Chapter Text
A Thing Called Hunger
“I said you could choose a room.”
“This is a room. Look. Walls, floor, even a little corner here for my brooding—.”
Rook cut him off. “I meant one of the available bedrooms.”
Maybe in his more fanciful youth, Lucanis had imagined meeting the Wilhelmina de Riva, now going by Rook since her falling out with the Crows. Perhaps they had hit it off and gone for drinks until the city’s lights dimmed, done all sorts of sordid things a young, pent-up mind could conjure, back when he thought loveliness equated to benevolence.
But nowhere had he envisioned them arguing over a pantry of all things.
She stood before him, glaring, hands placed on her shapely hips, a twitch setting in on her right brow. Even ticked, she was an ache to the senses. Blue-black curls tumbled to her elbows, looking soft enough to drown in. The fine points of her ears jutted out from the mass, leaving only the pink tips visible. The pale line of her throat was bare to him without her cape of crow feathers. The dark stain of her lips was twisted into a frown. Her gray eyes should’ve taken on an amber light from the low phosphorescence of the lanterns but they retained their own cool chill, as if lit from within. They had not been exaggerating when they spoke of her beauty, which made Lucanis feel weirdly despondent.
In the back of his mind, he felt Spite stir.
Rook tilted her chin up, clearing her throat. “The Lighthouse is not wanting for space. In fact, I swear rooms just seem to appear here, cropping up from the ether. We have plenty of adequate lodgings that are not the pantry—.”
Lucanis did not pause, continuing to heft the thin pallet he had found into the corner. It was little more than threadbare, stuffing bursting from its seams, but he had slept on rocks in the Ossuary, so this was practically a luxury. He eyed the space adjusting as he went, evaluating the tight corners of the walls, a cage while he slumbered. An itch relieved itself from his skull. “No need. This will do.” Once settled in a position he found agreeable, he reached for his pack—
Only to find it snatched out from under his hand.
In his head, cold laughter. Oho, she’s quick.
Lucanis rolled his shoulder to dislodge Spite. He could feel him there, a parasite prodded, stirred to wakefulness by this little disagreement. Overall, he seemed more...roused by Rook than others, a fact he noted with bitter acknowledgment.
He glanced up into luminous gray eyes. She clutched his pack by its strap, nostrils flaring slightly. “As I was saying, we have plenty of actual rooms—.”
Lucanis made a sound in the back of his throat. Perhaps she wasn’t an indulgence for the senses, but a trial. “I do not want one of the other rooms—.”
She snorted. “You’re not sleeping in the pantry—.”
“What if I want to sleep in the pantry?”
Her foot stamped down, the metal bottoms of her shoe striking the ground with a sharp thwack. “Well, you can’t have the pantry!”
Lucanis stared at her. “Did you just stomp your foot at me?”
A flush crawled up from the hollow of her clavicle. “N-No.”
In all honesty, the reality of her did not match up with all the dark tales he had heard of her. Every Crow had listened to some whisper of her, the mage who took on the most disreputable of contracts. The woman who soldered silver to her heels and hammered metal to the bottoms of her shoes just so her footfalls would always be audible. “So you can hear her coming,” was how the ghost story went, in direct opposition to the soundless, nameless quiet common of Crows. Even her cousin, Viago, had nothing kind to say about her, this ruthless, selfish woman.
...Who was arguing with him over a pantry.
“I do not see the issue,” he said, watching her carefully.
“It’s not a room, first off—.”
“That depends on how you define a room—.”
She held up one finger in warning. Lucanis smelt a whiff of ozone over the drowning scent of her perfume, the combined sharp scent of citrus and smoked berry make his nose itch. “I’m not doing this roundabout arguing with you over semantics. It is not a room. It is a pantry. We keep our food here—.”
Understanding dawned. He tasted something bitter on the back of his tongue. “You think I will poison you all.”
“No!” She spluttered, but her gaze darted wildly and she shifted her stance. “I-I just meant that if someone would like a little midnight snack...they risk waking you. A problem that you would not have with any of the other rooms. Plus it’s not a room—.”
