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Part 8 of Something Real
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Published:
2023-12-04
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2023-12-15
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18,854
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3/3
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Thou Hast Bound Bones

Chapter 3

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Astarion was having a great deal of trouble understanding the last ten minutes.

Cazador had begun the ritual. He understood that. Tav had bowled him out of place to save him; that made sense too. She had pressed a dagger into his hand—Cazador’s dagger—and that weight was grounding, a real and measurable coldness against his palm. But somewhere in that mess Karlach had taken a flying leap to the center of the dais with a shout, and Gale was weaving his arms in a great fiery circle from the nearest platform, and Shadowheart and the bear-shaped Halsin had split to flank a number of Gur undead that had come from—somewhere—and the idea that their party had come for him, that they had come to help, was beyond his comprehension.

Someone recoiled into him; he automatically twisted away and dropped low. The ghoul opened its reeking maw and shrieked—its putrid breath washed over him and his stomach churned—then instinct took over and he thrust the dagger twice into its gut. It recoiled, swiped with its claws; he ducked easily within its guard and stabbed again. The ghoul staggered backwards two steps, three—and went rigid under the brilliant rivulets of electricity that chased up and over every inch of its grey skin. Astarion straightened as the ghoul fell to its knees, then to its face, and did not move.

Gale stood behind it, a perfectly smarmy grin on his face. “Well, well,” he said, and doffed a little half-bow that made Astarion want to pull his robes over his head and push him off a stair. “Fancy meeting you here, my friend.”

Time for that later. “I must kill Cazador. And Tav needs healing—you must get her to Shadowheart—”

Gale’s eyes flicked over Astarion’s shoulder, and he whirled just in time to catch the werewolf in the throat with his blade. Fire erupted from Gale’s fingers at the same moment, hot enough Astarion winced and leaned away. The rancid stink of burned hair filled his nose; the werewolf fell back, shrieking. Astarion flung up the dagger. “Gale!”

“All right, fine! Where is she?”

“What do you mean, she’s right—” But Tav was gone. Astarion spun on his heel. The battlefield was a wreckage, both sides joined in earnest. Shadowheart was engaged with Cazador, her holy mace stripping him from his misty escape over and over; Karlach had picked up the body of a ghoul and was beating two more with it. Halsin, still a bear, was wrestling with the largest wolf of the pack on the far side of the dais, a handful of other wolves nipping at his sides wherever they could find purchase. And Tav—and Tav—

“There!” said Gale, and his eyes lit white.

Astarion did not wait to discover what spell the wizard intended. Chatterteeth—the wretched little skeleton—had found Tav two platforms over and was casting something red and dangerous. She’d found some cheap dagger and brandished it before her, two ghouls dead at her feet, but there were three more encroaching alongside the skeleton and he would not reach her in time, would not—

Chatterteeth loosed the spell. Gale shouted behind him and a beam of light streaked forward, choking off the spell before it could land. Tav laughed, a wild victorious thing, and thrust the knife above her head in victory. “Gale, you’re wonderful!” she cried, and a werewolf rose behind her to sink its teeth into her shoulder.

Tav screamed and dropped to one knee. Astarion pelted the last few yards and stabbed three times in quick succession—kidneys, heart, base of the skull—then seized the beast and wrenched it off her. More fire snapped past him—Gale again, and again the stench of burnt fur—and Astarion threw himself low between Tav and Chatterteeth’s grinning broken jaw, the ghouls, the lumbering undead Gur.

“Darling,” he said tightly, “you’re going to need to get up. Right now.”

“I’m up,” she gasped, and he felt her grasp at his waist as she pulled herself to her feet. “I’m all right. It was the bad hand anyway—I’m all right—”

“Here!” Karlach shouted, and she threw with incredible strength something thin and glittering towards them. Tav’s rapier. He realized it the moment before she caught it, her fingers looped into the silver curve of the hilt as if she had never let it fall. “You too, fangs!” Karlach shouted again, though this throw was hampered by the ghoul latching onto her arm and shorting the motion. Still, the dagger had the distance if not the height, and it spun perfectly towards Astarion’s bare feet. He stopped it with his heel, then flicked it up to his waiting hand.

