#shivunin scrivening

[shivunin]

A kiss along the collar bone - For Lenore Ingellvar <3

Thank you very much for asking! <3 (from this list)

Factual Inaccuracies

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis Dellamorte | 443 Words | CW: Brief references to poison)

“—and among the bouquet rested a horrible secret, for the petals had been washed in a poison called Silent Death—”

“Did Viago write this? Check the author again,” Lucanis murmured against Rook’s chest. She went on, laughter suffusing the words. Lucanis let his eyes drift half-closed, the better to hear her voice without the distraction of her bare skin.

“—which would surely kill the gentle maiden should she take even a single breath of their sweet scent.”

“Ineffective. Too much collateral damage. Do they think that the maids do not smell flowers when they deliver them to their mistress’s chambers? The flowers would never make it upstairs. A distraction, perhaps, but a kill? No.” 

“Maids plug their noses whenever flowers are near, didn’t you know?” she asked, still laughing. 

When Rook laughed, he could feel the hum of it in her chest, felt his head shift with the motion of her ribs. He turned his head and kissed her twice, feeling warm skin and hard bone beneath his lips. He kissed the dark line of her tattoo stretching over the collarbone, kissed the hollow between that line and her neck. She pressed her lips to his forehead in kind, resting there for several long seconds before leaning back again. 

“Would you like me to skip this bit?” Lenore asked, lifting the book again. “We can pretend the flowers were slipped into her private chambers with an anonymous note or something.”

Lucanis snorted, shifting against her. Rook preferred to sleep wound in long lengths of fabric, as if in emulation of the undead that lived below. More often than not, he found himself kicking the blankets and sheets away when he rested in her bed. He did so now, and covered her leg with his own so she would not feel the chill. 

Spite, who’d been reduced to a not-unpleasant hum in the back of his mind while she read, stirred. Lucanis spoke before Spite could, for he knew by now precisely what the demon would ask for.

“Go on,” he said. “Let’s hear it all, however absurd.”

“Alright,” Rook laughed, smoothing a hand over his hair. “Where was I? Oh—here we are. ‘—should she take even a single breath of their sweet scent. On the day the flowers arrived…’”

Later, he would recall little of the book except its inaccuracies. The story itself mattered less to him than the steady beat of her heart under his ear, the warmth in her voice as she read, the occasional laughter that jostled him from his place at her shoulder. Lucanis let his eyes close again, sinking into her voice and the comfort of her presence.

[shivunin]

Hey, this is mine!

This story was inspired by the Fade level of Origins. After I played it, I started thinking about what something like that might have looked like in Inquisition, and, well---here it is!

I am proud of how this turned out. This was my first Big Bang and it was such an interesting experience. If you check the fic out, I hope you enjoy c:

It's time for the sixteenth post of the Dragon Age Big Bang 2023! Let's give it up for author Mortonsspoon and artist HellerHound; they did fantastic work! Go check out their efforts over on Archive of Our Own.

Enjoy!

Rating: Mature

Summary:

After the Inquisitor is poisoned, she finds herself trapped in a version of the Fade woven from her own worst nightmares. It is up to her Commander to track her through the shifting landscape of her fears and retrieve her before time runs out—and she is utterly consumed by the demon who hunts her.

[shivunin]

Breath and Bone

After Rook is injured in the Crossroads, a spell gone wrong makes the injury dramatically worse. With Rook unconscious, Lucanis must help her reach the Lighthouse and safety.

(Lucanis Dellamorte/Rook Ingellvar | 6,360 Words | AO3 Link | CW: broken bones, implied past child abuse)

“It's never enough being one. Why do I hope to contain you: always undoing and undone; every place you touch me changes shape.” —Robert Fanning, “Song of the Shore to the Sea”

“Nice one, Rook!” Lucanis shouted from the other side of the clearing. 

Rook, stepping back from the fresh corpse she’d just driven her spellblade into, did not have the breath to respond. The Crossroads was a dizzy thing, ridden with a resonant hum. When she fought here, she could feel it all through her, as if the place was singing in her bones. It was easy to get lost in that rhythm. It was especially easy when she was fighting like this, Venatori swinging blades everywhere she turned, no space at all to breathe or strategize.

A missile hissed as it passed her, and Lenore summoned a barrier just as a second might have hit. Somewhere behind her, Bellara shouted something she couldn’t hear. Days like this invigorated some of the others, she knew. After battle, Taash or Davrin seemed energized, as if the adrenaline rush of combat clung to them a little longer than the act itself.

It wasn’t like that for Lenore. Death was a familiar friend; killing was an entirely different creature. She had long since accepted its necessity. That didn’t mean she loved the fight. Quite the contrary, in fact. If there had been any other path for them, she would have taken it a hundred times over by now.

She ducked nimbly, drawing a miasma of death from the ground to drive the nearest foes back. They choked and gagged at its touch, so familiar to Lenore, and staggered away from her. 

The field had been whittled down somewhat. As she watched, Bellara waved her arms to draw the attention of an assailant. When the warrior turned to fight her, Lucanis appeared behind him as if from the air itself and drove a blade neatly between his ribs. 

This! This was what she’d been working toward! It was so heartening to see that their group combat practices were paying off, that their techniques and strategies were interlocking so effectively. She would have to bring this up to both of them later, because it deserved to be pointed out. She would—

Something struck her leg, midway between her knee and her ankle. There was an ominous crack somewhere in that region and an answering swell of pain. She’d made the first, most basic mistake in combat and taken her attention from her enemies. Luckily for her—for all of them—her instincts had been honed by the constant fighting, too, and she reacted without thinking. Lightning arced from her hand and spread, striking the one who’d hit her and spreading to the two behind him. One toppled immediately, arms splayed, eyes hollow. The other shook, caught in place as the power coursed through them, and crumpled to the ground a moment later. 

“Nice try, filth,” said the one before her, and swung his blade at her again. 

Not good. She could barely put weight on her leg, which would dramatically hinder her maneuverability. The pain was getting to her already, crawling from her leg to her chest and choking her lungs. She couldn’t think straight; needed to do something to fend him off. Something—

He swung again, and her shield flickered into existence just before the blade would have connected with her forehead. Her reserves had been drained by the lightning, and they drained further as he added a second hand to the hilt of the blade to bear down on her. 

Lenore gritted her teeth. Her head felt fuzzy, her face clammy. She hadn’t the strength to hold him off now. She barely had the breath to hiss between her teeth, let alone call out to one of the others for help. Healing magic was out of the question—she’d never had the knack of it. 

None of them could heal, really; up to now, they’d mostly been working around this with potions. Not for the first time, she wished she’d formed the sort of bond with a spirit that might’ve given her this skill. Alas, her talents lay elsewhere—her hands had always been for death, never life.

Wait. There was an idea. 

In the Necropolis, inhabited skeletons often encountered the sort of damage that cracked a bone or two. There were spells to mend them when this sort of thing occurred, and materials to patch missing pieces if necessary. She’d learned those spells when she’d been an apprentice, but hadn’t needed to call upon the knowledge in years. 

Her bones were still covered in living tissue. It would be risky to try this herself, but she had little choice. In a moment, he’d break through her barrier. If she could just remember—

“Give in to me,” the Venatori demanded. “Kneel!” 

Lenore panted with effort and dragged the words from her memory. The shield dimmed around her, bright where it touched the blade and nearly insubstantial everywhere else. She had so little energy left. This would take most of it; she’d only have one shot at patching herself up. She had to make it count. 

“Rook’s hurting!” Bellara yelled somewhere beyond her. 

Rook tensed, sucked in a breath, and spoke the words of the spell. Several things happened in quick succession: 

Devoid of the power it took to sustain it, her shield faltered and the sword broke through. Lenore ducked to her right, taking her weight off her injured leg, and hammered the base of her staff into the Venatori’s throat. 

As she moved, the spell took effect. Pain swelled within her and broke like a wave, the bone in her leg mending itself over and over again until it had multiplied itself enough to break through the skin. She screamed without knowing it, without really hearing it, as if the pain itself made a tunnel from her leg to her throat and poured itself forth from there. 

Bolts laden with electricity shot from somewhere in the distance, hammering into the unbalanced Venatori’s back. He stumbled, nearly tripping over one of the many spurs of bone now projecting from Rook’s leg. 

“Rook,” Lucanis shouted from what seemed like a great distance, “hold on!” 

She’d no idea what she could possibly be holding on to when the whole world was shuddering like a freshly reanimated corpse, but she tried anyway. She must have fallen at some point in the chaos because her hands scrabbled at stone and dirt now, not thin air. If her leg hadn’t hurt so badly that it eclipsed all other feeling, her head and tailbone would no doubt be aching from the impact.

The Venatori, now bleeding profusely, staggered to his feet. Behind him, a violet blur felled first one, then another of the remaining Venatori who stood between Lucanis and Rook. There were few of them left, which was probably good. It still wouldn’t save her if she fell to this one right now. 

Her staff had fallen behind her. Rook dragged herself backward, scrambling for it. Her hands were slick with something and they moved slower than they should, as if the air itself was more viscous than it ought to be. Every time she tried to grasp the smooth wood, it slid away from her. A flash of teal and brown flickered at the corner of her eye: Bellara was running toward her from the other side of the clearing. Even as she identified her friend, another Venatori darted into Bellara’s path and blocked her from view. 

Only five left now. If she just held out—

The violet blur spread tenebrous wings and shot closer, impossibly fast. Fast enough? It was hard to say. Everything looked—felt—so very strange. Her head pulsed in time with the wound in her leg.  The Venatori lifted his sword and swung, a blow that would connect precisely with her breastbone. At last, at last, her hand wrapped around the polished wood of her staff, though it fought to slip from her grasp.

Unbidden, her mind began to recite, in clinical and removed tones, precisely what would happen to her body when the blow connected: if her sternum did not collapse, one of the sternocostal joints would. The force of the blow would penetrate her chest, likely striking her heart. If it did not, it would certainly rupture the pleural cavity and steal her breath away. The latter would not kill her immediately. She’d tended plenty of corpses that’d taken at least one more blow to die after this precise strike. If she hung on for long enough, one of the potions the others carried could still heal her. If not…

If not, she’d already shown Emmrich exactly where she wanted to be buried. 

Behind the Venatori, Lucanis—or maybe Spite—struck down two more Venatori; they fell before him like sheaves of wheat before the scythe. She might be impressed at his accuracy and speed if she weren’t possessed by mortal terror. Perhaps Emmrich would be able to coax that thought from her corpse after she—after— 

The blade whistled through the air, a silver gleam meant for her heart. At that precise moment, Lenore finally grasped her staff and summoned another barrier. It failed almost immediately, but held just long enough to arrest the sword’s motion in midair. The Venatori grunted and lifted the sword again. 

This had to be it; she had nothing left, not even a drop of magic.  Rook took the staff in both hands (it was so heavy; so heavy that she almost couldn’t lift it, though she’d been wielding it for months now) and held it over her chest. It was a poor shield, especially when she was shaking so hard she could barely see straight, but it was better than giving up entirely. 

“For Razi—” the Venatori began, but the word was cut off abruptly. 

Between one blink and the next, the air was filled with that purple glow, illuminating her attacker from behind. Even now, Rook held her staff in shaking hands, warding as best she could against whatever blow may yet come. It wasn’t necessary; already, blood trickled from her attacker’s mouth, still open to speak a syllable that would never come. 

When his body dropped, it fell to the side and away from Lenore. Lucanis stood behind him, his face like stone. Spite’s wings spread from his back. His knife dripped blood onto Rook’s boot. She looked at that instead of her—instead of the bones branching above it. 

There was no clever comment, no regards from the Crows. Instead, his eyes held hers. 

“Can you walk?” Lucanis asked, eyes gleaming with the telltale sign of Spite’s ascendance though it was undeniably his voice she heard. 

“No,” she managed through gritted teeth. 

Behind him, Bellara shouted as the last of the Venatori fell. Lucanis must have seen her leg by now; his face grew more grim, eyes pinched at the corners. She could hardly look at it herself, though she could see the jagged, pale sections from the corner of her eye. 

Lucanis stepped closer and crouched, neatly blocking her view of whatever she’d done to herself. Without meaning to, she reached for his elbow and squeezed, far harder than she would have under any other circumstances. She couldn’t have said what kind of comfort she sought then; there was nothing he could do for her and both of them knew it, though he was already reaching for the vial at his belt. 

“Bad idea,” she told him, lifting a hand to clear the sweat from her brow and realizing at the last minute that mud, blood, and something green dripped from her hand. She used her elbow instead, though it wasn’t much cleaner. When she drew her arm away, new red streaked over the fabric. 

“Why?” Lucanis asked. He pulled a cloth from his pocket and lifted it to her forehead, carefully dabbing at something there. His face was so very grim. She did not like it; did not like that she was the cause. 

“What I did—” gorge rose at the back of her throat. Lenore swallowed and tried again. “Healing is the problem. It might make it worse. Unless you’ve got something for—for pain or sleep…”

“No,” he told her, tucking the vial away. “Only this. Can you bear it until we reach the Lighthouse?” 

“Don’t have much choice,” she said. Bellara rushed into view, face already paler than usual. 

“Rook, that looks really bad,” she said. “What can I—is there anything I can do?” 

Lucanis rested his hand over Rook’s at his elbow and looked up at Bellara. 

“I am going to carry her back. Can you find something to keep her leg stable?”

“I—yeah. Yes. Give me just—give me a few minutes. I have an idea.” 

Bellara darted off again, flitting from body to body. After a moment, she perched near the collapsed pile of metal that’d once been a guardian of the crossroads. Something pulled Rook’s attention to a pile of rock floating past and she watched its slow, gentle path across the sky. It was not engrossing; it was something she had seen dozens of times by now. Nonetheless, she could not look away. For a moment, every other sound was drowned out by the rush of her blood in her ears.

“Rook?” Lucanis said. “Rook. Can you hear me?”

It took some effort to unclench her teeth. Lenore nodded instead, turning her head to look at him. He’d leaned closer while she’d been distracted. He reached for her hand now, apparently unbothered by the muck still caking her palms. 

“Hold on,” he said. “As tight as you need to. I am here. I will stay.” 

At last, she managed to part her lips. Her mouth was dry, but she didn’t dare reach for her waterskin. Any movement felt like it could upset the delicate balance she was maintaining. An ounce more pain and she would be lost. 

“I will pass out,” she told him as clearly as she could manage. 

His hand tightened around hers—surprising, since she had his hand in a vice grip and couldn’t seem to unclench her fingers. She hadn’t expected him to hold her back. Sweat dripped into her eyes, stinging as she blinked it away. 

