faith and honor

He disguised a gag as a cough when she stopped at one of the stalls and selected a small chicken, freshly roasted on a spit the merchant continued rotating as they spoke. His stomach turned at the smell of roasting meat and the faint crackle of the crisp skin as the merchant boxed the chicken for Lidia, and once she turned her attention to a produce stand, Illario rolled his eyes at his own weakness. Not so long ago, he had bodies upon bodies left in his wake, a blood mage in his bed, the Antivan Crows in the palm of his hand, and now…

Maybe Lucanis had always been right about him. Maybe all he was good for was charming people as a distraction for better assassins to finish the job. If one injury was going to ruin something as commonplace as meat, perhaps dying would have been kinder after all. 

Perhaps, if he managed to irritate Lidia enough, she might grant him that, as one final favor to him. Though, he had to admit, she wasn’t likely willing to offer an unfaithful lover any favor at all.

Former lover. It stung to think. Pain was supposed to be beneath him, and yet here he was, agonized just as much by the betrayal in Lidia’s eyes as he was by his own wounds.

Perhaps dying would have been kinder after all.

“Come,” she said, holding one hand toward him while the other secured her groceries. “Don’t just stand there slack-jawed. You’ll look more pathetic than you already do.”

After a split second’s glare, he took the offered hand, and they left the square together.

They passed the opera house on their way to the back entrance of Villa Dellamorte. Lidia, with her shopping bag tucked under one arm, tried not to look at the spot where she and Illario first kissed, behind one of the pillars at the edge of the canal. She cursed herself silently when she looked anyway. Memories flooded back like they always did in that spot - the sight of the audience filing out of the opera house to the left as Illario pulled her to the right, the sound of the canal gently lapping at the stone drowned out by the heartbeat in her ears when his arm found the curve of her waist, the desperate thought that she shouldn’t be doing this at all, and certainly not with him…

The kiss was, unfortunately, divine. She expected no less from someone who spent most of his free time either at parties with beautiful people or grooming himself to prepare for parties with beautiful people. She anticipated his every move that night - showing her around Treviso as if she’d somehow lived in Antiva for twenty-four years without ever seeing impressive chantries or waterways at dusk, buying her an expensive dinner at a secluded open-air restaurant on one of the city’s many scenic terraces, bringing her via private gondola to an opera with box seats and conveniently forgetting to mention the fact that the opera house was on the grounds of his family estate - but he still managed to fluster her when he took her hand behind that pillar. The evening breeze did little to cool her burning face, and when she shivered as the air hit her exposed back, he cupped her cheek in his palm. Those long, practiced, delicate fingers tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, brushing the pointed tip as it flushed pink, and he smiled at her like nothing was more important to him in the world than this moment, stolen just for them.

Liar. He’d been involved with Zara for weeks by then.

And Lidia had no idea. She was more pliable than clay in his hands that night. All she could do was look up at him, from his eyes, dark and half-lidded as he gazed at her through his soft black lashes, to his silken-looking lips. Would they be cool to the touch, like satin sheets left under an open window? Would he kiss her desperately, hungrily, like he needed her? He certainly looked at her like he wanted to devour her.

And what if he didn’t kiss her at all? What if it was all just a game for him? Meet someone on a job, antagonize her, then slowly warm her up to him until she’s willing to kiss him before making an utter fool of her by pretending he didn’t want her. Was she beneath him? An elf from House Valisti could never be a proper match for the heir apparent of House Dellamorte. What if he just intended to throw her off-balance, play with her emotions, embarrass her so thoroughly she’d never interfere with one of their jobs again? She never dated other Crows, she simply slept with them and moved on - if she ever engaged with them at all - and if he was tricking her, she was falling right into his hands, but somehow she couldn’t stop, because her feet wouldn’t move and her heart wouldn’t stop pounding and her hand curled around his shirt purely on its own and her breath kept catching in her chest and what made Illario Dellamorte so damned different–

Beside her, Illario’s feet dragged. She glanced at him sideways, cheeks and ears burning guiltily as she snapped out of her recollection. She felt a wave of self-indulgent relief as she saw that his eyes were fixed on a spot in the distance, but once she saw that spot was behind their pillar, she felt impossibly heavy. She found herself hoping the same memory haunted him, too. Then she found herself hating that she hoped anything about him at all.

This house, these grounds, this man - they all had too many messy sentiments attached. How could she possibly separate him from Treviso, from the villa, when every inch of it had some association to him? To them? She would never be rid of him at this rate, not when she so dearly loved this city. If anything could tempt her into a deal with a demon, it would be the promise of erasing Illario from her happiest memories. But if she thought of it any longer, she would be forced to confront the fact that if he were erased, very little joy from the last three years would remain at all.

