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“Still alive, huh?” Tarquin said as his smirky bearded face coalesced within the glass scrying bead.
“Every time you say that, I feel like you’re cursing me,” Rook muttered.
“Should you even be contacting us so soon? Might I remind you that you’re supposed to be undercover in Zara’s ranks. Avoid all unnecessary risks. Where are you even talking to me?”
Rook glanced around. He’d found this handy quiet nook in the underwater fortress that was the Ossuary during one of his nocturnal jaunts, fiddling with ancient elvhen devices. The ancient elves did so love their musical logic puzzles. Rook had something in common with them, along with his love of things that blew up, caught fire, or were hellbent on self-extinction—in Tarquin’s opinion, anyway. “It’s safe. Relax. Besides, I’m sitting on a Rook Special.”
Tarquin rolled his eyes. “Only old mages with a huge ego name their spells. What are you, a summer shy of twenty?”
“Excuse you,” Rook said, dignified, “Maybe your old person brain can’t retain long-term memory, but I’m a Vol Dorma grad, thank you.”
Tarquin sneered. “Exactly. A fucking grad, green to the godsdamned gills, and the Viper stashes you with a key undercover mission.”
“Take it up with your boss. I’m not exactly happy to be here.”
Of all things, this makes Tarquin sober up. He frowned. “You… you all right? Look. If it’s too much for you, there's nothing wrong with calling it. I’m your handler; I deserve the truth. I don’t want you getting yourself killed—the Shadow Dragons would never ask that kind of thing out of a kid. That's what this call is about?”
“No. Something unusual came up.” Rook double-checked the ward he’d inscribed on the stone floor.
Like most of the Ossuary, the chamber smelled persistently damp, time’s slow curse only momentarily suspended. The pressure of the sea around them made itself known as a constant weight of the senses, worse with Rook’s so finely attuned to the Fade as it were. The sea dreamed strangely. Small wonder the Venatori had decided to dry out this ruin and populate it with their prisoners and experiments. Rook had explored as much as he could for the weeks he’d been here and still kept finding strange chambers and devices whose purpose usually eluded him, making him vaguely wish he’d taken Ancient Elvhen Artifice as an elective in college.
The ward—and the silent warning ones he’d peppered around on his way to this bolthole—hummed soothingly as Rook reached out for them. Only then did he lower his voice and say, “Ossuary has a new prisoner. Someone important—Zara has singled them out for special treatment. They’ve got a whole sealing chamber to themselves, with guards rotated out every few hours.”
Tarquin blinked. “Some powerful mage, perhaps? Strange. We haven’t heard tell of anyone going missing.”
“I don’t think it’s a Tevene prisoner. I think they’re Antivan.” One of Rook’s little wards had caught wind of the guards insulting the prisoner as they’d dragged the poor soul past. “But I can’t be sure, not unless I take a closer look.”
“Hm.” Tarquin lost interest. “Antivan? Perhaps we should reach out to the Crows.”
“You mean that merry band of assassins with decent fashion branding and great advertising? Would they even stage a rescue? That doesn’t sound like it’s in their skillset.”
“Just a thought. I’ll raise it with Viper, but I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Prioritise your safety and try to find those phylacteries.”
Rook swallowed the mother hen quip on the tip of his tongue. For all that Tarquin appeared short-tempered and impatient, he’d been the most vocal about sending a ‘young greenhorn’ out on an undercover mission, and it’d come from a place of concern, not envy. Rook’s unstable childhood had long made him quick to discern genuine sentiment from fakery. “Keep you posted,” he said, and released the scrying spell. Checking the time on his pocketwatch, Rook pulled the slightly itchy red Venatori cadet hood over his face. Work called.
#
Staff turnover was unexpectedly brutal in the Venatori. Rook had initially been assigned to a crowded four-person staff dorm room, which made sneaking out at night to explore increasingly awkward. Over the month, his roommates began to disappear. Polite inquiries were met with flat statements to shut up and not be so nosy from Rook’s immediate supervisor. By the end of the month, Rook had the room all to himself. Convenient—if also puzzling.
