Chapter Text
“Two more for you, Godey. A full house tonight.”
Cazador’s voice. Astarion struggled to wake, the stench of rat and memory of fear twisting the world to shadow. Was he dreaming? No—no. Home, such as it was. The house of horrors.
“Yes, my master, yes. Shall these two stay unmarked also?”
“It must be so, unfortunately. They were distracted when I needed their full attention. My guests were not as delighted as they ought to have been before their slaughter.” That thin, nasal laugh. “They will stay here until I call for them.”
“As you say, Master.” Footsteps—two pairs—no sound of a struggle. But then, there never was. Astarion sat up in time to see Dalyria and Leon kneel and crawl into the cage on his other side, still in their feasting finery, their eyes blazing their master’s red. Godey locked the grated door behind them eagerly. The torches had gone out; the room was nearly lightless save a single candle on the far table.
“And attend me a moment, Godey. I have a task for you upstairs.” Cazador again, sounding almost delighted. Astarion did not particularly wish to know the reason, cared only for the relief from the creature’s company. The skeleton shivered in excitement, followed his master out of the room, and sealed that door as well. The candle flickered desperately, nearly went out, then grew strong once more.
Tav was still asleep. Not that surprising, given the length of the beating, but Astarion wished he could hear her voice if nothing else. Her breathing still came steady, and it was deeper than it had been—good. Recovering, at least in part; surely just a matter of time. The relief made him dizzy.
More irritating, though, was the piercing gaze of his siblings on the side of his head. Insistently curious. Unblinking. Ignorable as a pebble inside his boot. “Well,” he said at last, when he could no more stand the silent scrutiny. “Nice to see you both again, I suppose. Just like old times, hm?”
Leon leaned his head back against the bars. “How cheerful you sound, brother, even surrounded by dead rats. Like the runt you are, yelping louder and louder, as if it might make up for the rest of your failures.”
“Failures? I’ll have you know this is all going according to some very sound plans.”
Dalyria laughed. She did not laugh often, one of the coldest of their twisted family, a fretful tactician who put forth significant effort to avoid their master’s ire. Straightforward, though, as much as any of them could be; she did not lie unless compelled. “And yet here you are, little Astarion, caged just as we are where we have always been.” She turned her head away. “You should have left the city when you had the chance.”
He should have and he had not. Confidence in their discordant group, perhaps—faith that Tav would protect him. And even still, even here, he could not believe that faith misplaced. “What, and miss our family reunion? How could I possibly?”
Leon pinched the bridge of his nose. “How tiresome you can be. I’d forgotten.”
“I may be tiresome, but at least I’m not fucking Yousen,” Astarion said with real acerbity. “Gods, his voice is like nails on glass. I don’t know how we ever stood it.”
That earned a chuckle from Leon, though it subsided quickly. “Won’t be much longer we have to stand anything. The ceremony will take care of that.”
“Yes, the ceremony,” Astarion said, that derisive edge creeping back into his voice. “The consummation—and consumption—of every scrap of power he’s been saving up for two centuries. Including you. Including me. Whyever aren’t I looking forward to it?”
They did not bother replying, but he hadn’t truly expected it. A silence fell over them, broken only by the guttering candle; then Tav gasped and let out a sharp, wet cough. Astarion jerked to face her—could not stop himself—but she did not rouse, only turned to her side with her eyes still shut, and within the minute her breathing evened out once more. He hooked his fingers around the bars, rested his forehead on the cool metal, and sighed.
Dalyria’s voice was low. “Who is she?”
“Hm? Who’s who?”
A noise of disgust. “This is why Cazador beats you, you know.”
“Cazador beats me, Dal, because he is a stupid, pathetic, vicious little tyrant who would more easily pledge himself to the service of Tyr than set a single one of you free.” He let out an explosive sigh. “Gods, that felt good to say.”
“He’ll hear you.” She was frightened now, cringing away from him. “He’ll sense it. It will be worse for all of us.”
“Worse than a short and painful death, followed by oblivion?” He snorted. “If we’re asking each other unanswerable questions, why don’t you tell me what had you both so distracted tonight?”