“I think, my dear,” he said, the rush of battle surging in his veins, a ferocious grin creeping across his face, “it’s finally time for some proper slaughter.”

Chatterteeth’s bony fingers began to trace new sigils in the air, bringing with them the bite of Weave. Astarion darted forward, then to the side—Tav blurred past him, so fast, so fast when she wanted to be—as he caught Chatterteeth under the second rib with an offhand strike. Tav was already behind the thing; she thrust her rapier through the back of the skull until it emerged from the empty eye socket, twisted her arm, and wrenched upwards. The skeleton howled like the damned, the magic that gripped it together warring with their blades; Astarion struck again at the join of the shoulder and the skull tore free. Tav flicked it from the end of her sword like water and it rattled across the platform, tumbled over the edge, and vanished. The skeleton collapsed in a jangling heap.

Tav drew herself up. Her back straightened beneath her shredded shirt, her shoulders grew square and strong. She flourished her rapier in her good hand, her eyes glittering. Blood soaked her left sleeve; her left hand was still badly swollen. Her feet, like his, were bare.

She was the most glorious thing he had ever seen.

“Yes,” she said, fierce as sunlight. “You and me, Astarion. Yes.”

Now the ghouls. This dance was effortless, even wounded. A quick flash in, both blades, one-two and out as fast as he could. The creature whirled to face him—then Tav like lightning from behind, the razor tip of her rapier piercing hearts and guts and throats with monstrous precision. One last strike from him if she’d left anything alive—less and less common as they’d grown stronger. Again. Again.

He did not need to search for her when they fought like this. There was no doubt. There would never be doubt. He expected her sword and it came. She heard the measured call of his knives and finished the rhythm every time. One-two—a pause—a strike. One-two—the pause again—the ring of steel.

They each fought well enough alone. Together, he was not sure they could be stopped.

Astarion lost count of their enemies. More ghouls, more undead Gur, werewolves, a swarm of very irritating bats. They slaughtered them all, tore through them like paper. They were going to win. Tav fought with him and their companions fought with him and it did not matter that Cazador stood here still, that the profane ritual still hummed and sang around them with an evil that vibrated in his teeth. He felt alive, his daggers whirling around his fingers, his limbs strong and ready and responsive, elation and vengeance and rage and justice all crushed together to make his skin electric.

The last wolf fell to Tav’s blade. And there, just beyond—

“Cazador!” Astarion shouted, and as his master spun away from a very bruised Shadowheart Astarion sank his dagger into his chest. “This is only the start,” he snarled, his face so close to Cazador’s he could feel the air move. “I won’t let you win. You will suffer for everything you did to me—”

“What I did to you?” Cazador sneered, and he vanished beneath the blade before reappearing a few feet away. He was not unharmed—Shadowheart and Karlach had been busy—and he leaned heavily on his staff, clutching at his side where his fine tunic had been split to bone. Burns and scrapes were scattered over his pale skin; one large patch of hair at his temple had been sheared off. “What I did to you—the gifts I gave you! Immortality—a family—the honor of my service! Ungrateful child!”

“Oh, yes, and what an honor it was!” Fire surged to his left—Gale, ready as always. The blazing rays struck Cazador squarely in the chest, and Astarion burst through the sparks and struck again. Cazador, bleeding, flung himself back into mist. Astarion raised his voice. “The torture! The compulsion! The kidnapping of thousands!”

“He’s here!” Shadowheart shouted, throwing up her hand. A towering radiant light crashed down in a gold pillar, ripping Cazador from shadow into corporeality again. Astarion flung a knife; it lodged in Cazador’s ribs, just below his heart, and he screamed and vanished.

A gasp, behind him now. “I had to hone you!” his master cried, but he’d reappeared too close to Halsin, who dropped an enormous bear paw on his shoulders and sent him crashing to the ground. The chain of gems shattered into a thousand pieces; the staff clattered away out of reach. “I had to—make you perfect—”

Two strikes this time, both in the back of his shoulder, before Cazador fled again. “Perfect? Perfect?” Astarion threw back his head and laughed. “I may not know what perfect looks like, Cazador, but I know enough to realize it’s nothing like you.”

