Archive of Our Own

1482 DR

The night they first met, Astarion had a green-eyed tiefling girl laughing in his lap with the smell of gin and silkroot on her mouth. He was watching the clock on the wall of the tavern and the size of her pupils for a time when he could get her to stumble across the uneven cobbles on his arm, while she laughed and laughed at nothing and scraped at the edge of his ear with her horn. 

He had a memory of a woman— maybe his mother— explaining to him what a thiramin was. Somebody whose spirit had a piece of his spirit in it. The gods gave us this gift, little star. It’s old, older than memory, from when our people were born, in forgotten times… no one knows if all elvish people have one. Perhaps some simply never meet their thiramin. But if you should be lucky enough someday to meet yours, Astarion, then when you first lay eyes on them, it will be like gazing into a looking glass. Like remembering something you had forgotten… 

Astarion hadn’t dreamed about such nonsense since the first few decades of his slavery. Early on, he’d pictured a dashing wood-elf with a feather in his hat, who would fall in love with Astarion at a glance and come to skewer Cazador’s heart with the tip of his rapier. Presumably, when he was younger, his fantasies had been even more embarrassing, but he didn’t recall them anymore. 

Vampire spawn who’d been centuries in their imprisonment did not dream of love. More importantly, if anyone robbed him of the pleasure of killing Cazador with his own hands, Astarion would murder them himself. 

How would I know? He’d asked the woman in his memory. 

When you see them, little star, your own heart will tell you. You won’t need to wonder if you’ve found what you are searching for. You’ll know. 

That part had been wrong. Astarion wasn’t searching for anything. He’d been expressly forbidden from doing anything of the sort. Cazador had added it to the commandments early on. 

There are certain weaknesses of elvish flesh I’m keen to avoid in my children, boy. Tell me, do you have a thiramin?

It was early in his unlife that they’d had this conversation, in one of the first several months. Astarion had been kneeling on the carpet, because Cazador had forbidden him from sitting in a chair. His knees had been stinging from the coarse red wool. 

No. 

No, Master. 

No, Master, I don’t, he’d repeated, too weak from recent turning to argue. The word master had still felt foreign and a little funny on a tongue accustomed to your Grace and your Honor and dear chap. 

Cazador had bent low to give him his command, so low his lips almost touched the crown of Astarion’s head. 

You are never to seek yours out, Astarion. Such diversions are for mortals, and for mortals alone. I have given you a new life now. Accept this gift, and leave such weaknesses behind. 

The commandment took no effort to follow. Much as he hated to admit it, Cazador was right. Such diversions were for mortals. Astarion knew what he was good for. There was a girl in his lap, high as a kite and singing along with the tavern band, to remind him what he was good for, in case he forgot. 

The stranger sat alone in the corner, arms folded across her chest. Dark eyes, black and sharp as obsidian, searched through the crowd, up and down, here and there, hungry, shining, like the eyes of a shark in a school of fish. She ran her tongue along the edge of her bottom teeth, from molar to molar, and back again. If she’d opened her mouth all the way, he would’ve expected fangs, like his own. 

Astarion stared. He couldn’t help it, and the girl in his lap was too far from sober to notice. It was as if he’d suddenly seen a rabid animal sitting across the tavern from him, foaming at the mouth. The path of those eyes drifted dangerously close to his own. 

When her gaze snagged on his, something deeper inside of him than anything he’d ever felt hummed like a hammered string. 

The stranger across the bar froze. She gaped at him as all the other people in the tavern turned to empty shapes and noise. 

Then she threw her head back and laughed. 

-

Astarion dragged the tiefling girl back to Cazador as fast as he could pull her. She was too high and too drunk to do anything but giggle half-naked in the bedchamber, kicking her legs to slide them against the expensive sheets while Astarion waited for Cazador to come and get his supper. 

He barely noticed the cold gelatin taste of the rat. He choked it down blank-faced, then scurried off to the dormitory and tranced facing the wall, with the thin coverlet pulled up over his ears. 

He had to be rid of her as soon as possible. He would be unable kill her or bring her to Cazador, because that would count as seeking her out, which was forbidden. Besides, the death of one’s thiramin was said to be horrifically painful, even if one wanted them gone. 

And gods forbid, he didn’t want to talk to her. That would be almost as bad. 

In stories, people were always catching the eyes of strangers and falling into an instant bloom of lovesickness. Birds chirping, rose petals falling from nowhere, that sort of thing. Astarion felt, on the contrary, like he’d heard a giant gavel banging for order when she’d looked at him. Somebody was going to read him his sentence, and he wasn’t about to get any parole. 

Maybe she wasn’t from the Gate. That would explain why he hadn’t seen her before. Perhaps she would swan off to whatever place had spat her out. Maybe she already had a lover she was happy with, and so she wouldn’t be care about him even if she did see him again.

Astarion tried to trance all day, but when he did, fitfully, he only remembered black eyes and the ragged hair that had tumbled over her chair back when she laughed. 

-

Astarion avoided the Elfsong for two weeks. He didn’t go to the Mermaid, either, or the Dancing Lute (whatever it was called nowadays), or to the Cat’s Kettle or the Hornpour or any of his other usual haunts. He picked new alehouses only, with gullible customers and cheap entertainment. 

He was at the bar of one such establishment, pretending not to notice a green-scaled Dragonborn admiring him from across the tasting room, when the hair pricked up on his arms. 

He had a second to feel the same lurch in the same depth of himself and to try to catch sight of her, before the stool beside him scraped across the floor tiles. Then somebody hopped astride it. She hooked her feet behind the stool legs, then set both elbows on the bartop, and looked quite carefully away from him. It didn’t prevent the lump that formed at the back of Astarion’s throat. 

“A pint or a glass?” 

He took a second to process the fact that she was talking to him. In the meantime, she peered at the rails of wine bottles on the other side of the bar with so much patience that she didn’t even seem to be waiting for a reply. 

She smelled of blood. Reeked of it— not like she was menstruating, but like she drove a mortuary cart. Astarion’s ever-empty stomach complained again. 

He couldn’t eat solid food, but wine he could swallow. 

“A glass,” he answered, in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere else. 

Why did he say yes? He wondered the whole time while she flagged down the bartender, picked a vintage on his behalf— a rather sour one— and watched intently while it was poured. 

She fished through her pockets for gold, but Astarion was faster. He slid two pieces across the bar before she could dig any out to pay for his drink. 

She didn’t argue, but she did finally look at him, intrigued, with her face cocked sideways. 

The seconds dragged on, and she remained silent. 

Astarion took a bracing mouthful of his wine. It burned on the way down. Her eyes darted to his throat to watch him swallow, and Astarion felt the prickly touch of ghosts on the back of his neck. 

“Yes, the sight of me is enchanting, I know,” he sighed. “You can fuck off now.” 

She tilted her head. She had an earring made from a tooth in one ear. 

“So the wine was no good, I take it.” 

He soured even more. 

“What do you mean?” Astarion did his most airy, high-class laugh. It was positively dreamy.”

“It’s not what you hunger for,” she said, in a low rumble. There it was again, the shark. 

His throat tightened. A hundred and ninety years and he had finally met his— he didn’t want to even think the word— and of course, she was only interested in getting him undressed. 

“I know what a made killer looks like,” she went on. “You’re undead. A vampire.” 

He’d guessed wrong. He set the wineglass down too hard. 

“You’re right. It’s rubbish. A Heapside-poor vintage, cheap as horse piss. An unfortunate selection, my dear. Good night.” 

With that, Astarion stepped off his barstool and marched off into the dark to find a different gullible drunk to seduce to his bed. 

Gods have fucking mercy, she didn’t follow him. 

-

Two months later, Astarion cautiously returned to business as usual. He was back at the Elfsong, enjoying the decent fiddle music and the perfume of the jasmine in the hanging baskets. He was back at his favorite winehouse off the Wide, laughing at a drunk patriar trying to play the lute. And tonight, hje was at the Mermaid, enjoying the sailors’ bawdy stories and tolerating the smell of fish on their breath. Beside him, a half-elf whose self control was rapidly dwindling hovered his hand above the bar behind Astarion’s back. 

Sometimes Astarion’s performance was so natural, he almost forgot he was doing it. It was even fun to put on sometimes, for a few hours. It felt good to be good at something, and to watch his poor, pathetic marks be so easily seduced. Sometimes, he surprised even himself with how fast he could have them crawling on hands and knees, agreeing to go anywhere for him at the end of the night. 

Other times, he had to be his own puppeteer. He had to intentionally lift the long line of his own neck, and intentionally tilt his face, but not his eyes, toward the stranger. Let them look at him awhile, believing he did not notice their eyes on him, let the shadows the torches cast play on the hollow at the base of his throat, and beneath it, at the place where his ruffled shirt fell slightly open over his pale chest. Part his lips, just barely, and let one corner curl up, as if he was thinking of something clever he refused to say aloud. 

There was a rustle of roughspun fabric when the half-elf bent close to murmur in Astarion’s ear. Astarion intentionally relaxed his jaw to keep himself from bristling up when the other man’s hot, stale breath swirled against his cheek. 

“Can’t they afford a flute player that can actually bloody play?” 

He hummed a light, one-note laugh. 

“You don’t find eighty-seven stanzas of Fairly Mawkish Mollie set to music to be entertaining?” 

“Fuck no. You?” 

The particular spirit on the half-elf’s breath smelled like turpentine, and had stained his lips and tongue emerald green.

“Alas, my dear, I fear the tune will never come unstuck from my head. I may well die of it.” 

“What sort of songs do you prefer?” 

The half-elf’s hand perched on the bartop, resting just on the fingers and thumb. It reminded Astarion of a hairy spider. 

“Don’t misunderstand me, darling, I do love a filthy bit of tavern opera, but couldn’t they have been more creative with the innuendos? Only so many things one can hear compared to sausages and ham.” 

“Art is dead.” 

Astarion rolled his eyes. 

“Honestly.” 

The half-elf attempted an easy, mocking smile, but Astarion could smell amateurish antsiness all over it. The man glanced at Astarion’s eyes to see if he was buying into their conversation. Talk about the death of art, Astarion thought. Nobody was as good at this as he was, and he kept himself from sneering at someone thinking they were seducing him. As if they were the first stupid fisherman who ever breathed all over him. 

The half-elf’s clammy hand closed around Astarion’s wrist. When he instinctively froze, the other man looked down at their hands, then up at him, half snarl, half placating smile. Astarion watched him realize he’d overstepped, then watched him realize that he didn’t care. The nervousness in his eyes turned hard and cold. 

“You know, you don’t have to keep hanging around down—”

Astarion twisted out of his grip. He was slower and clumsier than usual, because Cazador hadn’t let him eat for a few days. Other people were watching them. He stepped off the barstool. 

He’d let people like this keep touching him before, before the locked tomb. He’d let clammier hands wander into more tender places. 

Now, he no longer had the energy to rebel against Cazador, so when he felt another flash of the desire for freedom, that rare and dangerous animal, he had to find someone else he could escape from. 

So he slipped through the crowd like a rat, and was out the door before the other man could follow and grab his arm again. 

Under the narrow bridge behind the Mermaid was ankle-deep fishbones and discarded charcoal in a soup of dishwater. Astarion minced around it, trying his best to keep his low boots clean, but he wanted the shadows to hide him. He crept deeper in. It stunk of vomit and rancid oysters. 

Astarion pressed his fingertips to the rough brick at the end of the alley and looked up the wall. When he’d eaten— well, anything— he would be nimble enough to get up to the roof from here. Perhaps a seagull would swoop down that he could catch. The moon made the ridgepole silver, and shone in a haze through the smoke coming from the chimneys of the dock district. 

Cazador would be angry, but Aurelia had been extra successful lately, and maybe with her and Leon keeping the table spread, Astarion could—

“What was that about?” 

The hair stood up on the back of his neck; his stomach turned to cold cement. 

He turned around with all the easy grace he could put on, and by the time he faced the half-elf again, a bored smile pulled at his lips. How could he have failed to hear the footsteps? 

“Darling, you must not value your boots very much. Have you seen all this muck? I don’t know how the kitchen staff can tolerate it, honestly.” 

“You’re out here,” the half-elf pointed out. Astarion made a toffish gesture. 

“And as I said, these boots are cheap.” 

“You didn’t answer my— my fucking question,” the other man spat. Astarion fought the twin urges to flee or to wait for something bad enough to happen that his mind would go far away. His weak muscles twitched. 

He had killed dozens of people like this in alleys like this over the years. He had a knife hidden beneath the back of his shirt for situations exactly like this one. But he’d never tried it when he was this wretchedly hungry. 

What he wouldn’t do, in this moment, for a rat. 

“It’s late,” Astarion excused himself as the half-elf took four decisive steps closer to him. 

“You ran off. People stared.” 

“Let them stare, then. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s ever left the Mermaid at a clip.” 

Astarion laughed, high and thin. 

The half-elf had a dagger in his belt. Astarion set his hand on his waist to bring it that much closer to the hilt of his own knife. 

“Guess they don’t have manners in Evereska, or whatever woods you crawled out of. Shameful fucking tease—” 

The dagger was out from behind Astarion’s back and brandished between them in an instant. Normally this earned him a flinch at least, but the half-elf was moving too fast, or Astarion too slow, and the half-elf crowded him in with the point of his blade cold against the hollow of his throat. Astarion’s back hit the freezing bricks. His wrist was in the half-elf’s crushing fist, twisted until his trembling fingers opened and dropped the useless dagger on the ground with a clang. He was slow, and weak, and starving. 

Astarion lifted his other hand in surrender, casting about for some mode of escape that wouldn’t end with an ignoble death in an alleyway full of trash. A victory grin split the other man’s nauseating face. His rank breath burned Astarion’s nose. 

Then a scarlet knife split the meat of the half-elf’s right shoulder, stabbed straight down just shy of puncturing a lung. Its owner didn’t bother to draw it back out. His blade clattered from his hand as his eyes and mouth popped open, cheek freckled with blood, and blood spurted along the grooves in the knife. 

Astarion wasted no time. He yanked the scarlet knife out, grabbed the half-elf by the jaw, and slit his throat to the vertebrae, clean through the larynx, so there would be no scream to rat him out. 

Hot, dark crimson spurted from the man’s neck, steaming in the shivering cold night. Astarion’s empty stomach cramped at the smell. So warm, so molten on the air that he could almost taste it on the back of his tongue. Light left the half-elf’s eyes, and he collapsed into the garbage heap with a splash of rancid water. 

The shape in the shadows stirred. Astarion snatched up his own fallen knife with his left hand and pointed both blades at this stranger who had come to his rescue. 

Somehow, he recognized her just by the sound of her breathing. 

“You followed me,” he accused. Stepping from the shadows, she lifted both hands, much as he had a moment ago. The knife sheath at her hip was empty. 

“You’re not the only hunter in Baldur’s Gate.” 

“Whatever it is you’re looking for in this garbage heap, you’re not going to find it here. ”

Her hands were empty, and he had two knives. Even weakened, he could fight hard enough to convince her that he wasn’t worth the trouble. 

