks so wholly out of the ordinary. The normally immaculate topiaries flanking the windows are dry and browned, a shutter hanging loose from its hinge, while a small pile of detritus has collected in the doorway. Even the string of magelights looping across the façade has gone dark, as if someone has forgotten to charge them.

“Something’s wrong,” Rook warns as they approach. “It looks like the place has been closed for months.”

Emmrich gives a small shrug. “Perhaps not surprising? Given your friend’s protracted absence.”

“I suppose. But I really think Alba would have done her best to keep the shop open even without Ludia.”

The door is locked, of course, when Rook tries to open it. And her increasingly fervent knocking elicits only silence from within.

She breathes a frustrated huff of air through her nose. “I don’t know what else to suggest. I only know Alba through the shop. I don’t even think she lives in the area. I suppose we’ll just have to—” She gestures vaguely. “—Go back to the hideout?”

Emmrich waves her aside as he steps closer to the door. “If you’ll allow me…”

He crouches down, producing some sort of small metal tool from a pocket as he does. Leaning forward, he slips the tool into the keyhole, his other hand lifting to channel little wisps of magic after it. There’s a little shimmy, a sharp twist, a clank from inside the lock and then suddenly—the door is swinging open.

Rook stares incredulously as Emmrich saunters into the shop. “How do you even know how to do that?!” she hisses, checking over her shoulder that no-one has seen them before slipping in behind him.

“Oh, one picks up a few things over a long and productive life,” he muses airily as if talking about cross-stitch or Orlesian poetry – not breaking-and-entering. “Honestly, as a Shadow Dragon, I’m surprised you don’t know how to do that.”

She pouts. “Yes, well… I have other talents.”

He laughs – a quick, bright sound cutting through the heavy stillness of the apothecary. Once he stops, an eerie silence settles in its place.

“Well—” He clears his throat. “I suppose we better start looking for answers.”

Rook moves behind the counter while Emmrich starts perusing the shelves. Admiring the impressive array of rare ingredients and ready-made potions, the bookcases of instructional encyclopedias lining the far wall. “Gosh, this is a comprehensive collection,” he muses, Rook humming in agreement.

There’s nothing particularly out-of-place in the shop, as far as they can see. Nothing disturbed or broken, nothing obviously missing either. Same for the back office, though Rook can’t shake the feeling of wrongness when she enters. It reminds her too much of Ludia’s apartment all those months ago – those little signs of life despite no-one being around. A ledger sitting open on the desk, quill still poised in its ink-well. Alba’s coat hanging on a hook behind the door. Rook lifts an abandoned cup of coffee from the desk – finds a film of furred mould bobbing atop the dark liquid.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” she says as she puts the mug back.

“Likewise. Is this all there is to the shop?”

“There’s a basement – where Ludia keeps the rare books.”

The door to the basement is easy enough to find, half-hidden behind some heavy drapery, an ‘employees only’ sign tacked to the wood. There must be some enchantment on it because the sconces lining the stairwell begin to glow as soon as the door is opened – emitting a sickly yellow-green colour that reminds Rook of the sky before a thunderstorm. A warning to head home before the lightning is unleashed.

They descend slowly, with the light so poor. White-knuckled grip on the banister as they navigate the narrow treads. With each cautious step, the room below begins to emerge, shapes taking form against the dim light. The walls lined with crowded bookshelves, a taxidermy dracolisk head mounted above a desk in the far corner.

A chair sitting in the centre of the room.

And Alba.

Face slack, neck ruined. Oddly flesh-less with nothing but shrunken skin pulled leathery and taut over bone. Unrecognisable except for the golden rings lining the entire shell of her left ear.

Rook wants to be sick. Or cry. Or scream. Instead she finds herself utterly paralysed, unable to tear her eyes away from the gaunt husk that used to be her friend.

“I’m so sorry, Rook,” comes Emmrich’s voice, a hand coming to rest on her shoulder.

She jerks at the touch, the paralysis broken as her head snaps round to look at him with wide, pleading eyes. “What in the Void happened to her?” she asks, voice quivering.

Emmrich squeezes her shoulder before turning to approach the body, crouches down to press his fingertips into the desiccated flesh of one arm. “A sort of mummification, it would seem.” He leans closer to inspect the shrivelled edge of the neck-wound. “I’m sure you felt the change in the air as soon as we entered the basement. Likely some enchantment to keep the space cold and dry – to better preserve the books. In this case, it seems to have thwarted decomposition.”

“How long?”

“Since she died? Hard to tell but from the condition of the body, I would speculate… a few months?”

Rook can feel a dampness prickling in her eyes. She rubs them with the back of her hand. “We were here – a few months ago. Me and Neve and Lucanis. Alba asked me to stay and find Ludia but I told her I couldn’t. I should have stayed.”

“Rook, you can’t blame—”

“Maybe she would still be alive if I’d only—” She sobs, just once. But shockingly loud in the basement’s unnatural stillness. She can feel another sob threatening to slip loose, clamps a hand over her mouth to keep it all inside. She won’t let herself break down, not now.

Emmrich reaches for her as he moves closer, arms raising as if to pull her into an embrace.

“No,” she warns with an outstretched palm. “I need to—I need to get through this.” She takes a deep, steadying breath. “We’re going to find out what we can, we’re going to reconvene with the others. And then later… I think I’ll want a hug later if that’s alright, Emmrich.”

“That is quite alright, Rook”

She smiles at him weakly, takes a few more long breaths until the prickling in her eyes begins to subside. When she finally starts to feel a little steadier, she steps up to the body. Forces herself to take in the kind of details that Neve might ask about later – the rope tied around ankles and wrists, the angle of the gashes along the throat. For some reason, Alba isn’t wearing shoes.

Rook isn’t sure what is and isn’t important so she tries to memorise it all – sealing an image in her mind despite knowing how painfully it will linger, haunting in its persistence. But it’ll be worth it if Neve gets the information she needs.

“We should speak with her,” she says once she’s sure she’s catalogued everything.

Emmrich nods. “Of course.” Pushing up his sleeves a little as he moves to Alba’s side. “You can leave if you’d prefer. I can easily do this on my own. There’s no need to put yourself through this.”

Rook doesn’t move. “No. I think I need to be here. I think I owe Alba that much.”

It’s clear from the tight pinch of his expression that he doesn’t approve, that he thinks Rook is just being stubborn – hurting herself out of a misguided sense of contrition. But Rook knows she has to do this. Has to look Alba in the face and hear her last words or else she’s sure the guilt will settle, fester.

The familiar tendrils of green begin to emerge as Emmrich lifts his arms. Then little showers of silvery sparks that seem to tremble and ebb in time with the jangling of Emmrich’s bangles. A dramatic sweep of his hands pulls the magic into a pulsing whorl of light, cascading over the body until it settles like a second skin over dried flesh.

“Let flame rekindle your sight,” he chants, “let breath and light rise again!”

The chair creaks as the body suddenly convulses, ropes straining against the fitful thrashing of limbs. Eyes snap open, the chest heaves—

And Alba screams.

Ashur and Tarquin look stricken as they take in the sheer expanse of notes Neve has spread across the hideout’s central table. The official reports outlining each murder in deep but impersonal detail. Neve’s more nuanced analysis scribbled in the margins. Sketches and maps and a sort of spider-webbed diagram where Neve has been trying to link together all the victims.

Rufus’s death was painful enough but now, with all these murders seemingly connected – it is a far deeper well of suffering.

“Well, shit,” Tarquin says.

Lucanis can only nod in agreement.

“I didn’t even know Festus was dead,” Tarquin continues, lifting the former Templar’s report from the pile. “He was supposed to be moving to Dubris for a new job – I thought he’d just left early.” He picks up another report. “Fuck, Severo?! We never would have pulled off the Magnis job without his information! This is—fuck!” Tarquin scrubs a hand down his face, his growing anger clear in the building tension in his jaw.

“There’s a lot of good people here,” Ashur comments as he reads through the names. “I just… can’t believe we didn’t put it all together earlier.”

Neve rearranges her notes as Tarquin and Ashur sort through them. “There’s been a lot going on. The demons from Solas’s ritual, then the dragon. The Venatori coup. Is it any wonder that things slipped our notice? Especially considering that many of these people were only one-time informants. Just on the fringes.”

“Fringes or not – these people deserved gratitude for helping us. And instead they got—” He gestures to a coroner’s report, the meticulously drawn anatomical sketch of a gaping neck wound.

“Shit,” Tarquin repeats.

Neve straightens, a bright fierceness coming to her eyes as she fixes on Ashur and Tarquin. “Maybe we missed it before but what matters is we know now. Which means we need to act. And quickly. We should reach out to all our informants – anyone we can think of who has ever given aid to the Dragons. See who else has fallen victim to this killer. Warn everyone else.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Tarquin says, still sorting through the papers.

“And Ashur, you might want to lay low for a while,” Neve advises. “We suspect the killer is in it for the money and, given your bounty these days, you’re likely the target.”

It’s hard to read Ashur’s expression with his mask in place but Lucanis can tell from the slope of his eyes, the deep furrow of his brow, that he finds Neve’s suggestion distasteful. “If I hid from my duty every time someone threatened my life, I would never get anything done.”

But Neve is not one to back down so easily. “It’s different this time, Ashur! We don’t know what information this murderer has been able to gather from his victims – he might actually have some strong leads on how to find you!”

“Impossible. I don’t think—”

“This is odd,” Tarquin interrupts, too distracted by Neve’s notes to take much interest in Neve and Ashur’s burgeoning argument.

“What’s odd?” Neve asks.

“This dock worker, this seamstress, both of these shop owners—” Tarquin flicks through a small pile of reports he’s put to the side. “All of these victims were former slaves. All from the Nessus job.”

“What’s the Nessus job?” Lucanis asks when all the others seem to nod in recognition.

“About three years ago, a Venatori slave ring was dismantled in Nessus,” Neve explains. “Over 20 slaves freed in one day. Rook’s doing. It was why she had to leave Minrathous – the Venatori were crawling all over the place trying to find her.”

He frowns, unnerved by the coincidence. For so many victims to be linked so intimately. And to Rook as well. There’s something there, he realises – the little snippets that Neve has told him about the victims suddenly gravitating together in his mind, coming together to form a rather unsettling whole. Stepping closer to the table, he starts actually reading through Neve’s notes for the first time. Surprised at how many things seem familiar to him.

“This shopkeeper,” he says, passing Neve a report, “their shop is at the Amos Market. That’s Rook’s favourite market. And look at these mages—” A few more reports placed in her hands. “—all from the Vol Dorma circle.”

“Rook’s circle,” Neve breathes with an edge of dread, catching on to Lucanis’s train of thought.

He turns to Tarquin next. “This Magnis job you mentioned, did Rook work on that one too?”

Tarquin pauses a moment to think then, “yeah. I mean – the Viper was the one who actually pulled it off but… I think Rook did some of the information-gathering for it.”

It’s all beginning to fall into place now – a rapidly tumbling line of dominoes that leaves Lucanis with a growing pit of panic. The Nessus slaves, the Magnis informant. A smattering of mages all from the Vol Dorma circle. Rufus. Ludia. All linked to one person – and not the Viper.

“It’s Rook. The target is Rook.”

Lucanis turns from the table – and runs.

Chapter Text

There’s an oddly metallic twinge to Alba’s screams. An unnaturalness to the sound as Emmrich’s necromantic magic compensates for the broken vocal cords. It reminds Rook a little of the screech of parrying blades, that ear-splitting shriek as metal drags along metal.

“Alba, it’s me,” Rook says as she drops to her knees next to the wailing corpse. “It’s Eleri. Please. Please calm down.”

The screams do not abate. Just the same shrill sharpness that seems to pierce right behind the eyes.

“Alba, please,” Rook pleads before gingerly lifting a hand. Hesitating just a moment before she’s bringing it to Alba’s withered cheek, stroking her thumb across the too sharp jut of her cheekbone.

The sound immediately stops, milky eyes snapping towards Rook as if Alba can actually see her. Startling Rook with the sudden movement, the unnerving intensity of her pupil-less gaze.

“Run,” Alba wheezes through peeled lips, head quivering above its tattered neck. “He’s coming for you.”

“You mean the Templar?” Rook asks, “the Templar that’s been searching for the Shadow Dragons.”

“No, not the Shadow Dragons. You, Eleri. He’s after you.”

“What?!”

There’s no warning before Emmrich goes flying.

No shout, no movement. Only one moment he’s standing just behind her and the next he’s hurtling forward. Hand darting out to break his fall, a grinding snap as his wrist breaks instead.

A scream.

A thud.

A bloom of red blossoming at the back of his head and Rook is still trying to understand what’s happening.

She turns too late, catches only a glimpse of metal before an explosion of pain bursts along her cheek. Her head hits the ground – a sharp crack as her skull meets flagstones. When she looks up through tear-blurred eyes, all she can see is an armoured figure looming over her.

Magic immediately rushes to her hands, that familiar surge of electricity that sparks across her skin before balling in her palms – the quick inhale of breath before she releases her lightening—

And then—nothing.

Sparks die, the light blinks out. And Rook is gripped with a numbness so yawning and empty she can scarcely breathe.

She tries to pull for her magic again but can’t. Reaching for something that will not answer back no matter how desperately she grasps for it. No surge of heat, no flow of energy. Just a sterile emptiness and the urgent grip of panic when she realises—it’s gone.

Her magic is gone.

A fist curls around her neck, lifts her from the ground until she’s eye-to-eye with the cold angles of a sneering face.

“You Tevinter mages are all the same,” he jeers. “You never see it coming.”

She reaches for the dagger at her waist but he notices the movement, smashing her head-first into the stone wall before she can get her grip on the pommel. Stars burst behind her eyes, a trickle of blood dripping down the side of her face, and she barely has the time to even feel the pain before he’s doing it again.

Once. Twice.

And then everything goes black.

Lucanis weaves through the crowds of the Fountain District with the kind of speed and poise he normally reserves for tracking down targets. Barely making a ripple as he glides through the sea of people. Behind him, he can hear Neve following. A constant litany of ‘excuse me’s and ‘thank you’s as she forces her way passed the throngs of shoppers.

“I don’t understand why we’re rushing,” she says once she’s caught up to him. “Even if Rook is the target, there’s no reason to think she’s in any imminent danger.”

He shakes his head, anxiety rippling across his features. “Last night – and again this morning. I had this… feeling. That something isn’t right.”

“We’ve all had that feeling, Lucanis. It doesn’t mean it’s true.”

He doesn’t respond. Torn between admitting that Neve is likely right – and knowing with absolute certainty that she isn’t. Her appeal to rationality conflicting with every single instinct in his body telling him that Rook is in danger.

He does not slow down.

When they finally reach Ludia’s shop, Lucanis is struck with how different it looks since the last time they were here. Identical in the essentials, perhaps - the same green storefront, the same smart signage. But there’s a sort of neglected dinginess that makes it stand out between the impeccable frontages of its neighbours.

“It’s closed,” he says as they approach, gesturing at the shuttered windows.

“Maybe Alba closed shop when Rook came to talk.”

“It’s been closed some time.”

Neve only nods.

The door is unlocked when they try the handle, swinging open to reveal the familiar interior of the apothecary. The walls lined with shelves, the seemingly endless rows of neatly-labelled bottles. Stuffier than the last time they were here. Choked with old air.

“Rook!” Lucanis shouts as he strides across the shop, towards the door he can see behind the counter. “Rook?!”

The door leads to an office – just as empty as the shop. Nothing out of place, nothing even remotely alarming. Just the usual mess of everyday activity. Somehow managing to heighten his unease all the same. Crowding him at the edge of a precipice he cannot see, knowing that something is wrong but not knowing exactly how.

“Maybe they went somewhere else to talk – somewhere more private,” Neve speculates as she sidles into the office beside him. “Or maybe Alba wasn’t here at all, and Emmrich and Rook are on their way to the Hideout as we speak. We could head back—”

“No!” Spite suddenly snarls through Lucanis’s mouth, a puff of purple billowing from the corners of his dark, searching eyes. “Rook is here. I can feel the dagger.”

It’s always a little disorientating when Spite takes over his body, even more so when he abruptly retreats – that rushing ebb and flow of consciousness. Although there is some comfort, at least, in knowing that Spite can sense Rook nearby. “Come,” Lucanis says, turning back into the main shop, “there must be something we’re missing.”

It doesn’t take them long to find the second door, partly obscured by heavy brocade. Revealing behind it the narrow staircase leading to a dimly-lit basement.

The stairs are steep enough that even in his hurry, Lucanis has to move slowly. His anxiety thrumming in his chest like a trapped bird as the room below gradually materialises from the sallow gloom. Heavy wooden bookshelves along the walls, a figure tied to a chair—

And Emmrich, lying face down on the floor.

“Mierda,” Lucanis cries before hurrying the last few steps to Emmrich’s side. “Emmrich, Emmrich!” He falls to his knees. “Can you hear me?”

Pressing two fingers against Emmrich’s neck, he’s relieved to find a steady pulse there. Frowns a little when he pulls his hand back and finds his gloves stained a gaudy red. Lines of blood curling around Emmrich’s neck as it drips steadily from the wound at the back of his head. “Neve, quick. Emmrich’s hurt. Badly.”

A few hurried steps and she’s there beside him, coming to a kneel, hand raising to the back of Emmrich’s head as a gentle green-ish glow starts to pulse in her palms. It wavers a little, a blooming brightness followed by a jerking stutter and then—Neve growls as the light fades; her healing magic hasn’t been the same since the dragon attack.

“Shit, shit,” she mutters, reaching a hand into the pouch on her belt to pull out a potion. “Help me turn him over.”

They carefully roll Emmrich until he’s propped in Neve’s lap, face bruised from the fall, blood smeared across his skin from where it’s pooled across the flagstones. One arm flops against his chest as the body settles, wrist bent at a sickeningly unnatural angle. “Oh, maker,” Neve mutters, lifting the potion to his lips.

Lucanis stands once he’s satisfied Neve has Emmrich well in-hand, eyes flitting across the basement in search of Rook.

