Chapter Text
The most difficult part is the one that Emmrich has struggled with the longest. True acceptance. As much as a man can know a thing to be true, understand its nature, and its place in the grander picture, accepting it is a task left to better, younger, more changeable men than himself. Now, as he stands alone in the quiet aftermath of his cluttered parlor, trembling fingers brushing over the battle-scarred motif of a griffon on a shield, returned to him by the Wardens mere days ago, he is forced to confront what he never thought he’d have to. Unavoidable conflict has come for him, with the thing that, no matter how commonplace, how normal, how inescapable, how worthy of respect it might be—The thing he knows intimately, in practice and in theory, yet never like this.
This thing, this one, specific, horrible thing… was not supposed to happen. Not now. Not after all they’d endured. All they’d survived. All they’d accomplished. All of it, all of it, all of it—This wasn’t supposed to happen. Prior experience had not been enough to prepare him to face it, to confront how it feels to lose everything. Again.
“We wanted to do this personally. We know what you meant to him.” Evka’s eyes shone bright with kindness as well as regret as she hefted it upward and showed it to him. Emmrich had seen the back side of this tower shield more than the front, as the one he loved so deeply and unexpectedly had stood between him and the thing he’d feared most. This shield, in the hand of its owner, had protected Emmrich from death. And now it was here all alone, with out an arm strong enough to bear it.
“This gesture means a great deal to me,” Emmrich replied, but the words numbed his tongue, bland, tasteless, useless to him but perhaps to her it might be some small comfort. Respecting her efforts is the least Emmrich can do. This loss is not his alone, but the whole of Thedas. And most importantly, one that belongs to those they’d come to count among their friends.
Emmrich expected a great many things when the world didn’t come to a sudden end. Outliving his Rook was not one of them. He’d seemed so young and sturdy when first they met; a warrior hardened and wizened by horrors untold in the later part of his prime, someone with a sense for people as strong as Emmrich’s own sense for spirits, and a warmth that came from living in a world too cold to survive without it. It took months of building trust and sharing one another’s company for Rook to even tell Emmerich his given name, or how young he’d been when he’d become a Warden, a gift he’d not granted the others for reasons that Emmrich thought he’d understood at the time. And yet, obscured in all the honesty that Emmrich alone was offered on their journey to stop the gods, there was one piece Rook had left out. An insidious lie of omission that was always waiting in the wings, there from the very start.
“He said you might want to try and recover his body. He… Gave his consent, but we must warn you that there may not be anything familiar of him left to find. The Blight is not as it once was, yet it still remains, ever changing and searching for new influence. If you wish to go through with it, with finding him, The Grey Wardens will be there in whatever ways you might need.” Antoine’s earnestness struck at a soft, tender part of Emmrich’s heart. He was too gentle a soul to tell Emmrich that it would be a fool’s errand to look, but not so gentle as to tell Emmrich it couldn’t be done and let him grieve. Kindness could be a cruelty to some, and as he stared down at the shield in Evka’s grasp, too heavy for Emmrich to lift on his own, his eyes brimmed with tears he refused to shed.
What a cruel fate it is to suffer, to look back and see the cracks in the edifice of love so clearly now that it’s been lost. They’d never really settled their argument, had they? Rook had let it go, his broad and gentle palm settling over Emmrich’s knuckles and squeezing his thin hand to reassure him. There had simply been too much pain, too much uncertainty, and when the fight was over, all that mattered was going home. A home that Emmrich has now neglected for days, books tossed, empty wine glasses left about, the curtains drawn, darkening the shadows in every corner of his home. A home that he’d shared with Rook for a period that now feels far too brief.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Emmrich asks, running bare palm across the scuffed face of the shield. His hair falls in his sleepless eyes as he awaits an answer from the dead that isn’t forthcoming. What Rook has left him to do is the cruelest thing imaginable, but there is no one better suited to the task than Emmrich. He sucks in a breath that stutters along his ribs and catches wetly in his throat. “Was it because of my concern for you or… my insecurity… about me, I wonder?”
There is only one way to be certain of the answer, and Emmrich doesn’t know if he has the strength to carry it out, but he has strength enough to see one thing through. The important thing.
