Chapter Text
The first thing Astarion tells you is that you’re not allowed to leave.
“Without permission, of course,” he drawls; he is sprawled in a patch of sunlight on the massive four-poster bed, wearing not a stitch of clothing, his pale form long and languid, sunshine limning him in shades of gold. He’d ordered all of the curtains taken down in his chambers—Cazador’s old suite, and sometimes, when you close your eyes, you can still hear him throwing furniture and smashing the walls when he’d first came home to the Crimson Palace. “Not that you’d ever dare, my sweet little pet.”
Dazed, you obediently nod. You’re situated in his lap, as he runs his long, cool fingers through your hair. You’re the same temperature now, corpse cold, and sometimes after he feeds, he feels warmer, almost a living creature. He guides back your neck with a careful hand, tipping the silver goblet down your throat. You swallow obediently, and he watches, with those scarlet, glimmering eyes, as you swallow every drop, and he clicks his tongue when the blood dribbles down the corner of your mouth, leaning down low to take a long, languid swipe with his tongue.
And then he captures your mouth, his fangs brushing your bottom lip, his tongue sliding against yours.
“Gale wanted to see me,” you say tentatively, as he nuzzles your neck, lovingly favoring your own scars with tender kisses. On your knees, you can still hear him say; oh, how you delighted at bowing for him, how he touched you with such reverence, and you thought—you still thought—that no one had ever been so lucky, to be loved so dearly.
He growls, low and possessive. “Whatever could he possibly want from you,” he mutters darkly.
“To tell me of his entreaty with Mystra, I suppose.”
Astarion leans back to regard you, his brows furrowing. He splays his hand over your sternum between your breasts. You feel paralyzed, your heartbeat is as still as ever in your chest. You wonder if he misses the sound of it.
“Could be advantageous,” he shrugs. “He’ll have to come to the Palace, of course. I wouldn’t want you running around the city. Gods know what could happen to you.”
I’m the hero of Baldur’s Gate, you want to tell him. A few free drinks is the worst of my worries.
But the Palace wasn’t so bad. After dismantling Cazador’s chambers, he’d set the servants upon a full-scale renovation, tearing the wallpaper from the walls, stripping and reglazing the floors, scouring every single bloodstain from them, fresh for new ones. The old spawn quarters were being turned into a greenhouse, all for you. He promised to find every last flower in Faerun, every herb from the Druid’s Grove that you’d admired, every wildflower you’d ever picked on the long road together. Think of it as a bridal gift, he’d said when he’d shown you the blueprints, freshly inked from the architects. He wasn’t entirely certain what to do with the prisons below; his eyes always looked so far away when the subject was broached, usually lapsing into silence entirely and occupying himself with his favorite distraction: your body.
“My favorite toy,” he would purr, his head between your thighs, slowly, leisurely lapping at you like a cat, so receptive to your every sound, to every flutter of your insides around his fingers, like you were a particularly interesting lock he was bound to open. He feasted upon you with single-minded devotion, even when you bit into his palm to silence your cries, oversensitized and weak from his torments.
You shake yourself from memory, tipping your nose against his. “Tomorrow?” you ask gingerly. “Perhaps Shadowheart and her parents could visit, too.”
He groans, winding a wiry arm around your waist, pressing you so hard against him it was almost bruising. “I was hoping to have the manor in a more fit state before entertaining guests, pet. Can’t it wait until the wedding?”
“But that will be months away,” you whine, a little petulant. Your hands were sore from writing invitations, hundreds of them laid upon your desk like white rose petals, each inked in scarlet. It was to be the most grand, opulent affair Baldur’s Gate had ever seen, Astarion Ancunin and his blushing bride, the Hero of Baldur’s Gate. You’d read, in your correspondence with Volo, that they were the most highly sought after invitations in recent history.
“Months will slide past so quickly in our eternal life,” he murmurs, punctuating it with a kiss. “You’re so early in your eternity, my darling, so full of that human impatience still.”
After the battle, you had wanted to spend your time with your companions before you all went your separate ways. He’d caught you crying that first night in the Crimson Palace. He’d patiently kissed every single tear away, swiping at your unblushing cheeks with tenderness. “I just miss them,” you'd hiccuped. “We spent so long with them, went through so much…”
His eyes had hardened, like blood coagulating. “I don’t want to see my consort crying on her first night with me,” he scowled.
You’d wrapped your arms around his neck and showed him how much you loved him, how much you needed him, how grateful you were for this beautiful, eternal, undying life with him, in the only language you were both fluent in—your bodies.
“You know I love you, Astarion,” you tell him now, stroking the harsh line of his cheekbone, smoothing down his smile lines. “But there are some things about me that will be unchanged.”
He looks at you as if his stubborn lock might just be worth breaking.