He finds nothing – apart from Alba, bound and broken. The untouched shelves of books. A tidy desk nestled in the corner of the room. And then – there – against a section of bare wall—

Blood dripping down the stones. A red starburst as if from a sudden cough.

“No, no, no, no,” he repeats, stepping closer towards the blood splatter, wrenching off a glove to find the blood still tacky beneath his fingertips.

The anxiety he’d felt before is quickly swallowed as other emotions surge to the fore. Confusion, as he tries to piece together what’s happened. Fear, as his mind conjures scenario after scenario of Rook’s fate. Anger, mostly, that he’d failed to reach her in time.

“You said she was here, Spite!” he shouts, feeling oddly betrayed. “You said you could feel her!”

The demon’s anger flares alongside his own – as angered by the accusation as he is by Rook’s loss. A painful pressure suddenly builds behind the eyes, a thrust of energy sparking down the limbs. And Lucanis’s mind is too muddled to resist as Spite takes control of Lucanis’s body. “She was here,” Spite growls, “I can feel her magic. Feel the dagger.”

He turns, head snapping from side to side as he tries to spot what Lucanis may have missed – brows knotting low with frustration as he sees the same nothing, whorls of purple unspooling from his narrow-eyed glare.

“Hey,” Neve gentles, lowering Emmrich to the floor so she can slowly rise. “Spite, look at me. That’s it. We are going to find Rook. Understand? But right now I need you to focus. You say you can feel the lyrium dagger – can you show me where?”

There’s another flare of purple as Spite moves, pulled by that throb of now-familiar ancient magic. His motions sharper than when Lucanis is in control. He crouches next to the nearest bookcase, reaches into the bottom-most shelf to pull out the lyrium dagger tucked on top of the books. He hands it to Neve.

“She hid it for us. She knew she was in trouble and she hid it for us.” Neve sighs, tucks the dagger into her belt, lifts a hand until it rests against Spite’s cheek. “Spite, can I have Lucanis back now please? We need to get Emmrich to a healer and I can’t carry him on my own.”

“We need to find Rook!” Spite protests, pulling back from Neve’s touch.

“I know, Spite, and we will. But Emmrich’s in bad shape – his skull is fractured and his wrist is broken. He needs a healer.”

Spite wants to object, to storm passed her out of the apothecary and find Rook himself – if Neve is so determined to stay behind and fuss over Emmrich instead. But then a thought emerges, accompanied by a niggling sensation at that spot in his chest where Lucanis always seems to be feeling something. A thought of Curiosity. How disappointed the spirit would be if Spite let something bad happen to Emmrich. How disappointed Rook would be as well. They would want him to help. 

“Fine,” he agrees with a petulant huff of breath. “Help Emmrich now. Then find Rook.”

“I promise.”

He scowls. “Lucanis doesn’t like promises.”

Spite pulls back, lets the tendrils of his control slip from Lucanis’s limbs to curl up again at the back of his skull. When Lucanis takes a gasp of breath, he can feel Spite’s awareness shifting behind his nasal bones, wriggling with uneasiness. Clearly dissatisfied but at least willing to cooperate.

“Lucanis?” Neve asks with a tentative step forward

“It’s me,” he says flatly, stepping around her towards Emmrich, dropping to his knees to gather the unconscious body in his arms.

She watches him a moment before, “you were right.” An apologetic tremble colouring the edge of her words. And even without seeing her, he knows what she must look like – the exact slope of her eyes, the downturned hook to her mouth.

“I know.”

“And I’m sorry.”

He sighs before lifting Emmrich from the ground, taking extra care to rest his injured head in the crook of his neck. “I know.”

“We’re going to get her back.”

He finally turns to look at her, whatever biting retort he’d planned dissolving on the tip of his tongue as he sees just how wretched she looks. Almost as wretched as he feels. In the end he only nods, turning away from her to head towards the stairs.

After all, there’s nothing more for him to say.

Ashur gives Lucanis a look as he walks into the bedroom where Emmrich is waiting. Something like pity in the softness of his eyes, the purse of his lips. Though there’s signs of his own grief there too – too much tension in the straight pull of his brows. It’s only a fleeting glance before Ashur’s attention is drawn to Emmrich’s unconscious body, though long enough to cause something inside Lucanis to rankle. Because if Ashur pities him, it means there’s something pitiable about him. It means it must be true that Rook is gone. Her absence not just some conjuration from the same part of his mind that still likes to torture him with visions of the Ossuary – of Zara and blood magic and a year of suffering.

He watches as Ashur funnels whorls of silver slight into Emmrich’s body, careful hands pulling his broken wrist back into alignment, gently cupping the back of his shattered skull. He listens as Neve explains to Ashur what they found in the apothecary, another murder victim to add to their list, the smear of blood where Rook was supposed to be. Finally, he sees as Emmrich’s eyes blink slowly open – a sudden flash of panic causing Emmrich’s body to tense before he takes in his surroundings and sinks into the bed with a tired sigh.

There’d been a part of Lucanis that had hoped Emmrich’s return to consciousness would bring them answers. Their target’s name, motives. Who’s pulling the strings, paying the gold. At the very least, a more detailed description of the killer beyond what Rook had managed to get from Rufus on the morgue’s examination table. Instead Emmrich has frustratingly little – it all happened so fast. Assaulted from behind, he’d only caught the briefest glimpse of Rook being hauled to her feet by an armoured assailant. Heard her pained cries as she’d been slammed against the wall again and again.

Lucanis clenches his fists until his palms hurt with the bite of his nails.

Once he’s sure he’s heard all he needs to from Emmrich, he slinks out of Rook’s guest room – the others too preoccupied with checking Emmrich’s wounds to notice. Wandering aimlessly, he ends up in the sitting room, drops heavily into the armchair next to the fireplace, limbs suddenly leaden with the kind of fatigue he normally associates with hours of combat.

There’s a tremour in his left leg as he sits – an impatient shake of frustration that thrums in time with Spite’s restless stirring behind the bridge of his nose.

We need. To find. Rook, Spite growls inside his head.

We don’t know where she is, Lucanis replies, pressing his hand into his knee until it stills.

Find her.

We can’t just—

“Lucanis?” Neve interrupts, though she can’t have known he and Spite were talking.

He raises his head with a hmm, eyes not really focusing on her (or really anything) as she approaches.

“I said that I can cook something, if you’re hungry,” she says, apparently for the second time.

“Oh, no,” he responds with a shake of his head, then, “thank you,” when he notices the tightness in her expression.

“I suppose my cooking would just make the situation worse.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m just… not hungry.”

“No, I know. I was… trying to be funny. I don’t know why.”

“Rook would have done the same.”

A bitter laugh, some of the tightness in her face softening with a wry smile. “Yes, she would have.”

There’s a long silence as Neve walks across the room, only now remembering to take off her rain-damp jacket, dropping it unceremoniously on the back of the settee before she sits down in the armchair next to Lucanis. “I’m sure she’s—”

“Don’t.” He raises a palm. “Just… don’t.”

She nods in understanding. Sits with him for a time in their shared silence. Oddly comforting, actually. Even Spite seemingly soothed by her mere proximity, no longer rattling so impatiently at the front of his skull.

“You know I thought I saw something,” he finally offers to the room. Not really speaking to Neve. Just offering a confession in hopes that it might further sooth his roiling thoughts. “All those months ago, at Ludia’s apartments. I thought I saw something out of the window. Then again, as we walked to the Crooked Well. I was so certain that someone was watching us. But I didn’t trust my instincts back then. After the Ossuary. With Spite so new. I didn’t trust myself. So I just… let it go.”

Neve doesn’t respond. Perceptive enough to know that he’s not really seeking her input.

“But then I felt it again. Last night. And this morning. I knew something was wrong. But I still let it go.”

“You still don’t trust your instincts?”

“I don’t know. I thought I did. Now that Spite and I have come to our new… understanding. But I didn’t… why didn’t I do something?”

“Done what, Lucanis?” she asks with a shake and a scowl. “What exactly should you have done? Unlikely anything that would have made a difference.” She sighs, turning in her seat to face him more fully. “You seem determined to blame yourself, and I understand the impulse, I do. I’m blaming myself for a lot of things right now too. But do you actually think there’s anything you could have done differently to change what happened?”

His lips pull thin. She’s right of course. As she usually is. No matter how many times he plays the last few days’ events over and over in his mind – there really is nothing he could have done differently to keep Rook safe. His actions entirely logical given the information available to them all at the time. And yet – while it’s easy enough to accept that he didn’t do anything wrong. There’s still a lingering certainty that perhaps… he is something wrong. That there’s something intrinsic to him that’s led them to this ruin.

“I think sometimes that I might be cursed,” he says, confession coming easier to him now that he’s started.

Neve smirks. “I never took you for the superstitious type.”

“I’m not. Or at least… I didn’t think I was, before the Ossuary. But… how else can I explain—?” He gestures vaguely. “All my life, all I know is death.”

“You’re more than just death,” she says, although he catches the quick flicker of… something behind her eyes as she speaks. A flash of guilt perhaps? After all, she herself had long thought of him as only the mage-killer. She never would have suggested recruiting him otherwise.

“I lost my parents when I was six, did you know that?”

She shifts a little in her seat, a breath escaping with a hiss between her teeth. “I didn’t realise you were so young.”

“Then my grandfather. My aunts and uncles. Cousins. Some even younger than I was.” He pauses as a flash of faces stir in his memory. No concrete features, not anymore. Just an indistinct blur of familiarity. “In only a few years, I lost almost everyone I’d ever known. All I had was Caterina and Illario. For a long time, all I had was Caterina and Illario. And then, finally – there was Rook.” His voice cracks on her name. “I had Rook. And now…”

“We are going to get her back.”

“She might already be dead.”

“She’s not.”

A frustrated growl rumbles at the back of his throat. “How can you be so certain?”

“Because if they wanted her dead, we would have found her body in that basement,” she says, so sure and unwavering.

And it helps. Hearing the confidence in her voice. Seeing the steely conviction in her eyes. Because Neve is like him – in a lot of ways. Prone to cynicism. To cold, hard practicality. And if she truly thought it likely that Rook was dead, she wouldn’t be trying so fervently to persuade him otherwise.

“Alright – so Rook is alive,” he concedes. “How do we find her? What do we do now?”

“We keep doing what we’ve already been doing. We follow the leads; we find this Templar. Rook’s kidnapping doesn’t change anything.”

He chuckles a hollow laugh, something dark and rough and entirely devoid of humour. Because Neve is mad if she thinks nothing has changed.

Maybe nothing has changed in their investigation. Maybe the steps to solving a kidnapping are the same as solving a murder. But the outcome—Lucanis knows for a fact, the outcome of the investigation is now very different.

He’d planned on a swift, clean kill before. A deft slide of his dagger between the fourth and fifth ribs. Something simple and quick so they can be on their way – rejoin their friends in the Hossberg Wetlands as soon as possible. But there’ll be nothing swift about the Templar’s death now – not now that he’s come for Rook, not now that he’s hurt her. Now it’ll be slow. Lingering. The steady letting of blood. The meticulous peeling of skin.

After all, they call him the Demon of Vyrantium – why not live up to the moniker?

Chapter Text

Consciousness comes to Rook slowly. A kindness, perhaps. Because once it comes, the pain comes with it. A tight burn in her cheek from the slap of a gauntleted fist. A persistent throbbing in her head from being slammed against the wall. Pressure pushing so steel-sharp and heavy behind the eyes, Rook would give anything just to crack open her skull and ease the pain. 

From the gentle jostling and the whir of turning wheels, she gathers she must be in some sort of carriage or wagon. The wooden surface beneath her cheek pitching with a steady rhythm. But not in Minrathous, not anymore. The thud of horses’ hooves too dull to be travelling over the city’s paved roads – she must be out in the countryside.

And she is not alone.

Beneath the sounds of the wagon, she can hear the even rumble of someone breathing. Hear the stretch of leather and the light clink of metal against wood as a body shifts nearby. Her assailant, presumably. This Southern Templar they’ve been trying to track. With his smug face and towering figure. All long limbs and harsh angles. Sharp. Like the jagged edge when something brittle is snapped in two.

He'd caught her unawares before – distracted by Alba’s frenzied wailing. Smote her before she’d even had the chance to reach for her spellblade. She’s hoping now she can return the favour. If she keeps her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Maybe she can unleash her lightening and escape before he even realises she’s awake.

She reaches for her magic – that familiar tension stretching inside of her, pulled taut like the strings of a harp. Only the barest pluck needed for her body to thrum with the same resonance as the Veil.

Except it won’t work.

Everything feels muted, stiff. No reverberation of energy, no crescendo of magic erupting from the Fade to sing along her veins. Just a heavy dullness. The music muffled.

“I can feel it, you know,” a gruff voice remarks. “You trying to reach your magic. But it’s not there.” A mirthless chuckle. “Too much magebane in your system.”

Her eyes blink open, finding his face in the gloom of the covered wagon. Long nose, high cheeks. Sneering at her like he’d done back in the basement – as his fist had crushed the air from her windpipe. Her throat aches with remembered pain.

“How long were you going to pretend to be asleep?” he asks with a softly curling smile.

And it’s odd – the casual easiness of his tone, the gentle teasing in his question. As if they’re simply friends, taking a long journey together. Not a murderer and his next victim.

It adds a layer of confusion on top of the rising tide of panic that’s beginning to swell. An uncomfortable whorl of emotions as she takes in her situation – injured, trapped, poisoned. Although if this man wants to feign affability, Rook is more than capable of indulging him. It would not be the first time she’s quashed her feelings beneath a façade of cool indifference to protect herself.

She shrugs. Not an easy gesture when lying on her side, arms bound behind her back. “Until an opportunity presented itself, I suppose.”

His smile curls higher. “An opportunity to—what? Kill me?”

“Something like that.”

A laugh wheezes wetly from the back of his throat. “You would have been waiting a long time then.”

“I can be patient.”

He laughs again. “Yeah? Well patience is going to get you fuck-all when you’re dead. Which you will be. Very soon.”

A flash of confusion cuts through the simmering anxiety for a moment. “If you want me dead, why haven’t you killed me already?”

“Lady, I don’t want you dead. I don’t even know who the fuck you are. I just know that you pissed off some very powerful people. I hand you over to them, I get paid. A lot.”

“How much?”

One brow arches sharply, a wide-eyed delight in his expression that makes it clear he finds her question amusing. “Why? You going to try and give me a counteroffer in exchange for your life?”

“No. I’m just curious – whether I should be flattered or offended.”

“Six thousand gold.”

She purses her lips as she nods. “That’s not bad, I suppose.”

“You going to offer me more? Six thousand and one gold to set you free?”

“And would you accept such an offer if I made it?”

“Of course not. The people who are paying me—after this job, there’ll be more jobs, more money. Can you offer me the same?”

“No. I’m not going to offer you anything,” she says airily, then adds with a bite, “I’m going to kill you.”

Another wet rattle of a laugh, gurgling at the back of his throat. “You’re funny!” He slaps a hand against his knee. “None of those people I killed said you were funny.”

There’s a sudden clench in her chest when he mentions the dead. An aching wave of grief as she’s reminded of all those people who were murdered solely because they were unlucky enough to know her, know about her. She feels a prickling at the corners of her eyes – quickly blinks away the spring of tears. Desperate not to give this man the satisfaction of a reaction.

“So, who are they then?” she asks, striving for the same lightness as she’d spoken with before, though she can hear the strain beginning to pull at the edges of her voice. “Who are these generous patrons willing to pay so much money for me?”

He arches his brow again, looking mostly curious but maybe with a hint of suspicion in the tight set of his eyes. “Does it matter? You’re going to be dead soon anyway.”

“Well, if I’m going to die, it seems only common courtesy to let me know who is going to kill me.”

He scoffs; suspicion replaced with a wry amusement. “I don’t owe you any courtesy.”

But there’s something else there as well, behind the bluster and the smile. A quick blur of something in the eyes. Doubt, perhaps. Or embarrassment. “You don’t know, do you?” she asks when it finally dawns on her. “You don’t know who’s paying you.”

There’s a dismissive wave of his hand. “Some rich mage.”

“That doesn’t really whittle it down in Tevinter. Venatori, I assume?”

“I don’t know!” he snaps, much louder than before, brows pinching in frustration. Then a sudden shift in his expression, as if uncomfortable with his own loss of temper. He takes a long breath, looses it slowly between gritted teeth. “I don’t care about all that politics stuff. Just as long as I get paid.”

“A Templar from the southern Chantry doesn’t care if he’s working for fanatical Tevinter cultists?”

For the first time since they started talking, he breaks eye contact. Glancing quickly to the side before his head falls back to thud against the wagon’s wall. “The Chantry turned its back on the Templars a long time ago – I owe it even less than I owe you.”

It is a curious moment, watching as the Templar’s posture subtly shifts. Shoulders drooping ever so slightly, hands coming to rest in his lap in an almost protective gesture – a strange smallness taking hold. Exploitable, perhaps, if she chooses her words carefully. “I’m sorry,” she offers, voice gentle, “that can’t have been easy, being abandoned by the—”

“Don’t,” he warns, head snapping back to look at her again. “Don’t pretend to care. Don’t… give me sympathy. I’m not an idiot, alright. I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make me like you. Because you think that if I like you, I’ll let you go.”

A slow smirk spreads across her face, undeterred by his sudden severity. “I don’t think you’re going to let me go, under any circumstances. I’m not that delusional.” The smirk broadens. “Although I do think you like me.”

Another one of those wet laughs, posture easing. “And how d’you figure that?”

“Because no matter how much I needle you, you’re still answering my questions.”

He purses his lips in consideration for a moment, then curves them in a smirk that mimics her own. “Yeah, well… maybe I do like you. Most people just cry the whole time. You’re at least… fun.”

“Then think how much you’ll miss me when you hand me over to be killed.”

