Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

First,

our dear Reader,

if you would so indulge us: let us set the stage. Both we and they have been apart for some time now.

Our fated-lovers await us upon the precipice of their reunion, the eve of their second-chance.

For seventeen years, Rook has hidden from Lucanis.

After her conversation with Caterina, two days before her seventeenth birthday, Rook has never given him the chance to explain. She’s heard it all, in the whispers of the ever-gossiping Crows that surround her — that flock her, that crowd her, that hem her in (into this life).

So she's heard it already. She knows what he'll say.

(But she cannot bear to hear such things directly from his lips.)

Though, Reader — in this one thing, we may congratulate ourselves in being that much cleverer than our deadsharp Rook — because we can be certain in the knowledge that Lucanis Dellamorte has never stopped trying to find her, has never stopped trying to explain.

Not for seventeen years.

(And for those who like to do the math: Rook is thirty-four. Lucanis, would-have-been thirty-six.)

Would have been.

Because so far as Rook knows, so far as any Crow knows: a year ago, Lucanis Dellamorte died. Was assassinated. By the very order he'd nearly single-handedly wiped out (if the rumors around the Diamond are to be believed.)

But again, our dear Reader: you and we both know better.

We know that Lucanis yet lives and still — still, always — we can be certain: he is looking for Rook. He has never stopped looking for Rook. (And he will never stop.)

Not even when he is lost, presumed dead, suffering and isolated, in his year beneath the sea.

Rook

Though she has been fledged for 17 years now, Rook has never been in charge of a team before.

There have been teams, sure, and she's been on them. She's worked with other Crows on contracts, especially when Viago insists. But even in collaborative efforts, assassins tend toward loosely-affiliated individuals rather than operating as a cohesive team.

But this? The tenor and scale of this — elvhen gods and ancient mages and tears in the Fade itself… — this is much, much different than Rook has ever known before.

And the only thing that Rook knows, really, about being a leader is this: your team has to trust you.

(They all trusted Varric.)

But trust isn't something typically keenly offered to an Antivan Crow.

(So: she'll need to work for it.)

Harding shouldn't be a problem. So far, Lace has needed only the confirmation that Rook knows she's got-what-it-takes — whatever that happens to mean to the Dwarf. Harding's trust is assured, a fair exchange for Rook's trust in her competence.

Bellara's trust, Rook expects, will be won about as easily as Lace's. The newest Lighthouse denizen doesn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that Rook is a Crow. The Veil Jumper's natural curiosity should be more than enough for Rook to draw her into her confidences.

Neve, however.

Neve is going to be… not a problem, exactly — but her sharp-dark eyes watch a little too closely, and a little too often, for any Crow's comfort.

The detective withholds herself, Rook can see it; she prefers to observe the others, listening intently, her judgments held in reserve, before choosing to join in. Sometimes, Rook catches Neve hiding secret expressions, pursed smiles and coy glances, behind hat-rim and high-collar. The Tevinter mage knows far more than she says and notices far more than she acknowledges.

These are traits they share, of course, but regardless: such things will make winning the detective's trust all the harder.

It doesn't matter.

Rook does as she must, always, and she has spent a lifetime earning the trust of untrusting and unlikely collaborators — amongst the Crows, between the Antivan Houses, and now across Tevinter. In most situations, she's found, the answer is simple enough: a truth offered most often wins a truth in return. Trust-for-trust.

(A simple enough equation to balance in theory, if not always in effect.)

And so when Neve suggests a return to Antiva, a return to Treviso, in order to retrieve the Crow's most feared mage killer, Rook realizes her opportunity.

(She doesn't relish it, no. But she does seize it.)

"Ah. A problem there," she says; her eyes track the movement of a wisp, floating a few feet off her right shoulder (she'll look anywhere, really, but at Neve as she says), "The Demon of Vyrantium is… Was — He's dead."

Neve allows her surprise to show plainly.

"That's a shame," and it's kind, Rook thinks, that she seems to mean it. "Stories had slowed down in recent years but… I had no idea."

Neve's head cocks ever so slightly. She purses her lips; the detective narrows her eyes. And asks (a little too astutely for Rook's comfort),

"Did you know him?"