“When you lift me,” she clarified. “It’s—going to jostle the–the wound. I won’t be awake. That’s good. You can move faster if you aren’t worrying about my comfort.”  

“I understand,” Lucanis said. “Don’t try to talk. Rest now; we will do what we can.”

“Stupid,” she told him, and took in a shaky breath. Bellara was moving toward them again, something golden in her hands. “My fault.”

“Leave it,” he told her. “You can blame yourself later.” 

“Got it,” Bellara said, skidding to a halt beside them. “This will hold your legs in place. There’s a bit that should keep anything from hitting the, um—pieces directly. I’m going to put this on now, okay?”

“Wait,” Rook said. The adrenaline was wearing off; she was thinking less and less clearly, the pain echoing and magnifying with each passing moment. “Tell—tell Emmrich—the spell is the one for—for mending bone. He’ll know—so stupid, tell him I’m sorry—”

“I’ll tell him, I promise,” Bellara said, her voice soothing. Briefly, she rested a hand on Lenore’s shoulder. “I’m putting the brace on now, alright? I’ll be as quick as I can.” 

She couldn’t help the noise she made when Bellara reached under her leg to fasten the brace. Without thinking, she turned and pressed her face against Lucanis’s knee to muffle the cries, uncomfortable as it was. All the while, his grip on her hand held steady. 

“I know, I know, I know,” Bellara chanted, her voice strained. “Almost done, just a little more—sorry!—almo—”

Between one syllable and the next, the universe blinked.

Now, the wind rushed through her hair. They were no longer in the same clearing. Instead, the Crossroads sped past on either side. The ache in her leg had intensified, though she could feel from the tight band around her thigh that the splint was still in place. 

“How close?” Lucanis asked. 

“We approach the requested destination, Dweller,” the serene voice of the Caretaker responded. 

Warm leather curled more tightly around her shoulders and the scene resolved itself into something that made sense. Lucanis held her at the prow of the rowboat, one foot braced on the bench before them. She turned her head to see him better and found him examining her already, his face solemn. 

Something about his chest looked odd, but it took her a moment to place it: he’d removed the blade and all the vials from his armor there. Why? Nothing made sense. 

“I’m sorry,” she told him, and his brow furrowed.

“For what, Rook?” 

What could she say? She turned her face into his chest instead, closing her eyes for a moment. It would be easier, she decided, if the world would just stop spinning. 

“It was a stupid mistake,” she mumbled against his chest. 

“You’ve said that,” he told her. “More than once. I will tell you again what you told me after Weisshaupt: we all make mistakes, Rook.” 

She tried to hold onto his words, but they scattered to the winds. His grip on her shifted slightly, his hand curling around her shoulder. 

“Look at me, Rook. You have to stay awake. You have a concussion. That’s why you aren’t thinking clearly.”

Staying awake was a singularly unattractive prospect. Everything hurt; the dizziness was only getting worse and she’d made the mistake of looking at her leg again. Just the sight of it, bone jutting from her leg in three directions and curling in on itself like the horns of a halla, was enough to make her stomach lurch again. 

“I’m sorry,” she told him. 

Through his armor, she could hear his heartbeat. 1, 2, 3, she counted, 1, 2, 3—like a waltz, played in double time. She couldn’t remember why she was apologizing. Had she played a waltz for him before? She’d played for him—for all of them—but she couldn’t remember—

“I’m sorry,” she told Lucanis again, and the grim lines branching from the corners of his eyes deepened. She wanted him to never let go of her; when she turned her face into him again, the world felt quieter.

“Don’t apologize to me, Rook,” he said, and the universe blinked again. 

|

It was quiet in Rook’s room, for which Lucanis was grateful. There had been far too much noise in the infirmary from when he’d carried her there to when Taash had brought her here. Neve’s sleeping spell yet held her; Rook’s face was still, though the space between her eyebrows remained faintly creased. If the spell had not failed when Taash had rebroken her leg and Davrin had set it, Lucanis did not think it would break in the face of too much noise. Even so, he was relieved that she was here, in her own space, and that the others had gone away for a time. 

“Why does she still sleep? Wake her up,” Spite said from the head of the settee she slept on, peering down at Rook’s drawn face. 

“Waking will hurt her,” Lucanis told him. “Her leg is still broken.”

“Then fix it, if it’s broken,” Spite said. 

Lucanis ignored the demon and leaned forward, glancing at Rook’s leg. The cold spell had reduced some of the swelling, though it was still visible under the second brace Bellara had brought her. The damage was clear beneath the metal and leather: her skin gone red and purple around the break, sliced to ribbons where the new growth had speared through it, dried blood still caked in the creases of her ankle where Lace hadn’t quite washed all of it away.

Like most Crows, his knowledge of healing was limited to the most basic necessities. In a fight, it was better to remove your opponent from the battle than to stop moving and patch up your fellows. He had studied certain medical writings in training, but only to better identify the weak points of his opponents. At most, he might’ve been able to bandage her wound long enough to get to safety, or perhaps offer one of the potions he kept on hand. In this—the bone jutting from her skin, the way she’d cried out when he’d lifted her from the ground, the tear tracks still visible on her cheeks now—in this, he’d been of no use at all. 

Even now, he was not entirely sure what she’d tried to do. Emmrich’s explanation had mostly been different versions of a horrified “why that spell” or “what an incredibly inadvisable course of action.” Lucanis had not disagreed with either statement, but he had not found them especially enlightening either. The necromancer had undone her spell, at least. He was glad of that.

“She smells all wrong,” Spite said, still peering at Rook. “All wrong.”

All the long way back to the Lighthouse, Spite had been uncharacteristically helpful. He had slipped beneath Lucanis’s skin seamlessly, as he once had in the early days in the Ossuary. He had done nothing but help speed them along, pushing their body faster than Lucanis might have been able to alone. It had seemed that they were, for once, of one mind, one mission: bring Rook somewhere safe and get her the help she needed. Everything else had been peripheral. 

It was…quiet now that the others were gone. This was a relief. It also meant he had far too much time to think. He might almost—almost—be grateful for the distraction Spite provided now. Whenever he turned to look at the fish, the water behind him, his stomach turned and his hands shook. As long as he faced forward, he could still pretend to ignore it. 

“Wrong,” Spite repeated. “Blood and elfroot and pain. Not like Rook.”

Lucanis sighed. He had not enjoyed carrying her back, though he would do it a hundred times over if she ever had need of such assistance again. It had been a fraught thing, willing her eyes to open again even though she would go on apologizing to him every time they did. He had a great deal of experience trying to hold still, but it had been worse to know that every involuntary shift of his body had caused hers pain. 

He had not liked carrying her, but it had been—he had felt—something to hold her pressed against him, to wrap her in his arms. She had clutched him to her, hands snarled in the belts at his chest, face pressed into his body. He had wished, on that long ride back, that he could curl himself around her and shield her from what she’d done, though it was a useless impulse. 

Useless and foreign besides; he had never felt such a thing before and did not know what to do with it now that he had. 

Now, his hand rested beside hers on the bed, close enough that he could feel the faint movements of her body when she breathed in and out. When Emmrich had finally deemed it safe, Lucanis had administered the healing potion to her himself. He’d slid a hand under her neck to tip her head back and ease its passage into her throat. Though he was no longer touching her, he could still feel the memory of the softness of her skin against his palm. 

Once, he had watched Rook tune her violin on one of the balconies outside the main tower. She’d struck a tuning fork against her knuckles and held it between two elegant fingertips, eyes closed to listen. The tone had spilled out into the air long after she’d touched it, humming until she finally set it aside to turn the small knobs at the top of her instrument. 

Lucanis supposed he did not feel so very different than that tuning fork now. The touch of her skin still hummed inside him, though he had long since let go. He could not help wondering if he should reach for her hand now, if only to still that hum. 

 “She needs to rest and heal. Then, she will smell like herself,” he told Spite.

Spite crouched, his nose an inch from Rook’s. Slowly, Lucanis’s smallest finger brushed against Rook’s.

“She should smell of incense,” Spite told her, as if to remind her. “Leaf-rot. Rosemary. The rest is wrong.” 

“She doesn’t smell like rotting leaves,” Lucanis said, as he had a dozen times before. Spite bared his teeth. “I don’t know why you always say that.”

“You’re wrong. She smells of sweet rot. Always. Only Rook ever does.” 

What use was there in arguing? It hadn’t swayed the demon yet, though they’d had this argument more than once. Lucanis shifted in his chair and found his hand resting against Rook’s. Should he let go? Leave? Work on finding a healer in Treviso they could bring her to? 

Her hand was so still, soft and cool in his.

When he had been a boy, there had been an illness (he could not recall what it had been; a fever, perhaps) and a dark room, bed hung with dark cloth. It had not been in Villa Dellamorte, but the home his parents kept. It had been—warmer, he thought. Less marble, more carved wood. One night, Lucanis had lain in the dark, ill and horribly lonely, and he had woken to find his father’s hand in his. What a comfort it had been, to know that he was not alone in the dark with his pain. 

Lucanis ignored Spite and curled his fingers around Rook’s. There were calluses on odd places near the first joints of her fingers. Musical in origin, he supposed, not caused by her staff. He had not seen them before, but now he could feel scars across her palms, across the backs of her hands. Where had she gotten them? He wondered if she would answer, should he ask.

It had seemed…foolish, potentially dangerous to hold her hand in most of the places they’d visited. What if one of them needed to draw a weapon? Precious seconds might be wasted in untangling themselves from each other. Beyond that, she would be a target if anyone knew that he wanted—that he thought—

“You will make sure she’s fixed,” Spite said, voice abruptly louder, and he leaned across the bed to put his face near Lucanis’s. “She won’t stay like this. It isn’t right.”

“Yes,” Lucanis agreed. “Neve is looking for a healer who can help. Emmrich has already undone the worst of whatever she did to her leg.”

Spite had been with Lucanis for more days than he’d been able to count, but he still had difficulty reading the demon’s expressions. He did not even know if they were facial expressions or if that was just how his mind interpreted Spite’s existence. On someone else, he might have thought the narrowed eyes and sneer meant displeasure. On Spite, it must have been approval instead because the demon winked out of existence a moment later. It was a relief when he was gone, as if some imperceptible background noise he never really heard had finally ceased.  

“Don’t worry,” Lucanis told Rook in the ensuing silence. “The others will find somebody to help. I’ll wait with you until they do. It’s not like I was sleeping anyway.”

She would have laughed at that. She liked to laugh, his—Rook liked to laugh. 

Her hand didn’t move in his. Still, he did not think he was imagining the growing warmth in her palm. Lucanis reached for the cup of coffee he’d set aside and sipped it without letting go of her. Whatever came next, he would be there. 

Even if nobody else had heard it, he’d made her a promise.

|

The first thing Lenore felt when she woke was the warmth wrapped around her hand. 

Pain followed quickly, but she’d been braced for that. She had not been braced for comfort and was less sure about what to do with it. 

“You’re awake,” Spite said, and Rook opened her eyes to look at him. 

The demon sat in a chair beside her bed, one foot propped on the seat while the other rested on the ground. He was the one holding her hand, of course. 

“I am,” she answered, studying him. “Did Lucanis fall asleep there or did you walk him here?”

Not what she was asking, really. What she meant was, which one of you decided to wait beside me while I was out? It would have been harder to ask that; harder still to admit to him how much she wanted to know. Better to sidestep it entirely. 

“Here,” Spite replied. “He promised. To stay.”

“And you didn’t want to make a run for it while everyone was distracted?” 

The ache in her leg was…significant, but better than she remembered in her awful, cluttered recollection of the moments following her injury. A cautious glance downward revealed only the usual quantity of bones. Nothing twisted past her shin, bones projecting outward and curling around each other like halla horns. She almost wished she believed in a god so she could thank them. 

“He promised,” Spite replied, as if it was the obvious answer. 

“Does Lucanis know that you keep his promises?” she asked, smiling at him. 

Spite smiled back slowly, each side of the mouth creeping up in turn, as if testing himself to see if he could. 

“No,” he said. “Are you. Fixed?” 

Mentally, she felt along her body. Her head felt better, she thought, though her leg was a miserable tangle of pain. The rest of her was stiff, as if she’d been lying still for a very long time.

“Not all the way. Something still hurts down there. But better than earlier, yes.” 

“Good. Your pain. Was wrong.” 

Wrong?

“Did it bother you to carry me around?” 

Rook thought to push herself up, try to sit, but thought better of it. She’d have to let go of his hand if she wanted to move and it hardly seemed worth it. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had held her hand. Actually—now that she was thinking about it, she couldn’t remember a time when anyone living had held her hand for longer than the time it took to lead her where she was supposed to be.

“No,” Spite replied at once, and looked as if he would go on. Abruptly, his face went blank and Lucanis blinked himself awake. 

“Rook,” he said. “You’re awake.”

“So are you,” she said. 

Now that she was awake, he would take his hand away. She was certain of it. She held very still so he wouldn’t notice that they were still holding onto each other. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked. His forehead creased as he leaned closer, shifting until both feet rested firmly on the ground. 

“I’ve been better,” she said, but he did not laugh. “Feeling a little stupid. I feel like I should apol—”

“Don’t, Rook,” Lucanis said, lifting the hand that wasn’t holding hers as if to halt the words. “I think you’ve apologized enough. If I never hear you say ‘I’m sorry’ again, it will be too soon.”

“Did I? I don’t remember that.”

“Hm,” Lucanis said, the corner of his mouth twitching. Some strong emotion suppressed; not a smile, she thought. “Emmrich called it…perseveration. He said that those with head wounds often repeat phrases or thoughts, and you’d happened to choose that one.”

“You disagree?” Lenore asked. 

His thumb traced something on the back of her hand, slow and soft. She repressed a shiver at the sensation—so comfortable, so easy. It was like they touched each other casually all the time, which they certainly did not. He had made his interest clear—clear enough for her, at least—and yet they had still remained largely hands-off until now. 

“These marks on your hands,” he said, and paused. “I have seen others like them.”

“Have you?” 

The urge to snatch hers back and hide it under the blankets was immediate, the effort to ignore it not inconsiderable. Lucanis lifted his own hand, angling it so the light shone over the scar tissue there, criss-crossing his knuckles and the back of his hand in straight, silvery lines. Thicker than the ones on the backs of her hands, yes, but mostly the same.

“You are not a Crow,” he said. “You were not trained the way I was. Emmrich’s hands are largely unscarred. Those are very old—before you left the Necropolis.”