More laughter. “Somehow, I think I’ll manage. Besides—” He reaches into his nearby pack to pull out a familiar stiletto, smirk stretching into a toothy grin as he brandishes it with a flourish. “—at least I’ll have this pretty souvenir to remember you by.”

Rook sucks in a breath. Her mask of ease almost immediately cracking as she feels a sudden burn of anger. Watching in contempt as he rotates the dagger in his hands, eyes narrowing as his clumsy, calloused fingers stroke along the delicately engraved quillon. “That’s not for you,” she says, sharper than she’d intended. “That was a gift.”

“I know,” he says with a casual roll of one shoulder, balancing the dagger on his finger as if to show off the balance. “I watched your gentleman friend slip it into your boot. It’s how I knew to look for it. Quite a… tender moment, if I recall. Although when he fell to his knees in front of you, I had hoped to see something a bit more… titillating.”

The burn of anger flares hotter. “Fuck you.”

He only laughs. “I mean… I was already frustrated from the night before. Leaving your curtains open like a fucking tease. Taking your lover to your bed. And then just… sleeping. I deserved a good show after all those months spent tracking you down.”

There’s a sharp prickling under her skin, a flushed heat in her face – not just the anger but revulsion. That he’s been following her, watching her. Lurking at the edges of her most intimate moments.

It’s harder now to keep the façade in place – as that disgusting wet laugh gurgles again in the Templar’s throat, as he playfully spins Lucanis’s dagger in his long, dirtied fingers. Taunting her with an expression of smug condescension. In that moment she wants nothing more than to set him on fire, sit back and watch with satisfaction as his skin blackens to charcoal, as his limbs thrash and his screams—

She feels something thrum.

A brief quaver of energy that quiets almost as soon as it sounds.

Her stomach lurches with something like hopefulness, a quick patter of excitement as the grip of silence in her chest begins to loosen. Reaching within, she gives a tentative pull. Waits an agonizingly long second until – there – a growing vibration, joined by a harmony, and then—a sudden a rush of heat surges to her fingertips. Just a whisper at first then a sudden clash of power.

The Templar stops laughing, abruptly lunging towards her as something cold and empty washes over her body.

No, no, no. Not again. Not again.

The fire winks into nothingness, fingertips turning numb with the sudden absence of her magic. A hollow void settling into the space where she can normally feel the hum of the Veil.

Fingers wrap around her neck, pinning her to the wooden floor of the wagon. Tightening their grip until she’s desperate for breath. “You fucking bitch,” he snarls, staring straight into her eyes as her vision starts to blur at the edges. A long, terrifying moment where all she can see is the utter hatred of the man looming over her.

And then everything fades to blackness.

Rana sends them to a tall, weasel-faced man in the Black Market. Skinny but in a lean-muscled sort of way. Put together with a sort of fussiness that Lucanis would not have expected from a Dock Town smuggler; his long hair swept back with pomade, well-tailored leathers managing to both show off his figure while concealing a number of small daggers. Or at least, they would be concealed if one was not as well-versed at spotting such things as Lucanis.

His smile is friendly enough when Lucanis enters the shop alongside Neve and Emmrich. Though Lucanis doesn’t miss the slight dip of the man’s brows. A flicker of cautious curiosity. Not surprising, perhaps, given that the three of them tend to stand out in Minrathous; it’s only wise to be wary of them.

“Gus, I assume?” Neve asks, stepping up to the counter at the centre of the room.

A slow nod. “And you’re Detective Gallus,” Gus says, uncrossing his arms to lean forward against the counter, hips cocked in what seems to Lucanis as an exaggerated attempt at looking casual. “You know, I’d always wondered whether you’d end up in my shop one day.”

“Well, here I am. What an exciting day for the both of us.”

Lucanis starts to circle around the room, absently noting the merchandise on offer. Nothing particularly remarkable; an assortment of armour and weaponry, mostly. A lot of it dwarven, from the looks of it. Occasionally there’s a shelf laden with poisons and potions, a few with a variety of tools. Surprisingly mundane for the Black Market.

“We’re looking for a Templar,” Neve explains.

“Then you’re in the wrong part of town,” Gus counters with a thin laugh, “you tried the Circle District?”

“I’m looking for a southern Templar. Tall, dark. He’s been in the city at least a few months.”

Gus’s face scrunches, nose wrinkling disdainfully. “What makes you think I’d know a southern Chantry type?”

“Not only do I think you know this Templar; I think you’ve been supplying him with lyrium.”

There’s a pause as Gus considers her, face suddenly blank. Perhaps debating how much he should admit to, how much Neve already knows. “Look, I just sell the stuff. I’m not asking for people’s life stories. How am I supposed to know who’s a Templar?”

Lucanis continues his slow circuit, eyes roving over an impressive array of daggers standing upright in a display rack.

“He would have had an unusual accent for these parts,” Neve argues. “Unusual armour? I would have thought that would stand out.”

Gus shrugs. “What can I say? I’m just not that observant.”

There’s a dirk in a lustrous black metal at the end of the display rack, instantly drawing Lucanis’s attention. A sudden lurch in his stomach as he recognises the distinctly Tevinter design – elegantly tapering blade, wine-red leather wrapped around the pommel. As familiar to him as any of his own blades. He grabs it with a growl—turns on the shopkeeper before he even realises what he’s doing.

Gus has better reflexes than Lucanis would have expected, managing to slip a dagger from his vambrace before Lucanis can get his hands on him. Gus thrusts up with the blade, aiming for the exposed skin of Lucanis’s neck. But while Gus’s reflexes are fast, Lucanis’s are faster, and he grabs Gus’s wrist and twistsuntil something crunches. Gus cries out in pain as his dagger clatters to the floor.

“Where did you get this spellblade?” Lucanis snarls, low and dangerous.

“What spellblade?!”

Lucanis spins Gus until he can pin him onto the countertop, bringing the spellblade to press against his throat. “This spellblade.”

“Lucanis?” Neve asks with alarm, hand dropping to rest on her stave.

“It’s Rook’s spellblade, Neve.”

Gus whimpers when Lucanis pushes hard enough to break skin. Just a thin line of red, not deep enough yet to pebble with blood. A warning, then, rather than outright threat.

“I don’t know any Rook,” Gus murmurs, trying hard not to bob his throat too much as he speaks. “Some guy brought it in yesterday. With a bunch of other daggers.”

“Did he exchange them for lyrium?” Neve asks, stepping closer.

“Ugh, yeah actually, yeah, I think he did.”

“Where can we find him?”

Gus swallows, flinching as it presses his skin into the edge of Rook’s spellblade. “Come on, Gallus. It’s not like I take down home addresses for everyone who comes into the shop!”

“Well, you better think of something you can give us, Gus, because I’m not sure my friend here is going to let up unless we get some useful information out of you.”

To prove her point, Lucanis slides the blade just enough to draw a trickle of blood. Watches with grim satisfaction as a thin rivulet snakes down Gus’s neck to rest in the hollow of his collarbone. From the corner of his eye, Lucanis can see the faintest whisps of purple smoke begin to curl.

Gus’s eyes fall wide. “Alright, alright!” he cries. “I’ll tell you everything I know! Just… put the damn dagger down!”

Lucanis holds on for a moment longer, eyes boring into Gus’s as if daring him to try and fight back.

A hand comes to rest on his forearm. “Lucanis?” Neve prompts.

With one final quick nick of the skin, he relents. Withdrawing Rook’s blade but keeping Gus pinned.

“H-he’s been coming every two weeks for the last f-four months,” Gus explains, tripping over his words in his hurry. “Always buying lyrium. Sometimes bringing things to sell.”

“And his name?” Neve prompts.

“Jon. That’s all he ever gave me. Just Jon.”

“And where can we find him?”

“How am I supposed to know?!” he whines, petulant enough to immediately test Lucanis’s patience.

“I will slice you from navel to nose,” Lucanis warns as he raises Rook’s blade again.

“No!” Gus pleads, “please, please. I don’t know where he lives – I’m telling the truth! But sometimes—sometimes he sends this kid to pick up the lyrium for him. I’m pretty sure it’s him, at least. It’s his usual order. And the kid—I know the kid. Or at least I recognise him. His father owns the boarding house on Fosse street. If I were a betting man, I’d bet you find your Templar there.”

Lucanis turns his head to Neve, too unfamiliar with the lower levels of Minrathous to judge the plausibility of what Gus is saying. She gives a quick nod, lifts one brow in silent command.

Lucanis lets the man go. Takes some steady, calming breaths as he steps back.

“Thank you for your help; we appreciate it,” Neve says, reaching out to help lift Gus from the countertop.

He shrugs her off. “And I’d appreciate it if you left now.”

Lucanis is more than happy to comply. Returning briefly to the shelves just long enough to pick up everything he recognises as Rook’s. Then leaves without another word, Emmrich following closely behind – though Neve lingers just a little longer.

When Neve emerges from the shop a few minutes later, she fixes him with a stony glare, brows pulled low in a scowl. “Was that entirely necessary?”

“He had Rook’s spellblade,” Lucanis explains simply. Unmoved by Neve’s disapproval.

“But he didn’t have Rook. And he was less inclined to cooperate after you threatened him.”

Lucanis shrugs. “He seemed cooperative enough to me.”

Neve opens her mouth as if to argue further, sighs instead with a long exhale. “Come on,” she says, walking passed them both to lead the way. “He said we want the Green Dragon Lodge. The owner’s called Julian.”

Lucanis and Emmrich fall in step behind her, Lucanis’s thoughts still too focused on Rook to really care about some disgruntled smuggler or Neve’s frustration. After all, Neve is not the only one of them whose career has revolved around tracking down targets – and Lucanis’s methods have proven plenty effective time and time again.   

He startles a little when a hand comes to rest on his shoulder, Emmrich’s bangles jangling with the movement. “For the record,” Emmrich says, “if someone I loved was trapped beyond my reach, I would tear down reality itself to bring them back.”

Lucanis smiles at him; the sentiment is oddly comforting.

Neve makes Lucanis wait outside while she speaks with the owner of the Green Dragon. Just a few short minutes but long enough for the rain to sneak beneath his armour and soak his collar, enough to slick his hair to the sides of his face in lank clumps. It’s quiet in this part of Dock Town, hardly anyone making their way down the narrow street where Lucanis is lurking, but he keeps his attention sharp nonetheless, eyes darting to track anyone who passes.

When he hears the door open, his head snaps over to see Neve beckoning him in to follow her.

They’re led through the boarding house by the owner, complaining the whole time about outstanding fees, until they arrive at a narrow door on the top floor. “If he doesn’t pay up soon, I’m selling anything he left behind,” he grumbles as he unlocks it, gives them all a suspicious glare as they walk passed him into the room.

“I’ll let Jon know,” Neve says as she steps across the threshold, smile plastered on her face until she closes the door behind her.

If the owner hopes to make a lot of gold from selling the delinquent Templar’s possessions, he’ll be sorely disappointed – the room so empty it barely looks lived in. Bed neatly made, surfaces clear except for a small leather case sitting on top of a nearby dresser.

“Damn,” Neve mutters as she takes in the room. “I’d hoped we might catch up with him before he left the city but… it looks like he’s already packed up and left. I doubt he’s coming back here.”

“Are we even sure we’re in the right place?” Emmrich asks. “After all, that smuggler didn’t seem particularly confident.”

Lucanis feels a sudden building of pressure at the bridge of his nose, Spite surging forward for attention. “This is the right place,” Spite speaks through Lucanis’s mouth. “Rook was here. I can smell her. Lemons and earth.”

“Oh, well, thank you, Spite,” Emmrich says with a polite incline of his head, “most helpful.”

There’s a flush of satisfaction as Spite retreats, though quickly lost under the roiling anxiety and anger that’s plagued Lucanis since Rook’s disappearance. Although, perhaps, there is still something soothing about knowing they’re at least on the right track.

“Let’s look around,” Neve says, then waves at the room with a sort of frustrated dismissiveness. “It’s not like it’ll take long.”

Lucanis heads to the dresser first, while Neve and Emmrich move towards a desk in the corner. He checks each drawer in turn, unsurprised to find them all empty.

That leaves only the roll-up case.

Quick fingers unravel the ties holding it shut, unroll the leather to reveal narrow glass vials held snugly in a series of small pouches. He slips one free, sees a red liquid sloshing around inside, immediately recognisable as blood. The discovery curious enough on its own – but even more disturbing when he feels a familiar itch behind his eyes.

He takes the case over to Neve and Emmrich, “there’s blood magic on these vials,” places it on the end of the table, “for tracking purposes I assume.”

“Tracking whom?” Emmrich asks, “Rook?”

Neve shakes her head. “If he had a phylactery for Rook, he wouldn’t have wasted all that time interrogating and murdering people for information.”

“Have you found anything else?” Lucanis asks.

Neve holds up a thin pile of papers. “Found these in the desk drawer.” She flicks through them with a furrowed brow of concentration.

“And?” Lucanis prompts.

She tuts her tongue against the inside of her teeth. “There’s a report here about ‘merchandise’ lost at Nessus. Records about the rescued slaves. Shit – there’s notes here on Rook.”

She hands him the paper, rough notes mentioning the Shadow Dragons, Varric, even remarks about himself. Something cold and heavy settling in his stomach at the realisation that this complete stranger – this deranged murderer – knows about his and Rook’s relationship.

“We can assume, perhaps, based on these notes, that the phylacteries belong to the Nessus slaves?” Emmrich says as he reads the reports over Neve’s shoulder. “And once the Templar found the slaves, he was able to follow the trail to Rook. I don’t understand, though—if they had these phylacteries, why not just retrieve the slaves?”

Neve shrugs. “Using a phylactery to find someone is a long process, costly too if you’re hiring someone to do it for you. For most slavers, it’s just easier to acquire new slaves.”

“But they’ll expend all this time and gold to retrieve Rook?” Emmrich asks.

“You’ve seen the bounties all over the city for The Viper; a lot of time and money has gone into trying to destroy the Shadow Dragons. This does seem… oddly personal though. It’s not just the Shadow Dragons they’re targeting; it’s Rook.”

“Someone wants revenge,” Lucanis says, “someone linked to this slavery ring in Nessus. Do we think that’s where Rook is being taken?”

“It’s likely she’s already there,” Neve points out. “Nessus is not far from Minrathous.”

Whatever brief flash of hope he’d felt at knowing they were on the right track quickly fades when it occurs to him they might already be too late. Rook already delivered to whichever Venatori slaver wants retribution for Nessus. “We need to get there – now.”

“Do we know of any eluvians in the Crossroads than can take us there?” Emmrich asks.

“It’ll probably be quicker just to travel there directly,” Neve replies. “By carriage, it’s only a few hours.”

Lucanis steps forward, eager to get moving. “Do you know anyone who can arrange travel for us?”

Neve sets him with an affronted glare. “Please, Lucanis, you know me; I have friends everywhere.”

It’s only a few hours later that Lucanis finds himself in the meticulously curated office of a Hightown Mansion, lavish enough to make the Dellamorte Villa seem almost humble in comparison (though, of course, rather gaudy for his tastes). Neve walks in with a confidence born of familiarity, leans forward with her palms spread across the top of a wide mahogany desk as she says, “we need your help.”

Magister Dorian Pavus looks up from the letter he’s carefully penning, lets loose a long, resigned sigh as his eyes settle on Neve’s urgent expression. “Well then it’s a good job that I’m so prodigiously talented.”

Chapter Text

The journey to Nessus is pleasant enough. Gently rolling hills and a patchwork of brightly-coloured wildflowers passing by the carriage window. Though Dorian’s never really been one to appreciate the countryside. Preferring instead bustling streets, lively dive bars and the soaring grandeur of Tevinter architecture; whatever mild interest he’d had in rustic landscapes and the great outdoors long excised during his Inquisition days.

But while the view is nice, the company is somewhat lacking. His Crow companion glowering stoney-faced and silent in the seat across from him. Not surprising, of course, under the circumstances. With Rook’s absence, they’re all more subdued than usual, more tension held in stiff postures and tight expressions. Still, Dorian idly wishes it was Neve in his carriage – even Emmrich, despite the anxiety that being around his old teacher sometimes inspires. At least Emmrich might actually deign to talk to him.

“Have any of your contracts taken you to Nessus before?” Dorian asks, partly to fill the silence and partly because it would actually be quite useful to know if Lucanis is familiar with the area, maybe even has contacts.

Lucanis shakes his head.

“Well then I suppose it’s a good job I’m at least… passingly familiar with the place.”

They fall again into silence, Dorian’s eyes flitting back to the view through the window while Lucanis’s stay fixated in the general direction of the floor. His left leg has been shaking hummingbird-fast the whole time they’ve been travelling, sending ripples of vibration through the carriage’s wooden benches. Sometimes a hand will slide down his thigh in an attempt to still it, though it only lasts a minute or two before the shaking returns.

“You know, we are going to find her,” Dorian says in an attempt at comfort, the constant vibration beginning to rile.

Lucanis lifts his head to look at him. “Neve has been saying the same thing.”

“But you don’t believe her?”

“I—” His hand pushes against his knee. “I do not doubt that we will find her. I… fear what state she will be in when we do. I have—” His voice cracks; he tries to cover it with a cough. “I know first-hand what the Venatori are capable of.”

Something dips in Dorian’s stomach because, of course, he knows Lucanis isn’t wrong. Remembering too clearly the torture chambers at Redcliffe Castle in a future that, thankfully, never came to pass. Remembering the hanging bodies of mutilated Dragons in a present that, unfortunately, he lives through day-by-day. But he knows that imagining the worst won’t help. If they are to be of any help to Rook now, they need to keep a clear head. They need to have faith in her.

“I’ve known Rook a long time now,” Dorian says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “And I could tell she was… special from the moment I met her. It’s why I recruited her for the Dragons. It’s why I recommended her to Varric. She’s smart, resourceful. She’s resilient. She—she won’t be easily broken, Lucanis. Not by this. Not by the Venatori.”

Lucanis is nodding but Dorian doesn’t miss the slight quiver in his jaw, the growing dampness at the corners of his eyes. The hand not pressed against his knee curls into a white-knuckled fist and—

—oh.