“What do you think? Is there a chance Lucanis beat us back to the villa?” Illario asked with a forced grin. He never did well with silence.

She took a deep breath and continued walking. “Ideally, he’s sleeping for once,” she said tersely. “I believe he’s earned that.”

“Ah, but sleeping alone? That, I doubt.”

They shared a brief look before he raised his eyebrows knowingly.

“I’m sure Rook is taking excellent care of him,” she replied, letting go of Illario’s hand to open the door for him. “Now go sit. He’s not the only one who isn’t resting when he should be.”

Like a duckling, he followed her into the kitchen instead. 

After setting down her ingredients on the marble countertop, she turned and crossed her arms with a glare. “Illario–”

He pulled a stool over and perched upon it with a stifled groan. “Ah, you did not specify where to sit.”

She sighed through her nose and shook her head, but let it go. Her head still throbbed from her earlier injury in Minrathous, but she knew his burns likely hurt worse than her headache. Truthfully, it was a testament to either his pain tolerance or his sheer hatred for silence - or both - that he was willing to endure the agonizing pulling and tightening of the skin around his mouth in order to talk as much as he did. 

When he sat with his left side toward her, he looked almost normal - just a few glimpses of a bandage here or a pink blotch there to betray his condition. Still, when he thought she wasn’t looking, he grimaced and tried to stretch the fingers on his right hand, hissing a breath through his teeth when his tendons flexed beneath his burnt skin. Lidia pretended to focus on unpacking her market bag when he looked back at her. If he hadn’t even wanted her to see the burns earlier, he certainly wouldn’t want her staring at them now. And she certainly didn’t want him accusing her of caring too much if he caught her watching him, whether it was true or not.

She cleaned her hands in the basin, and then, with a large fork and a sharp knife, she began deboning the chicken. She cracked the breastbone down the center and flattened the chicken out on her cutting board before removing as much meat as she could, setting it aside to be shredded properly later. At the top edge of her vision, she noticed slight movements when the skin crackled beneath her fork, and she glanced up just in time to see a barely-disguised shudder as she peeled a piece of crisp skin off one of the breasts.

“Illario,” she began gently, “you don’t have to stay.”

“Don’t look at me that way,” he snapped, meeting her gaze with cold eyes.

“In what way?”

“Like you pity me.”

She set her jaw, tightly flattened her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and looked back down to the chicken. She tore the remaining meat off its bones and set the carcass aside before collecting her vegetables.

Her knife came down hard on the ends of the celery, onions, and carrots. He could tell by the rhythm that she was furious with him. Chop. Chop. Chop. Scrape. Repeat. The knife was sharp enough that she had no need to use pressure enough to make the blade snap against the cutting board. This was purposeful, pointed, like the taps of Caterina’s cane when she wanted the boys to know she was on her way and they were in trouble.

He blinked the flash of Lucanis’ bare, bloody back away from his mind’s eye and tried to refocus on Lidia’s movements. She swept the vegetables off the board with the side of the knife and they dropped loudly into a copper pot. When she lifted the chicken bones to add them, a scrap of skin clung to the bottom of a leg, and his stomach turned violently. He closed his eyes.

Of course she pitied him. He was pitiful.

Perhaps dying would have been kinder after all.

He stood stiffly, eyes fixed on the arch leading to the hallway. “I’m going upstairs,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even. “I can still smell smoke on me.”

“Fine,” she replied brusquely before letting the carcass fall into the pot. “I’ll be up for a bath while this simmers.”

On his way out, he managed a meager, “Take your time.”

Taking the stairs hurt. He wasn’t allowed to acknowledge that, of course; disguising pain was beaten into every Crow at an early age, and the Dellamortes were no exception. Still, he was quickly coming to the realization that burns were an entirely different beast. Caterina beat them and starved them, enemies aplenty had bled them and poisoned them, but he had never been burnt before. Not this badly. The nerves that hadn’t sloughed off with his singed skin or died as the necrosis set in afterwards were translating even the slightest breeze over his burns into a blistering pain he couldn’t possibly hide. 

He used to pride himself on his ability to walk off his injuries. It was one of the first things Caterina taught them. Do not yield to your pain. Your feelings. Sharpen them and make them useful.

He did sharpen them. He sharpened all that inadequacy and envy and hurt into a dagger he held right at their throats. And then it was made painfully clear for him that he was still too soft to use it.

Funny how softness only seemed to please Caterina when it came from Lucanis.

The first thing he did upon reaching his room was look in the mirror. No one had shown him back at the Diamond. He knew it was bad by the reactions he got, and he caught a glimpse of himself in one of his daggers while he waited for the healer, but he hadn’t fully seen the damage yet. So he sat at his vanity, and he stared miserably at his reflection.