“It is a room,” he said back, not letting her have this, not completely understanding why this victory mattered.
“A bedroom,” she corrected herself, tension in her jaw.
He lunged forward, snaring the strap of his pack and ripping it from her fingers. “I will be fine here,” he assured her. He gave her his back, a keen awareness rippling down his spine, had his fingers itching for one of his daggers.
“But—,” she started.
He added, trying to keep his tone level. “And do not worry. I will not poison you.”
“I-I never… I misspoke. I didn’t…” She blew out a frustrated gust of air. “Fine.” He heard the staccato rhyme of her footfalls—click, click, click. They paused and he knew she had not gone far enough to reach the door, waited there with his hand in his pack, fingers unconsciously having found the hilt of his dagger.
Click, click, click, the footfalls receded back towards him and he turned just in time to see her snatch a cheese wheel from the rack by the wall. “But I’m taking the Asiago,” she warned, then hurried out the door, arms laden with cheese.
X
Of all the rooms he could’ve chosen, why oh why did it have to be the pantry?
Rook gnawed on her nail, pacing the confines of her room, her mind in an agitated frenzy. The pressure of her jaw strained. She could feel the phantom length of her real teeth itching at her gums but there was no relief to be found in unsheathing them, stuck as she was. Whatever magic Solas had wielded at the ritual site had bound her demoness to this form, to this body. And while it was a nice form (the tits, in particular, were generous) she did sometimes miss being able to let her real teeth snap free.
The chewing, for one, was far easier with a small army of pointy, sharp teeth, a set behind and a set in front of her human ones, retractable through whatever magic allowed her to exist in this form, forcing her to split the sides of her mouth to let them all emerge. Secondly, they would’ve made a handful of the fights they had faced end a lot sooner.
It also would’ve been nice if such magic cured her of her hunger, but she supposed that was a lot to ask for, considering it was her base nature. Some might have found it maddening, a nails-on-stone grating annoyance, the constant burn in the back of her throat, the mad spiral of her thoughts into devouring if she allowed them to stray.
But she had had years to temper herself. She barely noticed it anymore. Mostly.
She ripped a handhold from the cheese wheel and, uninhibited as there was no audience to cater to, tipped her head back and let the entire chunk fall down her throat, gluttonous in her consumption.
With every addition to the Lighthouse, the vacant corners were decreasing, the quiet reprieves growing fewer and fewer. Now, she felt like she couldn’t turn a corner without plowing into someone out and about.
Which would all be well and dandy if she weren’t a Hunger demon trying to indulge a little.
Too many times she had been in the pantry, sating an urge, only to have to clamber up and hide in the rafters as she heard footfalls, her treat clutched to her chest like a prize, maw damnably full. And that was when there hadn’t been someone sleeping in the damn pantry.
She smoothed a hand through her unruly hair, replacing her fingernail with another hunk of cheese, trying to work out the pressure she could feel building up there.
Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t so on edge, but facing off against elven gods with the fate of the world hanging in the balance would do that to a girl...demon. Whatever she was. She still wasn’t fully sure; it wasn’t like she could get together with other demons and ask them if they experienced episodic bouts of humanity that tended to linger for years, twisting and contorting their natural state.
It was a careful balancing act, indulging her more baser urges but not turning mindless, one she had thought she had mastered in her years of hiding. More often than not though, she found herself jolting awake in the middle of the night, the light from the fish tank looking neon to her veil of gray creeping into her vision, while hunger clawed and gnawed at her belly like some ravenous beast, nibbling at the edges of her sanity.
Thus far, slinking down to the pantry had been her coping strategy. The apples in particular were her balm. Something about the crunch—the tough rasp of punctured skin and the thick gush of tart juice—really satisfied an itch. So far, Harding hadn’t noticed if maybe a bushel or two went missing here and there, replenishing their inventory without question.
But she wasn’t sure how she was going to do that with Lucanis, assassin extraordinaire, sleeping right there.