“Manfred—” The name catches between his tonsils, choked by the grief he cannot contain. “We’ll need to send word. To the others. Could you please…”
His knees feel so much weaker than they used to, always threatening to crumple. Four days he’s wallowed in this ugly feeling, so cold and hollow in his chest. It’s as if when Rook left, he scooped out everything that made Emmrich warm and took it with him. The affirmative, hissing reply sounds muffled, as if Emmrich’s head is underwater. He’s never experienced the terror of nearly drowning, but this might be what it feels like. Sucked under into all this cold, dark nothing. Rook couldn’t swim.
“You always seem so fearless, my darling.”
“Oh, I’m plenty afraid. All the time. Of a lot of things. Don’t let the calm and collected façade fool you.”
“Well of course. Wasn’t it you who told me that a little fear is normal? Good, even? But you can tell me your fears, you know. A burden shared is a burden halved, as they say.”
“Do they now? They say a lot of things it seems.”
“Always so cheeky.”
Rook paused, his easy grin melting into something a little softer around the edges, more vulnerable. He took a breath and Emmrich’s brows twitched closer together, ever patient as he waited for his love to decide what he wanted to say next. His admittance came with a self-effacing smile, more a grimace, but his too-wide mouth was always a little upturned at the corners, bearing a smile in the face of pain, anger, embarrassment, or even in moments of sorrow.
“Water, actually.” Rook shrugged, looking away, his mane of dark chestnut hair falling across his shoulder to obscure his face. “Can’t swim. Trotting around in all this armor… even if I’d ever learned, it’s a death sentence more embarrassing than any monster.”
“Really?” Emmrich hadn’t meant to sound so surprised. Rook looked back at him, the dimple at the left side of his mouth deepening with the way it stretched crookedly into a smile that was completely impenetrable.
“Yup. Really.”
The location chosen is an appropriate one. Much as Emmrich would have loved to have everyone come together under his roof, in some other place and time, where the reason for such a reunion was not so grim, there is nowhere more fitting. The Lighthouse stands and its energy still carries the warmth of Rook’s presence, soaked into every Fade-touched brick. The Lighthouse had molded to him, reflecting his past with effigies to the Grey Wardens that seemed to appear overnight after the siege of Weisshaupt. To stand in the library once more, beneath the glow of the astrolabe above, and feel the touch of Rook’s departed spirit, even briefly, is a quiet agony that Emmrich suffers with a tense swallow.
Manfred visibly slouches beside him, deflating as he makes a noise of commiserating sadness, little more than a growl. When Emmrich looks at his ward, he sees a choice Rook made with his heart, not his head. He convinced Emmrich to give up everything he’d worked for, and for a time, they were a family because of it. A fair trade, in the end. Emmrich can’t imagine a world where he chose differently. And now he knows, more than ever, that Rook was and is the reason that Emmrich is not suited for immortality. For lichdom. The sorrow runs in deep, frigid fathoms of black water, and would that he could, Emmrich would reach out of this current and grasp his love with both hands, dragging them together once more.
Manfred wanders by and looks at the books, the roving wisps, chittering with them in a way only he can; he makes floating motes of light to dance and play with the wisps. For a moment, Emmrich can feel Rook at his side and see his smile in the periphery of his vision. Arms akimbo, eyes half squinted in amusement, and that warm, easeful expression of contentment he’d often worn when it was just the three of them. A trick of his mind, Emmrich knows. A trick of the Fade. If he turns to look, Rook will vanish. He holds his breath. He holds on to that feeling a little bit longer.
The eerie pressure of another person stepping through the eluvian below makes the air feel thinner, and in the wake of it, the urge passes Emmrich by. He schools his emotions into something acceptably put together; he dons the air of a proper Mourn Watcher. Somber, but unbroken by grief for the departed, only accepting. Whether the redness of his eyes or the weariness of his smile will give him away, he can’t say, and he doesn’t want to know.
“Emmrich?” The call bounces off the stone staircase, the sound of Lace Harding’s gentle, musical voice, followed by another, deeper, more hesitant.
“Y’here, Pops?”
Together. Harding’s light-footed steps masked by Taash’s heavier gait. Emmrich clears the congestion of emotion from his throat and calls back, as bright as can be managed.
“Up here, in the library.”