“Here, fangs!” Karlach to his right, her strong arms hooked under Cazador’s armpits, her fingers linked behind the back of his neck. “Caught the little weasel for you right here!”

A hefty slice to the gut, nearly to the knife’s hilt. “You cannot do this,” Cazador said in a thin voice, frightened, frightened. Astarion wanted to drink it in like wine. “I forbid it, boy. I forbid you!”

Karlach thrust him away from her, disgusted. Cazador fell back, staggering, to the center of the dais. He bled from a dozen wounds, his mouth slack, his eyes wide with terror and the abrupt inevitability of death. Six silent spawn hovered in red glows around them, watching, waiting; seven thousand more waited behind them, bound in blood and shadow.

Astarion stalked forward, Cazador’s dagger a cool and steady weight in his hand. Karlach fell in behind him, blazing with righteous anger—and Shadowheart to her right, and Gale and Halsin to his other side. He felt powerful. He felt invincible, not because of the ritual but because his companions stood unflinching at his back.

More than companions. Friends.

Cazador stumbled backwards until he collided with Tav’s outstretched hand. “No,” he said to Astarion. He fell to his knees, looked up in supplication, and he was pleading, pathetic, so very pathetic and so very weak, “no, no, no—”

Astarion seized his throat. He met Tav’s eyes over Cazador’s shoulder. A promise there, an endless safety; a love that knew nothing at all of fear. A love that made him strong.

I won’t leave you. I’m here. Trust me.

He thrust in the blade. One-two.

Her rapier drove forward, her eyes burning.

The strike.

Only flashes, after that. A red mist, fleeing into marble. His master’s body torn from its coffin, the slump of ragdoll limbs on stone.

A thought, faint as starlight, of the unfinished ritual—and discarded again. Unneeded. Unwanted. Sebastian’s face—Dalyria’s eyes. Tav’s fingers linked carefully between his. A lifetime ago, perhaps. Perhaps tomorrow.

Now, first. Here, the knife. Cazador’s knife. His master’s hair clenched in his fist—

One stab. Not enough. Two—three—five—over and over and over, beyond counting, until his arm was on fire and his skin grew slick with blood.

His eyes burned. The world went soft, blurred. In the distance, he thought someone was crying.

I’ve been dead in the ground for long enough. It’s time to try living again.

“Knock, knock,” Tav said.

Astarion, reclined on the nest of pillows inside his tent, glanced over to where she stood in his open doorway. The moon was high over her shoulder, starlight tumbling down her cheek, and despite that they’d been together—quite together—only a few hours ago, a lazy, pleasant anticipation curled through him. She’d bathed again as he had—he realized with some annoyance they’d missed the opportunity to share—and her hair was tied back once more, if without her habitual twists along one side. Hard to manage, he supposed, with one hand bandaged and splinted to the elbow. Shadowheart must have been at her again after they’d returned from the cemetery.

“Can…I come in?”

“Yes, of course,” he said belatedly, and let his head drop back to where it had rested on his arm. “How vampirically patient of you, darling.”

“Maybe I like hearing you say you want me here.” She ducked into the tent, drew the flap mostly closed behind her, and sat beside him on the pillows.

“I most assuredly want you here,” Astarion said, and he ran his hand up her good wrist, her forearm, her shoulder. He’d left a handful of candles burning on a low table earlier; the light brought ruddy warmth to her cheeks, caught in gold glints in her eyes. “And in the alley behind that fine tavern we never stay in, and among those pretty willow trees we stopped by yesterday, and anywhere else you can think of.”

He expected her to laugh; instead she only smiled, a tightness in its edges, and caught his hand to kiss his fingertips. “I couldn’t sleep. I keep thinking about you. About everything that’s happened.”

He grimaced. “I suppose it was too much to hope you were only here for my body.”

“You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and in the heat of battle you look like a feral god of death,” Tav said, and he felt again that tilting wonder that always came when she admired him and meant it, “but really, I’d rather talk.”