Damn him. Damn him and the way her gaze roved to find him, latching onto the supple planes of his back, watching the cords of muscles work, something as rigid as gravity keeping her gaze pinned there, something like hunger brewing in her gut. Damn him and that voice that reminded her of the richest of wines and the way his lips always twitched, as if she was very amusing. Most people only found her odd, arguably not without reason. (Humor, in particular, seemed to change without warning between the years, leaving her to flounder. Once, she would have been expected to act alarmed if someone said they were leaping from the belfry; now, she was expected to laugh and not take them seriously?)
He was a temptation.
She had spent years denying herself, taming herself. A simple man should not undo such diligent, patient work
Plus, that demon of his would be a problem. Though forcibly hidden as she was behind this veil of skin, she still knew her true nature seeped from her very pores, would only be a matter of time before he noticed it, too, and alerted his host. A whelping, really, so young and freshly wrought from its perversion. But still knowledgable enough to recognize like.
If she had her teeth at her disposal, she would just eat him. One, maybe two crunches, done and gone.
She vigorously chewed on another chunk of cheese, the spongy, tangy lumps sticking between her blunt human teeth.
Maybe… Maybe she was worrying for nothing. Maybe Lucanis was a deep sleeper and maybe she was crafty enough to slip in, steal an apple or two, and then slip out, unnoticed. Or maybe she could start pilfering to keep a hoard here in her room, Bellara’s warning of ants be damned. Or perhaps she could find a new snack in the kitchen proper rather than the pantry.
She leaned back onto her chaise, staring upward wondering when sheer survival, scuttling from host to host to prolong herself, dine on the experiences true life offered, turned into this. Being here, a member of the Veilguard, its leader, a deceitful demon at its helm as the world around them threatened to collapse and she worried about apples of all things. It was like a joke, one she actually understood and found funny for the sheer ridiculousness of it.
Of course, that was not a question she asked that she did not already hold the answer to. It sat, folded in her breast pocket, paper weathered from the stain of her fingertips, ink smeared but still legible. She had read it so many times she could envision the ink strokes in the air above her.
Dear Mom, it began.
Love, Gull, it ended.
Something sat in her throat, making her next breath hitch. She swallowed past it, blinking hard, dashing the imagined shapes from her vision. She turned onto her side, tucked her knees in and curved herself around them, humming low to distract herself. She rode the wave of emotion that always felt to be too much, too much for her limited understanding.
Yet she did survive it. She had survived far, far worse waves.
Sitting up, feeling a bit better, she brushed her hair back, emboldening herself. She could do this. For Gull, she could. Be a hero, save the world. It was just one more life lived for her, another phantom to haunt her cluttered in her attic.
And she would not let the lack of apples deter her.
She was the master of her hunger. She had remade herself for survival. She was a creature of restraint. She was—.
Her palm smacked the empty table, fingers curling around nothing, only crumbs marking where the Asiago had been.
She was out of cheese, damn it.
X
Hunger was a needy mistress.
On her bare feet, Rook padded across the still courtyard, the lack of night making her anxiety spike as she was spot lit there, creeping towards the kitchen, no shadows or darkness to hide her. She paused when she thought she heard something, ducking to hide behind the Dread Wolf statue. If they were to look up and see her crouched there, she would’ve painted a crazed sight—her hair mused and flattened on one side, lip bitten and chapped from her own gnawing, a fine tremor wracking her fingers.
She blamed her preference for the female form. She had seen how men ate, no qualms for manner or portion control, voraciously indulging. Truly, if she could just get her mind on board with sacrificing the tits, her next life might be one of less stringent control.
Alas. She was cursed.
Thankfully, she caught the whisper of the Caretaker drifting about. If he knew what she was, he paid her no mind and she returned the favor, rising from her crouch, sprinting towards the doors to the dining hall.