"I knew of him," Rook lies — which is an impulse for defense she understands — but she doesn't understand why she then adds, "His name was… Lucanis Dellamorte."

(Neve's eyebrow arches, pleased; a point won.)

"I'm not surprised I've never heard his name but I am surprised I never heard of his death. I suppose the Talons aren't keen for the world to know the Demon is dead but that the news hasn't spread more widely…. The Demon is famous among the Dragons. Tarquin will be devastated."

"He was famous, a legend among Crows, too. Since our childhood. And well liked — or, so I've heard," she hastily amends. "People don't like to talk about their heroes' suffering."

"Not in Antiva, maybe." Neve laughs. "Tevinter loves to torture its heroes. But are there, really? 'Well-liked Crows?'"

"Some."

"And you, Rook? Are you one of them?"

"According to some," the nascent leader allows. "Enough to outweigh the few that disagree."

Neve nods.

"Perhaps a new mage killer has risen up since you've been in Minrathous. Your bosses would know."

"Perhaps," Rook laughs, "but will they tell me? That's much less likely. I'll write to Viago to inquire. While we wait for his reply, we'll go to Dock Town."

"Well, well, look at us — both going home again."

Rook grimaces. "At least you're going first."

…

This is exactly what Rook had been hoping to avoid, altogether, when she'd opted to write to Viago about a new mage killer.

She hadn't wanted exactly this: the sudden hush that falls over the gathered Crows at the Diamond as soon as she has alit from zip-line to veranda. And gathering in the wake of this hush is a phenomenon she well-knows — the onrush of gossip, the broken wisps and fragments of thought, of judgment, of shocked (dis)approval —

"Did you just see…?"

”Is that Rook de Riva?”

”Rook’s back?”

"I haven’t seen her since —"

She hasn’t been in the Diamond — hasn’t been in Treviso, hasn’t even been in Antiva — for the last year.

And it had been quite a scene, the last time that any Crow remembers seeing Rook de Riva in the Cantori Diamond: the same gossip mill swirling around her now had informed her of Lucanis’ death.

(She feels like there’s a pall cast over her as she follows Teia numbly. Neve shadows her right shoulder.)

”— never seen anyone so distraught, not even Caterina had reacted so —“

”— tore down the hangings from the walls, just about —“

”… screaming, sobbing, wailing, tearing —“

”— I witnessed it! Full on decked Viago, right in his —“

Her name, over and over.

Rook —

It’s Rook.

Rook is here.

And inextricably, unavoidably, (heart-wrenchingly), his —

(Lucanis.)

His name, too.

And he is everything that she’d been hoping (praying, begging-the-Maker) to avoid.

”… the death of Lucanis Dellamorte.”

Rook is keenly aware of the Tevinter mage's dark eyes, moving too-keenly and too-rapidly to take in all they see. Neve is a teal sore-thumb amidst the raven-cloaked Crows. (And Rook is wondering if she should have brought Bellara instead.)

“Rook,” Teia brings her attention around. “In here.”

It isn’t just Viago that awaits them — though he’s there of course, with his stiff-neck and loose-hips and his air of frigid disapproval —

Caterina Dellamorte, First Talon of the Crows, rises to greet her. The old woman kisses Rook once upon each cheek and says warmly (with her hands upon Rook's shoulders), “Giulia. I am pleased to see you; it has been very long.”

A nod to Teia, and the old woman returns to her chair.

Rook had known to expect Caterina. Viago’s return letter, received only hours ago, had been very clear:

(You idiot) Rook,

Caterina Dellamorte has caught wind of your return and summons you, immediately. I need not remind you that House de Riva does not kneel to House Dellamorte, but that we also do not leave the First Talon waiting. Come as soon as you are able.

T insists I write that I am looking forward to seeing you, little sister. (Even if you are the worst kind of idiot.)

— Vi

(He certainly doesn’t look like he’s pleased to see his sister, at the present moment. The left handlebar of his mustache is ever so slightly twisted, upturned — crooked from an anxious tic. He narrows his eyes at her as Caterina returns to her seat, accusing her of she doesn’t-know-what.)