Rook took the opportunity to go on wider ranging forays. The phylacteries were nowhere to be found in the staff residences or the laboratories he had access to. The low to mid-security prison levels turned up nothing but a few years’ worth of nightmare material. As to the high-security section… Rook had spent three days carefully unravelling the wards in a less-used maintenance shaft. He made a bee-line for it once his shift was over, high on three cups of stolen tea and boredom. Cadets in the murderous blood mage cult were pretty much treated like glorified servants, and if Rook had to smile and nod and polish down one more crystalline magical focus with his thumbs—
Footsteps made Rook tense up and recheck the weaving of his invisibility spell. He flattened himself against the clammy stone wall in time for an armed patrol to clatter past—three guards in full armour and a couple of senior mages. Puzzled, Rook passed two more circling patrols on his way to the maintenance shaft. Once he got to the elvhen crystal puzzles that locked off the entrance to the sector, the shouts and footsteps faded.
Exhaling, Rook pulled back his hood and released the invisibility spell. He untied arcanic lock puzzles on his way up to the shaft, stifling yawns. As he stepped onto the ledge leading to the shaft, Rook’s instincts had him stop and check the thick layer of dust beneath his feet. Footsteps in a different shoe size.
A whisper of air from above. Rook backpedalled and brought up his hands, a dagger glancing off the arcane shield that bloomed around him. His attacker spat a curse in a language Rook didn’t understand and tried again instead of backing off. Grimacing, Rook leapt back and slapped the haft of his staff on the ground, lashing out with a swell of ice that froze his assailant in place. As he conjured shards of ice before him, ready to pierce his opponent, Rook faltered. Struggling angrily in a cage of ice was the most handsome man Rook had ever seen.
Dishevelled, pale, and liberally bloody didn’t detract much from the elegant lines of the stranger’s face, nor did the murderous stare do much to lessen the impact of those gorgeous dark eyes. Rook blinked slowly, then exhaled and released the spell, smacking himself against the side of his head to try and knock out his unfortunate tendency to make bad life decisions at the sight of pretty faces. The sound startled the stranger out of his cursing, his lush mouth pursing.
“I don’t speak Antivan,” Rook said, studying the stranger’s recognisable drab garb. “You’re a prisoner. Escaped prisoner? Congratulations and all that, I suppose, but you’ve set off the alarm, and everyone’s looking for you. Unless you’ve got a way off this underground prison, there’s only food and water in the staff sector, and that’s fairly guarded. I think you’re fucked.”
The stranger frowned. “I’m not looking to escape,” he said, speaking Tevene with a thick accent.
“Could fool me.” Rook leant his weight against his staff. “Look, I’m not your enemy. If I let you out of that ice, will you promise to stop trying to stab me? I find the sight of my blood quite depressing.”
The stranger gave Rook a pointed once over. “Venatori are all my enemies.”
“What a coincidence. Same for me.”
“Oh?”
“Bring the light and all that.” Rook had always thought the Shadow Dragon branding and tagline rather trite but had to admit it was memorable.
“You are a Shadow Dragon?” The stranger looked incredulous. “You’re too young.”
“Please, like there aren’t children in the Crows.”
That brought on a pinched expression. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, it’s obvious. You’re no mage, nor are you a Tevene soporati or an elf—the Venatori’s favourite victims. Why would they trap a random, very stabby Antivan person in here? Besides, I think one of the entrances to the Ossuary starts offshore near Treviso.”
“Let me go,” the stranger said after thinking this over. “My apologies for attacking you.”
“Not at all, it’s only logical.” Rook released the spell, careful to do so at a safe, re-castable distance. The stranger noticed—his mouth twitched with amusement. Cocky bastard. “Rook,” Rook offered. “Shadow Dragon.”
“Lucanis Dellamorte. Crow.”
“The Demon of Vyrantium?” Rook had done some light reading when snooping around the Ossuary’s archives, including their folder about their so-called prime targets. Perhaps depressingly, only a handful of Shadow Dragons were named, even from pseuds. Rook had made a mental note to tell Tarquin to work harder.
Lucanis looked adorably abashed for someone bloodied and holding a murder weapon. “Ah… yes.”
“Hah, well, you could possess me anytime,” Rook said because sometimes his mouth worked on a completely different filter when high on tea and adrenaline in the presence of the hot. Lucanis looked startled, then puzzled—then, to Rook’s amusement, the tips of his ears turned pink. Rook laughed, because why the hell not, and Lucanis cleared his throat.