She made it to the joint kitchen/dining room unchallenged, began to open up the cabinet doors, peek into the drawers, restraining her hasty movements even as she felt saliva pool in the back of her mouth and threaten to overflow. An assembly of spices greeted her from one dusty cabinet and she paused, debating if upending the salt onto her tongue would be enough. She crouched, praying to whoever she was supposed to endorse in this life that there was something here she could use.
She nearly groaned aloud at the measly onion sitting all alone in the lower cabinet, skin partially beginning to peel from neglect. She wrinkled her nose at the thought but maybe if she imagined the tart sweetness of one of her apples…
No, no even she was not that good of a liar.
Longingly, she looked to the pantry door, once a lone, squeaky barrier between her and her treats, now restricted further by the man that lay beyond it. She could see a faint glow from the bottom crack but she knew that didn’t necessarily signal wakefulness—
A shadow shifted there, blocking out the light. She froze. The barely perceptible shifting of movement reached her ears, had the sensitive tips twitching. She saw the knob turn—
She tipped backward, gracelessly but at least still soundlessly, then scuttled on her belly to hide around and under the table, getting as far as she could before the addition of sound forced her prone.
She lay there, hands fisted, hunger still frothing. She tried to take the edge off by gnawing on her tongue, the wet appendage used to the treatment by now. Flattening her head to the ground, she peered around the corner of the table’s thick leg, trying to track him.
The sight of his bare toes peeking out from the hem of a long pair of pants struck her. Her gaze traced up his form, finding it odd sans armor. She thought he would’ve looked slighter but the leather seemed to have contained his form, buttoning and strapping him into a more refined, lithe shape. He held a lit candle, used it to guide his way forward in the gloom, the firelight painting loving shadows along the slopes of his cheeks. The slouch of his sleep shirt looked very soft to her, her fingers itching to touch it, purely for observational reasons. He carried something under one arm and she hoped, for his sake, it wasn’t her apples.
To her horror, he did not wander away but approached the kitchen nook. Situated himself there. Lit the burner, then pushed his shirt sleeves up, showing her the width of his forearms. He flipped a pan onto the burner with the expertise with which he handled his blades.
She inched her head back so it was more hidden by the table’s leg, wanting to scream. She settled for taking a chunk of her hair and stuffing it into her mouth. Then after her silent tantrum, she lay there, resigned.
It was pure torture having to listen to him. She heard the sure chop of a knife. The sizzle of oil. His low murmurings as if he were arguing with himself, then the low timbres of his humming.
Really, she should get a reward for her restraint.
Or, at the very least, a snack.
Left unsated as it was, her hunger had lost its bite, still there, still roiling but not baying for attention. Rook eyed the entryway, wondering if she could crawl to safety, resigning herself to hunting mice in the courtyard—
Her nose twitched. A flood of smells hit her, crawled down her throat and sunk deep into the pit of her belly. Garlic. Was that…? Goat cheese. And maybe...Mushrooms?
Carefully, she folded her body upward so she was perched on her toes. Against her better judgment and maybe in spite of it, she clung to the edge of the table and peeked over it.
The low candlelight offered little illumination but she had no need for it, her eyesight sharpening in the near gloom. The blades of his shoulders greeted her, the deltoids bunching as he whisked something on the sizzling pan. He moved with unerring confidence, adding pinches of something, no second-guessing.
Rook watched him, mesmerized.
Maybe it was nature’s revulsion for her but she couldn’t make toast much less anything edible. When she did try, scrounging up the knowledge from her previous hosts, she was always left with something blackened, sickly, or moldy. It didn’t matter if she stood there and watched the damn pot as it boiled, somewhere along the way it rotted before she could claim it.
She had taken the hint and stopped trying, sticking to foods she did not have to prepare to devour.
But, Lucanis, it seemed, lacked any such reservations.
He was making some kind of omelet, she could see when he moved to reach for something, the thing beautifully fluffy, just crisp enough around the edges to give it that crunch. She smelt seasoned mushrooms, could almost taste the earthy flavor as it burst along her tongue, and saw crumbles of goat cheese bubbling amid the yellow folds. But there was something else. A pungent, lingering smell that had her nostrils twitching.