The bandages covered the worst of it, so he peeled them off. Caterina used to say he had to let his wounds breathe anyway. He stacked them on his vanity, keeping his eyes down so he could reveal it to himself all at once, and he took a deep, steadying breath before looking up.

“It’ll scar,” said the healer.

That’s an understatement, Illario thought as he turned his face to the side.

The burns were deep and gnarled. The scars would linger, perhaps for the rest of his life. The pain spread farther than the actual damage, and a part of him was relieved to see that the burns mostly followed his jawline. Still, his eyes stung, and he blinked away tears. The uninjured left side of his face had that five o’clock shadow he liked to manicure coming in nicely. The other side was raw. He couldn’t properly shave without risking a deep cut in this state - especially with only one good arm. Would his jaw ever be smooth enough to shave safely again? Would the hair follicles even produce anything on the right side?

His neck was no better. Caterina used to compare him to a swan: elegant, proud - and aggressive. When he was a teenager, she would threaten to cut his hair off if he didn’t pull it back, saying he looked better when he showed off that long, graceful neck. He was tall and beautiful and he should be displaying that proudly, not hiding it with poor posture or untailored clothes or unkempt hair. And now he could barely turn his head without the pain radiating up from the burns on his neck. He always slept more comfortably on his right. Though that was when he was back to back with Lucanis, who’d since come to sleep better on his left.

Lidia used to sleep on his chest or in his arms. With his injuries, neither of those would be possible either. Not that she wanted to sleep anywhere near him after everything he’d done.

He bit down hard on the inside of his left cheek. As he lowered his head, his hair fell in front of his eyes, smelling of blood and smoke, and he rose to his feet. He swallowed his self-pity and made his way to the washroom, where he began to comb the flecks of ash and rubble out of his hair. He perched himself on the edge of the clawfoot tub and sectioned his hair, tucking a few stubborn strands behind his ear. He worked each section meticulously, running the comb through it several times to loosen the hold of the oil he’d applied that morning. 

Why had he bothered? Why did he bother with any of it anymore? He would never be First Talon. He would never be redeemed in the eyes of the Crows. He would never win back Lidia’s trust. 

Perhaps dying would have been kinder after all.

Toward the end, he came across a particularly stubborn knot, and as he separated the strands with his fingers, he heard soft footsteps followed by a knock on the door.

“It’s just me,” Lidia said, muffled by the thick wood. “Get the door for me.”

“It doesn’t hurt to say please,” Illario huffed as he set his comb back on the shelf and opened the door.

She hoisted a large bucket of water onto the marble beside the wash basin. “No, but it hurts to stand there with this digging into my hand,” she said, letting go of the splintered handle. “Your servants need better tools.”

He lowered his eyes. “I’ll mention it to Caterina.”

“Lucanis,” Lidia corrected. “He would actually do something about it.”

“...Right.”

She looked up at him and her expression shifted from a neutral one - perhaps leaning toward irritation, but still neutral - to a deep scowl with concerned eyes.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to take the bandages off.”

His eyes remained fixed on his hands, fidgeting in his lap. “I needed to see everything.”

“Rio.”

“I know, alright?”

She shook her head, one hand settling on her hip while she looked down at the water. After a moment, she sighed through her nose and poured the water wordlessly into the basin. With a razor, she shaved a few curls of soap into the water and stirred it before plunging a soft, clean cotton cloth into it.

Illario cleared his throat quietly and stood. “If you’d like privacy–”

“Don’t antagonize me.” She glared over her shoulder at him. “Come here.”

He shuffled across the room to her side. “I was just offering to–”

“Shut up, Illario, I’m serious.” She motioned for him to lean over the basin and he did so reluctantly before she touched the sponge to the left side of his face. “You can’t even take care of yourself, and you expect me to let you just sit and sulk in your room? You said it yourself: you smell like smoke.”

He swallowed the urge to reply and set his jaw instead.

“Relax your face.”

He rolled his eyes.

“And don’t roll your eyes at me.”

Glaring, he snapped at her, “You’re not my mother.”

“No, I’m not, which means I have no obligation to do any of this for you,” she replied icily, her voice harsher than her hands as she dabbed lightly at his neck. “And you should remember to be kinder to me.”

He fixed his eyes on the door and tried to will away his embarrassed flush as she washed his left shoulder and upper chest. “You’ve chosen to do this and yet you complain about it. You’re a vexing woman, Lidia.”

“I complain so you know I haven’t forgiven you.”

“Oh, trust me, you’ve made that abundantly clear already.”