“Correct on all counts,” Lenore told him, and turned their hands so hers was pressed against the blanket and out of sight. 

He watched her for a moment, free hand settling slowly on the cot beside her leg. She wondered what he’d read in her face. She wondered what he wasn’t saying nearly as much as she hoped he wouldn’t keep talking about it.

“You do not have to apologize to me,” he said at last. “I was glad that I was the one with you when you fell.”

“You shouldn’t have had to carry me back,” she told him firmly, shifting her weight onto her elbow. Her grip tightened on his hand. “I’m meant to look after myself better than that. I should’ve—”

“Stop,” Lucanis said, squeezing her hand in turn. “Stop. I would do it again.” 

He was so very close—she hadn’t noticed him getting closer—and she still felt so awful, so grateful, and his hand was so warm in hers—

“Lucanis,” she murmured, as if speaking too loud would ruin something precious and fragile, “I think I’m going to kiss you.”

Lenore hadn’t been touched or held in so long. She had almost—almost—convinced herself that this didn’t bother her, that she didn’t care. She’d been wrong, though; she cared a great deal. Cared like a plant cared for watering, like strings longed for a bow. Before she could change her mind or retreat from him again, she was lifting her face to his and kissing him.

|

Lucanis could count on one hand the number of times he had kissed somebody, and nearly all of them had been in the process of completing a contract or training for the same. They’d all been more or less the same to him, the experiences blurring together into the same dull sensation, all duty and never desire. 

This—Rook’s face upturned, her soft mouth pressed to his—was like none of those other times. He hardly had time to recover from the shock of it before she was pulling away again, eyes searching his face. Too fast; not enough time to understand. He needed more.

On instinct, he reached behind her and cupped the back of her neck as he had before, carefully pressing her close to him once more. Her lips were soft and surprised under his, as if she had expected him to pull away. When he kissed her, she made a surprised sound and squeezed his hand.

 Had he worried that it was Spite, not Lucanis, who wanted to kiss her? Had he somehow believed that touching her would quiet the hum of fascination under his skin? All ridiculous, all incorrect; this was something entirely different. His hand fit at the back of her neck perfectly, as if it had been shaped precisely for this. He was barely kissing her, but the faint pressure of his mouth against his was almost overwhelming. He was already touching her, already holding her to him, and yet he was hungry for exactly that—as if the touch by its very existence required more of itself, required more of him. 

Too much. He withdrew, though he didn’t let go of her yet, and found her eyes still closed, her lips softly parted. 

What was he to do with this? He wanted to press his thumb to the pulse beating at her throat, wanted to lift her from the bed and hold her again, wanted to kiss the hand he held in his until—until what? 

“You should rest,” Lucanis told her, his voice so quiet he found himself surprised he’d said it aloud at all. 

Rook nodded once, eyes still closed, and pressed her lips together. When she moved, he could feel the shift of her spine under her skin. Would it feel the same if he held her hand while she moved, while she played her music for him, when she drew magic from the Fade? Would it feel the same with his hands around her hips, or her—

The thought was strange enough, foreign enough, that he let go and climbed to his feet. For a moment, Rook held very still, face still tilted. Lucanis took a step back, lest his hands betray him and reach for her again. 

“You’re still healing,” he told her, and took another step back when her eyes fluttered open. Her eyelashes were so fine against her skin, her eyes so warm and soft in the pale light of the water. He wanted to look closer. Instead, he stepped back again and wished he had something to do with his hands. Anything that would remove the sensation of her hand in his, her mouth so sweet against his. 

“I’ll check on you later,” he went on. “Somebody needs to start dinner, and a note from Teia and Viago arrived while you slept.”

“Lucanis,” she said, her voice soft and quiet. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Thank you. For staying, I mean. Both of you.” 

“Of course, Rook. Anytime,” he said, and slipped from the room before she could take him up on the offer. 

“Coward,” Spite hissed. 

Lucanis, striding briskly away from the door so he would not turn around and open it again, found he could not disagree.

[shivunin]

Honey and Lavender

In which Lucanis grapples with his feelings for Rook after their near-kiss in his bedroom (AO3 Link)

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis | 3,586 Words | No CW, romance progression spoilers)

“Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through.” —Christina Rossetti, “Who Has Seen the Wind?”

No matter what he’d told Rook, stepping out of the dining room did not help Lucanis clear his head. No matter where he stood, it would always be too loud, too cramped. 

“Go back,” Spite snapped. 

Lucanis wrapped his hands around the wood railing and squeezed, trying to shake the sensation of Rook’s breath on his cheek. She had been so very close—close enough to breathe her in, to feel the brush of her clothing against his. Close enough to touch, though he had not done so.

“No,” he said. 

Spite loomed in his peripheral vision, his face pinched. 

“No,” Lucanis repeated, his grip tightening until the uneven wood pressed hard into his palms. “We have to stay focused. Getting attached without—no. No, it is a poor idea.”

“Liar,” Spite spat. “Make up your own reasons later. I want to touch her. Go inside.”

The demon’s grip tightened, like a fist around the base of his neck. Lucanis gritted his teeth and pushed back. Waking from sleep to find himself already standing, the taste of strange words on his tongue, had become all too familiar. 

Rook’s presence when he woke was also not unfamiliar. He wished he knew how to feel about that. 

That was, in the end, the problem: he didn’t know how to feel. He didn’t know which of them wanted Rook, or for what. When he thought of setting his hand on her shoulder, was that his or Spite’s? When he imagined how her bare hands would feel on his face, was that something Spite wanted, for reasons beyond Lucanis’s understanding? Or worse, was it the remnants of infiltration training he’d rarely cared to use?

How could he hope to understand when Spite would not stop saying that?

“I said no,” Lucanis told him. “She isn’t for touching. She is—”

A what? A client? A friend? An associate, he had called her when Teia had flirted with her, and realized too late that she’d only done it to prod him. Rook was none of those things; she defied easy categorization. Rook was a threat when threatened, a friend when friendship was offered, a leader when leadership was called for, his voice of reason when it seemed easiest to believe the worst of himself…

Rook was important. He would never pretend otherwise. It didn’t make any of this less of a distraction. 

“She wanted to touch. You wanted to. I felt it,” Spite said, and Lucanis felt the demon’s grip tighten at the base of his neck. He gritted his teeth against the pressure and tightened his grip on the railing. 

“It does not matter what I want,” he said, and with some force pushed the demon further away from his mind again. 

Alone for a moment, Lucanis pressed his knuckles to the trickle of blood that already dripped from his nose. 

She is not for touching, he’d told Spite. 

He wished he knew if he believed it. 

|

Lucanis would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t watching Rook more closely in the aftermath of the near-kiss, but such a lie would have been pointless. Spite saw everything he did and nobody else seemed willing to ask about it. Who would he have lied to? 

At first, he might have thought there was no change in her behavior. She still followed her general routine, sparring and cooking and seeking ways to fight the gods. She still took him with her when she and Neve hunted Venatori in Minrathous and still joked with him when they were around the others. When he walked unsleeping in the rotunda, he could still hear the haunting strains of her violin from the meditation room. 

There should not be any difference, yet he would have sworn that something was amiss. Rook was more prone than usual to drifting silence, gaze fastened somewhere in the distance, a frown furrowing her brow. It wasn’t until several days later that he overheard her speaking to Neve and put the pieces together. 

“Hey, there. Something bothering you?” Neve asked. The door to the dining room creaked shut. “You haven’t seemed like yourself these past few days.”

There was a long silence, which Lucanis disregarded. Whoever she spoke to, it was not his current concern. He needed to prepare for—

“Do you think people are capable of changing?” Rook asked.

Lucanis, who’d been in the middle of a long series of stretches, paused and listened. 

“Rook!” Spite said. 

Lucanis resisted the urge to tell him to be quieter; nobody would hear the demon but him. 

“What sort of change do you mean?” 

Soft sounds, liquid pouring (“Eugh—smells like burned coffee,” Spite muttered, and Lucanis could not blame him), and a quiet sigh. Lucanis slipped silently to the door and stood very still just before the threshold.

“Because,” Neve went on, “I have a hard time believing some people can change. You know, lifetime of power and murder makes it a little hard to start thinking that other people matter, for example. But if you’re talking about, say, learning to like a new food? I’d say yes.”

Rook laughed slightly. Something scraped—a chair pulling away from the table. When she spoke again, her voice was much quieter. Lucanis had to strain to hear her. 

“I mean—do you think we’re doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again forever?” 

A pause. Footsteps—Neve’s. 

“I’ve got a lot of experience in being where I’m not wanted,” Rook went on. “I mean, it’s sort of what has to be done when it comes to our current situation. But even before that, I was used to people—I mean people I cared about—I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m asking, I suppose.”

“No, go on,” Neve said, and a second chair scraped over stone. 

“You’re a detective,” Rook began, and paused. 

“I am, yes.”

“How do you know when you’re putting clues together and when you’re reading into something that isn’t there.” 

Spite hissed.

“Ah,” the syllable carried a heavy weight. 

Lucanis braced his hand against the wall and bent forward, anchoring himself to the sensation of solid stone against his fingertips. Something that isn’t there. She could mean anything. He wasn’t willing to try to fool himself into thinking she meant anything other than whatever was happening between the two of them. 

“I lay out the facts,” Neve said at last. “Clear as I can. What was actually done, what was actually said, what I know about the situation as a whole. I write it all down together, get everything I know in one place.”

Someone sipped from their cup. The hearth on the other side of his wall crackled faintly—almost time to add a log. He did not think he would do so while they were still talking. 

“Right,” Rook said at last. “Right. That makes sense.”

“I try to stay out of my head about it,” Neve went on, voice lowered. “Easy way to get distracted from the facts. That’s when you get into trouble.”

“Out of my head,” Rook repeated. “It sounds good in theory, but I’m not sure how I would achieve something like that.”

Neve laughed. 

“Sounds about right,” she said. A chair scraped across the floor again. “But if you want my opinion? Just between the two of us?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not imagining it.” 

Soft footsteps—Neve’s—and the creak of the door. Slowly, it creaked closed again. In the other room, Rook sighed and pushed her chair away from the table. Her footsteps were quiet—barefoot again, even after she’d scraped her foot on the wooden steps to Davrin’s room last week. They hardly grew louder when she approached his room. 

Lucanis, still leaning against the wall, curled his hand into a loose fist and tried to decide if it was worth pretending he’d been doing something else. Maybe he would resolve this instead, make it clear he’d heard her. That he thought…

What did he think? 

That he’d only really slept once since they’d almost kissed and he’d dreamt of pressing her back against this wall and tasting her? That he had been wondering what her hair might feel like caught between his fingers? That Spite talked over everyone but her, that his fascination with her had probably been sparked by Lucanis’s? That he was no longer entirely convinced that he felt like this only because of Spite?

That it had only occurred to him to want to do this once before and it had been a disaster?

His door creaked slightly, as if Rook’s hand rested upon it. This close, he could hear the soft intake of her breath. She was only a few inches away—less than a foot. He could open the door himself. He could tell her…

The door rattled slightly as the pressure on it released, followed by a soft sigh and footsteps moving away. 

“She’s walking away,” Spite snapped, surging for the door. 

Lucanis reached for the handle before he caught himself, violet sparks burning in the corners of his eyes. He shook his head and stepped back slowly, deliberately. His hand stretched forward against his will, grasping for something it could not reach.

“Let me talk to Rook,” Spite went on, as he so often did. “Open the door.”

Rigidly, Lucanis walked back to his cot and sat, wrapping one hand tightly around the other. In the next room, the door swung open and closed again. 

“She’s leaving. Now!” Spite said, seizing his hands. 

The demon warred with him for control. Lucanis pushed him away, but the effort took several minutes and left him exhausted. Temporarily alone, he pressed a hand to his face and took several long, slow breaths. 

If he could touch her without touching her—if there were some way to make his feelings clear while holding her at a safe distance…

Unbidden, he remembered the way she’d smiled at him that first time in the cafe. Surprised, cheeks slightly flushed; he had not had her measure then. He was not entirely sure he had it now, for she spoke so little about herself. But she had smiled at him and said—

That was it. 

Lucanis stood, remembering precisely which set of stretches he’d left off on before the conversation in the other room. He had a plan now. Now, he had only to wait for the right time to set it in motion. 

|

“Do you think Harding believed you?” Lucanis asked from the other side of the fireplace. 

Rook, midway through dumping her pile of vegetables into the stewpot, glanced at him. 

“About the letter from her mum? ‘Course she did. There was an actual letter.”

“Oh?” he lifted a brow and angled his head to the side. The firelight traced the lines of his face the way she would’ve liked to, painting dark hollows under his eyes and limning the angle of his nose and cheekbones with gold. He was just so—

Shouldn’t be watching him like this. It’d been days since they’d almost kissed. She’d been strong. Focused. Had kept things aboveboard and friendly, no matter how much she wanted to ask him…

What? What could she say, really? How’s your head feeling these days? Pretty clear? No, that was silly. There was too much else to be worrying about to worry about whatever was between—whatever she’d imagined was between them. 

“You’re not imagining it,” Neve had told her, but it felt awfully dangerous to believe her. The consequences for believing her and being wrong would be far worse than she could handle right now. Worse than all of them could handle, if she was being honest. More than anything, it was her responsibility to make sure that they all held together. There was no room for her to make a mistake that big over her own feelings. 

“Well, I remembered it was Lace’s turn to cook,” she told him, focusing on the cutting board with far more attention than was warranted, “and Davrin may have mentioned something about an alarming amount of cheese earlier…”

“It was for a cheese soup, I believe,” Lucanis agreed, and his hands moved in her periphery. Taking another sip of coffee, presumably. She suspected it was a proportionately significant component of his blood content at this point. She wasn’t going to watch the way his lips moved when he pressed them to the rim of the cup. 

“You can’t be serious,” she said, though she knew he was. Lace had been most of the way through grating a block of cheese when Rook had walked in. 

“You don’t think her capable of it?” 

Rook laughed at that, settled the lid on the pot, and turned away again. There was half a block of grated cheese to do something with now—a troubling thought, since none of the rest of them were Fereldan and thus did not share the scout’s love of cheese. Maybe she’d just set it aside and Bellara would make khachapuri again. 

“Well, in any case,” she went on. “The letter came in a little earlier. I may have waited until she’d started cooking to let her know.”

“Devious.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to say so.”

She tapped her hips, surveying the available ingredients before selecting a likely-looking loaf of bread. Lucanis shifted in her periphery. Despite herself, she looked at him. He’d pressed a hand to his face, forefinger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Spite?” she asked, and he nodded. “He want to say anything in particular or is he just hungry, too?” 