Whatever else he might be feeling, their faces are a sight for his weary eyes to behold. Harding looks well, her hair longer now, her plaits intricate and woven with golden beads. She looks well matched beside Taash. Their influence and closeness are shown so plainly in the subtle changes in Harding’s dress. Little glimmers of gold here and there, a healthy tan on her freckled face. Treasure hunting, among other things, seems to be suiting her well. And for all that they struggled to get on and understand one another, the awkward, crushing hug invited upon him by Taash, one of the few who can tower above Emmrich in height, is a welcome sensation. They give off such heat from within, warming his frigid bones as much as squeezing the air from his lungs.
“O-Oh—Good… To see you both,” he wheezes, under the rib-creaking pressure of the embrace. Taash steps back, a jerky motion as they look up and off to one side, clearing their throat and sniffing pointedly.
“Yeah. Same to you. Wish it were… For a happy reason,” Taash grunts. Emmrich’s throat shrinks to the size of a pinhole and his smile thins.
“Ah, but what is a memorial, if not a celebration of life lived. An occasion such as this can be both happy and sad. Sad for what we’ve lost, happy for the memory of all we shared and how it brings us together. There is even peace in the knowledge that our friend is no longer suffering.”
Harding’s mouth twists into a frown, tugging at the scar on her cheek as she fixes him with a look he glances away from. He scans the room, the banners and statues, the signs that Rook’s own spirit had changed this place so deeply that his influence still lingered. The signs that should have warned Emmrich from the beginning. He always knew, but he’d thought there was more time.
Fickle.
Time is so very fickle.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Harding says, so gently that Emmrich barely hears her. “You were closer to Rook than any of us.”
“Was I?” The reply springs from his lips faster than he can stop and think better of it. There’s a crackling bitterness in his voice that catches him by surprise, a sudden icy grip in his gut following, skin prickling with cold, harsh embarrassment. He clears his throat, turning to face her. “You’d known him the longest. I think perhaps we’re on equal footing.”
His smile doesn’t fool her.
It feels forced, and he knows it shows when her frown deepens in the face of it. Silence stretches and Taash shifts their weight from foot to foot, folding their arms over their broad chest. Emmrich’s spine straightens, and he presses his palms together, holding his taut smile in place, not for the sake of his friends, but for himself. This is his life’s work. This is what he’s always done. The aftermath of loss is as old and familiar to him as his own reflection. Manfred makes a nervous little noise, and all eyes turn to him. There is an uncanny sadness to his demeanor, despite his lack of facial muscles to express such an emotion.
The intense hum of the eluvian makes the room flex and breathe.
Two sets of footsteps bounce off the cavernous stone below, coming closer, drawing attention away and for only a moment, Emmrich lets his expression falter. With no one looking at him, he exhales, whisper quiet, feeling the contortion of disquieting emotion in his face that he quickly forces smooth, into the placidity of an acceptance he doesn’t feel.
“Sorry we’re late,” Neve says as she comes up around the bend, Bellara on her heels. “We got caught up letting the Veil Jumpers know and helping them with preparations for their own rites in Rook’s honor.”
Bellara is uncharacteristically silent, her face drawn and brows tented, eyes downcast to the floor as she sticks close to Neve’s side, knuckles brushing before slipping her fingers between Neve’s to hold on tight. Squeezing. Tethered by companionship. Grounded. Emmrich is glad to see that no matter how much things change, some remain the same. He shakes his head and waves a dismissive hand.
“No apologies necessary, this is all intended to be quite informal, as was Rook’s preference when it came to funerary customs.” That was always a point of contention; one that they’d never settled into an agreement on. It sits like a stone in Emmrich’s belly now, and the knowledge that the body is out there, that he could go look for it, that the Wardens would assist, intrudes on his attempts at peaceful steadiness for the sake of his friends.
“He would’ve been happy. To see us all together again. I think,” Bellara adds, not looking up from the spot she’d chosen on the floor, her voice soft as a spring breeze.
“Yeah. Big softie. Always calling us a team even though he meant family,” Taash nods in solemn agreement, brows drawing tight and casting a shadow across their eyes. Family. The word echoes within Emmrich’s mind, bringing to the forefront, the memory of standing in his quarters, here in the lighthouse, when Rook for the first time, said that they were one. His gaze drifts to Manfred who is hovering nearby, saying his own hello to everyone that barely registers over the noise in Emmrich’s head. The group breaks into chatter, Never and Bellara catching up with Taash and Harding as if no time had passed at all. Emmrich can see their mouths moving, hear the muffled tones of their speech, but he absorbs nothing. He stands silently, looking on at the living, breathing remainder of their group.
