Chapter Text
The Lighthouse felt... off tonight.
Neve Gallus wasn’t one to wax poetic about Fade energy or Veil ripples or whatever nonsense Solas found fashionable. But even she could tell that something in the Lighthouse had shifted - like someone had elbowed the place and it hadn’t quite found its footing again.
She had a suspicion about the cause, of course.
The Demon of Vyrantium. The legend beneath a dozen layers of rumour, with a body count too high and a profile too low. If you believed half of the whispers - Rook certainly did - Lucanis was a ghost sharpened into a knife and sent to kill.
And now that knife was sitting in their kitchen, apparently.
She’d felt his arrival without seeing it. The Fade wisps grew agitated when someone new entered, fluttering with the urgency of servants who’d misplaced a guest. She could never quite decipher how they knew or what they wanted. The Fade had a language all its own, and despite all her magical abilities, she could never quite learn it.
She had told Rook about the lead on Lucanis two days ago. He’d lit up with recognition. Not surprising - Lucanis was half battlefield ghost story, half folk hero for baby Crows. When Rook finally left for the mission, he glowed like a boy handed a sword twice his size and told a story of the man who used it. Every other word out of his mouth had been “Lucanis this,” “Dellamorte that.” The legend wasn’t just alive - it had lodged itself in Rook’s brain like a catchy tune, and Neve had watched him hum it all the way to the eluvian.
But she hadn’t gone with him. Harding had. Neve had stayed to cipher old Shadow Dragon missives and interpret vague threats passed off as diplomacy.
She hadn't been worried about the mission. Nothing short of a miracle or a million Magisters could slow Rook down. But the aftermath... that had worried her. Because no one, not even a legend, could live up to that kind of reverence.
Eventually, curiosity bested discipline. She placed the letter she was pretending to read on her desk and followed the nearest Fade wisp, a flickering guide that tugged her from the alcove like a leash. It drifted ahead of her with purpose, as if it knew something she didn’t - which it probably did.
The kitchen greeted her with the soft scent of scorched wood and something else - bitterness, deep and earthy.
Coffee.
Odd. No one really brewed coffee here. Harding drank Fereldan tea with the devotion of a widow. Rook was more likely to steep herbs for poultices and poisons. This was something else - strong, dark. Pleasant.
Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dimness. The kitchen was always too dark inside, too at odds with the brightness outside - like a room caught between dreams. That was when she saw him.
One hand braced against the hearth. The other at his side. Silent. Still.
Lucanis Dellamorte.
He turned briefly, acknowledging her with a glance that felt like a paper cut: minimal, precise, oddly personal. Then he turned back to the fire.
Neve’s mind, ever the analyst, catalogued him quickly: lean, shorter than she expected, tension hidden beneath tailored casualness. A man built for movement but currently forced to stay still. His clothes were neat - expensive, but understated - yet his hair and beard told another story: just enough unruly to suggest a man once immaculate, now with more pressing matters on his mind.
Something about him made the back of her neck tingle.
Her steps faltered for a moment, but she masked it quickly before continuing. She would not show weakness to a man like him. Not when the only things she knew about him were his strict professionalism and the high price attached to his contracts.
“You can’t suppress it forever,” Bellara was saying, her voice hushed but urgent. “He’ll push through on his own. That would be worse. I think-”
Neve placed a hand on her shoulder, gently but with intention. Bellara flinched.
“Oh, Neve. I didn’t hear you enter.”
“No worries, Bel.” She gave a smile that was more suggestion than expression. “Just wanted to meet our new... guest.”
Lucanis looked at her again, lingering this time.
“Neve Gallus,” she said, giving a graceful flick of her wrist. It could’ve been a greeting or a warning. “A pleasure.”
“Lucanis Dellamorte.” He dipped his head in return. “At your disposal.”
His voice curled around the words with that unmistakable Antivan cadence - liquid vowels and deliberate consonants, a rolled ‘r’ here, a softness there. Everything about him was polished, shaped by old money or older mentors.
And yet… there was something unmistakingly off about him. Beneath the perfectly recited manners, she spotted it: the grip on the stone. The slight favoring of the left leg, as if it had only recently relearned the idea of “weight.” His shoulders, too, carried the stiffness of a man remembering how to appear relaxed.
Wherever he had broken out off, the cracks were still fresh.
Bellara’s voice pulled her back.
“Sorry for rambling, Lucanis,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to… you know. Announce your situation.”
Lucanis let out a barely there sigh. He wiped a hand down his face, the kind of gesture a man made when there were no elegant exits.
“It’s fine,” he said. “If I’m to work with all of you, you deserve to know what you’re dealing with.”
Neve sat beside Bellara, folding herself into the moment. “And what exactly are we dealing with?”
“Well,” Bellara began, fingers wringing each other into knots. “Lucanis has a... passenger. No, more like - an intruder. But it’s not his fault! This wasn’t some back-alley pact. He didn’t summon anything himself-”
“A demon,” Lucanis cut in. “I have a demon. His name is Spite.”
Neve blinked once. The word dropped like a stone in her mental ledger. Her mind ran through everything she knew about possessions. A demon called Spite. Attached, but not by a deal. Lucanis was no mage. Which meant… She didn’t know what it meant.