The muscle in his jaw twitched. Slowly, deliberately, he set his mug on the table beside him. 

“It is nothing worth sharing. I will brew more coffee. Would you like some?” 

What could she say? Pity would shame him and sympathy was hardly better. She sometimes wished she had Emmrich’s talent for hearing spirits. Perhaps if she could address both of them at once…but no. Maybe letting him do something for her would help. He seemed comforted by taking care of the people around him in that way.

“If you’re making it.”

“Sweet with cream, yes?” he said. 

The soft sounds of metal and glass to her left told her he’d already begun. Could he see her smiling? Surely not. She’d turned her head enough that she wouldn’t be caught. 

“You remembered.”

“How could I forget?” he said. 

She laughed. He didn’t, but Rook was distracted enough in retrieving the bread knife that she hardly noticed. Water bubbled in the kettle and was poured into Lucanis’s coffeemaker. The fire crackled between them, its sound like a warm blanket over her shoulders. All at once, for no apparent reason, she felt—well, it was strange, but she could almost say she felt a sense of belonging, of rightness, like she was meant to be here at this moment with him. Her hand stilled on the knife, as if moving too much would dispel the sensation.

Had she ever felt like this before? Like she belonged anywhere that wasn’t the Necropolis? Maybe it didn’t matter if he wanted her or not. Maybe it was enough just to be near him, to know that he cared. Maybe it was enough to be in a place where people cared about her and told her so, where she cared enough to cook for them and worry about who would eat what. 

A place where somebody remembered how she liked her coffee. 

“Rook?” Lucanis asked, abruptly beside her. 

“Sorry,” she said, straightening. “Did you say something? I was…lost in thought.”

Whenever he looked at her, she had the odd feeling that he was reading something far deeper than her skin. She often wondered how much he saw, how much he understood without ever asking. 

“Your coffee,” he said at last, and held out one of the delicate coffee cups that’d appeared in the kitchen shortly after his arrival. 

Rook took it, still trying to cling to that feeling of comfort. His hand lingered on the mug, brushing against hers. His skin was warm, unexpectedly so. She wished that she could linger in the heat of it, but perhaps the warmth of the mug could satisfy that want instead. 

“Thank you. You make the best coffee—but I’m sure you know that.” 

“Nobody else here has the experience,” he agreed, and drank from his own cup. 

Lenore blew across the surface of hers and took a sip, wary of the heat. Lucanis seemed less sensitive to it than she was and she’d burned her tongue on his coffee more than once. Caution had made her careful. 

There had been no reason for her caution; this was the perfect cup of coffee. It was slightly cooler than boiling, perfectly sweet (though it was a warm sweetness that could not have come from sugar), and tasted faintly of…what was that? She closed her eyes and drank more deeply, trying to name the flavor. 

Coffee, honey, cream, and…something floral. 

Lavender! That was lavender. Oh. 

Honey and lavender cream, sweet and intriguing, he’d said at Cafe Pietra. Like a first kiss. 

When she opened her eyes again, Lucanis was still watching her, index finger tracing the whorl in the ceramic cup he still held. Two steps away—that was all. Such a small distance. She could have closed it so very easily.

“Honey and lavender cream,” she said. Her breath seemed to have deserted her; the words came out in a whisper, so quiet that someone standing on the other side of the hearth would not have heard them. 

His eyes were—she never stopped thinking about them, but they seemed especially deep, especially fathomless in that moment. She wanted to touch his face, to trace the dark lines of his beard, to cup the angle of his cheekbone. She wanted to watch his eyes change when she kissed him, wanted to know if that self-contained focus of his would dissolve or sharpen in response. 

“I can make you something else if you would prefer,” he said. His voice was as quiet as hers had been, but so gentle it hurt her heart to hear. 

“This is perfect,” she said. She drank again while he watched. The coffee was just as sweet and luscious and strange the second time. She’d never tasted anything like it. 

“Perfect,” she repeated. “The best I’ve ever had, I think. Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said. 

She wondered if Lucanis would turn away and break the moment, but he did not. He stood very still and watched her instead, his own mug cupped in his hands. 

I lay out the facts, Neve had told her. Get everything I know in one place. 

Maybe they were both working on too little information. Maybe the only way to fix that was to put all the facts in one place. 

“What are you thinking?” she asked impulsively, clutching her own mug in mirror to him. Lucanis angled his head, longer strands of hair slowly drifting over his shoulder. 

“I am thinking,” he said at last, “that it may be a poor substitute for the alternative.”

A slow breath. Her heart raced on anyway, refusing to be calmed. The coffee warmed her cool hands and the taste of lavender and honey still lingered on her tongue. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Lenore told him. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you it’s been a very long time, and even then I wasn’t any good at it. If this is something you—something you want…I’m not in any rush.”

A ridiculous thing to say, considering the forces arrayed against them and the tight timeline they were always working under. It didn’t feel ridiculous, though. It felt right, in the way that cooking in the same room as him had felt right. Facing the idea of some sort of romance head-on made her feel faintly ill, as if looking down on the world from some great height. But this? It might be roundabout and oblique, but it felt good anyway. 

Lucanis opened his mouth to answer, but the door to the dining room opened and Bellara rushed in. 

“Is it my turn to make dinner? I can’t remember where my copy of the list went. I think it might have gotten stuck under something again. Hi, Rook!” 

“Bellara,” Rook said. “No, you’re fine. It was Harding’s turn, but I took over for her. If you don’t mind, I’m running a little behind. Could you slice the bread while I finish with these?”

“Sure!” Bellara said, slipping between Rook and Lucanis. The latter set his cup on the table and returned to the hearth. 

“I will keep this from burning,” Lucanis said, lifting the pot lid and looking inside.

It already is, Rook thought, for there was heat from her cheeks to the tips of her ears. She said nothing aloud, but took one more sip from her mug before setting it aside. 

As first kisses went, it was certainly better than her last one, and given with a great deal more care and attention. I don’t think you’re imagining it, Neve had told her. Lenore had to agree. This—whatever it was, whatever it would become—was entirely real. 

“What are you humming, Rook?” Bellara asked a moment later. 

Rook, who hadn’t realized she was humming at all, smiled. 

“I don’t think it has a name yet,” she said, “but I’m working on it.”

[shivunin]

Filed Under 398.2

In which Lucanis and Rook don't quite manage to have a post-game interlude in the Necropolis library. (Inspired by this post) *The beginning of this is a bit risqué, but not explicit

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis Dellamorte | 2,470 Words | AO3 Link)

“We only have—mph—half an hour, maybe forty-five—why do you have so many belts?”

“Poisons,” Lucanis murmured against Rook’s mouth, hands already working deftly at the buckles. “Throwing knives. Other things that I—ah!” 

Lenore caught his lower lip between her teeth, thumbs already hooked into her underthings to push them down and out of the way. The library shelves, carved sturdily from stone, absorbed his weight admirably when she pushed Lucanis back into it. Sometimes, she wished she was just a little taller, or that she owned any shoes with a heel. It was hard to reach his mouth for kissing without a little assistance.

“Where is everyone?” he asked, shedding three belts in quick succession and starting on the last. 

“Symposium,” she told him. “Compulsory. I waited until they swept for apprentices or we would’ve had company. That’s why we only have half an hour.”

And she was infinitely grateful she’d worn a dress for once. Lucanis was coming straight from a contract, and thus his clothing would take significantly more work to get off. She couldn’t complain, though; it’d been nearly a month since she’d seen him and he’d have to go straight back to Antiva from here. She was fortunate they had even this long. 

Climbing to her own quarters would have taken too long, and she’d been content with catching up in a crypt while they’d waited for the library to clear out. He’d given her the wide bracelet she wore on her left wrist now, malachite beetles inlaid with gold. She’d given him wyvern venom enchanted with a potent paralysis spell, just in case his target had built up a resistance. It was tucked into the bandolier on his belt now, discarded amongst the others on the library floor. It was gratifying that he’d seemed to appreciate it—his thanks had been enthusiastic enough that they’d wound up, well, here. 

It was unfortunate that she held the Necropolis too sacred to do this in the crypt because they probably would’ve had a little more privacy. Ah, well; she’d have to thank Emmrich later for holding a symposium at such a convenient hour. Sex in the library was so much better than no sex at all. 

As she thought so, Lucanis’s sword belt fell to the floor. In an instant, he’d gathered her up into his arms and reversed their positions. His mouth was—she’d missed kissing him so much. She’d gone much of her life not doing it or thinking about it at all; it seemed ridiculous that she would feel the absence of it so keenly now. It was not something she could understand through logic, so she’d stopped trying. 

There was something disarming about the way he sometimes curled his hand around the back of her neck, as if she was something precious, something that must be held carefully. Nothing else in the world—no accomplishment, no heady wine or hard-won victory—ever made her feel the way she did when he touched her. It wasn’t even the sex she needed, it was just—being near him, feeling his hands on her skin. The need was as urgent as breathing. 

His hands slid up her thighs now, pushing the dark fabric out of his way with agonizing care. Lenore had wrapped her legs around his back for stability, but she shifted them enough for him to move the skirt out of the way. All that remained between them was a thin, unfastened layer of leather. So very little was left to separate them.

“Are you ready?” he asked, and tipped his head so his kisses fell over her exposed collarbones. Lenore squirmed against him, half-laughing. 

“Ready? I’m melting,” she told him, and made a soft, wanting sound when his hand slid between them to trace the length of her. She loved the quiet Antivan curse he mouthed against her skin, the devastating care present in every touch, the heat of his skin, the—

She loved him. She loved all of him. 

Lucanis removed his hand from her waist and looked up—presumably to find a spot to brace against. Slowly, his eyes focused on something to the left of her head. Oh, dear. There were spiders and wisps and things in here sometimes. Had one of them crept closer? She turned her head to look where he did and smiled. 

Ah. No, not a wisp or a spider at all. 

“The Ways of Wyverns: Provincial Folklore and Mythology,” Lenore read aloud. 

Lucanis cleared his throat, glancing at her and then up again. 

“I don’t suppose I could…borrow that? Return it to you later?” he asked. 

“Enchanted, I’m afraid,” she told him sympathetically. “Whole section is. We’ve the best research collection on monster hunting here, all donated by a foremost Nevarran scholar on the subject. There’s a standing bounty for any copies of a lot of them and they’re only lent out on special occasions. After the third or fourth theft, they took measures. Nothing from the collection leaves the Necropolis.”

Absently, she reached over her head and slid the volume free, propping it on her exposed thigh. 

“Oh, I’ve read this one,” she told him. “It’s actually rather interesting. The folk in rural Orlais have all these elaborate traditions around wyvern hunts. There are altars and rituals associated with them, even given how dangerous wyverns can get when fully grown. One of the families even…”

She trailed off, abruptly aware of the position they were in. Half-naked in the arms of the man she loved and hadn’t seen for a month and she was telling him about wyvern hunting traditions in Orlais. How were things like this always happening to her? It was nearly as bad as the time she’d had to stop touching him so she could coax a freshly animated skeleton to leave her quarters. 

“Go on,” Lucanis said, angling his head to look at the book. “What do they do? I have heard about the hunts, but I have never seen this—” 

Lenore snorted, then laughed, moving the book out of the way so she could press her face into his half-exposed shoulder. For a moment, laughter overtook her and she was helpless to explain herself. 

When she gathered herself at last, she lifted her head to look at him. Already, she could see the shift in his expression. It was the same one she felt herself. It hardly mattered that they’d been waiting to see each other for a month or that they had very little time before he would leave again. The idea of sitting propped in his arms while they read together was every bit as attractive as making love against the cold bookshelves of the Grand Necropolis. 

Actually, it sounded more attractive than what they were doing. Her hip was starting to hurt and the shelves really were frigid. This had seemed a lot more spontaneous and romantic than it actually felt. Ah, well. One fantasy punctured by reality, one likely realized—if he felt as she did. 

“You are perfect,” she said, and unwound her legs from his back. “Why don’t we read this together instead?” 

“You’re certain?” he asked, setting both hands on her hips. He was frowning, as if trying to work something out. “You don’t want to…?”

“I’m certain if you are,” she said, still half-laughing. “But only if you stay close to me. I’ve missed having you close enough to touch.”

“I was going to say the same to you,” he told her, dipping his head to kiss her again. 

He really did feel perfect, she decided happily, sliding down his body. She could see her underthings just behind him. If she hurried to get them back on, they might make it through two or three chapters before their time was up. Last week, she’d even found an inordinately large chair near this section, one big enough for two if the two were comfortable with each other. 

They passed nearly an hour together in the quiet library, Lenore snuggled back against his chest while he paged through the volume on wyverns. At intervals, Lucanis would set the book down to exclaim over some piece of trivia and Lenore would respond with other things she’d gleaned from the library. 

“Why do you know so much about wyverns?” he asked her after one such moment. 

Lenore, now fully clothed and comfortably ensconced between his chest and the arm of the chair, grinned at him. 

“Why do you think?” she asked him. 

Lucanis set the book face-down on her lap, which covered his. 

“You read this for me?” he asked, reaching for her face. Rook pressed her cheek against his palm, closing her eyes. 

“When I miss you, sometimes I come down here and read about them. I think about which things you’d like, what I ought to tell you later. I have a list somewhere. Under a book in my rooms, probably.”

“You—” 

Lucanis cut himself off, surging forward to kiss Rook. Carefully, he lifted both hands and cradled the base of her skull, holding her exquisitely still. His lips moved against hers, delicate at first, as if conveying some unspeakable emotion. Slowly, he leaned into her, pressing his cheek to hers. Lenore’s hands slid down his shoulders, touching the leather below, the criss-crossing belts, the vee of bare skin below his throat and above his heart. She’d grown accustomed to the soft brush of his beard, the way he angled his lips against hers, and she cherished it all. 

How horribly she’d missed this while he’d been away. She’d never truly understood how lucky she was to always have him near the Lighthouse. Being with him, especially like this, felt right in a way she had no means to articulate. 

For long, sweet moments, he simply rested against her, their lips pressed softly together. When he pulled away at last, it was only far enough to rest his forehead against hers. 

“You think of me,” he said at last. 

“Of course I think of you. Both of you. I’ve boxes of things for Spite to smell and touch too, if we have time. When we have time.” 

He touched her face, tracing the angle of her jaw and the curve of her cheek. He didn’t move away from her. 

“I want to stay,” he said. “For tonight, at least.” 

“Don’t you have to go back to Treviso?” she asked him. The lines beside his eyes deepened. 