“What if I was looking to see a skillful slitting of a mouth-breathing half-elf’s neck?” Her upheld fingers twitched when she spoke. “I wasn’t, but maybe I should’ve been. It was very well done.”  

An iota of him preened at the compliment. Damn whatever elvish magic had infected his brain to make him feel flattered right now. He crushed the little bead of warmth with indignant anger. 

“You followed me.” 

She exhaled hard through her nose. Her breath fogged white from its heat, as his own breath was too cold to do. 

“Yes.” 

He waited for her to demand his gratitude, but she didn’t. 

“For how long?” 

“When I saw him following you. He looked hungry. A different kind of hungry than what you look like you are feeling. ” 

His stomach growled, agreeing with her. Astarion grimaced, clenching his abdomen to make it go quiet. “So you thought you’d dispatch him for me.” 

“No, I just helped you do it yourself.” 

“Do you ever talk about anything but killing?” 

She’d gotten distracted inspecting the bloody corpse that lay between them. Blood bubbled from the half-elf’s neck. She moved out of the shaft of moonlight so she could see the body without it blinding her. Her eyes were so wide that there was white all around her dark iris. 

“Are you going to drain him?” Her head jerked up to him. “I’ll leave so you can eat. Otherwise, the blood will go to waste.” 

Most of the man’s lifeblood had mingled with dishwater. Pitifully, that wouldn’t stop Astarion right now if his body would let him drink. He played off his hunger with a coy tip of his head. 

“Oh no, darling. I don’t lap at puddles.” 

She took another step toward him, her hands still raised, and her knees bent in the beginnings of a crouch. Blood had dried under all ten of her fingernails.

“May I offer him to Bhaal on your behalf?” 

Astarion’s hand tightened around her scarlet knife.

Of course she belonged to a murder cult. 

“Aren’t you a delightful little madwoman.” 

“Does that mean yes?” 

He stepped away from the body. His stomach pulsed painfully, beseeching him to drink. 

“He’s all yours.” 

She grabbed the corpse beneath the shoulders. At least she was a convenient way to get rid of a body. 

He watched wordlessly as his thiramin, whose name he didn’t know, dragged the body toward an open sewer drain, caked in cold mud and barely wide enough for her to fit through. She shoved the corpse in headfirst, and stomped at his feet until he slid down the chute to the sewers below. Then she stuck her own feet in, with her hands above her head so that her shoulders could pass through. 

Astarion still had her knife. 

“This is a gift, you know.” She looked up at him when only her bloodstained hands and mud-smeared face were visible in the shadow cast over the drainpipe’s mouth. “I won’t forget it.” 

She slipped out of sight. He heard her nails scrape metal, and the echo deep down when she landed. 

-

Taviri tranced in an alcove behind the great skull that was the face of Bhaal, which overlooked his holy altar. She slept on a mat of braided straw. Orin called her a rat living in the walls, and Tav usually retorted by calling her an indulgent princess who insisted on a four-poster bed with silk sheets. 

She was down there right now with a lover, one of the new Death’s Head initiates. Tav waited to hear the sound of Orin carving out his heart when they were finished. She didn’t do it every time, but Orin was predictable. Tav had held her the day she was born. From the sound of Orin’s howls and shouts alone, she knew it wouldn’t be long before the initiate was spluttering in his own arterial blood, or possibly missing a cock. 

Tav hadn’t taken a lover in the four months since she first saw the vampire in the Elfsong. None of the others knew about him, not even Orin. Bless me, father, she prayed the night he left the tavern in a rage. Bhaal was silent. You gave me this flesh, she protested, peevishly, but he said nothing. 

The vampire had made it clear she disgusted him, and she had no plans to parade herself around like a gentlewoman to make him want her. Yet she found herself carnally indifferent toward anyone else. It was a strange state to be in; she’d certainly never lacked for passion before. 

Tav lay flat on her mat, listening to Orin rattle the headboard, and replaying in her mind the sight of the vampire slicing clean through that half-elf’s throat. His enemy had gotten the upper hand, and he had no weapons but his teeth. She was glad she hadn’t stolen the kill. He was a poet with a blade. 

What a gift you have given me in this flesh, she told her father. For there to be a piece of his spirit in mine. 

She hoped he’d kept her knife. 

The alcove suddenly felt cramped. Tav stuck her legs down the ladder and slid to the floor below as soon as the impulse took her. 

When her ragged boots struck ground, she didn’t turn to watch Orin crack the initiate’s ribs apart. She just disappeared through the tunnels into the city at night. 

-

Her feet carried her to the winehouse the vampire was haunting that evening. She didn’t know how she’d found him. She didn’t know much about how the ties that bound them worked, exactly, since Bhaal had discouraged her curiosity about it. 

Taviri had been priestess of Bhaal’s altar since she was old enough to pull a femur from the socket by herself. Eighty years, most of the ninety-two turns of Toril she’d seen in total. Orin made jokes she pretended not to mean about getting Tav a glass display case next to Orin’s mother. Tav wished Orin was small and single-minded again. 

She saw the vampire through the diamond-paned window of a lush upper-city tasting room, lined with booths where a fringed curtain could be drawn across for privacy. The sweet smell of wine cut through the scent of dead winter flowers in the window box. 

His mouth was on someone else’s mouth. His tongue, too, on theirs. His porcelain hand on the back of their neck. His body pressed up against theirs.

He must have grown tired of the tiefling girl she’d seen him with the first night. She stared for a long second— at the clawing of his hands, the hungry way they carded through the new lover’s hair. Then she pressed herself against the bricks, out of sight of the window, torn asunder between rage and desire and shame. 

Her father had no patience for this. 

What were you made for, my daughter?

Blood, blood, Father, she recited her catechism in her restless head. 

She wanted to slit this stranger from the solar plexus down and pull their slippery viscera out an inch at a time. 

But not tonight. He had a right to lovers, whomever he wanted, even if it made her feel like ripping out their eyes. Let him have his pleasure. Someone else tonight. 

So Tav found someone else. Bhaal had no chance to demand the new lover’s death at her hand, though, because she never saw them again. 

-

She saw her thiramin another three or four times in the next two months. She never went looking for him, but somehow she kept spotting a cloud of star-white hair across the dark street or through an open door. 

Every time, he was with a new lover, never the same one twice, and the lover would always disappear before daybreak. She never saw any of them again.

He drains them. She realized it the third time one went missing. They weren’t lovers at all, but prey! Like a spider, he caught them in his web, and sucked them dry. He was a creature of infinitely more finesse than she, this vampire, with his pearly fangs that no one else seemed to notice. How clever, to hunt without needing to struggle, but still able to enjoy the kill!

Taviri made a reluctant effort to avoid him after that. She wouldn’t want her own heels dogged while out on the hunt. But she thought of him often, even when she was working with her knife, even when she was praying, even when the thunder of Bhaal’s voice in her head nearly drowned him out. 

-

1483 DR

It was early summer when Taviri was leaning against the wall in the elegant upper-city winehouse where she saw him kissing his target through the windowpane all those months ago. She wore a red cape pinned around her neck to hide the blood on her tunic. 

When she caught sight of the vampire, she almost didn’t recognize him, except for the familiar twinge of recognition in her spirit. His arms folded in around his middle, and his shoulder bones poked through the worn linen of his shirt. His face was sallow and gaunt, lips were so pale and waxen they were almost gray, but what she noticed most was how he guarded his side and inner arm. Rigid as plaster, he flinched when touched. 

He was injured. The lover with him caressed him like she didn’t know. How could she not know? There was a corresponding pain in Taviri’s stomach.

He let the stranger touch him anyway, because he was hungry. Taviri scowled. He should not have to hunt when he was like this. 

She waited in the wall’s shadow, fixed on the lover’s tangle of yellow hair. The woman leaned in to whisper something in the vampire’s ear, and he listened, with his lightless eyes unfocused. 

The lover got up. Tav watched her toddle across the room and around the corner toward the bar, then she was off like a hound. Beneath her cloak, she drew her knife halfway from its sheath. 

Taviri crept so close that her breath stirred the hair at the other woman’s nape when she silently drew her knife and pressed the point against her back. 

“Hold still,” she whispered. “Or I’ll slip.” 

The woman froze, then started to breathe fast and shallow. Tav pressed the knife point hard enough to slice the stranger’s dress.

“P-please, you can’t hurt me, I’ve never— the Fist would arrest you!” 

Tav suppressed a smile. She loved when they spluttered pointlessly about what the Flaming Fist would do. “If you think I’m afraid to pop your kidneys and bleed you onto the floor, you’re wrong. Step inside that door to your right.” 

The woman obeyed. Tav shut the door behind them. 

The room was storage for the winehouse, with racks of bottles and crates of napkins and glasses. Tav grabbed a bottle at random and uncorked it with her knife too swiftly for the woman to move away or scream before the blade was against her skin again. 

“Pick up one of those cups.”

“I won’t—”

Tav bared her teeth at the woman in a way that said she would enjoy killing her far too much to let this conversation continue forever. And she would, but it would be a waste of blood. 

The woman picked up a wineglass, her lip quivering and her throat bobbing around a suppressed scream. 

From the open bottle, Tav poured the glass half full, then set it on the floor. Then she withdrew a vial of poison from one of the pouches on her belt, and emptied that into it too. 

“No, no, you can’t make me drink that!” 

“You would prefer the knife?” Tav waved it at her. “It’s not fatal.” 

She pushed it into the woman’s hands. 

“What do you want?” 

Tav darted across the floor on hands and knees until their faces were inches apart. A scream almost escaped the woman’s lips; Tav clamped a hand over the her mouth to keep it in. 

“Drink. It will hurt less if you drink.” 

As soon as Tav moved her hand, the woman squeezed her eyes shut and drained the cup. 

She was asleep in ten seconds. The soporific Tav had given her took effect before it reached the bloodstream. It wasn’t a poison Tav used often, but it was useful now, because she could get what her thiramin needed without tainting the blood with the drug. 

Quick as a cat with her blade, she opened two of the small arterioles in the woman’s forearm. 

They bled fast, thin, and bright red. Tav snatched another wineglass and filled it almost to the brim. Surely not enough to make him full, but hopefully enough to take the edge off his hunger and help him heal from his wounds. The bleeding slowed to a fast drip, and then formed gummy scabs when Tav pressed her fingers to the cuts. 

Finally she pushed the empty wineglass into the woman’s limp hand, and the empty poison vial into the other. 

Tav slipped back out the door into the hallway, then into the open area with its laughing patrons left none the wiser. They went on spilling wine onto their lace sleeves. 

When she strode up to the vampire’s table, his eyes went wide at the sight of her, then wider when he caught the scent of what she carried. 

-

His thiramin stepped into his booth and drew the curtain shut across the alcove opening. Astarion flinched, feeling ghostly fingers close around his throat, but she stepped to the table’s far side to preserve the distance between them. 

Then she drew a wineglass of sweet-smelling blood— a wineglass of blood— from within her cloak and set it on the tablecloth in front of him, like a monstrous sommeliere.

“You can drink it,” she told him. 

“Where in the sweet hells did this come from?” He glared between her and the glass. “Is this yours?” 

His mark still hadn’t returned from the washroom where she’d said she was going. Astarion’s skin felt even colder, realizing whose blood this really was. 

For a second, pure rage made him clench his jaw shut and not speak.

“I saw you were hurt,” she said quietly. “You shouldn’t have to hunt when you’re hurt.” 

Astarion shoved the glass away so its smell would stop tormenting his dry throat and empty stomach. A drop splashed over the rim onto the tablecloth. 

“You cost me a mark.” He jabbed his index finger like a switchblade in her face. His side still throbbed from Godey’s cudgel, his mouth so parched his tongue grated against the roof of his mouth. Last night Cazador had hung him up by his wrists on the kennel wall and kept him from trancing with the back of his hand across Astarion’s face. He was so furious he could’ve clawed her to ribbons if his body would let him. “Again! You have no idea what you’ve done, do you? She was all I had for tonight. He’ll hurt me, again—! if I come back empty handed. You meddling worm. You think you’re helping me?” He seethed. “What would help me is if you would crawl back into the sewers and rot!”  

He watched understanding bloom on her face and harden into anger. He was not a full vampire lord, as she must’ve thought. Just a lowly, pathetic, mewling spawn, kneeling for crumbs at his master’s table. 

She shook her head. “She’s alive. I can show you where.” 

“Alive? And you just, what, slit her wrist and left her there?” 

“Asleep. The drug will addle her head.” 

“Where?” 

“The pantry in the corridor.” 

His thiramin’s eyes had been lowered submissively since he started shouting at her, but she lifted them momentarily to ask him:

“Do you want me to kill him?” 

“Who?” He asked, even though he knew the answer. 

“Your master.” 

Rage filled his head like hot smoke. 

“I never want to see you again,” he said with all the bite in his voice that his teeth could not exercise. “Get out, now, take that—” he pointed at the glass of blood— “with you! Out!”

She hesitated, then snatched the goblet and scurried out from behind the curtain when Astarion scowled like he wanted to lunge across the table at her. 

Then he was the only one left, alone and out of breath, with the lamp still guttering from how loud he’d shouted. 

As soon as he caught his breath, he drew the curtain back. The other patrons had all been staring, and quickly averted their eyes when they heard the curtain rings screeching on the rod. 

He hurried across the winehouse to the corridor pantry. The woman took a few minutes to wake up, and when she did, tearful and disoriented, all it took was the promise that she’d be safe from the mean, bad murderer for her to follow him all the way to the Crimson Palace. 

It was an easy night, after all. He didn’t even have to take his clothes off, just let the woman sob into his shirt until Cazador dragged her off screaming. The rat was almost fresh. 

Only when he was curled at last on his bunk did his long-sworn promise of revenge taste bitter in the back of his throat, like food he couldn’t keep down. 

-

Tav carried the glass of blood out of the winehouse. The Upper City boulevard, lined with sweet evergreen trees, made her feel like a mouse in a cellar where someone had just lit a torch. She turned down a narrow side street. The patriars in this quarter had their curtains shut and their windows latched tight against the biting insects that Gray Harbor spawned in summertime. 

He is like me, came a thought into her brain, unbidden and from nowhere. A servant of a master who does not allow him to disobey. 

Then her hand became the instrument of its maker. It drew her knife and slashed across her thigh. No, it was not time for the blood of Bhaal to be spilled! Her hands came away wet with it. Your mind betrays you, her father roared in her ear. Remember that you are mine. 

The wineglass slipped from her grasp and shattered on the stones into sharp, jagged pieces, where the blood it had held became another oblation poured out to Bhaal. 

She watched it run in the divots between the cobblestones, as her own blood darkened her trousers and dripped onto the ground. 

-

1484 DR

For a year, Astarion didn’t see her, except in busy markets at night, and in narrow alleyways, and sometimes as a blurry shape on a rooftop. His chest prickled when she was ahead of him in the crowd, but he only ever saw the back of her head. When he did catch sight of her, he watched, half in curiosity and half in dread, until she disappeared down some drainpipe or up a wall. 