“Gods, why?” he asked, and he threw his arm petulantly over his eyes. “It’s over. Done. The bastard is dead and the ravenous horde has been loosed into the bowels of the Underdark. Godey is a pile of nasty little bone-bits in a tin pail. I’ve sworn whatever’s left of my shriveled dead heart to you in cripplingly solemn devotion. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“No.” Tav tugged his arm down. He could not read her expression in candlelight, even as familiar as her face had become over the months. Quietly, she pressed her palm to his cheek, leaned down over him, and kissed him on the mouth. It was a gentle kiss, not very long, and then she rested her forehead against his. She said, “You could have left.”

He cupped her jaw in his hands, pulling her away from him until he could see her face. “What are you talking about?”

“So many times.” Her lips pressed together so hard they went white. “In the first fight at the docks. I felt it—you still had some magic in your boots. You could have escaped. You probably should have.”

Was that what this was all about? “Darling…”

“And then again during the fight with Cazador. I saw you, with Gale. I didn’t mean to get so separated, but that wolf…I guess it doesn’t matter much. But the point is: you could have gone to fight Cazador, or you could have come to help me, and you chose the latter. Again.” Tav looked away. “You didn’t have to go through any of that. Any of that suffering, any of that waiting. Not for me. I wish you hadn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Astarion said, astonished, “am I in trouble because I tried to help you?”

“No!” She jerked back to face him. “No, not at all—damn it! I’m trying to apologize, Astarion! For being a—a dead weight. For holding you back from your revenge, even if was just a few minutes. For what happened in the kennel—I know it upset you. I wanted you to face him with—with an unshakable courage, if that makes any sense. And instead I became a ball and chain clamped around your ankle.”

Flabbergasted, Astarion could only stare. That she had such a fundamental misunderstanding of his decisions—that she genuinely believed she had become— “Gods above,” he said at last, and he pushed up to a sitting position. “I have done you wrong, my dear, haven’t I?”

“What?”

“I love you,” he said, and here again came that little shock of novelty at meaning it. “Considering you’re the one who introduced me to the concept—at least, as something other than a way to manipulate a target into Cazador’s clutches—I’m surprised you’re struggling so much with the idea.”

“I love you, Astarion, but I don’t see why—”

Good gods. “Fine, you little idiot, we’ll try this a different way. Let’s revisit, shall we, the moment where Cazador was pulling me along towards the ritual and you’d been left behind in the kennel. A lockpick in your hand, a dagger—I don’t know, clenched between your teeth or something. You managed to break your way out and had even swigged some potions from Godey’s table. Any of this ringing a bell in that cavernous brain of yours?”

“Some faint and distant chime, perhaps.”

“Then let’s review. You, free and clear. Me, horribly doomed. And you chose to…” He let the word drag up in a question.

At least she was smiling now. “I chose to save you.”

“You chose to save me,” he said grandly. “Why was that, do you think?” She leaned up to kiss him in answer, and he turned his head, tutting. “Ah, ah—we use our words when we’re facing hard truths, don’t we, my dear? We don’t use physical pleasure as a distraction for both one’s partner and oneself.”

“You rotten—damned hypocrite.” Still, her fingers were gentle as she touched his cheek, trailed down to the two puncture scars on the side of his neck, and came to rest above his quiet heart. At last, slowly, she said, “The idea of leaving you behind never even crossed my mind. The only thing I wanted—more than anything else, even more than getting out—was to make sure you were safe.”

“Yes, good,” Astarion said, and tried to ignore the powerful affection that fluttered in his stomach. “Now, I know this is difficult for you, but I need you to imagine that I—” he gestured pointedly, as if for a small child “—feel the same way about you.”

“Hm.” She let her hand lift, curl around his hand. “You found me more important than escaping.”

“Yes.”

“More important than killing Cazador right then.”

“Yes.”

“More important than killing Cazador ever?”