“I can send word that I’ve been delayed. It will give us until dawn at the earliest.”

Lenore leaned back, studying his face. They both knew who’d demanded he return as soon as this contract was completed. It was the same person who’d chosen contracts increasingly far afield. Any contract would do, so long as the fee was paid and the target was far away from Nevarra. 

“I can’t ask you to do that,” she said at last. 

The book still rested on her lap. She flipped it closed to protect the pages, leaving a finger tucked into the edge to save their place. 

“You don’t have to ask,” he said. 

“Lucanis, I don’t…” 

Didn’t what? She wanted him to rest in her bed, to read with her, to be there when she tracked down that list of things she’d wanted to tell him. How could she say no to any of that, especially when she’d rather his grandmother trip into a canal than get to have him back? 

And it was precisely that—the animosity between her and Caterina Dellamorte—that meant she was reluctant to be the one who asked him to stay. His family was everything to him; it was not a bond she would test for her own gratification. 

“Do you want me here, Rook?” he asked, resting his hand over hers on the book. 

“Of course I do.”

“Then I will stay,” he said. “We can take this book to your rooms. Finish what we started.”

Yes. Oh, she wanted that so badly that it almost hurt to imagine. She’d resigned herself to sleeping alone already, had braced herself for the pain of curling up alone in her bed after having him for so brief a time. 

Solitude still came more easily to her than company. That was what she told herself when he was gone, anyway. It was easier to tell herself so than it was to admit that it cost her something vital every time she left him at the eluvian to Treviso. 

Endearments did not trip easily from his tongue, and she would have accepted them with just as little grace if they had. Long experience had taught her that there were other words that amounted to the same thing. 

“Lenore,” he said quietly, and brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Lenore. I would always wake with you if I could.”

“I know,” she told him, and slid from his lap so he couldn’t watch her gather herself. “Come on. If we stay up late, we can finish this in my rooms.” 

Already, there were voices at the doors to the library. The symposium must be done, later than expected. No doubt, she would hear the broad strokes of it tomorrow. If not, she’d get the tale from the one who’d led it. Catching up would keep her busy, and that would be good. 

But—none of that had to matter right now. Corpses and spirits and necromancy could wait for tomorrow. Right now, she had a book to read and an assassin to hold. 

The voices drew closer. As if he did not care whether or not they saw, Lucanis took her hand and kissed it slowly, one knuckle at a time. It had been the first place he had kissed her and the gesture, no matter how briefly it was performed, always did something funny to her knees. When he was done, he did not let her go. His thumb ran over her knuckles instead, back and forth, as if reminding himself where they were. 

Lenore swallowed around the tightness in her throat and hurried toward the exit. Every moment of happiness they’d ever had together had been carved from a universe that didn’t want to share. This would be no different than any of those other moments. They had a whole night ahead of them—eons and eons of time stretching out before her, so much more than she’d thought she would have. She didn’t want to waste a second thinking about his inevitable departure, how he would turn to look at her one last time before he stepped through the mirror to the Diamond. 

No. Instead, she would think about…about wyverns. 

As long as he was with her, as long as she could feel him near, she was satisfied.

[shivunin]

Notes in the Aftermath

Prompted by @greypetrel for "a note between companions about Rook." Here is a series of notes from after Tearstone Island:

(Lucanis/ Rook Ingellvar | 341 Words | Major end-game spoilers, mention of character death)

A single page of notes, extending to both sides of the paper. It sports a large cut in the lower left corner and has been crumpled and smoothed more than once. 

Emmrich—

Is there any word from the Mourn Watch? Did you find that spirit of hers? It must know something. I am leaving with Davrin now to make contact with the Wardens. Please find me as soon as you are able. 

—Lucanis

Lucanis, 

I’m afraid there is no news to provide. Vorgoth and Myrna continue to monitor the Fade for any stirrings that might indicate that Rook has passed through. I was indeed able to locate Grief, who states that she felt Rook mourning Lace for only a moment before the sensation was cut off. “Cut off,” not faded, as such things do with time; I confirmed as much. She wished for me to tell Spite that she is sorry. 

I will continue to work on our secondary solution with Neve. Please feel free to seek me out once you have returned if you would like any additional details. 

—Emmrich

Emmrich—

Taash and I are leaving to seek a path into Minrathous. 

I have moved   She left her violin in my   Spite wouldn’t stop

Rook’s violin is on your desk. I think it will be safer in your library. Please take it to   make sure that  Please look after it until she returns. 

—Lucanis

Lucanis, 

Of course. I will make sure it remains safe until she returns. I have spoken with Neve, who has agreed to take this and some food with her when she leaves to find you. Our decoy is nearly complete. I will debrief the team when everyone has returned this evening.

Take heart, Lucanis. There is still much yet to try. We will do everything in our power to find her. 

—Emmrich. 

Below, a blade has punctured the page. The cut is followed by three words, pressed so deeply into the page that the letters have torn through in several places. 

BRING 

HER 

BACK

[shivunin]

A Caged Rook

For day 4 of @veilguard-appreciation-week, Determination, here is a piece about Rook and Spite (before he was Spite):

(Rook Ingellvar/Spite | 2,605 Words | CW: Confinement, references to end-of-game spoilers in the last section)

“Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—” —Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven”

Not all the spirits in the Necropolis stayed there. 

Some were permanent residents; some had been there for time immemorial. Some, like Determination, were only passing through. It had borrowed this shape to see the place as quickly as possible; it was determined to feel this place for itself, to understand why so many flocked here.. 

It had not accounted for Mischief. 

No amount of struggling had freed it, and it thought that something in the body might be damaged. Its wings ached from beating them against the cage (pain—that was an odd thing. Determination had not felt it before and it did not like it now) and one of the joints seared him with a sharp pain whenever he tried to move it again. 

Mischief chittered at him, bobbing before the cage, and shrieked off into the spirit-rich shadows. Determination screeched after it, for the vocal cords of this body seemed to work just fine. It would peck and claw and get itself out. It would shriek and call until someone came to help. It would—

“Poor thing,” Grief said, hovering before it. She wore a body, too, though hers was bony and dripping with cloth. 

Determination cawed at her and pecked at the nearest of the fine bars, doing little to free itself. It had wanted a break from the restless currents of the world. It had not wanted a cage. 

“To seek such freedom and find oneself penned up instead—to beat your wings against constraint and find no relief,” she sighed, the sound whistling through her ribcage. “You are a tragedy, my friend.”

Not Tragedy, Determination, it told her. Grief tilted her head. 

“I understand the distinction,” she said. Without another word, she rose and swept away. A dim fog swept after her, swirling in her wake. 

Come back, Determination called, but the spirit was already gone. 

A flicker of something brushed through it, an impulse that both was and was not itself. That spark of feeling wanted to say, you are never good for anything, Grief, and you never have been. 

But the spirit had no time for that sort of sentiment, so he pushed the thought away. 

Determination curled its claws around the bars and tilted its borrowed head back, pecking higher along the tarnished copper. This place felt very old, and sometimes old things had weaknesses it could exploit. There was always a way through. Its very existence was predicated on this knowledge: there was always a way through. 

“Oh no, look at you,” a living voice, filtering through the hum of the spirits who passed. “Mischief again, I suppose? Give me just a moment there, I’ll have you free in no time.”

She crouched before the cage, pushing long hair away from her face. Determination let go of the bars and peered at her, tilting its head this way and that. There was something in her—if it had been in the Fade still, it might have seen it a little better. It could not think of that while it remained trapped here. It cawed at her instead, flaring its wings until they ached again. 

“You see?” Grief said, drifting back into view. “I knew you would be able to do something.”

“Sure enough,” the elf said lightly, and lifted something that hummed with the Fade. “It’s simply done. Do step back, please. I don’t want it to hurt you.” 

Determination huddled away from her on the opposite side of the cage, feeling the burst of fire-fire-fire-cold that erupted from her tool. A strange thing, to feel it here; it had never been beside a person while they drew from the home of spirits. It was like looking at something once familiar, now made strange. A warped version of something it thought it’d understood well.

It might have considered the thought further, but the cage opened with a screech of metal and it was freed at last. 

“All right, then?” the elf asked. “Can you take off on your own?”

These wings do not work, it told her, balanced on the edge of the open door. It tried again to open them, but they would not unfold properly as they had when they’d carried it here. 

“It says the wings are broken,” Grief told the elf. 

Not broken, Determination corrected, strained only, and stepped onto the elf’s finger when she offered it. Some instincts came with the body; it fluffed its feathers out and shook them back into place again, creeping along until it had perched along the edge of her wrist. Her bones shifted under its feet as she stood and turned toward Grief. 

“Not broken, it says,” Grief related. “Perhaps it is strained.”

“I can take you to the aviary,” the elf offered. “They will be best able to take care of you there. Give you some rest so you can go on wherever you were headed. What did you say it was called?”

Determination, it said, as Grief echoed the same aloud. 

“Well then,” her cheeks widened, teeth glistening between slightly parted lips. A smile; it had seen them from a distance before. A strange thing. It wondered how it would feel to make one. It had never had a face of that sort before. 

“You’ll come out alright in the end, won’t you? I can tell.”

Determination recognized then what it’d sensed from inside the cage. Like called to like after all; if it had been on the other side of the Fade still, it might have imitated her or taken a semblance of her shape. Here, it gauged the distance between her hand and her shoulder. If it spread its wings slightly, if it glided just so, it would land—

“Oh!” she said, holding very still. “Sorrow?”

“I believe it wants to stay with you,” Grief said. 

“Ah,” the elf said in response. “Well. I don’t really know what a bird eats. Will it still need to eat?” 

“You know how to find the answer,” Grief said. It turned away as if to leave, then paused. 

Grief reaches forward and backward, she told Determination, speaking as only spirits could. You are a tragedy. I am sorry for what will happen to you and all the pain it will cause. 

You don’t know anything, Determination told her, touched again by that distaste which was at once itself and not itself, Don’t you ever get tired of weeping over headstones?

With no further ado, Grief turned and slipped away into the mist again.

“Well then,” the elf said, angling her head as best she could to look down at it. “Nice to meet you, Determination. I’m called Lenore. Not the most descriptive name from a spirit’s perspective, I suppose, but it’ll have to do. Let’s get you to the aviary. Maybe someone will have answers there. You’re welcome to stay with me until that wing’s healed, or to do whatever you please if you’d like to go. I think some of the more experienced Watchers can speak to spirits directly if you ever need.”

Lenore. She was right; it wasn’t a name that meant anything. Still, Determination tucked itself against her neck, felt the warmth of her beating heart, and thought itself very fortunate to have been found by her, of all people. 

|

The other mortalitasi candidates for the Watch started calling her Rook sometime in the second week of caring for her new charge. 

Lenore couldn’t say it was the worst nickname she could’ve been given, but she didn’t know what to think of it otherwise. She’d promised the spirit she would care for it as long as its wings healed, which meant carrying it on her shoulder from seminar to seminar. It also meant long nights sleeping on a couch in the library instead of going back to her flat, but the discomfort hardly mattered. She spent most of her time in the Necropolis library anyway, and the roommate she’d been assigned by whoever made housing assignments had shown no signs of wanting to be friendly so far. 

“I did think you were a crow,” she confessed to Determination one night in the second week. She poured a handful of seeds onto the desk before her and watched it peck at the pile. 

“I read a book about it later. Not that you’re really a rook, of course. I wonder why you picked a bird. Is it the moving faster? Some other quality you like?”

Determination fixed one dark eye on her, cocking its head slightly. 

“Both?” she asked, and it made a soft noise before going back to the seeds. 

Determination was a good companion, she’d found. It didn’t bring with it the cloud of sadness that Sorrow did, didn’t make her feel as distractedly excited  as Curiosity. She would miss it when it went back to whatever it’d been doing before, she thought, and shook herself from her thoughts to return to the paper she’d been drafting. 

A week later, it woke her from the nightmare of the closet, the crack of the door against her nose. It’d pecked at her until she woke, throat raw with the scream she’d held back. Once she’d stopped shivering, it’d combed its beak through her hair until she dozed off on the library couch again. In thanks, she’d taught it how to play a solitary card game. She thought achievable goals might be good enrichment for it in the way that new and odd things were enrichment for Curiosity. Hours of watching it peck at the cards with increasing focus had her laughing so hard it gave her a headache. 

Happiness was an odd thing; she hadn’t realized until then how foreign it still felt to her.

One morning, near the end of the third week, Determination spread its wings and flew away to a nearby shelf. The two of them froze, looking at each other, and she’d known immediately that their time together was coming to an end. 

“It’s not that I’m surprised,” she told it gently. It had landed on her hand again, as it had when she’d first freed it from the cage. “I knew it wouldn’t be forever. Perhaps I’ve just grown fond of you. You are very good company, you know.”

Determination peered up at her. She wished, as she had a thousand times, that she could speak to the spirits. She wished she could know what it was thinking. 

“Do you want me to take you back where I found you?” she asked at last. 

The spirit settled itself on her shoulder, which was answer enough. She’d taken to tying her hair in a loose tail so it could do just that. She supposed, somewhat miserably, that she could go back to leaving it down again after today. 

She remembered precisely where she’d first seen the poor creature in a cage, but the Necropolis seemed reluctant to let her go back. She rounded the same section of the Memorial Gardens three times before she finally crossed her arms and peered up into the gloom. 

“I’m dreadfully sorry to ask, but can you please let us go where we’re trying to go? This spirit is not amongst our dead, but I would like to assist its passage nonetheless. Please allow me to help it in this way.”

Reluctantly, a nearby hedge peeled back, revealing the walkway she’d known was there.

“Thank you very much,” she said, and patted the nearest headstone soothingly. 

Nobody was entirely sure why the Necropolis did what it did; some theorized that it was like some giant, slumbering thing and the rearrangement of its halls were merely the stirrings it made in its sleep. Lenore had always rather felt it was more like a beleaguered parent, trying to steer all of its quick-lived residents away from their certain doom so they could go on doing what they were supposed to be doing. She had little evidence to back up this theory, unfortunately, though not for lack of trying. 

“I do prefer it here,” she told the rook, slipping away down the narrower path. “You picked a good spot to stop. I don’t know how much you can smell, but the scent of the flowers is soothing, and it’s a bit quieter than the higher halls.” 

She paused before a familiar tomb, tracing the markings in the cool marble. Ingellvar, the engraving above the gate said. She smiled up at it and turned away again, only a handful of steps closer to the drop-off into the deeper Necropolis. 

“I do hope we see each other again someday,” Lenore told the spirit. 