Astarion had prayed to Bhaal before, like he’d prayed to every god he’d ever heard of, but at the time Bhaal had been silent. Maybe, he thought darkly, she was Bhaal’s idea of an answer. Under different circumstances, he might’ve found the idea amusing. 

Cazador had put him under strict orders not to seek her out. She certainly never seemed to be seeking him out; she never seemed to notice him at all. Yet they were always drawn to each other without meaning to be. 

If only it was like in the cheap thiramin romances that humans sold each other in the Wide, the ones with swooning and mind-reading and sudden bursts of magic powers. Instead, all Astarion and his thiramin got was this weird magnetism. And all she ever gave him was blood he couldn’t drink. 

He wished he could stop seeing her everywhere. Partly because he was furious at her for her meddling, and partly because he didn’t want to see her narrow her eyes with disappointment. He’d had to admit that he was a slave, and now the confession was in her grubby hands, beyond his control. 

He saw her again one night in an alleyway between the Dancing Lute and one of the laundress’ houses in Heapside. Astarion’s mark was asleep in the bed behind them, too drunk to keep an erection, and soon Astarion would have to wake him and hustle him toward the Crimson Palace before the sun had a chance to rise. His feet were propped on a stool before the tiny hearth, the fire built up hot, but he had the window open so he could stick his head out and look up at the moon and stars. It was a rare, quiet night. 

She never found out he was there. He spied her slinking down the alleyway in a long maroon coat. One hand was on the hilt of a short sword slung from her hip, the other tucked into her coat on what he knew was the handle of a knife. He quickly ducked his head back into the rented room before she could recognize him. 

Across the alleyway, a disheveled human man with a saggy face and expensive, curl-toe boots stepped from a side door. 

“You refused to meet me in the sewers,” she hissed to him. 

“I can’t imagine why I would’ve done that.” The human drawled. “Rest easy. Everyone in this building is on my payroll, and everyone in this one—” he knocked a ring-studded knuckle against the stones of the Lute— “Is too wine-sopped to hear us, or too wine-sopped to remember come daylight.” 

“Everyone in the sewers is either a servant of Lord Bhaal, or dead. I would prefer the sewers.” 

“I don’t care what you would prefer. I have a job I need you to do.” 

She laughed in his face. 

“I’m not looking for a job.”

“I think I can convince you,” he said. “I’ve been in contact with our friend in the dark.” 

“It never ends with you.” She rolled her eyes. “Gondians, Zariel, the Council, illithids, Sharrans, now Thorm himself? Bane keeps you on a long leash.”

“And Bhaal keeps you on a very, very short one, doesn’t he? I can hear you choking on it. Look at that stray tomcat at the end of the alleyway. You’re breaking out in sweat deciding which of us you’d rather disembowel. Please try to pay attention to this conversation. I have things to get back to. Gondians, Zariel and the like. You know how it is.”

Astarion heard a garbled curse come from somewhere in her throat. 

“What will you offer Lord Bhaal in return?” 

She sounded mangled. Astarion wanted to creep closer to the fireplace, but he was terrified they’d hear him move. 

“Nothing unless you succeed, in which case, all I can give you is meat for your altar. I understand that’s all you Bhaalists want anyway.”

“Meat,” she echoed. “Don’t believe you.”

“Meet me again in a fortnight at the saltpeter house in the west Lower City. I’ll show you what I have prepared.”

“Pretty nonsense! You might have a plan. I won’t get entangled with it when it ends with you dangling helpless on a noose. Only I will take pleasure in stealing your pieces from the charnel house.” 

The human snapped. “Fine! I wish you’d just been willing to talk. Your sister thinks she’s too slippery to catch, but I have eyes on her haunts in Rivington, in the northeast, and by the guard house. You can tell her I’ve caught her out, if you want, and I’ll just track her down again. And then—”

She hissed, “Orin is sloppy! Too dramatic. Easy to—”

“Yes,” he cut her off. “Easy to find. If you know what you’re looking for. Unlike you, you slippery gutter rat. She might be a Bhaalspawn, but she’s not Chosen, and she could die on an assassin’s knife if she weren’t careful. Don’t worry, I’d make it quick.” 

“No!” She cried out, exactly like Violet did when Cazador threatened to chop off her fingers. 

“Why not? Unless you do what I asked. The reward’s on the table still. I’ll forget we argued. Besides, it’s years of planning away. Five, I would hypothesize, maybe more. I just need you onboard now, or you can fish your sister out of Gray Harbor. No need to invite me to the funeral.” 

She made a growling sound no humanoid should be able to make.

“Lord Bhaal will—”

“Yes or no, please? I don’t need to endure your Bhaalist spew all night. Like I said, business to attend to, unless you want me to be planning this burglary for ten years instead of five.”

Astarion heard the clang of metal against stone. 

“She will learn to be cunning!” 

“Maybe one day,” the man agreed. 

“She will…” 

The metal blade gouged down the wall. She gurgled the inhuman sound again. 

“You can have what you want, Gortash.” 

“Always a pleasure,” said the human wearily. 

His boots clicked against the cobblestones as he walked away. 

Astarion couldn’t hear her anymore. He didn’t risk a look outside to find out where she’d gone. 

Sister. Chosen. Bhaalspawn. His thiramin was not just any Bhaalist. No, she was a daughter of the god of murder himself. Maybe there was a leash around her neck, like the man had said, but maybe she was also more powerful than he had dared imagine. Maybe it would be worth it to let her be a little closer than a stranger. 

He hid the secret under his tongue like a funeral coin, terrified that Cazador would reach in and ferret it out of him, but for years, the moment delayed its coming.

-

Sometimes, she still haunted the same taverns as he did. She never looked at him, but he knew she knew he was there. His feet wouldn’t walk to her table, so he never tried. She always picked a seat where she could see him, if she ever were to look. 

She didn’t talk to him. She didn’t look at him. She kept the distance he’d asked her to give him. She wore a hood, so he couldn’t see her face. 

Sometimes, people who made a habit of bothering him when he already had a mark for the evening disappeared. People who got adventurous with their hands turned up dead in the river. Slowly, the card sharps and guildsters stopped threatening him or speaking overly familiar when they were in their cups. He wished he weren’t grateful, but he was. 

He named the feeling of safety for an illusion every time he felt its presence, but he felt it all the same. Like having an invisible guard dog with big invisible teeth prowling obediently at his heels. Yes, maybe she could be useful in her way. 

-

He was extraordinarily light-fingered. Tav noticed this when she was alone in the Mermaid, upstairs in the shadow of a whale skull hung from the ceiling. She had her hood over her face. She was always cognizant of being watched, by Harper spies as much as by Gortash’s rats, but she did what she could to escape notice. 

He stole coins. Pocket watches. Rings off of fingers. Earrings out of ears, as he was fervently kissing the necks they were attached to.

Once she watched him unclasp a heavy emerald necklace from behind a noblewoman’s neck as its owner was talking to him and slip it into his sleeve with such ease that she didn’t even blink. Taviri could hardly breathe with her delight. 

She figured he spent all his stolen riches on wining and dining his master’s prey. Astarion wore carefully-patched finery, whose fashions she remembered from fifty years ago, and he was beautiful, because he would be beautiful wearing kitchen rags. Or maybe he spent it on perfume. She had caught his scent in the curtained alcove of the winehouse, even through the stink of blood, and she had to pretend she couldn’t remember it: herbs and citrus oil and some kind of distilled, oaky richness. She shrank back deeper into the shadows. He didn’t want her to talk to him, but at least she could be useful with a knife. 

-

Astarion had never had a dog, but he knew one was meant to throw them a bone from time to time. One night he was feeling generous, and an especially grope-happy duergar had just turned up drowned in his own bathtub. So Astarion put one single gold piece on her tab. 

She’d only ordered water. It covered the whole tab, plus some. Astarion got three silver pieces of change in return. 

Someone knocked on the door of his room at the Elfsong late one night. 

“Someone left this for you, saer,” said the door-boy with a doff of his hat. 

It was a garnet ring, set in soft yellow gold and engraved with the emblem of the Flaming Fist inside the band. Astarion turned the stone in the hallway torchlight. Its owner was probably quite deceased, especially since the ring smelled of blood. Bhaalspawn probably had no use for pretty trinkets like this, but Astarion, to whom Cazador gave only a paltry allowance to cover his activities, could certainly find use for it. 

She probably hadn’t imagined him pawning it to pay for oil of bergamot and bottles of absinthe he wouldn’t drink himself, but after all, one did what one must. 

He got sixty gold for it. As apologies went, it was better than nothing.

-

Tav was sitting on the trunk at the end of Orin’s bed, sharpening her knives for her. Orin always let blood cake up on the blade, and it rusted the edge. Tav tutted over a deep rust spot and picked up her roughest grinding stone again. 

“Scleritas, get me more oil.” 

“But of course, my lady, nothing would please me—”

She picked up the fine-grit grinding stone and lobbed it straight at his head without looking. Instead of him, she hit something else, which shattered. She didn’t look up to see what it was. 

“No kowtowing. Oil.” 

She heard Scleritas’ toenails mincing up the back steps, and the sound of broken glass being kicked aside. Orin, as soon as she looked to see what had been smashed to pieces, let out a piercing scream. 

“The mirror!” 

“Your big one?” 

“If it was the big one, bloodkin, I would flay you limb to limb and use your bones to—”

“And then you would have dull knives, so where would you be?” Tav muttered. The rust spot finally came out. She squeezed out her vinegar rag and buffed the whole thing down one more time. 

“Father gives us butlers for a reason.” 

“To teach us patience.” 

“I am the only one ever on the pointy end of your wit, sister. Can you ever be as mute with me as you are with everyone else?” 

“When I was your age—”

Orin flopped back onto her bedcovers and groaned until Tav was sure she’d run out of air. 

“Fucking elves take forever to die!” 

She hurled her one remaining knife into the bedpost. Tav had to leave Orin with at least one knife to hold onto while she cleaned the others, or she got antsy. 

Taviri was ninety-four, and Orin was nineteen. Scleritas had informed Tav that when she was around Orin, she also behaved as if she were nineteen. 

“But I hear rumors, bloodkin. You’ve been getting up to such— youthful, impassioned pastimes! You think I don’t know your secret,” she singsonged. “But I do!” 

All the blood in Taviri’s body froze at once. 

She whipped around and pointed Orin’s own knife straight at the artery in her sister’s thigh. Orin just laughed. 

“How?” Tav demanded. 

Orin twirled a bone-colored strand of her loose hair around a finger and bit her lip in pretend contemplation. 

“Do you think Father would be especially satisfied with his corpse?” 

Her flesh and soul rebelled against each other. She quailed at the sudden image of him, pierced on the altar, in motionless torpor, with needles in her veins and ringing in her ears, but the bottomless maw in the depths of her stomach that would never be satisfied as long as a living thing moved in all the planes sang. Why not get it over with now? Father would know you truly love him, if you withstood the pain of losing your thiramin for murder’s sake! Why not make him a pretty—

No no no no no!

“We all know what kind of flesh Father likes best,” Tav rasped. By pure miracle, the knife didn’t drop from her hand. “Ours. I’ll put a feast of it on the altar if you raise a finger to hurt him—”

“Oh, really?” Orin cackled. “My bloodkin would move the earth and heaven, all for the oily kiss of—”

A ripple moved down Orin’s face and body as she changed shape, and suddenly Tav was kneeling above Enver Gortash, with the knife over his thigh. Orin’s voice bubbled from between his lips. 

“Is this what stirs your loins? Is this what makes you tremble? Oh please oh please, Gortash, take off those fake brass claws and make me come all over your—”

Tav’s ears were still ringing, but normalcy slowly seeped through the cracks in her mental image of the vampire murdered by Orin’s knife. She leaned back and ground the heel of her hand against her forehead. 

“Gods, shut up.” 

“One of his lackeys told me he’d seen you slinking around, Taviri! Not like you, to be so conspicuous. But have your dalliances, why not?”

“Dalliances.” 

“Yes, bring him here! Bring us your lover in his jackboots! If Father consents to let him live, I won’t cross the murderlord’s will. Even if I could think of all the most grisly, delicious ways to take his corpsemeat apart—”

Tav flipped Orin’s knife in her hand, then returned to her work. Scleritas had left a jar of oil by the grinding stones. Another ripple rose from Orin’s feet to the top of her head, returning her to her own shape, and then she was lost in another fantasy, babbling and whimpering to herself about killing Enver Gortash, then every member of the Flaming Fist one after the other, and stringing their teeth into necklaces. She rolled across the covers from side to side, kicking her feet, until she was all wrapped up in her silky hair.  

Gortash was planning to rob Mephistopheles himself. There was a crown in one of his vaults that was the key to a whole stratagem intended to enslave the Sword Coast to the Dead Three’s thrall. 

Taviri knew she must really be insane, because even that secret didn’t seem as precious as the one that she’d guarded for two years since that night in the Elfsong. 

-

One night, Astarion found a little silver and gold skull, stashed in a merchant’s purse. It was a paperweight, perhaps, with rat teeth in its metal jaws. He spent a while contemplating its hollow eye sockets.

Obviously he would never waste his precious coin on anybody except himself (and one time on replacing a loveworn novel of Dalyria’s that had fallen into the fire, but only so she wouldn’t bemoan its absence too loudly). This wasn’t an exception.

But it was probably fake, anyway. Brass and tin instead of anything worth selling. He flitted upstairs to a table where the candle had been snuffed out, following the ancient feeling. Her attention shifted to him. She didn’t move, but the way she held herself changed entirely. 

They hadn’t spoken much in the years that had passed since she’d offered him safe haven and he’d refused. When they did talk, it was shoulder to shoulder at the bar. He didn’t meet her eyes. She seemed more tired lately, more gaunt. Bhaalspawn business, he assumed. 

Maybe he gave her the gift because he was afraid that she harbored a grudge about their relationship. Or maybe he just found it amusingly on-the-nose, giving a Bhaalspawn a little fanged skull, and that was why he set the paperweight down on her table with a tiny thunk. Either way, he did it. He heard her pick it up as he strode away. 

-

Slowly the cold metal of the trinket warmed in her palm. She ran her fingernail across the rat teeth in its mouth, tiny and translucent, surprisingly sharp. 

Repayment, or a gift? Or tribute? She didn’t know. Her father’s rattling voice hummed in her ear, saying nothing, but drowning out her thoughts. 

Cold, lancing pains went down the twin bones in her forearm, reminding her that her nerves were still living nerves, and her father hadn’t seen fit to devour her corpsemeat yet. Even so, Taviri hid the gift in her pocket. 

-

She stashed it on the far side of her pallet by her pillow, then turned it so it would look at her. It was fitting, since she slept inside the great stone skull, to have a little skull with her here too. Sometimes Orin stole up here to twiddle her dagger between her fingers or throw knives at her unsuspecting butler. Tav decided that if Orin ever tried it again, she’d drag her back down to the ground by her hair. 