“Tomorrow,” he says instead, kissing your neck, the divet between your collarbones. Your breath catches. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Cazador died with a thousand secrets, and Astarion means to uncover every last one of them. It almost seemed that this was his greatest disgrace to Astarion; he might have ascended to nigh godhood, but what was a god, if he did not know his limits, his powers, his abilities? Thus far he could move with supernatural speed, walk in the sunshine without so much as a care in a world, could drain a body of blood with the same amount of effort as a wine bottle.
“Could I kill you?” He wondered to himself, when you were shackled to his bed, spread-eagled and dazed, a velvet leash about your neck. “If I drain you dry… would your blood replenish?”
“No,” you whimpered, shaking your head, even as he twitched the cord and your neck tipped forward helplessly. “Please… Astarion…”
“You know I’d never hurt you, my treasure,” he murmured into your ear, nipping at the sensitive lobe, and you trembled, in a paroxysm of anticipation as he drew down to your exposed jugular. “But your blood is the most decadent wine in the entire world.”
You faded into darkness before you could find out, waking to find yourself bundled in an eiderdown blanket, Astarion stroking your hair, an ancient tome open in his lap. You felt utterly wretched for the rest of the day, like a husk of a person, but he used one of Cazador’s contacts to fetch a soul from Wyrm’s Rock Prison, and let you drain him down until you felt his pulse still, his body slackening in your arms as he shuddered horribly and went still.
It became his preferred way of feeding; no blood was good enough for him save for yours, and it was the sweetest thing, the way he fretted over you, how greedy he was for your ever-replenishing blood. During your journey he’d been terrified of hurting you, of taking too much, but you were no warrior any longer, your hardships now spent in endless fittings at the modiste, picking flowers, cutlery, dishware.
Your favorite times with him were spent in Cazador’s libraries—Astarion’s libraries, you corrected yourself, as you oft did. He’d brought up all the books and scrolls from Cazador’s lair and you were each going through them—you had an unfailing eye for hidden secrets, little insights into lines of seemingly meaningless poetry or scraps of whimsy that Astarion would overlook. It made you feel useful, other than being a trinket adorning the quiet halls of the Palace. He’d bow low over your shoulder to read through the paragraph, eyes narrowing as he skimmed, and then he’d press a kiss to your cheek before pulling the book away and passing you another, curling into the squashy armchair like a cat as he poured over the ancient pages.
In the evenings, when the moon was full in the sky, Astarion would hold private dinners with the courtiers of Baldur’s Gate, inviting a select few of the city’s gentry for his pleasure. You were ever at his right-hand side, adorned in the most extravagant jewels that Cazador’s coffers could offer. The vampire had been exceedingly wealthy, and Astarion had only made a small dent with the renovations to the palace. “But you, my dear,” he says to you as he drapes yet another chain of priceless gold about your body, wreathed only in jewels and translucent swatches of fine silk spun ephemeral and shot through with gold thread, “are my most valuable asset. You made a very ill-informed investment on me, and I intend to return it with interest.”
During the evenings, sipping Blingenstone Blush, he would feed you only the choicest offerings from his plate, taking a bite himself to ensure there was no poison before tipping it into your waiting mouth, his hand never leaving the small of your waist. The newly appointed Duke of Ravengard, Wyll’s features human again, rolls his eyes at the pair of you. “Are you going to be this disgusting for all of eternity?” he teases. “You were bad enough on the road!”
Astarion tilts his head. “If I didn’t know better, I might almost think our dear Duke was jealous,” he purrs. “Are there no such flowers in the Court of Ravengard?”
Wyll tips his wine glass to you. “None so fine such as that.” He raises his glass in toast and drinks it down, and Astarion joins him. There is no blush on your eternal cheeks save for the rouge, but you bow your head smilingly.
“You do have a taste for devilish appetites,” Astarion continues. Sometimes his voice was almost hypnotic, so lulling that it commanded you to stop everything you were doing and simply listen. He’d never considered himself a leader during your adventure, but you wonder if he was contemplating otherwise. “We’ll be inviting all sorts to the wedding. Certainly we can find something for you.”
“If I am at your whims to find a partner, I must despair indeed.” Wyll shakes his head. “Have you heard from Karlach, my friend?”
You bow your head. “I got a single letter that was still on fire, telling me she’d made it to Avernus.”
Wyll sighs. “Sometimes I regret not going with her.”
“Me too,” you murmur to yourself, staring down at your wine goblet. Astarion rubs a thumb into your bare skin, gentle and soothing. “I did send her a wedding invitation, however.” You find your smile again. “Gods willing, she’ll survive to see it.”
You retire your conversation to the solar, another wine bottle uncorked. Here, Astarion would have you on his knee, toying with your hair has he began broaching the true interest in such parties. He had two hundred long years to watch Cazador rule from the Crimson Palace, time enough to see all the flaws in how he’d ruled, the vast allocation of wealth and resources, and plan accordingly for when he would rule. Though bodies in and of themselves were certainly to be considered, maintaining public appearance and tightening the bonds between his allies were deeply underutilized. Strange though it might be, you were both considered the saviors of Baldur’s Gate, and Astarion did not mean to let this go to waste.