“Sorry about that. Uh, look. Given you’re who you are, it’s possible that the Shadow Dragons could be persuaded to extract you,” Rook told him more soberly. The grandson of the First Talon could net the Shadow Dragons a few decent favours. “I could contact my people.”
“No. I’m here to do a job.”
“Who’s your target? Zara?” At Lucanis’ slow nod, Rook whistled. “You’re dedicated. Headed in the wrong direction, but dedicated.”
Irritation crossed Lucanis’ handsome face, followed by wry amusement. “I was going to rest and patch my wounds first.”
“Oh, right.” Rook wavered between work and spending the rest of the night with eye candy. Sadly, his work ethic turned out to be fragile. “I know a place.”
#
Lucanis examined Rook’s bolthole with the wary curiosity of a street cat before seemingly deeming it satisfactory. “Sorry to intrude,” he said.
“You’re welcome to weeks’ old dry food and the pile of ancient rags. I have a lumpy, cold cot in the cadet dormitory to look forward to. If you need the restroom, there’s an elvhen device in the back that I think I’ve fixed. Or, I think I have, and it’s quite possibly for bathroom use. Maybe.”
Lucanis grimaced. “I’ll pass. In my experience, elvhen devices tend to catch fire or explode.”
“They’re thousands of years old?”
“That makes it worse, not better. Thank you. For your help.”
“Want me to contact the Shadow Dragons? We could send word back to your people,” Rook offered.
“No, not until the job is done.”
Rook showed Lucanis how to close off the route to the safehouse and left him staring suspiciously at one of the elvhen power crystals. It was near dawn when he got back to his room, and he knew he’d be sleepwalking on the morrow, but Rook didn’t care. So far, the ambit of his life had taught him not to live the rest of it with regrets, and his instincts told Rook that Lucanis would make things exciting.
#
Having expected to return to the bolthole to find Lucanis missing, Rook stared. The piles of rubble had been cleared away. Bedding folded out over stone replaced the rags. Lucanis had even stacked boxes of food supplies—old and new—neatly in order of type and height on a stone table that he’d somehow moved in from one of the side rooms. There was even a tiny magical stove, likely purloined from the kitchen.
“Evening,” Lucanis said. He lounged against a wall, dressed in fresh clothes. Someone’s civilian outfit, a little too tight—it hugged Lucanis’ deliciously broad shoulders and narrow waist.
“How did you get coffee?” Rook asked, staring at the cup in Lucanis’ hand.
“The kitchen and storage areas are not that well guarded.”
“You’ve been busy.” Rook sat on a rock. He took a crumpled wad of paper from his cadet jacket and tossed it over. “Zara’s movement patterns.”
“My thanks.” Lucanis pocketed it. “You never said what the Shadow Dragons were here for.”
“Phylacteries.” At Lucanis’ puzzled expression, Rook said, “A handful of Venatori want to defect on condition that the Shadow Dragons find and destroy their phylacteries. Otherwise, blood magic could be used to kill or control them remotely. Upgraded version of the barbaric system down south in the Circles.”
“How could you trust a Venatori?” Lucanis sneered.
“That part, thankfully, isn’t my job.” Rook didn’t trust most people further than he could spit, let alone a cadre of blood mages. But he did recognise that not everyone fell into the demons and human experiments crowd because they wanted to. Or regretted it afterwards. “I’ve searched this place's low and mid security parts and didn’t find squat.”
“That’s why you were going to enter the high-security section.”
“Until I got distracted,” Rook said with a grin.
Lucanis lowered his gaze. “I’ll go with you.”
“Hm? What for? It’ll be easier for you to get to Zara in the less heavily patrolled bits of this shithole.”
“It is a question of style,” Lucanis said, of all things.
“What.”
“To strike at the enemy at the heart of the place they find safest and tell them there that the Crows send their regards.”
Rook rubbed a hand slowly over his face. He’d been starting to think Lucanis a little too perfect, what with his looks, confidence, and male mother attitude. But no. What the world giveth, it often also taketh. Becoming a Crow didn’t appear to take a firm grasp of logic and intelligence. The fact that Lucanis had said that completely unironically and Rook still found him hot said a lot about Rook’s taste in men, though.
“You don’t approve?” Lucanis asked.
“It’s not the usual modus operandi for the Shadow Dragons,” Rook said as diplomatically as he could. “Come along if you want, just. Don’t get too excited before I find the phylacteries.”