“Maker,” Dorian’s voice is breathy with surprise, “you’re in love with her.”

And Lucanis flinches, turning quickly away with another cough then turning back with sad, sloping eyes. His mouth opens as if to speak, pauses, closes again.

Utterly and hopelessly, it would appear.

“Well, that’s a bit embarrassing, actually,” Dorian continues, “normally I’m very good at picking up on these things.” He gives an airy little wave before leaning back against the cushioned seat. “But then I suppose I’ve had other things to worry about recently.”

There’s a beat as he takes in Lucanis’s bearing – the worried pinch in his brows, the thin pull of his mouth. “So does she love you back or is this some sort of… unrequited pining situation?”

“We are… together, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Huh,” he chuckles, “yes, I suppose that is what I was asking. Good for her. And you, of course.” There’s another puff of laughter, softly fluttering at the edges with incredulity. “You know, it’s funny to think that when I was paying for all those contracts, I was funding the man who would one day seduce my prodigy. What a small world!”

Lucanis’s expression turns suddenly sharp, though his eyes widen with surprise. “That was you?”

“Mostly, yes. Ashur and Mae provided the funds for some of them. But it was my negotiator who arranged them all. You are startlingly efficient, by the way. Bravo. I have been a very satisfied customer.”

There’s a flicker behind Lucanis’s eyes, a rumination of thoughts, trying to make sense of this new information, but Dorian merely carries on.

“One could argue that your very presence here at all is thanks to me, actually,” Dorian muses, lifting a bejeweled hand to stroke thumb and forefinger along his moustache. “After all, it was because of my contracts that you earned your reputation as mage-killer and, from what she’s told me, it was your reputation that led Eleri to recruit you. And now – here you are – fighting elven gods and falling in love with my favourite recruit.” Another laugh. “Should you two decide to make your arrangement permanent, I expect full credit on the occasion of your nuptials.”

Lucanis looks a little stricken at that, though Dorian’s not sure which comment exactly has struck a nerve.

There’s a long pause, Lucanis glancing to the window and the passing scenery for a moment before turning back to Dorian. Finally, “I think about that sometimes,” Lucanis admits, tone cautious.

“Nuptials?”

“No!” he hurries, body tensing. But then everything quickly softens as he inclines his head in consideration. “Well… sometimes I think about that. But, no, what I meant was—” He looks down at his knee, frowns as if only just noticing the tremours for the first time. Looks up again at Dorian with a sort of reluctant openness, something vulnerable in the roundness of his eyes. “I was being held captive by the Venatori when Rook found me. When she rescued me. And I think sometimes… if I wasn’t the Demon of Vyrantium – if you hadn’t made me the Demon of Vyrantium, I suppose – would anyone have come to find me? Or would I have been left in that prison to rot?”

Dorian gestures at him. “If you weren’t the Demon of Vyrantium, maybe you wouldn’t have been in a Venatori prison in the first place?”

Lucanis hums in thought, holding steady eye contact as his brows dip low. His eyes narrow, searching, though Dorian doesn’t feel like it’s him being observed, rather there’s some internal deliberation as Lucanis reflects on… something.

“Do you believe in fate?” Lucanis finally asks.

“No.”

A thin huff of amusement. “Me neither. But I think… I think I was supposed to be dead a long time ago.”

Dorian smiles, absentmindedly adjusting the large signet ring on his pinky, the one with his family crest. “Oh, I was supposed to be a great many things to a great many people. But none of it stuck. And now here I am anyway – happy despite everyone’s expectations. Well—maybe not… happy, given everything that’s happening. But content in a way I never thought I would be. The kind of contentment that comes from knowing that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, no matter what anyone else thinks. And maybe, now that I think about, maybe that is a form of happiness.”

He's a little surprised with himself once he stops; Dorian has never thought himself one for pep-talks. But something in his unexpected rambling must have hit right because Lucanis nods firmly.

“I am exactly where I’m supposed to be,” he says.

Dorian stops fiddling with his ring, flexes his hand. “Good. Now we just have to find Eleri. Get her back to where she’s supposed to be. And then all will be right with the world! Or at least… our small part of it.”

For the first time since they left Minrathous, Lucanis smiles. A tentative thing but enough to bring a gentle crease to the corners of his eyes. Remarkable, actually, how such a small change lightens his whole expression. Dorian had always thought Lucanis quite a dour figure, always stiff and shadow-eyed whenever he caught sight of him in the Hideout – but perhaps this is a small hint of what Eleri sees in him.

Without quite meaning to, he finds himself smirking, a tilted twist to his mouth as he shakes his head in disbelief. Lucanis lifts a brow in question.

“It’s nothing,” Dorian assures, “just… you’d have thought I would have learned my lesson ten years ago – not to embroil myself with so many tragically courageous, hopelessly romantic individuals. Yet—here I am again.”

Lucanis considers for a moment then, “Rook says you were close friends with many of the Inquisition members during your time in the south. That you’re still close with many of them today – particularly the Inquisitor and the Inquisition’s former Commander?

“Yes. I don’t see them as often as I would like but I still consider them both the dearest of friends.”

“So do you take credit for their nuptials too?”

A hearty laugh bursts out of him unexpectedly. “Oh, absolutely.”

Lucanis’s smile curls into a crooked smirk then, much like his own. Finally at ease, it would seem, though there’s still that lingering tension in his posture. That glassy sheen to his eyes when he’s thinking too much.

At least, much to Dorian’s relief, his damn knee has stopped shaking.

When Rook next wakes, it is not wood beneath her cheek but stone and dirt. A coarse grittiness digging into skin already throbbing and raw. With a groan, she shifts – trying to alleviate the pressure against her face, lifting her hand to cushion the delicate wound. Jerking her hand back when the pain only worsens.

“Oh, you’re awake,” comes a stranger’s voice, Rook’s eyes immediately snapping open to follow the sound.

Her heart thumps with a sudden spike of adrenaline, expecting another threat just like the last time she awoke. But instead—

It is only a woman. Sitting cross-legged in rags at the other end of the holding cell they both appear to be trapped in. Watching her with a sort of cautious concern. Even in the meagre light, Rook can see mottled bruises across the woman’s dark skin, purple smudges of exhaustion beneath kind, round eyes. Her long hair is streaked with occasional shots of grey and so tangled from neglect her pointed elven ears are almost completely obscured.

Rook tries to push herself upright, falls back to the ground with a grunt when a lance of pain shoots through her skull.

“Careful, careful,” the woman says, crawling forward to Rook’s side, “take it easy. You’re hurt.”

A thin hiss is all Rook can manage in response – her throat too aching and swollen for words.

There’s a concerned tsk, the woman moving away for a moment before she returns with a cracked, earthenware mug in hand. “Here,” she says, carefully lifting Rook’s head until she can bring the mug to her lips, “there’s not much water left but it should help.”

It is only a minor relief, this slight trickle of lukewarm water, but Rook sips eagerly all the same, relishing in the smoothing sensation as it glides down her ragged throat. Pleased as the lingering taste of salt and metal is finally washed away – from the magebane, she thinks, although it’s just as likely to be blood.

The mug is taken away far too soon and Rook can’t help but moan in disapproval, shaking hands reaching out in vain to stop it. “No more,” the woman gently admonishes, knocking aside her hands, “we have to make it last as long as possible.”

Rook nods in understanding, immediately regretting it when her throat and neck twinge with another jolt of pain.

“Try not to move,” the woman says as she strokes warm fingers along Rook’s temple, pushing strands of hair behind Rook’s ear. “It looks like you’ve taken quite a beating.”

They stay like that for some time, Rook’s head in a stranger’s lap, callused fingers pulling in her hair with a steady rhythm. Comforting, in a way – though it does little to alleviate the actual pain.

Rook tries to speak a few more times, only manages a few pained wheezes until she finally forces out: “Rook.”

“What’s Rook?” the woman asks. “You’re Rook? Your name is Rook?”

Rook nods.

“Nice to meet you, Rook. I’m Nia.”

Rook smiles.

“Although it would have been nicer to meet under different circumstances, of course.”

There’s another long pause, still with the same steady movement of Nia’s fingertips, though bringing less and less relief as more time passes. The comfort slowly replaced with a growing frustration, a growing sense of helplessness until Rook can’t take it anymore – forcing herself upright, hands grasping at the bars of the cell for leverage, ignoring the protestations of both Nia and her own body. But this seems important somehow, to pull herself off the floor, to claim some minor victory over her currently miserable situation.

“You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?” Nia comments with a pointed arch of one brow.

“So I’ve been told,” Rook rasps in response.

She has a better view now that she’s off the floor – not that there’s much to look at. They’re in a long, dark chamber, it would seem, shuttered windows blocking the light. Each wall lined with small metal cages; each cage huddled with bent bodies. Such a painfully familiar sight – though Rook’s never been on this side of the bars before.

“Where are we?” Rook asks, words coming a little easier each time.

“I don’t know,” Nia replies, “Nessus, I think. My clan was passing near there when we were attacked.”

There’s a chill down Rook’s spine the moment she hears the word Nessus. Because of course she’s in Nessus, even after all these years. Of course she’s not done facing the consequences for that rather spectacular moment of impulsivity. She supposes it had been foolish of her to ever think she could just put the Nessus job behind her – it just hadn’t seemed so worthy of concern when there was Solas and Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain to worry about.  

Nia eyes her with curiosity, brows furrowing. “What’s that expression? What are you thinking?”

Rook sighs, then, “I’ve been here before. To Nessus. I didn’t realise… I didn’t realise there were slavers here.”

“There are slavers everywhere,” Nia says with a shake of her head. “My clan never should have come to Tevinter.”

“Where were you before?”

“Arlathan. But with its strange magicks—.” She sighs, a heaviness settling over her shoulders as her whole body deflates with the shudder of her breath. “It is no longer safe for our people. With Qunari in the east, and Blight down south… we thought we could slip through Tevinter to the Anderfels. We were wrong.”

Rook’s heart twinges in sympathy. Knowing all too well the dangers now plaguing the Dalish in Arlathan. All those dead she’d found while trying to settle Eulogy. The still missing clan, the one Bellara and Harding are trying to track down even as they speak. More distantly, she’s reminded of her own clan, eviscerated by the Antaam near Ventus when she was still just a child. Such a burden of grief knowing there are so few places where her people can just be safe.

“You’re Dalish too?” Nia asks, gesturing towards the white-inked whorls and curls on her own cheeks.

Rook’s nod is a little stilted. “I was born Dalish. But I was adopted by humans when I was a child so… I don’t know whether that counts.”

Nia looks puzzled. “Of course that counts. You don’t stop being Dalish,” she says.

And it almost takes Rook’s breath away. To have her identity affirmed with such easy simplicity. After so many years being told that she was Tevinter now, so many years living as a proud member of the Mercar family – it’s only recently that she’s even tried to reclaim her Dalish-ness, struggling to remember more of her birth parents, choosing the elven “Eleri” over the adopted “Helvia”. And even then, the process has been difficult. Feeling embarrassed by her own ignorance, feeling like a fraud trying to masquerade in both worlds but not really fitting into either.

“Are you alright?” Nia interrupts. “You’ve suddenly gone all… distant?”

Rook smiles in an attempt at reassurance. “Sorry, yes, I’m fine—well… not fine. But… thank you, I guess.”

“For what?”

“For being here?”

“It’s not like I had much of a choice in the matter but… you’re welcome?”

Rook’s smile breaks around a sudden bark of laughter, loud enough to draw the attention of several nearby prisoners. Eying her warily from their cells, as if afraid of what her unexpected sound might summon. What punishment her disruption will bring. When she makes eye contact, they quickly look away. Something deeply unsettling in the utter hopelessness shadowing every feature of their gaunt faces.

“We need to get out of here,” Rook announces, grasping the bars again to try and lift herself to her feet.

Nia reaches forward to help – one arm curling around Rook’s waist to pull – though her expression shows only doubt in response to Rook’s words, nose crinkling while her lips purse and curl. “Either we leave this place as slaves or we leave as corpses,” she explains, “and I’m not sure which is worse right now.”

“No!” Rook cries, wincing as the word rips too forcefully from her battered throat, ignoring the pain as she insists, “I’m going to get us out of here. I’ve done it before. I’m going to get us—”

A door opens at the far end of the room. Followed by the sound of footsteps, crisp and steady as they cross the long chamber. Rook cranes her head to try and catch sight of this newcomer, notices in her peripheral vision Nia retreating to the back of the holding cell.

It is a man, short and stocky, bristling with a sort of agitated energy only barely contained below the surface of his skin – his steps stiff and quick, head snapping brusquely between the cages as he strides forward. When he reaches Rook’s cage, he comes to a sudden stop, turns, smiles. “Oh, good, you’re awake.”

Rook pulls her shoulders back, trying to look confident though her hands are grasping white-knuckled to the bars to keep herself upright. “I am awake. And are you who I need to talk to about the accommodations? I was just thinking they are somewhat… lacking.”

There’s a quick tremour to his smile, a flicker of irritation in response to her attempt at humour. “Well then it’s a good job you won’t be staying here with us much longer,” he sneers with a mocking drawl.

“Oh? And where are you taking me?”

“It doesn’t matter ‘where’. It matters ‘who’ – someone who was very excited to hear of your capture.”

Her brows knit in confusion. “I don’t—I don’t understand. Who? Who is this person that wants me so badly?! Do you not want… retribution for those slaves I freed?”  

The smile deepens, curling at the corners, almost feline in the way his eyes narrow, how he bares the slightest hint of teeth. “Me?! I should thank you – everyone here should. The last time you were in Nessus—when you left your path of destruction behind you—you left the door open for me and my associates to take control. To rebuild this operation bigger and better than anything that was here before!” He leans forward, snarling so close to her face, Rook can feel his breath against her skin. She wants to step back but fears she’ll fall if she lets go of the bars. “Claudius and his cronies were weak,” he continues with disdain, “to be so easily defeated by some lowly elf. Now – with Lusacan awakened – my Venatori brethren and I will serve him in the way that he deserves!”

There’s a surge of anger, frustration, of gnawing fear – so many swelling emotions she feels almost giddy with the press of them. “You’re fucking insane,” she spits, unable to contain herself, to keep her cool for any longer, “Lusacan hasn’t awakened, you dumb fuck. It’s an elf. An elven mage playing all of you Venatori for fools.”

He reaches through the bars to grip his hand in her shirt collar, abruptly yanks until her face crashes into the bars with a sonourous clank. Rook smells blood at the back of her nose.

“You don’t know shit,” he hisses right into her ear, still pulling her face against the bars. “The glory of Lusacan shall reshape all of Thedas and I will be rewarded for my tireless service.” He pushes, Rook tumbling heavily to the floor. “You should feel honoured that your pitiful life can at least serve Lusacan’s glory in death.”

With her face pressed against the bars, she hadn’t noticed the other’s approach – the Templar standing with several guards only a short distance from her cell. Sprawled on the floor, head still ringing with pain, there’s nothing she can do except watch as the Templar unchains the gate, steps inside her cell, smiles down at her as he reaches to lift her by her neck.

As he drags her from the cell, all she sees is Nia’s stricken face – hand outstretched in a futile attempt to reach her.  

Lucanis doesn’t know what to make of the Praefectus.

There’s certainly something quite striking about his stature – tall and broad, straight-backed, well-muscled despite his age. Almost stately in the way he sits at attention in the centre of his well-appointed office. But there’s an odd languor about his expression as well.  A listlessness behind his eyes that gives him an air of being permanently distracted, slow-witted in his inattentiveness.  

“Of course I’m terribly sorry to hear about your missing secretary,” the Praefectus says as he half-heartedly shuffles at some papers on his unnecessarily ornate desk. “I know it can be an awful bore trying to find good help these days.”

“Well, quite,” Dorian agrees, though Lucanis doesn’t miss the straining tension hidden behind smiling eyes. “I was actually hoping you would be able to help me.”

“M-me?!” the Praefectus stammers with no small alarm. “What do you expect me to do?”

“I’ve brought a detective with me from Minrathous,” Dorian says with a nod towards Neve. “Detective Gallus here is an expert in missing persons cases and I was hoping you would speak with the City Guard to… facilitate their cooperation with our investigation.”

“You want the City Guard involved in this little bother of yours?!” the Praefectus exclaims, brows lifting almost to his hairline. “Well, Maker, I suppose… if you think it’s truly necessary. It does seem like an awful lot of bother just for some elf. You sure you can’t just get another one?”

A simmering heat blisters beneath Lucanis’s skin – a prickling fury at hearing Rook dismissed so carelessly as some elf.

“Unfortunately not,” Dorian continues, pulling Lucanis’s attention back to the conversation and away from the urge to do something ill-advised – like stab someone. “My secretary is the daughter of Legatus Mercar – and I fear her disappearance will cause quite an incident within the top ranks of the military hierarchy if not resolved quickly.”

The Praefectus waves his hand vaguely, nose wrinkling as if enduring some distasteful smell. “Oh yes, I think I do remember that whole… situation. Always seemed like an odd decision for a man of Mercar’s station to make, if you ask me. Never took him as someone with such… modern sensibilities.”

“But you understand the difficult position I’m in?” Dorian probes, trying to keep the Praefectus focused. “And you’ll lend me your support?”

“Yes, Yes, I suppose I must, mustn’t I? I can send someone down to the Guard Captain with a message in the morning, if that will suffice.”

“That is most generous.”

The Praefectus rises from his chair, circles round his wide desk to clasp Dorian on the shoulder. “And I insist you stay here in the residence for as long as your business keeps you here in Nessus. You surely recall from your last visit that I have the most splendid guest wing.”

Dorian laughs, the sound distinctly fake to Lucanis’s ears. “How could I possibly forget? Truly a splendid guest wing indeed!”

“Well then it’s all settled – send your manservant down to the porter and he’ll be sure to have your luggage taken to your rooms,” the Praefectus says, gesturing towards Emmrich at the word manservant. Impressively, Emmrich manages to keep his expression neutral.