They both stiffened, eyes falling away from each other. Interesting. In another life, Astarion would have pressed that weakness like a bruise, setting one against the other until they bled in the fight for every scrap. Now—somehow—he did not mind the wait.
At last, Leon spoke. His voice was heavy, slow. “I think…Victoria is dead.”
Victoria. His young mortal daughter. Astarion had vague memories of a white, frightened face, brown braids. Pleasing Cazador enough to keep the favored spawn’s private room had been Leon’s only stopgap against her slaughter. “I…see.”
“I tried to drain her.” Dalyria, distant and clinical. “I thought there might be a medical cure for…it doesn’t matter. I was wrong. The master found me before I was finished.”
“You disobeyed the master? You, drinking the blood of thinking creatures?” Astarion laughed, delighted. “You surprise me at every turn, Dal. Maybe there’s some spine left in you yet.”
She grimaced and Leon flinched. Ah. Perhaps that had been tasteless. Astarion tried again. “That is—that’s too bad for the girl, I suppose. You saw her die?”
“No. I left her alive.” Dalyria pressed her hands over her eyes. “But she was cursed. Her blood—Leon had tried to—it was all cursed. She was screaming when I left, and the master sent in two great undead Gur behind me, and then—and then it was quiet.”
Leon’s mouth had pulled tight in grief. “That was three weeks ago. I haven’t seen her since, and the master will not speak of it.”
Ah. That explained that. Still, Astarion’s voice gentled, unfamiliar, difficult. “She’s certainly dead, then, brother. I’m sure you know this.”
“Yes,” he said, the word dropping like a stone, and Dalyria put her hand briefly on his hand. A brutal kindness; a comfort with poisoned blades. No one outside their little family could have understood it, the desperate clawing need for freedom, the recognition of the cruelty it required, the melancholy sorrow for those wounded by it even so. They had been bound together more tightly than even blood, and all three of them knew each would have done exactly the same in Dalyria’s place.
Tav coughed again. This time it was followed by a moan, a shift on stone, a shuddering inhale. “Astarion?”
Even slow, even slurring, it was the best sound he’d ever heard. “Right here, darling. Try not to move.”
“Hurts.” A pause, another careful shift in the dark. The rustle of cloth as she slowly put her shirt to rights. “I would murder a man—” she coughed again “—for a cup of water.”
“Keep hold of that instinct. You might need it.” Astarion closed his eyes. “I should mention, my dear, that we’re not alone. You remember Dalyria and Leon.”
“Vividly.” She rolled to her side, murmured invocations to both Eldath and Torm, and groaned again at the pain. “Gods, my hand, my hand—Ilmater’s rack. Is it rude to say I’d like to kill you both?”
“Aha, now you’re getting it.” The candle’s feeble light caused more problems than it solved; he could barely make out her shape. Just enough to see her left hand was badly swollen, with an angry shine to the skin—just enough to see the thin straw beneath her was no more red than before. Her back must have stopped bleeding. “So? Now you’ve experienced the joys of both that priest and our dear Godey. Who brought you nearer Loviatar’s knee?”
“Oh, your bone man, most definitely.” She scrubbed the heel of her better hand over her eyes. She’d stopped sweating; he did not know if that was a good sign or not. “My heart hurt for you before, but now it’s positively broken.”
Astarion snorted. “I’m sure all three of us are very grateful for your pity.”
“I feel very pitiable,” she said, her voice strained, and he saw her turn to the other cage. “I’m Tavish Gale. Call me Tav. Everyone else does.”
Leon leaned forward, the movement automatic and fluid even here, the drop of his voice a full register as simple as turning over a hand. “A pleasure, little one.”
“No need to bother with any of that,” Astarion said, waving him off. “All secrets have been revealed and all tragic life stories have been thoroughly discussed. In fact, she came here with me to help kill Cazador.”
Leon’s head cocked like a dog’s. “You know? You’re just a target. You know what Astarion—what we are, and you let him stay?” A pause. “You’ve heard him talk?”