-

1485 DR

This time it wasn’t hunger. This time it was Cazador. 

Not to say he wasn’t hungry. He was, but it wasn’t gnawing at him any more than usual. No, this time Cazador picked something blisteringly cruel, something he’d only done once or twice before. He took one of his long, thin knives, sharp enough to shave with, and sliced along the soles of Astarion’s feet, from the heel to the ball of his toe. 

Then he sent him out to bring back supper. 

Nothing had happened. He’d behaved himself all month. He hadn’t been bowing and scraping like Violet or Leon, but he’d been careful not to warrant any more suffering than usual. It’d been six weeks since he’d even seen the inside of the kennels, or gazed into Godey’s blank, bloodthirsty orbital sockets. 

The insoles of his shoes were wet with blood. He kept to the shadows, taking awkward, rigid steps, so he wouldn’t pull on the wounds, but it didn’t help, and the pain was so bad he was dizzy and lightheaded with every step. Crossing a bridge, he had a sudden, violent vision of himself collapsing over the railing into the Chionthar from a misstep, and flailing helplessly for some laundress to fish him back out. 

Of all the fucking indignities. He’d take a lash, a flail, almost anything right now over this. Over mincing along in agony, feeling the knife cut him open again with every step, stumbling on instinct to some fucking winehouse, where he’d be unable to find anyone, of course, because who would want a lover wincing hard and sweating bullets and bleeding into their shoes? 

The Cat’s Kettle had a small table in the corner with a comfortable chair, partly in shadow, and when he found it empty he slumped into it, infinitely grateful. Then he dropped his head into his hands and dug his nails hard into his scalp. 

The last time Cazador had done this, all he’d had to do was walk to the dormitory and endure Violet’s mocking and Dalyria’s pity. Now his feet pulsed and throbbed, like the Lower City’s cobblestones were still grinding into them. 

Cazador would be displeased when he comes back empty handed. And then— sour bile rose in Astarion’s throat, because Cazador was forcing him to fail, and then he would be punished for what he couldn’t have helped. Like a mayfly leashed on a thread by a rotten little boy and crushed for not being fun enough to play with. 

The door eased open, then banged shut. It didn’t interrupt the tavern’s hubbub, but it interrupted Astarion’s train of thought. His stomach flip-flopped. Her, again. 

He rubbed his clammy palms into his temples, because she’d figure out he was injured, because she always knew whatever was inconvenient for her to know. 

With one trembling hand, he straightened the cheap lace at his collar, swallowed around his dry tongue, scrounged around inside himself for some glue he could use to hold together long enough to find somebody, anybody, to keep Cazador fed tonight. 

He sat up straight. Gripped the table edge with both hands. Rolled his shoulders. Remembered a handful of the most shameful things he’d ever had to do in alehouses, and then scooted his chair out and tried to stand up. 

It backfired immediately. Searing pain lanced through his arches, and he came down hard in his seat. 

Footsteps creaked on the boards behind them. Somehow, he knew they were hers, even though he hadn’t exactly paid any enraptured attention to the sound of her walking before. His stomach lurched.

“Oi, fancy tosh. Isn’t there anywhere upside to drink?” 

Astarion also knew the voice of the man who’d just spoken. He was a wagonwright from the Basilisk Gate who drank here once or twice a tenday. He wasn’t cruel or unusually rude, but he was absolutely, blisteringly stupid. Astarion twisted in his chair and saw her frozen midstep, with her cloak fallen to the side to reveal the jagged piece of red glass in the hilt of the long knife on her hip. 

It certainly looked like a patriar’s weapon, and the poor idiot was poking it with his index finger. She stared cockeyed at him, like a hermit crab who’d just been picked up, or like she was thinking about biting off his fingers. Definitely one of the two. 

“Oi, sausage fingers!” Astarion shouted. “With a nose that protuberant, can you help but stick it in everyone else’s business?” 

The wagonwright turned beet red and snatched his hand away. One of the man’s friends snorted into his beer foam. 

She shifted her cloak back over her dagger, then turned her black eyes on Astarion. The tavern was a clamor that turned mute when he looked at her. Had it really been almost a year since he’d held her gaze? She’d lost weight, or maybe her eyeballs just looked especially sunken. There was mud on her boots she’d tried to knock off, with pieces of gravel stuck in it. 

Astarion had no idea why he shoved out the chair beside him before once again burying his face in his hands. Maybe he just needed someone familiar to swear at, and she was his only option beside his siblings and the pack of horseflies Cazador called employees. 

Slowly, like she was approaching a mangy alley-cat, she came and sat beside him. 

“In case you’re feeling even more incapable of taking a hint than usual, I don’t want to talk,” Astarion informed her. He contemplated getting two buckets of ice from a fishmonger or a wizard or something, and then sticking his feet in them until they went numb or fell off, whichever came first. 

She didn’t move. She didn’t move at all: so stock-still her shoulders didn’t rise with breath, and she barely blinked. 

He wondered why the Seldarine couldn’t have given him somebody boring, like an accountant. Or somebody with access to two buckets of ice. 

Another pair of patrons entered the Kettle. She was quick to pull her hood on when she saw them. There was some kind of spell in the weave of her cloak that made it shimmer a little. Maybe it kept people from recognizing her. 

“Friends of yours?” 

“Baneites,” she muttered. 

“Yay for religious squabbles,” said Astarion with a sigh. Then he flexed his toe too hard. More blood, sticky in the insole felt. Her nostrils flared. 

He couldn’t disguise his grunt of pain. Two hundred years of torment and he still couldn’t suffer in silence. It was what made him his master’s special pet. Revilement choked him at being reminded of his slavery now, when she sat there staring at him. 

She pursed her lips, flat and thin, then opened her mouth. Then shut it. Then she reached into her cloak, and Astarion heard a clink and the slide of leather. She pulled out a healing draught and set it on the table. An expensive one, the kind Godey only gave them when Cazador had all but left them for dead. Crimson liquid sloshed in the glass. 

“Keep your pity,” he snapped. He shoved it back so forcefully it tipped over. She caught it before it shattered on the floor. 

“It’s not pity. It’s medicine.” 

“Don’t make me regret talking to you by being cute about it.” 

“I don’t…” she stuttered, with the bafflement of someone who had never before been called cute in her life. 

Astarion stared at the potion in her hand a second too long. Cazador would make things tenfold worse if he came back healed, but he was imagining the cork-pop and the relief. He knew how it would taste— sharp, sour, hyssop and pomegranate. The drone of pain in his feet would disappear. He could walk, laugh, be mysterious, be delightful. Everybody in this tavern would want him, and one of them would win the grand prize of dying for it, and Astarion would trance with blood in his stomach and not care a whit. 

Slowly, so he had time to change his mind, she put the potion back in her cloak. 

“He’s hard to escape,” she said quietly. 

Astarion dug his fingernails into his palms. 

“Escape is impossible. I don’t suppose you’d have any laudanum in there, would you?” The half-moons his nails made in his skin did nothing to distract from the pain. He dreamed of slipping away in hazy apathy. 

Her brow knitted. She didn’t answer about the laudanum. “He has hirelings in the city,” she guessed. 

“Not really, no. He either likes slavish servants who never leave the Palace or spawn he can puppet around. Anyone he can’t torture when the mood takes him is too uppity for his taste.” 

She guessed again. “He has a hostage. Someone you care for.”

Astarion laughed at the idea that he could care about anyone enough that they’d keep him bound to Cazador. “Vampires, darling. They write books about us, you know. Imagine all the things you could learn if you read them. Then again, do they teach Bhaalspawn to read?” 

“You said ‘puppet.’ He controls you,” she realized, with sombreness in her black eyes so heavy it almost made him recoil. He didn’t, though, because sudden movements hurt his feet. 

“Yes, darling. Glad we’ve worked that out. He commands me. I don’t leave his side unless directed.” 

“So he directed you tonight.” 

“Brilliant, yes,” Astarion hissed. 

“Sometimes,” she halfheartedly agreed. 

Astarion blinked. He’d never heard her attempt to be funny before. 

The pulse jumped in her neck. Gods, he was thirsty. 

He reached into his purse for two pieces of gold. 

“Buy me a glass of wine, would you, dear. Berduskan Dark, please, a double pour.” 

She left, with a wordless smile suppressed on her mouth. The chair scraped the sticky floor. 

What was he doing? If Aurelia knew, she’d tell him he had a death wish. If he told Dalyria, she’d scold him until his ear was sore. Astarion himself was trying to ignore the stupidity of his own choices. Things were easier that way. At least with his thiramin around, he didn’t need to walk to the bar to get moderately drunk. 

She returned quickly with a smudged wineglass full of eye-smartingly pungent wine. Astarion knocked back half of it in one swallow.

“You knew I was a Bhaalspawn.” 

When he looked up from his drink, she was fidgeting with her sleeve. It caught on her jagged fingernails. 

He briefly panicked. Then said, “You knew I was a vampire the first night we spoke.” 

“I knew because I am a Bhaalspawn.” 

“And maybe I knew because I’m a vampire, or maybe you’re just such a natural-born killer that nothing else could explain it, hmm?” 

Her whole face colored at the compliment, like roses could start blooming from her ears. There was that awkwardness avoided. 

“What exactly did your master direct you to do?”

The frankness of the question threw him off-guard. 

“Bring back supper. I’m very good at it.”

“Did he say when you had to be back?”

“I fry in sunlight, if you didn’t know.”

She pressed. “Did he say?” 

“If I’m not back before dawn,” said Astarion, already warm and dizzy, “Then there will be, as you say, hirelings in the Lower City, and everywhere else in Faerûn. Which is why I will be back before dawn.” 

Feet. Blood. Headache. He drained the rest of his wine. Berduskan was strong stuff, and he hoped it’d dull everything enough that he could seduce something with a pulse. 

“There won’t be hirelings in Bhaal’s Temple.”

When he looked at her like she’d suggested he sprout wings and fly away from Cazador, she hurried to elaborate. 

“No one would hurt you. I’d have good clean animal blood brought down that you could drink, and you could do whatever you wanted. The Temple might smell strong to you. That’s how it is. But you’d be safe, I swear it.”  

Astarion stared up at the ceiling beams through his drunken fog and actually laughed. However ghastly this temple might be— he imagined her on a throne of skulls, seated before a fountain of blood, perhaps while stabbing an orphan to death— he wouldn’t care. Not at all. Not if he really believed Cazador wouldn’t find him down there. 

“How sweet. Unfortunately I can’t accept.” Astarion shook his head. He shoved off from the table, swiveled to his feet, and immediately regretted it. Stars burst in his vision. But he was fine, actually. He could work with this. Gods, he hoped whatever sop he brought back for Cazador gave him the indigestion of the century. “Good night.” 

He took a step. Pain seared his foot. He took another. Swallowed. 

“You wouldn’t happen to have a name?” He asked her over his shoulder. 

“Taviri,” she told him, low enough that only he could hear. 

“Mine’s Astarion,” he told her back. 

-

Sometimes, Tav asked Gortash’s contacts to meet her in a tavern somewhere instead of in a hidden cellar near the Basilisk Gate or a tower room in the Upper City. He hated it. Her Death’s Heads came back bearing long, screedy messages about her ignorance of security measures and the strange proclivities she was forcing upon him. Gortash himself started talking to her like she wasn’t triple his age, and Taviri answered by telling him she could send Orin in her stead if he wanted, and Orin could chop him into confetti. 

Eventually he consented. Orin wouldn’t sneak into the frozen wastelands of Cania to steal the treasure that had brought the greatest empire of history to its knees. Only Taviri would do that. Gortash knew it, and so he consented. 

With her meetings to use as cover for her regular visits to the night haunts of the Lower City, Taviri was free to look out of the corner of her eye for the sight of white hair and an elegant hand wrapped around the stem of a half-empty glass. 

Astarion. Three years since their eyes first met, and she finally knew his name. 

One evening, she was leaning back in her chair with her eyes shut and her ears cocked. Her head rang with schemes. She didn’t have the mind for it that Gortash did, and it made her want to ball up his maps and toss them in the fire. Instead, she sat and listened for Astarion’s voice. 

She almost didn’t catch it, because instead of his usual honey, all he had for his mark that day was bored interjections. 

“Mmhm. Yes. I see. How fascinating. Delightful. I mean, yes. Hmmph.” 

She cracked her eyes open. Astarion was at the bar with his mouth in a flat twist. His fingernails scraped idly at the lip of his wineglass. 

“And I, so I have a, a lot of, a deep understanding, and I’ll get to this, and a deep appreciation of drow culture. I think one of the craziest things is you have this whole Surface thing where people laud the matrons of old Menzoberranzan…”

“Do you,” said Astarion to the female half-drow who was droning in his ear. 

 “And I spend a lot of time talking to drow matrons, you know, like real drow matrons, and understanding what they believe.”

“Indeed.”

“I mean, today, these modern drow matrons, the old drow matrons would never have accepted them. And the thing that’s crazy unique about Baldur’s Gate…” 

He caught her eye across the tavern. Slowly, in a piece of theatre that was only for her, he blew out a breath between his lips that fluttered the curl on his forehead. Astarion blinked forcefully, and then turned back to his mark, suddenly beaming with composed interest instead of manic boredom. 

“Darling, why don’t you tell me more about those arcane superweapons…”

Taviri bit the inside of her cheek. She wondered how often he wished he could stab people. Probably a lot. She indulged in a brief fantasy of him with her red knife stabbing everybody he could reach, and getting blood on the wall hangings and all over the floor, and then licking it off his fingers after. 

The half-drow was now talking about some sort of wizard chicanery in Waterdeep she’d read about in cheap newspapers. Astarion looked like he was going to start clawing at the bartop. He scowled when he saw the laugh tainting her face, but she knew he didn’t really  mean it, not like before. 

-

1486 DR

It was late in the first month, wet and drafty everywhere except right by the fireplace, and Astarion’s mulled wine was quickly cooling down. He had yet to find a target for the evening. In his opinion, though, he was doing a grand job of looking foxy and composed. 

She was in here somewhere; he knew, but he wasn’t sure where until he turned around to face the fire and found her tucked into one of the alcove tables right beside the hearth. Her fingernails were all stained the color of rust from somebody’s organs.

“How long have you been there?” 

She shrugged. “Forty minutes.” 

“Good gods, darling, you know you are allowed to say hello?” 

“…hello?” she haltingly obeyed. 

“Good evening. Move over, won’t you?” 

He shooed her out of the warm spot on the bench that backed into the chimney. With soft amusement playing in her eyes, she obliged him. Astarion plopped down with a huff. 

“So,” he began, “killed anybody today?”

She took a delicate sip of her drink. 

“My sister has been terrorizing the Rivington shallowdocks. She’s slit the throats of a brace of cabin boys already, I’m pretty sure.”

“Sister!” He exclaimed with pretend shock, like he hadn’t heard that greasy human in the alleyway. “Hells, there are more of you?” 