You had no talent for negotiation, but you had spent the last several months parlaying with people to agree to your cause, to think before they killed you. Even in Astarion’s reckoning, you were no mere adornment. “There is no universe in which I would be here without you, my love,” he murmured into your ear before you entered the dining room.
Curled into the armchair of his study, as he nuzzles your ear, chuckling darkly, you truly thought that this as forever could be a beautiful thing indeed.
He kisses you the same way he devours you; relentlessly, giving you no quarter, with the lethal confidence of a prowling predator. He inhales your perfume daubed at the back of your ear, sliding his hands down your haunches, gripping your thighs so tight that if you’d been made of fragiler stuff, it might have bruised. You arch at his touch, making a soft sound low in your throat.
You couldn’t blame him, for not wanting you to leave; you didn’t want him to leave either. Your heightened senses made you feel alive in a way you never knew you could, his delicious scent surrounding you so much you could taste it. You could never forget the drop of blood he’d dropped on your tongue on your first night as a vampire, the way it tasted like life, like everything vital in this world. Drinking the blood of any others was like fireswill, filling yet poor quality.
You come to the left side of this neck, indulging yourself at nibbling on the skin there, dragging your nails down his undone brocade. His hips twitch upwards, stifling a groan in his throat.
“You almost make me wish I could let you do that,” he rasps into your ear.
“You shouldn’t have given me the good stuff first,” you whisper into his skin.
His hands dig into your hips, pulling you down, dragging you between his parted thighs, muscle solid as you grind yourself against him. Sometimes he’d have you like this for hours, until your knees ached, until you were feverishly dragging yourself across his leg, until you ground yourself into an orgasm against him, unsatisfied and panting into his shoulder. You didn’t think you could stand that; you tug aside his shirt, unlacing his breeches as his eyes flicker down to watch you, licking his lips.
“You look so good on your knees,” he whispers as you kneel in front of him, fisting your hair, stroking your cheek with his thumb.
You rest your cheek on his thigh. “I’m going to see Jaheira tomorrow. Do I have your permission?” you ask, staring up into his eyes.
He groans. “There is nothing I would not give you and you ask me that?”
You tug the breeches down his hips, pulling out his swollen cock. “Don’t make me say please.”
“On your knees and begging,” he smiles, every inch of him wicked. “Yes, if it’ll make you get on with it. You were so very good tonight, weren’t you.” he breathes as you ghost your lips over his length, digging your nails into his thigh. “Then again, you are always very good.”
His praise made your stomach feel flooded with warmth, like fresh blood. It had not been so long that you’d forgotten what it was like to be human, but nothing made you feel so full and replete with satisfaction. You lick the very tip of him, treasuring the way he shivers and swallows down another moan.
“Don’t stop,” he snarls, his grip growing tighter in your hair. He’d shove you on his cock if you waited another moment; not that the thought wasn’t tempting. You took him into your mouth, watching his features slacken, his hips knocking forward to drive him into your waiting mouth another inch.
You still remembered that first night you’d spent with him; you’d done this, too. It was hard to resist; he fell apart so beautifully as you sucked and licked, a little more composed now, watching you with starved eyes as he strokes your cheek, feeling himself inside your mouth.
After, he fucked your mouth—after he’d held you by your hair and came down your throat, muttering your name like a profaned prayer, drawing you up to crash his mouth against yours, lifting you into his lap, settling you on his still-hard cock—and you were dozing in your bed, his head in your lap, you run your fingers through his silver curls and ask, “will we take a honeymoon?”
His face lights with from within, bright as moonlight. “Yes,” he breathes, kissing your hand. “Don’t think I've forgotten. I’m not camping again. I daresay we’ve both had enough of that." You’d seen him, early in the mornings, as he watched the dawn rise over the horizon, plotting away at a freshly inked map of Faerun. “We’ll take a ship, a nice little schooner for the two of us—maybe a couple of shiphands, for snacks or for help.”
“Well, we won’t be running for our lives,” you demurred. “It’ll be a little easier, then, won’t it?”
“I wouldn’t mind if they ran away from us,” he drawls. “I enjoy that part.”
For your part, you wanted to be forgotten—and perhaps that was why you were enjoying being nothing but his consort these last few weeks. It was something of a relief, to be unburdened from the fate of the world, your tasks nothing more than to look pretty and be feasted upon. You were still, after all, growing used to your newfound status as one of the undead. Some days it felt as if that were a too demanding task in and of itself.
If Astarion had it his way, you’d never leave your pillows, never reach for anything save another ready goblet of blood. He wanted you as docile as a well-fed housecat, and for the moment, you were terribly inclined to agree with him. But you would have enjoyed it far more if your to-be husband wanted to rest for as long as you, and it seemed as if Astarion’s energy was endless. Sometimes he’d stare up at ceiling and mutter to himself, “the moulding, it needs replaced, that’s at least a hundred years out of date.”