Her eyes flicked to Astarion’s, faint gleams in the dark. “I like listening to him talk, as it happens,” she said, and it sounded very much as if she meant it. “Astarion’s very likeable, you know, when he wants to be. Charming. Occasionally even kind.”
Sounds of derisive astonishment from both of his siblings, though for the first time in decades Astarion felt like he might have blushed had he still been capable. Shame had been beaten out of them early, any sense of pride or dignity or self wholly crushed under the weight of Cazador’s burning eyes, but this—this sincere, open affection—
“You’re saying this because you’re lovers.” Dalyria now, her tone questioning. “He keeps you happy. You keep him safe—yes?”
“I’m doing a piss-poor job of that, if that’s the case,” Tav said. “I suppose things might have started out that way, but for some time now it’s been…” She trailed off into a little laugh, the sound incongruously light in the depths of this pit. “Something real.”
Leon let out a sharp sigh. “This runt. The master’s useless favorite pet and he’s the one who ends up getting out and getting someone to stand up for him. Of fucking course. I bet you’ve even let him—” There was a short silence. “Have you? Let him feed on you? You know—willingly?”
“Really, dear brother,” Astarion drawled, propping his elbows on the iron bars. “You’re acting like I’ve never brought anyone home to meet the family before. Let’s keep the table talk polite, hm?”
“You have,” Leon said, startled, and then, with very real longing, “Was it nice?”
Astarion met Tav’s eyes. She watched him calmly from where she lay, her head pillowed now on her good hand, her bad one cradled against her chest. He felt the faint brush of her thoughts against his own. He searched for the pain first, and she let him feel it—present but not suffocating—and behind that was unoffended fondness, no reticence at the idea of sharing. She didn’t mind if he didn’t.
He let his gaze slide back to Leon’s red burning. “Yes,” he said at last, and there was no mockery in it. “It was very nice.”
Tav smiled and shut her eyes. “Aside from the first time, when he killed me stone dead.”
“I apologized for that! I even meant it!”
She laughed. It was a beautiful laugh, without any cruelty at all, and he saw Dalyria clutch her hand to her heart. “And such an eloquent apology it was, too.”
“You punched me, my dear. I was desperately afraid you’d broken my damned nose.”
She laughed again. “To mar your handsome face would be a crime against the gods. Another reason to make sure Cazador dies painfully.”
“You sweet, flattering thing,” he purred, but even as he spoke he could see the agony that had risen in both Leon and Dalyria, and he let the rest of it die unvoiced.
He could easily imagine their misery. The spawn left behind to the whims of Cazador’s rage, the brothers and sisters broken and beaten in his absence, the torture that must have been visited upon them again and again when they failed to discover him, when they failed to bring him home. And then he’d returned to the city of his own will and with companions—defenders—who insisted the ceremony they had clung to for freedom would only be their doom. And now, here, in the place of their greatest suffering, he had the temerity to bring along a partner who loved him, who thought him strong and handsome and—even if mistaken—kind, who would protect him however she could, even against his family, even at the cost of her own torment.
Fitting. A night spent in the kennels without a blow landed on either of them, and he’d managed to hurt them badly all the same.
“When Cazador made us,” Astarion began, and it was a stilting, clumsy start, the words falling flat in the shadows of the cages, but he struggled on regardless. “He meant for us to be slaves. Slaves to him, to the hunger, to every voracious appetite he could imagine. He created us and used us and he intends to consume us. But it doesn’t have to—it doesn’t have to be this way. We can be more than that. More than what he made us to be.”
A long silence. The candle flickered, guttered again, and went out at last with a brief, plaintive hiss.
Easier to see his siblings’ faces now in true darkness. Leon’s head was in his hands, but Dalyria was watching Astarion, her brows creased, and he thought it was the same look as when she was trying to solve the puzzle of a difficult mark, that analytic disassembling of a thorny tangle down to its simplest roots. She hesitated—she opened her mouth—
The door swung open, the sudden dreadful glare of torchlight forcing Astarion to wince and cover his eyes. But it was only Godey, no Cazador with him, and the skeleton said nothing as he shut out the torchlight once more, took up his habitual place by the door, and grew still.