Taviri chuckled. “Only her. Only…” she muttered something to herself that he couldn’t quite hear, except for the word ‘father’ that she repeated like it was caught in her throat. She coughed into her fist. “Only her and me. She’s younger. I held her when she was just a baby, and she would bite the tips of my fingers. I still have the scars.” She held her hand up to inspect the little silvery marks that interrupted her fingerprints. “Little devil. Do you have brothers and sisters?” 

Astarion’s lip curled. 

“That’s what Cazador calls us.” 

“Calls what?”

“Other vampire spawn. Other creations of my master. Some of them are mostly tolerable, and others are worse behaved than alley mutts, who at least are unable to talk.” 

“Are you the oldest?” 

“Third oldest. Violet and Petras are older.” 

She wrinkled her nose. “What kind of name is Petras?” 

“This is exactly what I’m saying,” said Astarion, loud enough that several of the other patrons turned their heads to look. 

Tav tugged the hood of her cloak down and twisted sideways her seat, tucking her feet up on the bench, so only he could see her face. 

“What? More Baneites?” 

“You never know,” she muttered. “Keep your voice down.” 

“Sorry, darling. I never get to complain about Petras with anybody new. There’s only so many bitch-fests Aurelia and I can throw before it all gets a bit tiresome. Yousen has tried to teach him to play lanceboard at least once a month for the last century, and he still thinks that you can move a Cyric sideways.” 

The only prayer Astarion had said in the last decade, since he long gave up pleading at temples for a savior, was for Cazador to finally cut out Yousen’s tongue. 

“Orin never cleans her knives,” said Tav. “I have to do it for her.” 

“Don’t you have servants?” 

Tav rolled her eyes. 

“Unfortunately.” 

She paused, looking at him in a way he didn’t entirely like.

“Do they do what you do? The others?” 

“What I do?” asked Astarion, with a stomach full of thorns. 

“Do they come out into the city? Come to— to places at night? Hunt for prey?” 

That was her term for it. Hunt for prey, as if he was some kind of weapon, sheathed in his clothes, sharp as a knife when they were off. He wondered if she thought of anything except in terms of killing. 

“That is what we’re kept around for, darling, yes,” he bit out. “Lures for the fishhook.” 

“Yes, like I must hunt to feed Bhaal’s altar,” she mused matter-of-factly. 

“Can’t let your sister get ahead of you, can you?” 

“No,” she answered in dark agreement. 

“Ah, sororal love. Now, who do you think looks most murderable in this tavern?” 

She pinched her chin between her fingers and narrowed her eyes to two little inkstains. Astarion looked alongside her. Baldurians, modestly well-to-do in this part of the Lower City, artisans, silk traders, penny-and-silver mages. Purses a little heavy but easy enough to lift. Cheap jewelry with counterfeit stones. Drunk, but not drugged, nothing hard, nothing exotic. The easiest targets would be the young apprentices. All it took was telling them they were special: that surely the other novices couldn’t be so clever, so talented, so well-spoken, as they were. He had to lean in close, like everything they talked of was a delicious secret. The Crimson Palace would become one such delicious secret. Wouldn’t they come to the Upper City with him? Wouldn’t they come to the beautiful house where he lived, and see its vaunted treasures, hidden away from the eyes of the world? 

“Her.” 

Taviri indicated a woman in a dress of red brocade, laughing with her head thrown back. She was some months pregnant. One ringed hand rested over her stomach. 

“Interesting choice.” Astarion would have picked, perhaps, the bored-looking elf with wine-stained lips in the far corner. His blood was probably rich as Elverquisst. “Care to elaborate?” 

“Bhaal demands an end to all that breathes. It is easier early, rather than later, to make an end.” 

He snorted. What brittle fanaticism. 

“You’re doing a bad job of being entertaining,” Astarion told her. 

“Can I try to be entertaining again?” 

“Why not,” said Astarion noncommittally. 

She pointed at another stranger sitting on a barstool. 

“What do you think he’d taste like?”

It took him a moment to realize she was talking about blood. He laughed. This was a good second try at entertainment, even if he wouldn’t flatter her by saying it. He and Violet used to play this game, until Cazador found out. 

“Like stonefruit wine with too many tannins.” 

“Her.” 

She pointed to a woman shaking a jar full of dice. 

“Like Baldur’s Grape when it’s boiled to fortify it.” 

“That one.” 

“Ugh, can’t you pick more appetizing people? You think I’d sink my teeth into anything.” 

She leaned close to point this time. Astarion caught a hint of her scent from the heat of her skin and the brush of her hair, and the bit of her blood that clung to her tunic, on some small wound concealed beneath her clothing. With her gaze cast safely across the room, Astarion parted his lips to taste the scent of her on his tongue. There was her throat, with just a few rough strands of hair fallen over her skin, the living coil of her windpipe, the branching vein and artery that framed it. She smelled like she could raise him from the dead. Astarion leaned in the slightest fraction; he could not keep himself back. If Cazador’s command did not keep him from drinking— if Bhaal would allow her to bare her throat to him— would she let him draw the curtain, like he had in that winehouse years ago, and sink his fangs in, and feel her blood break over his tongue? 

-

1487 DR

1488 DR

The years passed. She learned he liked their game, so they played it often. He taught her how to play cards, and then how to cheat at cards. Astarion was a fluent cheat who hardly ever got caught. Taviri was a terrible cheat, and the only solution she knew to being accused of cheating was murder. Astarion made her promise to play cleanly after one too many players at their table fell dead of poison in their beer. 

It was only one night a month, perhaps, that they spent much time together. The rest of their time was occupied: his, by his prey, Tav’s, by feeding her father’s infinite maw or in Gortash’s dens. 

It was a late night in early autumn, under a clear sky on the rickety deck of a bar off the Wide, owned and mostly frequented by wood elves. Ivy grew all over the railing, still shiny and green this early in the season. There were wrinkled ferns swinging from the ceiling, and scarlet winter orchids in pots on the table. Overhead the stars were glittering like new snow, and there were no candles except for tiny red witchlights set out on the deck, so that everyone could see the constellations as clearly as they could through the Baldurian smog. Tav would’ve thought it was beautiful if she were an entirely different person. 

She had killed already tonight. A rock gnome girl who had died without screaming. She had cleaned her hands in a cistern so that she wouldn’t leave blood on doorknobs. 

Astarion, sprawled beside her in a wooden chair, giggled to himself and had another gulp of the clear liquor he’d been drinking since he showed up. Tav had had enough of it herself that the stars overhead were starting to blur. 

“Isn’t this too… conspicuous?” She asked him. 

“Pleeeease,” he drawled. “As if any of your slithery cultists and gangsters would be in this…” he wrinkled his nose. “Greenhouse.”

Cultists and gangsters could be anywhere, as they both knew, but she had her enchanted cloak on, even if it wasn’t entirely covering her face. 

“How much of that have you had?”

“Shhhh,” he said, holding a finger a few inches from her mouth. His hands didn’t wobble at all. “I’m over two hundred years old, darling, I never know how much of anything I’ve had.” 

“I can’t wait for that to kick in.”

“How old are you?”

“Ninety-nine.” 

“Oh, wee little babe. Not even grown all the way.” 

“I stopped growing eighty years ago. One and two-thirds’ span.” 

“I am too drunk to say if you’re being sarcastic or a bit slow on the uptake.”

Astarion set the bottle down on the table, almost knocking the orchid pot over. 

“Did you kill somebody before this or am I hallucinating the smell of blood?” 

“First one.” 

“I figured. You’re quite predictable, you know. Although I have hallucinated the smell of blood before. What do you eat, down there in Bhaal’s temple?”

“Astarion, keep your voice down,” she hissed. 

“Alright, alright, yes, unbutton your collar and take a deep breath, darling,” he replied, but he did lower his volume to a whisper. “Come on, answer the question. You’re as lanky as a monkey.” 

Her father was snarling in her ear. 

“Don’t tell me you gnaw on bones like a dog.” 

“That would blunt my teeth.” 

Astarion giggled, and then leaned back in his chair so far that he started to topple over. Her hand snaked out and caught his chair back before he could slam into the floorboards. 

Tav set him on four feet one-handed. Astarion looked a mixture of sheepish and irritated, but mostly drunk. 

“I’m not going to say thank you,” he informed her. 

“Don’t,” she agreed.

She was curious about whether he was hunting or not tonight, and why his master had let him out if he wasn’t, but she kept the question to herself. 

“Gods, I feel so warm,” Astarion announced. “The thing, the thing about being undead is that you’re always cold. And everything except blood tastes a bit shit.” 

There was an exclamation from one of the neighboring tables, where the two women who’d been sitting there jumped to their feet and embraced the two older people who’d just walked in. There was kissing on cheeks, and inquiries about the journey, and compliments that sounded sincere to Tav, and hanging of cloaks over the backs of chairs, and someone went to get drinks, and somebody else pointed out how lovely the flowers were and how pretty the stars were. Astarion had another sip from the bottle, but it was a small sip.

“It’s so wonderful to finally meet you!” 

“We couldn’t believe it when we got Vienye’s letter. We would’ve traveled to the Gate earlier if the roads hadn’t been washed out.” 

“Oh, was everything alright with the carriage?” 

“We never had to stop. Thank you, dear,” said one of the older people to one of the young women. 

“Emel, my thiramin doesn’t drink,” protested the other young woman when her mother brought four tankards back to the table.” 

“Great. You drink it. Then I’ll get more of this story out of you.” 

There was more haranguing and more endearment, and then the daughter finally gave in and told the story of how they’d met. 

“… a delivery for work. She was the one who came to get it. When she looked at me, we both knew, like everybody says it’s like, and then—”

“Damia, we’re so proud of you—”

“Yes, so it’s all really been a dream, we were so happy right away we couldn’t believe it. And now it’s been two years, and…”

“And we’ve just got a little place near the main gate to the Upper City, near the park…”

Tav and Astarion made the mistake of making eye contact. Astarion bent over double laughing. Tav grinned, huge and stupid, and Astarion made noises that up until then only donkeys had been able to produce. The other patrons on the deck looked at them, baffled, as Astarion hooted and howled and gasped for breath. 

When he got a hold on himself and she mostly managed to replace the grin with her usual glower, they shared another brief look, one in which Astarion’s face said gods, can you imagine? and hers was unreadable. 

 Tav enjoyed the feeling of broken tension. All of the thiramin talk made her think he’d get prickly and traipse off. 

“Give me some of that,” she said, holding her hand out for the liquor bottle. 

“I want a gold piece for every swallow,” he replied, but he gave it to her all the same. 

-

1489 DR

In his laboratories, Gortash showed her mind flayer tadpoles in brined jars. Pieces of Infernal machinery wedded to Gondian ironcraft. Anatomical diagrams of Astral creatures with psionic teeth. 

She sharpened Orin’s knives, and her own, and the sword that she meant to carry into Cania. It was a weapon she used for sacrifice-fights, with live victims taken and armed and given a chance to face a Bhaalspawn. She won, always. She was very good with a sword. 

Ketheric had necromancers in his service: a foul, unnatural talent in Bhaal’s eyes, to bring back what was already murdered to be murdered again. One was called Balthazar and another was called Kressa. Taviri took a journey of several weeks to see the place where they dwelt and the mind flayer colony beneath the tower, where the brain they meant to enslave for their ends lived in a fetid, saline pit. 

Gortash was pleased, and so was she. As soon as they succeeded, she meant to take his Netherstone and give it to Orin, and Ketheric’s, to give to Sarevok’s phantom. Then she would have the world to lay at her father’s feet. After all, Death and Tyranny were but impotent ideas, and Murder was all raw act. 

But not him, she told her father, too boldly, in her prayers. Not him. If her flesh was bound to his flesh, surely he couldn’t die before it was all finished? Pretty corpse, said her thoughts in reply. What suffering it will give you, progeny of murder! 

She was walking down an alleyway on a warm summer night,  her black boots crunching on fishbones. What stopped her was the familiar tug, and a sound. She paused, partway openmouthed, as something outside herself ground the endless carousel of corpsethoughts in her head to a halt. 

Like the sweet poetic slide of blade on the spinal column’s cable of nerve, a fiddle was playing. 

She looked in the side window, into the back of the taproom, and spied a familiar coiffure of white curls. He was bent in close to someone beautiful, with blue skin like the midnight sea, and a fall of scarlet hair. She watched them flip their locks over their shoulder, their hand braceleted in pearls, and lean away from him, daring him to be the one to come closer. 

She had seen him do this dance a thousand times by now. I am a consummate lover, darling, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of, he’d told her one night, but he was ashamed. She knew. Ashamed to not be free. 

The fiddle music coaxed her toward the entrance. She stepped beneath the eave, and the hanging fern caught at her cheek. 

Inside, the bard had a violin between his neck and shoulder. He was sliding the horsehair  up the minor third, then gliding it hard from end to end of the chord in a bridge between the strings. She must have heard a fiddle play before, but it suddenly felt as if she hadn’t. 

She found a table at which to sit, with a single candle guttering in its center and the melody thrumming in her head. She’d hardly slid into her chair, intending to mentally run through every step of the plan for the burglary in Cania, when two white hands slammed palm-down on the tabletop. 

“Darling! How lovely to see you. You know, I was just—” His voice quieted from the initial bright effusion he greeted her with. “—just having a very horrible time with my catch of the day, who is playing coy like a schoolgirl, and pretending not to want me when they do, and I’ve just implied that you are an old flame I simply had to come say hello to, and so you should smile and laugh and flutter your eyelashes so I don’t waste the evening’s work!” 

Taviri smiled, albeit rather like a barracuda. Astarion huffed. 

“Gods, please try not to be useless tonight.” He raised his voice again. “It really has been so long! Tell me, how is your sister?” 

“Eating raw entrails, last I saw her.” 

“How fun,” said Astarion faintly. He glanced over his shoulder, and the blue-skinned person was still feigning disinterest, although Tav could see her peering at them out of the corner of her eye. 

“There’s nothing else for it. Come on, up, dance with me. Ugh, you’ll probably clank when you dance, with all the weapons you have hidden on you.” 

“I can’t dance.” She had before, on corpses, but that seemed like a silly and macabre thing to mention. “You’re very confident in ordering about a High Priestess of Bhaal.”

“Oh, now you complain, after seven years, you sullen thing! You’re nimble enough. I’ll lead. Please try not to step on my shoes.” 

He grabbed both of her hands and steered her up and out of her seat. She let him move her, dragging the chair legs on the dinged-up floor. He cupped her right hand in his cool, dry palm, while her left hand he pulled to his shoulder, bony beneath his worn velvet doublet, and his own hand slid to the middle of her back. 

The feeling in her gut was a faint pinch no longer. It became the crush of ocean water at high tide. Taviri wondered if she could drown in it, or if she might crack a rib.

“I’ve heard it’s like sword fighting, if that helps,” he murmured in her ear, his cool breath stirring her hair. 

“I see,” she answered. Had her lungs always been so small? “I am good at that.” 

With that said, he whirled her off into the small crowd of couples on the tavern floor. 

