Chapter Text
Astarion watched Scratch and Quills disappear into the trees, unsure how to categorize the emotion he felt welling in his chest. It was somehow different, to touch and be touched, when it was them. The animals were warm and soft and undemanding, with no nefarious motivations prompting their affection. He almost asked Halsin to call them back, before setting his jaw and turning resolutely away.
Ridiculous. A month ago I’d have eaten them.
He shook his head, ignoring the needling inner voice seeking to remind him that a month ago, he’d have been fortunate to have a putrid rat for supper, let alone a plump dog and a ripe little owlbear.
He looked to Halsin and Gale, smirking at the sight of them hurriedly unclasping hands the moment his attention shifted.
“There’s no need for that,” Astarion said flippantly. “I can smell it all over you.” He decided, in light of the night he’d had and the weight of what he’d just confessed, he was due a little entertainment. “Enjoyed yourselves, did you? Whilst I was having my mind plucked apart by a devil?”
Gale had the decency to look embarrassed, but Halsin only bowed his head and took hold of wizard’s hand again.
“What did Raphael want from you?” Gale asked, in a hasty—and clumsy—effort to change the subject. “I know of precious few spells that involvesleepas a prerequisite for casting, even fewer of which are benevolent in purpose.”
Astarion frowned. He recalled, for half a moment, a fleeting image of Raphael towering over him while he was strapped to the torturer’s rack, a vague memory of the devil searching for…something. Thinking too hard about it sent a swift shard of pain lancing through his head, and his vision briefly blurred.
“He crafted a dream for me,” Astarion said quietly. “Made me relive the worst night in all my long memory. He watched Cazador… well—he watched Cazador do quite a few things to me, actually, but he was especially riveted once thecarvingstarted.”
“Your scars?” Gale ventured, his tone muted, he eyes downcast.
“Yes,” Astarion confirmed. “I don’t… I can’t remember much beyond that. He’s done something, I think, to prevent me from knowing what he was after. My head feels like it might split again.”
“I’m sorry to have asked,” Gale said. “Although I don’t believe we’re fortunate enough to have seen the last of him, at least we’ve concluded all current business with him. He can’t pretend you still owe him anything, after this.”
Astarion’s hand moved to the dagger at his belt.Elegy. Well and truly his now. Paid for with a portion of his own sanity.
He decided that now was not the best time to mention he’d begged Raphael to make another deal with him—to kill Cazador and take whatever he wanted from Astarion as payment. Raphael had declined, of course, but the request had been made.
“You’ve lost a fair bit of blood,” Halsin said. “You must be hungry. Can I persuade you to eat something?”
Astarion felt a flash of annoyance, remnants of the argument they’d had back at the Grove, when Halsin had confessed to the pleasure he experienced when Astarion fed from him and Astarion had responded rather poorly.
“I seem to have left my bowl in my other trousers,” Astarion snapped, eyeing the lucious veins pulsing down the length of Halsin’s arms with a bitter glare he didn’t bother trying to conceal.
Halsin fixed him with a long look, unreadable, neither angry nor indulgent.
Astarion felt a flash of discomfort, remembering what else Halsin had said that night. That Astarion would never starve again. That all he need do is put voice to his hunger and he would be provided for. That his body responded to humanoid blood in a way that too closely resembled arousal and it would be safer for both of them if Astarion fed vicariously.
“I’m… sorry,” Astarion said, with some difficulty. “You’ve made your feelings clear on the matter of direct feeding. I don’t mean to disregard that. Some part of me…” He broke off with a bitter laugh, casting his gaze to the ground. “Some part of me is grateful you’re so firmly resolved not to take advantage of me. I do hope you can see that.”
He left unspoken the rest of that thought: that there was an equal part of him desperate to be taken advantage of, to be used and of use in the only way he knew.
He sensed Halsin drawing near, pulling the wizard along, and fought against the instinct to retreat, to flee, to shrink away. He remained in place, frozen, barely even breathing.
“I’m happy to hunt for myself,” Astarion went on, without looking up. “Boars and deer aren’t nearly as appealing as… well—otherthings I could be dining on, but they are significantly better than the rats and bugs Cazador fed me. I won’t complain.”
“Bugs?” Gale whispered. “You can’t possibly have done anything to deserve that.”
Astarion ground his teeth together, glaring down at his own feet. “I existed. That was reason enough, it seems.”