Her gaze alighted on the remains of the sad little onion on the chopping board, flaky shell peeled away and innards gutted.
Usually, onions made her recoil but there was something about the smell of this one, something transformed, that had her mind rifling over scents and tastes trying to place—
Her teeth clicked together—an instinct, not a choice—hunger crawling up the back of her throat.
Suddenly, the relaxed slope of Lucanis’s shoulders hitched upward and he stiffened.
X
Lucanis knew he hadn’t been alone.
He hadn’t been alone in years. Spite was now his constant companion. He could always feel him there, lurking, a cloud of doom to blot out any light, a yammering that never ceased in his skull.
But he had thought they had been alone, was almost ashamed his keen senses hadn’t noted a disturbance until…
We’re being watched, a hiss across his mind, a puff of breath by his ear.
He whirled, kitchen knife seized in his hand, a husk of onion skin clinging to its admittedly blunt edge—
Only to be met with a pair of luminous gray eyes peering at him over the table’s edge. The sight was enough to full-body startle him and send him crashing back into the stove.
Thankfully, his omelet was spared.
Rook stared at him, mute and unapologetic, no explanation for why she hunched there like some uncivilized creature. The knuckles of her hands were white from where she clutched the edge, nails looking wickedly sharp.
Not staring at you. He wasn’t sure whether to take that as mockery or just an observation.
He followed her sightline to the pan, to where his omelet sizzled and browned. “Do you, er, want a bite?” he asked.
Rook almost cracked her chin on the table’s edge with the fierceness of her nod.
X
“What’d you do to the onion?”
“What do you mean?”
Rook prodded at one with the tongs of her fork. “To get it to taste...non-oniony?”
Lucanis swallowed back a chuckle. “You mean caramelizing?”
Rook mouthed the word under her breath as if it were some fascinating thing.
Bent over a warmed pan, eating an omelet from it while hunched shoulder to shoulder with Rook was truly not how Lucanis saw his evening going. Not that he was complaining.
He thought perhaps he would’ve felt a bit disenchanted to see her undone in the early or late hours. But, if anything, she was more mesmerizing. Her lashes apparently were that soot-black, naturally curling upwards. Her lips, without the stain, bore the imprint of her teeth, tiny dents where her front teeth gnawed on the lower. Without the kohl rings of her liner, her eyes themselves appeared larger. Her hair was a wreck—curls going every which way, sometimes falling into her gaze and being batted back by an impatient hand—but there was an art to the dishevelment.
She speared a chunk of omelet and hastily placed it in her mouth, her hand darting up to cover her lips as she chewed, as if embarrassed by the action. “It’s good,” she told him, her eyes round with wonder.
“You said that already.”
“Did I?”
“This is the fourth time.” He should not feel such enjoyment from such simple praise.
She cocked her head. “Should I...apologize for repeating myself then?”
Lucanis repressed a cough of a laugh. “Only if you want to.”
She paused considering. Another bite of omelet, the working of her lips hidden by the fold of her fingers. “I think it bears repeating.”
He was surprised to find Spite quiet. Usually, the demon would be chattering on, undercutting everything with a biting snipe, dousing this respite. He could still feel him there, awake and aware, watching everything from behind his mind’s eyes, but lulled in some way.
“I’m terrible in the kitchen,” she admitted.
“It’s a skill, like any other.” Lucanis had a chunk of omelet sticking to his fork, but he had the sudden urge to free it and let her have it all, if only she would grace him with that curious smile of hers. “I could...if you wanted me to...show you some things.”
She laughed, the sound bright and loud. “Careful. You might reconsider that proposition once you actually witness my incompetence.” Her fork stabbed a chunk of omelet near the edge, cheese clinging to its surrounding layers. Her lower lip jutted out, mewling something over. “I did not protest you taking the pantry because I was worried about you poisoning us.”
“Oh?” he asked casually while a weight seemed to be taken from his shoulders.
“I was only protesting because the pantry is not a proper bedroom.” Her gaze was direct, allowing no space to hide. “You deserve a proper bedroom.”