It turned its head and took a lock of her hair in its beak again, tugging lightly at the strands. Preening, the book she’d read had called it. She’d wondered how much of the behavior belonged to Determination and how much was instinct borrowed from its body. She’d had no way to ask, but she wished now that she’d looked for the answer a little harder. It seemed important to know, somehow.

Before she could think of anything better to say, it leapt from her shoulder and vanished into the deeper shadows of the Necropolis. 

Lenore rested before the precipice for a long time, but she did not hear the sound of approaching wings. At long last, she had no choice but to turn away and go back to the routine she’d had before she’d fetched it from the cage. 

In time, the memory faded against the sharpness of newer, more vital things, but Rook never forgot the spirit entirely.

|

Many years later, Spite opened his borrowed eyes as Lucanis’s consciousness faded into sleep. 

Rook slept pressed against them, bare skin to bare skin. He could feel her heartbeat where they touched, could hear the soft whistle when she breathed in and out. Blue light danced against her skin, a refraction of the water in the tank behind them. A very old memory stirred, dim and belonging to something that was both him and not-him at the same time. 

Slowly, he lifted a scarred hand and took a lock of her hair between forefinger and thumb. The hair was silken and smooth. Rook had washed it as soon as she’d come back to the Lighthouse, but she smelled of Lucanis now. Well—Lucanis and himself, ozone and coffee overlaying the sweet rotting-leaves scent that clung to her skin no matter what she’d been doing. He breathed her in and let the hair slide from between his fingers, soft and slow. 

Today, he and Lucanis had reached out and drawn her from her confinement. 

He did not know precisely why—the memories did not belong to him, had been stuffed away somewhere he could not touch them anymore—but pulling her from a cage had settled something deep, deep inside of him. Spite could still feel the hum of that satisfaction, that rightness now, as she slept in their arms. 

He almost remembered a wish that they would see each other again, the swish of wings spreading wide over a vast abyss. He almost remembered, but then what did memory matter? 

Spite tucked his face into the crook of Lenore’s neck, tasted the salt clinging to her skin, and breathed the scent of her in with all the force of his borrowed lungs. 

They had found her, and he held her now. What else could possibly matter?

[shivunin]

Muscle Memory

Rating: Mature Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy Relationship: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian Characters: Female Shepard (Mass Effect)Garrus Vakarian Additional Tags: Pre-Relationship, Developing Relationship, Sparring, Injury Recovery, POV Multiple, Dissociation, Amnesia (if you squint), Biotics, Trust, Canon-Typical Behavior, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort (but if neither of them wanted to admit the hurt part)

Snippet:

As she was distracted by the thought, Garrus kicked hard through her open guard and knocked Shepard flat on her back. Breath fled her lungs with an oomph and for a moment she just lay there, choking on nothing, paralyzed by the one memory she could always count on: suffocating to death in the dark vastness of space.  “Shepard?” Garrus leaned over her, frowning. She stared at him, incapable of blinking or speaking, and her friend crouched to look closer. He’d seen her take hits worse than this; he hadn’t even been moving at full force.  Dammit, she hated this. Hated it.  “I’m fine,” she wheezed.  The concern in his expression was replaced by a flick of his mandible. Cocky bastard.  “Looks like I’ve still got it,” he said.  Jesse rolled her eyes and sat up. Something about his voice soothed her, even when he was being an ass, but she didn’t know why. It’d been like this since she’d stepped into that damned room back in Omega—just glad to see him, maybe. Glad to see anything that still felt familiar.  “I was distracted by how much you’re telegraphing your moves,” she lied. “Again.”

(Read More)

[shivunin]

Danse Macabre

For Day 1 for @veilguard-appreciation-week (The Grand Necropolis/Curiosity), here is a fic about Lenore trying to explain the Necropolis to Lucanis:

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis Dellamorte | 2134 Words | No warnings)

“Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Arrow and the Song”

The Grand Necropolis, undying, was so thoroughly choked with memories that Lenore almost felt she might pass a younger version of herself inside. 

Walking through its halls to reach the professor had been an exercise in suppressed heartache: here, she had taken the first of her classes with the Mourn Watch after she had been certified as a mortalitasi. Here, she had hidden under the steps and inside sarcophagi as a small child.

Here, she had walked away from the only home she’d ever known for what she’d thought was the last time. 

Was it better that she’d been allowed to come back, she wondered, or would it only mean a greater pain when she walked away again? She did not know. And so, even though it hurt her a great deal, she looked and looked and gathered memories like lost pages of a treasured manuscript. 

When they descended to the Shrouded Halls at last, it was a relief to find herself in a corner of the complex that’d never mattered much to her. Apprentices were not often allowed down here, for it was one of the oldest sections and thus one of the more dangerous. When she’d joined the order in full, her research and duties had taken her elsewhere more often than not. It was, in short, a place that felt like home without bearing the weight of the regret she’d been dragging behind her since they’d crossed the threshold. 

It was…nice, even considering the Despair demons and restless dead. Reminded her of her childhood, in a vague way: creeping through dusty hallways in the flickering green light with a thrill in her chest and a song in her throat. She had almost forgotten what that secret joy had been like. Not even their enemies could rob her of it now. 

“Are you alright?” Lucanis asked as they rounded another corner. 

The professor had hurried on before them, the hem of his coat swinging behind him as he descended the stairs. Lenore slowed slightly and glanced over her shoulder at the assassin. There was a set of stairs before them and she wasn’t keen on the idea of meeting them at a full sprint.

“I don’t think I’ve taken any wounds yet, unless you can see something I can’t. These dead are restless, but I’ve seen them so before. It doesn’t really bother me now.”

“No,” Lucanis said, and sped up slightly so they walked apace. He turned his head to peer down at her, apparently aware of the stairs without needing to look at them. “You’re humming. I have never heard you hum before.”

“Oh!” she said, because she had been humming without noticing it, and stopped so abruptly that she almost slipped down a step.

 Lucanis stopped a step lower than her and turned, brows raised. Their eyes were almost level with each other like this. What an odd thing it was to see him thus, his dark eyes fixed expectantly on hers. Something about the change in perspective is likely why she did what she did next.

“You can’t hear it too?”

“Hear what?”

Sometimes, she forgot that not everybody perceived this place as she did—as Professor Volkarin likely did, too. This had beenLucanis’s first time within the confines of the Necropolis, and it had been clear that he was far from comfortable with it. How could he be? The rest of Thedas had little experience with…well, all of this. 

Rook blinked at Lucanis, momentarily at a loss. Lucanis had not grown up here; he was neither a musician nor a mage. He would have no way of knowing, would he?

“May I take your hands?” she asked impulsively, tugging off one glove, then the next. “It will be easier to show you that way, I think. This will only take a moment.”

She could still see Emmrich below, though he’d slowed slightly. From the gesture he was making, he was likely casting a spell—perhaps attuning himself to the disturbance they sought. Their task was urgent, she knew, but—he had not explained to Lucanis about the bell, about the currents and the eddies of magical energy. Much of the explanation would probably be oblique to one who did not know this place, who did not know magic, but thinking about this particular sort of resonance had been her singular passion for years. 

A brief lesson will not be amiss, she thought. Perhaps it was even something he’ll need to know when we reach the upper levels. 

Lucanis removed his gloves deftly, though there was a question in his eyes. When he held out his hands, she rested her palms under the back of each and lifted them, as if they were cupping the lower sides of a sphere together.

“This won’t hurt,” she told him, “though it may feel a bit odd for you, Spite. Let me know if you’re uncomfortable and I’ll stop.” 

Gently, she reached out for the slow current of magic in the Necropolis and allowed it to fill her palms. She asked nothing of it, called it to no task. Instead, she let it pool there until it became pinpricks of visible light, swirling in the space above their hands. When she had enough, she stopped reaching and held it instead, the soft motes of moss green hovering in the air between them. 

“What is this?” he asked. 

The light reflected in his eyes, now and again glowing purple instead of green. She had to tear her focus away to remember what she was trying to show him. 

“It’s the Necropolis. A little piece of it. I imagine this as its breath, or its blood. I’ve borrowed only a very small bit of it for the moment. Here—close your eyes. Take a deep breath.”

The movement was subtle at first; a minute stirring of the center, as a ripple in a still pond. The rest of the light was shifted by it, stirring like the soft revolutions of hot water meeting cold, and then all at once it was moving. Movements; not physical ones, but those created by a grand orchestra, dancing to a tune that was not sound. She could feel it against her palms as she felt the vibration in her violin when she drew the bow across the strings. It wasn’t music, not really, and yet she’d always felt strongly that it was. 

Rook caught the rhythm at once and hummed along. It was not quite a waltz, but it was also not quite anything else. Lucanis’s eyes remained lightly closed, the dark lashes fine as cobwebs against his cheek. She could not think of another time she’d looked at him so still, so quiet. Here, in this place of memory, he was something new. 

Focus, she reminded herself firmly. You are explaining a measurable phenomenon, not writing poetry.

“If it’s anything,” she said after a moment, her voice quiet, as if speaking louder would disturb the moment, “it’s this: the Necropolis is often called a house of many mansions. A whole of many parts, which are themselves separate and complete entities. I have always imagined it as music. An orchestra has violins, cellos, clarinets, violas, timpani and so on. Individually, they play their own unique and distinct sounds. Together, they make up something greater than the creation of one.”

Lucanis opened his eyes again and looked at her through the light in her hand. After a moment, he focused on the motion between them instead. Rook cleared her throat and went on. 

“All of this is to say that the magic of this place is…many small movements, many independent pieces of magic, which in their motion create a greater whole. Each wisp and spirit and bone contributes to what you see here, and what they make is not unlike music. Unguarded, they can slip from what they ought to be—demons, off-key versions of what already exists here. When we ring the bell, the reverberations will sound along these lines, mix with this existing current, and…let’s say tune everything up. Drive out the dissonant sounds. When it rings again, there will be no space left for Despair to inhabit. The resonance of the song will not allow it.”

She hummed a few more notes, smiling at the light before her, and recalled what they were about. As easily as she’d gathered it, she let the energy go. The magic flowed back into the Necropolis as rainfall into a river. When it was gone, she was left with the warmth of Lucanis’s hands against her palms. She blinked away the afterimages, wishing they hadn’t obscured his expression, and drew her hands away from his. 

“At least, that’s how I understand it. I hope that made any sort of sense outside my head; I’ve never had to explain it before,” Lenore said, realizing abruptly that Lucanis had said nothing for several minutes. 

Gloves; she should put them back on now. She gathered the pair of them from her belt and slid each of them back on again, glancing past Lucanis to where Emmrich waited at the bottom of the steps. He was discussing something with a wisp now, hands gesturing carefully as he explained something to it. They were too far away to catch any of what he said, but she understood the idea anyway. Wisps were good at scouting ahead if one was very specific about what one was looking for. He’d want a glance at whatever came next. 

“I understand,” Lucanis said, and she returned her attention to him. 

When she shifted to the side and started walking again, he matched her pace. 

“I did not think—” he began, then paused. Lenore tucked her newly-shorn hair behind her ears and tried very hard not to look at him. 

“You said that you have not been here for the last year, yes?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. 

Lucanis did not say anything for a moment. Did not, in fact, continue until they’d descended half the stairway. Emmrich glanced up at them as he passed through the doorway to the next room. Hurry, he was likely saying without directly saying so. Lenore grimaced and sped up slightly, careful to keep an eye on the steps. She’d fallen down stairs just like this more than once when Mischief had decided to play a trick. Death was not so serious a consequence to the wisps.

“I did not think I would ever see Treviso again,” Lucanis said abruptly. 

The stair rail was cold and slightly uneven beneath her hand when she gripped it. 

“When I saw it again that first time—I almost wished that I had not. You understand?”

Lucanis saw too much. Talking to him felt, sometimes, like stepping onto a stage and realizing she was the only one standing in front of the audience. She didn’t have to look hard for an answer, though it all but choked her to say it. 

“I understand perfectly,” she said. 

And she did. She, too, had almost wished she had no reason to come back when they’d faced down the gates. Shutting away the hope for home entirely had been a simpler thing than returning to this place and knowing that it was, in a way, still lost to her. 

“I don’t,” he told her, and they sped up after the last step. Emmrich was in sight now, already lifting his staff to fight something out of their view. Lenore drew her own staff and heard the soft snick of steel clearing leather as Lucanis reacted in kind. “But—I am glad you showed me.”

What could she say to that? Perhaps it was fortunate that they lost themselves in the fight that followed. Perhaps it was better that she did not have to find the words. 

Later, rubbing her eyes over a half-written journal entry, it would occur to her that he had done rather the same thing by showing her Cafe Pietra. Lucanis had guided her past the veins of the city to its heart, had bared to her Treviso’s subterfuge and its sweetness. Likewise, she had cupped the beating heart of the Necropolis in her hands and held it up for him to see. 

Lenore did not understand the Crows, neither their sharpness nor their lies. She supposed he did not understand the spirits or the song. 

She wondered then, pen leaking ink in a messy splotch onto her parchment, what all of that could possibly mean. Though she stared unseeing at the fish in her room for a very long time, she did not find anything resembling an answer.

[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday

Thank you for the tag @bitchesofostwick! I will tag @exhausted-archivist, @layalu, @inquisimer, @bumblewarden, @pickelda, @dreadfutures, @pinayelf, @star--nymph @greypetrel, @ndostairlyrium, @jtownnn, @idolsgf, @elfroot-and-laurels @saessenach if you are working on something you'd like to share!

Here's a bit of a Rookanis arranged marriage AU that's been simmering in the background this past week. For context, Lucanis is watching Lenore from the rafters of the Chantry while she plays her violin alone.

(470 Words, no warnings)

The music rose in a golden line, smooth as a bird soaring the thermals, circling and circling. Lucanis’s hands hung loose between his knees, though he often tapped them against his leg in time with her. Music was not something he’d had ever needed to learn, with the exception of the basics of sheet music. Code was sometimes hidden there or he would not know even that much. Anything else was beyond him.  “Tell Caterina I am guarding her interests,” Lucanis told Illario. “There was an attempt last week.”

