The courtyard was quiet, save for the gentle splash of the fountain and the distant sound of gulls over the Treviso rooftops. Lucanis poured wine into two glasses, dark red, cool, expensive. The sort of vintage Viago insisted on but rarely finished.
Lucanis held one out without looking, and Viago took it, lounging against a low marble column like something that had never known discomfort. Fading sunlight kissed the open collar of his shirt, his bare throat. He swirled the wine lazily but didn't drink. His eyes were elsewhere. On the letter left behind, the one they knew she'd find the moment she returned.
"She'll come," Lucanis said, calm and certain.
Viago smiled faintly. "Of course she'll come. The question is whether she'll stay."
Lucanis didn't answer. Because she never did. Not the first time. Not the second, third, or fourth. Not even after they'd spent hours mapping her with their mouths, chasing the ragged edges of her breath, coaxing gasps from her like confessions. She'd melted between them... then slipped out like smoke while they slept.
Why doesn't she stay?
Viago had asked him that before. Nearly two weeks ago now. Quietly, after the third time they'd woken to cold sheets and the soft scent of her on their pillows.
"She's tired," Viago said now, pulling the wine close to his lips, though he still didn't drink. "Fresh off a mission. We could wear her out so thoroughly she can't move. That might keep her."
Lucanis shot him a look, all sharp bone and shadow.
Viago raised one brow. "You're telling me you weren't thinking the same?"
Lucanis didn't reply, but he didn't deny it. Wear her out. Keep her still. Keep her.
He drank his wine, slow and steady. "We could use the silk ropes," he murmured.
Viago's grin curved, lazy and hungry. "So we're tying her down now?"
"If she won't stay willingly…"
"She might like it."
"She might." Lucanis set the glass down and glanced at the fresh linens on the bed they'd prepared, soft and luxurious. "The others stayed."
Viago laughed, soft and dismissive. "The others begged to. Whined about sore legs and being cold and won't you let me stay, just this once?"
Lucanis turned away from the window. "And we let them. Some of them."
Viago's tone cooled slightly. "Some of them we should have kicked out harder."
They didn't say the names. Not one of those others lingered in their memory like she did. Starling, who came without fear, without pretence, who took her pleasure and vanished before the sun.
"She's never bragged either," Lucanis said after a beat.
Viago's expression went still. "No. That's… unusual."
"She's hiding it. Hiding us."
"And yet she keeps coming."
Lucanis didn't reply.
Viago's grin curved like a blade. "In more ways than one."
Lucanis let out a huff of air, not quite a laugh. Dry, and Fond, if one knew how to hear it. He glanced toward the table they'd had prepared, nothing extravagant, but indulgent in ways that mattered. Roast duck, sharp cheeses, warm bread with oil, wine just sweet enough to slow the pulse without dulling the senses.
And… His gaze caught on a small dish nestled near the edge. Candied almonds.
He hadn't meant to look at them. But there they were. Pale pink sugar crusted over golden nuts. A child's treat, really. Something more suited to a festival or a street stall than the Dellamorte estate. And yet…
He saw her again. In his mind's eye. That first week he'd started watching her, back before the invitation. Before bedding her. Before this ache that kept pooling low and insistent every time she walked into a room and didn't look at him.
Starling had been in the training yard. Loose-limbed, sun-warmed, a little smudged with dirt but laughing. Not the cruel kind of laughter Crows learned, not the brittle sound of mockery or dominance. It had been joyful. Light and real. She'd been throwing knives with Tenna. And each time Tenna hit centre, Starling had tossed an almond into Tenna's mouth with impeccable aim. When it was Starling's turn, the roles reversed - Tenna held the bag, and Starling threw her knives. She hadn't missed once. And after each bullseye, she'd turned with that soft, smug little grin, mouth open, waiting. Tenna had thrown the almond, Starling caught it every time.
Viago had said something beside him, probably something clever. Lucanis hadn't heard it. He'd been watching her mouth. Watching the way she grinned with it, chewed, laughed.
She's played this game before. Not with Tenna. Tenna had been off-balance, slightly delayed, untrained in it.
No, Starling was practised. That kind of game took trust. Repetition. Affection. And for someone to teach her how to catch food in her mouth like that, smiling wide, open and playful…
Lucanis's fingers curled lightly on the glass in his hand.
Who had taught her that?
Not the Crows. Not here. That kind of joy wasn't native to this place. It was foreign. Older and hers. And it didn't belong to them.
He hadn't let himself think on it too long then. But now, with the almonds glinting in sugared pink on the edge of a perfect table, the memory curled like smoke behind his eyes.
She laughs like someone loved her. Once.