Behind Caterina’s chair stands her remaining grandson, (fucking-) Illario Dellamorte. He smirks at Rook (and she realizes that she had somehow forgotten how much she hates to look at his smug face).

“Ah, little Rook de Riva. I had forgotten all about you.” (The feeling? Mutual.)

“Charmed as ever to see you, Illario,” she deadpans in reply. Then, nodding to Caterina, “You summoned me, First Talon?”

"Yes. You are looking for a mage killer."

"Yes, Caterina."

"You want the best mage killer that the Crows have to offer?"

"Yes."

"Then you are looking for my grandson, Lucanis."

A pause, which ripples through them. The deep line between Viago's eyebrows deepens.

"Lucanis Dellamorte is dead," he says.

But Caterina's reply is simple. She says, "He is not."

And Rook is —

Wait, what?

What did she just say?

“My cousin is alive? And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“Hush, Illario. I have many good reasons to believe that he is.”

Lucanis is… alive?

Illario raises his voice, lifting an octave. “My cousin is alive and you’re only telling me this now?”

(At least it means the primary focal point of Viago’s disapproval shifts from Rook to Illario.)

“We knew that someone sold him out,” her brother begins. “You think the body that was returned to us was faked?”

“Yes," Caterina replies and behind her shoulder, Illario blanches, his expression darkening. "It had been altered with blood magic to have his face, but the body your people brought back was not my grandson’s."

"Why are you telling us this now, Caterina?" Teia asks.

“I was recently able to discover the location of Lucanis' prison — and I find it a happy coincidence, that such things arrive on the wings of Rook’s return to us. An omen of our changing fortune, perhaps. I want you to go to this place, this Ossuary, Rook — and free my grandson, free Lucanis! Bring him back to us and he will be the god-killer you need.”

“Why are you sending Rook,” Illario bites. “This is a job for family, for flesh and blood —"

“Her track record is better than yours,” Caterina interrupts, “in saving Lucanis’ life. I trust her to protect him.”

…

The last time that Rook de Riva saw Lucanis Dellamorte (alive) had been across the central overwatch at the Cantori Diamond.

Their eyes met briefly across the open space — he, mid-step aside his cousin, and she, leaning-hip against the railing between her brother and Teia (two Talons) — honeyed-brown and bitter-chocolate.

(A fleeting and weightless moment of hope, a momentary lifting of the ever-deepening crease between his brows.)

"Rook," her brother warns, unnecessarily; Teia's chin lifts.

"I've got you, little Gi, this way —"

There is a hidden door — an unsurprising thing, in a casino owned by a House of Antivan Crows — through which she ushers Rook, secreting the younger de Riva away from prying eyes (dark, searching, as-yet-still-hopeful).

(Still? Still hopeful? Rook wonders, both back and ear pressed tight to the wooden door behind which she hides.)

She hears him ask for her; she hears Viago's denial that Lucanis spotted her; she hears Teia promise Lucanis that she will pass his message along (that he is looking for Rook, that he is wanting to find Rook).

And for just a moment, for the space of the aching breath she seizes in her chest, Rook's hand moves to open the door between them.

But she hears, "There's a contract."

She should have known. They are Crows. There is always a contract.

And it means: he doesn't want her, but her skills. He doesn't want Rook, but a spy.

She listens as his steps retreat.

She listens as Teia says, "Would it be the worst thing, Vi, really?"

"Yes," her brother hisses. "She's a de Riva and she's my sister and he isn't getting his claws into her again."

…

In hindsight, Rook wishes she had opened the fucking door.

Chapter Text

Lucanis

The last time that Lucanis Dellamorte saw Rook de Riva was…

Well, he isn't actually sure how long it has been. Time is a bit… in(de)terminable. Inconsequential. (Here, in the Ossuary.)

He'd last seen her across the central overwatch at the Diamond, their twin gazes meeting all-too-briefly across the empty air. By the time he'd gotten to where he'd seen her, however, she had disappeared.

He remembers the way his heart had fallen in his chest, the sinking-falling-shrinking that had followed his (briefly-soaring) hope. Such moments have been so rare, these times of seeing Rook again — of glimpsing her briefly or hearing a snippet of gossip not meant for his ears. Rare and highly prized.