#
Lucanis appeared duly impressed by Rook’s invisibility spellwork and, despite the grandstanding, stayed close by and didn’t stab random passerby Venatori. The high-security sector was segmented into different restricted areas due to Zara’s controlled abomination experiments. As they passed another cell where the human within seemed to be melting into a living candle, Lucanis’ mouth twisted with disgust.
“You’re very calm,” he told Rook in a whisper as Rook set up another inconspicuous ward.
“People join the Shadow Dragons for usually the same reasons,” Rook said, deliberately vague. “The shit that the Venatori do—it’s never anything new.”
Lucanis looked away as though embarrassed. “I did not mean to pry.”
“No, it’s all right.”
“How can you accept Venatori to your ranks, knowing what they do?”
Rook stared at Lucanis, surprised. “A principled assassin?”
“Why can’t an assassin have principles?”
“Don’t tell me that everyone you’ve killed has deserved it.”
Lucanis let out a dry laugh. “After a fashion.”
“Well, as I’ve said. Not my call.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“After a fashion,” Rook said and smirked as Lucanis scoffed and shook his head. The moans and screams that echoed through the spell-lit corridors nearly masked the sound of oncoming footsteps. Rook began to warn Lucanis, then nodded instead as Lucanis motioned for silence.
#
Shit tended to roll downhill, which meant that Lucanis’ prison break eventually resulted in arduous, all-hands-on-deck shifts. Even cadet mages like Rook were rostered into patrols, ones that went on for hours without a break and left his feet blistered. For a week, he didn’t even have the energy to check on Lucanis or look for the phylacteries—he staggered back to the dorms, washed up, and slept the sleep of the dead.
Then, the patrols petered off all at once. Worse, there was a pay bonus and a string of off days. As the surviving cadets excitedly prepared to head home on the next day’s supply shipment, Rook managed to sneak off and conjure up an invisibility spell unnoticed.
The way to the bolthole was quiet, but Rook only started to get suspicious as he got close to the inner chamber and smelled spoiling food. Within, the bed didn’t look slept in, and dust had begun gathering on the floor. The level of coffee in the jar wasn’t that far from when Rook had observed it a week ago. Nor were most of the other supplies disturbed. Rook looked around halfheartedly for a farewell note, didn’t find one, and exhaled.
Bloody, overconfident Crow.
Tarquin looked exasperated when Rook contacted him with his plans. “He’s a stranger. You’re going to risk the mission for a stranger?”
“He’s a high-ranking Crow,” Rook said, though his protest sounded weak. “Grandson of the First Talon, even.”
“Doesn’t seem to matter for much if the Ossuary isn’t being overrun with Crows. That tells me either his grandmother doesn’t care, or there’s some power struggle that’s made it such that she can’t care.”
“I’ll do the mission,” Rook assured Tarquin. “I might just need a quick exit afterwards. With a plus one.”
Tarquin sneered. “You were never this soft. What’s wrong with you? Is that man good-looking or what?” As Rook coughed, Tarquin’s mouth flattened. “You’re fucking with me.”
“Well—”
“Fuck you, Rook. Stick to the plan.” Tarquin signed off.
In the silence, Rook made himself a cup of tea and mentally reviewed the layout of the Ossuary that he’d memorised so far. Then he pocketed the scrying device and picked up his staff.
#
Rook perched on a ledge and studied the chamber in the Ossuary’s depths. Locking red lyrium crystals fed a ward that sealed off the doorway to the dome-shaped room beyond. The last Rook had seen, this chamber had been unused. However, the Venatori had also reshuffled the prisoners since he’d last been here. With luck, Lucanis was in one of the other sections—
“Juno and Nicomedes passed yesterday of their wounds,” one of the guards close to Rook’s position said. He’d lowered his voice, but noise in the chamber echoed.
“Even with Theo transferring in to the infirmary?” the mage he spoke to looked grave. The guard nodded, and the mage scowled. “To the hells with the Crow. I hope he rots in there.” The mage made a rude gesture toward the large ward.
Convenient. Also annoying. Rook began to make his way back along the ledge and went still as a woman in a gold and black gown swept into the room, a crimson coat over her shoulders. Shadow Dragons intel had painted a portrait that accurately captured the pinched expression on Zara’s face, as though she’d just eaten a roach. Rook swarmed quickly down the closest strut to the ground as Zara approached the seal, disentangling it. The oily tang of blood magic in the air spread, making Rook grit his teeth. He sidled through the now-open door and found an inconspicuous nook in the new room.