Viago moved beside him, his shoulder brushing lightly. "Still thinking about how to keep her in bed, or are we down the rabbit hole already?"
Lucanis didn't answer right away. He lifted the glass and took a slow drink of wine. It tasted darker now. Not the wine's fault.
He kept his eyes on the almonds a moment longer, then said, almost casually, "What do we know about her from before she joined the Crows?"
Viago leaned back against the column, glass dangling loose in his fingers.
"You trained her, didn't you?"
Viago tilted his head. "For a time. She moved through training quickly. Quick little thing. Learned fast, adapted well."
Lucanis raised a brow. "How old?"
Viago thought for a beat. "Ten, I think? That's what the records said. The Crows bought her from slavers."
Of course they had. The Crows didn't do sentiment. They didn't save people. They purchased them. Like weapons. Like dogs.
Ten. Starling at ten. That would've been nine years ago. Lucanis would've still been finishing his third-tier contracts. He wouldn't have noticed a sharp-limbed elf child slipping through the cracks. Not unless she'd gotten in his way.
She hadn't. But she'd found Viago.
"She was maliciously compliant," Viago added, his smile sharpening at the memory. "The type that follows orders to the letter while somehow making you feel like she's laughing at you."
Lucanis's mouth twitched. He could picture that.
"She ever actually laugh during training?"
Viago gave a thoughtful hum. "Not much. Not unless she thought no one was watching. And not during the kills. She didn't like them."
Lucanis looked at him sidelong. "Did she tell you that?"
Viago shrugged one shoulder. "She didn't have to. She held her breath before every strike. Tightened her mouth like it might spill something if she didn't. You learn to spot that."
He didn't say anything for a moment, fingers turning the stem of his glass slowly. Then, dry as bone, "Maliciously compliant. Good with knives. Haunted little laugh. Seems like just the sort of well-adjusted person I'd bring home to my nonexistent mother."
Viago laughed aloud at that. "Would she like Starling, do you think?"
Lucanis deadpanned, "She'd assume I'd kidnapped her." He sipped again. "You'd be blamed too."
Viago grinned, teeth flashing. "We'd deserve it."
That was the problem. They would. And Starling? She didn't deserve any of it. Not the bruises, not the weight of their attention, not the way they both kept circling her like she was already theirs.
But she was theirs. And the more she slipped away, the more it scraped bone.
"Has she ever talked about before?" Lucanis asked, too neutral.
Viago's expression shifted, subtle, but real. His usual charm softened just for a breath, eyes dimming with something closer to respect than amusement.
"No," he said. "Not with me at least. But I don't think with anyone. She holds it to herself. Guards it, almost."
Lucanis glanced sideways, listening carefully.
"There was a before," Viago continued, "and an after. And they're not allowed to touch."
Lucanis let that sit a moment, swirling the last of the wine in his glass. He'd known Crows like that. People who'd been shattered and glued back together with blood and orders. People who wore the past like scars and weaponised the silence around them.
But Starling wasn't brittle. She was balanced. Controlled. Soft in ways she didn't realise were still visible. She hadn't been broken. She'd bent. And somehow held her shape. He respected that. Hated it too, because it made her slippery and harder to hold.
He turned to look at Viago, studying the line of his jaw, the relaxed sprawl of his limbs as he sat back down in his chair, the careful nonchalance of a man who rarely said what he meant.
"Is Starling her real name?" Lucanis asked.
Viago shrugged. "It's the name she gave."
Lucanis made a low sound in his throat, noncommittal but thoughtful. Names mattered in the Crows. Half of them were aliases. The other half were taken from contracts, dead mentors, mistakes never repeated. A name you chose for yourself? That was rare. A name you kept from before? Even rarer.
Starling. A bird. Small, quick, fast to fly. Beautiful. Common enough to vanish into a crowd, but clever enough to mimic anything it heard.
Too poetic a name for the kind of girl the Crows wanted to make of her. But maybe not too poetic for the kind of girl she had been.
Lucanis took his own seat and set his glass aside, resting his hand lightly on the table. His fingers tapped once near the bowl of almonds. A soft sound.
"Do you think she remembers who she was before?" he asked, his tone flat as glass.
Viago tilted his head, then offered that slow, infuriating half-smile of his. "Every day."
Lucanis's mouth twitched. Not a smile, just the idea of one. He believed that too.
She remembers. And she hides it. And she's still trying to protect it- whatever's left of it - from everything this life wanted to strip away.
She was the only one they'd ever invited to their bed who made them feel like they were being watched instead. Measured... Considered...
And maybe she came to them, but not because she had to. She chose to. That, more than anything, made Lucanis restless.
Because choice could be taken back.