“Just consider it,” Astarion said into the quiet, and then he lay back, his hands linked behind his head, and waited with them for dawn.
—
Morning came. After centuries in this palace they could all tell, even without windows, and in a matter of minutes dawn had arrived in full. Astarion sat up and murmured Tav’s name. She was slower to rouse, sweating profusely again, and when she woke it took longer than he liked for her eyes to focus on his face. “Come on, darling,” he said, trying to hide the worry. “You’ll want to be awake for this one.”
“Do you think he’d be willing to put it off a day until my hand heals?” She rubbed the base of her skull, groaned as the movement put new strain on her lacerated back, and forced herself to a sitting position. “Listen, Astarion.”
Her tone had changed. Sober now, serious—he knew suddenly what she was going to say and recoiled. “Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t you dare.”
“Listen, you’ve got to think about it. If something happens—if there’s a chance, and you have to—”
“I am not leaving you behind!” he said furiously, and let the tadpole smack her upside the head with his anger to boot. “What kind of monster are you? Appalling. Atrocious. Be quiet and prepare yourself for escape like the rest of us.”
She laughed, that terrible nobility waning behind more familiar pains, and leaned sideways against her cage wall. “Fine. How awful you are. No wonder heroes never tried to save you—you wouldn’t have let them.”
That stung a little, but only because she meant it to. “Charming. When we get out of here, my dear, we’re going to have a very long chat about how to stage a proper rescue.”
“The master is coming,” Dalyria said suddenly, and they all fell quiet as the door swung open.
Cazador.
Dressed in his finest embroidered tunic, a chain of gems stretching from shoulder to shoulder, a heavy jeweled pin at his high collar. He wore a beautiful dagger at his waist, the stone glowing a hot white. His dark hair had been lacquered in place and shone in the torchlight; his boots were new, the leather still gleaming, and they squeaked faintly when he walked. Astarion suppressed a maddened laugh.
“Godey,” Cazador said in that infuriating pompous tone that made Astarion want to break every one of his pointed teeth, “Take dear Dalyria and Leon to the ceremonial circle. I need to have one last chat with my stubborn, erring child.”
“Yes, yes, my master,” Godey said, unlocking the cage door, and his siblings’ eyes flared with their master’s power as they crawled out and went, without speaking, with the skeleton. Cazador waited until the kennel door had closed and locked before sweeping the rats away in one smooth gesture and coming to stand before Astarion’s cage.
For a while he said nothing. Astarion let the silence linger, aware this was as challenging as anything else here, and then Cazador at last shook his head and tutted. “How it pains me to see you like this, my child. Fallen so far. Become such a base, corrupted version of yourself. I trained you to be so much more.”
“You trained me,” Astarion said, each word clipped, “to be your puppet. Dancing here and there at your every whim, torturing others, torturing myself—no. I’m done with that. And I’m done with you.”
“Such pretty words from a boy kneeling to me in supplication.” Cazador leaned over the cage, rapped his staff against the iron bars. “How impotent you must have felt, knowing the truth of my little ritual. Knowing what would happen to you and to each of my children, and finding none of them would believe you. And despite all your efforts, I have called you home again to die and you have come, obedient as ever.”
Find the rage. Keep it, stoke it. Let it swallow up the fear. “I’m not dying today, Cazador. It doesn’t matter what you think.”
“You are, boy.” Cazador straightened. “You will be consumed, and I will become the Vampire Ascendant, and I will have to find new ways to sate my returned…appetites.”
Astarion realized a half-second too late. The staff lifted—Tav’s cage door flew open—and Tav herself was yanked out by strands of red-lit Weave like a marionette. Cazador drew her near with a gesture of his staff, dangled her in the air between Astarion’s cage and himself like a child’s toy, her body held fixed and motionless by his master’s magic at her wrists, her waist, her throat. Her bare toes stretched for the ground and could not reach it.