She sponged too near the edge of his burns, and his hand flew to her wrist automatically as he hissed in a breath between his teeth. She hastily muttered an apology as she withdrew her hand, and she found herself stroking his left cheek softly as if to punctuate it. He let go of her wrist and covered her hand with his own before leaning his head into the touch.

It didn’t feel wrong to comfort him. That pained her as much as it irritated her. The high arch of his cheekbone fit right back into the curve of her palm like it used to; the pad of her thumb smoothed over his soft lips like it always had. His eyelashes brushed the side of her thumb as he closed his eyes and turned into her hand and instinctively, he pressed a half-mouthed kiss into her palm.

Something in her ached. He looked ready to fold into her arms, to bury into her neck whatever part of his face didn’t hurt and just breathe her in for a while. She hadn’t held him in months. That night in the opera house, she told herself she never would again, and she would be stronger and happier for it, and he would deserve it. But it hurt, seeing him with nothing left. He had her, he had Lucanis, he had the respect of the Crows - and then in one night, he had none of it. All he had left were his looks and his wits. And now one of those things, well…

Lidia would never say anything. She was one of a very select few who had ever seen the full extent of the scars on his back left behind by Caterina’s cane. She had seen him without his makeup and hair done to his liking after waking up before him by chance and admiring him in dawn’s faint light. She had seen him a sweat-drenched mess, bruised, filthy, covered in blood - both his own and the blood of others - and she always thought him lovely, even then. He had always been her Illario under it all.

She wasn’t sure what he was now. It was strange, loving and hating a person so deeply all at once. Strange and alienating and painful.

She submerged the sponge back into the warm, soapy water before squeezing most of it out and cleaning off the rest of his arm. If she didn’t refocus, he would stand there and stare at her for the rest of the night and neither of them would eat. Silently, she turned him around and rinsed his back, noting that he could count himself lucky that the burns did not stretch back that far. At least he would be able to sleep comfortably.

When she turned him back around, he was looking at her oddly. She handed him the sponge as if she intended to leave, but he spoke first.

“You know, at the risk of sounding clichéd–”

She sighed quietly. “Has that ever stopped you before?”

He managed a smile. “You’re so very lovely when you’re mad at me.”

She stared at him for a moment. Unfortunately, he was still Illario. In a tone about as thin as her patience, she replied, “You’re so very lovely when your mouth is shut.”

“You wound me, Lidia, truly.”

“Unfortunately, someone beat me to that. Now finish cleaning yourself up.”

He reached out with his injured hand, the other still holding the sponge. The ghost of a touch that didn’t fully land at the side of her head still stopped her in place.

He dipped the edge of the sponge into the water before gingerly dabbing it on her forehead, blotting the dried blood off her skin.

“Teia already saw to me, you know,” she said, though she still dipped her head down when he beckoned.

“Then Teia missed a spot,” he replied. “You have blood in your hair.”

Her eyes remained fixed on his, both of them unblinking. “I have to skim the broth.”

“It hasn’t simmered long enough to need it yet.”

“You should be resting.”

“I’ll rest in a moment.” He continued to soften the dry clot in her hair under the warmth of the sponge, gently cradling the side of her crown. “Didn’t you say you wanted a bath?”

“I can have one when you’re done,” she said, her voice faint as the distance between them narrowed.

He tilted his face ever so slightly to the side. Their noses nearly touched. “You have seen me undressed before. And the bucket is awfully heavy for one hand.”

Her eyes flicked down to his lips. His, to hers. 

And she took a step back. 

The air was cold as it rushed to fill the space in front of his face. 

“I would rather stay bloodied than let you see me undressed again.” She pushed his hand back to his chest. “Clean yourself up, then go rest. And if you won’t clear out, this villa has other washrooms.”

She turned, and shut the door behind her when she left. Without looking back - despite the weight in her chest urging her to - she entered Illario’s room, collected one of the last outfits she had left amongst his things, and left it folded on the corner of the bed in one of the guest rooms. She returned to the kitchen downstairs, skimmed the fat off the simmering broth, and cleared off a section of the countertop to make a well of flour.

As she mixed several eggs into the flour by hand, she found her gaze blurring as she stared out the kitchen window. The Trevisan evening lights were glowing across the canal, street lamps and sconces burning as if nothing had happened. The city paused for no one, not even the Crows. She wondered if they’d recovered all of their fallen yet, or if some of her fellows still lay unfound under Minrathous rubble as she stood here kneading pasta dough in Villa Dellamorte. How many others had died while she was shopping for vegetables? How many more would they lose over the next few days, whether they succumbed to blood loss, infection, or Blight? Even Caterina was still at the Diamond - though Lidia suspected she was only there awaiting Lucanis’ return. Waiting to celebrate his victory while her only other remaining grandchild sat scarred and disgraced in her house.

