Chapter Text
Dawn:
- Exercises
- Bath
- Breakfast
Mid-morning:
- Weapon maintenance
- Meeting with Neve and Harding (Venatori)
Midday:
- Light meal - pears, walnuts, cheeses
- Debate with Taash (Rivaini seers. Crow myths. Coffee.)
Afternoon to early evening
- Travel to Treviso with Rook and Bellara
- Meeting with Rook and Illario (Zara’s locatio-)
(A violent scribble across several pages precedes the next entry.)
ALWAYS:
- We seecrets
- Shared heat
- Shared taste
- Shared want
- But he says NO TOUCH
- NEVER KNOW TOUCH
- NO TRUST
- Wants to know but doesn’t ASK
- Dagger against our thigh
- A gift.
- A message.
- Wet in our hand
- WANT WANT WANT.
(Drawn below is a detailed sketch of an eye crinkled by a smile.)
Lucanis started awake and wrenched his hand away from his belt with a groan. A puddle of violet ink covered his side table, a corner of his notebook, and his fingers. With a deep, calming inhale, he noted the faint aroma of his own sweat in the air mingled with the sweeter scent of dried herbs and fresh oranges.
Good. No fresh air means the door has been closed for hours. Spite didn’t take us out anywhere.
Hands trembling slightly, Lucanis massaged his aching head. With another groan he set about cleaning the inky mess Spite had made, his limbs heavy from lack of food and water. Spite still did not understand that they needed to eat. Lucanis gripped the quill resolutely and stared at the guttering candle, trying to determine how much time had passed.
Before he could flip back to his own diary entry, the details of Spite’s note caught his eye. Twisting, ice-cold dread tangled in his gut. A spite demon had no notion of love or desire or lust…that was another demon entirely. Spite understood only malevolent intent, and Lucanis would not let him touch Rook.
Nearing midnight???
-
Maker help me. I can’t…
Sleep had always been an uneasy bargain. So much time gone. It could be better used for training, reading, practice…And in return for the loss? You felt only a little better for a little while. Sleep’s one saving grace had been the blissful black; the brief reprieve from thought.
But that was before Zara. Before Spite. Before hundreds of days and nights in the Ossuary.
Now sleep not only ate into the potential of useful hours, it all but guaranteed nightmares and the emergence of Spite.
Still here. Still here. Not going. Not leaving. Not disappearing quiet nice like. Staying here loud loud LOUD.
Lucanis’ stomach clenched at the voice, his eyes closed so as not to see his own face screaming at him. Spite’s shouts were a violating foghorn of madness through the sticky mist of caffeinated exhaustion. An ever-present reminder that he was something other. Not quite a person, twisted at that sick witch’s hands.
Under this heavy blanket of fatigue, Lucanis noticed his mind clinging more stubbornly to the smallest comfort. Anything to soften the gritty, grating, thorny syrup of total burnout. He fixated on the rhythms and rituals of planning, chopping and cooking meals, the habitual repetition and exertion of training and now the sound of Rook’s, Lina’s, voice. This latest addition tormented as much as it calmed.
“You can’t buy something for everyone but yourself. Here. This is for you.”
“You just described my perfect drink.”
“What would a first kiss be?”
The memory of her words was cool water on sunburned skin, well worth the painful swoop in his chest. An aching sigh seeped from him as their conversations played again in his head. They had walked dangerously close to romance today, and she had strayed willingly. Daydreams of other words he would have her say drifted into his mind. The attempt to push them away was folly, like a fist against a wall of smoke. The wyvern tooth dagger she’d bought spun in his hands as he stared at the blank ceiling of the pantry.
She likes us. Eyes hooded. Smile wanton. She wants you to see.
“No, Spite.”
Yes Lucanis. Yes Lucanis. Oh. Yes right there Lucanis. Oh, that’s what you want to hear? You can tease sweet songs and screams from her. She wants you to. Her fingers are wet right now, thinking the same…
“No Spite.” Lucanis’ stomach roiled at the breathy high moans Spite affected during his little speech, his fingers tightening on the dagger. “I cant.”
We can.
“No we…I can’t.” Lucanis stood to pour a glass of water. His mouth was dry and his breath rasped.
Rook is our favourite. We are Rook’s favourite.
A response swelled, but Lucanis swallowed it down with his water.
Mierda, Dellamorte. He’s SPITE, idiot. Telling him not to do something is the quickest way to make him do it.
Each twirl of the dagger in his grip threatened a wave of daydreaming, a blissful, temporary fantasy where her kindness was deliberate, specific, just for him.
It’s late. She comes back, exhausted. Flat footsteps in the courtyard. The hour is unsociable but you’re up. Always up. Her bright smile as I offer coffee, and food…her favourite. It was nothing, but it’s everything. Her shoulder hurts, I offer to look, she turns, your lips meet, she moans and…
SPITE STOP.