You knew with every detail, he only saw two hundred years worth of awful memories locked in this place. You who felt that weeks inched along, could not imagine how much hatred had welled up in him after so long.
No matter how many servants at your disposal, nothing waylaid the tactical nightmare that was wedding planning, and if a part of you had wondered before how Astarion would make of a wedding, this was to be the event of the century, and he wasn’t the only one hoping for such. The entirety of Baldur’s Gate was in a buzz, and you wondered if you hadn’t succeeded in inviting the entire city if they might turn up anyway. Rebuilding was still well underway in the Lower City, but the people seemed to teem for a glamorous affair, a story to talk about. The announcement had been printed in the Baldur’s Mouth and Astarion had read the newstory to you as you were poked and prodded by yet another seamstress, the third one this day.
“It’s disgusting!” you laughed. “You’d think we were royals."
“Oh, but we are,” Astarion purred. “I think it needed about three more sentences on my radiant face and another on your beauty. Who cares about the lives we saved?”
“It needed about three paragraphs less." The seamstress came over to Astarion, presenting three bolts of white fabric. You readily acknowledged you didn’t have his palette for these kinds of things, and left it to his keen embroider’s eye to choose. He picked the lace, and the seamstress nodded, turning to you to drape it over your hips. “Astarion, I’m beginning to think you told the modiste we wanted six dresses for the wedding instead of three.”
He clicked his tongue. “Forgive me for wanting you to have options." He shrugged. “We’re only getting married the once, after all. It’s got to make a statement.”
“I’m picking the shoes,” you needled.
He shrugged, and you knew even from that gesture that he would invariably get the final say. You wondered what he might do if you simply didn’t wear any, and shivered, both in fear and anticipation, at what might come.
“Dearheart,” you murmur over breakfast—a goblet of body-temperature wine for the both of you, shared like morning tea. “Shadowheart invited me to pay her a visit. Would you mind if I was gone for the afternoon?”
Astarion’s lip curls. “You have a ten thirty appointment with the modiste.” He checks his nails, holding his pale hand into the early dawn light. “Fittings for your honeymoon wardrobe—and then another appointment with the florist, and then—”
“Would it be so terrible to reschedule them?” You interrupt.
He sighs, not quite looking at you, folding and then unfolding the morning edition of the Baldur’s Mouth. “She said she has news of Lae’zel,” you insist. “Astarion, I am going fairly mad, locked in this palace—”
“So nothing I have provided matters to you, in the end.” His voice is low and calm. “I have been awake all night, planning this wedding, planning our empire, and here you are, worried about your friends.”
A hot wash of embarrassment floods your cheeks. “That’s not what I meant,” you manage. “I just—I only wanted—”
“I am inclined to keep you here until you learn patience. Darling, you are immortal, undying, unchanging. You might have been a little human before, but you are a vampire in full, the most incredible that any such have seen. Don’t tell me you take such a position of power so lightly. Many and more have died to become what we are.”
“I know,” you say. And that coupling of words is growing so familiar, when Astarion lectures you, a habit he was growing into when it came to your pitfalls. “But—I was an adventurer, before we got those mindflayer parasites, and that part of me isn’t going to change. Please, Astarion? Just for an afternoon? I promise I’ll attend all my appointments, I—”
“No, pet. Do you not know the meaning of the word?” The newspaper falls into his lap as he stares at you with a critical eye. “I will not allow my consort to roam the streets idly. It simply won’t do. There’s never been a pair like us. And you plan to bandy it about like so much cheap swill?”
“I just want to see Shadowheart—”
The silver goblet flies across the room, splashing blood all over the pristine, white floral wallpaper. He’d done it so fast you hadn’t had time to flinch. “Do not test me,” Astarion snaps. He might be a vampire lord, but the bruises beneath his scarlet eyes are so heavy now, almost blackened, and his bares his teeth, elongated canines flashing in a snarl. “You are so very fond of testing my patience.”
“I just—”
He rakes his hand through your hair, through the half-done braids, latching onto them, tugging lightly. “If you test me,” he breathes, “you will face the consequences.”
He releases his grip on you, then snaps his fingers. A servant appears at once, a well-dressed drow who bows in obeisance. “Alert the guards that my consort is not to leave the Palace. Allow in only the scheduled appointments.”
Her eyes flicker over to you, no trace of emotion upon her features. “Of course, Master,” she says primly. “It shall be done as you say.”
Astarion kisses you on the cheek, his lips cold, before leaving you in your receiving chambers alone. The drow gives you one last look before dutifully following him out.
You listen to their footsteps down the hallway, waiting until they are long past. Your own senses were heightened beyond human ability, but Astarion had yet to describe the full of his power to you. You wonder if he could sense you even now, even a building away.
The smart thing would be to do what he wished—to be the perfect vampiric consort, the obedient wife, the pretty ornament upon his knee. And you wanted to. Oh, you wanted so badly to be good for him.