The dough tore beneath Lidia’s palm. With her jaw clenched and her biceps tight, she looked down and saw how hard she pressed it into the countertop, and she sighed through her teeth. With more care, she balled it back up and left it to rest in a covered bowl before soothing herself with a deep breath. 

Maybe a nice, uninterrupted bath would clear her head. 

The labor it took to pump the water, heat it over the fire, hoist the buckets up the stairs, and pour them one by one into the bath was hardly worth the sensation of finally sinking into it. Blankly, Lidia stared ahead, her eyes glazing over once more. The Minrathous fires were hot, so hot, as the archdemon razed everything she could to the ground and the Venatori charged the air with blood magic. Everything felt strangely damp and dry at the same time, thick with smoke yet electric enough to make her hair stand on end. The screams were brutal until they faded into background noise, and then it was the silence once Elgar’nan fell that left her the most uneasy. Silence broken only by the sound of rubble crumbling and distant weeping. She spent nearly an hour searching for anyone she knew, and her face was so covered in dust from the buildings she’d crawled through on her way back that Teia didn’t recognize her at first.

She could barely sit still as Teia wiped the blood and dirt from her head. Too worried about the others. Lucanis. Rook. Viago.

Illario.

All their dead, all their wounded, all the casualties in the city, and she worried about Illario. She was beginning to realize why the older Crows always cautioned against love. It makes you stupid, they said. It makes you careless.

The issue at hand was caring too much.

The bath was not pleasant enough to linger in, and she had burnt enough food in her lifetime to know it needed stirring by now. She scrubbed her skin until it was pink, then withdrew her body and submerged her hair while doubled over the side of the tub. She ran her fingers through the length, loosening the remaining dried blood at her scalp before properly washing her hair. 

She found a conditioning oil in the cabinet. It smelled like Illario. But her hair would turn to straw if she left it bare, so she warmed the oil in her palms. As the warm, woody spices bloomed from the friction of rubbing the oil into her ends, the scent enveloped her, evoking memories of stolen moments and long nights. The first time she saw him with his hair down stained her like oil on cotton. She still remembered how her knees weakened when she walked in on him lining his eyes, leaned halfway over his mirror, his chin tipped down to his chest for a better angle at his waterline. He had his hair pulled to one side, but it slipped down his neck when he smiled over the opposite shoulder at her.

It’s considered polite to knock, cara mia. For courtesy, if nothing else.

She stood up, shaking out her roots and shaking away the memory before letting her hair fall down her back. Draping a towel around herself, she retreated to the guest room where she’d left her clothes. She turned her back to a portrait on the wall as she redressed and was quickly reminded why she left these clothes with Illario. The neckline plunged impractically, the trousers were too wide and airy to be good for anything but a summertime stroll, and the material was a pain to launder. But he’d bought them for her, and if nothing else, he had an impeccable eye for what flattered her. He used to love dressing her - usually in rich jewel tones or deep wines like the trousers - and pairing her outfits with gold jewelry and accents. 

Her fingers brushed the diamond stud in her left ear as she tucked her hair back. She still hadn’t removed it, despite swearing she would after that night in the opera house. But she was away from home each time she remembered it, and she always told herself she’d get to it when she got back.

She’d been home several times since. She still never took the earring out.

She closed the door behind her softly, turning the handle to make sure the latch didn’t click noisily. Illario met her halfway down the hall, wearing a silk robe draped over his right shoulder to leave his left side bare. It was secured low on his waist with a loosely knotted tie, and he didn’t hide the smirk that rose when he caught her glancing down. The resulting glare he received did nothing to deter it.

“I’ve missed seeing you in those,” he sighed, leaning against the wall to his left. “Merlot suits you like nothing else.”

Her eyes were cold and unimpressed. “You also say that about black and royal blue.”

“Black suits everyone, and blue brings out your eyes.”

“Just admit that you liked it when I matched you.”

The usage of past tense stung like a razor. She walked around him, giving him as wide a berth as the hallway would allow, but the scent of his conditioner caught his attention as she passed. As if leashed to her wrist, he followed her to the top of the stairs before she whipped around, causing him to stop just short of running into her.

“What do you want, Illario?” 

It was less of a demand and more of a question. Before he could answer it, she begged, nearly feverish, “You’re following me like a stray. You won’t leave me alone. I’m already in your house again. I’m already cooking for you. I’m already going to stay until someone else gets back to keep you alive because I don’t want your death on my conscience. What more could you possibly want from me?”