His cousin Illario never remembers hearing anything of note about the younger de Riva. Lucanis stopped asking almost a decade ago. ("Why do you bother?" His cousin has always sneered. "I've forgotten her. Why don't you?")

Teia, so often his ally, is not his ally in this. In this, she is always Rook's. ("I'm sorry, Lucanis," the Cantori has always told him, and he has always tried to believe her. "But Rook isn't here.")

And Viago? Hopeless. The elder de Riva's frowns have become more pointed than his beard.

So Lucanis has always just-missed-her. (He's always just-missing-her.)

For sixteen years, last he'd known the day. And that day was…

Well.

Many, many torments ago.

…

"The Chianti, I think," Illario croons to the bartender, "The lovely vintage from Salle that arrived last week? Two glasses, per favore."

"One glass," he corrects. "And a cup of Andoral's Breath, black."

"Lucanis," gripes his cousin. "But we're celebrating. You can't celebrate with coffee."

"I am the one who completed the contract. I am the reason we're back in Treviso celebrating at all. So let me celebrate how I like."

He is well accustomed to dealing with Illario. (Still, he hears the silent sneer: "My cousin has no capacity for joy, for pleasure, for romance. And yet somehow, it is me who they call 'Dellamorte the Lesser!'") Illario doesn't say it; Lucanis hears it nonetheless.

A small coincidence, then — the world is so full of them, really — that he is thinking about his capacity for romance the very moment that the crowd parts: and she's there.

(A stroke of luck. He is lucky, when she is near.)

Her hair is longer than he remembers it. When was it, the last time he saw her? It's been… at least nineteen months. And for once, she doesn't seem to have seen him (for once: he has a chance).

He knows from past experience that she'll feel the weight of his gaze if he lets it rest upon her overlong, and so he purposefully avoids looking at her (though it hurts, it aches, to force his eyes away—). His cousin he leaves behind, wide-palmed in disbelief as he watches Lucanis stalk away. But Lucanis has no thought to spare for Illario.

He is newly thirty; she, less newly twenty-eight. It's been more than a decade since they were close.

They are close now, near enough almost to touch; she hasn't yet turned to catch his approach and bolt.

Announcing himself, "Rook," he brushes her elbow. She is not alarmed by his touch; she doesn't jerk away from it.

She turns with a half-smirk on her lips, as though expecting him; there's an arch to her brow when she sees who she wasn't expecting. He can't-quite read this expression. Her thoughts remain hidden behind warm eyes, rapidly cooling. He no longer possesses the skill to read them as they flash by, to his regret.

But he has never forgotten the secrets of her voice. He has forgotten not one single instance, not even one syllable, of the times Rook has said,

"Lucanis."

…

Not even this place, not even the endless depths and this constant ever-present humming madness can drive him to forget.

(He is determined.)

…

"Lucanis?" she says again, a familiar smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, as she waits for him to catch up.

(How many years, he wonders, since he saw her smile? How many years, since he was the reason for it?)

The conversations of the cafe patrons buzz around his ears.

"Were you looking for me?" A question she has asked him before. (Though: she no longer asks why he is looking for her. Does she already know?)

(Doesn't she?)

Beside her, Noa de Acutis mirrors Rook's quizzical brow.

"I—" Mierda. What had he been planning to say? His mind is blank. Empty. (And yet full: filled to the brim with Rook, cataloguing everything he can to last him the next decade.)

"We're celebrating," chimes Illario, having followed his darting cousin (coffee mug and wine glass, double-fisted). "Another contract completed, with style."

Noa inclines her own wine goblet. "To the Demon of Vyrantium!" she intones.

He grimaces but politely sips the coffee Illario hands him. He notices: Rook does not drink to the Demon. Quietly, before her own sip, he hears her whisper, "To Lucanis."

Honeyed-brown; bitter-chocolate. Locked in an eternal embrace.

Rook turns to go but Lucanis reaches for her elbow to stay her, his grip is loose — easily broken, his hold on her a mere two fingers, gently clasped.

"Rook," he implores. He wishes he could say aloud the word that's in his heart: please.