He wasn’t sure why he didn’t leave it at that, let her think of him as deserving of such luxuries, let her think of him as stubborn and stalwart, wanting to sleep in a Maker’s damn pantry. He couldn’t even blame Spite, quiet as the demon was.
“At the Ossuary,” he began, hearing himself speak as if he were far away, “the ceilings were too high. And everything was made of glass. If you were lying on your back, staring upward, you would just see the spiraling sea, the curve of the currents. You couldn’t even detect the glass if you were not looking hard enough…”
He had sometimes felt like he would float away. Nothing to ground him, nothing to anchor to but the wet, algae-flecked stone at his back, the leash of unseen control around his neck as Zara fondled his vial of blood. The place had felt vast and cavernous, too large to be sated by any of the screams that filled it.
Weak, weak, weak, Spite began to taunt.
Shame fizzled on his tongue as he realized what he had revealed. He ducked his head, curling his fingers on the table’s edge. He tossed his head, trying to disrupt Spite, clearing his throat. “Forgive me. I did not—.”
“So you’re choosing to sleep in the pantry because it feels safe. I suppose that makes sense.”
Spite fell silent.
Rook gave a lazy flick of her wrist as she ate another bite of omelet, seeming to chew too hard on it. He expected to see pity, perhaps even disgust but, if she felt such things, she hid them well, projecting instead a softness. “You could’ve just told me that, you know.” Then, as if she could see the thoughts written across his face, she added, “I would not have thought less of you.”
Some may have said it mockingly, had lied through their teeth to declare it, yet she only stated it simply, a blunt truth being given freely.
Where once he had been flailing, floating in the cavernous vast space that was the Ossuary, he now felt like the solid ground had finally returned under his feet. The silence from Spite helped, let him be alone in his body for just a moment, examining what was there and what had changed. He let a low chuckle slip free. “But then we could not argue so ardently whether a pantry is a bedroom or not.”
She set her fork down with a sharp clack. “It is not. It doesn’t even have a proper mattress!”
The sight of her, so affronted on his behalf about a mattress of all things, made a laugh spark in his chest. “You’re not how I imagined you to be,” Lucanis let slip out before he could consider the weight of his words, the dim light and their secluded corner making him a tad reckless.
That head tilt, like she was a bird studying prey. “You...imagined me?”
Finally, a wave of mocking laughter rattled through his skull. Tell! Tell! A flush crept up his cheeks. He cleared his throat. “Well I… You are kind of a fable amongst the Crows.”
Her eyes shuttered, gaze growing distant. “Oh, y-yes. I guess I am.”
“They say you gutted your twin brother to secure yourself a place.”
She shifted, averting her gaze. “Well...I am an elven mage. My options were limited if I did not want to consider Circle life, rot in an alienage, or struggle as an Apostate. My brother was bigger, stronger, and there was only one spot available so… It was a matter of survival.”
There was a stiffness to her words, like they were being recited.
He spared her the weight of his gaze, looking down at a whorl in the table. “That mindset served you well amongst the Crows, I imagine.”
“I suppose it did.”
He regretted bringing it up, regretted the solemn shadow it brought over her. As repentance, he scraped the chunk of omelet from his fork and pushed the warm pan towards her. “You can have the rest.” Her head jerked up, lips forming a protest before he cut her off. “I insist.”
Rook eyed him, gaze narrowed. “You truly don’t mind?”
“I would not have offered otherwise.”
“Yes but sometimes people offer without really meaning it and it’s a test, you know? You’re supposed to refuse and they take it as a slight if you don’t—.”
He held up a hand. “I’m not most people.”
That damn head tilt again, the curtain of her hair gracing one shoulder. “No...I suppose you’re not.”
He let out a quiet, frustrated breath at the weight of her studying him. “It’s an omelet, Rook. Not a damn proposition.”
She gave a huff. “I would debate less over a proposition,” she muttered.
Lucanis choked on air. Rook paid him no mind. Without further protest, she took up her fork and dug in.