Halsin gave Gale’s hand a brief squeeze before releasing him. “I will hunt for you,” he said.
Astarion opened his mouth to protest, but Halsin didn’t seem in a mood for argument.
“You would only endanger yourself,” the druid sternly insisted, “trying to hunt in your condition. And in truth… I need—It would do me good to spend some time in wildshape.”
Something in Halsin’s tone startled Astarion into lifting his gaze. The druid looked worn, the last several days of constant worry evident in every line on his face, and his eyes were glowing with the orange-yellow flame of his wildshape. They’d periodically taken on that glow throughout the entire night, Astarion realized now, and each flare seemed increasingly difficult for Halsin to subdue.
Astarion was reminded, disconcertedly, of the way his siblings’ eyes—and his own, he supposed—lit with a pale red gleam while under Cazador’s compulsions. It was the surest indication they were not acting of their own will, that they’d been stripped of any semblance of control. Seeing something similar in Halsin—an archdruid, a centuries-old elf, and the most self-disciplined person Astarion had ever known—was frightening.
He stepped back, lifting his hands defensively.
Halsin’s expression twisted, displaying sorrow and shame in equal measure, before he turned hastily toward the shadow-swathed trees at his back.
“I’ll return shortly,” he said, and vanished into the darkness before another word could be spoken.
Astarion looked to Gale, unsure how to explain his reaction and hating how desperately he felt the need to do so. “I didn’t mean… I wasn’t…”
Gale shook his head with a long sigh. “You don’t need to explain yourself, Astarion. You’ve done quite enough of that for one evening. I’m certain Halsin took no offense.”
Astarion wasnt so sure, but offered Gale a mute nod. “This all seems so ridiculous now—I should have just agreed to go to camp and rejoin the others.”
“Not at all,” Gale disagreed. “A little respite can do wonders. With the past several daysyou’ve had, no one will begrudge you the need for a little peace. Well—aside from Lae’zel, perhaps, but I suspect there’s simply no pleasing that one.”
Gale stretched his arms out with a groan, wincing in pain.
“Would it be all right if I sat?” the wizard asked. “My mind is willing, but the knees… well, they do ache.”
“Not just the knees, I’d wager,” Astarion murmured, unable to resist the opportunity to tease. Seeing Gale blush chased away the last remnants of his own discomfort, and he felt himself smile.
Using his staff for leverage, Gale lowered himself to the ground with a whimper of relief, leaning against a broad tree and tilting his head back to watch Astarion. “Join me?” he asked softly, then hastily added, “I won’t touch you.”
“I’m all right now,” Astarion insisted, dropping down next to Gale with considerably more grace than the wizard had displayed. “At least put your arm around me. No—don’t you dare ask if I’m certain, just hold me.”
He draped himself against Gale’s side, nuzzling against his shoulder, wriggling insistently until he felt Gale shift his arm and snake it around his waist.
“All right?” Gale asked faintly.
Astarion nodded, breathing deeply, inhaling Gale’s delightful scent. The usual ink and parchment smell, but something else now, he noted with a frown, struggling to place it. Something new… and something gone.
“Is that… rosewater? Oh my—have you perfumed yourself? Changed your soap?”
“What? No, I—wait. Rosewater?” For some reason, Gale sounded pleased. Giddy, even. “The scent of rosewater has long been associated with the Weave—with Mystra herself!”
Astarion regretted mentioning it. Every time Gale invoked Mystra’s name a thick knot of anger coiled taut in the pit of his stomach, a twisted skein of loathing and disgust the reason for which he couldn’t quite determine.
Gale reached up with his free hand, rubbing the flat of his palm against his sternum, ponderously scrubbing at the blight-burn. “The orb has been calmed,” he explained. “I feel nearly as connected to the Weave as I did before my folly, magic surging through every fiber and sinew of my body like it never left. I’m reconnecting, little by little, to the power siphoned from me the moment I opened that accursed book. What a relief it is, to know the changes I’m experiencing aren’t just… an inner manifestation of my own longing. That you cansmellthe difference on me is, ah, well, it’s a degree of validation I find most welcome.”
Astarion didn’t think Gale had noticed, but his arm had tightened around him as he prattled, his long fingers curling into the lean flesh of Astarion’s waist.
“Calmed?” he asked.
Astarion turned his face into Gale’s neck, taking another long, slow inhalation. That would account for the other change to his scent. The rank rot of the wizard’s blood was still present, but… muted. Masked, beneath the more cloying aroma of the Weave.
