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It's a one more something for @dread-red-queen and the Spite Week she's hosting. And it's also a bit for @genjyoandgojyoandhakkai as the God-parent of Sulahni. (Sorry not sorry, I'll copy-paste it every time.)
The Bad Wolf vanished in the Beyond, and the Void retreated.
Time to go home.
That’s what Lucanis said.
Home — a vast, empty space. With walls and a roof. Too many walls inside. The Dellamorte estate. It smells of linseed oil and dust here, and every corner hides rememburnings. The house remembers how to be a Home. It keeps the voices of people — laughter, arguments, a child’s crying, quiet lullabies.
Lucanis feels sad here, or angry, or falls silent inside, staring into space, forgetting about the brew on the stove. He doesn’t see what the Home remembers — only his own memories, and they burn him from within.
He doesn’t feel at home. Neither does Spite.
People don’t make this place better.
The Old Crow rages outwardly, hiding the cracks through which fatigue and guilt seep. She made Lucanis a prisoner, just like the Wicked Witch did — stole his choice, stole his life.
Spite doesn’t understand why Lucanis doesn’t want to kill her. Why every time they talk, his partner feels guilty too.
He hasn’t done anything to be blamed for.
The Traitor also rages outwardly, but inside there’s guilt too. So much guilt. And joy. Less joy — like a grain of salt dissolved in a bucket of water. Barely noticeable. But the Traitor is glad Lucanis is alive.
Other people come too, but they don’t bring life back to the House. They take what’s left. Lucanis smiles at them, but inside he hates them.
Spite doesn’t understand why Lucanis doesn’t want to kill them. Why he keeps smiling even when his fingers clench painfully around the dagger’s hilt.
“You said this is Home,” Spite sits on the windowsill, gazing out at the world beyond. “But it’s not Home. You don’t really think so.”
“What do you want?” Lucanis’s voice sounds weary and flat, like he’s already halfway beyond the Veil. “It’s an old house — there are… a lot of ghosts here.”
“No,” Spite shakes his head. “There are no ghosts. Only rememburnings. Ones that no one sees except you.” Little people. Quiet songs. “You’re… like a ghost,” he adds with something close to sympathy. He hadn’t liked feeling this before. It was empathy for humans that made him a demon, made him a prisoner — but he’d learned. Learned a lot. Sulahni had taught him. To understand. To empathize.
“Maybe,” Lucanis doesn’t argue. “This life… isn’t for me.”
“Which life is for you?” Spite asks.
Lucanis looks at him with longing, then turns away.
Sulahni… she knows what life should be like. She knows everything. Spite missed her. Why doesn’t she come?
“Why doesn’t Sulahni come?” he asks aloud.
“She… I don’t know…” Lucanis’s longing grows so thick Spite couldn’t breathe if he needed to. It fills the room, nearly snuffing out the candles. “I don’t know, Spite.”
“We should call her,” Spite pleads, then adds the word he knows makes mortals do what they don’t want to: “Please.”
---
“Do you like Treviso?” Lucanis avoided looking at Sulahni, just in case she was about to give a negative answer. He loved the city so much himself — and he truly wanted to share that feeling with her. Just like he wanted to share his whole life with her, really.
“They say it’s crawling with assassins,” she purred. “What if one of them has a contract out on me?”
Lucanis shot her a surprised look. Sulahni was watching him with that serene little smile he both hated and adored, clearly waiting for his reply.
“I figure the top assassin around can keep you safe,” he promised.
“Well, in that case, I guess I like Treviso — more than I don’t,” she replied, stepping close enough that he could smell hot wax, blood, and herbs.
“Would you… like to spend some time there… with me? I mean… I’d be really happy if…”
“A date?” Sulahni asked, slipping her small hand into his.
“No, more like…” He swallowed and gently closed his fingers around hers — always careful not to break those delicate bones. “An entire summer of dates.”