But it was as if you moved on instinct—dragging open your trunk, tossing aside scraps of silk and lace, piling them on the floor, lifting off heavy spellbooks until you found the very bottom—your clothes from your adventure, simple, thread-worn, utterly mundane and ordinary, still stained with mud and blood despite a dozen scourings.
You don them quickly, your heart rabbiting in your throat, securing your long cloak about your features.
And then you move to the open window.
Ever-so-slowly, you crawl out of it, staring down at the sheer vertical drop down below, Baldur’s Gate teeming around the palace unknowing, like a sea of fish seething around a waiting shark. You cling to the parapet, silently closing the window. You creep along the stone edge until you find a balcony below, and with a moment of hesitation, you drop down.
It was a ten foot drop, and it should’ve hurt, but you fall harmlessly onto the balcony, kneeling low as you hear footsteps beyond the window pane; servants preparing the dining room for gods know what sort of meeting.
You latch onto the railing with both hands, lowering yourself onto the other side, until your feet dangle above the streets below. You hear carts tumbling by, the cries from the market, the seething, teeming life of Baldur’s Gate just below.
You crane your neck, and spot a cart of hay just below your dangling feet. Either it would be enough to cushion your fall, or you’d be limping to Shadowheart.
It seemed a fair price to pay for a taste of freedom.
You let go.
The air whooshes past you, whipping your hair into your face, and you clamp your mouth shut against a shout as you collide into the hay, your back hitting the cart with a solid thump.
In a daze, you stare upwards at the balcony just above you, now so far away.
No pain. No injuries. Stiff, you tumble out of the cart, brushing hay and straw from your hair and cloak.
The sunshine beams down upon you, and two children skirt past your legs, shouting at each other. “No, let me be the hero!” the girl yells. “You can be the mindflayer this time, Jhessem!”
“But I don’t want to be a stupid cephalopod,” Jhessem bawls, and they turn a corner, careening down a darkened street alley before you can catch your breath.
You wonder, as you stand there, how long it would be before Astarion came to collect you.
You could not squander your time.
Shadowheart’s Sharran accouterments are long gone, her hair in a simple, silver braid swinging down her lower back. Fraygo’s Flophouse is as dilapidated as ever, but the barman hums a merry tune, his eyes widening a fraction when you step into the tavern. “By Mystra’s tits,” he says, and you could not tell if he was sorry or glad to see you.
Shadowheart inclines her head, fixing you with a sweet smile. “Well, there you are,” she sighs. “I was worried I’d been stood up.” She pats the stool beside her, and you slide into it. “Astarion didn’t want to come, I take it?”
“He was… occupied,” you mutter, gladly taking the dingy glass the barman hands you, downing the alcohol without thinking about it. It burns bright and clear down your throat, not nearly as satisfying as blood might be, but it soothes your frayed nerves.
Shadowheart tips her head back, downing the wine glass in one jolt. Her pale throat works as she swallows. “Lae’zel is somewhere among the Astral Sea at Orpheus’ side. They plan to take the fight to Vlaakith—or die trying.”
“Did you… not wish to go with her?” you manage.
Shadowheart smiles wryly. “Not all of us are interested in soul-crushing devotion.” She shrugs, flicking her braid over her shoulder. “I wanted to see my parents settled into their new life. They spent so long waiting for me, watching me—I wanted just a little longer with them.” Her pale green eyes, like newly opened crocuses, flit across you. “I hate to say this, but I’m not entirely certain immortality suits you. You look terrible. And what in gods’ name are you wearing?”
“We’re getting married in two months,” you say instead, drinking down the liquor. It brings with it an artificial heat to your blood, a flush riding high in your colorless cheeks. “I wanted to give you and Lae’zel your invitations—if you could pass it along to her.”
“He didn’t want you to see me, did he,” Shadowheart whispers. “Astarion, you complete idiot.” Her expression, once so reserved and stoic, floods with pity, the same worrying look she’d fixed you with when you’d taken a too hard of a blow during battle. “He said you weren’t a thrall—but why do you look so miserable?”
And then her eyes flick upwards, past your shoulder, and her expression hardens. “For someone so concerned with his own bodily autonomy, he seems utterly preoccupied with yours.”
Your gaze follows hers, and you wonder how you did not feel the heat of his gaze on the back of your neck.
Astarion was a vision of the past before you—he is dressed in his own old traveling clothes, meticulously kept spotless, a black leather tunic, one boot propped atop his knee. As if he’d always been sitting here, as if you were the one interrupting his reverie. If anyone in the Flophouse recognized him, they knew better than to show it. Astarion’s bootheel hits the wooden floorboards with a heavy thunk, guttering your heart. He rises in a long, fluid movement, striding over to the bar and tracing a cool finger down your bare neck.
“My little runaway,” he purrs, the smile on his lips not touching his eyes. He turns to regard your companion. “And the former acolyte of Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows herself. You simply must visit the palace, my dear. You would fit in as well as any of my denizens.”