“Although I should warn you, the residence is operating with a reduced staff these days,” he continues. “I only stay here when my work requires it. Otherwise, Lilith and I have largely withdrawn to a lovely villa on the outskirts of the city. There’s a natural spring there, you see, and Lilith’s doctor has recommended the waters for her health.”

Dorian nods. “Of course, and I do hope Lilith is doing well these days.”

“Oh, quite swimmingly. Quite, quite swimmingly. I’ll be sure to pass on your good wishes. They are most gratefully received. Now—if you’ll excuse me—I should probably retire for the evening. Lilith and I are expecting guests tonight at the villa and you know I have always valued punctuality over all things.”

Dorian nods again. “I hope you have a pleasant evening. And I trust that you’ll speak to your Captain of the Guard in the morning.”

“The Captain?” There’s a short pause, the Praefectus staring at Dorian with a soft-eyed bemusement. “Oh yes! Yes! I remember now – I said I’d speak with the Captain in the morning. And so I shall!” He gives Dorian a brisk handshake. “Bonum vesperum, Magister Pavus!” Another handshake for Neve. “Bonum vesperum, Miss Lady Detective!”

And with that—he leaves. The sound of idle humming following him as he retreats down the corridor.

There’s a pause once the Praefectus has left the room, a brief moment while everyone seems to wait for the air to settle around his absence.

Neve is the first to break the silence, letting loose a long sigh before: “well he’s certainly… a character.”

“He’s an idiot,” Lucanis remarks with far less charity. “Venatori, I assume?”

“Gaius? No – I don’t suspect he’s Venatori,” Dorian says. “At least not directly. Doesn’t make him any less dangerous, though.”

“You think him dangerous?” Emmrich asks.

“It’s dangerous to be that inattentive during times such as this.” Dorian explains. “In Minrathous, it took a dragon attack and a violent coup for the Venatori to take power. Here in Nessus, it took just one man’s continued inadequacy. He may ostensibly be the one in charge here, but you’d be a fool if you didn’t consider the undue forces imposing their influence over him. With relative ease, I imagine.”

“So he’s always been like that?” Neve asks, sidling over to his desk to take a peek at the papers abandoned across its surface.

“He was always a poor choice for Praefectus – far more interested in magical study than governance. But his family had high expectations for him and a scholarly position within the Circle just wasn’t public-facing enough for their liking. He wasn’t so bad in the early years – disinterested but not incompetent. Things took a turn for the worse when his wife fell ill several years ago. What started as mild indifference to his role quickly turned into outright neglect.”

“And you think this man can help us find Rook?” Lucanis asks, failing to keep the scepticism from his voice.

“He can help us by ingratiating us with the City Guard. The City Guard can help us find Rook.”

“I don’t like this,” Lucanis says.

“I know. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to trust me on this.” Dorian takes a few steps towards Neve. “Anything interesting?”

She puts the few pages in her hands back down on the desk, shakes her head. “Nothing at all.” Walking over to Dorian, she pats quickly against his back before carrying on towards the door. “Come on – let’s speak with the staff. You never know who’s heard something interesting from around the City.”

Dorian mutters something in agreement, follows after her with words that Lucanis doesn’t even try to catch. Instead, his attention is on the desk, ignoring the papers that Neve has already flicked through to focus on the locked drawers. Not trying to ransack the place, just curious enough about what he might find.

He can feel Emmrich’s eyes on him as he works on the lock of the first drawer, though not with disapproval, as far as he can tell.

“What are you hoping to find, Lucanis?”

He pauses with the lockpick just long enough to shrug. “I have no idea. Probably very little but… I can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

“We’re not doing nothing. Neve is going to speak with the staff and tomorrow we’ll speak with the City Guard.”

“That doesn’t seem like enough.”

“What else do you recommend? Scouring the city street-by-street? Seems a touch inefficient.”

Lucanis huffs in a way that he suspects is petulant, childish with his growing frustration. “If one of us was missing, Rook would not rest for a moment until she found us again.”

“Of course not – and we are not resting either. We are following appropriate leads with the guidance of an expert. Which is precisely why we will find her. Now come on,” Emmrich says with a roll of his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll find nothing of interest in that dullard’s drawers. And Neve might need your help in the interrogations. She has her particular charms, of course, but I suspect your unique charms might be more effective with certain individuals.”

There is some reluctance as Lucanis pockets his lockpick and moves away from the desk – though he suspects Emmrich is right. His presence more helpful to Neve than skulking here in the Praefectus’s office. He just wishes there was more he could do – some definitive steps he could take to bring Rook back to him. Plagued by the niggling suspicion that he is so close now to Rook, and yet still so far.

There are uneven flagstones beneath her legs as Rook is dragged from her cell. A chip on the edge of the enamel cup as more magebane is forced down her throat. When she’s thrown again into the back of a wagon, she can feel a splinter of wood needling at the small of her back through her shirt.

There are a few murmurings – at times she can recognise the Templar’s voice – but mostly they ride in silence. A short journey until she’s being dragged from the wagon and carried towards the colonnaded entrance to some grand villa. Flanked on each side by meticulously maintained topiaries, reflected in the still waters of a shallow, marble-edged pool. Beautiful, in that overly fussy style so popular in Tevinter.

Rook supposes there are worse places to die.

They are welcomed at the door by a surly-looking man in uniform, admonished for their late arrival, then led through a series of open-air courtyards until Rook finds herself thrown unceremoniously to a mosaic floor

When she looks up, she’s in some sort of dining room. A large wooden table curling around her in a semi-circle, artfully decorated with arrangements of flowers and candied fruits. The walls are festooned with tapestries, the ceiling held aloft by gilded corbels, and the whole room is drenched in a warm, red-tinged light from the intricate chandelier hovering above them.

And in front of her, a man – tall and broad, looking down at her from across the table with a stern curiosity beneath grey-streaked brows. He squeezes the elbow of the woman sitting next to him as he rises – a sallow-skinned and painfully thin figure with an eerily blank expression – then makes his way around the table with slow, measured steps.

“You’re late,” he comments as he rounds the end of the table. “You know I abhor tardiness.”

“My apologies, Praefectus. We came as fast as we could,” says the stocky man from before, diction unnaturally crisp. His bristling energy now erring towards nervousness.

The Praefectus drops to one knee a few feet away from her, peers at her with the sort of confused curiosity one might look at a museum piece. “So this is her then? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Yes, Praefectus.”

“I didn’t realise she’d be so… small.”

“She may be small but she’s been consistently belligerent, sir. Without a steady supply of magebane, she would have been quite uncontrollable.”

“Magebane? My goodness – you’re telling me she’s a mage?!”

“You don’t even know who I am?!” Rook sputters as she pulls herself unsteadily to her knees, overcome with irritation at all these smug, condescending men talking about her over her head. “What could you possibly want from me if you don’t even know who I am?!”

With the blur of a mage-step the Praefectus appears beside her, hands snatching out to grip her tightly along the jaw as he spits, “I know who you are. You’re the one who took my merchandise away from me.”

“Merchandise?!” she chokes around his grip. “You mean the slaves? They’re not merchandise, they’re people, you sick fuck!”

“They’re elves,” he sneers, leaning forward until his face fills her entire vision. “They would have had short, miserable lives in the Imperium and died in misery and squalor. I did them a favour. I made sure that their deaths had purpose. That their deaths served a higher calling. Served something beautiful!”

“A higher calling?! You grasping onto unearned power is hardly a higher calling.”

He tightens his grip, the force sending sparks of pain down her already bruised throat. “The power isn’t for me, you fool, it’s for my wife.” His face goes soft at the word, a fond glassiness in his eyes in stark contrast to the unrelenting hold on her jaw. “To make her strong again, to make her smile again.”

Rook's eyes flick over the Praefectus’s shoulder to see the woman still sitting at the table – her sunken cheeks, her milk-wash eyes. Unmoving, unblinking. Straw-like hair hanging limp onto hunched shoulders.

Well preserved, perhaps, but still, unquestionably, dead.

Shakily, Rook raises her hands, curls her fingers around his. He flinches a little at the contact, though the strength of his hold on her jaw never wavers. “I’m so sorry about your wife,” she whispers passed the pressure in her throat, “but those slaves I freed… spilling their blood would not have brought her back.”

The grip tightens again. “She was doing fine. She was getting better! Until you. Until you took what my wife needed. What she deserved.”

She tries to force her fingers beneath his, to pry him loose. “I didn’t kill your wife!”

It’s the wrong thing to say – his expression turning from forceful to furious. Eyes burning with rage while his nose curls up with a snarl. “She is not dead!” he roars, hurling Rook across the room with unexpected strength – a surge of magic powering the throw. When she comes to a halt at the Templar’s feet, she can feel her skin tingling with the after-glow of magical energy.

“You can take her away now,” the Praefectus commands with a wave of his hand. “Leave her with the others.”

The stocky man and the Templar nod.

“And I still expect my usual delivery at the end of the month.”

More nods, and then Rook feels gauntleted hands beneath her armpits, yanking her to her feet.

And she knows what’s supposed to happen next – they’ll drag her away to some ritual site within the villa, her blood will be spilled in some mad man’s attempt at healing his already dead wife. Her life will be ended because she had the audacity to free slaves who didn’t deserve the same fate that she now faces.

Her friends left alone to fight the ancient elves she helped unleash without her.

As the Templar manhandles her to standing, a flash of white draws her attention. A reflection of light along the hilt of a familiar dagger tucked into his belt. Elegant silverite carved with outstretched wings, as familiar to her as any of her own. Anger surges as soon as she sees it, reminded too clearly of how the Templar had mocked her back in the wagon. And even in her weakened state – bruised, beaten, utterly exhausted; magic still held behind some dam of unwavering silence – it is the easiest thing in the world to reach out, grip the pommel with what little remains of her strength—

And drive the blade into the Templar’s flank.

She imagines it’s luck more than anything, that she manages to find a space between the plates of his well-worn armour. But the stiletto slides in deep, a hoarse scream wrenched from the Templar’s throat, and she feels his hold on her immediately falter.

The blade stays lodged in the Templar’s side when she falls, too weak to maintain her grip as her body slams limp-limbed to the floor. There is shouting all around her – the slavers demanding her death, calling her a danger, the Praefectus claiming her life for his own use. Above her, she sees the Templar pulling his longsword from its scabbard – whether to end her life or merely in warning – smiling down at her with equal measures of glee and pity. Clearly enjoying the sight of her completely at his mercy, tired and broken and utterly helpless.

Except… there is something.

A quick flutter in her chest. In that place where the heavy stillness of magebane sits thick and tight. A light shrill of energy just waiting to be coaxed into a sonorous thunder. With a desperate urgency, she pulls. Reaching inside as the Templar raises his sword. Plucking at the tight chord of her magic as the sword is brought down in a wide, powerful arc. When she feels the air shift, she strums – feels the answering wave of heat and pressure and a flood of energy and then—

Everything shifts all at once.

The slavers lurch to the ceiling – pinned against a delicately painted fresco of cavorting dragons, crying and cursing as they flail their limbs for purchase. For a moment Rook simply watches from the floor as they struggle, unravelling more threads from behind the heavy block of magebane still lodged inside her body until – there – something slips loose, a sudden wave of power that flows through her body, familiar and comforting.

She snaps her fingers.

They scream.

Rook watching with a sickening sort of satisfaction as the slavers’ bodies convulse and quake, no longer pinned to the ceiling but crushed. Their desperate pleas not quite loud enough to drown out the sound of grinding metal, of cracking bone.

When the thread of magic is spent, their bodies fall. Leaving behind thick smudges of crimson in great daubs across the ceiling. Blood dripping onto the floor like a spring shower.

Rook pants heavily for breath, lying within this circle of carnage. Too completely wrung out to even contemplate sitting upright. She can feel her magic retreating, slipping away almost as quickly as it had come, leaving a yawning chasm of exhaustion in its wake.

She just about manages to lift her head when she hears footsteps approaching, looks up to see the Praefectus staring down at her with a sort of wide-eyed wonder. Not just surprise on his face but delight – pleased with what she’s done. Kneeling at her side, he brushes the blood from her face, whispers with an unexpected reverence, “you are… remarkable.”

Chapter Text

Lucanis does not sleep.

Not a novel experience, of course, or even an uncommon one. But sleep has been coming easier since he’d started sharing a bed with Rook – and in that ease he’d allowed complacency to take hold. Complacency that Rook would continue to share his bed, that his sleep would continue to improve. And now, in her absence, he’s left with the startling discovery of just how much he has grown to depend on her.

His nights more restless without the warmth of her body sprawled atop his. His days more bleak without her abundant smiles. Spite a little harder to manage without her comforting presence to soothe him.

When the morning light starts curling its fingers around the curtain edges, Lucanis gives up on even the pretense of sleep. Lifting himself from his borrowed bed with a deep sigh, feeling the weight of fatigue settling onto his shoulders alongside the existing weight of his grief and frustration. He dresses quickly and methodically, tries to ignore the uneasy wheedling of Spite behind his nasal bone as he leaves the room in search of a kitchen and, hopefully, some coffee.

The Praefectus’s guest wing is just as grand as the eccentric man had promised – room after room of plush furnishings and gaudy décor. A veritable warren of ostentation that leaves Lucanis feeling more and more irritated as he uncovers an endless array of extravagant bedrooms and lavish parlours, and yet no damn kitchen.

It’s after a long while of endless wandering that Lucanis finds himself in a small library of sorts, turning immediately to leave until he sees the flash of Emmrich’s familiar green waistcoat. He’s bent over a long table at the centre of the bookcase-lined room, an array of books and scrolls spread before him, a look of pinched concentration on his face as he shuffles through sheafs of meticulously-annotated paper. Drawn by curiosity (and the well-mannered urge to ask whether Emmrich would prefer coffee or tea this morning), Lucanis moves closer, padding silently across the thick-piled rug until he’s on the opposite side of the table.

Emmrich startles a little when he notices Lucanis’s arrival, offers a tentative smile. “Wasn’t expecting anyone else up at this hour. Trouble sleeping?”

Lucanis nods. “I was trying to find the kitchens, actually. For coffee.”

“Well good luck – this wing is as sprawling as it is garish. It was a miracle I was able to find this place.”

“And once you found it, you couldn’t help but—” He eyes the pages in Emmrich’s hands with a pointed arch of his brow. “—snoop?”

Emmrich’s expression falls sheepish, a rosy flush spreading to his cheeks, though the quick quirk of his lips suggests he doesn’t feel quite as shamefaced as maybe he should. “Well the Praefectus appears to be a very passionate magical scholar – I’m sure he’d be pleased that I’m… admiring his work.”

Lucanis leans over the table, runs his eyes over the narrow-lettered scrawl on the papers beneath him. “Is it any good?” he asks, remembering with a sudden burn of irritation the Praefectus’s directionless bumbling from the night before.

“I think you would find it fascinating actually, and very pertinent to your current situation. You see—” Emmrich points to a neatly-bound report. “While his early writing offers some interesting critiques and even expansions on Falk’s treatise on the inducement of spirit possession, his later writing moves away from the theory and practice of possession towards theories of transference. Quite radical, really!”

“I’m not sure I’m following.”

“Well of course you are aware of the commonly-held wisdom is that once a spirit has joined with an individual or an object, that union is permanent and cannot be undone without destroying either spirit or host. But the Praefectus seems to think otherwise.”

Lucanis feels a sudden sharp tug of—something. The immediate blooming of hope tempered with an unexpected surge of… reluctance? Anxiety? “Are you telling me that the Praefectus can separate me and Spite?”

“Not a separation. His writing alludes to a transference – he is positing that Spite could be transferred to either another host or an inanimate object of some kind.”

Spite flares from his usual hum to a more fervent throb, a dissatisfied hiss sounding in Lucanis’s ears.

“To be clear,” Emmrich continues, “this is an interesting theory. But certainly nothing that could be put into practice. I remain staunchly of the opinion that you and Spite are permanent bedfellows unless you are willing to undertake more drastic – and certainly more deadly – measures. And it has always been my understanding that you are not willing to undertake such an approach.”

“Of course not,” Lucanis replies without pause. Unwilling, even from those earliest tumultuous days after the Ossuary, to entertain the thought of causing serious harm to Spite. The demon may have unnerved him at times – even repulsed him – but Lucanis knows that he would not have survived Zara’s torture without Spite. And he will not repay that service with death. And besides, he has found himself growing rather fond of Spite, as of late – though he tries not to dwell on it.

Emmrich gives Lucanis that oddly proud smile he gives him sometimes – the smile he gives any time Lucanis speaks kindly of Spite or when he teaches him something new. When the two of them are working in sync.

There’s a sigh as Emmrich starts tidying everything away – papers gathered into neat piles and tucked back into leather-bound folios. “And, besides, I doubt this research is ever going to get beyond the theoretical stage at this point. His most recent writing is… rather eccentric.”

Lucanis arches a brow. “How so?”

“Well his interest moves away from spirits and the Fade and instead seems to focus entirely on the soul. He seems quite certain that his theories could be applied to the very essence of mortal existence – that a soul could be transferred between vessels in much the same way that he theorises a spirit could.”

“Is that possible?”

“Of course not! It’s absolutely preposterous! I’m afraid these latest writings lack all logical coherence and completely abandon the academic vigour that made his earlier theoretical thinking so interesting.”

There’s another long sigh as he finishes tidying the folios. “I did notice that much of his earlier work included annotations and corrections from a second hand – a collaborator of sorts. Since these annotations cease around the same time that his writing becomes more… unstable, I speculate that this collaboration partner was essential in his thinking process.”

An odd heaviness shifts in Lucanis’s chest – not sympathy exactly but perhaps understanding when he speculates, “it was his wife.”

Emmrich’s head turns to look at him. “What makes you say that.”

“Just… what Dorian said last night. About how badly the Praefectus’s wife’s illness had affected him. He must… feel her absence keenly.”

There’s a gently knowing smile on Emmrich’s face that Lucanis finds a little grating. “Yes, it is a… tragic situation for them both.”