The soft, lavender-scented oblivion of his sheets met Lucanis as he slumped forwards into them
Wasn’t just me, Crow…
So rarely did his body betray him. Its whims had been beaten out long ago. But now it did, and Lucanis wasn’t even sure it counted. Could you be betrayed if you wanted, allowed it to happen? He watched idly, with interest, as his thoughts strayed further into the fantasy, allowing his cock to stay hard and grow harder. The idea of Rook’s soft exhale as she moaned against his mouth coated his brain, seeped into his blood, set his skin aflame, muffled the brittle shame of his desire. Her taste, her soft lips, the sweet honey lip balm she was so excited about in Treviso smearing across my beard, my lips, my tongue, my chest…
Traitorous fingers found their way to his belt, teasing the soft leather and tugging his trousers open.. His cock twitched as it slid against the bundled bedsheets. The soft linen offered welcome, torturous friction. He sighed and rocked his hips, dragging his cock in long strokes against the fabric.
Maker, am I a fledgling again? Leaking into my bed sheets at the thought of her…beneath me, warm and writhing, wrapping her legs to pull me closer, deeper. She wants this. Me. She claws your…
Blackness, abruptly followed by a deep lurch behind the navel. Spite left. Lucanis’ muscles burned. His cock was raw from friction and throbbed with urgent pressure. A damp sheen of sweat glazed his skin as he rutted into the soft sticky sheets, now coated in his pre cum.
Maker…Mierda…Lina…Fuck…she’s writhing under my mouth, clenching around my fingers…swollen, sweet…her fingers in my hair, begging for me to finish inside her, to fill...I drag myself to face her…as she licks my beard clean, I sheathe myself in wet hot…
The orgasm shot sharp shards of pleasure through him, wrenching a cry that grated his lungs and tore his throat, muffled by his damp pillow. Lucanis twitched and shook. Abrasive breaths heaved his torso as a poisonous wave of tension crashed into a handful of choking sobs.
Lucanis breathed, purging the torrent of thought and feeling that threatened to bury him, save for a small mental note of gratitude that he detected no movement in the dining room.
It’s not your body, Dellamorte. Not anymore. You’ve…NO. Stop. Not useful.
In a grey haze he bundled the stained sheets and fitted fresh ones. Admittedly more relaxed than he had been in months, Lucanis perched on the edge of his bed, taking a deep breath.
Zara gave your body to a demon. A demon just got you most of the way to orgasm. You don’t even know what you were rutting to, you sick…NO. Stop. Not useful. Not useful. Your body is not yours, not human, but make it useful.
Another deep breath almost grounded him. He caught stale coffee and dried apples this time. Grasping the bundle of linen, Lucanis hurled them into the shadowy corner by the door, the space where his laundry basket sat, and where Spite currently sat, smug and triumphant.
You want Rook, naked and trusting, beneath you wanting you when that thing could just…NO. Stop. Not useful.
With a grimace, Lucanis looked away from the lurking purple shadow, and noticed the wyvern tooth dagger on the floor, knocked down by…didn’t matter what.
In the long run, it would surely make everything easier to bear if he misplaced this dagger, dropped or lost it in the spine of some deserving Venatori. But he didn’t. The fine craftsmanship and materials were something to behold, but not what made it hard to part with. For the first time in…for the first time, somebody cared about what he wanted, and it didn’t even seem to take any effort. She just did it.
It’s not about you, idiot. She’s kind to everyone. You’re just pathetic. The same touch-starved, attention-seeking boy you’ve always been. And now you’re not even human. You’re the flesh box for a demon. You wouldn’t be here, you’d still be rotting in a box of your own, if you weren’t so adept with a blade. She sees you as everybody else does - a vendor of death. Don’t kid yourself that it is otherwise.
Smells like…honey and lavender cream. Smells like fresh coffee and warm air. Feels like prickling burning rolling wanting ...Her mouth on ours. Her sweat on our lips. Her tongue tasting, writhing, gasping, sighing. Ours ours OURS.
The sharp, bright bite of the blade on his thigh. A scream of sensation so loud it drowned out his own treacherous thoughts and Spite’s insistent lack of subtlety. Another moment of comfort that Lina would never know she brought him.
Trancelike and savouring the rush of brutal sensation from the blade, Lucanis got up and cleaned the wound with his healer’s kit. Another task. Thank the Maker. Something on which he could focus to drag his mind away from Spite and Lina and want and dread.
As he tidied away the bandages, Lucanis imagined Lina’s voice again as wordless, desperate syllables. Sounds he could never allow himself to hear. He was long past the delusion that his intense affection for Rook, Lina, was mere gratitude for freeing him from The Ossuary. He was grateful to Harding too, but that gratitude did not come with such anatomically specific symptoms. Nor with such all-consuming dread.
Lina was a glimpse into life beyond contracts and enemies and rivalries. A life spent earning her smiles, learning what to do to make her smile. Lucanis wanted to exchange knowing glances; to have whole conversations with a look. He longed to hear her complaints and triumphs each day, and to massage the knots from her aching muscles. There was nobody better suited for Lina de Riva than Lucanis Dellamorte.
Of course, Lucanis Dellamorte was dead, and the shade that currently fought over his corpse with a Spite demon could only daydream about the life they might have shared had things been different.
There was nothing human about the hunger that came with these tender wants. Part of it was familiar, of course. The gentle ache of a burning ember, desperate to burn brighter. But with Spite tethered to him, Lucanis could not trust the body they shared. Every outrageous impulse was now magnified. A passing whim sparked to raging wildfire in an instant, and what remained of Lucanis would not see Lina burn, no matter how often she reached out a hand to touch his twisted, freakish form.