Now she was grinning, the wretch. “Let’s just be grateful we never had to find out,” he said after a moment, and his eyes dropped to the red blanket pooled behind her. “Darling, about—” Damned tight throat. “About what happened with Cazador—”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it ever again.” Her grip tightened on his fingers. “Please don’t misunderstand. He’s just—I know it was a drop in the bucket compared to what you went through, and I don’t want—and it did hurt, I won’t lie, I think the fires of Avernus would be better—but the only thing that made it unbearable was that he did it in front of you. That he made you watch.”

He felt like someone had taken a hammer to him, breaking him apart like mirror-glass. All the shards still trapped in place, raw edges glittering and brilliant, held together only by the tension of the frame. “How very godsdamned altruistic of you.”

“I’ve made you angry. I didn’t mean to.” Her voice was strained.

Astarion tipped his head back and stared at the cloth ceiling of his tent, taking in several sharp breaths through his nose. The air was not particularly needed, but the gesture was calming nonetheless. “Just for once,” he managed, “for the sheer originality if nothing else, I would very much like it if you would be furious for your own sake, instead of somebody else’s.”

Because that was what Cazador’s kennels did to a person. Stripped out the weakness, the shame, the horror at others’ pain, because to show any part of a heart was to have it crushed underfoot like a grape. There was the agony one experienced and there was what had to be done to make it stop, and everything else outside of that—anyone else outside of that—was nothing. He knew, distantly, he was being unfair—knew that one night was a far cry from two hundred years, and yet—that she should have come out the other side still more worried for him

Such a fucking joke. Of course, vicious little cretin that he was, he’d be furious that she had not emerged selfish, broken, twisted beyond all recognition. Of course he’d be furious that she still had any love left in her after Cazador’s rancid touch. He didn’t even want that torment for her, and yet—one night

“Astarion.”

Gentle. Warm. He closed his eyes and let his head fall into the curve of her shoulder. “Ugh.”

“I was angry for myself.” Her fingers began stroking through the curls at the nape of his neck. “If that helps at all. I still wanted to kill him for what he did to you, I did, but after—that night—it was mostly for me. I didn’t want to tell you because your claim was so much more important. But I was viciously glad to watch you kill him. I enjoyed every moment he suffered.”

Good. That helped, a little. The fury began to ebb, then waned further as he forced his grip on it to ease, finger by white-knuckled finger. “Oh? Do you wish I’d left a tiny speck of him for you to destroy?”

The words were muffled in her shoulder, but she laughed regardless, and her fingers slid further into his hair. “Maybe a bit. What’s one evening as a percentage of your time with him? I think Gale’s on watch with Wyll, I’ll go ask.”

He looped an arm around her waist. He could not stop the rage, perhaps, but he could choose not to keep it. “You will not.”

She laughed again. They fell silent a few minutes, her fingernails lightly scratching over his scalp. The candles popped, flared cheerfully, and settled again. Then she said, “I hope you know how wonderful you were today. And yesterday, too, but mostly today. Not just to me.” She let out a sigh, as if the words came with difficulty. “But…I liked it the most, when you were protecting me.”

Astonishing, that even after all this time her compliments could still so disarm him. He cleared his throat. “My dear, we mustn’t pretend this quirk of yours is any sort of news. Shadowheart tried to defend you the day we met and I thought you’d throw yourself at her the moment you were free.” The memory came fondly now, though at the time he had still been frantic with terror, both at the tadpole and his sudden freedom. “‘I still need her,’ she said. You might as well have tied yourself to the laces of those very ugly boots she wore for so long. Gods, I’m glad those are gone.”

She snorted. “You know how much I like being needed.” Her hand stilled in his hair. “And on that subject…”

“Hm?”

“Earlier this evening, in the graveyard.”

“A much more pleasant reminiscence.” He hesitated, suddenly unsure. “For both of us, I hope.”

She tugged at his curls until he lifted his head. Her face was open, affectionate, a bit nervous. “That was one of the most perfect moments of my life,” she told him firmly, and a coil of warmth began unfurling in his chest. “It’s not that. I was wondering—I’m almost embarrassed to say it.”

“No secrets between us, darling. I do so hate surprises.”

Without quite meeting his eyes, she said, “You didn’t feed from me while we were together. Even when I thought you’d like to. You didn’t even ask. Why not?”