She clenched her jaw, intent on not letting the closeness distract her from mirroring his feet with her own. In time with the rise and fall of the violin, he advanced, she retreated. His left foot pressed back her right, she answered yes, and found that where swordplay was all about discovering the question and answering no, dancing was discovering it and saying yes. Her instinct was to press back where he pushed her, and instead she had to yield. To the violin, and to him. She must have been making a face, because he was making one that said he was trying not to laugh. He spun her, their fingers dancing together over her head, as the world blurred around them, and he slid his hand again beneath her cloak onto her waist, and she felt his touch keenly, more real than any part of her own body was to her. The floorboards vibrated with the melody, and somebody in tears was clapping along. Why were they crying? Had someone died? It was no wail, just the steady flow of tears. 

Dancing was a bright mirror of being a daughter of Bhaal, in a way: following the lead of another around and around, neither robbed of nor entirely in control of her own limbs. Astarion’s eyes were red as two dark garnets; as soon as she was confident enough to stop looking at her feet, she stared up at him. He stared back down at her with a faint and soft smile on his face— something in her heart snarled and snapped when she told herself it was all a performance— as the music rocked them around and around together. He spun her again; again, his eyes locked onto her the moment she was back in his arms. 

“Very convincing, old friend,” he murmured. 

“Should I leave murder behind and join a theatre?” 

“Ha!” 

It was a real laugh. She watched the candlelight shine on his teeth. 

“The critics of the Gazette will speak more literally of butchering a performance!” 

The violin crowned the theme, a floating wrenching high-pitch that sunk into sorrow at the end, and Tav wondered if she was going to cry. Why did she want to weep? Her father had not made her to weep. Tears were the foretaste of blood in the already doomed. The song was ending. How could it be ending? She wanted to gut the violinist for letting it happen. 

She hadn’t taken a lover in seven years. Orin crowed over it constantly, thinking it another sign that she crawled after Enver Gortash like a drooling puppy. Astarion knew all about soft touches and tender kisses, but she was made to devour and ruin everything she touched. There was nothing she could give him that he wanted, except Cazador’s death, which he had already vehemently refused.

If Astarion knew that all she thought about when she touched herself hidden away in her alcove was that after he had found a way to kill his master at last, that he would want her, and no one else, to warm his bed— would he mock her then? Aside from the slightest brushes, they’d never touched before this. A wave of acrid jealousy filled her mouth, like poison filled that of an adder. He had to leave, because the gods had seen fit to put a creature like him in chains for two hundred years. 

Father, I am a heretic for the sight of him. 

-

Astarion was losing. 

If he was a gambler, the extra cards in his sleeves were tumbling out. He was getting nervous, bleeding his hand left and right. Her eyes were so dark, looking up at him, like water underground, water he could tumble into, deep enough to swallow, like warm soft velvet night. 

He may, in fact, have thought she was beautiful. What a stupid, pointless thing to think.  

One song was all he needed. More than that, and he risked losing his mark. He heard it coming to an end. 

“I’ll see you around town, my dear.” 

Astarion let go of her waist. Her hand that held his arm jerked back, as if scalded, and she hid it in the folds of her cloak. In his own turn, he fixed the hem of his doublet. On the small stage, the bard was busy draining a waterskin, while his accompaniment tuned their mandolin. Taviri hung a step or two away from him instead of going back to her table. 

The script of the play Astarion was putting on demanded he go back to the bar, so he did. His mark— Astarion had already forgotten their name, and he cursed himself inwardly for being so sloppy— quickly looked away from him, but Astarion could see the prick of their ear, and he knew the game was far from up. He sat on the stool beside them, picked up his wineglass with one hand, and slid the other along the back of their seat. 

“Pardon the diversion, darling, I believe you were telling me something about that opera you liked…” 

He dove back in again, beginning where he’d left off. His mark looked over their shoulder at him, then turned, following the movements of his mouth with heavy-lidded eyes, and finally leaned in, positioning their body right in between him and Taviri’s table. He couldn’t see her anymore, and he only noticed her leaving when he felt the now-familiar tugging sensation draw taut and disappear. When she went, the room suddenly felt colder and smaller, as if someone had blown out all the candles and let the fire burn out. Only cold smoke was left behind in her absence. 

-

1490 DR

Taviri brought the girl back in tears. 

My own flesh and blood, her father sang in her ear. 

“Please,” the girl begged, tugging fruitlessly at Tav’s iron grip on her arm. 

My own sword and dagger. My Chosen. 

A cackling Scleritas pulled the doors open for them, and Tav shot him a contemptuous look in place of the usual kick. 

Tonight, I will give you a gift. One that will burn like fire and make you clean. 

“Yes, Father,” said Tav out loud. “I’ll receive it.” 

She heard the novices muttering. The girl let out a breathless scream when her feet first splashed in the blood on the floor of the Temple, then went back to her helpless sobs. 

Her Father chose this one in particular. She did not know why, and he refused all of her questions, so she stopped asking them. The girl was a green-skinned wood elf, and Taviri was thinking that it would show the contrast of her blood all the better when she opened the girl’s throat on the altar. 

“Sister!” Orin’s voice echoed up the steps. “Have you brought supper back?”

“No, no, no—” the girl pleaded, her face blotchy and shining with tears. She was trembling all over, and Tav, annoyed at the girl’s wrist shaking in her grip, clamped down almost tight enough to break bone. The girl must have been too afraid to cry out in pain, because all Tav could hear were her wet, desperate struggles for breath. 

She dragged her down the stairs, where her Reapers were waiting around the altar in their robes. She heard the chitinous clicking of Orin’s armor as her sister climbed the steps to join them. 

“I have family in Rivington. They can get the gold together if you g-give me time—!”

The girl was cut off when Tav snatched her knife from its sheath and pressed its tip to the tender flesh beneath her jaw in the span of a breath. 

“I’m not going to give you time,” she said, and then dragged the girl to the altar, threw her down onto the stone, and planted a knee in the middle of her back to keep her from thrashing around too much while she shackled her where she was. 

Orin passed through the half-dozen Reapers crowded around them. Scleritas minced down the steps, tapping his peeling claws together in impish glee. 

Ready your heart, my daughter. 

Yes, Father. 

“Bhaal chose this one,” she told Orin. 

Orin pivoted to prostrate herself before the great skull. 

“We thank you for your guidance, great Lord Bhaal!” She shouted, and it echoed through the Temple, and almost drowned out the sound that the girl’s shaking made in the chain links, like tiny bells. 

“We thank you, great Father,” Taviri muttered. The pulse was jumping around the girl’s arteries, the push pull of blood up to her brain. Tav wanted to beat her to a pulp in time with her terrified shaking, one blow at a time. 

She raised her already-drawn knife and stepped up onto the altar, her bloody boot toes leaving red marks on the girl’s dress. She can feel the bladehunger, ready to sink the tip into the soft point right at the base of her skull… 

“My lady!” 

One of her Reapers had fallen to his knees. Tav fixed her jaw. 

“Feeling unwell, Maedhor?” 

“Your Holiness!” 

He raised two pale hands, caked in blood, toward her in supplication, but his gaze was fixed on the girl with such fervent terror that Tav sneered in derision. She did not promote Reapers with weak stomachs. 

“Are you volunteering in her stead?” 

“Please, Your Holiness, she is… she is…. gods, mercy, wait, Your Holiness, I beg!” 

Orin crouched by the kneeling Reaper, humming like a hungry animal. 

“Does it plead? Does it feel pity for Lord Bhaal’s supper?” 

“Let him speak, Orin,” Taviri ordered. 

Orin hissed her displeasure, but she obeyed. 

“Thank you, Your Holinesses, I have never seen her before, but she is my— my—”

Taviri pointed her knife at the Reaper instead, like she could skewer the words before they reach her ears. It was too late. She already knew what he’d say.

“Your thiramin,” she finished for him. Orin stared milky-eyed up at her. Father, don’t let her guess at what she doesn’t need to know!

“Oh, gods!” cried the girl. “Oh, Seldarine, mercy…”

Taviri kicked her in the ribs, cutting off her tearful prayers. 

“Do you fear pain, Maedhor?” 

“They say it is the greatest pain there is, Your Holiness!” 

She looked at his bloodshot eyes, at the cringing girl, chained at her feet, at her sister, baretoothed and bloody-handed and waiting for her to fail. 

This is a test, Father. 

She drove her knife into the girl’s neck, and the girl died too fast to scream. 

Maedhor, her Reaper, screamed instead. He crumpled like a bug fried by a glass in a child’s hand, splashed into the blood on the floor, and screamed so raw that the scream ricocheted around the Temple, like it could shatter the cement, like the spirit inside him was being flayed in half, and the scream made ripples in the endless river of blood, and it got into Orin and made her laugh, chortling like a baby with her feet in the air, and it got into Scleritas and made him clap his hands over his ears with a grimace, and it made her Reapers and Death’s Heads stumble away, and finally the scream got into Tav and burrowed into her brain, and got her by the hair on the back of her neck and by the strength in her hand, and it was so loud that, for the first time in a hundred and two years of her life, she could not hear her father, only the endless, infinite shriek of suffering that was shearing Maedhor apart. 

She didn’t think. She just made it stop. One blow silenced him. The next caved his head in. 

In the silence left behind by everything the scream hollowed out, Taviri still could not hear her father. 

She grabbed her bloody knife and stumbled toward the stairs that lead back to the Undercity and out of the Temple. 

“Take care of the corpses,” she mumbled to Scleritas, before she fled the Temple, Maedhor’s brains all over both of her hands. 

-

Take care, my daughter. 

Bhaal didn’t speak inside her head, but instead spoke from his effigies that lined the way over the bridge and out of the Temple. 

All she did was grunt in reply. 

The fire that cleanses can burn the flesh. 

“I am not weak, like Maedhor was! I’m not afraid of pain!” 

You fear what you do not understand. 

“I am your hand!” 

She stumbled around the traps. She licked a piece of Maedhor’s gray matter off the side of her hand, and the taste was so foul she spat it right back out. 

You have lost your appetite for the table of Bhaal. 

“I am your flesh and blood!”

Even a hand can betray. 

“I obeyed!”

Then why do you flee? 

“This—” With one hand she pointed back at the temple, and with the other she pointed at her own stomach, where she felt Astarion even now. “Why am I weak?” 

Can you accept my gift? 

“Yes, I can!” She cried in return. 

But you doubt. 

“Never!” Taviri shouted at the final effigy. “You don’t have any evidence I’ve ever been—”

A hand does not argue with the spirit that gives it life. 

Her knees fell out from under her. Her hands struck the dusty ground. 

The second she had a morsel of strength back, Tav vanished into the Undercity, out the door, and into the sewers. The whole time she ran, Bhaal was silent. 

-

Astarion was restless tonight. He disappeared out of the side of the Heapside brothel whose barroom he was ornamenting tonight, and found a patch of clean shadow where he could be alone for a moment if he held still and kept from drawing attention. 

Cazador had kept them all on a shorter leash lately. He’d started giving them specific times by which he wanted them to return, and places he would not let them go. And he’d been, of all things, less cruel. He caught Dalyria singing and didn’t beat her for it, and overheard Leon going on about his dead wife and didn’t even scratch his face to get him to shut up. He went on and on about how they were all a family: all brothers and sisters, and the other night, Astarion even got a live rat, instead of a dead one. 

He’d take it, obviously, over being buried alive for a year, but it was still the most terrifying thing Cazador had ever done, because it meant he was planning something. Yousen had mumbled that something must be coming the other day, and Astarion kicked him in the knee and told him to shut his miniature mouth. But Yousen was right. 

The second he started feeling like cold hands were strangling him, Astarion cleared his throat and thought about velvet doublets and fountains of blood and piles of gold. It didn’t cheer him up, but it was better than thinking about Cazador. 

Taviri picked that time to round the corner of the alleyway where he was hiding, because of course she did. She was stumbling like a zombie and clinging to the wall, so at first, Astarion thought she must’ve had too much to drink. 

“Darling, as diverting as your company usually is…”

He didn’t finish his sentence. Taviri reeked of corpse, even more than usual, and the blood on her trousers and boots wasn’t dry yet. He pursed his lips to control the saliva filling his mouth. 

“Did you have to come looking for me smelling like that?” he asked quietly. 

She paused with her fingers clawed against the brothel wall. She was breathing fast, like she was about to be sick all over the cobblestones. 

“Please try to vomit on your own boots instead of mine.” He backed up against the end of the alleyway. He would’ve been pleased to see her if she were in less of a bothersome state. 

“I can’t hear him.” 

She whispered it to herself. Astarion coughed conspicuously. He would really like her to act more normal. 

“Father, am I failing?” 

She turned her hands around to look at them. They were both deep brown with blood. Whatever answers she was looking for weren’t in her hands, because she only slumped down the wall, until her forehead thunked against stone. 

A man cried out from the brothel window in pleasure or pain or both. 

“Taviri.” 

She looked at him once, then looked away; twice, and her eyes went round. 

“Did I scare away your mark?” 

“All of Cazador’s possible menu items are inside, so no. I came out here for fresh air. Well, Heapside’s version of fresh air,” he amended. 

She exhaled. Blood stuck her hair together and spattered her face. “Good. Good.” 

Then she returned to her muttered prayers. 

“Why was she my test? Why was… couldn’t be… why do I… hmmm. I do not— yes? Yes?” She looked up, and all around her, like someone was talking that Astarion couldn’t see or hear. “Do I think she—” 

First, Taviri slumped back on her heels as every muscle in her body went suddenly slack. Then her head jerked to the side, like she was shaking it no, and she tumbled backward onto the ground. Her chest bowed in; her hands flew to her throat; her mouth gaped and her nostrils flared. She could not draw breath. 

“Taviri?” 

Astarion stood over her. She must be having some sort of religious fit. He waited a second, but she still wasn’t breathing, and he really didn’t want to know what would happen if she didn’t breathe for too long, so he knelt over her, grabbed her by her jaw, and popped her mouth open to see if there was anything caught in her throat. There was nothing. His hands came away bloody. She was starting to foam at the lips. 

“Taviri!” He shouted. 

She sucked in a huge breath, but a choke cut her off before she could finish it. Her bulging eyes fixed on his face. He checked her chest, her throat, but nothing there was cutting off her windpipe. 

“Astarion, I—” 

Even wheezing, her voice had a resonance it’d never had before. 

“Taviri, what’s happening?!”

A glob of spit pearled at the corner of her lips. With the next breath that she fought to inhale, she cried: 

“I would not choose her!” 

“Who?” Shouted Astarion, close to shaking her in case that would finally loosen her tongue. 

“Killed— a thiramin—” Another gasp. “Two— both— Bhaal said— a test— angry—”

Her gullet worked frantically, but the air wouldn’t come. 

“Astarion, he’s gone!” 

“Because Bhaal is angry with you?” 

“—Gone!” 

For a moment, Bhaal was winning their battle for her lungs. She was silent again, her throat sealed shut. 

This was Taviri without Bhaal. Her voice was different. Her eyes watered, and there were pieces of flesh between her teeth. She thrashed against his seizure of her body, like an avenging angel drowning in a stormy sea. 