But a Demon does not say such things, and Lucanis Dellamorte is il demonio. Has been, for years now.

(But can't she see it? The hope there, limning his eyes?)

"Let her go, Lucanis, can't you see she doesn't want to be here?"

(Doesn't she? With him?)

…

(A missing peace?)

…

THUD.

Lucanis is face-down, nostrils flaring against the sandy floor, his assailant—

No: his torturer.

His torturer yanks him back up, violently righting him as the marionetteer jerks their marionette. (His blood absolutely compels him.) He doesn't know how long he's been here.

(Here. In the Ossuary.)

A caress against his cheek. A cut. A strip of skin, neatly trimmed away. Another nail, halved; another lip, split. These tortures are no worse than any of the myriad tortures he has suffered before, and at far crueler hands than Zara Renata's.

("Good," his grandmother crows. "You are learning. You are surviving, Lucanis. Survive, Lucanis.")

He laughs, spitefully, "Is this all that you can muster? Debole," he calls her, weak.

(Her? Caterina? Or… Zara? He isn't sure.)

It doesn't matter.

He has suffered much, much worse.

(And he needn't, really.)

He spits, a cloudy globule of blood and saliva and snot and his own churned-guts.

A caress against his cheek, he sees only the pointed toes of her boots.

(Too late.)

She's too late; he's gone. It's so very easy to use the physical sensation of her so-called tortures to slide into the safety of his memories: a strategy he'd honed, decades ago, and has practiced, for decades since.

…

He is sitting on a long, low bench, beside Rook; and they are staring out at the waxing Dead Moon. His cheek, against the crown of her head, is warm; otherwise, he is struggling to hold the shivers at bay.

"I'll protect you," he is promising her, whispering into the night; an oath sworn upon the Dead Moon, and sacred.

It is the eve of Rook's first Trial.

…

("Good," his grandmother crows, from the deepest recesses within him. "You are surviving. Survive, Lucanis.")

("Shut up," he whispers back through teeth clenched bitterly, "be silent. I'm not doing it for you.")

…

He's ripped back to consciousness.

The depths of the waters. The all-consuming pressure of it all: on his ear drums, behind his eyeballs, against his chest, within his chest.

He shudders, nauseous, Zara's fingers against his lips, pressing between his teeth, his own blood on his tongue —

He retches.

There are no torturers, for now. He is alone.

He need never be alone.

(He isn't.)

…

One thousand three-hundred fifty-four. Once, Lucanis counted Rook's breaths as she slept curled against him.

He has remembered.

He remembers.

He will continue to remember.

One thousand, three hundred, and fifty-four.

Many times since, Lucanis has recounted those breaths. Several times, he has imagined even more. Once, under Caterina's thumb, he'd counted nearly seven-thousand of Rook's breaths in his memory. (He remembers nothing else of that day's training with his matriarch.)

In reality, his Venatori captors have him laid out on a stone slab. They are carving into his chest, hoping to tempt out the demon that incubates within.

But Lucanis does not suffer his reality.

Instead, he is stretched out on his back, warm and safe and (loved? and) Rook slumbers peacefully beside him, against him, within him, and her every breath steadies him.

It's a meditation. A peace that he's found, that he carries within him.

…

(The peace that was missing?)

Yes, a peace. A peace that he can have again — and again — with Rook.

(A peace.)

…

"You are dead," Zara has told him. "None think you alive. There is no rescue coming. You will surely die, Lucanis Dellamorte — Demon of Vyrantium — alongside all the rest."

The Venatori witch whispers; she promises; she goads and taunts and slices; she bleeds him dry.

Death; always death; only death. It is her only offering.

Zara likes best to taunt him with the imagined pities of his kin—

"Would that the mighty Caterina Dellamorte, First Talon of the Crows, could see her grandson now," the blood-witch purrs. She taunts, "I wonder if she wept at your funeral."

But Lucanis does not wonder. He knows: Caterina Dellamorte did not.

He knows: his cousin, Illario, did not.

(He does wonder, though: did Rook?)

(Rook?)

…

Rook.

The little girl that had stolen Illario's precious-silk gloves, spitefully.

The ten-year-old who had saved his life, in spite of the Trialmaster's plotting.