The air between them suddenly feels sharper. A prickle crawling up the nape of Lucanis’s neck as Emmrich looks at him with a sort of over-eager earnestness. Too close to pitying to be comfortable.

He’s just about to make some excuse to leave – to go in search of the coffee he’s been craving since well before dawn – when Neve bursts into the room, face flush with exertion and panting heavily.

“We’ve got a lead!” Neve declares, eyes alight with a zeal he hasn’t seen since before they even came to Minrathous to investigate Rufus’s murder. “One of the scullery maids came to find me – told me of some happenings down by the docks this morning that’s got everyone talking.” 

Both men turn to look at her, Lucanis stepping quickly around the table until he can reach her side.

“About a half-dozen bodies washed out of a storm drain this morning,” she continues. “All freshly deceased. All heavily armoured. One of them – dressed quite unusually in Fereldan plate.”

“Our southern Templar?” Emmrich asks.

“Possibly. It’s the nearest thing we’ve got to a lead since we arrived in the city.”

Lucanis narrows his eyes thoughtfully, trying desperately not to allow Neve’s words to sweep him away with premature optimism. “And how did they die?”

Neve’s lips curl into a smirk. “That’s the really interesting part. When the City Guard fished the bodies from the water, they found that every single bone in their bodies was broken. If I had to speculate – a rather spectacular display of primal magic.”

“Rook,” Lucanis breathes with a hopeful reverence, utterly failing to keep himself even-keeled, almost giddy with the thought that they might actually have some concrete lead to chase. “Where are the bodies now?”

“With the City Guard – Dorian’s gone to speak with the Captain already. Come on, we should hurry,” Neve urges, turning to leave through the door without even waiting for an answer, assuming the others will follow.

And they do, of course. All thoughts of theoretical magicks and even coffee banished to focus their minds again on Rook. Lucanis buoyed with the thought that finally, finally, they may have found the trail that will lead them straight to her.

Rook expects to wake in another cell. Dirt beneath her head, penned in by metal or stone or magical barrier. She expects to hear the muffled crying of her fellow captives, the terse reprimands of her gaolers.

Or she doesn’t expect to wake at all – her unconscious body hefted to some ritual site for sacrifice, blood spilling across the floor to amend for the death of a woman she never even knew.

So it’s a surprise when Rook opens her eyes and finds herself in a bed of all things. Ornately carved posts holding aloft a many-layered canopy of coral-pink silk and whisper-thin muslin. Tiny mage-lights twinkling with a silvery glow as they dance against the folds of fabric.

She’s ensconced within a nest of pillows, cradled in the light dip of a feather-stuffed mattress. Satin sheets impossibly soft against her fingertips as she slowly flexes her hand. And she’s—clean. No more sweat or grime or blood clinging tackily to her skin, no more lank clumps of hair falling against her temples. Every inch of her skin has been buffed and smoothed and oiled until it glows with a gentle lustre in the dim candlelight. Her body no longer hidden beneath soiled leathers but draped in a gown of artfully ruched scarlet chiffon. She even smells good – juniper and cedar wood and—

What in the Void is going on?!

Trying to lift her head, she’s surprised when she can’t. Feeling neither the bite of restraints nor the buzzing energy of magic. Instead her body simply refuses to obey her. Not due to her injuries – those appear to have been healed while she slept – but some innate stubbornness making her limbs feel heavy and sluggish. Like her body has slipped beneath the waves of an ocean, the crushing weight of the water pushing her deeper and deeper.

Well… fuck.

It takes all the strength she can muster to turn her head to the left, revealing more of the room than just the canopy above. Her vision blurred at first but eventually managing to focus on the details of the rather lavish bedroom she finds herself in - tapestries lining the walls, gilt drenching the furniture. There’s a blood-letting bowl on the table beside the bed, though she’s disappointed not to find any instruments she could maybe use as a weapon. Then a chair where someone has presumably watched her while she slept. And, beyond that, an unlit fireplace along the far end of the room, stylised stone dragons holding up the mantle with their outstretched wings, a portrait of a happily smiling couple hanging above it.

It’s the Praefectus and his wife, Rook realises. The man younger, less grey, but familiar in the broad set of his shoulders and the long jut of his nose. His wife is nestled close at his side – head bent to rest against his chest, long golden waves spilling over her shoulders. So beautiful and serene and tragically ignorant of the unfortunate fate that awaits her; the parody of life that her husk of a body will be subjected to by a husband driven deranged by grief.

Rook almost feels sad at the sight of her – if only her fatigue and fear and rage had left any room for pity.

With another monumental burst of effort, Rook manages to move her leg a few inches across the bed. Then a long rest – heart pounding with the exertion, face warm with lightheadedness – before she manages another few inches. She doesn’t know how long it takes her, minutes or maybe even hours, but inch-by-agonising-inch, Rook manages to drag herself to the edge of the bed.

She knows she hasn’t the energy to stand – but, maybe, if she can carefully drop herself to the floor, she can explore the room further at a crawl. Perhaps find some sort of weapon, a magical device, even a way of escape. A path to survival surely possible if only she is determined enough to fight for it.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she flexes her arms to try and guide her descent—instead falling to the floor with a sudden slam. Limbs heavier than she’d anticipated as she crumples into a crooked heap. The air knocked from her lungs, bones rattling with a rolling vibration as her skin smarts from impact.

Rook tries very hard not to cry.

It’s just—she can’t do it. Escape clearly hopeless if she can’t even lift her head from the ground. All her previous attempts to fight for survival utterly futile because she’s here anyway. She’s going to die anyway.

She does cry then. Just a few silent tears slipping down her cheeks into her hairline – too tired from blood-loss and magebane to manage a full-bodied sob. Feeling so utterly lost and despairing and alone. She feels alone. A feeling she has always hated for as long as she has memories for – always one to prefer the company of others, to take strength in companionship. 

She needs help; she needs her friends.

Can think of only one way to find them—

Far from the meditation room of the Lighthouse, Rook tries to empty her thoughts. Tries to ignore the exhaustion in her limbs, the discomfort of her contorted body. Tries to let herself drift to a place where she knows help can be found. Though it’s harder than she’d assumed; with her shoulder pressed against the hardwood floor, the persistent bone-deep ache fueling her growing frustration and despair.

A memory comes to her then – unexpected and unbidden. Of that moment only a few days prior. When she’d emerged from the Shadow Dragon’s hideout and found herself in a strange moment of peace. No expectant faces, no questions waiting for answers – just an empty alleyway and a marble of ash-grey rain clouds whorling overhead. How blissful it had felt; that tiny moment of quiet. That brief reprieve.

Trapped and broken, far away from home, Rook takes a deep breath, lets her mind go blank – and thinks of nothing but the rain. 

It is jarring each time – that slip of consciousness from the waking world to the Fade. Different from when she falls asleep, sharper, faster. That sudden pull in the pit of her stomach and before she even has the chance to recognise what’s happening, she’s blinking her eyes open into a world drained of colour.

It strikes Rook as odd that this place has become so familiar to her, that a prison forged in the Fade would welcome her presence so readily, if only as a visitor. But there’s something almost comforting about this small part of the Fade now – a reassurance in knowing that whatever hardship is happening in Thedas, there is succour to be found here. At the very least, she’s relieved to find that her blood loss in the waking world has not translated to fatigue in this one, able to stand and move again with her usual ease.

Surrounded by a cracked landscape of twisted rock, just outside the grasp of a hundred petrified hands, Rook steps closer towards a nearby chasm, looks across the gaping void of nothing in search of her quarry. A small smile curling at her lips when she sees the familiar figure slinking from behind the curled edge of a colossus Evanuris crown.

“Rook, have you been able to uncover what schemes are at play in Arlathan?” Solas asks as he comes to a stop at the edge of chasm across from her, hands clasped behind his back in his usual pose of only casual interest.

“Not yet but—” She hesitates, knowing with certainty that she desperately needs his help yet unwilling to show too much vulnerability. His face already smug before she’s even shared anything of her current predicament. “I have found myself in a… situation. And I need your help.”

“Oh? And what kind of… situation do you find yourself in?” he asks with a slight quirk to his lips, equal parts curious and amused.

She sighs, pushes down some of her frustration so she can keep her expression even, her tone light when she says, “I find myself at the mercies of a blood mage. A rather deranged one at that. And while I’m pleased to have avoided ritual sacrifice so far – I don’t think my luck is going to hold much longer.”

“Ah – that is indeed a… situation. Although I’m not entirely sure how you expect me to help. I may be able to offer you advice on the Evanuris but, as a Tevinter, I imagine deranged blood mages are more your area of expertise than mine.”

“Well, actually, I’m not here for you at all,” she says, the barest whisper of a smirk forming when she sees him blink in surprise at her words. “I’m here for Spite.”

“Spite?!”

“The demon possessing Lucanis. I’m hoping you can take me to him.”

There’s a deep furrow between Solas’s brows as he looks at her, a pronounced wrinkle at the bridge of his nose as he frowns. “I’m… not sure I follow.”

Her smirk widens just a touch, allowing herself to be the smug one for once. Finding it oddly pleasing that, for this time at least, she is the one with the plan and he is the one asking questions. “Spite has pulled me into Lucanis’s mind before, let me speak with Lucanis inside the confines of his own thoughts. And now I’m hoping that the reverse can be done – that Spite can pull Lucanis into my mind. It’s the only way I can think of to let my friends know where I’m being held.”

“A demon let you enter the mind of another? Fascinating. Although I’m still not sure what you expect me to do.”

“Help me find Spite.”

“And how am I to accomplish such a thing?”

“I don’t know! But mages can manipulate the Fade, right? And you’re practically a god.”

He scoffs, as she knew he would. But she also knows Solas well enough by now to know that it is rare for him to be completely unmoved by an appeal to his pride.

“And, besides,” she continues, “Varric always said you’re more comfortable in the Fade than in the real world. That you understand spirits better than you understand even your friends. If anyone can find Spite, it is you.”

“Is this an attempt at flattery?”

Now it's her time to scoff. “Hardly. But are you willing to help me anyway?”

He sighs, unclasps the hands from behind his back. “It was never a matter of will, Rook. I need you to be my eyes and ears in the fight against the Evanuris – I can hardly afford to lose you now. But I’m not sure that what you ask of me is even possible.”

“But you’ll try?”

“Of course!” he says, tone almost affronted, “I always relish the chance to attempt new ways of exploring the Fade. After all, if Varric says I am more comfortable here, who am I to prove him wrong?”

He lifts his hands, a flame of silver-white unspooling from his palms, the glow radiating brighter and brighter until the entire landscape is washed out with light. “Now think of this Spite, Rook. And let my magic flow through you.”

There’s a growing warmth at first, like the slowly-banking heat of a morning sun, then a sudden rush of something hot and roiling. Skin prickling with energy as Solas’s magic channels through her. Her mouth snaps open in a silent scream as the breath is snatched from her lungs, air forced out as the burn of silver-white pushes itself in, filling every inch with heat and light and force and—Rook feels like she’s going to burst.

Dorian is arguing with the Guard-Captain when they arrive. Although arguing doesn’t seem like quite the right word – there are no raised voices, no heat of emotion in either man’s expression. Just an implacable calmness on their faces and Dorian speaking in increasingly crisp diction.

Lucanis is almost reminded of Caterina, in a way. How her voice pitches low and dangerous when someone disagrees with her – steady and clipped as she asserts her perspective rather than roaring with anger. Far more effective, Lucanis has always thought, than pitched shouting.

“Is anything wrong?” Neve asks, sickly-sweet. Flashing a broad smile at the stone-faced Guard-Captain as they approach.

“Of course not!” Dorian answers before the Guard-Captain can. “We were just discussing the particulars of our investigation.”

“The investigation is not ‘ours’,” the Guard-Captain adds with a huff of breath. “And while I appreciate your interest, Magister Pavus, I assure you, your help is not required.”

“And yet you shall have it all the same!” Dorian insists, ignoring the Guard-Captain’s clear dismissal with forced joviality. Knowing the man can’t reject a Magister’s assistance so freely given without risking professional ruin. “Now if you would be so kind, my associates and I would like to inspect the bodies you found this morning.”

The Guard-Captain pinches the bridge of his nose but offers no further objections, smart enough to recognise when he’s been outmanoeuvred. With a terse nod, he gestures for them to follow as he walks them through the Garrison, answering Dorian and Neve’s questions as they go with polite but noticeably short responses. Stepping out into a courtyard milling with sparring guards, he stops only long enough to bark a few corrections before continuing to lead them to another stone building on the far edge of the compound.

Shaded beneath the wide, flat boughs of a thorned acacia, the building has an almost sinister bearing. Lurking in the shadows.

Lucanis recognises the smell of death as soon as he enters, sees the sunken bodies resting on two lines of tables pressed against the room’s walls. Their chests caved in, skulls flattened. Ghoulish in their disfigurement.

Under any other circumstances, he might feel mildly horrified at the sight; unusually gruesome even for one as well-versed in death as Lucanis – but instead he only feels a thrum of anticipation, eager to see if these bodies are the final clue that will lead him to Rook.

A short, stocky man looks up at them at the sound of the door closing, pushes a pair of spectacles back up his nose. “Anything I can help you with, sir?” he asks with a nod of acknowledgement towards the Guard-Captain, eyeing the others warily. “I have only just started my examination if you were hoping for findings already.”

The Guard-Captain waves away his concern. “Carry on, Lorn, I am not expecting answers so soon. Only… we have a… visiting dignitary from Minrathous who is eager to help.”

The man, Lorn, looks at Dorian with a curious quirk of his brows before letting his gaze shift to the others. A look of confusion settling over his features as he takes in the Magister’s rather eccentric-looking entourage, likely a myriad of questions coming to his mind but he only asks, “why?”

“It is a personal matter,” Dorian answers rather churlishly, clearly trying to avoid having to explain the whole situation, “now have you been able to uncover their identities?”

Lorn looks a little put-out, quickly glancing at the Guard-Captain for reassurance before looking back at Dorian with a stern steeliness in his expression. “No,” he says rather pointedly, “as I said, I have only just begun my examination. I can tell you very little right now – only that these men are dead and that their final moments were… unpleasant.”

Good, Spite growls in his ear. They deserve it for hurting Rook.

Lucanis finds little reason to disagree.

“I heard that one of them was wearing Fereldan armour,” Neve says, stepping forward, “can we see it?”

Irritation flickers across the Guard-Captain’s face. “Where did you hear that?”

“Oh, around,” she answers with a vague wave. “But if you would let us examine their belongings, perhaps we might be able to help with their identification.”

The Guard-Captain sighs but nods in reluctant agreement, gesturing at Lorn to show them to the victim’s belongings. A long counter at the back of the room piled up with an array of crumpled plate and twisted leather. Neve immediately reaches out to start sorting through the pile, a look of intense focus hardening the lines of her face, though Lucanis can’t help but feel that her efforts are futile. Impossible, at first glance, to even decipher pauldron from vambrace – every item distorted and crushed beyond recognition.

Lucanis looks at a few pieces, discards them when he finds nothing of note – his impatience growing until Neve surprises him with a sudden aha.

“Here – this armour is Fereldan,” she says, fingers tapping against a knot of metal and leather.

He leans over, sees nothing particularly remarkable compared to the rest of the table’s detritus. “How can you even tell?”

“This is ram leather – typical of Ferelden but far rarer up north.”

Neve continues to rummage, speaking up whenever she finds a new piece of what she claims is Fereldan armour, though Lucanis can’t help but remain sceptical – still uncertain whether he can see anything of note at all amongst the bend and buckle of metal and fabric.

It is only when Neve pulls out a silverite stiletto that he is convinced.

The long, thin blade. The quillon shaped like a crow’s outstretched wings. Embossed black leather wrapped around the pommel. His dagger. Gifted to Rook. His way of keeping her safe, even as they parted. Though clearly, in this case, not enough.

“This is yours?” Neve asks, handing him the blade.

He nods. “I gave it to Rook,” he says, voice soft, then much sharper when he asks the Guardsmen, “which man had this blade?”

Lorn looks a little taken aback by the sudden question but leads them to one of the crumpled bodies, gestures to a wound along its flank. “The dagger was embedded in his side – though the wound wasn’t deep enough to kill.”

“This is him. The Templar that took Rook,” Lucanis says, feeling an odd mix of emotions. Satisfaction, of course, at seeing the broken, boneless body sprawled naked and undignified on the table before him. Relief in knowing that Rook got the better of him, and not the other way around. Disappointment that he did not get the chance to flay the man alive himself like he so desperately wanted.

“Who’s Rook?” the Guard-Captain asks. “And how do you know this man is a Templar?”

“Emmrich, do you recognise him?” Neve asks, ignoring the Guard-Captain's questions.

Emmrich steps closer but only frowns as he looks down at the body. “Impossible to say, I was struck from behind. And it all happened so fast. I suppose the general colouring appears accurate.”

“Wait - you know this man?!” again the Guard-Captain asks.

“Can we talk with him, Emmrich? Ask him about Rook’s whereabouts?” Lucanis asks.

“Of course!” Emmrich responds, the slightest glow of magic beginning to bank in his hands as he raises them. “Although I should warn that the condition of the body—”

“Wait!” the Guard-Captain shouts, hand snatching out to catch Emmrich’s wrist. “No magic until someone explains to me what in the Void is going on here! Who is Rook? Are they the one responsible for these murders? And how do you know this man is a Templar?”

Spite growls, the vibration of it rumbling at the back of Lucanis’s skull. We are close now. No more questions. Find. Rook.

“Of course I would be happy to answer all your questions,” Dorian says, only barely managing to sound sincere, “but I’m afraid time is of the essence in this matter. So if you would just—”

“No!” the Guard-Captain interrupts. “I need answers now. I won’t jeopardise the integrity of this investigation just to assuage your curiosity.”

Another growl from Spite, louder now, a growing pressure ballooning behind the bridge of Lucanis’s nose as Spite thrashes in frustration.

Dorian actually manages to look contrite as he says, “you’re right. My apologies. We do not wish to interfere only… there is a life on the line that necessitates urgency.”  