Astarion looked at her, surprised. “Why not? I should have thought the answer would be obvious.” He touched the side of her throat, very lightly. “I thought perhaps it might have been—a mite soon.”

She swallowed. “So it’s not that you—didn’t want me.”

This was abruptly getting out of hand. “Darling, I think you’d better explain yourself. Right now, from the start. Because if you think there is ever a moment when I’m not imagining sinking my teeth into you—including when they’re actually in you—you’re even thicker than I thought.”

Tav looked at him, her jaw set like she was going to war. For a moment he thought she still wouldn’t tell him, and he was taken aback by how much that hurt. Then, sudden and incongruous as Lae’zel deciding to take up formal dance, she reached up and covered his eyes with her hand. “Gods. I can’t tell you if you’re looking at me like that.”

“What—are you deranged? Get off.” He batted her hand away. “Cazador had you beaten within an inch of your life last night and now you can’t bare one shy corner of your heart to me? I knew your priorities were defective from the start, but I never imagined this.”

“I like it!” she burst out, glaring at him. “I like it every time. Not because it gets me off, you tosser—gods, this is why I didn’t want you looking at me—but because I like the way it—I feel close to you. I feel important to you. I feel like the Elder Brain itself could come through the door of your tent and it wouldn’t matter, because you’d still keep me safe.” Her lips pressed together so tightly they turned white. “I didn’t want to push, earlier. I thought it might have been too soon for you. Or that maybe, after Cazador—that you’d rather not, for a while. I would have understood. And the last thing I wanted after everything that happened was to smash my fist into a bruise.”

That affection surged suddenly like someone had thrown oil on a flame. It burst within him, bright and hot and blazing behind his ribs like a swollen little sun, impossible to contain. “How very considerate of you.”

She thumped his shoulder. “I’m being serious!”

“So am I, my love.” He gathered her against his chest, wrapped both arms around her tightly. She huffed, stiff as a board against him, but after a moment she began to relax, and eventually she let her chin land on his shoulder. His hand spread over her back; the wounds there were well on their way to healing, thanks to Shadowheart, though he could still feel the ridges if he tried. “You must understand, darling, enjoying the comfort of your consideration is a relatively new thing for me. Not many have been considerate to me over the centuries.” He turned his head, nosed a strand or two of hair out of the way, and kissed her cheek. “You are important to me, just so it’s known. The most important person in Faerûn, on the Material Plane, in any other sphere of existence you can think up. I’d move mountains for you, darling, even if I’d nick my nails in the process.”

“Astarion…”

“I do like…” Even now, this was a struggle. “I confess I’m relieved to hear you feel safe with me. You certainly know I do with you. I can’t remember the last time anyone was actually safe in my company, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything, and I’m glad—” The word stuck and he had to swallow. “Well. Considering my first time sampling your blood ended with your heart abruptly stopping, I’d understand if you had—reservations.”

She shook her head, and her voice was low. “No. Not for a long time now. I trust you with my life, Astarion. And even if you did take it over the edge,” she added, her cheek warm against his, “Shadowheart would patch me up soon enough.”

He shuddered, overwhelmed. “I appreciate that, but let’s not tempt fate if we don’t have to, hm?” He drew back, took her jaw in his hand, and kissed her. It was fond and pitiably sincere, and when it was over he looked her in the face. “Even if you told me now you’d never let me have a drop of blood again, I believe I’d still love you. I’d be ever-so-slightly completely devastated, but I’d love you all the same.”

“I like it when you take my blood.”

“I like taking it.”

She laughed, a little wild. “If you’ve been waiting for an invitation, consider this it. Standing offer, on tap.”

“One day you’ll tire of making such dangerous promises to me, darling.” He reached up around her back, drew her hair away from her neck with a hand that shook. “Where would you like it? Here?” He pressed his lips to the junction of her neck and shoulder, then a trifle higher. He felt her heart jump a beat or two, her neck arch up against his mouth; his skin thrummed with anticipation. “Here?”

“No, wait.” She turned in his lap until her back was against his chest, her knees bent above his crossed legs. She tilted her head to the side and leaned back against him. “Like this, I think.”

