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1
“I’m afraid I won’t be re-ruling on any decision I’ve handed down,” says a voice loudly from a nearby office. The door is open to the hallways of the court house and this late at night, there is not enough foot-traffic to mask the conversation or the contempt. “I don’t care who you are and, frankly, it’s a little undignified trying to corner me here after hours.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are, you imperious little shit?”
Cazador pauses in the hallway. Walking the streets of Baldur’s Gate openly and alone is not something he often bothers to do, but he’d had a meeting with his private attorney about a matter both personal and professional, and as a curiously good mood had been upon him he’d followed that lark to attend to the matter in person.
The ‘imperious little shit’ in question is a shockingly beautiful high elf seated at a well-appointed desk in a well-appointed office. This hall is the magistrates’ wing, so the silver-haired, crystal-eyed young man is clearly a judge of some variety. He’s also not looking up from the book he’s reading, ignoring the fuming man stood in his door.
He turns the page with slim, perfectly manicured fingers. Unbothered.
The howling man is only just recognizable as a member of House Abraxis: an old house of nobility fallen into mismanagement and disgrace but still, one of the founding families of Baldur’s Gate. So the lack of decorum from this bureaucrat is… notably insolent.
“I said, who do you think you are? Do you know what I can do to you—?”
“I think,” says the young magistrate coolly, still not looking up, “that I’m the judge who denied your business license on the grounds that it was, you know, hilariously illegal. But I also would have denied it for fun on the grounds that it was tacky.” The beautiful stranger looks up from his book at last, leveling a devastatingly lovely smile at the patriar stood over him. “If you’d like, I can recommend further action to the courts.”
“How dare you—?”
That pretty smile grows almost fanged in its viciousness. “Gross incompetence isn’t a crime, but defrauding the city intentionally?” He clicks his tongue like a chiding teacher.
Lord Abraxis loses his composure entirely—a disgraceful display—screaming for all to hear through the open office door. “I will not tolerate this kind of disrespect from a whelp jumped up on their position! You will show due deference, or I will have you—”
“Magistrate Ancunín, is there a problem here?”
The question comes from the Flaming Fist Sergeant who has stepped into the doorway. She’d come around the corner as the screaming escalated, looking very, very put upon. She’s a half-orc brute, ducking her head slightly under the door lintel to glare at the second son of a dying noble house like a mold she might need to scrub. (Again, such insolence.)
“I heard a ruckus. Ruckus is disrespectful when there’s courts in sessions.”
“Too right,” drawls the judge—Ancunín. “You should lower your voice, Lord Abraxis. You might disturb the business of important people.”
And then the beautiful young man looks past Lord Abraxis to him.
Lord Abraxis wheels around and pales when he recognizes Lord Cazador Szarr. Cazador likes that well enough to almost overlook the impudence of the young man so presumptively pulling him into confidence; he just stares silently at Abraxis, holding the tiny man’s gaze for the single second required to dissolve all sense of reason—and Abraxis breaks.
He literally flees the courthouse, babbling apologies.
Cazador watches the man’s retreat.
He imagines tearing the spine out of that receding back. Wounded things trigger such an… instinct in him, even now. But he sets it aside to look instead at the young man seated in his office.
Ancunín—not entirely devoid of sense—freezes momentarily when Cazador meets his eyes, and Cazador feels another echo of that long-suppressed instinct. This one is young. It’s subtle, the smell of young blood in the elven race, but Cazador can smell it from here—the silver-haired man can’t be more than fifty years of age. Yet here he is, a judge in the Upper City, a position that must have taken half a decade at least to acquire.
Not from old money then, this one.
Working class then, this one.
No right to talk down to his betters, this one.
Those pale eyes flicker, uncertain suddenly but unable to look away and—
“Shit, Astarion, stop riling up the nobility!” chortles the half-breed Sergeant, banging a fist on the door frame hard enough to startle. “Thought that Abraxis guy was gonna lose it!”
“I rile up everyone, darling. It’s part of my charm,” says the young man, Astarion, quickly putting on a smile for her. “Throw the book at everyone and that’s how you get”—a pause, distracted, like he’s looking for something—“a society.”
Cazador departs before the brute can reply. He has other business.