Once upon a time, Shadowheart and Astarion had enjoyed a truce between them, like two skittish cats in the same patch of sunlight, tolerating one another’s presence. Now, her eyes narrow, her nose scrunching in scarcely concealed derision. “She’s the godsdamned hero of Baldur’s Gate, not a pet in a gilded cage, Astarion.” She did not move for the dagger lashed to her hip, but reached instead for the wine bottle, pouring both yourself and her another glass.
Astarion slides his fingers around the stem of your glass, lifting it to his own lips to taste. “Fireswill,” he mutters. “The wine here is always terrible.”
Astarion drapes an arm around your waist, featherlight, but he could have had the velvet leash around your throat and tugged, for you could not help but retreat into his presence, attuning yourself to his smallest movements, to the way he rapped his knuckles over the maple bartop, how he cocked his head as if listening to something you couldn’t perceive.
“Looks like my pet is growing tired,” Astarion smiles serenely. “I’ll have to take her home.”
“You can’t be serious!” Shadowheart erupts. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in weeks—” She stops just short, as Astarion’s grip around your waist grew ever-so tighter.
“Missing Lae’zel so soon, Shadowheart? Is she somewhere in the Astral Sea, running after Orpheus’ lackeys? Leaving you all alone here again, drowning your sorrows in the worst tavern in the city? What about those parents of yours we saved? Shouldn’t you be with them? I suppose they must’ve grown dull after a while.” He flashes brilliant white teeth, all malice.
Shadowheart stares at both of you, her mouth a thin line. Betrayal fractures across her features like shattering ice. “Congratulations, Astarion. You are truly Cazador’s rightful heir after all.”
You feel him tighten around you, a snarl spasming out of his throat like a strangled sound he couldn’t quite choke down. Ignoring him, Shadowheart plucks the wine bottle from the bar and slips out onto the landing, disappearing into the crowd of Wyrm’s Rock.
Astarion keeps silent. Holding your waist in a bruising grip, he steers you away from the bar, down the hallway, the sounds of lovemaking, pillowtalk, and giggling filtering through the closed doors. And then he spins you all at once, and smoke erupts around you, black as ink on water, enveloping the two of you not in the Weave, but something else entirely.
And then you were standing in the foyer of the Crimson Palace.
“Go to your room, pet,” Astarion says with deadly calm. You’d seen him erupt before, watched his long-tested temper get the better of him for lesser slights, but even when he’d drained you of all your blood, you’d never felt quite so terrified of him, ice cold sinking low in your belly.
“Astarion,” you manage, “I—I am truly sorry—”
“I looked for you everywhere.” He spins with preternatural speed, slamming a hand around your throat, pinning you into the wall so hard your head smacked against the fresh wallpaper, still smelling faintly of glue and paint. “Every room, every corridor, the library, the greenhouse, darling, I even went down to the fucking prisons.” Her jerks you hard, cupping your jaw with steel-trap fingers, forcing you to meet his eyes. He looks fractured, like a wounded animal, almost feral for something you did not know if you could give. “You promised. Promised to be mine, and mine alone. I made you what you are. How easily you discard it, breaking my heart—”
“I just wanted to see her!” The tears hadn’t came, not yet, but Astarion’s grip was ever-so-slowly growing tighter around your throat, making the air tight, and you felt so much like wasted kindling, burning hot and dry. “I was going to come back—”
“After,” he interrupts smoothly, “You asked me, and I said no. You were willful in your disobedience, my darling sweet girl.” He takes a quick step back, releasing you. You fall numbly from his grip, like an unstrung puppet, feeling bereft and heartbroken. “Bed. No dinner. And do not make me ask a third time, little love.” Only Astarion could make the word love feel like cruelty.
Witless and affrighted, you flee to your bedroom, taking the darkened hallway with trembling steps, ignoring the servants’ whispers as you push past, stumbling over a tarp with paints and awls and brushes—already hard at work at refinishing yet another fixture or tapestry or fresco. You slam your door so hard the door jamb rattles, and with a bitter cry of despair, you sink down to the cold floors, stuffing your fists into your mouth to muffle your scream of sheer frustration.
The tears roll hotly down your cheeks, and you weep as you have not since you were a child, bawling hard into your pillow. You were—still are, you stubbornly remind yourself—the hero of Baldur’s Gate. You had saved thousands of lives through your strength, your will, your sheer determination. You had been a leader of people, a savior.
But here and now, curled into the fetal position around an overstuffed pillow, you feel precisely as helpless as a child who’d drawn the ire of their parent, as if you had never left.
By Astarion’s reckoning, the blame was squarely upon you. You, for your failure to be satisfied, to appreciate his efforts, to obey his simple, easy commands. And a part of you—the part that you could not be certain was simply still loveswept or sired by him—yearned to make him happy. You couldn’t recall the last time you’d seen him smile—really truly smile, with the lines around his eyes wrinkling, head thrown back and the sweet little hitch of his giggles in your ear.