Wards tainted with blood magic sealed a human-shaped crystalline egg in the chamber's centre, its base veined with pulsing arcanic threads. Within, Lucanis’ mouth twisted into a snarl as he struggled against his bonds, his skin lined with pale blue cracks—his blood itself was being infused by a low concentration of a lyrium substrate. Rook’s heart sank. He’d read the Venatori notes on the procedure in the archives. The victims they prepped for their spirit possession experiments tended to be infused before the ritual, making them more stable hosts for infection.
“You’re resourceful, I’ll give you that,” Zara told Lucanis. “Somehow, you hid out under my nose for a week. Perhaps you had help? If you give me a little hint, I might consider making your stay with us more… comfortable.”
Lucanis sneered. “Crows have honour. Unlike your kind.”
“To be honest, you’re refreshing my theoretical knowledge of the Crows,” Zara said, tapping her chin with a painted nail. “If you’re lingering around here, I presume you have a contract on someone. Not to be immodest, but I presume I’m the only person in here that the Demon of Vyrantium might be interested in.” This got a snort from Lucanis. “So why were you caught breaking into the phylactery storage? Made such a mess in there, at that.”
What.
Rook glanced inadvertently at the scrying sphere in the pouch at his hip as it grew warm—Tarquin was trying to contact him. The logical thing to do would be to withdraw and check on Tarquin. The illogical thing, which he did, was to ignore Tarquin and wait. Zara had finished her gloating and drew a small sphere from her robes, thick with inscriptions. Within it, something purple and black squirmed. Zara reached through the arcane restraint and grabbed Lucanis by the jaw, at which point Rook decided to throw caution to the wind.
The icy blast knocked Zara away from Lucanis, sending her sprawling as she snarled, looking around wildly until she noticed Rook on the perch. Invisibility spell dropped, Rook grinned at her and threw up an entropic sphere, the groaning void spiralling out as it got toward Zara and pulling her into orbit. She tore herself free and flashed away, but her grip on the sphere dislodged—it smashed on the ground.
“Fool!” Zara roared. “Look what you’ve done!”
The thing within the sphere unfurled into a many-eyed crow of shadow and light, then a hundred smaller crows that shrieked and flung themselves at everything in the room. Rook grit his teeth and threw up a shield, hoping that whatever Lucanis was in would protect him from the onslaught. Zara fought back, throwing scythes of blood magic into the dense mass of shadow, making it snarl. The spirit ignored Rook and concentrated on attacking Zara, giving Rook enough of a breather to fire off shards of ice at the locking wards in the chamber.
Crude, but it worked—Lucanis fell free of the restraint, coughing. Rook conjured a dagger of ice before him, and he grabbed it, charging into the fray. Not a very assassin thing to do, but the Venatori guards outside the chamber were swarming in and Rook no longer had the space to complain. Another entropic sphere swallowed up the guards closing in on his position, grinding toward the edge of the sharp drop beyond the chamber ledge. Rook ignored it and engaged in an arcane duel with the remaining Venatori mages, meeting fire with ice until he froze them. He turned in time to see the spirit tangling up Zara’s hands and interrupting her incantation, long enough for Lucanis to stab her in the chest with the ice dagger.
Rook hurried over, wary of the spirit, but it made a low chuckling sound and turned back into a giant crow. Lucanis stared at it. “Thank you,” he said.
“My. Pleasure,” the spirit said and made a hissing laugh.
Rook wished he’d taken more electives about spirits and the Fade as he walked over to Lucanis’ side. “We should get out of here,” he told Lucanis.
“What about it?” Lucanis nodded at the huge crow.
“The waking world isn’t great for most spirits.”
Lucanis frowned. “What happens to them?”
“I presume it was coerced here since Zara was going to feed it to you. It’s what she’s been doing to the other prisoners. Spirits that get coerced into crossing the Fade usually turn into demons.” That being said, the giant crow was a lot more stable than Rook was giving it credit to be. It even chuckled.
“Sorry,” Lucanis told the crow. He sounded genuinely apologetic.