Later though, as he rests for the day, the name comes back to him—as does the way the young man’s eyes had started to dilate with unformed fear, and the instinct that triggers in him. He turns the name over in his mind.
Astarion.
Astarion Ancunín.
2
Acquiring the body of Ancunín’s legal work and residential documentation isn’t difficult.
The majority is public and what’s private is easily bought for by dependable third parties among the Zhentarim. A summary report and copies of every document are on his desk within the week and the story is exactly what he read off the boy at a glance: he’s from money, but new money. Two elven generations deep at most, a series of vineyards kept by family: far east, inland, and celebrated widely enough that Cazador recognizes the name.
Ancunín came to Baldur’s Gate of his own accord at just twenty and seven. One of a set of fraternal twins, the boy’s sister is dutifully attending to the family business in the east while her brother is here on the coast. Impudent thing, to desert his family so abysmally young to attend to personal interests in the city—the family does have old roots, if not old money.
But clearly no spine if they couldn’t bring their son of just twenty-seven to heel.
He lives in the Upper City, in an apartment overlooking the parks—a neighborhood that houses a mixture of the well-to-do and visiting officials. Oddly, his sister's name is on most of the initial correspondence with the landlord; she even co-signed the lease in absentia. But the rent payments all come from Ancunín's accounts, and have never been late in his decade plus of residency. He has a substantial sum to his name at the Counting House, enough that the interest it accrues would cover his living expenses without him needing to work at all.
He works anyway.
His magistrate’s salary is largely left to the banks or used to fund a lavish but primarily solitary existence. The Zhentarim watchdog hired to monitor the boy’s movements sends along scrying-eye recordings of Ancunín frequenting a series of favorite bars and restaurants, visiting high-end tailors to keep himself in the latest fashion—a creature of comfort taking great pleasure in any moment not committed to professional pursuits. He was certified in Balduran Law in just two years, installed as representation for just five before taking a position as magistrate for the last half decade.
At 39 years of age, he’s one of the youngest magistrates in the city even among his human peers.
His casework and rulings are summarily vicious: even first time offenders are punished to the full letter of the law. Nobility and beggars alike are afforded precisely the same level of mercy: none at all. He’s making a name for himself in his district as the man you send offenders to should you like to see them hang.
Abhorred or adored, the verdict is split down the middle on the subject of Astarion Ancunín.
Further recordings show Ancunín seated on his balcony in the mornings, cascades of carefully manicured wisteria and ivy draped along the walls around him, a warm drink in hand. He spends nearly an hour a day watching the sun rise and basking lazily in its glow—as though the sun is the thing to rouse him, not the tea.
He takes the evening shifts at the office, leaving in the early hours of the morning to trance at home and repeat his morning ritual. Balcony. Sun. Reading a book. Staring at the sea. Patronizing a selection of cafes and restaurants within walking distance of his apartments, where the staff afford him special attention and affection.
A decadent and selfish little thing living a decadent and selfish little life.
The wood-elf woman who runs The Moment’s Respite—an all-hours café that services primarily elven and half-elven clientele, in the wee hours when most other races are still abed—seems surprised when Ancunín doesn’t object to a stranger taking a seat at his corner table. She’s not surprised enough to check in on them though, smiling to herself as though pleased one of her regulars has company.
Ancunín’s probably never been charmed before.
If he has, he’s out of practice resisting, because his mind buckles instantly to vampiric hypnosis. He smiles at Cazador like he might an old friend. Up close like this, Ancunín is so ethereally beautiful it seems like his looks must be illusory, but they’re not. He’s authentic. An actual rarity. Fey blood running so deep it’s come right back to the surface in him; so lovely he could have anything he wanted without lifting a hand.
Open on the table, beside a mug of mulled wine, are notes on a case.
On the seat beside him is a satchel of books.
There’s ink on his fingertips.
Ancunín tells Cazador everything. About his casework, the harshest sentences he’s given out this month, his plans for the next four weeks, his last sexual conquest, what he thinks about when he’s touching himself alone in bed, how he’s most afraid to die, where he keeps his letters from his sister, how many people he’s allowed to fuck him and in what ways, what the tea blend is that he drinks every morning, why he watches the sunrise like it’s a ritual, his favorite cologne and where he buys it.