No, Lucanis had never been a musical creature. But she—Ingellvar, her surname was; he’d yet to hear anyone use her first—she played with the ease of long practice. More than that; she played as if she was unspooling some horrible, painful thing from her chest. She always left more relaxed than she’d arrived, shoulders even and loose, hands gentle on her case. It was a pleasure to listen to her. It was a puzzle, an enigma, to watch.  Neither of those were the reason he came here so often. Spite’s fascination took precedence; Lucanis’s questions followed some distance after.  “I heard nothing of this,” Illario said, scowling. “She was meant to inform our people if—” “I took care of it. She never knew anyone was watching,” Lucanis said, and nodded to a dark stain on the adjacent rafter. There had been blood dripping below while Lucanis had hauled the body away, but she had not seen it. Too focused on her music. If she was not careful, that lack of attention would get her killed. Already, it nearly had. Twice. He saw no use in mentioning the second to Illario. He had already told Caterina.  “Why her?” Illario asked unexpectedly. Lucanis looked at him.  “The Necropolis has other orphans. Some of them are prettier, at least; some of them are stronger. Surely others are are more expendable. Whydid they send her?” “She said that the Necropolis chose her,” Lucanis said.  The key had changed while he was talking. The song was deepening, slowing; a flying thing grounded. He had missed its transition.  “She said that the others were found in the Necropolis, but she belongs to it. The liaison who brought her said—” SHE IS BELOVED OF THE DEAD, the creature had intoned, and she had bowed her head. He still hardly knew what she looked like; she had worn a spell, some sort of mask that'd shown him only her glowing skull. They remained all but strangers to each other. “It does not matter what it said,” Lucanis told Illario, impatient. “Carry your message. I will keep watch until she returns to her guards.” Illario laughed at him again, looking down at the small figure below.  “It isn’t too late, cousin,” he said, and clapped Lucanis on the shoulder. “I could still take her off your hands.”

[shivunin]

Burying the Lede

Rating: E

Fandom: Dragon Age II/Dragon Age Inquisition

Pairing: Cullen Rutherford/Female Lavellan

Tags: Developing Relationship, Mystery, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Post-Dragon Age II, Kirkwall, Minor Fenris/Female Hawke, Mage Lavellan, Eventual Smut, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Canon-Typical Violence, Lyrium Addiction, Fantasy Racism, POV Multiple

Prologue and Chapter 1 posted now!

Summary:

In order to shake her sister free of Kirkwall's hungry streets, Latharia Lavellan has a debt to pay. Her work as an investigative reporter at the Kirkwall Herald keeps them above water, but the clock is ticking and it's only a matter of time before the city comes to collect. With his former commanding officer dead and the city in shambles, Cullen is left in charge of Kirkwall's Templars. It is already a heavy responsibility, but the city's never-ending horrors and his own growing doubts about the Order test his resolve. When he is presented with a problem that he does not have the authority to solve, he reaches out to someone he knows will not stop asking the hard questions. A 1920s(ish) AU set between Dragon Age II and Inquisition.

Snippet:

There were smears of blood at the corner of the page; he wondered if she’d noticed them when she left them behind. Again, he remembered her as he’d seen her when he’d crept into that room in the warehouse, eyes flashing, chin defiant, hands bound behind her. He had thought she looked indomitable; it wasn’t until he’d turned and found her half-gone that he’d realized she was in such a bad way.  And now she’d gone off somewhere alone, injured, because she had been unwilling to admit that she needed his help. He should have expected no less.  A muscle ticked in his jaw. The letter fit neatly in his pocket once he pulled the keys to the car out, and then he was closing the door and starting it up without consideration for the last sentence she’d written.  He may have botched this whole affair, but Cullen always kept his promises.  Even when it was too late for them to matter.

[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday

I will start, since I haven't seen any yet today c: I would love to see what you're working on, but no pressure @elfroot-and-laurels @greypetrel @layalu @inquisimer @pinayelf @ndostairlyrium @star--nymph @chanafehs @bitchesofostwick! And since I thought I posted some of this somewhere but can't find it, here's a bit of a fic about Teia and Viago immediately post-"Eight Little Talons." This is pure Tevinter Nights era, no Veilguard spoilers of any sort.

(Teia/Viago | 599 Words | CW: Suggestive language)

A cabinet opened in the kitchen, followed by another. 

“Not that one,” she told him, and stepped into the candlelight of the next room. “Do you want a hint?”

He wouldn’t. Not her Vi. Too stubborn—too proud. He would search every cabinet in her kitchen and pretend he’d always intended to drink straight from the bottle when he found nothing there. 

“I can—” he began, but turned to look at her and stopped mid-sentence. 

“Can you?” she asked. He cast her a disapproving look that did nothing to disguise the heat in his eyes. 

Here. He was here. And she…

“You don’t want even a little help?” she asked, producing two wineglasses from behind her back. “And here I thought we worked so well together.” 

Slowly, Viago closed the cabinet before him. Slowly, he leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms. His walking cane leaned against the counter beside him, looking as innocuous as something could when filled with a dozen vials of poison, acid, and Maker knew what else. It did not surprise her that he’d come here armed. There were at least three daggers on her person right now, after all. They were Talons; this did not mean that they took their safety for granted. 

“Any tests you’d like to perform on them before we drink?” she asked, stepping closer. She’d left off her shoes, so she moved almost silently over the familiar floorboards. He watched her all the way, almost entirely still. If she hadn’t been watching the muscles in his upper arms twitching, Teia might have thought he was entirely unmoved. 

“My arm is still bruised from the adder,” he said, and lifted a gloved hand to touch the spot in question. “If you wanted me poisoned or dead, you could have let me die then.”

“Ah, but what if someone infiltrated my rooms, poisoned the wine rims, and snuck out the window?” she smiled at him, feeling the brush of the loose skirt against her calves when she stopped just before him. “What would you do then, Vi?” 

He was looking at her mouth. He’d done so before, with his hand pressed to her chin. He’d slid one of his mixtures over her lips with his gloved fingertip, so slow and thorough that there’d been no mistaking his attraction to her for anything else. 

She wanted him to touch her. Not just his forehead to hers, his thigh pressed hard between her legs while they rocked against each other. Teia wanted his bare skin—unwound, unbound from the layers of protective clothing—pressed to hers. It had felt too good before. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. She wanted him to be as desperate, as distracted as she was. 

Viago said nothing. He looked down at her, perfectly still. 

Come on, she thought. She shifted closer—just close enough that the hem of her dress brushed against the leather of his trousers. 

He moved fast, she had to give him that. She would have been faster if she’d wanted to be, but she didn’t. She wanted him to do exactly what he was doing now: pressing her back against the counter, hips flush with hers. 

“What then?” Viago asked, lowering his head until his cheek was only an inch from hers. He’d taken the glasses from her hand when he’d spun the two of them around. Now he reached past her, taking the bottle from the counter. She listened to the wine fill one glass, then the next. 

“Then you will have to find another antidote,” he said, voice low and silken. 

[shivunin]

For the Rook story promots, how about

8. A time Rook argued with someone they care about

or

18. Rook trying to impress someone.

Hope the distraction works AND that you have a lovely day ^^

Thank you!! This wound up a bit longer than I intended, but it dovetailed really well with something I'm writing about Lenore and Caterina.

Bias-Cut

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis Dellamorte | 2,369 Words | CW: Implied/referenced past child abuse)

In which Rook prepares to meet the former First Talon

“It’ll be fine, Rook,” Teia said from the settee, deftly spinning a dagger around her finger. “She’s tough and stubborn, but she loves her family. She’ll intimidate you a little. It’s her way. But really, after all that, it will be fine.”

Rook cast a doubtful look over her shoulder, shifting uncomfortably in her borrowed dress. Every small movement sent ripples of light over the silk, which seemed determined to cling to her skin. 

“And you’re sure that this is the appropriate sort of thing to wear to an evening like this?” 

Something about the gown felt wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. It wasn’t the fit; she and Teia were more or less the same size, save around the hips. The color was even one of her favorites, a deep purple that leaned more toward plum than the usual indigo the Crows seemed to prefer. 

“Of course it is. I’ve done so dozens of times. You couldn’t go in what you were wearing before, Rook. Armor sends a message.”

“She won’t be angry that we’re late?” 

“She’ll expect it. She is the one who left the message for Lucanis with Viago. They’ll have to resolve whatever it was before you can leave.”

Borrowed dress aside, Rook still looked like herself in the mirror. That had been important to her for reasons she couldn’t place. Even so, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn something so fine, silk slippery and drifting over her skin with every movement. It felt like… 

“Antonia,” she murmured, taking half a step back from the mirror. 

It was absurd. Antonia had been taller and paler and human. Lenore didn’t look a thing like Antonia had; Antonia had never been her actual mother, after all, and had only playacted at being one when it’d suited her to do so. 

Still, she couldn’t help but recall being shepherded around some cocktail party with the Nevarran nobility, Antonia’s silken gown brushing against Lenore’s arms as she was ferried to and fro. She’d been the picture of politeness, the perfect child, had answered only when spoken to and commented only on matters intended for her ears. The only time she’d slipped up, that lovely, elegant hand had clamped onto her shoulder with bruising force while Antonia apologized to their host. 

And when they’d gotten home…

“Rook? Did you hear me?” 

“Hm? Oh—I’m sorry Teia. I was lost in thought. Can you repeat that?”

“Sure,” Teia said, standing to follow her. “I’m going to go check on the others. I thought they’d be finished by now. You’re alright on your own?” 

“Yes, of course,” Lenore said. She waited there, eyes locked on herself in the mirror, until the door clicked shut behind her. 

Her violin case had been left on the table by the door. Lenore crossed to it now, taking comfort in the familiar click of the clasps as they were undone. 

Willful child. Defiant child. You shame me.

There was the bow, smooth and warm under her fingers, rosin already applied. There, the familiar body of the violin, varnish gleaming over woodgrain in the lamplight. The strings shone silver, each carefully tuned on the other side of the eluvian while she’d waited for the correct time to step through. Lenore touched each piece in turn now, resisting the urge to tune and rosin and check one more time. All was already prepared for use. Anything more was fussing.

If she was allowed to, she would play for Caterina. It was a silly gesture, a candle against a hurricane, but it was worth trying. The Dellamortes must love something of the arts if they had their own opera house, right? She wasn’t certain if Lucanis thought this a good idea because she still hadn’t seen him yet. Teia had swept her off to the attic of the Diamond almost as soon as she’d stepped through the eluvian and she’d been here ever since, digging through the other woman’s apparently endless wealth of clothing. 

In truth, she’d brought the instrument for her own comfort. No matter what Teia said, she knew that Lucanis’s grandmother had no intention of giving Lenore her blessing. No beautifully executed sonata would sway her; nothing short of bending her knee and kissing the ring would suffice, she supposed. She knew the type very well; she’d been raised by the type.

Carefully, Lenore snapped the case closed again and rested her hand on the lid. The lamplight shone differently on the scars over the backs of her hands. They were very old now, faint enough that most never even noticed they were there. Lucanis had noticed. Lucanis had scars that matched hers. He had seen them, noted them, and never once pressed her to explain how she’d gotten them. She supposed they both knew very well. 

The marks of a cane and the marks of a wand didn’t look so different from each other, after all.

“Rook?” Teia said, leaning through the doorway. Lenore turned toward her, hand still resting on the dark wood of her violin case. 

“They’ll meet us at the canal. Soon,” this last said pointedly over her shoulder. “She’ll expect you to be late, but not so late she feels disregarded. Follow me.”

“Alright,” Rook said, and gathered the trailing end of the dress over her wrist so it wouldn’t catch on the wooden stairs. 

“You look more relaxed,” Teia said, patting Lenore’s shoulder as they descended the stairs. “That’s good. I thought you were going to run before I got back.”

The more tightly wound Rook felt, the more relaxed her body became. This, too, was a holdover from childhood. She had, at least, exorcised the need to flatter and appease when somebody else seemed angry. Perhaps someday she would leave this vestige behind, too. 

“Thought about it,” Rook lied. “But I know how much his family means to him. If this is important to him, it’s important to me. I just wish I’d been able to see him before…well.” 

“It will be better this way,” Teia said, pointing at the door they needed. “I’ll arrange you for full effect—it’ll be worth it just to see his face when he sees you in this.” 

Lenore allowed Teia to take her arm as they left the Diamond and stepped onto the streets of the city. In truth, she had difficulty imagining that Lucanis would think any more of her in a pretty dress than he had when she’d been coated head to toe in the blood of a god. Still, it was a pleasant enough distraction to pretend that it would matter, that there would be some pretty silver lining to this evening. The thought carried her all the way to the canal steps.

“Tsch,” Teia said to someone standing beside the dock, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She let go of Rook’s arm to plant both of hers on her hips. “You weren’t supposed to be here yet.”

“Perhaps you should move faster,” Viago said, still out of sight for Lenore. 

“You think I should take her running across the rooftops like this?” 

Teia stepped down and to the side, clearing the space between Rook and Lucanis. The latter stood in the gondola already, steady and balanced despite the faint rocking of the boat. Lenore looked at him, her grip loose on her violin, and he stepped from the boat to the ground. There was something soft in his face, something she’d only just begun to identify as affection for her. 

“Doesn’t she look perfect?” Teia prompted. 

Lenore had been left for dead in a crypt in the Necropolis before she was a week old. She had been raised by the Mourn Watch, save those four long years with Antonia. She’d never had a legacy to shoulder, a mother to mourn, a grandmother to appease. She had never had a name to live up to; Ingellvar had just been the word engraved on the crypt where they’d found her. 

“Always,” Lucanis said, his voice quiet. “Rook. Thank you for coming tonight.”

She would never really understand what it meant to Lucanis to have his family, but she would do everything in her power not to drive a wedge between them. One night was a small sacrifice. This was a conclusion she’d come to last week; seeing him now only reminded her of her purpose. The dress was nothing; the dinner was nothing. The ghost of her foster mother was less than nothing. For him, she had braved far worse than any of it. 

Lucanis met her at the bottom step, hand held out to help her down the last step. 

“Thank you,” she said. 

Generally, they avoided public displays of affection in Treviso. They’d agreed it painted an unnecessary target on her back. Accordingly, he held her hand only as long as might be considered normal, but he murmured to her as she passed.

“Did something happen?” 

“No,” she told him quietly and truthfully, and raised her voice when she went on. “Teia is good company. She was kind enough to lend me this.”

“It was for my own gratification,” Teia said, wrapping an arm around Rook’s shoulder and kissing her loudly on the cheek. “Look at her. She was meant to wear this, yes? It was wasted in my closet. You should keep it, Rook; it suits you.” 

Viago crossed his arms and grimaced at them, but Lucanis touched the bare patch of skin down Rook’s back. 

“We’re late. We shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

“Of course. I’m ready to go,” Lenore said. Lucanis stepped down into the boat and lifted a hand for her to take. Teia stepped closer one last time and Viago followed, still glowering. 

“Remember what I said and you’ll be fine,” Teia said quietly. 