He opened his mouth, then thought better of a smart reply and closed it again. Then, after a beat, he managed, “Company. That’s all.”

Her shoulders dropped and her jaw relaxed. Her eyes, narrowed just a moment ago, softened and she gave the slightest shake of her head. “I just want you to eat dinner tonight.”

“I know.” He reached for her hesitantly, and when she didn’t shrink away, he slowly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Is it another of my many crimes to have missed you?”

“It’s a punishment of your own making,” she answered, her eyes following his hand as he slid it down to cup her shoulder.

“And when I see you in clothes I picked for you, had tailored to you, smelling like my wardrobe and my conditioner, I feel it the most.” A sad smile tugged at his mouth. “Believe me, I know what I’ve done.”

“If that were true, you would have apologized by now.”

“Have I not suffered enough? You still care enough that you’re here. Why pretend you hate me when I know you can’t?”

An acidic, humorless laugh escaped her. “Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” she said icily, stabbing a finger into the center of his chest. “I do hate you. I hate you so much. I trusted you more than anyone else, and I defended you and I supported you in front of Caterina and Lucanis and everyone else who doubted you for years. I stood by your side and I told them that you were cunning and strong and capable and just as good of an assassin as Lucanis. I told them they were underestimating you, that they just needed to trust you, because you’re good, Illario – good enough to be more than just someone who follows Lucanis around like a dog. Good enough to be First Talon. Lucanis may have invited me to House Dellamorte, but I agreed because I knew both of you were capable.”

“I never said you didn’t–”

“I’m not finished.” She cut her hand through the air. “I was always on your side. I always had your back. Even when you ruined the duelist contract for me.”

“I finished the duelist contract. You were lying concussed on the floor.”

“Because you wanted to play hero and duel him for my supposed ‘honor’ yourself, you idiot!”

He arched over her, his finger in her face. “I told you I didn’t want his hands on you.”

“Why? Because you suddenly realized you cared about me beyond how much pleasure you could wring from me?” She crossed her arms, leaning back on her heels to put some distance between them. “Is that how it was with Zara, too? Just sex until you accidentally fell in love?”

He straightened back up as his expression fell. “I never loved her, Lidia. I swear it to you.”

“It doesn’t matter. You told her you did, and she believed you. Just like I believed you. Maybe you lied to me, too. If she was easy to convince, I’m sure I was. Or maybe you did tell me the truth, but you told her the truth too. Or maybe you loved both of us. Or maybe you loved neither of us. Maybe you loved her and not me and I was just conveniently pliable around the same time you met her.” Her posture shifted again and she leaned forward with her fists curled hard enough that her fingernails pressed crescents into her palms as her voice rose to a shout. “Maybe, when you so impulsively told Lucanis about ‘us,’ you told him about Zara fucking Renata instead and just replaced her name with mine! That is why I hate you, Illario. Because every time I think about you, I have to live with the possibility that I was just a cover for you. That I loved you with everything I am while you used me to excuse your absences so your brother wouldn’t suspect that you were planning for months to have him killed!”

His mouth stuck, his tongue thick and his throat tight. He made no sound, merely swallowed and held her gaze as the fire in her eyes dimmed.

She sighed lowly and raked her hand back through her hair. “I should let you die, alone by your own doing, in the villa you cost yourself, from injuries you brought on yourself. But I’m not heartless. And I don’t want your death on my conscience,” she repeated, spacing the words for emphasis. “And Lucanis would be heartbroken. I love him more than I hate you.”

His voice took on a venomous edge, though it was low and strangled. “You always loved him.”

“Like a brother, Illario.” The fury in her voice was fully extinguished now. It was matter-of-fact, but defeated. Sorrowful. “No one else ever made me feel the way you did. Certainly not him.”

They stared at each other, each searching the other’s eyes for something neither of them could describe. When nothing but silence answered her, she turned around and started down the stairs. “Go rest. I’ll bring your dinner when it’s finished.”

He took a step after her, but she looked over her shoulder, freezing him in place.

“Don’t follow me. I don’t want you there.”

“I’m sorry, Lidia.”

It fell out of his mouth before he could stop it. He bit the inside of his cheek as she studied his expression, then nodded gently.

“I know,” she said softly. Her eyes were unreadable, flicking between his as if one could only lie and the other could only tell the truth. When she couldn’t answer the riddle, she turned away once more, descending the stairs and disappearing into the hall.

The smell of his conditioner lingered in the air behind her. The various notes played in her hair differently than they did in his, but it was familiar in the most stomach-tightening way. If he closed his eyes and savored it - and tried hard enough to forget the last few months altogether - he could almost see her stirring in her sleep, head nestled beneath his chin with his blankets layered messily over her naked frame. He washed her hair for her, smoothing his oil through the lengths and finger-combing the tangles out of those long blonde ropes, and once it dried it was silken beneath his palm as he cradled her head against his chest.