“No. Sorry.” The crow twisted back into shadow, which flowed into the bloodied dagger of ice that Lucanis held. It solidified, gaining a hard sheen and a hilt shaped like a bird’s claw.
“Wouldn’t keep that if I were you,” Rook said.
“I need a weapon. And I owe—”
“Don’t say you owe anything to one of them,” Rook cut in. “Be very careful what you say to a spirit.”
“I don’t ignore my debts. To you, or anything."
“I’m guessing you’ve already paid the one you owe me if you did my job.” Rook pulled out the scrying orb. “Ready to get out of here? Might be a bit of a bloody slog now that we’ve made so much noise.”
Lucanis grinned, baring his teeth. “Sounds exciting.”
#
Having thought Lucanis would disappear back to Antiva on the first ship, Rook was rather surprised to find him haunting a cafe near the Shadow Dragon hideout. Lucanis smiled when Rook sat at his table, sipping coffee. The cats that crowded the cafe gave Lucanis a pointed berth, perhaps because of the haunted dagger at his hip.
“Didn’t think you’d still be here,” Rook said.
“Disappointed?”
“Not in the least,” Rook said with a playful grin. “Who am I to protest the presence of so much eye candy?”
Lucanis chuckled, his ears reddening. “Do you flirt with everyone you meet?”
“Only with people more good-looking than I am,” Rook admitted. Honesty got him a laugh.
“Mages have such inflated egos,” Lucanis said, though he didn’t sound annoyed.
“Is that a dealbreaker?”
“The ego? Not particularly. The magic? A few weeks ago, I’d have said yes.” Lucanis leaned in, his pretty mouth curling into an inviting smile. “I think you’ve managed to change my mind.”
“All of it?” Rook asked, maybe too hopefully.
Lucanis seemed amused. “We’ll see. The Viper has called in the favour that I owe the Dragons. I’m to assist you in your next project.”
“Whatever brought that on?” Rook said, delighted. He made a mental note to send the Viper a box of chocolates.
“It was on Tarquin’s recommendation.”
“Huh.” Tarquin could get chocolates, too.
“I have a place just outside the Docks. Perhaps we should discuss things further there.”
“Discuss, you say?”
“Work first,” Lucanis said, though he lowered his eyes and sipped his coffee.
#
Lucanis had a swanky terrace house in Vivazzi Plaza, of all places, close to the Gardens. “You’ve just refreshed my views on safehouses,” Rook said faintly as he explored the marble-floored three-store house. There was even a manicured garden, kept perfectly trimmed by imbued spellwork. “I thought only mages and very wealthy merchants got to live in this district.”
“Indeed. It was payment to the Crows from one such merchant. One of my earliest jobs, so my grandmother transferred it to my name.”
“Won’t that raise eyebrows at the land registry?”
“An alias,” Lucanis said. He looked amused by how Rook seemed surprised by everything, from the heartwood furniture to the crystal windows, bespelled to keep the house at a constant pleasant temperature. The paintings were disguised scrying glasses, open to pastoral viewpoints in Tevene and around Thedas.
“Do I want to know who you killed to get paid a house like this?” Rook said, gawping. “Maybe I should switch employers.”
Lucanis laughed. “It’s confidential. And you’d make a fine Crow.”
“Never mind, Tarquin would bitch.” Tempting, though.
Lucanis had set out notes and maps in the study. They discussed plans over tea and coffee, after which Lucanis got up to cook. “How is it that you can cook if you’re so wealthy?” Rook couldn’t help but ask.
“It is a hobby.”
“Like, a hobby hobby, or something adjacent from an interest in poisons…?”
“A hobby,” Lucanis said, folding his arms. “Not everything about me is beholden to the Crows. Is everything you do related to the Shadow Dragons?”
“You have a point. I’ll help,” Rook said, only to be kicked out of the kitchen ten minutes in for trying to use magic to boil water more quickly. He slunk back to the study and ended up reading one of the books on the shelves, and had to be dug out of the couch for dinner. Which turned out to be a multi-dish endeavour: toasted spiced flatbread, roasted vegetable shards sprinkled with cheese, pasta twists with buttery peas and crumbled sausages, fried battered zucchini flowers stuffed with cheese, lamb backstrap arranged over spears of asparagus…
“Did you make all that just then?” Rook said, startled.
Lucanis coughed. “It’s not often that I get to cook for others. My grandmother considered it a waste of time.”