And then he invites Cazador to visit him at his apartment whenever he’d like.
Cazador has him say ‘master’, quietly, in the privacy of their corner booth. Has him say it over and over, like a plea, his eyes empty of anything but the dim adoration of the hypnosis and the commands that compel him and when Cazador leaves him at that table, Astarion recalls only that he was catching up with an acquaintance.
3
Astarion walks home alone most nights.
The Upper City is well patrolled and exceptionally safe, particularly in the three blocks between the courthouse and his apartments. Nevertheless, the half-orc Flaming Fist Sergeant, Bularia, sometimes insists on coming with him in case of potential assailants.
“Keeps them guessing,” she chortles, unaware of the vampire that has been trailing them, invisibly, for the last two blocks.
She leaves Astarion in the foyer of his apartment building. It houses about ten of these larger, luxury homes, and Astarion is one of the few long-term residents which makes him a favorite with the aging landlord, a gnomish man so old the smell of death has started to settle into his blood. He owns most of the buildings on this block and his extended family monitors the neighborhood for strange happenings like a pack of rats sniffing for trouble.
The building, like the neighborhood, is clearly chosen by people who have a particular interest in safety.
A shame.
When Cazador leans into the boy’s ear and tells him to leave the door open, he relaxes into the command like someone lies back into bathwater. His shoulders slacken, the command soaking into his mind, and he obeys. He doesn’t think anything of it when the heavy wood door shuts behind him of its own accord. There’s a shimmer of an arcane lock when it clicks closed. Charms against entry glitter on the windows.
None of it is of any use.
Cazador watches the boy go about his evening routine.
He puts his satchel down on a table near the door, shrugging his cloak off and tossing it over the back of an ornate but well-worn chaise. He pours himself a small glass of brandy, drinks it entire, then drops onto said chaise. He sets the empty glass on the floor by his foot, then drags both hands back through his soft, white curls, pushing the lot further back from his forehead.
Cazador watches him roll his neck, drop his head against the back of the couch, eyes closed, and that’s when Cazador leans down, stood behind him, to murmur into his ear:
“Relax. You’re dreaming, child.”
Astarion shivers but sinks further into Cazador’s thrall. His hands drop into his lap. His breathing slows. His eyes flutter as Cazador loops a hand under his jaw and pulls his head back from behind, pulling his chin to one side before leaning down to sink fangs gently into his neck. Astarion moans, tensing, then relaxing. His breathing goes thready, a whimper catching in the back of his throat as some subdued threat-detection in him fights the command to relax.
But he lets this tasting happen.
When Cazador is done, Astarion slumps to one side, collapsing dizzy and boneless on the couch and groaning slightly, dazed from the blood loss and the charm. He doesn’t resist when Cazador circles to the front of the chaise and calmly slips a palm under his right knee. He moves the young man’s legs up onto the couch so he’s lying on his back, near unconscious from the bite.
Cazador tilts his chin up slightly, running his thumb over his lower lip, gauging the shallowness of his breathing for a moment. That moment goes on for a while, a suspension of possibility that forks in a thousand directions: some sanguine and slaughter-red, some benign as coffee grounds and an empty room. He peruses the selection and while he does, Astarion struggles vaguely, trying to pull his thoughts together around the hand so firmly sunk into the center of them.
He tries to say something, ask a question, but the attempt moves his lips against Cazador’s thumb and—
“Take off your clothes, Astarion.”
Astarion does it, but clumsily. He strips out of his fine jacket, the under-tunic tailored so exactly to his slim and well-toned frame. There’s a suggestion in his musculature of someone who must spend at least some time on deliberate physical exercise for the sake of looks. (Vain thing.) He’s eye-achingly beautiful as not everyone always is when undressed. His pale skin shimmers in the moonlight as the last of his clothes crumple to the floor.
“Lie back.”
He does, his hands resting over his forehead like he has a headache.
“Spread your legs.”
The boy’s brow furrows, his pale eyes fluttering, trying to focus on the figure stood over him. For a moment he struggles in the grip of the charm, and inhales sharply when Cazador lays a hand along the inside of his knee. When that hand moves too intimately along the inside of his thigh, he whimpers and one hand moves, clumsily, to stop whatever is happening.