“Wow!” she exclaimed, sounding unexpectedly childlike. “I’ll just grab a few things.”
“Yeah. Of course.”
Lucanis hadn’t really expected to lure Sulahni away from Minrathous. Neve had her firmly in hand, pushing her to work non‑stop — healing those scarred by the Blight, cleaning up the city. Neve believed it was a mage’s sacred duty, especially for someone with Sulahni’s power, who’d abandoned Minrathous to its fate despite all the good the Shadow Dragons had done for her.
Sulahni worked. She was a bit out of touch with the world, thanks to her father’s spirit living inside her, and she never refused to help anyone — but Lucanis was starting to think Neve treated her like a slave. And he didn’t like it one bit. They’d already had a row about it, and the First Talon had warned Detective Gallus that he wouldn’t tolerate that kind of treatment toward the woman he loved. Well, he hadn’t actually said “loved.” He’d only said it once — to Sulahni — and wasn’t sure how to repeat it.
“One question,” Sulahni said, hoisting her backpack and staff onto her shoulders. “Will we be staying at the Dellamorte estate?”
“Not necessarily,” Lucanis shrugged. “I have a house in the city.”
“Wait, what?” She chuckled. “So this giant estate with an opera house, a garden, a guesthouse, and Maker knows what else — that’s not enough for you? You needed a separate house too?”
---
This house is different. It holds no memories — except the ones Lucanis brings with him. They are all tied to objects.
A small carved box — its lid etched with delicate patterns — speaks of his mother. Spite doesn’t know what lies inside, only senses it’s something precious.
A silverite dagger in worn sheaths studded with labradorites represents his father. The dagger’s tip is broken off, and the blade has several chips, but Lucanis hasn’t taken it to a smith to reforge it. This is how the dagger looks when its owner crosses the Veil.
A pair of matching coffee cups. Lucanis always drinks from one — the fine porcelain slightly worn at the handle and rim. The second cup sits dusty and darkened, waiting for a hand to hold it.
Lucanis seems to be rescuing memories from the emptiness of a grand house. He tries to make this place his home. But it remains empty. He alone isn’t enough to fill it.
It’s good they have Sulahni.
---
Lucanis had exaggerated a bit when he called this place a house. It was an apartment on the third floor of a small mansion. The first floor housed a weapons shop; the owner’s family lived on the second. That Lucanis managed to rent the entire floor was partly luck, partly due to the armorer’s tight circumstances.
“It’s cozy,” Sulahni approved, dropping her bag by the door of the single bedroom.
Lucanis didn’t much care for the estate either — vast and empty for most of his life — but he’d hoped to restore its former charm. For now, this refuge suited him just fine. He’d furnished it to his taste, but now it suddenly struck him as too gloomy and bare. Maybe it was Sulahni’s sunny beauty that made it seem so.
“You can use anything here, and… if you need something, just say so, I…”
“Do. Not. Fuss,” she took his hands and led him to the bed — plain, though fairly wide, with no canopy. “I really like it here.”
“Sulahni,” he whispered, and as usual, first pulled the pins from her tight bun.
He’d missed her. All these days while he’d been dealing with new responsibilities, grappling with the nuances of politics, and squinting at contracts, treaties, and invoices until his eyes burned, he’d desperately missed the little red‑haired elf with her chrysolite eyes. Finally, he’d offloaded some work onto Illario (as punishment, though both knew that was exactly what Illario wanted), some onto Viago and Teia, and fled on “personal business,” leaving a shared cache as an emergency contact point.
Missed her — yet now he hesitated, fingers tangled in coppery curls, not daring more. Thankfully, Sulahni didn’t need special reasons to do what she wanted. She pulled him close, brushed her lips against his briefly, then again, and again, until he lifted her in his arms and kissed her with the desperate passion of a drowning man. Kissing, he gently laid her on the coverlet, propped himself up on his arms to admire how her coppery locks spilled across the deep‑blue fabric. He leaned to her neck, nipped the translucent skin. Sulahni laughed, pressed her palms against his chest. Lucanis froze.