As Cazador had held her. As Cazador had dragged his damned fangs down her throat and threatened to turn her against her will. Astarion knew all too well how it felt to walk that knife’s edge of memory, craving respite from pain and the pain itself all at the same time, pricking a thumb on the blade’s tip over and over in the hope that one day it might stop hurting.

Better this way, perhaps. If she were so determined to thrust herself upon the dagger, at least here he could keep a firm grip on the hilt.

“All right,” he said at last, and she shivered. Gently, he ran his thumb along the stretched line of her neck, then up behind her ear, sliding her hair out of the way once more. He bent his head and kissed the skin beneath her jaw, and she shivered again. “Here?”

“No. Lower.”

He worked his way down her neck, feathering kisses after every freckle he passed, until her hand came up suddenly to twine into his hair. Her good hand, stretched a little awkwardly across herself, but the bad one resting in her lap was still splinted to the fingertips. Astarion touched her knuckles lightly, then reached up and cupped her jaw, steadying both of them, her pulse thundering under his touch as he kissed her neck again.

His bite would never be painless. He was sure of that. He still did what he could to keep it quick and clean as his teeth sank into her throat, and when she gasped he hummed in apology. But she wasn’t here for gentleness, not really, and it was no strength of his anyway, and when he slid out again and sealed his mouth over the wound she let out a sigh of relief and settled back against him.

He echoed the sound without pulling back. Her blood was a relief, not only for his thirst but for the knot of old fear that lingered even now. Delicious. Hot. Exhilarating in a way that made his fingers tingle and his nerves hum. Tinged, despite everything, with an odd, lopsided sorrow.

Intriguing, that even now her blood could hold surprises. The taste of her arousal he knew very well; their first meetings had been lush with it, her blood singing so sweetly for him he’d hardly had to touch her to help her finish. Embarrassment, satisfaction, anger, even annoyance—often at him—had all been swallowed and usually relished. Even that night in the shadow-cursed lands had been closer to grief. And later, when they’d been apart and she’d been politely trying to hide her more prurient moods, he’d begun to recognize the finer notes of her fondness, her affection. He’d learned to taste the shift as they themselves had shifted, changed, grown together—sometimes painfully—into something more.

But sorrow…sorrow was new.

Astarion closed his eyes, gathered every scrap of will left to him, and lifted his mouth away from her neck. He licked his lips despite himself and shuddered through the rush. “Darling…”

“Don’t stop. Please.” Her voice was thick with anguish.

“I won’t.” He turned her face to his. “But you must come back first. Wherever you’ve gone—it’s not here, and I won’t have it.”

She laughed, a little wet. “This familiar refrain.” She swallowed, gave a small shake of the head, and looked at him again with clearer eyes. “All right, all right,” she said, and the words were stronger too. “You win. You have my undivided attention.”

“As I should at all times.” He kissed her, leaving a smear of blood on her lower lip, before dropping his head again to her throat. His first draw was light, tentative, but she had kept her word, and her blood had lost that sorrowed tinge. Satisfied, he swallowed again more deeply, without reserve. He didn’t mind being her knife, but he’d be damned if he’d be her whip.

Her breathing evened out as he drank, her body growing lax and soft against his. He’d need to stop soon regardless—she’d begun to cool, and the candles were burning dangerously low—but he let himself enjoy without compunction the last few draws, her fingers still twisted in his hair, her splinted hand resting on his thigh. Never did he feel so strong as when he’d freshly fed, not just from the nature of her gift, but because it was a gift, and one she seemed inclined to continue giving in perpetuity. And now with Cazador dead, the idea that there might actually be some nebulous future out there for them, that there might be a chance to—but he was getting ahead of himself. Tav could be bad enough when she was feeling optimistic. No need to join her in that foolish, traipsing merriment just yet.

Here, first. He broke away, collected himself from the brief maddened joy that always followed a sated hunger, and licked the twin wounds until they began to clot. They closed even faster than usual—Shadowheart’s magic still at work, he supposed—and he kissed the curve of her jaw, her cheek, and her mouth. She kissed him back, let him reclaim the spot of blood he’d left there without complaint, and then she twisted in his lap and wrapped both arms around his shoulders and went still. Astarion pulled her even closer, until there was no space left between them, and she let out a hitching breath.