“How did you manage that?”
He wondered to himself if it truly mattered, if he really cared, or if he just wanted Gale to keep talking.
“I, ah, had a spot of help from an old friend, truth be told. Elminster Aumar. Perhaps you’ve—”
Astarion stiffened, barely refraining from the impulse he felt to leap to his feet in astonishment. “Elminster?The Elminster? The Sage of Shadowdale is anold friendof yours?” His thoughts were racing. He’d thought Gale alone to be a worthy ally, an adequate shield to guard against Cazador, but learning Gale counted the most famed mage in the Realms amongst hisfriendsexponentially increased his value.
“You’re acquainted with the legends, then,” Gale said.
“A far cry from being acquainted with the man himself,” Astarion said, “but yes, of course. Reading was the one activity Cazador never restricted. He said it was important we spawn maintain an ongoing education and keep up with current events. It makes for smoother seduction, you understand. Everyone longs to be wooed by an intellectual.”
“They… do?” Gale asked in a small voice.
“Oh, certainly,” Astarion affirmed dismissively. He kept his face where it was, lips pressed against the side of Gale’s neck so every word he spoke was like a kiss. “‘Of all the people in this bursting tavern, the handsome, well-spoken, educated elf deigns to speak tome?’ Rarely does it fail, darling.”
“I see,” Gale said.
“He’s hoarding quite an impressive library, actually—Cazador, I mean,” Astarion rambled on. “Rare and exceptional tomes on every subject, a veritable wealth of knowledge, exclusive to his own collection. A pity, really, that no one outside the family is permitted to view them.”
“Astarion,” Gale broke in softly, his tone hesitant. “I hope you don’t fear I need convincing to help you. Shadow curses and Absolute cultists and illithid tadpoles aside, I fully intend to do everything within the grasp of my power to see you irrevocably freed from the yoke of Cazador Szarr.”
Gale’s hand rose from his sternum, drifting to the side of Astarion’s face, where it hovered a moment before graceful fingers bent to gently caress the length of his jaw.
“What I mean to say,” Gale continued, “is that you needn’t seek to lure me in with the promise of rare books or, ah, carnal delights. I’m already committed. I swear on my life, Astarion—Cazador will never touch you again.”
Astarion hummed, pleased by Gale’s words and the conviction he felt in them. He’d been waiting centuries to hear someone issue that very promise, make those very assurances. “What a lovely notion that is,” he murmured. “But I have to wonder if you have any idea the sort of primal power Cazador wields, the forces you’d be pitting yourself against.”
“I’ve read—”
“I’m not taking about books anymore, Gale. A bit of ink on parchment could never possibly prepare you for a monster like him.”
The hand on his face stilled, and Astarion worried for a moment that he’d given offense.
“You know,” Gale said softly. “I do believe tonight is the first time you’ve ever called me by name. On two occasions, at that. I quite like it.”
Astarion pushed away from the wizard, exasperated. “If you’re not going to take this seriously…”
Gale reached for him, pulling him back with a contented smile. “My apologies. Go ahead—I’m listening.”
Astarion let out a disgruntled snort before giving in and settling back into Gale’s arms, molding himself to the wizard’s shape. Halsin’s scent was still heavy on his skin, in his hair, and Astarion had to wonder just how thoroughly the druid had explored the blighted mage. And how many times.
He shook his head and tried to focus.
“Cazador can shape shift, for starters,” Astarion said. “He can turn into mist; call on wolves to do his bidding; shrug off blows like they’re nothing. He could find our camp tonight and kill you all with his bare hands. And you’d all be lucky if death was the worst thing that happened to you.”
“He certainly sounds formidable,” Gale agreed. “But no one is without fallacy, no monster is without weakness, and vampires are known to have many. Sunlight, for starters. Radiant magics, holy water, silvered weapons—”
“You’d never get near enough to try any of it,” Astarion insisted. It was important to him that Gale fully understood what it was he sought to undertake. “Cazador rarely needs to actually use any of his vampiric abilities. He’s more obsessed with the power he wields over people. His spawn have no choice but to do his bidding, but there are others… those who seek him out of their own will, following him into the depths of depravity clinging to the hope they might one day be granted the gift of eternal life. The palace is teeming with mortals, very few of whom are actually enthralled, and every one of them a shield between Cazador and any who might seek to bring him to justice.”