“You son of a bitch,” Astarion snarled, knuckles white around the iron grating. “You godsdamned monster. I’m going to tear you apart and believe me, I will relish it—”
“Now, now,” said Cazador, and he stepped closer to Tav’s shredded back, closer again, until his chest pressed fully against her from behind. Cazador still held the staff in one hand; with his other he caressed her cheek, her neck, letting his fingers dip beneath the collar of her shirt and drag along the length of her collarbone. “You see? Everything you have belongs to me. It always has, dear child,” and Cazador laughed, he laughed, and reached up to brush a loose strand of hair from Tav’s eyes. She tried to bite him, teeth bared like an animal. Cazador snatched his hand back, laughed again, and wrapped his fingers loosely around her throat.
“I thought to give her to Petras,” he said, tone light, as if Astarion was not going to break the cage bars apart with his bare hands. “Last night, perhaps, as a reward for his very loyal service. Or maybe Violet—you and I both know she loves her little games, don’t we?” Cazador’s fingers began to tighten, the flesh of Tav’s throat going white under the pressure. “But it must never be said I was unfair to any of my children; I must not appear to have favorites. And then I thought to myself, perhaps she was intended to be a gift for me.”
Tav swore, choked for air, and Astarion could not find any purchase at the gate, not a single hinge or nail or solder he could tear loose—he shook the cage door in fury and shouted—
Cazador was smiling. “Yes, I thought. Perhaps that would be the most fitting of all. I will need new slaves after the ritual, will I not? Fresh blood, sired by a true Ascendant, with none of the misguided preconceptions of my weaker children.” He slid his hand higher on Tav’s neck, thumb digging hard into her jaw, and wrenched her head to the side. She was writhing as much as the spell would let her, her wrists fixed in place at her sides, her hands clenching and unclenching around nothing. Her chest heaved as she gasped fruitlessly for air.
Cazador bent, opened his mouth, and let the pointed tips of his fangs come to rest on the side of her neck. Her pulse jackrabbited in her throat, strong enough Astarion could see it from where he knelt in black dread. Cazador inhaled sharply and gave a long, satisfied sigh. “Ah, that smell of fear. Blind panic from an animal who knows it is about to die. It is the most pure smell in the world.” Cazador inhaled again, shuddered, let his teeth drag up towards Tav’s ear and then down again to the curve of her shoulder. “Here, I thought. Or here, or here. So many fitting places. I could even leave her with a mark like yours, to remember you by.”
Astarion threw a memory at her blindly. He couldn’t think—had no idea—something about Lae’zel and a silver sword—but it ricocheted away, recoiling off her terror like rain off glass. “Cazador, you fucking—”
“But in the end,” Cazador continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “I decided it would be best to wait until after to make a decision. Don’t you think that’s wisest, dear child?” He withdrew his teeth and pressed his lips instead to Tav’s throat in a facsimile of a kiss. Then again, higher, and then to the skin just beneath her ear. Her eyelids had begun to flutter, her fingers going limp, her eyes rolling back in her head. “Even cattle like this may be transformed into a greater purpose. Better to wait and be most certain what that purpose ought to be. And I must confess, child,” he added, and there was such vicious glee in his voice it made Astarion nauseous, “that I find your worrying over her destiny, even at the moment of your own death, to be a most delicious fate indeed.”
“I—will kill you—” Astarion spat, seething, the words almost stuttering over each other in his rage.
Cazador laughed. He lowered his staff at the same time he released Tav’s throat. The magical bindings vanished all at once, and she collapsed in a gasping heap. Cazador bent over her, still smiling, and shook his head. “Such a pathetic display,” he said softly. “I see why the boy thought himself so well-matched to you.”
She reached up for him, gasping out something too hoarse to understand, but she had no strength left and Cazador moved easily from her grasp. With a wave of his staff, she was swept smoothly back into her kennel and the door clanged shut. “And now you, my dear boy. I confess, as amusing as this all has been, I have not waited centuries to be denied my feast a moment longer.”