Lucanis had never been so amused watching someone eat. She paused as she considered every bite, sometimes halving it, like she worried about taking too much though none of her bites could be considered anything but diminutive. She chewed thoroughly, vigorously, always with her fingers pressed to her lips to shield herself. She savored, letting out quiet little sounds of appreciation.
“Is that thyme?” she asked suddenly.
“It is.” He was surprised she could detect it. He had used the barest sprinkling, just enough to tame the bitterness of the onions.
A stirring in the back of his skull, movement from a phantom that had held himself so strangely patient that the absence of him was more jarring than his presence. Cook for her! More!
A spark ignited in his chest, a need.
Rook froze mid-chew, her eyes darting upwards to snare his. “What?”
A sick kind of horror flooded him, Spite equally going still before he realized she was only remarking on his staring, not on the commentary. He ducked his head in apology. “You’re…You’re not how I imagined you.”
She sniffed. “You said that already.”
“It bears repeating.”
X
“I tried to stop her,” Bellara warned as she stood in the doorway to his room/their pantry. Behind her, he could hear someone rifling about, the screech of furniture being moved, the thwack of something stacked, all undercut by muttered cursing.
Lucanis sighed, deeply, choosing to take a long sip of his coffee before he asked for specifics. “What…” he began to ask, trailing off as he peered past her.
His threadbare pallet through which he could feel the coldness of the ground was gone. In its place was…well, he didn’t know if it could be given the term of mattress or a bed. There was a sturdy box-frame upon which sat a firm cushion. Two thin pillows had been added to the mass, tucked into the corner. The most luxurious thing was a heavy, fleece blanket draped at the foot of it, dark in color showing glints of blue and purple in the textures. Utilitarian, yet more than the scraps he had been attempting to rest on. Something he might’ve purchased for himself if he chose to show himself a modicum of kindness.
Rook placed her hands on her hips, assessing her work. She was dressed down to her thin undershirt, her cape of crow feathers draped across the rack alongside the meats and cheeses. She turned, startling at Lucanis then, her gaze cutting past him to narrow on Bellara. “You were supposed to shout a warning if he came.”
Bellara’s eyes widened in realization, her mouth falling open in a tiny ‘o’. “Sorry! You said lookout but I wasn’t sure what to look out for.” She jabbed a finger in his direction as he stood there, rendered a bit dumb, pitching her voice to a loud whisper. “He’s here!”
Rook rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “That’s—. Thank you, Bellara, dear.” She faced him, hands returning to her hips. “We kept the pallet if you’re really fond of it, but I figured you could use some semblance of a bed.”
The quiet wonder of the moment ended with a dark hiss in his ear. You don’t deserve—.
Rook’s voice cut through. “You do deserve it.” She tucked a curl behind the point of her ear, smoothing it down. “Everyone deserves a bed.”
Sometimes he wondered if he had ever actually left the Ossuary. If this wasn’t some invented Fade dream/nightmare poured into his skull.
If it was…
He hid his lips behind the rim of his mug, dragged himself back into his body, ripped free from Spite’s startled grasp. He should thank her, should free his tongue, find some way to structure the words together even in his ineloquent way.
Instead what came out of his mouth was, “So it is a bedroom now, no? Or are we going to continue to argue particulars?”
Her brows lowered and her features tightened, inspiring a laugh from him even as he felt Spite scuttle to a more protected corner in his head. “It is not a bedroom,” she told him and held up a hand before he could continue. “But it is yours for however long you want it.” She turned on her heel to assess her work again, lacing her arms behind her. “Just…” She indicated the rack of provisions with a vague jerk of her head. “If I wake you for an apple or two in the middle of the night, I apologize in advance.”
“I don’t sleep,” he told her. At the arch cut of her gaze, he added, “I do know a recipe for an apple tart, though…”
She straightened as if he had offered her something truly captivating. He caught the pink of her tongue as it glanced across her teeth, her lips parting. “This could be the start of a marvelous friendship then.”