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Illario flung the door open but knew better than to step through. Indeed, his grandmother's cane hit a wide arc where he would have been, stopped only by the solid wall with a teeth-grinding noise.
"Now, now, is that any way to greet your grandson?" he asked, taking a swig from the bottle in his hand.
Caterina stepped forward, leaning on her cane and giving him a steely glare. He grinned with all the mirth he lacked, knowing it would infuriate her, and let himself in, shutting the door. She'd been confined to her own room, with all the comforts it held — and all the secret passages and exits that he'd taken pains to close out. He sat at the small table in the corner — a work of art, like all the furniture Caterina acquired, with the top a delicate mosaic of a crow. He gestured to the other chair, but Caterina sat on her bed instead.
"Illario."
"Good eye for you age," Illario said blithely. "Must be how you realized Lucanis's body was a fake."
Caterina's grip on her cane firmed up, but her face stayed impassive. "It was sloppy work."
"It wasn't." He knew it wasn't. He'd been fooled, too, and he'd had more cause than anyone to make sure it was his cousin lying there dead. "But I suppose nothing escapes the great Caterina Dellamorte."
He took another sip. It was good wine, although he couldn't care less about the quality right now. It was wine that he'd never shared with Lucanis, which was all he asked. Something that didn't make him think of his cousin.
And then he'd walked into Caterina's room. Typical. What was it that made him lose his senses when it came to them?
"Is that why you never named me heir? Because you knew he was still alive?"
A single twitch at the corner of her eye. She looked disdainfully at the bottle. "I hoped."
"You hoped? I thought hope was for the, uh, unskilled and suicidal. You are neither."
A minute flare of her nostrils. Oh, he'd had years to practice not getting under her skin; it was freeing to disregard all of it. She stood up, the tip of her cane striking the hard floor clear and loud, familiar. He didn't flinch. She'd trained it out of him — out of them both. He drank again.
"You should have killed me to secure the position," Caterina said, looking at him. She walked around her bed, standing at the window, back to him. An insult if there was ever one, but Illario couldn't find it in him to get angry. "You shouldn't have kidnapped me now, but you should have killed me long ago in the first place. This is an obvious mistake."
She was right. He'd known this since the seventh week after Lucanis's funeral. "Maybe you should kill me now," he replied instead. "I'm inebriated, and you don't think highly of my skills. Maker, you even know I won't kill you first."
Caterina turned towards him. Looked at him, for once, with genuine evaluation. She was thinking about it. Silent, she stepped towards him slowly, each step punctuated by her cane again. He hated the thing, hated that it reminded him of long nights being imparted Crow teachings through beatings and orders, even now. All that, and for what? Second choice? When she reached the table, he raised his chin, refusing to cower in front of her, offering his throat.
For a long moment, she stared at him, and he had no idea what the expression on her face was.
Then she looked away and sat down. Illario drank again.
"Why didn't you? Name me heir. Why—" Why was it never me. Why did you never look at me. It was childish. "Lucanis never wanted it."
The corner of Caterina's mouth turned down. "That is irrelevant. He will do it, for this family."
"Ha! For this family?" He threw his head back, turning to keep her in his sight. "Look at us, Caterina. What is left of our family? I killed Lucanis, and I'm keeping you prisoner, and you can't bring yourself to kill me either. Even though you should," he added, not about an easy shot.
"You failed to kill Lucanis." Even now, Illario could hear the grain of pride under the ice of her voice, and he wanted to throw up and tear himself apart. He drank. "Why would you leave Venatori to do this, of all people? You should know better."
Illario shrugged. "I had contacts, and they had a grudge."
"You should have done it yourself. Lucanis would not have suspected you." She discussed this like any other mark, like this was training again. Dissecting his mistakes. He felt ill. Too much wine. "You've practiced it hundreds of times."
The only way you could ever have bested him, Caterina didn't say, because they both knew it. He just looked at her. Was it any surprise, that he could not kill her, and she him, when he hadn't been able to bring himself to lay his own hands on Lucanis in the first place?
"I think he died anyway," Illario murmured.
Caterina looked at him flatly. A familiar expression again, though this one at least Lucanis had also been on the end of. Their teenage years had not been filled with Caterina's approval, though she had let them become Crows in the end. At the same time, even. Equals for once in their life. "What are you talking about?"
Illario finished the bottle. The wine tasted sour and too rich now, and the dregs at the bottom were unpleasant to swallow, but he needed the time it bought him.
"It's a demon wearing his face." Caterina's expression tightened, and he drank it in avidly. "Zara Renata put something in him. I've seen it." Bright purple wings, knife ready to be plunged in his chest, Lucanis struggling to keep himself from killing him. "It's not him anymore. It's just — his body walking around."
"You have spun better lies than this, Illario," Caterina admonished, her face pale and drawn.
Illario couldn't smile. He gritted his teeth, swallowing his own acrid spit. "I am not lying. You know. You can tell." He kept his eyes fixed on her, and heard the bitterness and grief in his own voice. "I did this to him, Caterina. I made him this."
She looked back. The dawning horror on her face was almost a relief. She knew, now, and she saw it for what it was, and she knew what his mistake had cost them both. The horror shifted to anger, to sorrow, to the cold hard flint that she wore when ordering torture and death. It resonated somewhere in his chest, almost exultant, almost hopeful. She stood up and leaned towards him over the table, and Illario held his breath. Maybe she would do it. They had taken all her weapons, except her cane, but she knew a hundred ways to kill a man with her bare hands, and another hundred without. She'd taught them all to him and Lucanis.
Caterina stopped a hand's breadth away, looking him right in the eyes. Her voice was soft, almost gentle. "You should have killed me."
Illario had no answer. He glanced across her face, but she gave him nothing else. She leaned back and walked away, sitting on the other side of her bed, her back to him again.
Illario wanted to cry. He wanted to scream, to ask why again, to tell her all about what he'd seen of the demon, to chisel pieces of her icy walls again until she looked as undone as he felt. Torture would do nothing, though, and he was now certain nothing coming from him would either.
He pushed back the chair and stood, and she did not grant him a single glance as he left, empty bottle in hand.