Astarion went cold all over. He couldn’t watch her like this. It was too much like a mirror. He moved to flee and leave her to her fate, but she reached for him, not grasping, just reaching with the hand that wasn’t clawing at her throat. 

“Astarion,” she wheezed. “I’m— going— to help you kill him— Ca— him— don’t care— if Lord Bhaal— puts his knives through me, let him—” 

She started coughing blood. Astarion covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve so the sweet smell of her blood didn’t drive him half insane. 

The smile she smiled wasn’t hers. Her eyes rolled back in her head, capillaries bursting in her sclera and rolling scarlet beads onto the tips of her eyelashes. 

He was the one who was going to be sick. 

“You are my creature,” said a voice that wasn’t hers, coming from her mouth. “I will teach you not to deny me. You will come into my service again, my child.” 

Then the mad god inside Taviri’s head looked at him and cackled. 

“I can feel the piece of your spirit that is chained inside my daughter, spawn,” it tells him. “I taste your fear. My altar is the destiny of all that lives. Even you.” 

And then she dissolved into babbling and raving, cheeks split with a grin so wide that Astarion wondered if it would rend her flesh. Rolling her shoulders, talking to herself, her teeth and tongue together sounded like the feet of centipedes. 

Astarion couldn’t witness her suffering, or save her from her isolation, any more than he could save himself, and so he did what he usually did, and left her to her fate. 

-

“You look…” 

Aurelia trailed off. 

The others were trancing or asleep. Outside, the sun was up. Astarion had his clothes back on. He was the only one sent out to hunt tonight. His body still didn’t feel like his. 

“Spare me.” 

“Okay, okay.” 

Aurelia leaned back on her pillow with her arms folded under her head. 

The unfinished sentence bothered him, and he wanted to know what she thought she’d figured out. 

“What?” 

“You gonna be a bitch to me if I talk?” 

“I’m not in the mood—”

“Gosh, sorry. Don’t yell. I don’t want to wake Violet up.” 

Violet was snoring away on the bunk above Aurelia’s. Astarion scowled, but he kept his voice down. He didn’t want to wake Violet either. 

“You look bad.” 

“The meal was bad going down.” 

This was a kind of code they had that meant his mark was a bad one. It wasn’t true; the whole thing was uneventful, just the usual touch whose memory he couldn’t distinguish from thousands of other hands now that it was over. But he knew Aurelia wouldn’t ask more about it. They’d long given up talking about the prey they brought back for Cazador. Violet and Petras still boasted about especially difficult marks, but the rest of them, more or less, had nothing to gain from talking about it, and no sympathy to give while listening. 

“At least they’re all dead now,” said Aurelia very quietly. 

Astarion pulled his knees up under his chin and scooted back on his bunk, so she couldn’t see him. 

“Cheers,” he answered. 

“You should trance, Astarion.” 

He did, in the hope that none of his memories would resurface today, but the hope proved foolish. He saw her, setting a goblet of blood on his table like a grisly sommelier. He saw her smirking in the corner of a tavern, sharing a thousand private, unspoken jokes with him as he went about his business being the honey that caught Cazador his flies. He saw her idly flipping her knife around under the table, and complimenting him when he showed her he could balance his own knife on the tip of his finger. He saw her pinching her chin as she looked out at the crowd, thinking of whose blood she’d ask him to speculate about next. He saw her wrestling her god for the right to breathe. He saw her covered in sewer mud, dragging the half-elf’s corpse down a drainpipe. He saw Cazador’s omnipresent eyes, narrowed in satisfaction, and himself in those expensive sheets, wearing nothing but shame. 

-

1491 DR

 When the night they had planned for comes, Taviri strapped on her armor. Purple and black, one piece at a time, refusing help from Scleritas or anyone. She painted her eyes dark. The sclera were still bloody from her father’s chastisement. 

Mephistopheles could match Bhaal for power and perhaps surpass him, but even he could be bargained with. Bhaal gave no quarter and took no prisoners. His hunger was as large as the cosmos, and it would not cease until he had devoured it entire. And she slept nested in his temple’s heart, waiting for the day when he would take the whole world for himself. 

She strapped her sword to her hip. Pulled her helm down to cover everything except her eyes. 

Orin seized her hand as she was leaving. Tav twisted out of the grip, full of strange contempt. 

“Even now. Even now, sister, you will not tell me what you have planned! Lying sister. I should follow you to Gortash’s deepest stronghold and drain the fluid of your spine onto his velvet boots!” 

“Peace, Orin,” said Tav. “I’m going to steal a weapon for Father. That is all you need to know. When I return, I’ll explain the rest.” 

The end would mean the murder of all that was— elves and dwarves, humans and gnomes, gods and beings older than gods. And horses and foxes, bears and birds, leopards and fish in the sea. Everything. The insects that swarmed alley garbage behind inns and factories. They would rot to bone, and their blood would fall from the highest celestial to the lowest hell, until tears and blood were one, and there was none left to weep or to bleed them, mortal or immortal, animal or thinking creature. It was Bhaal’s way: everything was equal to him, and only one thing would be satisfying.

“Steal? A weapon? What weapon? From who? Where are you going? Where, where, where, lying, sneaking Bhaalsister!” 

There was a buzzing in her head, like needles in a numb limb. No words, no direction, no anger, no pleasure. Pure, blissful silence. 

“A great weapon. A weapon of control from a powerful enemy. That is all.” 

“Cursed, teasing, faithless sister!”

Tav rolled her eyes. 

“Would you stop shouting? I’ll explain everything when it’s finished. Sit on your hands, kill Scleritas a few times. It’s very fun. I’m going to bring you something you’ll like.” 

The silence slammed back in over her like water. Her throat shut. Orin looked askew at her, like a cat looking for weaknesses in a vole. 

Then her breath came back, but the silence remained. 

“Don’t follow me.” 

-

Helsik finished the last incantation. 

The air smelled like corpses frozen in glaciers, like sour smoke and finality and death. 

“After you,” Gortash purred. 

“Let us wash the realms in blood,” Taviri said, and stepped through the portal into Hell. 

-

The Crown of Karsus was cold in her hands. 

Another mortal might be tempted. It didn’t call to anything in her, though. Bhaal was already a god. 

-

“I’ll bring it to Ketheric,” Gortash promised her. 

“Don’t let him keep his greedy hands on it.”

“You Bhaalspawn are so anxiety-prone. I would never. An Elder Brain will wear it much better than Thorm could.” 

“How long?” 

“Give me five days. Don’t let anyone else touch your Netherstone.” 

“Never.” 

Her body was black with demon blood. As Gortash strode out the door, collar high around his ears, Taviri went and sat in his chair. She hoped demon blood was impossible to wash out of upholstery. 

The silence loosened. Not completely, but just enough that it felt like blinking herself awake. 

Daughter, will you be faithful to me? 

“I won’t be merciful again, Father,” Taviri sighed. 

If you betray Bhaal again… 

“I am your creature,” she finished. 

-

1492 DR

Astarion was dressed for the night’s work. He was fixing the buttons on his cuffs, climbing the stairs to the south exit, readying himself to go out into the Lower City. He wasn’t sure where would be best tonight. Probably something close by. 

“Boy.” 

He froze a few steps from the top. Cazador was sitting in one of the armchairs set out for him to enjoy his art collection. Astarion looked up and noticed a new picture, just purchased. It showed two elves, both naked and holding bowls of fruit, per Cazador’s horrendous taste in oil paintings, and leaning their foreheads against each other. One of them clutched a broken wineglass. 

“Yes, master?” 

Cazador tutted. 

“What fine manners tonight.” 

Astarion’s stomach clenched. He’d always called Cazador ‘master,’ ever since he was locked in the catacomb. Something terrible was going to happen, for Cazador to point it out. 

“Thank you, master.” 

Cazador rose from his seat, still observing the painting. 

“There was a conversation we had many years ago, Astarion. I don’t know if you recall.” 

“Yes, master?” 

“Yes, you’ve forgotten, or yes, you recall? Speak clearly, boy.” 

Astarion felt the compulsion take control of his tongue. 

“I don’t know what conversation you mean, master.” 

“The one about the weaknesses of elvish flesh.” 

He wishes he could force his mind to go somewhere else, like it did when he was on his back. Pitilessly, his awareness stayed fixed, glued to himself and to Cazador. 

“Yes, master.” 

“It occurred to me just tonight. I don’t believe I’ve ever asked you again, have I, boy?” 

“No, master,” said Astarion too quietly. 

“Speak up!”

“No, master!” 

“Good. It was a mistake I made, simply because it doesn’t happen to every elf, does it?” 

When Astarion didn’t answer, Cazador raised his voice. 

“Does it, boy?” 

“No, master.” 

“No. And certainly not when you see so little of the world, when you remain with me, in Baldur’s Gate. I had thought it was so remote a possibility, it couldn’t possibly be worth my time to worry. And I was wrong. I was wrong, Astarion. Do you know why I was wrong?” 

“No, master, I don’t.” 

“Your brother Leon, the other evening, came to me and told me that he had seen you several times with an elvish woman who seemed quite taken with you, and you with her, but you haven’t brought an elvish woman to our table for quite some time. You must imagine my surprise.” 

“Leon,” Astarion growled. The boot-kissing, mewling, backstabbing pissant, Astarion was going to spend hours killing him—

“I forbid you from saying anything to him about the matter. Or to any of your brothers and sisters, and I forbid you from harming him in any way,” Cazador enunciated. “After all, why would you be angry with your brother for being obedient?” 

Astarion did not, could not speak. He stared up at Cazador with every ounce of two hundred years’ hatred in his heart, envisioning every death he’d ever wished to subject his master to, and Cazador laughed, because he knew that impotent hatred was all Astarion would ever have. 

“That is what I thought. Is this woman your thiramin, Astarion?” 

“Yes,” said Astarion’s mouth without his permission. 

“Is she still alive?”

“Yes.” Bhaal hadn’t killed her yet. He would know if he had. 

“What is her name?” 

“Taviri— master, you can’t kill her, she’s a Bhaalspawn, the Chosen of her god. He’s too powerful.” 

Yes, good. It was even true. Maybe this would save her— save them both. 

“A Bhaalspawn!” Exclaimed Cazador, as if this was all amusing. “Is it true?” 

“Yes.” Compulsion forced the answer from his mouth. 

“In that case, we will have to take extra precautions. Thank you for forewarning me. Could you convince her to return here with you?” 

There might as well have been a millstone chained round Astarion’s neck. 

“…yes, master.” 

“Good,” Cazador cooed. “Go at once. Find her, do whatever you must to convince her to come here. Do not tell her of our conversation tonight, or that you are seeking her on my orders. Do nothing that would put her on edge in any way.” 

Cazador, already triumphant, gestured toward the door. 

“Well, run along, boy.” 

Astarion’s teeth clamped down on his tongue, and his feet puppeted him off to do his awful task. 

-

The gravitational pull toward her was so strong that he never second-guessed a turn. He went along the wall, then left, then along the road to the Basilisk Gate before turning north. In the streets, people were singing, laughing. Someone played the flute, with their empty shoe set out to collect coins. A tavern boy rolled a keg into an alley door. Two hobgoblins sat on a stoop, trading harbor gossip. Astarion trotted along, a little errand boy with fangs. He dug his fingernails so hard into his palms they drew blood. Two hundred years ago Cazador had drained all the blood in his body, and at the time, he’d thought nothing could possibly be worse. 

Past the Tabernacle he went, and of course he was on his way to the Elfsong, because where else would this end besides here? 

In the taproom, somebody was sweeping up a broken stein. Six tieflings argued about the rules of a cardgame. At the bar, beer foam poured over the lip of an overfull glass. 

Tonight, she wasn’t in the main room. Tonight he followed his gut up the stairs to the second floor. He eyed each door he passed, waiting to sense her behind one of them, but they all came up empty. Eventually, he reached the spiral stairs that lead to the rooftop. 

He didn’t have enough time. Not that his body would let him prolong it. He climbed. 

When he opened the hatch, she was there in the rooftop garden, perched on the bench beneath the trellis, almost invisible except for the moon that washed the lush flowers, the terracotta roof, and the plane of her cheek in ethereal silver. 

“Astarion.” 

Her voice was back to normal: not Bhaal’s growling and not the clear voice she’d promised to help him kill Cazador in, just her rasping, dry voice, like usual. What a sick joke this had all turned out to be. 

“You were a tricksy little thing to find tonight.” 

Cazador’s power wouldn’t let him leave her any hints, but he had to hope that the strangeness of the situation in the first place would be enough to clue her in that something was very wrong. 

She smirked. 

“You went looking for me?” 

“Yes, usually the other way around, isn’t it?” 

Astarion sat crosslegged on the cushion across from her with his wrists resting on his knees. He might as well be comfortable. 

“Was hunting bad tonight?” 

“I don’t want to talk about hunting.” 

It came out too harsh. 

“One of them hurt you.” 

She was always careful when they danced around the subject of what he did with the people he brought back for Cazador. She knew how it all worked. She’d seen him slip into enough closets and rented rooms; she’d looked away when a mark put their hands under his clothes in a dark alcove. If she pitied him, she only showed it by making the especially bad marks disappear. It was one of his favorite things about her. 

Tonight, she made no effort to disguise her contempt. He could taste her ire in his throat. 

“No.” He shook his head. “No, actually, there’s no one tonight.” 

The furrow between her brows disappeared. She waited for him to explain. 

“I wanted to see if you were alright after what happened in Heapside.” 

Any explicit concern from him was new territory for their relationship. Taviri stared at nothing. 

“Most of it I don’t remember,” she confessed. “Father says it’s over, anyway.” 

“What do you remember?” 

Whatever she was imagining as she stared at nothing made her stony-faced. “I killed a woman. Something about it went wrong. Father was displeased. He executed the discipline he saw fit. I thought I hallucinated you because I couldn’t breathe. Heapside, you said? I didn’t know where we were.” 

If Bhaal had made her forget that much, she must have forgotten the promise. It was for the best, given what was about to happen to them both. 

“Don’t tell me more,” she finished. ”He says I shouldn’t know.” 

What is worse, Astarion wondered— having no will of one’s own, or having a will, but being utterly impotent to carry it out? Bhaal filled every empty space of her head like mold in the walls. 

“If you’re content, my love, then that’s enough.” 

She played her reaction off well, but Astarion caught it plain as day. Her breath hitched, her pulse sped up. A flush bloomed over the spot on her neck that he dreamed of sinking his fangs into. Then she went on picking at a bit of dirt on her trouser leg with her thumbnail. 

“Astarion, something is going to happen soon in Baldur’s Gate,” she told him. “Something big. I can’t tell you what, but you’ll know when it comes. If you’re not with Cazador when it happens, and if you stay away from him, you might make your escape.” 

“Darling, he would have to die for that to happen.” 

“I know that,” she replied. “I know every way there is to kill a vampire lord.” 

Gods, if something in Astarion didn’t go a little warm, picturing her doing murder homework because she had a crush on him. Reading up, plotting it all out, even if she knew he’d never let her be the one to kill Cazador. 