And then Neve looks at him, a sharpness to her voice matched in her gaze.
“Lucanis isn’t here yet?” She asks, and Emmrich’s brows lift as he ponders the question. Now that he thinks on it, it seems strange that she’s asking him. If anyone should know where Lucanis is, he’d think it would be her. The one Lucanis had given his heart to on their journey to stop the gods.
“I’m sure he won’t be long,” Emmrich soothes. “He’s been quite busy since becoming First Talon, hasn’t he?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Neve replies.
She’s always been a little distant, but this bears an edge of coldness that makes Emmrich want to step back a pace, out of the wintery winds of whatever it is she’s feeling. Things must not be going as well as they were when they’d all parted ways. It’s not Emmrich’s place to pry. He’d prefer to pretend he hasn’t noticed but there is a ripple of tension that passes through the room. Bellara grimaces, mouth drawn to one side. An awkward silence prevails and Emmrich refuses to let it linger long.
“If you’d all like to head to the dining table, I’ll wait for Lucanis. I’ve taken the liberty of preparing food and drink. Please,” he gestures toward the door with a sweep of his hand. “This was our home once, after all.”
His friends exchange looks that Emmrich does his best not to read into, favoring retreating further into himself and the familiar comfort of professionalism in the face of tragedy. His smile, however tense, remains firmly in place as he watches them all file out with some varying levels of reluctance. Taash pats his shoulder with a heavy hand as they pass, and Manfred gives a quizzical hiss.
“Stay?”
“No, Manfred. You may go. You should spend time with your friends. It’s been quite a long time since you’ve last seen them.”
That his eternal ward seems hesitant to listen is unsurprising. Ever since the incident at Blackthorne manner, he’s been more willful, more certain of his own choices. A child, growing and coming into his own. Their child. Emmrich shoos him on and turns away, looking up at the Grey Warden banners and armor stands once more. He listens for the heavy clunk of the door creaking shut before he lets himself exhale. His legs are weak again, urging him to take a seat in his chair.
So many times he’d sat in this very chair, looking to his right at Rook, watching him puzzle through their growing problems and contemplate strategies, information, everything they had in order to come up with a plan. He can almost smell Lucanis’ coffee, feel the weight of his presence and Spite just behind his shoulder. He can see wood shavings piling on the floor from Davrin’s constant, obsessive whittling. He can smell musk and fire from Taash’s terse interjections. It feels so close, like the memory is alive. Or like he’s slipping into a dream. It would be appropriate, given the location.
He closes his eyes and thinks about the last time they all gathered here, around this table, beneath the cold, blue light above. His ears pop as the eluvian hums one last time. The sound of dashing footsteps follows, stairs taken two at a time. He opens his eyes just as Lucanis rounds the bend of the staircase and stumbles into the library proper. He looks the same as he ever did, dressed as though he’s just come from a job, knives strapped to his person, hair a bit of a mess, cheeks reddened with exertion, but a look of embarrassed frustration painted across his features.
“Sorry—I got. Caught up on my way here. More refugees from Kirkwall arrived this morning, it’s been absolute chaos. The triage alone…” The excuse is a perfectly valid one, but it dies a brittle death on Lucanis’ lips as their eyes meet across the library. The quiet that settles is heavy.
“It’s good to see you, Lucanis. Spite.” Emmrich inclines his head in greeting and leverages himself up out of the chair with hands planted against the arms. His limbs feel watery, but he stands, he smiles, he folds his hands before himself and puts on the brave face of a man accustomed to death. Lucanis opens his mouth to speak, a single inhale taken, but nothing comes. Instead, his dark eyes flit down and then up, scanning with the assassin’s precision that Emmrich has come to know well from their time fighting side by side and living together. When he does speak, it’s to the point:
“You haven’t—shaved. In… Two weeks. By the looks of it. You’re thinner, too. Not eating. Why did you not reach out to me sooner?” Lucanis widens his stance, gloved fists planted on his hips as he gives Emmrich another once over with his gaze. The sternness of his concern is more refreshing than the softness of grief-tinged support he’s received thusfar. It grounds him. Centers him enough to steady his own breathing as he reaches for a reason to give, filtering it through his practiced smile, keeping his tone light and even.
“I know you have your hands full. And besides. I have Manfred.”
