Chapter Text
Astarion smirked.
It had been so easy. He had wondered if her calling would have interfered with his plan, but it seemed not. The naive, foolish Cleric of Tyr, her heart so pasted to her sleeve that each person they encountered asked her a favour which she then did, had taken all of two of his least impressive lines to get her on her back. He sneered as his mind flicked back, remembering the way her heart had quickened in her chest as he had offered her his body, and she had taken all of one fluttered eyelash to fall right on to the hook.
Pathetic.
He could almost feel sorry for her, if he hadn't burned through his capacity for empathy centuries earlier. She hadn't really stood a chance, he supposed - she had been the obvious target from the start, and he very rarely failed when he put his mind to someone. He had had a lot of practice, after all, and she was so sheltered. Her natural leadership meant that her protection would be the strongest, while her lack of connection to any dangerous past made her the safest... and her kindness to every godsdammned waif, stray, animal, even a caged goblin, for hells' sake, made her heart the most open to manipulation. Too easy, almost to the point of being dull. If he had met her before the ship, and before the tadpoles, she would have been a lifeless corpse that very night. Easy prey. Easy to lure. Just too easy, in every respect.
She was exactly his preferred type of target, as well. Well, perhaps not the cleric part, that was admittedly a little disconcerting, although manipulating and bedding a priest of the god of justice did have some delicious irony to it. But definitely the looks. His master had always preferred his food to be attractive, and Astarion himself had found his role to be easier if they were good-looking. The sour bile in his throat when he had only managed to procure a substandard victim, knowing what punishment followed, meant that he had quickly learned to seek out only the best looking meat, and this one was certainly one of the prettiest he could have lured to her death. It helped, too, when he had to... perform the lure itself, the act, that the person he was forced to be with wasn't some rank, lust-addled punter who came with him only because they thought he was a prostitute; bad breath and wandering hands, eyes seeing nothing but his body and what they could take from it...
Bedding her had been extremely easy in that respect as well. She was - to put it bluntly - absolutely stunning. Hah, easy on the eyes as well as easy-everything-else. Not to mention that she had quite a wicked sense of humour, for all her do-goodishness. And she was kind, too. To everyone.
That had been hard though, at first. Luring the nice ones. The horrible pretty ones were easy. But the nice pretty ones, he had tried to avoid those, until... no, best not to dwell on that.
He had learned his lesson.
Astarion stretched out his arms, savouring the gentle warmth of the sun on his shoulders, face turned up to welcome the light. He had lain beside her until she had fallen asleep, every nerve willing himself not to show any expression of contempt until she could no longer be aware of it, until he heard the cadence of her breathing falling into the deep, regular rhythm of sleep. Then he had disentangled himself as gently as possible, dreading the possibility of waking her, and moved away, the feeling of her arms sickening to him, the trust, at falling asleep in the arms of a vampire. Even his other victims could take more credit than that. So he had stood, away from her, not looking at her, and waited for the dawn, revelling in the transfer of night to day, the silvers of the moon-bathed darkness breaking oh so slowly into riotous oranges and pinks as the sun crept over the horizon and the dawn birds shattered the silence. The colours were so bright, so vivid, the sounds of daylight so much sweeter and more musical than he had thought he had remembered them.
"Interesting scars. Where'd you get them?"
He jumped slightly, and turned around, away from the sun. She lay, completely naked, in a bed of leaves, her brows furrowed. The sunlight cast all her curves into interestingly heightened depths, and gleamed in her hair.
"It's a poem." His response was curt. "A gift from my old master, Cazador. He considered himself quite the artist, and used his slaves as a canvas." Hm, perhaps his tone could use some work. She wasn't a sure thing, after all; he hadn't ever needed to charm after the first night before, so his morning after attitude was perhaps not up to scratch. "He composed - and carved - that one over the course of a night." He allowed himself to let the memory slip through into his voice; no harm in gaining more sympathy. "He made a lot of revisions as he went."
He didn't go into further detail. Being forced to pleasure his new master, lying in bed afterwards convinced he had done enough to be spared punishment, only to be told to lie still, not even to flinch, as Cazador straddled his hips and took a scalpel to his back, humming happily as he precisely removed thin slivers of his skin. And then to be told it was a reward. He hadn't quite accepted his new reality back then, and the nights of torment and torture had not begun to blur together, so that one remained particularly vivid.
"Why did he write it in infernal?"
Astarion felt the shock run down his spine. "Infernal? I-" He broke off. Wouldn't do to let her see too much. Easy, dismissive, not important. Focus. "Who knows? The bastard was insane." He would have to deal with it later, and especially not while she was around. "Anyway, enough pillow talk. Let's go, before the tieflings drag us into another mess."
She smiled at him, her eyes showing something he couldn't quite identify. As she turned to pick up her clothes, he thought he recognised it as pity, which was - well, a start certainly, but it was a bit irksome. If he became too pitiable, his plan wouldn't work.