“Well, she’s wrong,” Rook said, sitting happily. He paused when he noticed Lucanis went still. “What? You clearly disagree with her.”
“Ah, no. It’s been a long time since I’ve met anyone willing to say that my grandmother was wrong in anything. Even out of her earshot,” Lucanis said. He poured wine for them both. Through dinner, Rook grew thankful for his youth. Being in his twenties meant being able to stuff himself to the gills, take a short break, and head in for round two. Lucanis began to look worried as Rook polished off the last of the lamb and dessert—an excellent tiramisu with embedded discs of crunchy chocolate.
“I hope you’re full,” Lucanis said, sounding doubtful.
“I am.” Rook patted his stomach. “Ahhh. You’re too perfect. Are you sure you’re single?”
Lucanis chuckled. “Not much in the way of socialising in my line of work, and I have no interest in finding someone within the Crows. It’s… complicated, with my family’s position. How are you single? I thought Tevene mages often get married early. Particularly ones as powerful as you are—marriage would be an easy way to raise your status. Get you into a house like this one.”
“Please,” Rook scoffed, “I’m at least worth a place in the Gardens. Even if it’s a flat.”
“Many of the estates in the Gardens are nothing like my family’s grounds in Treviso.”
“Why, are you proposing to me? It’s rather soon, isn’t it?” Rook said, just to watch Lucanis redden and sputter. “Why marry if I can earn it if I wanted to? There’s a well-practised route for anyone with magic worth half a spit. Hell, if I did want to get married, it’d have just been a matter of waiting until my adoptive family negotiated the right price to sell me off.” At Lucanis’ startled look, Rook sipped his wine. “Common practice. Long-term safe investment, too. Snatch up a foundling kid with promise, wait a decade or so, and betroth them to the highest bidder. Sometimes, the kid might even be grateful.”
“I presume you weren’t.”
“Started running away from home the moment I learnt how to disentangle a ward. Eventually, they gave up. What about you? Guessing growing up in line for the Talons would’ve made for a stressful childhood.”
“A disciplined one, in many ways. I grew up with a cousin. Hard to say which of us was the bigger troublemaker,” Lucanis said. He regaled Rook with stories until they’d drunk two bottles and were working on a third, tipsy enough that Rook was starting to forget why he’d had qualms doing more than flirting with Lucanis since the Ossuary. Handsome as Lucanis was, the survivor in Rook could tell that he wouldn’t be up for a simple roll in the bed, and anything more would need work that Rook wasn’t sure if he could put in.
The wine loosened his resolve. Rook couldn’t remember later who’d started it, but they went from chatting by magelight at the dining table to being handsy on the couch, Lucanis pinned under Rook with their shirts unbuttoned and his hands greedily exploring the hard planes of Lucanis’ stomach. How had Lucanis maintained his figure in prison? Was he one of those people who stayed hot no matter what happened to them? Rook could believe that, with Lucanis making those sexy gasping sounds against his ear. That the Gods had made someone to be sex appeal incarnate, to push all of Rook’s worst buttons. Lucanis whimpered as Rook pinched his nipples, which hardened quickly under his touch. They kissed with Lucanis pulling at his shirt, then his belts, with wine and lust on their breaths.
“Such a bad idea,” Rook whispered as he nibbled Lucanis’ throat, making him growl. Lucanis’ seemed sensitive there, the blush on his skin darkening as Rook sucked marks close to his Adam’s apple, down to the elegant lines of his collarbone.
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m not good with long-distance relationships,” Rook blurted out, distracted by the kisses going down his clavicle.
Lucanis chuckled. “You’ve thought that far?”
Rook caught himself. “Ah… sorry. I, well.”
“I have,” Lucanis confessed, before Rook could get too embarrassed. “I never thought myself a frivolous person. Never believed in love at first sight—and I still don’t. But this is close,” he whispered, tipping Rook’s chin so their eyes met. “All my instincts tell me that if I let you go, I’ll regret it.”
Rook never thought he’d ever be speechless in his life, and yet here he was. After a long, breathless pause, he said, “If I weren’t a mage, I’d assume I was dreaming.”
Lucanis had begun to look worried—now he smiled. “Not a very romantic thing to say.”