“Emmrich—”
“I’m fine.” Emmrich holds up a hand to stop the terse admonishment he knows is waiting for him behind Lucanis’ clenched teeth. He adds a little more, for Lucanis more than himself. A dash of vulnerable honesty, but not enough to increase the pressure to break down once more. “As much as anyone can be after suffering such an unexpected loss.”
Lucanis looks at him from beneath the shadow of his unevenly furrowed brow, dark eyes flitting over him again, assessing before he lets out a heavy, scraping sigh and drops his arms. His shoulders slacken as he pushes his hand through his hair and looks anywhere else. The quietude doesn’t help the feeling of tension abate, but Emmrich is still glad that Lucanis seems to have given up on scolding him. He’ll take his wins where he can. When Lucanis looks at him again, all soulful brown eyes and pinched frown, Emmrich’s heart thuds against his ribs out of time.
“What happened?” he asks. Emmrich wishes he had a good answer for that. The truth in its entirety doesn’t paint Rook in the best light. Digging through all his journals, trying to find some scrap of sense in all the senselessness of pain had left Emmrich with a piece of information that only complicates his feelings of grief. Alongside it sits a sense of betrayal. But it’s his betrayal alone. No one else’s. There’s no sense in muddling the memory of an otherwise good man.
“The Calling,” Emmrich croaks, startled by the thin frailty of his own voice as he says it. He clears away congestion with a small cough and rubs at the front of his throat. “Despite his proximity to Elgar’nan, it seems he was not wiped clean of the Blight like Neve… Perhaps it was simply too deeply rooted after all these years.”
“The Calling.” The layered sound of Spite’s voice adds an acerbic edge to Lucanis’ own. Emmrich nods, pressing his palms tightly together as he glances around at all the Grey Warden regalia decorating the Lighthouse. A Warden’s fate, to feel the pull of the Titan’s madness, the Blight in their veins and a song of untethered pain, wailing in the deep, drawing all of itself home. Understanding what it is should make Emmrich feel better, shouldn’t it? He heaves a sigh.
“Antoine and Evka came to me to deliver the news. He’d instructed them to wait a while before telling me.” When Emmrich says this, Lucanis’ face contorts into a small, frustrated sneer of twisted mouth and wrinkled nose. There is a brief pause between them in which the unspoken understanding of such a measure festers.
“You mean to say… He didn’t—”
“No. He didn’t tell me.”
Lucanis lets out a soft growl, indignant, frustrated, and wipes a gloved hand over his face, lingering around his jaw as he casts his gaze aside and takes a moment to collect himself. It’s an unfortunate thing to have to process. No two were closer to Rook than they, with whom he spent the most time in the field. Lucanis takes a breath, looks at Emmrich, and it all rushes out of him again. At a loss. Emmrich smiles weakly, an expression that cannot bring light to his eyes though he tries. Lucanis takes a step closer and reaches for him, a hand pressed against the outside of Emmrich’s arm. Steady. Emmrich’s face twitches, threatening to crumble.
“I’m sorry, Emmrich.”
“As am I.” He can’t fall apart now. He won’t allow himself that. He clears his throat yet again, trying his damndest to be what he’s meant to be. A friend who knows grief. Who can offer guidance. Comfort. Support. But it’s not easy. Not natural in this moment. Forced. Just like his voice from his throat as he tries to move on from it. “The others are waiting in the dining hall. We should join them.”
Lucanis shakes his head, his grasp slipping down to the back of Emmrich’s elbow and then falling away. The look he gives Emmrich, narrowed and full of concern, forces Emmrich to turn his face away. He can’t—He just can’t. Lucanis lets out another heavy sigh.
“Just a moment more, if you please,” he asks, and Emmrich nods.
“Of course.”
As they remain, Lucanis pulls away from him, moving about the library, looking from the astrolabe to the banners, to the armor stands. There he lingers, gloved fingers brushing over antique plate, feeling out the shape of the griffon etched in the surface. Quiet contemplation overtakes his sharp features. As Emmrich observes him, Lucanis seems a bit gaunt himself. Worn thin. His beard is not as tidy as it could be and the crescent shadows beneath his eyes seem especially dark. Deep. In these last several months, Treviso has been tasked with taking on more than her share by the King and the capital city. Refugees from the south are pouring northward from the Free Marches. Nevarra is similarly burdened by those who are fleeing Orlais after the fall of Halamshiral to the Blight.