“You’re carrying a demon?” she asked carefully.
Bellara jumped in again. “Not carrying. Bound. Like… real possession. But it’s fine! He had it for a year and nothing really bad has happened yet!”
Neve narrowed her eyes. Now that she knew what it was, she understood what she felt a moment ago. What had unnerved her about him: something was inside him. Not dormant. But watching.
Then Rook arrived.
Unlike Neve, Rook never entered a room quietly. He breezed in like a wind, loud in ways that had nothing to do with volume. The atmosphere changed immediately - lighter, warmer, but no less tense. Sunshine into a surgical theatre.
He stopped a few feet in, immediately sensing the mood.
Then, with clear deliberation, he cleared his throat. The sound was awkwardly timed. Too loud.
“Lucanis,” he said.
Neve’s eyebrow arched. He was lowering his voice. Purposefully. The usual lilt, the casual playfulness, gone. Replaced by something gruffer. It didn’t suit him.
Bellara twisted toward Rook in relief. “I talked to him,” she said, “like you asked. He’s definitely bound. No way to separate them.”
Rook stepped closer, his hands resting on the backs of their chairs like he needed to physically brace himself. He stared ahead, lips twitching like he was chewing through the implications.
“There’s no way?” he asked.
Bellara’s shrug was half-hearted. “There’s one. But it’s… you know. Fatal.”
Rook blinked. “Mm. Awkward.”
Silence.
He grimaced, as if his mouth had gone rogue. “Not that we’d do that, obviously. I only just got you. I mean-” His hands fluttered once, a vague, helpless motion. “We only just got you. It’d be a waste of talent to. You know. Murder.”
Before his sentence could fully collapse under its own weight, Lucanis’ head snapped like he took a blow. Blood dripped from his nose.
Both Neve and Bellara stood at once, chairs scraping back with the suddenness of alarm.
“Lucanis!” Rook started forward, panic breaking through, but Lucanis raised a hand without looking.
“No!” he said. Then quieter. “It’s fine.”
It very clearly was not.
Spite had lashed out. In the kitchen. Over roasted beans and Rook’s spiraling monologue. That meant proximity. That meant the demon was so inexplicably linked to Lucanis that it could influence the physical world.
“I… I don’t like leaving you alone with a demon,” Rook said, words falling to the stone floor.
Lucanis didn’t look up. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
Neve watched him. Then Rook. Neither looked like they had the tools to handle this situation.
“Well,” Neve said, breaking the tension like one might pop a bubble. “That was educational. If no one minds, I’ll be taking my leave before Spite throws something heavier than a temper.”
She walked out with her spine straight and her mind spinning.
A demon in a non-mage. A bound spirit fused to flesh without consent. No pact. No precedent. The implications were vast, unethical, and entirely terrifying.
And then there was the whole Rook issue.
She hadn’t known him long, but she had grown to care for him. He was exhausting in the way idealists always were - relentless, determined, forever tugging broken things toward the light. But he was sincere, and the world had too few of those.
And now he was told to stand back. To stop helping. To let someone fall through the cracks. By someone he looked up to. By someone who made him drop his voice and lose his words.
Neve resolved, as she entered her small, flickering chamber in the Fade, never to meet her heroes.
It was cleaner to admire them from afar - where their armour stayed untarnished, and the demons were only ever just nicknames.
The narrow streets of Dock Town were alive with the usual chorus of capitalist misery: merchants hawking wares, the shuffle of robes against cobblestones, and somewhere nearby, someone was definitely getting cheated out of a full pouch of silver. Oh, how Neve loved it here.
She trailed behind her companions, not because she couldn’t keep up, but because people revealed more when they thought you weren’t watching. And Neve Gallus - detective, spy, reluctant field agent - was always watching. Professionally nosy.
Rook cut through the press of bodies like the city owed him passage. Lucanis followed beside him, lean and silent, with the kind of economy of motion that came from deadly efficiency. Rook projected confidence like a lighthouse beam. Lucanis absorbed it like a void.
They didn’t speak. But Rook kept glancing sideways - those flicked, guilty looks that tried very hard to be accidental. He adjusted his pace by half-steps, syncing with Lucanis without looking like he meant to. Lucanis, for his part, gave no outward sign he noticed. Which, of course, meant he absolutely had.
Neve sighed, internally. So much posturing. So much smothered longing. If you cut the tension between them with a knife, Lucanis would probably critique the technique.
She’d suspected something weeks ago - Rook, usually fluent in sarcasm and smirks, had started speaking in full sentences around their newest companion. Full paragraphs, even. Too polished to be natural. Too deliberate not to be meaningful. She’d chalked it up to Rook being careful around the demon. Or Crow pride. Or maybe just the tension of too many alphas in one murdery pen.
But now, with the benefit of repetition and proximity, she could see it clearly for what it was:
This wasn’t rivalry. This was courtship. Badly disguised. Worse executed.
Rook stopped abruptly at a vendor’s table, daggers laid out like silver fish on a butcher’s block. “Hey, Lucanis,” he said, picking up a dagger and holding it with fake interest. “What do you make of this? Not really my thing, as you know. I prefer the bow. But I thought… maybe I should branch out. Practice my stabbing.”