A peculiar feed. Hushed. Not only from the lack of sex, but from a surprising lack of desire. Normally his teeth in her stoked a delightful, mutual flame, even if sometimes that pleasure had been taken later and alone. He could count on one hand the number of times it had not, and every one of those had been due to total exhaustion.

This was something else. A comfort for aching sorrow, a bulwark against grief. He had not expected it. He did not, to his surprise, mind.

They stayed that way a long time. Every now and then she adjusted herself against him, let her unsplinted hand stroke over the back of his head; every now and then he pressed his mouth to the top of her shoulder. The candles ran down their wicks, sputtered, and went out, leaving them in cool grey moonlight and the faintest twist of smoke.

Eventually, soft in the dark, her cheek brushing against his, she said, “Astarion?”

“Hm?”

“I order you never to eat a rat again.”

He scoffed. “My master’s dead, darling. I don’t take orders from anyone, even you.”

“I demand it. I command it. I compel you.” She shook with laughter. “People only, for the rest of your days. Preferably me, but if you can get Lae’zel to say yes, I’ll pay you to let me watch.”

“You’re a perfect damned fool,” Astarion said agreeably. “And if you think I’d charge any less than ten crowns a head, you’ve lost what’s left of your addled mind.”

“I’m only addled when it comes to you, dear heart,” she said, and she leaned back just far enough to kiss him. “Let me stay here tonight.”

“Yes,” he said, and they settled themselves with familiar ease. Astarion lay back in his carefully arranged assortment of pillows, and Tav curled into his side with her head resting on his shoulder, one leg thrown over his, all three of his blankets pulled high to her chin. His tent was never warm with him alone, but with the addition of her heat, even slow as it came after a feed, it became almost cozy.

From where he lay he could see a strip of the night sky through the tent’s flap. A narrow column of black, a spattering of stars, the bare edge of a round white moon. Tav let out a long, slow sigh of utter contentment and shut her eyes.

You could have left.

So many times she might have chosen to leave. Not only tonight at the graveyard, but at Cazador’s palace, and after the first night he’d bitten her, and after the violence of their initial meeting. So many times he had been only a hairsbreadth from fleeing himself, overcome by the terrifying ordeal of freedom. Then again, later, petrified by the realization that he’d grown to care for someone after all, that he’d managed to get his hands on something he couldn’t bear to lose. Something precious. Something rare. But she hadn’t left, even when she should have, and neither had he.

But perhaps, he thought, that was what freedom might become, if he let it. He could choose to keep something safe, even when it hurt. He could choose to stay.

For two hundred interminable, excruciating years, he had been alone. Cazador had promised him new life, new family; he had not understood then that his master’s gifts would be so twisted, so corrupted. No choice, then, but to make his heart a stone. No other defense against the craven fear.

Now, like a dream startled into truth, he had stumbled headlong into a world where he was not only loved, he was liked. Where friends who knew his nature came to his defense regardless, with maces and bear claws and annoying smarmy smiles. Where, at the end of a long, painful day, he could sit with his lover and commiserate about the exhaustion and find comfort in her company, enough to make the next day’s journey a little better, a little less fraught, because the trouble would be shared. As if that stone had begun to crack with every hard step of their journey, revealing some secret gem hidden within, some new facet which glimmered with its own light.

Ah, but these were lofty, intangible thoughts, and he was free, well fed, and lying in the moonlight beside a beautiful woman who adored him. Tav tucked her head against his neck in her sleep, and Astarion closed his eyes. Enough. Enough for now. The hunger could be quieted after all; he could be satisfied with this.

He drew the blankets higher over her shoulder, buried his nose in her hair, and let the steady rhythm of her breathing sweep away the last of his fear, like cleansing, like readying the way for something new.

end.

Notes:

Sometimes you just have to stop fussing over a few words and let the darned thing go. Regardless, thank you very much for reading and commenting, and I hope you've enjoyed it!

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