Nearly drank poison. (But Rook saved me.)

The teenaged girl who had shown up for him when he'd needed her most, sometimes altogether flinging herself through his bedroom door as if racing — as if thinking of her too hard summoned her, forcefully.

Briefly, he wishes: (Rook, save me.)

Her arms, tight, around his shoulders; her breaths, heavier, than his.

"What's wrong?"

"Everything but this." Rook always knew, exactly, how to say the things in his heart. She said the things aloud that he could never find the words for. He thought she knew he was echoing them, silently, in her wake.

A warmth against his chest. A stillness-without-bracing. It's peace.

A peace that he has learned to carry within him. A peace he can have, again and again.

(Deal.)

…

He does not realize, until too late, what is watching his memories alongside him. But together? Together, they can FIGHT. Together, they can BREAK THEIR CHAINS. Together, they can LIVE.

(For Rook.)

(For peace. The peace that is missing.)

…

He has completely lost his mind, surely. Truly.

It is the madness cultivated in him by the endless pressure of the sea, the newly-invoked insanity of making a deal with an actual demon… it's only that he doesn't realize he's completely lost it until he starts hallucinating.

Surely… he's hallucinating.

Because inexplicably: Rook is here. Mid-escape.

She says, "We're here for Lucanis Dellamorte."

("Fight!" says his purple-hued twin, grimacing up at him beside the corpse of a blood-mage. "Live!")

Wouldn't it be funny, though?…

It doesn't matter.

There are Venatori yet to kill.

"You're the reason we're here," his hallucination declares, when there are no longer any Venatori to kill.

This isn't the Rook he last remembers — there's a long scar, jagged, deep, across her face, framing the apple of her cheek and curving down to mar the corner of her upper lip. He'd know if that had been there before. (He'd demand to know who had done it.)

(He'd demand their death, if not already granted.)

"Who are you?" he asks. "Who sent you?"

She is no hallucination, after all. He can tell in the way that her face falls, the way she neatly shutters her hope away, wherever she keeps it. He sees the pain of his purported amnesia, writ plain across her high-boned cheeks.

(The sight? His worst torture yet, here. In the Ossuary.)

"Huh," says the woman at Rook's side. "I would have bet good tesserae on you two already knowing each other."

Chapter Text

Rook

Lucanis hadn't recognized her.

"Who are you," he had asked, his dark-brown-and-bitter eyes narrowing, a haunted (haunting) flurry of wings, furling and snapping to a close between shoulderblades —

Fucking wings. Lucanis has wings now.

(And he doesn't recognize her.)

He's clearly in bad shape — malnourished and gaunt. She can see it in the angle of his cheeks, in the exhausted hunch of his shoulders, in the desperate (hungry?) gleam in his eye… Though spectacularly, incredibly, they have somehow discovered him fully-armored, fully-equipped, somehow already mid-escape. (And in this, he is exactly the Lucanis that she remembers.)

So she recognizes him, a little. Though he looks like he hasn't bathed in months, though he's sporting a stranger's beard, overgrown and tangled and crowding his high-necked leathers. His hair is greasy and wild. Rook has never seen him so unkempt. (Rook has never seen him look so empty.)

She’s going to get him the hell out of here.

"Huh," Neve had quipped and her casual tone had struck Rook oddly, discordant with the stuttering in her own chest (hammering; heavy).

Hollow-voiced, she’d introduced herself to him anew, "Rook. House de Riva." She'd stood there before him, bedecked in feathers, metallic-toed boots shining — still, his eyes remained flat. Empty of all recognition. His gaze had skittered askance, tracking something unseen.

(Something is wrong. Here. With him.)

Neve had warned her, mere seconds later: "He's possessed by a demon."

Wide-palmed, he'd deadpanned, "It's complicated."

"It's fine," Rook swears, Rook promises, "We're getting you out of here."

"I can still work," he says, momentarily once more a Lucanis that she recognizes. "I'll owe you." (No one declines the offer of a favor from a Dellamorte.)

She nods, can’t-resist, and says, “I’ll keep a tab for you. It’s always good to have leverage over the Crows of other Houses, right?”