“Something wrong?”
“Tickles,” she giggled softly.
Lucanis chuckled: his personal blood mage, possessed by the spirit of an ancient elf, afraid of tickles.
---
Sulahni is always half beyond the Veil. The Fade seeps through her in a radiant stream, filling everything around — filling this little Home. Spite knows she can fill the big Home too, if she wants. She can bring life back into it — voices, laughter, songs.
If she stays. Spite really wants her to stay. With them. With Lucanis. Lucanis comes alive when she is near, as if she heals him with magic. It is a different kind of magic from anything Spite has seen in the mortal world — the kind spirits of Compassion wield. It both irritates and draws him in. He barely notices when he finds himself standing too close, and even Lucanis’s sideways glances can’t stop him. Near Sulahni, he doesn’t long for the Fade. Near Sulahni, longing ceases to exist.
---
“Tell me how the Antivans confess their love,” Sulahni asked.
Lucanis stroked her back, feeling the ridges of scars under his fingers, and smiled.
“Te amo, piel de mi alma, eres mi corazón, mi cielo, mi todo,” he purred, completely sincere. She truly had become everything to him — the only real reason to live.
“That sounds beautiful,” she approved. “Elves say: ‘Ar lath ma, vhenan.’ Is ‘corazón’ also ‘heart’?”
“Yes.”
She placed her palm over his chest, right where his heart beat, and held it there, as if listening to something.
“Sula…”
“Shhh.”
Maybe it was some kind of magic, or maybe she just liked feeling his heartbeat. He’d almost grown used to the awkwardness she occasionally stirred in him. What she’d said… “I love you, my heart” — was that real, or had she just been discussing confession phrases in different languages with him, and what he’d told her was just another turn of phrase to her? Lucanis focused on the sensation. Sulahni Lavellan wasn’t an open book. A powerful mage, she was expert at hiding her emotions — but he always felt her warmth when she was near. Her genuine admiration, which he still couldn’t quite get used to. Her passion, intoxicating like a potent brew.
Having gotten what she wanted, Sulahni sat up in bed, unashamed to show her naked body — graceful as a statuette — and asked:
“So, what are your plans for the summer? You mentioned something about dates…”
“You were the one who threw yourself at me,” Lucanis chuckled.
“I wouldn’t mind spending the whole summer in bed with you. Or even the whole of my life. I’m just curious. You showed me the market, your favorite café, the estate. I’ve been to the Diamond — well, only in the attic. I wonder what goes on downstairs. And there must be other interesting places around here too. I hear puppet shows are very popular in Antiva — can we see one? And does the Opera actually stage performances, or is it just a meeting place for the Crows? Can we go for a ride on a gondola?”
Suddenly she seemed like just a girl to him. In truth, she was young — what was she, a little over twenty?
“I haven’t worked out the details of the program yet, but I suppose you’ll help me make a list?” Lucanis suggested with a smile.
---
“Is this Home now?” Spite watches Lucanis making the brew, humming softly to himself.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Lucanis nods absently.
“Because Sulahni’s here,” Spite clarifies. “Is she the Home?”
Lucanis just smiles in response — a real smile, not the kind he gives to others: not to the Old Crow, not to the Traitor, not to Adder, not to His Girlfriend. Spite feels the warmth spreading through his partner’s body.
“Will she stay?” he asks.
“I… don’t know,” Lucanis furrows his brow slightly; the warmth is cracking like old porcelain.
“Ask her,” Spite suggests. “Say ‘please’.”
“What if she doesn’t want to?”
Spite rolls his eyes — a human gesture he’s picked up from his partner.
“She does,” he states firmly. “For the whole summer. For the rest of her life. If you let her.”
I love you, skin of my soul, you're my heart, my sky, my everything.
Sulahni Lavellan, the blood mage. 😁