It hadn’t been since before, you realize with a sudden chill—before you’d entered the Crimson Palace for the first time.
Before Astarion had stared at you, his eyes upon you entreating. “I can do this. But I need your help.”
You, who have never been able to deny him anything—you who had from the very start offered up your blood to him in earnest—went as willingly as any of one of his victims to his side, unquestioning, unthinking. You watched him carve the same runes upon his back into Cazador’s, drenched in the blood of seven thousand souls come out of it as the most powerful vampire to walk Faerun.
No one could slaughter so many and be unchanged, and something within Astarion—perhaps the last of his humanity—shriveled and died down in the prisons of the Crimson Palace, and a small, traitorous part of you yearned to find that ghost and call him back.
The moon is high in the sky by the time Astarion comes for you. It is a mere hangnail sliver against the dense velvet night. You can hear his footsteps echoing down the hall—he could always move as soundlessly as the shadows, and you knew he wanted you to know he was coming.
You draw yourself to stand, wiping away the teartracks with the heel of your palms and balling them into fists at your side.
You are struck anew, as your consort stands before you, how heartbreakingly beautiful he is. Sometimes you have wondered what he must have looked like, when he was human, but immortality has wrought him into something anew, curls so pale they shimmered silver in the flickering lantern light, his crimson eyes, the depthless scarlet of blood, flickering down at you as he takes a slow, deep breath, rolling back his shoulders.
There is no cruelty in his eyes, no hatred—only the calm, implacable justice of some dark god.
“Kneel,” he whispers, fraught.
Nothing other than that selfsame desire to please him moves you to kneel before him. You’re a little ashamed, that you’re still dressed in your tattered travelling clothes, and find yourself wishing you’d worn one of the dozens of beautiful gowns he’d given you. Would it be so hard, to be thankful for all that he’d given you?
And that was the trick of it, wasn’t it—in complete isolation of anything other than Astarion’s will, his needs, his desires, it was so easy to be his perfect darling treasure.
You cannot bear to meet his gaze; you are terrified of what he will find writ in your expression. You stare down at his boots, watching them draw nearer, until he bends down before you, tucking his thumb beneath your chin and lifting it.
“You know I love you, my darling,” Astarion murmurs, “I love you so dearly I think it will split me in two. You are part of the very marrow of my bones, inextricable, the very life of me.”
“I know,” you choke out, the tears so very near to the surface again.
His hand curves to palm your jaw, running his thumb over your tearstained cheek. “It hurts me, to see you so,” and then an edge of cruelty enters his voice, his lips crooking upwards, “even if you are very pretty when you cry.”
“I love you,” you whisper, reaching forward to cup his hand against your cheek, turning your head to nuzzle against his palm. “There is no one else I would rather spend an eternity with.”
“Then why must you vex me so?” Astarion says, his voice chilled.
You have no response for him; you press your lips against his palm, the cicatrices of his life and heart lines, breathing hotly against his skin.
“You know what I have to do, my darling,” Astarion tells you.
You shudder horribly. “Yes,” you gasp.
And then his hand slides down your neck, and his eyes gleam with cruelty as he clenches down, rising to his feet as he holds you by the throat.
“I’d be lying, if I said I wasn’t looking forward to this,” he drawls. His fist squeezes tighter, and though you do not need air, your lungs seize with the lack of it, sputtering and seizing as he unlaces his breeches in sharp, deft movements with his free hand. “You’re going to be good for me, aren’t you, darling?”
“Ye… ye… yes…” it takes everything in you to choke out that simple word, the one he always, always wanted to hear from you. The world is blackening, your limbs growing numb, visioning narrowing down until he is the only thing that matters.
Astarion releases. You heave for air, clutching your chest, and he gives you no time before he is thumbing open your mouth, taking a step forward to nudge the tip of his cock against your gasping lips.
“Easy now, pet,” he smiles. He fists your hair until it stings, and then shoves himself into your wet, pliant mouth.
Still struggling for breath, you very nearly choke on his length, your throat spasming as your eyes water, desperately trying to figure out how to breathe until you finally inhale through your nose, and for a moment you are terrified he’ll stop you from doing that, too, but he is heedless to your petty concerns of breath; Astarion groans low and deep as he shoves himself down to the very hilt, and you reach up in desperation to grip at his hips as you struggle not to choke, and then he pulls back, tipping his head with the motion, before he fucks your mouth again.
There is nothing for it save to relinquish yourself to him, to the hot, hard length of him, to the drag against your tongue and throat, to the sharp stutter of his thrusts, the wet squelch of it all as your saliva pools down your chin. You relax your muscles as best you can, willing yourself into non-being, into something to be used, and you find an easy rhythm. “There she is,” Astarion says, all husky and low and full of molten love. “My very best girl.”
His praise is the warmest light that has ever been; you keen for him, staring up at him with perfect obedience, but you are ever prone to willfullness, and despite your best intentions, your hand finds itself between your thighs, humping against the heel of your palm aimlessly, desperate for the satisfaction of it.