“And I would be more than happy to assist you once you’ve actually explained to me what’s going on,” the Guard-Captain says, far less successful than Dorian at sounding sincere. “Now, let us retire to my office and you can answer my questions while Lorn finishes his examination.”

This time it’s Lucanis who growls, “there is no time.”

“Lucanis,” Dorian warns.

“No! I don’t care about this investigation or these dead men, only the one corpse who knows where Rook is. Let us get what we need and then leave.”

The Guard-Captain’s expression darkens. “You will respect my authority in this matter.”

“I don’t give a shit about your authority.”

This time when they argue, there is yelling. Faces burning red with sudden fury, voices raising to a feverish pitch. The Guard-Captain unloading his anger straight into Lucanis’s face while Dorian comes surging forward to his defence.

Behind his nose, the pressure keeps building. Spite pressing harder and harder and—Lucanis feels like he’s going to burst.

Spite is surrounded by idiots.

They bite and sputter. Narrow-eyes and curled lips. Speaking again and again about duty and authority and respect – words that mean nothing unless everyone pretends they do. So many hollow words and Spite is done with words.

Spite needs to act.

Needs to find Rook.

Lucanis agrees but does not move. Meets the Guard-Captain’s rage with his own sharp tongue – demanding action but unwilling to actually take it. Such a frequent failing; to know and want and need but never do. Always restrained by something.

It’s what had kept him from Rook in the first place. Letting fear and self-loathing hold him at a distance when all he wanted – all he ever thought about – was to touch, to hold, to stroke, to kiss.

It’s what will keep him from Rook now. Too concerned about propriety. Some rule that says it is bad to simply stab Guard-Captains that get in your way.

Stupid rule.

Stupid Lucanis.

Spite stretches. Reaches down into the fingertips of their shared body, pulls at the tendons, making them itch. How easy it would be to take the dagger already in their hand and slide it into the Guard-Captain’s neck.

But Lucanis pushes back, wresting control, grip tightening against the pommel as Spite is denied.

No, Spite, he hisses in his mind, forceful yet tired.

Kill him. Find Rook, Spite hisses in return. Pressure behind the nose until they both smell blood.

This is not helping, Lucanis says, just give me space and I can—

“Spite?” comes another voice, Spite startled by the sudden sound. Gentle, warm. Familiar. And yet—wrong. Shouldn’t be here. Here where it is only ever him and Lucanis.

“Are you there, Spite?” Again, the voice. Louder this time – determined. But softened at the edge by a tremour of… desperation? Fear?

Someone needs him.

“Rook?” he responds, pulling back from his perch at the front of Lucanis’s skull. Following this strange new sensation of being called – hot and white and insistent and it would be uncomfortable except the voice is Rook’s and Spite knows he can trust Rook.

Something shifts. Sights and sounds and smells melting away. Lucanis still there but his presence rounder somehow, softer without the cage of bone and skin. It’s similar to when Spite follows Lucanis into his dreams. Though different too. A little harder to move. Fighting against the current to follow Rook’s voice, pulled by the sharp heat of some magical tether.

When everything starts to settle again, Spite finds himself in a forest – tall trees stretching on either side of him towards a thick, impenetrable canopy. Hemmed in. Almost bordering on uncomfortable. Except he knows he was brought here for a reason – he is needed.

“Spite?” asks Rook, as if summoned by his thoughts. And – there – emerging from the trees. Familiar walk, familiar face, familiar eyes. Smiling. And that’s familiar too. Lucanis has categorised every single one of her smiles – pulls his favourites to the forefront of his mind any time he feels the weight of circumstance crushing down on him.

“Rook!” he replies, surging forward to envelop her. Tendrils of energy curling around neck and shoulder and cheek. He knows Lucanis likes to press his forehead to hers and he tries to do the same, vibrations of energy pulsing against the skin there.

“Maker, am I glad to see you,” he hears her say and he is glad too. Glad that she’s here. Glad that she’s alive. Glad that she missed him too. He holds her a little tighter – then tighter still when he feels her body begin to shake.

“Rook?” he asks, pulling back when the tendrils cradling her cheek feel damp. Alarmed when he sees the tears falling from her eyes. He knows how it feels when Lucanis cries.

“I’m in a bad way,” she says, breath hitching when Spite brushes away a tear from her skin. Annoyingly, more follow. “I haven’t got my magic, Spite. And I’ve lost a lot of blood. They’re going to kill me.”

“I’ll kill them for you!”

“I know you will.” She smiles. “But you need to find me first.”

She lifts a hand, rests it against the light and heat of him. An odd sensation – to feel the pressure of her touch not tempered through Lucanis’s flesh. “I need Lucanis, Spite. Can you bring him into my mind the way you brought me into his before? I need to tell you both how to find me. Can you do that?”

He nods, or at least tries to. The gesture unnatural to him but he knows that it helps – brings a flood of relief to Rook’s face. “I will bring Lucanis here to speak with you,” he reassures. “Then I will bring Lucanis there to rescue you.”

Another smile, broad and crooked. Flash of white teeth. He will have to remember it – show it to Lucanis later. Lucanis will want it for his collection.

It is hard to leave her, standing alone in this grey-washed forest. Tears still streaming down her face. Warm smile but terror behind the eyes. She should not be alone.

But she won’t be – soon she will have Lucanis and him both. First here in the Fade but then again in the waking world too.

Spite does not waste any more time on words.

Spite blinks from the Fade and back to Lucanis.

Lucanis feels the push of air, the spray of spittle as the Guard-Captain takes another step forward, hand raising to jab a finger against Lucanis’s chest. He is yelling something about procedure, about integrity – as if Tevinter justice was something real and sacred and not some utter farce.

Lucanis responds with a threat. Restrained. Well-mannered. But his intent is clear enough – to get what he needs, with or without the Guard-Captain’s permission. And The Guard-Captain is lucky it is only a threat – Lucanis more than happy to snap the man’s neck with his bare hands but unwilling to make things more complicated for his companions.

Dorian inserts himself between them, palms raised in supplication, honeyed words dripping from his mouth as he tries to diffuse the situation.

“I want that man out of here,” the Guard-Captain spits, head inclined towards Lucanis. “Not just the garrison – I want him out of my city.”

Lucanis smirks, fingers flexing against the pommel of his dagger. “I’d like to see you—”

Rook? Spite asks. Lucanis’s words catching in his mouth as Spite interrupts his thoughts.

“You’d like to see me—what?” the Guard-Captain sneers.

Rook! Spite repeats, this time louder. A sudden rush of warmth spreading through Lucanis’s body, skin tingling with phantom sensations.

The Guard-Captain is laughing now. Lucanis must have missed something he said. Dorian turns to look at him with concern, brows furrowed as his eyes peer at him searchingly. They’re waiting for him to say something.

I’ll kill them for you! Spite’s voice loud enough to make him flinch this time. That same comforting warmth still brushing against his skin only now there’s something throbbing and urgent. A ripple of anxiety. Spite no longer contained to just the hollow of his nose, no longer felt in just the spark of his nerves – but everywhere. Blanketed by the demon’s presence in a way that usually only happens when they dream together.

“Lucanis, is something wrong?” Neve asks. A hand coming to rest on his elbow – though he barely feels it. Only knows he should feel it because he can see it.

There’s a flood of something that feels like fondness. The ache for something just out of reach, then, I will bring Lucanis to speak with you.

I will bring Lucanis to rescue you.

There’s a sense of loss. The sadness of leaving something important behind – then a sudden rush like he’s falling. The room around him spinning though he’s sure he’s not moving at all. Neve’s face looks stricken, Emmrich shouts something from over his shoulder—

And then everything goes white.

Chapter Text

Something about the trees isn’t right. The proportions all wrong. Branches too thick, canopies too dense. Trunks tapering too sharply at the top. It gives the impression of impossible height – the trees looming in a way that makes Lucanis feel unusually small.

He turns in place, sees only an endless expanse of forest. Top-heavy trees surrounding him in all directions in this washed-out landscape of unreality. In the Fade, he thinks – but he has no idea how he got here. Remembering so sharply the Guard-Captain’s snarling face, the flicker of concern in Dorian’s eyes right before Neve reached forward to touch him.

“Rook was here,” comes a voice from behind him, clipped with frustration. “Where is Rook now?”

Looking over his shoulder, Lucanis sees a flash of white and purple, tendrils of energy that pulse and shimmer before coalescing into something more familiar. Another Lucanis looking back at him with his own eyes, though softly glowing. Always a little unnerving to see – even after all this time. He wonders whether he really looks as tired as Spite’s doppelganger makes him appear.

“Did you bring me here, Spite?” he asks, gesturing out towards the endless stretch of trees. “Why are we in the Fade?”

“Not the Fade,” Spite replies. Tone flat as if Lucanis has said something incredibly stupid. “We are with Rook. She asked me to bring you here.”

“Rook? Where is—” It dawns on him then, sparks of memory rushing to the fore. Of Rook navigating an illusory Ossuary, disarming his gaolers to set him free. “Are we in Rook’s mind?!” he exclaims, “Por Hacedor! Spite, how did you even do this?”

“Rook called for me. I answered.”

“Then—where is she, Spite?”

Spite growls, head snapping from side to side as if searching. “She was right here. She was—”

They’re interrupted by a sudden roar of sound, a bright burst of orange and red just in the distance. The sudden surge of colour so stark amongst the washed-out greys that Lucanis finds himself scrunching his eyes shut against the brilliance of it. When the light has passed, the smell comes – acrid and burning – and then the muffled sounds of someone whimpering.

Lucanis runs. Drawn towards this sudden commotion amongst the endless monotony of forest, weaving between the thick press of trees with Spite’s presence following close at his heels.

It’s not long until they reach a small clearing, bathed in a weak shaft of light from a small gap in the canopy above. The ground is scorched, a circle of blackened earth covered in the burnt, smoldering bodies of dead qunari. The cut and colour of their armour similar yet wholly different from what he knows from Treviso. And at the centre of the carnage – a child. No more than eight, he would guess. Huddled on the floor, arms wrapped around their knees as they shake with muffled sobs. A curtain of messy blonde curls obscuring their face

From his side, Spite growls in growing frustration. “What is happening? Where is Rook?”

“I think we’ve found her,” Lucanis says with a nod towards the child.

“That’s not Rook. The smell is wrong. Too much earth, not enough lemon.”

Lucanis shakes his head at him, “she’s still just a child, she’ll change,” then moves further into the clearing, stepping carefully over the dead as he goes. “Rook?” he asks when he’s closer, though there’s no response. Dropping onto his knees, he tries again with, “Eleri?”

The child’s head jerks up, hair dislodged enough to reveal a round face and large brown eyes. So instantly recognisable that Lucanis’s chest aches with the sight of them.

“Who are you?” the child asks, “and how do you know my name?”

“My name is Lucanis,” he says, bowing his head slightly in greeting, “and I’m… a friend.”

Her gaze flits over his shoulder, eyes going wide with alarm as she spots Spite just behind him. He wonders whether she sees him as he does, as a facsimile of himself, or whether she sees something altogether more monstrous. “That’s Spite. He’s a friend too,” he reassures.

“Friend,” Spite repeats, a shimmer of purple light just at the edge of Lucanis’s peripheral vision.

“Is there anyone else with you? Any grown-ups?” Lucanis asks.

A sob escapes her as she shakes her head, arms pulling even tighter around her knees. “The horned men were killing everyone. Mamae told me to run. She’s dead too, isn’t she?”

He’s heard this story from Rook. Though only once, during one of those quiet nights in the early days of their friendship. Sitting next to the fireplace in the dining hall, she’d offered the story to him after he’d told her about House Velardo and his parents. A way of showing she understood his particular pain, perhaps. She hadn’t gone into much detail, still one of the rare topics she is reluctant to talk about. But enough for him to know how it ends – with Rook wandering the forest alone until the General finds her.

He can’t bring himself to tell this small, sniffling child the truth, instead offering her his hand with what he hopes is a comforting smile. “Let’s get you out of here. Find someone who can help us.”

There’s reluctance there, her hands still clutching to her knees. He is, after all, a stranger in a strange place. But then she looks again at their surroundings, at the dead grass and blistered bodies, and finally reaches out to take his proffered hand. Her grip surprisingly strong as he lifts her to her feet.

“Are you lost like me?” she asks, hand still gripping his.

He nods. “Yes. But I’m sure we’ll find our way together.”

Next to them, Spite needles his foot into the flank of a downed antaam, watches with an oddly curious smile as the skin folds against the toe of his boot. “What happened?” Spite asks, looking over at Eleri.

She looks back at him, though Lucanis notices her gaze doesn’t quite reach Spite’s eyes. “They wanted to kill me. I killed them first.”

“Good,” Spite snarls. Lucanis feels Eleri’s grip tighten against his palm.

“I didn’t know I could make fire. I didn’t know they would burn so fast. I didn’t—I didn’t know.”

Lucanis lifts the hand not holding hers to pat against the crown of her head. “It’s alright. You did what you had to do to protect yourself.”

“Then why didn’t the fire come earlier? Why did my clan have to die first? I should have… I should have protected them all.”

Her words sound like Rook’s, though the voice is still that of a child. “You were so young, Rook, you couldn’t have been expected to save them all.”

“Who’s Rook?” Eleri asks, looking up at him.

“She’s—I’ll tell you later. We should go.”

They walk together into the forest, Lucanis and Spite flanking the young Eleri between them, her hand still curled firmly in Lucanis’s own. He’s not sure what direction they’re headed – not sure there even is direction in this place – but he has little choice except to walk through the close crush of trees and hope that eventually he finds Rook.

They’ve been walking for a long while when Lucanis realises that the canopy above is starting to thin. A slice of grey-green sky beginning to show between the thick hatch of branches – though earie and featureless without either moon or sun. No clouds or circling of birds. Just a yawning nothingness over the too-tall trees.

Suddenly another crash of sound breaks the stillness of the forest. Different from the explosion before – not a rush of fire but a sort of wrenching echo that leaves a ringing at the back of his head, the taste of metal on the tip of his tongue. Looking up, a tear of sparking white grows across the newly-bared sky, an uneven rend spreading like some ghoulish grin.

“What. Is that?” Spite asks.

“The ritual!” Eleri gasps, “I’m too late!” Her hand slipping free from Lucanis before she’s sprinting away from them into the forest.

“Eleri, wait!” Lucanis shouts, glancing at Spite only long enough to make sure that he follows before chasing after her. Her flash of golden hair the only thing guiding him as he dashes forward.

He comes to an abrupt halt when he rushes beyond the tree line and finds himself on a tall cliffside of sorts, the forests of Arlathan stretching to his right while on his left – a staircase leads up to that sparkling tear, an elven figure arguing with a dwarf while magic rages and snaps. Behind them, a semi-circle of towering statues surrounds them, watching them fight with sombre, sightless expressions. And there are other figures too. Harding at the foot of the stairs firing endless arrows into a swarm of demons. In the distance, Neve and young Eleri at the base of one of the statues.

It's Solas’s ritual, he realises. The whorling slash of magic not just a breach in the sky but in the Veil itself. Familiar enough from Neve and Harding’s accounts and yet – so completely different.

He discovers then how utterly lacking his imagination must be. Everything so much more than he’d pictured. The cacophony of heaving magic and howling demons rattling in his ears. The sting of unfolding energy biting against his exposed skin. The heaviness in the air as the Fade begins to bleed into the world, so thick as to almost choke.   

There’s another crack – loud enough to hear crystal-sharp even above all the other noises – and then one of the statues is falling, toppling towards Solas, debris splintering and hurtling through the air as it’s caught in the eddies of magic. And there, in the heart of it all, Neve and Eleri running for safety. Or at least, trying to. The walkway they’re running across buckling under the onslaught of rock fall.

Lucanis runs, feeling a quick burst of speed when Spite slips his hands beneath Lucanis’s armpits and propels them both forwards with a snap of his wings. Reaching out, he manages to grab Eleri just before a spray of rock lands on her, curls her into his chest with a hand cradling the back of her head. Feels another snap of Spite’s wings as they’re pulled back from another deluge of debris.

“This way!” Harding shouts, “to the eluvian!” And though it’s hard to make out Harding’s form amidst the squall of rapidly unravelling magic, he can see the golden sheen of an eluvian standing at the bottom of a sloping path.

Eleri is squirming in his arms as he hurries towards the eluvian, screaming Neve’s name into his shoulder as he sprints with his and Spite’s combined momentum.

It’s only once they’re on the other side of the eluvian that Eleri manages to slip free, banging on the mirror’s now dull surface with tiny, clenched fists. The sound seeming to echo endlessly throughout the grey void they now seem to find themselves in.

“Take me back!” she screams, “I can help! I can—I can heal!”

And it hurts. To watch her batter herself against the eluvian’s glass. Her too young face contorted with such sorrow and rage. His mind scrabbles to think of something to say to soothe her pain, comes up with very little; Rook has always been the better one with words.

She flinches when he places a hand on her shoulder, turns her head to scowl at him. “You should have left me there!” she shouts, an arm lashing out to strike at his stomach. He winces a little at the contact, more out of surprise than pain, manages to catch her arm when she tries to hit him again. A frustrated cry ripping from her throat as she cranes her head up to glower at him.

“I couldn’t stand idly by and watch you get hurt,” he says, sinking to his knees until they’re at eye-level with each other, palms lifting as if calming a startled animal.

“But they got hurt! Everyone around me keeps getting hurt!” she chokes out, voice beginning to waver. “Neve. Varric. I come up with these stupid plans but I’m never the one who pays the price!” Tears are falling freely now, washing clean tracks down her dirt-smeared cheeks.

“They made their choices, Rook. And they knew the risks. There was nothing you could have done differently.”

“If I’d been quicker, I could have stopped the ritual before Neve and Varric were hurt. I could have stopped the ritual before the evanuris escaped. I should have been quicker.”