“I’m not a terribly romantic person. You might regret this either way,” Rook said, kissing Lucanis reverently over his eyes, his perfect nose, his mouth. “I have a whole host of bad habits, never grew out of them. I’ve almost nothing to my name. I use magic all the time for fun, and I know that shits you. I—”
“And it’s nothing on how much you excite me,” Lucanis said, stroking Rook’s cheek. “The world feels drab when you’re not nearby.”
There didn’t seem like much Rook could think of to say that would top that. He settled for a kiss, infatuation’s first eager flush rife between them. They kicked off boots and pulled impatiently at belts, Lucanis groaning as Rook urged him up against the couch's armrest. Room made, Rook shifted back, kissing down Lucanis’ belly to the curls at the base, savouring the musky scent. This wasn’t something he did often and it likely showed, but it was worth the awkwardness to hear Lucanis gasp “Mierda” as Rook licked him from root to tip.
Rook smirked up at Lucanis as he kissed the thick cap. “What’s your opinion on magic in bed?” he asked, playfully chilling the air just above his fingertips, then tickling up the vein along Lucanis’ cock. Lucanis bucked with a groan, his fingers clenching tight over Rook’s shoulders. “That a ‘yes’?”
Lucanis bit his lower lip, then nodded. “You… you do this often?”
“No, but I have a lot of theoretical knowledge—”
“Please, don’t make me regret this,” Lucanis said, then arched into a lovely bow with a sob as Rook flicked a tiny spark at the tip of his cock.
“Nice and sensitive,” Rook whispered. He leant up, sealing a small sphere of ice over a nipple before suckling it, the heat and ice making Lucanis tremble and scratch his back. Hard enough to leave welts, by the feel of it. Rook was about to say something smug, but Lucanis hauled him up for a desperate kiss, grinding against him. Powerful thighs nudged pointedly against Rook’s hips, but Rook pretended not to understand, tickling curling patterns of snowflakes down Lucanis’ belly as he shivered.
Eventually, wet-eyed, Lucanis said something Rook didn’t understand, then gasped out a broken, “Enough,” as a second try. As Rook gave Lucanis’ swollen shaft a final lick and pulled off, Lucanis turned impatiently onto his knees. He swore at Rook as Rook tipped a potion over his pert ass, licking up the excess while working in a finger. With the potion to help the way, Lucanis’ groans grew urgent rather than pained, until finally he gasped another string of curses and ground his hips down to Rook’s knuckles. Three fingers probably weren’t enough, but who was Rook to deny such a lovely invitation?
The tight heat felt exquisite. Rook gasped, locking a small ring of force magic over himself to keep himself from finishing too early as he worked his way in hip deep. Lucanis didn’t fare better, trembling as Rook kissed the back of his throat, then his shoulders. As Rook traced a swirl of ice down his shoulder blades with his tongue, Lucanis wailed and clenched tight, spilling over the couch.
Rook propped a cushion under Lucanis as his legs gave out, laying flush over his back and riding out the tremors. Waiting for Lucanis’s breaths to even out, for him to grind back against him in a request for more. “How about we go all night?” Rook suggested, nipping him on the back.
“A mage has that much stamina?” Lucanis said, his smile provocative in all the right ways.
Rook curled his fingers into Lucanis’ palms and thrust lightly, eliciting another lovely moan. “I’ll take that as a challenge.”
#
Lucanis couldn’t get out of bed the next day. “Don’t be so smug,” Lucanis told Rook as Rook arranged a tray of flatbreads and dips that he’d purchased hurriedly from the closest market. Coffee as well, though Lucanis wrinkled his nose when he’d sniffed it. He’d drunk anyway, knocking it back like he’d taste less of it that way.
“Shouldn’t I be smug?” Rook asked, snuggling on the bed behind Lucanis and pulling him against Rook’s chest.
“Tch. You’ll get older someday too.” Lucanis ate with the delicacy of someone with a noble’s education, tearing the bread into dainty bite-sized pieces. Rook had never understood the point of that, for all the forced etiquette classes that the Shadow Dragons had their undercover agents go through.
“Could probably still go until dawn,” Rook said, brushing a kiss over one of the reddened marks on Lucanis’ throat.
“Did you have to sleep with… inside me?” Lucanis grit out.
“Hmm,” Rook groaned as he recalled the delightful state of the morning he’d woken into. “I wonder.”
“Rook, you can’t be getting hard—we have work to discuss—Rook!”