Astarion wrenches your hair tight, driving you down until he hits the very back of your throat, and it is everything you can do not to choke. “You’ll come when I say,” he bites out. “And not a moment sooner.”
And then he takes a step backwards, slipping out of your mouth, and you collapse to the floor, gasping for breath, eyes and nose streaming.
You are dimly aware of him kneeling down beside you—and then you feel the cold press of a dagger at your throat.
“On the bed,” he commands. Before you can scrabble upright, he has you in his arms, swinging you over his shoulder with careless disregard and dropping you onto the mattress, leaning over you to catch the iron chains and drag them down to your wrists.
Your breathing grows ragged, caught between fright and desire, and once he has your wrist and ankles chained, he takes the dagger—the same, twisted dagger he’d used to murder Cazador—and drags it between your breasts, slicing through the thin cambric of your tunic, and you shiver with horror as he draws down to your hips, but he merely slashes open your breeches, ripping them off you until you are bare before him.
And then he leaves you, collecting the rags, and he turns to the mantle and throws them into the fire. The sparks dance in his eyes as he turns back to you, prowling over the bed to bring himself above you. For how much he was tormenting you, you wished he looked happy—but he looks as troubled as ever by his wayward consort, and you’d rather he drive the dagger into your stomach than suffer his displeasure.
Those blood-soaked eyes glimmer down at you before he cranes his neck down to whisper hotly into your ear. “You will wear what I tell you,” he commands. “You will do as I say, when I say. That is all I have ever asked for, my little dove. Tell me—am I giving you anything too hard to obey? Too troublesome?”
His hand slides up your exposed thigh, long fingers languidly sliding between the cleft of your legs, the slick wet waiting there, and he slowly drags the tip of his finger across your seam.
“I just want to make you happy,” you say miserably, even as you arch upwards into his touch.
“Then obey me,” Astarion growls. “Without question. Heed my words, and you will make me the happiest man in all of Faerun.” He kisses your throat, hot and gentle. “I am not unsympathetic,” Astarion says against your carotid artery, laving it with biting kisses that fracture your already spent mind. “You’re so untrained, so very young. It will take a long time, to make you learn, but oh, what delicious work it will be, bringing you to heel.”
Abruptly, he slides two fingers into you, and you gasp with the sudden fullness of it, chains rattling as you tremble against him.
He does not linger; during these little torments, you know he will not let you reach any sort of pleasure. You are here, as ever, at his service. His fingers slip out of you, and he situates himself between your thighs, the chains clinking as he drags your thighs higher and higher, folding you over until you strain with it, his hard length dragging irresistably against you, and he bends down over you, and drags you into a punishing, hard kiss.
In one last moment of futile resistance, you try to give as good as you get, nipping at his lips, chasing after his tongue, kissing him with bruising force; but it is like a stone in the way of a tidal wave, for there is no fighting against him as he shoves himself inside you, frictionless and suddenly overwhelmingly full, and he roughly shoves your head to the side as he exposes your neck.
“I don’t care what anyone else says,” Astarion snarls in your ear before biting down. “Your very soul is mine, forever.”
Of what follows, you only recall in brief, halting snatches, awash with blood and dizziness and the agony of the heart; he’d bitten you as if he was trying to turn you all over again, your neck, your wrists, even your thighs, fucking into you with a reckless abandon, never quite finishing himself, and pursuing doggedly regardless.
When you finally wake, it is before the dawn, in the strange hours between complete darkness and sunshine, the bedroom awash in transient greys. You realize with a rush that you are unchained and cleaned of blood; you heal very quickly these days, but there is not a single trace of a wound upon you, save for the initial bitemark at your throat from when he’d turned you.
“Astarion?” You whisper, sitting up in bed, muscles aching.
He is curled in front of the window, still naked, skin like marble in that cool grey light. His head is bowed, shoulders shaking, and you can see in exquisite detail every single etching that Cazador had ever left on his beautiful back, that Infernal contract writ into his very skin.
He looks—and you never thought you would live to ever see it again—vulnerable.
You are soundless as a ghost as you move to him, scarcely breathing, terrified it would shatter the reverie, this one, single shred of humanity still left in the man you so dearly loved. You slowly draw your hands across his shoulders, and he flinches at your touch, shuddering as you drape yourself across him, tucking your head against his shoulder.
He does not touch you, does not reach for you, folded inward on himself, wrecked with his own agonies.
“I have killed him,” Astarion whispers—so soft it is scarcely a breath, “ascended into the seat of my own power—but in doing so, have I become him? Is he even truly dead?”
You cannot answer him. He would never forgive you for it.
So you stay together in the quietude of the dawn, waiting until the golden rays glimmer across the horizon, spilling through the windowpanes into your bedroom, blood like roses upon the bedsheets.
And then the moment shatters. Astarion lifts your hand to his mouth, kissing it, and when he rises, the immortal mask is in place, and you do not think it will ever slip again.