“Allow it, boy.”
Astarion’s hand falls away, resting against the flat of his stomach. He lies still, eyes going unfocused as every inch of his body is meticulously inspected for flaws, cool hands smoothing over his arms, fingers tracing the lines of his palms, closing around his throat and cupping his jaw. Astarion smells like the cologne he wears. His mouth tastes faintly of the brandy he poured for himself. He’s warm and yielding. He shudders and twitches and fights the charm like a bird fights the weight of a mountain lion pinning it to the forest floor.
“Enjoy it.”
He’s a responsive creature. Pretty in his pleasure. His mind bends so readily into any command that reduces the primal fear and the friction. He’s gasping and moaning by the end of it. Sweat runs down his jaw, his chest, the back of his calves as he arches and shakes. He cries out like he’s been struck when he climaxes. Then he screams when he’s made to do it again, eyes rolling back in his head, fingers digging into the cushions beneath him until the aftershocks of orgasm unwind the curl in his spine.
Cazador leaves the boy in disarray, curled naked on the chaise, the brandy bottle half empty, and his head stitched with an addled memory of pleasuring himself in a drunken fervor. Of a fantasy of being fucked by a stranger, driving him to roughness that does not quite leave bruises, but only just. He goes in to work the next day but leaves early after canceling his appointments, hurrying home under daylight looking harried and distracted.
The watchdog reports that Ancunín sat anxiously on his balcony for the rest of the afternoon, chewing his lip, scribbling and discarding drafts of a letter that he never finished before going to bed.
4
“I have the strangest notion that I'm being watched,” Astarion is saying.
“Isn’t that fairly normal for you, young man?”
His drinking partner is an older half-elf of indeterminate gender, a prosecutor that seems to be the closest thing to a friend the young magistrate has in his social circles. They’re clearly as amused as Cazador is by the notion that their beautiful colleague would ever go anywhere without eyes on him. This doesn’t seem to faze Astarion, who’s worrying his glass of whiskey at the bar, brow knitted with nerves. Finally the older elf frowns and pinches the bridge of their nose.
“Alright. Fine. What do you mean ‘watched’ exactly?”
“I haven’t the faintest. Just this… sense of unease, recently.” Astarion lifts the sweating glass to his brow, letting the condensation cool his skin before taking a drink and setting it again on the bar. “I rather wonder if someone’s hexed me.”
“Well, you are a cold-eyed bastard,” says the prosecutor reasonably. “You should probably invest in some counter-charms and divine knick-knacks, ‘cause every criminal you don’t kill will want to kill you and the families and friends of every criminal you kill will want to kill you and that’s true for magistrates with half your bloodthirst, Ancunín.”
Astarion levels a somewhat exasperated look at the elf beside him, who quaffs their wine without much concern.
“That’s it? Go see a cleric about it?”
“Hey, I’ve been a prosecutor for the last fifty years. Seeing a cleric about it is how I got through the last half of my first century alive. I’m giving you sage wisdom you little fuck.”
“You do understand that I’m the magistrate and you’re the–?”
“Kid, fuck you.”
“Alright,” says Ancunín dryly, taking another swig of his whiskey but not without a bit of a grin. “Glad to know a feeling of lurking doom is the norm for people in our position and I shouldn’t be worried at all.”
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t be worried, I said you should buy more protection. How are you the one with the magistrate’s office if you’re this bad at listening, huh? Tch.”
They click their tongue and look around the quiet tavern hall. The Earnest Archetype isn’t entirely welcoming of the general public—it’s frequented largely by law enforcement officials and the bureaucrats comfortable with them—but the half-elf glances around with a furtive air. Their eyes coast over the gathered patrons and all around the room. The seemingly-casual but careful assessment of someone that may have been an investigator before they were a prosecutor.
Then they turn and fold their arms on the bar, leaning in to speak quietly.
“Look, that thing with the Gur got pretty nasty and you know what they’re like—”
“Oh, please—”
“I’m not kidding. They’re fucking pissed. Bularia and Kell have increased security around the courthouse because of it. I’m not fucking around. Magistrates are not immune to getting stabbed, Ancunín. This is Baldur’s Gate, not fucking Waterdeep, or whatever the hells—” They inhale, then exhale. “Just be careful. I’ll never know if you’re going to become less of an intolerable asshole with age if you die before you’re forty.”