When Rook would have turned away and taken Lucanis’s hand, Viago stepped between them.

“Don’t listen to Teia,” Viago said, voice low enough that he might think Lucanis didn’t hear. Lenore knew better. “Not all of us have the benefit of being the favorite. Be polite, don’t make yourself a threat, and you might make it back in one piece.” 

“Unusual for you to give me personal advice,” she said, voice faintly amused in a way she despised. Antonia again. She’d be hearing the damned woman all night. 

“For the sake of Teia’s dress,” he said, already turning away. “She likes it too much for it to end up bloodstained.” 

Lenore snorted and turned away from the two Talons, taking Lucanis’s hand at last and stepping down into the boat. It rocked faintly under her feet in a way she found unsettling. Boats were still strange to her, still a little dizzying to sit in. Drowning didn’t top her list of worst ways to die, but it came close. Accordingly, she sat on the closest bench as quickly as she could manage.

“Are you comfortable?” Lucanis asked, and waited for her agreement before pushing off from the dock. “Don’t listen to Viago. There won’t be any fighting. Caterina would never allow it.”

“Lucanis—” Lenore bit back the next words, struggled to find others to fill the space they left behind. 

“Go ahead, Rook,” he said, glancing down at her before returning his attention to the canals. Looking for assassins, she supposed, as well as navigating around the other boats in the canal. “Say whatever you need to say. You know I won’t hold it against you.”

Rook took a slow breath, filtered the things she wanted to say from the things she needed to say, then went on. 

“I’m not Antivan. I will never be a Crow. I don’t have a family name or anything to offer materially—no connections, no significant money or land,” she began, and hesitated. “I know this doesn’t matter to you, nor Spite, but it matters to Caterina. She doesn’t approve of me.”

“How do you know that?” he asked, and turned back to the canals long enough to steer around a gondola floating aimlessly in the center of the passage. He murmured something uncomplimentary at it and glanced back at Rook. 

“Something she said the last time we spoke,” Lenore said, and watched Villa Dellamorte rise as they approached. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise…”

“Then don’t promise,” he said, and surprised her by sitting down across from her. 

They’d moved into a relatively empty stretch of water, the sounds of the market and its shops far behind them. When he took her hand from her lap, there was nobody to see. 

“There are things I need to say, too,” he said, solemn. “Whatever happens tonight, Rook, it doesn’t change anything between us. What Caterina thinks is her business. You are mine. All I want from tonight is to share the place I called home and what’s left of my family. Without having to kill our way through it this time.”

“You know it isn’t going to be that simple,” she said, wrapping her other hand around his and squeezing. “So I won’t remind you. I’ll be honored to see the place you grew up, Lucanis, however Caterina feels about it.” 

He leaned forward and kissed her, quick and dear. She didn’t close her eyes when he did. She wanted to watch him, just in case…In case she needed to remember later. 

“Let’s go,” she said when he drew away. “I don’t want us to be any later than we already are.” 

“Alright,” he said, but paused a moment longer, still watching her expression. “If it’s ever too much—if you decide that you need to leave—”

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’m more worried that I’ll lose my temper. I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t have the best track record with authority figures.” 

“That you do not,” he said, and kissed her again. He was smiling while he did it, and she caught the barest sliver of his teeth with her lips. They kissed for longer than was advisable, but she drank in the contact, the reassurance. Lucanis loved her wholly. She could never question something so obviously true. 

As long as she remembered that, she could handle whatever came next. 

She was certain of it.

[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by @greypetrel @inquisimer @saessenach and earlier @pinayelf and @plisuu, thank you all for the tag! Tagging back @exhausted-archivist, @layalu, @bumblewarden, @pickelda, @bitchesofostwick, @dreadfutures, @star--nymph, @ndostairlyrium, @jtownnn, @idolsgf, @elfroot-and-laurels @saessenach @midmorninggrey @chanafehs, no pressure as always <3

I have been adding to this whenever I have a thought and it'll certainly be a monster to edit, but from my fic about Lenore's sojourn in the regret prison (and what everyone else is doing in the meantime):

(Lucanis/Lenore | 383 Words | No warnings)

Lucanis found the locket while he was waiting for Viago to track down Teia.

He sat on the roof of the Diamond, feet dangling over the city below, and he’d reflexively run a hand over his chest to check his weapons. There—an unfamiliar shape tucked amongst the usual things there. He did not know how he hadn’t felt it before. It was tucked into a pouch at his chest, usually intended for loose sand or other powders. He had not needed either on the island; there had been little use for distractions there. Only blood, hot over his hands, and the wind like ice on his face when Spite kept him aloft.  But now… The face of it was frosted glass, that odd old-copper green that the Necropolis wore in every hall. Etched into the glass was a sort of flower, stretching like drooping fingers away from the chain. She had told him what it was before, touching the wine-purple petals in the Memorial Gardens. Amaranth, she’d called it, a flower of eternity.  “We also use its seeds in breads and such, too,” she’d added in her pragmatic way, and he had felt an unfamiliar tenderness in his chest.  Lucanis traced the shape of the flowers now, catching all its faintly sharp edges against the tip of his finger.  It smells like her, Spite said, leaning close over his shoulder. Hers. She gave it to us. He dug his thumbnail into the seam on the right and the locket opened easily, revealing a piece of paper and a single, ribbon-tied coil of hair.  Hers, Spite said again, bending his face closer as if that would help him smell it. Lucanis lifted the locket to his face, inhaling. It did smell like her—like incense and sweet rosemary.  Rotting leaves, Spite corrected him, and Lucanis sighed.  The hair might have blown away in the wind then, caught by his breath, if he had not reached out and snatched it from the air. How easily this vestige of her could be lost; how easily he had almost sent it right over the edge. Lucanis closed it away again, careful to ensure that every strand was tucked inside the hollow of the locket.

[shivunin]

Hey! 7 or 16 for the Rook story time prompts!

Hey! Thank you so much!!

For 16. Rook falling in love for the first time:

(prompts)

On Love and Its Definitions

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis (and past Ingellvar/OC) | 1,248 Words | CW: Mention of corpses, suggestive intro)

The heat always took her by surprise—the heat of a living person’s skin against her own, hands lifting to touch her, lips against her cheek. 

Ingellvar had grown too used to the cold rigidity of corpses, the waxy sheen their skin took on when they’d been dead too long. But this—for someone who had gone most of her life without being touched by anybody, this was a revelation. 

Edeline was already unbuttoning Lenore’s shirt, nimble fingers dancing over her starched shirt and below, tracing the edge of her underthings with the tip of her fingernail. Lenore couldn’t pull her mouth away long enough to speak, but if she’d been able to she might’ve told the other woman to slow down. They had all night, after all. They slept only a few feet and a thin wall apart from each other and nobody was going to interrupt.

There was no need to rush; they could’ve made it to one of their beds instead of doing this on the settee. Edeline never seemed to care about these facts.

“You were late again,” she said, mouth dragging over Lenore’s lips and lower, where her throat met her jaw. “I was waiting for hours.”

“I—have my practical Tuesday,” Lenore said, and parted her legs readily when Edeline pressed her knee between them. “Had to finish—I needed to—mph.”

Heat—skin touching her skin. Ah, she never felt as alive as she did when this was happening. It was foolish, she knew; the late nights, her increasing lack of focus on her coursework, and—and everything else. She was putting her future at risk by doing this, but it felt so good. She was drunk on it, tilting her head away so Edeline could press her teeth into the soft skin of her throat. 

Touch me, she wanted to say, touch me, touch me—but she was already being touched, hands sliding over her ribs to her hips, sliding off her shirt until it trapped her shoulders in place. 

“I was all alone,” Edeline went on, drawing back to tie her long hair back, “waiting for you.”

She was beautiful. Disastrous, but beautiful. Lenore stared up at her for a moment, eyes wide, and wondered: Is this love? It was difficult to know. She’d never loved anything but the Necropolis, had never been loved by anybody but Grief, so much as the embodiment of mourning could love somebody it hadn’t lost. 

“I want you,” Edeline went on, bending once more to her. 

Was it love? She didn’t know. The heat against her skin, the breath catching in her lungs—that had to be love, didn’t it?

Yes, she decided as she lifted her head to kiss her roommate again. This is probably love. 

|

“Rook? Do you need to go?” 

Lucanis’s soft voice roused Lenore, who sat on the cot in his room. His hand brushed her elbow, finding bare skin at her forearm below. If he had touched her arm with lightning, it would not have electrified her more. 

“No,” she told him, dragging her eyes open. “No. I’m awake.”

“It isn’t the best place to sleep,” he told her, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Not that I have tried to do so very often myself. You would be tired in the morning.”

Lenore smiled and stretched her neck one way and then the other. Dozing in this position had been a dreadful idea. Her neck already hurt from a few minutes of it; surely a whole night of it would make tomorrow a nightmare. Still…it was tempting, just to have an excuse to stay. 

“I will still be here in the morning,” he told her, his voice still soft. 

His eyes lingered on her face, her mouth. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. They hadn’t done that, though he’d made his interest clear. Their near-kiss in this room was the closest they’d gotten. She found she didn’t mind as much as she might’ve expected. Something about being near him made it difficult to question. 

“Promise?” she asked. 

“You have my word,” he told her, the corner of his mouth twitching again. Leaning back against the wall while they’d been talking had mussed the back of his hair slightly. It was…endearing, she decided. She’d never seen his hair messy like this before. 

“You will sleep better in your own bed,” he added after a moment. They were so close. She could kiss him right now. She could lean forward right now and—

“It’s generous to call it a bed,” she told him and stood, stretching her back, “but I take your point.” 

“I will walk you to the door,” he said. 

“Bodyguard duty now, too?” she asked, opening the door to the pantry. Nobody was in the dining room beyond. Fortunate. “Overachiever.”

“Yes—I won’t charge you extra for it.”

Lenore laughed. She might’ve thought of something to say in response to that, but his hand found hers as they passed the table and any thought fled immediately from her mind. 

His hands were so warm. That made sense, of course. She’d felt his hands before. He’d helped her up when she’d fallen in combat and passed her dishes at the table, among other things.

But he hadn’t ever held her hand before. He held it loosely now, as if ready to let go at any moment. It was difficult to hold very still and walk at the same time, but she tried it anyway. Anything to hold onto this moment a little longer. Could he tell that she’d slowed down? It was such a short distance to the door. She didn’t think she could drag it out terribly long, but…

“Thank you,” she told him. “For spending time with me tonight, I mean.” 

“I could say the same to you.”

Drat. Here was the door already. 

“Here,” he said, swinging the door open.

Beyond, the Fade looked more or less like it always did. There was no night here. That had certainly taken some getting used to. 

“See you in the morning?” she said. His thumb ran over her knuckles, touching each in turn. 

“Mm,” he said, and lifted her hand to his lips. 

Lucanis kissed her, lips brushing against the scar over her third knuckle. It was hardly any contact at all, but he may as well have driven a blade through it for all the shock she felt. 

Oh, she thought. Oh, dear. 

“Goodnight, Rook,” he said, and she took three steps through the open doorway before she could think of anything to say in return. 

“Goodnight, Lucanis,” she told him. He ducked his head and closed the door behind her. She was left blinking at the too-bright world beyond. 

Before her, skeleton lovers embraced, the statue towering over the courtyard. The Caretaker had replaced a wolf statue with it one day when she’d been sleeping. It was almost precisely the same as the one she’d tended for years in the Necropolis. It seemed like a sign somehow that it was standing before her now. 

No matter how long Lenore stared at the statue, it offered no guidance. 

“Oh, dear,” she said, because it was all she could think. 

Exhaling shakily, she raked her shorn locks back from her face and stumbled down a set of floating stairs toward her room. A fierce fullness in her chest, a song under her skin, a heat in her cheeks—that’s what love felt like. 

If nothing else, she supposed it was good to finally know.

[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday

Right under the wire! Thanks for the tag @heniareth!

It is statistically unlikely to still be Wednesday for most of you, but tagging back @dreadfutures @dungeons-and-dragon-age @elfroot-and-laurels @pinayelf @inquisimer in case you have anything you want to share (no pressure, as always!)

Here's a bit from a WIP set immediately after the not-a-kiss scene with Lucanis, ft. Lenore being Totally Normal:

(Lucanis/Rook Ingellvar |486 words | vague romance progression spoilers)

Shouldn’t be watching him like this. It’d been days since they’d almost kissed. She’d been strong. Focused. Had kept things aboveboard and friendly, no matter how much she wanted to ask him… What? What could she say, really? How’s your head feeling these days? Pretty clear? No, that was silly. There was too much else to be worrying about to worry about whatever was between—whatever she’d imagined was between them.  “Well, I did remember it was Lace’s turn to cook,” she told him, focusing on the cutting board with far more attention than was warranted, “and Davrin may have mentioned something about an alarming amount of cheese earlier…” “It was for a cheese soup, I believe,” Lucanis agreed, and his hands moved in her periphery. Taking another sip of coffee, presumably. She suspected it was a proportionately significant component of his blood content at this point. She wasn’t going to watch the way his lips moved when he pressed them to the rim of the cup. 

“You can’t be serious,” she said, though she knew he was. Lace had been most of the way through grating a block of cheese when Rook had walked in.  “You don’t think she would?”  Rook laughed at that, settled the lid on the pot, and turned away again. There was half a block of grated cheese to do something with now—a troubling thought, since none of the rest of them were Fereldan and thus did not share the scout’s love of cheese.  “Well, in any case,” she went on. “The letter came in earlier. I may have waited until she’d started cooking to let her know.” “Devious.” “You wouldn’t be the first to say so.” She tapped her hips, surveying the available ingredients before selecting a likely-looking loaf of bread. Lucanis shifted in her periphery. Despite herself, she looked at him. He’d pressed a hand to his head, forefinger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose. “Spite?” she asked, and he nodded. “He want to say anything in particular or is he just hungry, too?”  The muscle in his jaw twitched. Slowly, deliberately, he set his mug on the table beside him.  “It is nothing worth sharing. I will make more coffee. Would you like some?”  What could she say? Pity would shame him and sympathy was hardly better. She sometimes wished she had Emmrich’s talent for hearing spirits. Perhaps if she could address both of them at once…but no. Maybe letting him do something for her would help.  “If you’re making it.” “Sweet, with cream,” he said.  The soft sounds of metal and glass to her left told her he’d already begun. Could he see her smiling? Surely not. She’d turned her head enough that she wouldn’t be caught.  “You remembered.” “How could I forget?” he said.  She laughed. He didn’t, but distracted as she was by the absence of the bread knife Rook hardly noticed.