It ached deep beneath the skin to think that he may never feel the steady rise and fall of her body on his again. A sharp, radiating pain, somewhere past his heart.

He felt ill, and he retreated to the safety of his bedroom.

The villa was built solidly enough to muffle the frustrated huffs Lidia let out as she rolled the pasta into a fine sheet on the countertop. Again, she asked herself why she was going to all this trouble for him, and again, she returned with no satisfactory answers. Excuses, yes, but no answers. She didn’t want him to be hungry? She could have bought a loaf of bread and left. She didn’t want him to be lonely? She could have left him at the Diamond. She didn’t want him to die of complications from his injuries? He was hardy, and a healer had tended to him already. If Illario couldn’t take care of himself, his suffering would be his own fault. Here she was coddling him like a child, and disgusted with herself for it. He was thirty-seven. All she was doing was enabling this helpless behavior.

But then a memory of him sitting at her bedside and reading a book aloud to her flickered in her mind, and her hands slowed to a stop as she leaned over the counter. Perhaps he would do it for her again, perhaps not - he still did it once. She knew she owed him nothing, but to even the score she alone kept, she needed to do it once, too. Her own conscience had betrayed her a dozen times over when it came to Illario.

She sighed again. She rested the long rolling pin against the wall where it belonged and folded the dough in on itself, reducing it down to a more manageable size before feeding it section by section through a fine extruder. With her free hand, she worked the blade at the other side, snipping tiny stars of fresh pasta into a waiting bowl beneath it.

With every passing moment, she expected footsteps on the stairs. Illario never liked being told to keep his distance, and every previous fight of theirs had always ended with him slinking his way back to her after she told him to leave her alone. Whether he came bearing gifts or just acted like he was her gift, he always made the first move. 

She wanted to be glad to be alone for once. All she felt instead was a chilling absence.

She strained her vegetable-laden broth into a smaller pot and brought it back up to a boil, crushing the cooked vegetables into a fine puree with a mortar and pestle as she waited. After adding the fresh pasta to the boiling broth, she grated her cheese and added it along with the vegetable sauce once enough of the broth had been absorbed. She stirred it lazily as it thickened, then removed it from the flames and added a single egg for more protein before ladling half the batch into a large porcelain bowl once everything had melted together. After tasting it, she set the pot aside to cool by the windowsill, savoring the soft, creamy soup before allowing herself a satisfied smile.

As she set the bowl and a small silver spoon onto a wooden tray, she promised herself to carve out some more time to cook for herself now that she wasn’t so afraid of disappointing the First Talon by taking a day off here and there. In the nearly two years since Lucanis’ wake, she had plenty of opportunities to make something as relatively simple as pastina for herself, and just as many times where she could have used the comfort. In her early life on her own, she’d been accustomed to low-quality ingredients and meals of opportunity, but since impressing Caterina enough to accept contracts on behalf of House Dellamorte, she made more than enough money to cook for herself properly. She insisted she never had the time and yet she always leapt at the chance to prepare something fresh when Illario came over.

The few luxuries she afforded herself were always gated behind Illario. As she thumbed the intricately engraved handle of the silver spoon, her free hand reached for her earring again. Diamond and gold. Her shirt, silk. Both gifted by Illario. The best meals she ever ate were either made for him or paid for by him. The finest horse she ever rode was from the Dellamorte stables. Once, he gifted her a delicate crystal bottle filled with a scent he had mixed just for her, designed to blend well with one of his, by the same Orlesian perfumer. Several pairs of shoes, her favorite kohl, the most beautiful gowns she’d ever worn: all ordered and paid for in full by Illario Dellamorte.

Affection or bribery? Distractions or devotion?

And why in the Maker’s name was she still carrying food she never had the energy to make for herself up to him?

She thought it was all but guaranteed that she’d run into him on the stairs. Then the hallway. It was only when she knocked once at his door that it sank in fully that he hadn’t even attempted to beg or argue or apologize like he always did. The hope that something had changed sat heavily behind her ribcage, pinned down by the doubt that anything ever would.

To her knock, Illario answered, “I’m decent.”

She entered the room without a greeting.

He stood with his back turned, staring silently out the window in a pair of loose-fitting linen trousers and warm socks. His hair was still down, pulled over his unmarred shoulder, though a few rogue waves fell down his back. He looked small, despite his height.

“Are you ever decent?” Lidia finally asked as she set the tray down at the foot of his half-made bed. “Sit. Eat.”