Astarion snorts. “You’ll die before I’m forty anyway, Illo. You withered old fuck.”
The prosecutor, Illo, salutes with their empty wine glass, sets it down, and pays before leaving. Astarion finishes his drink a few moments later, setting the glass down and pausing to thumb the rim of the glass with one finger as though contemplating another round. In the brief moment while he’s standing there, alone at the bar—dressed down in a fitted blue tunic, fine boots, and dark trousers—he attracts more than a few admiring glances.
Eyes move over him, his back, his shoulders, his strange silver hair, every part of him as he shifts his weight slightly and frowns at the melting ice.
It’s a wonder that he senses the appetite of a larger predator when every room he walks into presents an ocean of hunger—that he feels something is wrong, despite the smokescreen, speaks to some level of survival instinct in this soft and spoiled thing. Still, he’s too young, too stupid, too certain of himself to work backwards through his discomforts to identify what’s wrong. Which patches of time have been sewn shut from the rest of his memory.
He’s thanking the barkeep for the refill when Cazador, wearing the face of someone else, moves in behind him under a shimmer of glamour to say, “You should drink the whiskey, all of it, now, because you want to be drunk.” And when Astarion does, a little too fast, a drop running from his mouth to his chin, Cazador says, “Order another. Drink that too.” When Astarion obeys that order too Cazador says, “Once more.”
“Steady-on,” says the dragonborn barkeep, but they grin despite the note of warning in their voice, and move on to serve other customers. With Cazador at Astarion’s side, the attention of the patrons who might have been sizing up the lone gorgeous elf also drifts elsewhere.
Astarion pays his tab, pulling his jacket on as Cazador leans in to whisper, “You can’t stop thinking of that dream. The one where the stranger raped you until you came.” He hears Astarion’s heart rate pick up, sees his skin flush a little in the half-light of the bar. “Just the sound of their voice arouses you, like a whore at the sound of coin…”
“Fuck,” Astarion murmurs to himself, folding one arm on the bar.
His other hand moves up to press over his forehead, again as if a headache is coming on. He shifts his weight slightly, shoulders hunched, stepping in a little closer to the bar, suddenly self-conscious of his arousal even though it won’t show through the structure of his well-tailored clothes. He stands there, eyes closed, expression tense, like someone hoping a spell will pass.
Cazador leans in as if making conversation and says, simply: “It’s going to be hard not to come untouched right here at the bar, standing among your colleagues, isn’t it?”
It’s not a real question. Astarion’s face is fully flushed now, his eyes still closed, a sheen of sweat on his brow as he tries to slow his shallow and rapid breathing. The rest of the tavern is filling up as the evening goes on, loud enough now with the comings and goings of Fist and city watch personnel, drinking, letting off steam, and laughing, that his quiet panic goes unnoticed, just another texture to the tableau around him.
“Vain thing,” Cazador murmurs. “Imagine laying over his bar and letting every man who looked at you tonight do exactly what they want with you.”
Astarion twitches, shaking his head slightly as if to clear it, the hand at his forehead scrubbing over his face to cover his mouth in a way that could be thoughtful or the prelude to puking after four measures of whiskey in a row. There’s an almost-imperceptible tremor in the fist clenched on top of the bar. He swallows a small, panicked sound when Cazador touches the small of his back.
“You feel it.” Cazador runs the knuckle of one finger up his spine. “You’re going to come. Just from thinking about it.” Astarion is gritting his teeth, the hand over his mouth digging into the soft part of his cheek, wetness gathering at the corner of his eye. “You can’t stop yourself thinking about it.” Cazador strokes up his back, vertebra by vertebra. “You can’t make a sound, boy, or they’ll know what you really are, won’t they?”
Astarion blinks, panicked as his climax starts to crest.
“High-end is still a whore.”
Astarion stifles the noise he makes, tensing so hard his shoulders hunch and his entire body locks up with nerve-deep pleasure. Then he stands there, frozen in the aftermath, eyes wide and bright with horror as a shudder runs down his spine.