Gale was silent for a long while. When he did speak again, his tone was muted and subdued. “Do you think he could control you again, if you were to face him? Would the tadpole’s influence be protection enough against his hold on you, even in close proximity?”
Astarion shuddered at the thought of putting that notion to test. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Worried I’ll be forced to turn against you when the time comes?”
Gale’s fingertips brushed against the soft flesh of Astarion’s earlobe before absently taking it between his thumb and first finger and gently pinching. Astarion let him, some part of him wishing it was the wizard’s teeth worrying at his lobe and not his fingers.
“I suppose I am,” Gale admitted. “Though I worry less for any harm you might bring on me and more for what falling under Cazador’s sway once more would do to you.”
“You think it would break me,” Astarion surmised. “Well and for good.”
“I just… Well—as I’ve said: I worry.”
Astarion lifted his hand, snatching hold of the fingers at his ear before Gale could pull them away. He held them there, staring up at Gale’s startled expression, idly imagining himself licking and kissing it into one more desperate and pleading.
“I don’t suppose your friend Elminster harbors secret knowledge of a cure for vampirism?” He heard himself ask, registering the stark vulnerability in his tone and hating himself for it.
Gale drew back, gently sliding his hand out from beneath Astarion’s. “Is that what you want? A cure?”
Astarion swallowed. He wasn’t usually self-conscious of the way he looked. He’d spent too many long years constructing a series of pleasurable masks to wear for others to enjoy. He knew he was beautiful. But he was so rarely allowed to indulge in sincerity; he wondered if that’s even what this was.
He wondered what Gale saw, when he looked at him.
“If there’s anything to be envied about my condition,” Astarion said, “I’ve yet to discover it. Forever young… forever beautiful… it means less than people might think. And the hunger is…”
“Nothing is impossible,” Gale said quickly, catching on to the way Astarion’s gaze lingered on his throat. “I’ll see what I can find out. Mystra may have cast me aside and my magical prowess may very well be permanently diminished, with or without the orb. But I’m not without considerable resources of my own. I can assure you, Astarion, if there’s an answer to be had, I shall find it. And if not… perhaps I’ll simply have to create one.”
He sounded so earnest.
“I…” Astarion stared at him, concerned by the twisted knot of unidentifiable emotion he felt plummeting through his chest and into his stomach. “Thank you. I suppose. And I wasn’t lying, you know. About the library.”
*****
Gale talked, and Astarion listened, and didn’t realize at first that his breathing had slowed, then stopped, every muscle relaxed, until the tonal shift in Gale’s lyrical voice stirred him back from the edge of his haze.
“Astarion? I believe you may be entering trance—is that all right? You should rest… but you seemed reticent about it, earlier. Shall I leave you be?”
Wake me!Astarion wanted to scream.Don’t let it have me.
But Astarion was so tired, and Gale was so warm. The rhythm of his breaths and the steady thrum of his pulse proved all the sedation necessary to tip Astarion into the yawning chasm of reverie.
He found himself right where Raphael had left him, strapped to a rack with a blade dragging across his back. But there was no distance now, between his mind and his body, no buffering knowledge that he was dreaming. He felt it all as viscerally as the night it had happened, his shoulders, barely healed from being crushed in a sarcophagus, aching anew as he pulled against the restraints.
“Untie me, master,” he pleaded. “I’ll hold still for you. I’ll be good for you. Please—my shoulders…”
Cazador faltered, Rhapsody’s tip stuttering against the shuddering flesh of Astarion’s shoulder blades. “I shall have to make another revision—do you not tire of this constant fretting, boy? I might have finished already, if not for your incessant squirming.”
“I’ll hold still,” Astarion begged again. “Please… please…”
Cazador set the dagger down next to Astarion’s tear-streaked face, letting the spawn take in the sight of his own pale, watery blood spattered across the blade, bits of his flesh caught in the striations of the dagger’s ornate, hollowed-out center.
“You will, won’t you,” Cazador said softly, carding bloodied fingers through Astarion’s lank curls. “You’ll be such a good, obedient boy for me now. I’ll untie you, and you’ll be so still, and so calm. But you’ll still whimper and moan for me, won’t you, my sweet. You would never deny me.”
Astarion closed his eyes, waiting for the weight of compulsion to settle in his skull… but it never came.
“I’ll be good,” Astarion promised, and he meant it. He’d never rebel again, not after that year in the tomb. Cazador wouldn’t even have to compel him. “I’ll be still. I won’t ruin your poem anymore.”
