Chapter Text
They put something in the prison food. Two weeks he’s been here. He hasn’t eaten.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” Illario had told him once. “You were interested in Viago. And now suddenly you turn it off?”
“I have a job to do.”
“It’s not normal Lucanis. You can’t shut out a feeling. This is not one of your romantic fairy tales.”
Lucanis had learned then that the ability to control emotions and suppress bodily reactions at will—infatuation, pain, hunger—was no ordinary skill. In fact his books had lied to him about this. No one was supposed to be able to snuff out an arousal once it began, or tune out their stomach as it ate away at itself. A person could not simply choose to avoid sleep.
Lucanis could.
It would have been nothing to starve to death in Zara’s prison and not feel a thing. But unfortunately for Zara, he has a contract.
So on the seventeenth day he eats the gruel.
He thought he was prepared.
He is not.
Pain, bright and unyielding, blooms up his sinuses. It snares behind his eyes into his brain and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it. He tries to stuff it down but the wracking intensity fights back, a claw hooked in his gut, as if it were a living thing that spreads and bleeds out every pore.
He can’t repress his own scream. It shreds itself into a roar.
WHERE.
Fingers claw against ocean bedrock.
IS.
His nails grind blood.
OUT.
It’s in his head. Moving his hands. A madness, an insanity that isn’t his own, or maybe is, shattering through a thousand uncaged memories. Everything released all at once. He doesn’t want to think about—
House Velardo’s final heir under his knife. “You’re no Crow. You’re a demon.”
Caterina. “Get up, boy.”
Illario. “But would you say no to her?”
Himself. “I don’t want the title.”
And screaming. So much of it, echoes of the past overlaid with the Ossuary’s tortured wailing, weeks of it, months of it, far longer than the days he’s been here. Sudden sharpness slices his senses and he’s smelling death down the hall and the prison’s salt fish rot all at once, over and over. Imagery that isn’t his flickers: blood staining violet claws and confusion, ripping, being ripped from formless eternity.
Through sound and smell and fury Lucanis can barely tell he’s tearing open from the inside. Thrashing on the floor, death fuzzes the edges of his vision. Static snows hot and threatening.
If he can’t contain the demon he’ll be leaving a contract unfinished.
Quiet, Lucanis thinks harshly. Feral vocals bounce back.
End another one. End every one.
He snarls, Enough.
No effect. Vision narrows to a faded dark circle. Overwhelming pain dims into silent swallows of the end as the creature crushes his head from the inside, its own hurt ratcheting through him as it does so. Is Lucanis killing himself?
“Stop,” he chews through his last breath. Discovers another.
The Chains. Always. Beg.
“I don’t beg.”
Different.
Crawling awful sensation whisks through his guts, under his skin, filling his lungs, cold and hot around his brain all at once.
…Different.
“Demon.”
The presence scalds. Dizzy and curled on the floor Lucanis can practically feel its enraged confusion prickling his skull. Keep it occupied. Keep it distracted until it doesn’t see the blade coming.
“Demon. What kind?” Lucanis repeats.
Everything.
He scoffs. “No such thing. Lies, then? A demon of lies?”
LIAR. Headache spears his forehead, Illario’s phrase ‘Calivan will never see you coming,’ yanks out of nowhere. We know lies. Promises not kept. Not us. We always deliver.
The last sentence growls like an oath Lucanis himself would say. It may be that he’s gone crazy. Disappointing. He assumed he would last much longer than this.
Even if the target ends up being himself it’s best to put a name to it. “I’m not sure Confusion is a type of demon.”
No! it snaps. Poison sound scratches for limited vocabulary. I. Am.
There’s no more to it than that. ‘I am.’ He’s possessed, but by what he has no idea.
It doesn’t matter. He’ll learn to control it just like everything else.
~ ~ ~
Zara’s voice echoes with that strange underwater quality as she enters the corridor, her posse in tow, bragging about her latest experiments. The tour’s footsteps trail their way closer with no intention of stopping. Venatori figures appear and begin to file past. Zara’s scarlet gown swishes like a blood flag.
Lucanis suddenly slams against the barrier, terrifying his guards. “What did you give me?”
The witch fans decorated fingernails over the scoop of her low neckline. False sweetness reeks like stale iron as she approaches. “Manners, please. Wouldn’t want that poor attitude to rub off on Nonus and Decimus.”
“You gave me. A demon. Which one?”
“Well isn’t that quaint? He doesn’t know.”
Each member of Zara’s entourage giggles or laughs or goads in their own unique way. Even her personal bodyguards sport cruel smiles, far from the professional detachment typical to the job.
He’ll remember this. The voice in his ear snarls yes yes yes.
Zara leans in, eerily symmetrical face mere inches from his on the other side of the wards. “Such a fine specimen. I would never want to waste you, Lucanis.” A painted nail taps the enchantments, drags down, her voice sickeningly sweet. “I didn’t choose anything. I left that all up to you.”
As she turns away Zara Renata drapes a bright, malicious look over her bare shoulder.
“The demon is your own.”