Chapter Text
~Over a year earlier~
Dragging Illario Dellamorte down into the dungeon was never something Lily ever imagined she would be asked to do. Caterina Dellamorte tasked her with a great deal of things she never blinked at. She once seduced a merchant lord into his bedroom where she gutted him and left him strung up by the toes for his family to find a week later when they returned from holiday. Another time, she stood on a roof and waited for the fool of a fencer to shake hands with the one person he was told to avoid, then shot an arrow through one ear and out the other. All at the First Talon’s behest. If she told Lily to bury a blade in her own belly, she would.
So, when she and Lucanis Dellamorte commanded the crow to drag Illario, the only other Dellamorte, down into the dungeon, she did so without question. He was limp in her arms as she strung him up in chains. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. When his blue eyes flickered up to her, she looked into the face of a stranger. His face was stone, the first time she’d ever seen him like that.
Lily worked for Caterina Dellamorte since she was eight, having run into the Dellamorte boys often. Always at arms distance, she was endlessly reminded she was a crow but not a Dellamorte. Because she wasn’t family, she was a tool. Caterina’s tool. First made to clean up after the matron, she folded clothes and dressed down beds and fetched the woman coffee or wine. Then she was trained in blades, in bow and arrows, in poisons, and death. Broken in like an already tame mare, she didn’t need whipping…she was already Caterina’s.
Hard for a kid with no memories or last name to put up much of a fight. No house. No loyalty to anything but the crows. Lily was just Caterina’s right hand. Her assistant, her tool, her weapon…and in that moment, staring down at her precious grandson, Lily felt a tug at the back of her head. Does Illario also feel like he’s not a person? Does he think back and wonder who he’d be…if he never stepped foot in this cursed house?
“Do you hate me, Lily?” He purred, but the tease didn’t reach his eyes. Illario was a flirt. He was a seducer, a politician with greased palms, a grifter with a silver tongue. Illario Dellamorte could talk his way into the empress’s knicker drawer if he so wanted. Lily truly believed he had the charisma to shmooze the scales off a dragon. Which was exactly why she could never, and would never, be another body on his list.
“I feel nothing for you Illario,” she lied through her teeth as she clicked the last chain into place.
“That’s a lie,” his soft, hoarse whisper told her everything she needed to know. Illario Dellamorte was lost and scared…but he was too fucking proud to admit it. Even when he was right, having seen through her falsehoods, it wasn’t Lily in chains beneath her family home.
But it was a lie because Lily always felt something for the pretty faced, flirty crow. Who didn’t? She just never let it go past rolling eyes at his attempts. Every summer, when there was a crow party, she could count on three things: Someone would get stabbed, someone would get poisoned, and Illario Dellamorte would bring her a drink as a lead up to asking her to come back to his room. And at every crow party, she would let him get all the way to whispering seductively in her ear before she would laugh at his attempt. I give that one a seven. Which would get a smile out of him, better than last year, yes? I say so. Then she would roll her eyes at him and turn his focus on any other eligible crow who would end up on the infamous list. Illario Dellamorte had a black book of names and Lily knew better than to end up there.
She belonged to Caterina. She couldn’t be the first talon’s right hand and fawn over her grandson. So, she never let him get past fluttering eyelashes.
“I feel sorry for you,” she corrected as she stepped backward, away from him to wallow in his foolishness. Lily truly felt sorry for the crow. Illario Dellamorte may have a name, a house, a family, power, prestige…but none of that mattered when he was imprisoned for a poisonous dream. She shook her head in dismay. Viago said you’re lucky he didn’t take your head…but this isn’t luck. This is worse than death. This is much worse. Lily left him without so much as another word.
She hated that she felt pity for him. But then again, that may just be more of Caterina that she carried for the elder crow. When Caterina didn’t have enough hands, that was Lily’s job. When someone needed dispatched, and no one could know who it was… that was Lily’s job. When the false body of Lucanis Dellamorte needed disposing of, that was Lily’s job. And when Caterina couldn’t feel pity for her own grandson because it would show weakness? That…that was Lily’s job. So, she carried that burden all the way back up into the Villa, and tucked it away with all the other things she took care of for the Dellamorte’s.