His grated door swung open. Astarion hardly noticed. He was fixed on Tav across the room, her shoulders heaving as she sucked in air, as she cradled her broken hand against her stomach and tried to rise. Sharp red light burst around Astarion’s wrists, dragging him forcibly from the cage. His head twisted over his shoulder as Cazador pulled him inexorably towards the door. “Tav?” he called, and the sound was pathetic and wounded and so, so small— “Tav, darling—”
“Astarion,” she tried to say, but it was all wrong, distorted and rasping, thick with pain. Not like this. The last time he heard his name from her—not like this, not here, not this wretched broken horror—
Cazador smiled, shortened the leash on his wrists even further, and then they were in the hall. Astarion stumbled in a blind daze down the familiar, hated carpets behind his master. The kennel door closed silently at his back; the lock fell into place.
Oh, gods. He was losing her. He was losing her despite everything they’d been through, everything they’d suffered. He blindly reached back for her with his mind, desperate to hear his name in a different way—the right way, as if she loved him—
There. He’d found her. Her emotion was immense, as if he stood before some towering wave, ready to die when it fell. But somehow—not what he’d expected—not the savage grief, not the fear. This was something else, something maddened and powerful and almost—ecstatic—
He shook his head, trying to force his senses to clear, trying to force his own horror to make way. She burst over him again, all-encompassing as a thunderstorm. With a new and painful amazement he recognized her feeling for what it was.
Triumph.
Images flashed through his mind almost too quickly for him to understand. He saw himself, kneeling in the cage, his own unfamiliar face a rictus of rage—felt Cazador’s teeth scrape across his throat—felt the cool weight of a metal pommel slip between his fingers, the lifting catch of a clasp forced loose. Spots in his vision as his air choked away—desperate to breathe—and a sudden drop, and the lace-delicate slide of the jeweled pin from Cazador’s collar.
Victory, again. She was nearly drunk with it. The long pin thrust into the lock of her cage and twisted, the heavy click of coaxed tumblers, her cage door slamming open. Free. Armed, Cazador’s beautiful dagger clenched in her good hand. A question—where—
Astarion gasped, stumbled, and used the moment of Cazador’s disgust to shut his eyes. He sent her memories as fast as he could summon them: potions in Godey’s table for when the master required quicker recovery, the shelf in the side room where the kennel key was kept. The turns through the mansion—left—up the stairs—there was a door to be locked with a magic seal, she must be quick, quick—
Comfort. Reassurance. The flush of healing from at least two potions, the bitter aftertaste of some third brew—invisibility, he thought—and safely into the hallway even if there’d been no time to find her rapier. Feverish excitement—they were going to kill Cazador—they were going to kill Cazador—
Caution, this time Astarion’s own. Until Cazador released his bindings there would be no rescue at all, only death. Be careful. Be cautious.
Astarion felt Tav’s hand brush lightly over his back, and his knees nearly buckled with relief. Cazador snarled and yanked him nearer as they passed from the hall into the ballroom. It was full of wolves—werewolves, he thought with blank surprise—and he grimaced as their noses turned inquisitively to Cazador and his dragging spawn, but with a word from his master they went back to their feasting. All the guests from last night’s ball, now only corpses, now only—
They passed together into the hallway to Cazador’s study, where Astarion had never been, and descended by a peculiar elevator into the green gloom of a massive cellar. More than a cellar—a ruin, ancient and enormous and reeking with the stench of fear. There were spawn here.
There were a lot of spawn here.
The hall was lined with tall grated cells on either side. As they passed Astarion could see shapes moving within them, more than should ever have been pressed into such a small space. There, on the left—even smaller shadows than expected, red eyes peering through the bars and clawed hands reaching out for him. Little hands, hisses from young voices. The Gur children. The children he’d taken for Cazador months ago and promptly forgotten, because what else could have been done? And on the right, in the cell at the end of the row—
“Sebastian,” Astarion gasped, and this recoil was very real.
He knew the face behind that bronze grating. Handsome, once. Shy. Dark brows—long, dark hair. A full, expressive mouth that had smiled at him, that had returned his kiss so sweetly it’d broken his heart. He stared at Astarion now with red eyes and no expression at all. Sebastian, here. After all this time— “You kept them,” Astarion said, numb with horror. “You kept them all.”