And amidst all of this, people are still dying. The reverberations of what the gods had done are still echoing across Thedas. And her greatest warriors are tired. Some of them are gone, entirely. Lucanis looks exhausted, which in his case must mean he feels even worse. It pains Emmrich to have to trouble him with such bad news amidst the responsibilities that were thrust upon him whether he wanted them or not. They’ve all been stretched thin on the ground, entrenched in their various locations, keeping touch as they can while trying to aid a slow going recovery that feels like it will never be fully completed.
And Neve… Emmrich frowns, unable to consider it for long before Lucanis turns to him and speaks again, pained and incredulous, gesturing sharply between himself and Emmrich.
“We traveled with him for every errand,” he says, as if pleading, and Emmrich straightens in the face of it, frown lines deepening across his face. “More than anyone else. I believed he trusted us.”
It’s not at all difficult to understand why Lucanis is so unsettled. After all they’d been through, one would have thought Rook would have bothered to mention. Give them a chance to say goodbye. Anything at all. Emmrich feels it twist in his gut, a knife turning, eviscerating him, and it’s so hard to remain calmly collected, to keep himself distant from the truth he’d found when sifting through Rook’s journals, trying to grasp why he’d made the choice he did, only to discover the reality of just when The Calling first began.
“He did trust us,” Emmrich says, and it feels like a lie. It needs qualifying. His throat burns around a hard swallow as a knot forms, bitterness choking him. “With everything he thought we could handle. That was his way.”
In their time working as a team, with Rook at the helm, he’d always been carefully distant with his past, his affection, who he really was beyond the one leading them. A friend but not someone they really got to know or understand. Emmrich had thought he was different. He’d thought things changed when the gods fell and they finally went home. But--
“He should have told us,” Lucanis’ harsh delivery, pained snarl, and frustrated gesturing make Emmrich flinch. “All of us, but especially you. At the very least.”
Even though Emmrich agrees, it feels like a fruitless train of thought to wander down. He’s already been there and found nothing of comfort waiting for him. He shakes his head, shrugging one shoulder as he looks into Lucanis’ eyes and finds them glossy with unshed tears.
“What would it have changed?” Emmrich asks.
Lucanis’ nostrils flare around a hard exhalation as his mouth presses into a terse line. Emmrich watches him, watches the flicker of violet rage behind those damp eyes, watches a single tear spill from the waterline and cut a path down Lucanis’ cheek to vanish within the thick scruff of his beard.
“Maybe nothing,” Lucanis rasps, rubbing at his chest, over his heart, expression twitching and twisting away from anger and into agonized defeat. “Or everything.”
There’s nothing good that can come from examining what might have been. All they can do is accept what is and try to move through the grief. Carry on. There’s still work to be done. But this time together, this moment to share in the grief, it is a break that must be taken. One that Emmrich hopes will offer some measure of relief at the end of it all. Even with no body to bury, no ceremony to give structure and sense to the senselessness, they at least have this.
“Death comes for all of us eventually. Better not to dwell on what cannot be changed, and instead… Celebrate… The life that was lived. And take comfort in knowing Rook is no longer… suffering.”
In silence, alone, never once telling them—
“Is that really good enough for you, Emmrich?” Lucanis asks.
It’s not.
“Are you ready to join the others?” Emmrich asks in turn. Lucanis observes him for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then takes two swift steps forward, reaching and taking hold of him, forcing his spine to bend and his center of gravity to falter. An embrace. A hand to the back of his head, dragging him down into the cradle of where neck meets shoulder. Soft, cared for leather that smells of santal and a faint tang of sweat. Grounding and human. An arm around his shoulders, holding fast. Lucanis is on the balls of his feet to meet him part way and Emmrich stalls there, hands lifted and tense as his mind races to catch up to the moment. When it happens, he falls apart, arms winding tight around Lucanis in turn as he breaks down and a sob claws its way up his throat.
It is neither the first time he’s wept for this loss, nor does he think it will be the last, but within the tight grasp of Lucanis’ arms, Emmrich shudders, fracturing, his breath snagging and stuttering in and out of his lungs as he feels the gut-twisting knife yanked free and so much pain gushing out of him all at once. Lucanis shushes him, whispering against the side of his jaw, close and humid connection—
“I’m sorry. I’m so… sorry… Emmrich.”
Emmrich nods, his face feeling numbed by the overwhelm of emotion.
“Me… Too. I’m sorry, too.”