This close, Cazador can faintly smell blood.
The boy must have bitten into his lip to silence himself.
Astarion wipes his eyes quickly with the back of his hand, glancing around to make sure no one’s noticed. He drags his fingers through his hair, a familiar reflex made unsteady, fixes his jacket, then pushes back from the bar. He’s shaky, but people are not concerned with him just now and his departure is regarded with nothing but the usual admiration of strangers watching a beautiful person in motion.
Cazador leaves the boy to walk home and make up whatever story best comforts him about what just happened. Back at the palace, he tells the girl, Aurelia, to have rooms cleaned and prepared. She obeys without a word, but he can see the question in her eyes nevertheless—the spark of observation he can never quite decide whether to beat out of her or keep for its usefulness.
5
It’s not hard to persuade the Gur into killing him.
This particular pack of mongrel monster-hunters happily takes the coin and the invitation to find Astarion alone, in this specific part of town, at this time, to do what they please to teach him a lesson. The Zhentarim make a point to pay the usual patrols to be elsewhere at the time and the Sergeant, Bularia, is not on duty at the courthouse.
To his credit, Astarion senses something is wrong when the side path he takes to his apartment is empty, the two watchmen usually posted there eerily absent. He turns to go back up the way he came, to the main thoroughfare, and finds the way already blocked by two large, angry men in leathers, armed for a hunt. He gamely keeps walking toward them, face set, eyes on the road just past them.
He says, sternly polite as he’s walking, “Pardon me, I need to get past—”
They grab him by the arms, each closing massive fists entirely around his biceps. He immediately tries to scream for help but one of them covers his mouth and they drag him bodily into the alley. He fights them the entire way, but they’re twice his weight and have a head in height over him. They literally pick him up and carry him, thrashing and frantic, around a curve in the street where two more of them wait deeper in the darkness.
They hurl Astarion against the brick wall to open the event, his pretty skull smacking stone hard enough that he cries out and drops to his knees. Once he’s there, one of them winds back to kick him in the head so hard blood splatters the wall in a wet ribbon of gore. Astarion collapses, bleeding profusely from a broken nose and fractured orbital socket, too stunned to even scream.
For a moment, the Gur pause. The monsters they’re accustomed to hunting aren’t the moral sort, who look like pretty young men and go down after just a few blows to the head. Astarion bleeds heavily into the grooves of the cobblestones for a moment, a low, agonized moan rising eventually through the shock.
The sound of his dying seems to rouse the Gur back into action: as Cazador had made abundantly clear, they can’t afford to leave any witnesses after assaulting a magistrate in a city like Baldur’s Gate. So, as a matter of self-preservation, they begin the slow, agonizing business of beating Astarion Ancunín to death.
They don’t even bother to tell him why they are killing him—to cite the wrongs he’d levied against them, the rulings that had killed people in their tribe, the consequences of his actions. Perhaps they understand that cracking the young man’s skull as the opening salvo means dialogue is of limited benefit, but whatever the reason they get on with it in a way that is very nearly professional until Cazador ‘arrives’ to intervene.
The four of them depart on cue, leaving Astarion choking on his own blood.
He’s not past saving for a cleric. In fact, he might survive like this for another twenty torturous minutes before he dies aspirating blood into his own lungs.
He’s conscious enough, alert enough, to be terrified. Cazador stands over him for a moment, watching the boy try weakly to pull himself toward the mouth of the alley, managing to drag himself just two feet before collapsing. He doesn’t have the breath to cry, just pant, wet and choking. He pulls his arms against his shattered ribs as he continues to bleed and Cazador can smell that he’s hemorrhaging internally—his lungs and his torn abdomen racing for cause of death.
Cazador kneels beside him.
The contents of Astarion’s shoulder bag are scattered over the cobblestones—books, papers, a shattered inkwell and pen. There’s a shimmering green gem that might be a personal sending stone, inscribed with the crest of his family, wet with blood and ink. As Cazador wraps a hand around the boy’s throat, he wonders whether somewhere in a mansion overlooking a vineyard out east, there’s a young silver-haired woman who will wake from her trance.
He wonders if she will feel her twin die.
Then he offers Astarion a choice.