His hands come to rest on her shoulders. “Maybe. Maybe you could have stopped the ritual. Or maybe you couldn’t. And Solas would have unleashed demons all over Thedas and beyond. You will never know – and you did the best you could. Neve doesn’t blame you for what happened. And I know Varric wouldn’t either.”

There’s a beat as she rubs her fists into her eyes, leaving the skin red and blotchy, glossy with damp. “Sometimes I wish it wasn’t me having to do all this,” she says, sounding small, even for a child.

“I know,” he says, mouth lifting at the corners when he adds, “but – selfishly – I’m glad it is you. Or I would likely be dead.”

She gives him an odd look then, like trying to remember an old acquaintance from a different lifetime, then cautiously steps forward, curls herself under his chin in a hug, wrapping her arms around him as best she can. He lifts a hand to pat the back of her head, pointedly ignores it when she wipes her snotty nose against the collar of his shirt. Glad at least that she’s no longer so determined to punish herself against the eluvian’s glass.

He's not sure how long they sit like that, curled together on the floor of an endless space of nothingness. Until he feels something press against his shoulder, Spite trying to get his attention.

“Something is here,” Spite says. Barely a breath before a shadow flickers across them. Lucanis cranes his neck to try and find the source, sees nothing except grey.

“Dragon,” Eleri breathes against his neck, though Lucanis still sees nothing. It doesn’t seem to matter though, Eleri insisting again, “dragon!” before she’s untangling herself from his arms and starting to run again.

He follows. As if he has any choice in the matter by now. Nowhere else to go in this unrelenting greyness except after the one person who seems to know where she’s going. It comes naturally to Lucanis anyway; he’s followed Rook without question since the moment they’d met.

It takes a few moments for Lucanis to spot what Eleri had known about from the start – a dragon swooping above them, almost playful in the way it curls and gambols. Occasionally dipping low to spit fire down to the ground. Eleri startles with every sputter of flames, though the creature is still far too far away to hurt them.

In the distance, Lucanis swears he can hear the dull clamour of screams.

The grey under foot slowly materialises into a paved street, the grey on either side of them folding and creasing into the sharp angles of Tevinter architecture. They’re running down a narrow Minrathous alleyway, the putrid smell of Blight clinging in the air. To the waterfront, he thinks, as his memories begin to stir. The heaviness of Davrin’s footfalls behind him. The burn in his legs as he’d tried to keep up with Rook. It is easier this time, without the throngs of panicked civilians.

When they finally reach the docks, he’s struck with the familiarity of it all. The Viper clutching his chest while lying on a pile of wooden pallets. Neve with icy determination on her face. Tarquin, expression clouded with fury as he turns to Eleri. “You!” he shouts, finger pointing in accusation. “You should have stayed away, Eleri. There’s been nothing but trouble since you came back.”

Her whole body seems to wither in the face of his anger, shoulders curling inwards as her chest starts to shake. Suddenly incensed, Lucanis quickens his pace until he reaches her side.

“The risen gods. The blight. The dragon!” Tarquin continues. “It’s all your fault!  And now the city’s lost to the Venatori—”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Lucanis snaps as he grabs Tarquin by his collar. Putting himself between Eleri and Tarquin’s rage as he should have done that night in Minrathous. But he’d been thinking only of Treviso then – of the damage caused by the blighted dragon, of Ghilan’nain marauding through the streets of his own beloved city. Too consumed by his own hurt to think about protecting Rook from Tarquin’s.

“It’s alright,” Eleri says, tugging at the back of his jacket. “Let him go, Lucanis.”

He only tightens his grip, watching with grim satisfaction as Tarquin paws ineffectually at the hands at his throat. “You don’t deserve to be spoken to that way. Not after everything you’ve done for Minrathous. For the Shadow Dragons.”

“He’s just angry. I can take it.”

Lucanis lets go of Tarquin with a shove, the man stumbling back a few steps before righting himself. Turning back towards Eleri, Lucanis simply offers, “you shouldn’t have to take it.”

A shoulder lifts in a small shrug. “If I don’t, then who will?”

He doesn’t have an answer for that. Peering down into her wide brown eyes, softly sloping with resignation. She looks a lot older than just eight. “I wish… I wish you would let me carry some of your burdens.”

She laughs. “And how many times have I said the same to you?”

A smile cracks some of the tension from his jaw, a thin huff of amusement pushed through the nose. “Fair point,” he concedes.

Turning in place, she takes in the scene around her – the injured Shadow Dragons huddling around their leader, the looks of anger and frustration being cast at her by her supposed friends and allies. She takes it all in, unflinching, spine straightening as she squares her shoulders in the face of their scrutiny. She gives him a commanding glare. “I think you should be moving on now.”

“I can’t just leave you here”

She smiles up at him. The shape of it so painfully familiar even if the features of her face aren’t quite right. “This is my city. My home. I’m not lost anymore. And you have somewhere to be.”

“I don’t—” He looks around at the colour-drained cityscape, this earie imitation of their shared memory. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.”

“Of course you do!” she exclaims, looking at him with a sort of fond exasperation before she turns on the spot and sprints away, disappearing down an alleyway and quickly out of sight.

Without her, everyone else fades away – Tarquin, Neve, the huddle of Shadow Dragons staying close to The Viper. Until all that’s left is Lucanis and Spite and a grey-swept Minrathous waterfront.

“Where are we going now?” Spite asks, nudging his elbow against Lucanis’s arm.

He doesn’t know, despite child-Eleri’s claims to the contrary. An odd curdle of feelings in his stomach as he tries to figure out what to do next – relief that he was able to keep Eleri safe as they wandered through her memories. Unease that their path doesn’t seem to have led them to Rook.

For a moment, Lucanis simply stands and surveys their surroundings, hoping for some burst of inspiration to strike, for something out-of-the-ordinary to make itself known to him. But his memories of this place are spottier than perhaps they should be – his mind at the time too preoccupied with his own selfish concerns to really take anything in. Yet something still rankles. That feeling of not-quite-right. Until, finally, he spots it. An odd incongruity among the worn-down warehouses and towering piles of cargo.

An ornate wrought iron gate stands between the blank façades of a sorting office and an empty storefront. Far more suited to the higher tiers of the city than Docktown – and immediately recognisable to him.

It’s the gate to the park on Rook’s street – barely a stone’s throw from her home. A little pocket of calm amongst the rows and rows of narrow townhouses and cramped storefronts.

And one of Rook’s favourite places.

He's moving before he even realises he’s doing it. Knowing without a shadow of doubt that this is where he’s supposed to go, Spite trailing behind him with a look of confusion but trusting Lucanis enough not to question.

He follows a stone path under the boughs of elegantly shaped trees, passed the well-manicured beds of flowers that he knows from experience should be a riot of colour. There’s a row of wooden benches to his left, the soft tinkling of a fountain to his right and, there – finally—

Lucanis sees Rook.

Luminous even in this world of washed-out grey. Golden hair still shining despite the meagre light. Red dress startlingly vivid.

She is – as she always has been – the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

“Rook?” he calls, voice so thick with emotion he can scarcely choke out the word.

Her head whips around, eyes wide when she spots him. Though the expression on her face is worryingly hard to read. Relief, he thinks, in the soft curve of her brows. Joy, he hopes, in the quick lift of her mouth. But something a little unsettling in the hard set of her jaw, the tension in her posture.

‘Lucanis?” she asks as she takes a few tentative steps forward. “Dear Maker, please tell me you’re real. Please tell me you’re really here,” she pleads, eyes turning glassy with unshed tears.

He closes those final steps between them at a near sprint, reaching out to cup a hand to her cheek as soon as he’s close enough. Rejoicing in the way she softens at his touch. The way her cheek leans into his palm. “I’m really here, Rook,” he says, bending his head to rest his forehead against hers, “I’m really here.”

She sobs then, the tension ebbing from her body as she falls into him, arms wrapping around his neck with an almost painful ferocity. And he responds in kind – arms encircling her back to pull her tighter against his chest, one hand sliding up her spine to bury into the hair at the nape of her neck. Soft hushing sounds slipping from his lips as her body shakes with each wracking cry.

He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised when he feels the shift of another body against his, a warm pressure spreading down his back, his arms, a few gentle caresses against his cheek. Too many points of connection all at once. Strange and new and yet undeniably comforting all at the same time.

“Hello Spite,” Rook mumbles against the side of Lucanis’s neck.

“I told you I would bring you Lucanis,” Spite responds, the words rumbling into him at every spot where their bodies are pressed together.

He feels her mouth curve into a smile against his skin. “I never doubted you for a moment.”

Rook pulls back sooner than he’d like, looking up at him with a sort of frantic desperation in her eyes that makes his stomach drop. “We shouldn’t waste time. I don’t—I don’t know how much longer I can stay here.”

“Are you hurt?” he asks.

“No. Yes? It’s—it’s hard to explain. I’ve been poisoned, Lucanis. I can’t reach my magic. And I’ve lost a lot of blood. I can barely even stand in the real world. I won’t be able to defend myself.”

He sucks in a breath; it whistles between his gritted teeth. “Where are you, Rook?”

“I’m in a city called Nessus – just outside of Minrathous.”

“We’re already in Nessus. Neve, Emmrich, even Dorian. We’re looking for you.”

Relief floods her features, smile broadening as she looks up at him. “Oh, thank the Maker, you’re close then. The Praefectus is—"

His body stiffens. “The Praefectus has you?!” A blinding-hot rage surging up his nerves, leaving him almost lightheaded with the rush of it. “The bastard! He promised Dorian help in finding you!”

“He wants revenge. He thinks—he thinks I’m responsible for the death of his wife.”

“She’s dead?! He speaks of her as if she is merely ill.”

“She’s long dead, Lucanis. The Praefectus has lost his mind. He intends to use me for a blood magic ritual and I don’t—I don’t think I have much time left.”

His hands flex where they still rest against her back, itching with the urge to simply tear through reality and pull her into his arms for real. “I’m coming for you.”

“Hurry.”

He kisses her then. Intending for it to be a chaste thing – a quick brush of his lips against hers in farewell. But something comes over him the second their lips come together. Something aching and desperate. A clawing neediness felt low in the stomach like a man left starved for months on end. All the grief and longing that’s been building inside his body suddenly pouring out of him as this fervent wave of want.

She must feel it too, hands curling into his collar to pull him closer, a moan vibrating against his mouth as she opens for him. Teeth clacking as the intensity of their kiss banks to a frantic burn. It is all-consuming, the heat of her mouth, the soft glide of her tongue against his, the way her whole body pushes against him – every inch of his skin revelling in the eager press of her.

They’re both panting hard when they finally pull apart, hot breath billowing into the scant space between them. Hands still curled into her dress or his collar in an aching unwillingness to let the other go.

“I’m scared,” she whispers, so quiet he almost misses it, though he feels the words ruffle against his beard. “I’m scared that this is the last time we’ll see each other.”

“It’s not,” he insists, “I’m coming for you and I will find you.” So close to a promise that he almost feels himself shying from the words. But he doesn’t. Because it’s more a surety than a promise – the alternative too unfathomably cruel to even accept as a possibility.

He presses one final kiss to her forehead before they part, long and lingering. Feels her body shudder against his one last time before he unwraps his arms from around her. He watches as Spite nuzzles against her neck as they step back, sees the indulgent way she smiles at him, her mouth forming around the words thank you.

There are tears in his eyes as he tries to take in as much of her as he can. The unbridled affection in her eyes, the defiance in her posture. Unwilling to look away from her for even a moment. Rook is the same, never once breaking eye contact.

She smiles at him.

And then she is gone.

Consciousness comes quickly. No gentle journey into wakefulness but a sudden, jarring awareness. Dorian still arguing with the Guard-Captain. Neve’s face hovering just above his own. The jangle of Emmrich’s jewellery as his hands skim over Lucanis’s chest with little bursts of magic.

“I am well,” Lucanis croaks, hand lifting to catch Emmrich’s palm. “I do not require healing.”

Neve and Emmrich both startle at the sound of his voice then reach out to pull him into a sitting position. His back cracking as it curls up from the hard table where he’s been lying.

“Maker, Lucanis, you gave us all quite a fright! Would some water help? Or maybe some—woah, there! Are you sure this is wise?”

Lucanis is already swinging his legs off the table, pulling himself to his feet. “I’m very sure. I’m fine. Dorian—”

Dorian turns at the sound of his name, a flicker of surprise across his features as he sees Lucanis approach. “Oh good, you’re up. You had us all—.”

“Do you know where the Praefectus’s villa is?” Lucanis asks.

“Yes, I believe so. Though it’s been some time since—"

“Good. Let’s go,” he says, already walking towards the door. “He has Rook.”

“What?!” Neve breaks into a jog to catch up with him. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Rook told me.”

Her hand tugs at his elbow, trying to slow him. “What do you mean ‘Rook told you’? Lucanis, that doesn’t make any—”

“I haven’t got the time to explain. Rook needs us now.”

There’s no arguing with his tone as Lucanis strides purposefully out of the garrison. Nor his determined expression, the faint wisps of purple coiling from the corners of his eyes.

The others follow.

Rook doesn’t know how long she lies on the floor. It must be a while because the ache in her shoulder from her sudden fall has the time to fade from startling-sharp into dreary numbness. Though the burning throb in her back from the awkward twist of her crumpled body only gets worse. At first she’d tried to move a little – summoning all the strength she could muster to wriggle her foot, stretch her fingers against the rug – but it’s not long until she exhausts her energy for even that.

Instead, she lies and she waits and she prays that Lucanis reaches her in time.

When the door finally opens, Rook doesn’t need to see the new arrival to know it’s not Lucanis. The footfalls too heavy, the clank of armour all wrong. Instead two guards look down on her with matching expressions of disinterest, as if she is just another chore to be dealt with rather than a living person in need of help.

They haul her to her feet by her armpits, carry her out of the room with her feet dragging limply against the floor. There’s a long corridor, a flight of stairs. Several faces pass – guards mostly but a few servants – but none even flicker with acknowledgement of her. Faces trained straight ahead as they focus on their duties.

At the bottom of the stairs is a long room that seems more cavern than basement – the walls and ceiling cut rough-hewn from the rock rather than built. There’s an ornate mosaic underfoot, a few pieces of wicker-woven lounge furniture dotted around the space, and in the distance she can hear the faint tinkling of running water. The sconces lining the walls glow with an undulating pulse of magical greens and blues, casting a sort of watery effect on the walls that would be soothing if Rook wasn’t so certain of her impending death.   

Rook had noticed an odd smell from the moment she’d entered the room. Sharp and metallic, overly sweet. It only worsens as she’s dragged further down the room. Cloying, almost acidic in the way it burns inside her nose; the all-too-familiar stench of blood and lyrium. When the guards finally come to a stop, she manages to lift her head long enough to see the source of it – blood bubbling out from amongst a clutch of rocks, falling in a gentle stream into a large, shallow pool. It reminds her of the Hightown bathhouses back in Minrathous, though she shudders to think of the enormous cost in life it must have taken to make a natural spring run red with blood.

She is reminded of Zara, suddenly. Her pool at the base of the Treviso chantry. The burning rage Rook had felt as she’d thought of all the slaves it must have taken to fuel Zara’s vanity. The nausea she’d had to overcome to fight her.

“Well look at you!” the Praefectus says as he steps into her field of vision, lifting both hands to cup her cheeks. “You look perfect.”

He turns his head to nod at someone over his shoulder. There’s some movement, the sound of grinding armour. Rook can only just make out two more guards holding something bulky – the Praefectus’s wife, she realises with a jolt in her stomach, being slowly lowered into the pool.

The Praefectus must see the panic on Rook’s expression when he turns back to her because he starts shushing at her soothingly, running his thumbs across her cheekbones. “Now, now, don’t you worry. It’ll all be over soon. And, I promise, you won’t feel a thing.”

He takes a half-step back so he can take her in – eyes roaming greedily over lithe limbs and the soft drape of red chiffon. “Yes, yes, Lilith will be so pleased with you.” One of his hands slips from her cheek to the column of her neck, strokes along her collarbone, slides further down until he can cup the side of her breast. “And I think I’m going to be very pleased with you too.”

It's only then that she realises what’s happening – her role not as mere sacrifice but vessel. Her life ended not to bring the Praefectus’s wife back but to welcome her into Rook’s own body. Impossible, surely. Surely.

“No,” she mumbles with as much force as she can manage, trying to pull back from his touch, barely managing a slow shake of her head.

The Praefectus steps back with an indulgent smile – as if she is a petulant child too foolish to understand what’s happening.

Except she does understand – and she is horrified. Preferring death over whatever foul puppetry the Praefectus has planned for her.

“You can place her in the pool now,” he says to his guards with a wave towards the spring.

“No, no, no,” she chants, increasingly frantic, as they carry her forward. She flexes her feet as if that might somehow trip them, wrenches her head to the side as if that might somehow free her from their grip. When she reaches inside of her to find whatever whisper of magic might still be hiding behind the knot of magebane in her chest, she finds nothing but silence.

There is nothing – no strength in her muscles or surging magic – to save her.

“Wait!” shouts the Praefectus just as they reach the lip of the pool. “Bring her back.”

Dutifully, the guards return her to their master. There is a frown on his face, a deep crease marring the skin between his brows as he looks at her with an odd thoughtfulness. A hand raises, cupping her cheek at first then sliding back to push her hair back from her ear.

“That won’t do,” he mutters, “won’t do at all.” He reaches for the ornate dagger hanging from his belt. “Can you hold her down for me for a moment?”

The guards place her onto a nearby table, hands pushing heavily against her shoulders to pin her in place.

“What are you doing?” she asks as the Praefectus steps forward with the dagger in hand.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” he says with a patronising smile, the crease between his brows softening as his expression slips from frustration to pity. “This’ll be over soon. And I’ll heal you up as best I can afterwards. But I can’t imagine Lilith will be happy with those pointed ears of yours.”

There’s nothing she can do as the Praefectus brings his dagger down, her body too weak, the grip of the guards too strong. Nothing she can do as the blade slices through skin and cartilage, as Rook’s ear explodes in pain. Nothing except scream.