Lucanis stepped closer, examined the blade with that quiet scrutiny he applied to most things. “You’d be better off stabbing with a spoon,” he said. “This is less a knife, more a shiv.”
Rook laughed - too quickly. The kind of laugh you gave when you wanted to prove you weren’t embarrassed. He flipped the blade once, fumbled the catch, and set it down with exaggerated nonchalance. “Right. I’ll leave the close-up murders to you, then.”
Lucanis had already turned away.
Rook followed, not deflated, exactly, but recalibrating. That was the thing about Rook: he could bleed and smile through it. The man had been broken and rebuilt so many times his scaffolding probably rattled.
Neve pretended to examine a crate of suspicious oranges. “Imported,” the sign claimed. From where, it didn’t say. Possibly a nightmare.
It wasn’t the first time that morning Rook had tried to lure Lucanis into conversation. Earlier, Rook had presented Lucanis with a swatch of imperial weave like he was gifting him an heirloom.
“What do you think about this one, Lucanis?” Rook had asked, holding up the swatch with an enthusiasm that bordered on desperate.
Lucanis had paused, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. “It’d clash with your undertone. You suit colder colours - silver, maybe. Steel. Not whatever… that is.”
Rook beamed, eyes glinting with that startled pride that came from being noticed. Neve turned her head. Not because she was uncomfortable, but because some moments were private, even in public. Everyone deserved to keep one small joy unobserved.
This whole ordeal had made her forget how young Rook was.
Not chronologically - she knew the number - but in spirit. He wore command well, moved through decisions with that ironclad certainty that came from surviving the worst of things. He gave advice like someone twice his age, and most of the time, he seemed too big for his body, too sure of himself to be questioned. But with Lucanis, something foundational wobbled. In the wake of a passing comment and a dismissed dagger, he looked young. Young and awkward and very suddenly unsure of his footing.
It was oddly endearing.
They reached the outskirts of town, where the crowd began to unravel and the buildings grew quieter, slouching under their own history. Neve found herself beside Lucanis.
He didn’t speak for a while. She appreciated that about him. Silence, when used well, was as eloquent as wit.
“You watch people,” he said finally. Not a question. An observation.
Neve shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”
He nodded. “Must be tiring. Always cataloguing. Even among friends.”
“It has its uses. Knowing where the pressure points are. Like who’s watching whom, when they think no one’s looking.”
He huffed something that might’ve been a laugh.
“In the Crows, we deal a lot with that kind of thing. Secrets, leverage, blackmail. You’d have fit in. Probably better than most of them,” he said, dry and simple.
It wasn’t flirtation. Neve was fairly sure Lucanis flirted the way other people applied for permits: reluctantly, and only under duress. But it had enough weight to it that someone listening too hard could mistake it for meaning. Which, of course, was what Rook did.
Behind them, a shoe scuffed against stone. Rook stumbled - not dramatically, but just enough to lose balance. Neve saw Lucanis twitch forward on instinct, hand halfway to catching, then freeze as Rook waved him off with a grin too big to be natural.
“All good. Ambush tile. Classic.”
Lucanis stared a second longer than necessary. Then he looked away, back to the road.
For the rest of the mission, Rook barely spoke. Gone were his theatrical flourishes, the sly glances. His movements lost their showmanship, all Crow now, no clown. Even when they found the Venatori documents - a scroll tucked in weathered floorboards guarded by all the effort of a damp doormat - Rook merely muttered, “Got it,” and tucked it away.
Lucanis opened his mouth but closed it again. He looked like someone who’d rehearsed a line and then lost his nerve.
Neve, meanwhile, filed everything away for later analysis - the glances, the missteps, the sudden storm cloud hanging over Rook’s usually sunny disposition.
By the time they reached the eluvian, Neve was tired. Not physically. Just of pretending not to see what was obvious.
As they stepped into the familiar glow of the mirror, she caught Rook’s eye. He looked like a man carrying three emotions and not enough hands.
“Bit of advice,” she said, just for the two of them. “If you’re going to flirt with death incarnate, try to stay upright, at least.”
He rolled his eyes, but didn’t answer. His silence wasn’t angry, just quiet. Embarrassed.
She let the moment hang, then softened her tone.
“I wouldn’t get in your way,” she added. “You’ve clearly staked the first claim. And I don’t trespass. Besides, you’re not exactly subtle about it.”
She glanced ahead. Lucanis was very seriously pretending to admire a weathered stone wall - the kind of intense focus reserved for people deliberately not watching the man they like to whisper with someone else.
“But neither is he,” she added. “He just hides it better. Give him time.”
Rook blinked. “Wait - really? What do you mean by that, exactly?”
Neve was already walking ahead, unhurried. She slipped a hand into her coat pocket and drew out her pipe, turning it over in her fingers like it was far more interesting than follow-up questions.
“I’m saying nothing else,” she called back. “Wouldn’t be fair to interfere. Besides… I’ve sat through enough crime dramas with a romance subplot to know when to give the leads their space.”