He turned, looking from the single bowl and spoon to her face and back again. Her stare was cold, unfriendly, and difficult to meet. Without a word, he sat down on the right half of his bed carefully so as not to disturb the bowl. He reached for the tray, but she lifted it to him first, helping it to his lap as he kept his eyes downward and tried to ignore the heat of embarrassment in his face.

“It’s hot,” she warned. Then, unspoken: You don’t need more burns.

He swallowed and his jaw clenched as if he’d heard it anyway, but he closed his eyes and a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he inhaled the steam curling off the pastina.

“It smells delicious, Lidia.” He looked into her eyes, gaze piercing, and said with as much honesty as she’d ever heard, “Thank you. Truly.”

After a long pause, she nodded softly in acknowledgement and looked over his shoulder toward his nightstand. His carafe still had water in it, and his glass was full. Good. 

Movement drew her eyes back to his hands, as with his left, he raised the bowl. With his right, he reached for the spoon, but his jaw tensed again as he held the handle between his first two fingers and his thumb. It was barely noticeable, but if he didn’t want someone to focus on his body language, he shouldn’t have courted a Crow.

Lidia drew back the neatly-tucked covers on the left side of the bed and sat down cross-legged beside him before lifting the bowl out of his hand.

“I’ve gathered that you’re upset with me, but presenting me with food and then removing it immediately is a kind of torment even Caterina never stooped to.”

“Left.”

“I would appreciate more than one word at a time.”

Tersely, she replied, “Put the spoon in your left hand, idiot.”

He hesitated, but switched hands as instructed. “I am not completely invalid, you know.”

“Then act like it. Feed yourself.”

He brought a spoonful to his lips, blew on it to cool it, and tasted it. Upon swallowing, his smile returned, brighter, and his eyes shone in a more lively light as he looked at her gratefully.

“Even better than last time.”

His praise for her last batch of pastina -  served to him in this same room, in this same bowl, with this same spoon, after the wake - was nearly endless. He thanked her repeatedly, teared up as he stared at her, kissed her with salty lips, buried his head in her lap and mumbled about how he didn’t deserve her, how he hoped the day would never come where he took her for granted, how much he loved her. With all my heart, Lidia. All my soul. There’s not much to offer, but every bit is yours. Down to my last drop of blood.

Guilt or gratitude?

She said nothing as he took another bite, then another. She stared past his hand at the steam that faded into the air, swallowing as her mouth watered. After a third bite, she extended her hand, and he passed the spoon without a word.

They shared dishes dozens of times. When she would cook for him or he would bring food to her, they would pile it upon a single plate or fill a single bowl and pass the cutlery back and forth as they spoke. While one ate, the other talked, and when the latter finished their thought, it was their turn to eat until the first had finished their reply. It was so natural that Lidia didn’t even consider a second bowl, not even tonight. It was muscle memory to carry just one.

Neither of them mentioned it. Neither of them spoke, either. They shared their pastina in silence, passing the spoon back and forth. He ate quickly until meeting her eyes, and like one of the stray cats soothed by a comforting passer-by, he slowed. She wondered if, like those cats, he still carried fear from his youth that this was the last meal he’d have for weeks.

When the bowl was empty, the sides thoroughly scraped, and his glass of water drained and refilled, Lidia set the tray on the side table and stood. She crouched in front of the fireplace and arranged some tinder and kindling in the center before deftly lighting them with a single strike of a flintstone. She watched the flames consume the shredded paper, adding more as needed to continue fueling the fire, before warming her hands once it grew large enough to sustain itself. She perched a piece of firewood on the metal cradle inside the fireplace and returned to the bed, sipping from Illario’s glass of water before tucking her feet under the blankets.

Wordlessly, she took the book that sat next to the pitcher, a fairly unweathered copy of Stories of the Wild South, and opened it to the bookmarked page. Illario watched her as she scanned the contents, but he cast his eyes back toward an empty corner of the room when she looked over at him.

As he stared blankly at the wall, he wondered if he should attempt to take the dishes back down to the kitchen. The most likely outcome was Lidia snatching the tray back from him and scolding him again, insisting that he stay and rest. So he remained in place, watching the shadows cast by the fire as they danced on the wall.

Lidia’s voice was measured and slow when she finally spoke. “In a hold past our own, a man named Virmik Torsen was to wed a woman named Seddra Yildsdotten.”

He looked back over to her, a soft smile spreading on his face. He leaned back into his pillows and watched her as she read to him, illuminated by the candle on the table and the flickering fireplace as it quietly crackled beyond the edge of the bed.

“They were young, and in love,” she continued, just loud enough for only him to hear, “and made large offerings to the gods asking for happiness…”