Neve chuckles.

And Lucanis… softens. His heavy-knitted eyebrows lift, ever so slightly, in the middle of his brow. “Yes,” he murmurs. “I have heard this said.”

Then he grimaces, turns away. (Another little tendril of hope, snipped.)

Neve asks him as they get underway, "Anything we should know about Calivan?”

He returns a dry laugh. (Empty). “You want to know his torture methods? We didn't chat.”

He says he doesn't even remember Caterina.

(This makes her feel a little better.)

(For herself. Not for Lucanis and the horror he's clearly been through. Is still inside of.)

Rook allows him to lead the trio through the warren of passageways, allows him to sniff out the path to his blood’s reliquary, though Neve’s eyebrow arches ever higher with every reference to his co-inhabitant.

“Now we both want him dead,” he’d intoned, speaking of Calivan.

“We?”

“Demons don’t forgive.” He'd added, a heavy-lidded glance at Rook, "And neither do I."

Lucanis can summon objects from the Fade where none existed before (the demon within him, he says, the demon possesses this helpful stepping-stone power. Handy of him.) And he has wings, sparking purple, flaring and fluttering as he fights, as he slaughters every Venatori and demon and undead corpse that challenges them. He’s beautiful. It’s grim.

This isn’t the Lucanis that she remembers.

His behavior is absurd, random and odd — inelegant, in a way she's never seen from him before. His chin jerks, he snorts, his breaths are sharp and uneven. She isn't sure if he's reacting to something unseen, if his breaths are paining broken ribs and bruised lungs, or if he is perhaps reacting to his own stench.

Sometimes, though… sometimes he is exactly the Lucanis that she remembers.

“Mierda, these guys,” he gripes once, and the familiarity of his tone — frustration, sass, the unadulterated confidence of his ability over theirs — has Rook nearly forgetting to notch an arrow as the Venatori descend.

Once, he reaches gently to draw down her arrow-pull, and growls instead, “Mine.”

(She doesn’t think about it — she isn’t thinking about it — the way that it had sounded, right in her ear, to hear him murmur, “mine.”)

She has to clench her jaw, grit her teeth, to fortify herself for what must-be-done. She's beginning to let herself believe that Lucanis Dellamorte (that is: her Lucanis, the little boy she'd known) is not dead, not lost… not entirely.

But almost.

They hadn’t acknowledged it, when they discovered the note containing the instruction for Lucanis’ death. Their twin gazes refused to meet, but somehow Rook had felt his heart pounding alongside her own in that moment.

(Twin hearts; beating in hope but not betraying it.)

Caterina had been right to send Rook because Rook will save Lucanis, always, at any cost. It’s a fact she’s proven, time and again, even as she suffered the indignities of a childhood twined with his. And she’d done all this, earning Caterina’s trust, fully unrequited.

So Rook knows: her love alone can be enough. Her love is enough, has always been enough to save him. Rook does not require (has never had) Lucanis’ love in return.

Though she is broken-hearted to learn, apparently, she doesn’t even require his recognition.

…

When first they surface from the depths, Lucanis draws down deep lungfuls of the Trevisan canal’s tepid air. He is, after all, a man who has been drowning for an entire year. Rook can’t blame him for relishing the putrid air because it probably smells like freedom, not anchovies, to him.

It’s enough, she’s decided, watching a few lines of worry fall away from his face as he breathes free. She’s brought him home (and he's alive) and barring anything else: that’s enough.

(It isn’t. Not by a long shot.)

His expression grows darker, though, becoming bereft, the further they delve into their home. Their return to the Diamond is less triumphant than Rook had expected. Antaam in Treviso. Zara’s people infiltrating the Diamond. Caterina gone.

Rook watches, in agony, as the tattered remains of Lucanis’ soul are decimated, desiccated. (He's alive, sure, but dead-eyed.)

"It's time to go," she decides. "We all need rest. There's nothing more we can do here, for now. I'll make sure Lucanis comes back home in one piece."

"Thank you, Rook," Illario simpers.

But her brother stops her, a hand caught-sharp around her elbow as she passes. "We're not done here, you and I."