Cazador unfastened the restraints and Astarion lowered his arms with a groan, the agony of his ruined back fading to the relief of his tortured shoulders. He felt himself dragged off the rack and deposited to the frigid stone floor, felt Cazador’s weight settle across the back of his thighs, straddling him, felt the chilly press of the knife resume its slow, careful work.
Astarion kept still.
No, no.His mind felt jagged, his memories snagged on this moment, unraveling every time he tried to pull away. He fought to extricate himself from his reverie, but returning to wakefulness felt like slogging up a mud-slick slope in the pouring rain, every labored step forward yielding to a long spiral back down.
“Astarion!”
Someone was shaking him, squeezing his hands.
“Halsin—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let him slip away, I know he didn’t want to, but he needs rest…”
Astarion felt himself moved—his real self, not the version on the cold floor in Cazador’s hidden dungeon—and broad hands that smelled of rich, damp earth and fresh blood cupped his face and neck, quieting his screams in both realities.
His eyelids fluttered, his vision roaming, his jaw slack and his limbs loose. He couldn’t move. He knew he wasn’t supposed to.
“You are not there,” Halsin’s voice assured him. “He doesn’t have you. You’re safe. Astarion—you’re safe. Gale is here. I am here. You are here with us.”
Astarion woke—truly woke—with a long stuttering gasp, and found himself clinging to Halsin’s forearms, drenched in sweat.
He’d heard Halsin’s words, registered them slowly, and inwardly argued against the truth of them. He was safe now, relatively, with Gale and Halsin. That was true. But when he closed his eyes he was Cazador’s again, and there was nothing anyone could do to change that.
He pushed himself away from Halsin, releasing the druid’s arms with some difficulty, his fingers having stiffened into claws. “You smell like blood,” he said faintly.
“I’ve brought you a bit to eat,” Halsin replied, nodding at something past Astarion’s shoulder.
Astarion turned to look and caught sight of a lovely deer lying motionless beneath the trees, its neck twisted to accommodate the heavy crown of antlers adorning its head. He flinched, recalling for a moment the roughly textured, thickly curving horns of Raphael, before forcing his vision and mind to focus. Even from this distance, he knew the deer’s throat had been slashed open with a single swipe of a great bear’s paw.
“You know,” he said, feeling his throat bob as he swallowed, “it occurs to me this isn’t verydruidicbehavior. Murdering the wildlife on account of an undead abomination.”
Halsin gave the deer no further regard, his gaze held steadfastly on Astarion. “Nature is at every turn as brutal as it is nurturing. I do not hold the wolf to account for its fallen prey, just as I harbor no sense of injustice toward the storm that brings death and destruction in its wake.”
His voice softened, no trace left of the upset he’d displayed earlier. His body was relaxed, his expression mild.
“You have a place in nature, Astarion,” he went on, “and just as I would never fault the carrion crow its choice of meal, nor would I ever begrudge you the sustenance you need. My beliefs may be unorthodox among druidic circles—they certainly earned me little love in the Emerald Grove—but if Silvanus takes issue with what I have done, he’s yet to make any complaint known.”
Astarion grunted. “I suppose the only real travesty would be allowing the poor creature to go to waste.”
Astarion partook of the deer. Halsin and Gale withdrew, gave him privacy, and he was grateful not to have to wrestle with any pretense of table manners. He was hungry, and he wanted to devour. He imagined, as he fed, that it was Halsin beneath him, and then—inevitably—the fantasy turned to Gale.
The wizard’s scent had changed, the blight held at bay. Astarion had to wonder if Elminster’s charm had done anything to cleanse the rot from Gale’s blood. He wondered what sounds Gale would make, were Astarion to suckle at his neck, and whether he would taste like rosewater.
For the second time in memory, Astarion fed until the hunger first dulled, then softened… then faded. Sated. It was certainly a condition he would like to get used to.
When he finished, he returned to find Halsin had started a little campfire, and Gale was warming himself next to it.
“I was going to suggest rejoining the others,” Astarion said, “but I can see you’ve settled in.”
“We’ll catch them up on the morrow,” Gale said. “For now, we have a few hours left before dawn and I, for one, may just get a tad malcontent without my beauty sleep.”
“You’ll certainly need it,” Astarion said loftily, “if you’re to keep up with the competition.”