“Of course I did, dear boy.” Cazador laughed, condescension at his obvious idiocy. “Most of them, anyway. I did have my needs, you know. But the Rite of Profane Ascension is a powerful ritual, and it requires a great number of souls. Surely you did not think your death alone could provide such power?”
“Seven spawn. Seven thousand victims—"
“I know,” Cazador said proudly, and a new rush of rage swept through Astarion, scorching out the numbness. “It amazes even me that I should rule such a glory.”
“A glory built by seven spawn on their backs,” Astarion said mockingly, and Cazador yanked his wrists hard enough he stumbled. His master began to turn back to face him—a flash of anxiety from Tav, whose potion was nearly gone—and Astarion straightened and sneered. “But who better for you to impress, hm? You’ve always been so in love with the sound of your own voice.”
Cazador’s lip curled, and he flung Astarion by the wrists down the flight of stairs before them. The first stair hit him hard in the small of his back; by the second he’d caught himself, and the rest of the tumble he managed with moderate control. He let himself sprawl at the bottom of the stairs, blinking away the stars from the impossibly high ceilings of this cavernous place. Cazador descended after him, staff tapping on each step, his red eyes glowing.
“This endless prattle,” Cazador said, the words stretched and quavering with anger, lips curled back to bare his fangs. “Your empty boasting, your tired jokes—I have endured you for so long, boy, and I will have what is my right!”
Power seethed and bit the air behind him. Astarion struggled to one knee and glanced over his shoulder—a great central dais, his siblings already suspended around its edges in red pillars of light, horror on their immobile faces—an empty place for him on the far side. The fear began to rise again, bitter, churning like the sea.
Trust me. Tav. Her fingers cupped carefully around his heart, an endless surety. I won’t leave you. I’m here. Trust me.
He trusted her.
“Fuck you,” Astarion snarled as Cazador reached him, his wrists still manacled with red light, and he pushed to his feet. He’d meet his doom standing if nothing else. “Fuck you, and fuck everything you’ve done to me!”
Cazador laughed again, tinged with madness now, and flung out his staff. Astarion was whipped backwards, thrown in a trice across the whole of the dais to the waiting, empty platform, where the pillar of red light blazed down in unholy fire to hold him still. Cazador stepped to the center of the dais where a thousand runes joined together in a fiery glow, lifting his staff above his head. The impotent rage swallowed Astarion whole—he could not move—he was so afraid—the scars burned—
Trust me.
“Ecce dominus!” Cazador cried, and the great stairway behind them exploded.
Cazador spun on his heel and threw up a hand against the orange flames, against the fractured stone and shrapnel screaming towards them. “What is this?” he howled, and then something slammed into Astarion from behind with tremendous force, and he was bodily thrown from the red light to the dais below.
He twisted on instinct to soften the landing. Tav landed hard beside him—Tav!—but she tucked into a roll, and in a moment she was on her feet again, reaching down for him to help him up. “Got you,” she said breathlessly. “Promised I would.”
“Yes,” Astarion managed, taking her hand, and as she pulled him to his feet she thrust Cazador’s dagger into his fingers. “Darling—I don’t—”
“Cazador first,” she said, her eyes bright and hard as diamonds. “Him first. Everything else can wait for after.”
“Yes,” he said, stronger now, and he turned just in time to see emerging from the fiery explosion a screaming Karlach, Shadowheart looking exceptionally furious, a bear, and Gale.
They’d come. They’d come for him, or at least for Tav, and right now it amounted to the same thing. The bear rocked up to its hind legs, tall as a mountain, and roared. “Is that—gods, is that—”
“You think you’re going to touch our Astarion?” Karlach bellowed as she reached the dais, every inch of her afire with vengeful rage. Shadowheart’s mace flashed like a star. “We’re here to break you to pieces, you fucking vamp!”
“You’ll never fight alone again,” Tav said, seizing his arm, and her smile could have outshone the sun.