(Lucanis looks so defeated, so in need of everything — food, a stiff drink, a bath, several days' worth of good sleep probably — not that he'll get it.)

"Go on," she tells Neve, "show Lucanis around the Lighthouse, let him settle in. I'll catch up when I've heard Viago out."

"She'll be a while," her elder brother snarls.

There are bitter chocolate eyes locked on hers, for a moment. The way he'd said, "And I owe Rook." Rook. The way he'd said: Rook.

"Go on," she assures him. "I'm right behind you. Promise. We've got catching up to do."

Neve urges, gently. “Let’s get you some food and a hot bath. Fixes everything.”

(It won’t fix possession. They all know it. She doesn’t say.)

It aches, to watch Lucanis walk away, though she is the one sending him. He hesitates on the threshold, casting a glance back at her before he goes. She nods; he nods, assuaged. A promise: there is a conversation between them yet to be spoken. They’ll speak it. But not yet.

When Lucanis and Neve have departed, Viago heaves an overwrought sigh.

“You can’t be serious, Rook,” he accuses. “Not again. Not with this. I’m too old to do this with you again, I have my own children to worry about now! Por la sangre,” he wipes his palm across his face. “I thought we were finally through with you chasing after Lucanis Dellamorte.”

"Vi!—" Teia’s reprimand is sharp but Rook doesn’t need the assist.

"How dare you, Viago, he's alive!"

"Good for him."

"Good for—? Vi!"

He rolls his eyes at Teia. "You know what I meant."

"You'd better hope I do," she snarls. Fool, she calls him, "Scemo."

"I just don't want her to forget who she is: a de Riva, my sister. She deserves better than to cast herself in the role of Lucanis Dellamorte's widow again!"

Viago has said such things before. A common refrain, over the last seventeen years: her brother would swear, "You are more than just the girl that Lucanis Dellamorte left behind."

…

“Are you sure you want to leave, little Gi?”

Teia is just inside the doorframe of Rook’s bedroom in Villa de Riva.

Her brother’s shadow ghosts back-and-forth beyond as he paces the hallway.

“I can’t stay,” she huffs, tugging open another drawer to spill its contents into her traveling case. “He’s everywhere, T — everywhere I look.”

Teia’s reply and Viago’s inarticulate grumbling are both lost upon Rook because suddenly in her hands — a silk sleeping tunic, worn and soft. It’s old and long unused…

This tunic is one half of a matched set. Its mate is a high-waisted pant, pinned close at the ankles and flaring loosely in the same silken brocade. The set was a gift from Lucanis. He chose the weave and the fit and then he gifted the pajamas to her one Wintersend long-past.

(She wore the tunic, bare-legged; he, the pants, bare-chested. A matched set.)

A matched set.

Rook stuffs the silk into her trunk, saying forcefully through her tears, “I’m going, T. I can’t stay here if he’s —“

“Say no more of it,” her brother says gently, his grumbles all gone. “You’re going. Just don’t forget your knives.”

…

"You let me go, Vi. Did you forget?"

"I was expecting you to come back again," he arches, arms crossing. "I'm thinking this whole occupation could have been avoided if I'd had access to my best spy. You weren't supposed to leave and never come back, Rook."

"I have to go. I… appreciate your concern," she strains to say such words aloud (she gets through it). "But there are bigger problems brewing, Vi, I'm sorry — you and T will need to hold the fort here."

"We will," Teia swears.

Rook dares to wag a finger beneath her brother's mustache, squaring up. "And let's be very clear on one point, regardless of anything else, Lucanis Dellamorte is a great ally to have. Now, I know that you'll never be able to stop yourself worrying — you are the surliest mother hen I have ever met — but brother, please. I need to go."

Viago pulls her by her pointed finger into a tight hug, he presses his lips to her hairline. "Be safe, Rook," he impels her. "Come home again."

She knows it's a gift that he never adds: soon.

There's no one to greet her when she steps through the mirror and into the Lighthouse's main building. And so (like a coward would), she creeps up the stairs to her own room and collapses — exhausted, overwhelmed — face-down onto the buttoned green vinyl.

Lucanis Dellamorte is alive. Lucanis Dellamorte is nearby.

(It's enough, for now.)