Whatever big opportunity she’s got planned would be great, if only they were both alive to enjoy it. 

“One of your many charms.” 

“Yes. I also know how to cheat at cards.” 

Astarion raised his voice. “That is lying. You are horrible at it. Please don’t bring it up again, it’s all flashing before my eyes.” 

She hid a smile by turning her face away. Her ears had gone positively purple from blushing. 

“Taviri…”

It got her attention; he hardly ever used her name. 

“That’s actually why I came to you tonight.” 

“Because…?”

“Of Cazador.” 

Her eyes narrowed again. 

“What is it?” 

“The thing is…”

He looked down at his hands. 

“I think I finally have it.” 

“It?”

“A way to kill him.” 

She caught the word kill like a bloodhound. 

“You’re going to be free?”

“Yes.” He batted his eyelashes at her. “Now, will you pretty please pop over to the Tabernacle and buy me all the holy water they have?” 

She actually stood up and reached for the purse dangling from her belt. Astarion grabbed her hand to keep her from scarpering off on errands. 

“Ill-timed joke, darling. No need to run off.” 

Hesitantly, she sat back on the bench. 

“I wasn’t joking about killing Cazador. That was quite serious, actually, and I do need your help.”

“What help?” 

“That’s the thing.” 

He was still holding her hand. It was hard, smooth and callused, with a silver scar across the knuckles. He followed the scar’s path with his thumb and felt her hand twitch like a moth. 

“I can’t tell you until we’re at the Palace. The other spawn are in on it, but I need you to trust me until we’re there. Can you do that for me? Please?” 

He knelt on the cushion, pulling their joined hands to lay against his chest. Her fingers were warm. The second he was on his knees, Taviri slid off the bench so she was eye-to-eye with him. She moved so fast it was like she couldn’t stand to watch him plead for anything. 

“There’s no part of your plan you can tell me.” 

A sigh of relief he couldn’t show blew through him. Yes, it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? She’d plotted and planned far more deaths than he has. This whole thing was paper-thin, painfully, obviously stupid. He waited for her to pull away and shake her head and save herself from him. 

“Alright, Astarion,” she said. “I trust you.” 

Fool , he thought as he surged forward into her arms, like he was so overcome with gratitude he couldn’t help himself. Poor little fool. She made a small noise of surprise, then groaned when his mouth found her mouth. 

They tumbled back onto the wooden planks. He cradled her head so she didn’t hit it on anything, but she was fast enough to catch herself with her elbow, and to cushion his fall with her body, so they end up entangled, legs intertwined, her warm lips against his cold ones, his hands tangled in her soft hair, her hands unbelievably, impossibly gentle down the slope of his neck to his shoulders, touching him like he was a living man instead of a dead one, and they kissed and kissed, and her soft tongue slipped out to caress his, tender and openmouthed, and she made a hundred little sounds she couldn’t contain, and he made a hundred more back, and wished he was faking any of it. Her body under him was warm in the cool autumn night, and she kept her hands in respectful places, but Astarion didn’t care to discipline his own, groping at the corded muscle in her arms, at the vein in her bicep, slipping his hand beneath her tunic to the bare skin of her waist, up the ladder of her ribs, mapping territory on a body he’d known a decade and hardly touched before tonight. Taviri kissed him like she was about to be shipped off to the front lines, like she was worshipping, like she was starving. 

Astarion kissed her back exactly the way he’d kissed ten thousand other mouths. He didn’t know how else to kiss. None of the others ever saw daylight again, either. 

Her arms snaked around his back to hold him, and a bolt of fear went through him that she was going to want him to take her to bed before they returned. 

Instead, Taviri kissed him deeper, coaxed his tongue into her mouth, and then bit down hard on her own cheek. Hard enough to draw blood. 

The next second lasted forever. He was right. She did taste like coming back from the dead. 

She tasted like sunlight. Colors exploded behind his eyelids. Electricity surged down his spine to the end of his nerves. His fangs ached to sink into her lip and drink himself sick. His heart, which had lain dormant in his chest for centuries, gave, not a real beat, but a great painful throb. For a second, he really believed the hunger would disappear, and he’d never been happier in his life. 

Then the compulsion seized him. He jerked away from her, back onto his knees. She wiped her mouth and swallowed, and he momentarily hated her for being able to swallow blood when he could not. Astarion’s body forced him to spit into the dirt of a potted plant. 

“Not good?” 

Her voice was wooden. Astarion shook his head. 

“Can’t drink.” 

He gritted his teeth. His stomach howled almightily in protest of its emptiness. 

“I thought, if you didn’t mean to drink it—”

“No, no,” he cut her off. “No, love. I’m glad you did it.” 

It was the truth, he found. One last hurrah. 

“When he’s dead, you’ll never have to be hungry again.”

Astarion laughed. His digestive system had figured out that he wasn’t going to get any more thinking blood for now, and so he mostly didn’t feel like he was going to topple over. 

“Is that it? The second he’s dead, you’ll bare me your neck?” 

“If Lord Bhaal has seen fit to have you carry part of my spirit, surely he’ll let you have some of my blood,” she reasoned. 

Astarion wasn’t about to argue theology with her, not when he had her in hand, not when compulsion was already drawing him back toward the stairs. 

“Such a sweet, generous thing,” he murmured. Her mouth was swollen from their kisses. How lovely it would be to live in the world he’d created for her as they walked to the Crimson Palace, where they were going to kill Cazador by the power of friendship or something equally droll, and then he’d slake his thirst from her jugular vein, and they’d vanish off into the city together and spend the rest of their days kissing and stabbing people they didn’t like. How lovely. 

He held her hand tightly the whole way there. 

-

Taviri kept glancing at him as they walked. He’d said that this whole plan had to be kept secret, but surely she could ferret some hint out of him. Thank Bhaal she had her knives about her, and her potions. She only wished she had the sword she’d brought to Cania. If she’d stolen the Crown of Karsus, then she could help Astarion kill his master. She straightened her shoulders. 

His hand was still in hers as they passed the Lower City’s central fountain in the shadow of Ramazith’s tower. Privately, she hoped that the kiss they’d shared atop the Elfsong wasn’t just to convince her to help. After ten years, Astarion must know that she’d gladly agree to help him even if he creatively insulted her the whole time. He’d been Cazador’s slave for two centuries. She would understand if it were only a trick to win his freedom. It would be a trick fairly played. 

They stepped beneath an eave. 

“Through here.” 

“This is a guard tower.” 

“It goes up to the south entrance. It’s a back way.”

Noiselessly, he followed several flights of stairs up to the wall, then slipped inside a door at the foot of another tower. She trailed behind him, just as noiselessly, with her knife hand on the hilt in case they ran into trouble. 

They came up to a landing cluttered with boxes and crates. A mouse skittered across the floor. Astarion led her onward, up a set of exterior stairs, where the wind blew bitterly cold and the stars blinked in distant blindness, and at last into a quiet antechamber in the Palace itself. 

Tall, dusty bookshelves stood against boarded-up windows. All of the ornaments and furniture were old-fashioned and a little gaudy. She wanted to ask him questions, but she stayed silent, waiting for him to speak. 

“We’re almost in, my love. We’ll be safe at the end of the next corridor. A few of the others will be there. They know you’re coming to help us.” He squeezed her hand.

He eased open a creaking door. There was another outdoor passage across a parapet, with planters of evergreens and winter lilies. Taviri wondered why there were gardens if Cazador couldn’t ever enjoy the sun. She focused on silently putting one foot in front of another and sticking to the shadows behind Astarion as he led them toward a heavy door in the Palace wall. 

He was first inside, and she followed. 

Unlike what he promised, there was only one person waiting for them. A tall, black-haired elf stood on the plush carpet with his hands folded behind his back. He tipped his head, and a little quirk of his mouth said he was pleased to see them, indeed. 

“Well done, Astarion. Hardly even…” 

He glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway, painted with cavorting devils. 

“Two and a half hours. Very well done. I’m sure she was very… easy for you, my boy.” 

Astarion was mute. Taviri drew her knife and stepped between him and Cazador. 

They’d been had. Someone had given them up. It didn’t matter. She could kill a vampire lord alone.

Father, grant me your unholy flesh! 

She felt her elbows pop forward in their sockets. Her fingers clawed out; her feet spread and articulated; her mandibles pierced the flesh of her face— she had only prayed for the Slayer form a few times before, and she heaped gratitude on her father for giving it to her now— even if Cazador’s death was by her hand, Astarion would be free, even if he hated her for stealing his revenge—

“Astarion,” said Cazador, calmly. “Pick up the knife on that table and hold it to your throat.” 

A small metal sound behind her told her Astarion had obeyed. Immediately, she let the Slayer form go and rounded on him to wrest the knife away. Her bones cracked back into place. 

“Astarion, no!” 

“Astarion, if she moves toward you, use the knife to slit your throat.” 

Astarion whispered, “Please.” 

He didn’t need to plead with her. She was frozen to the spot, blood pounding with wasted adrenaline. Astarion clutched a silver and gold dagger with two intertwining blades a hair’s breadth from his neck. His nostrils flared, his hands trembled, but everything was exactly as he’d said. Cazador controlled him, even to the point of death. He wouldn’t look at her. 

“Let me be very clear,” said Cazador with the same eerie calm. “If you disobey me in any way, Taviri— wasn’t that what he told me your name was?— if you hesitate overlong to do as I say, he will die. Is that clear?” 

When she didn’t answer immediately, Cazador raised his voice. Astarion made a wordless, high-pitched noise, urging to her to respond. 

“Is that clear?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good,” he purred. “Take out your knives.” 

She drew both of the knives at her hips. Their familiar hilts were cold. 

“Throw them onto the ground away from you.” 

She obeyed with a grunt of frustration, despising Cazador for robbing her of everything piece by piece. 

“Taviri, if there are any weapons my servants discover on your person that you have hidden from me, I will not allow you to beg for mercy. Astarion will simply die.” 

Astarion made another fevered sound. Clenching her jaw so hard it made the bite inside her cheek throb, she drew four more knives out of their hiding spots along with all of her poisons, and tossed them onto the carpet. 

The second the last knife left her hand, Bhaal threw her to the floor like a doll. 

YOU RID YOURSELF OF YOUR HOLY BLADES FOR MERCY.

“No, Father!” She screamed. Spittle frothed from her lips. Somewhere far away, Cazador was laughing. “No, Father, please!” 

YOU PROVE YOURSELF TO BE WEAK. 

“I am not weak! Not weak! No, no! A century I’ve served! Chosen! Father, please, don’t— leave— need—!” 

I REJECT YOU FROM MY SERVICE. YOU HAVE SURRENDERED THE HONORABLE GIFT OF BHAAL. YOU HAVE FAILED TO KILL YOUR ENEMY. YOU HAVE FAILED TO FEED ME HIS GRAVEMEAT. 

“No, no, no, no, no, Father, please!” Writhing on the ground rubbed her skin raw. She clawed at her own face. “I have done everything, everything in your service! I robbed the Hells for you! Father! Father! Father!” 

MURDER’S REBELLIOUS PROGENY WILL MEET WITH MURDER’S END. 

Her throat was already raw, and she went on begging until no more sound came out but a dry rasp. There was blood in her mouth, and blood dribbling out of her nose. 

Cazador reined in his laughter enough to say, 

“Astarion, would you tell me what breed of madness has possessed your thiramin?” 

“Bhaal hurts her when she displeases him, master,” said Astarion. She could hear how his jaw trembled when he said it. How would he know that? She had never been so weak, so pathetic in front of him before— how would he be able to look at her if she had?— but no. As Bhaal left her, like blood from a cadaver, as he abandoned her all alone, as he cast her like a pebble from a shoe, she remembered Heapside. The woman, the pleading woman that she’d killed, and Maedhor, and how she’d raved in the alley as Astarion stood over her, and the promise she’d sworn to him, on pain of the knife, in between moments when Bhaal let her breathe. 

“I see,” said Cazador approvingly. “He keeps her well to heel. Do you think she is able to respond to me, or shall we all wait an hour or so until her wits are about her again? Perhaps I could bring Godey to find her some motivation? Astarion, can you think of anything?” 

Taviri crawled onto her hands and knees. 

“Do not,” she told Cazador. “I can stand.” 

-

Cazador padded down the stairs to the kennels. 

“Follow me. You may speak freely if you like, Astarion,” he called behind himself. “Do keep your voice down, as the others are all in their rooms, and don’t dawdle.” 

“Fool,” he called her as soon as she dragged herself to her feet. She was a mess of cold sweat, and she had to cling to the banister on their way down. “Fool! You fell for every cheap lie!” 

“And what would he have done to you if I hadn’t?” She fired back.“If you came back empty handed?” 

“Well, perhaps your dear papa wouldn’t have hung you out to dry, and you wouldn’t be trapped in here, with me!” 

He was still holding the dagger to his own throat. Honestly, at the moment, it was the least of his worries. It would be a relatively quick death. 

“And you, Astarion? Now you care about my hide instead of just your own?” 

“Throwing away your knives, refusing to use any of your powers as Chosen. Fool!” 

“You were going to die!” 

“You aren’t the bleeding heart you think you are, darling, seeing as you would suffer immensely more than I would!”

He didn’t care if Cazador heard them. It probably wasn’t going to make anything worse than it already was. 

“Bhaal has abandoned me,” she mourned. “It doesn’t matter anymore. None of this does. You are the only one with a chance of freedom, Astarion, and—”

“And so let’s all make a series of incredibly stupid decisions that will make everyone miserable—”

“Remember I promised you?” 

Even though her voice was hoarse, it had the same resonance it had had in the alley when she got free of Bhaal. He looked at her. Looked like he thought he’d find something good. There was no hungry shark hiding behind her eyes, no twitching or grinding her teeth. Just her. 

So she remembered. They rounded the landing. Cazador was drawing the kennel keys out of his pocket. 

“You idiot,” he hissed as quiet as he could, “it’s not me he will—” 

“What a time for a lover’s quarrel.” Cazador’s nasal voice broke in, and Astarion had never hated him more. 

He opened the door to the kennels. 

“Come along.” 

Taviri went ahead of him, stepping inside like Cazador had invited her to his drawing room instead of to her execution. 

“Fuck you,” Astarion spat. Under any other circumstance, talking like that would get his tongue scalded or his back flayed, but he and Cazador both knew that what was already going to happen would be worse than any of that. “Fuck you. Fuck you and everything you’ve ever done to me!” 

Then he actually did spit in Cazador’s face. Cazador only smiled and flicked it off his cheek. 

“Step inside, Astarion.” 

Astarion did, because he had to. Cazador slammed the door shut and locked it behind them. 

Inside, everything was the way it always was: knives, laid out on the table. Scrolls and healing potions in their rusty lockbox. Oil, silver, holy water; manacles on the wall, cages, empty coffins, lumpy straw mattresses, stained permanently dark with blood. The lash, in its rack on the wall. A row of sharp steel spikes that Cazador liked to hammer under Aurelia’s fingernails. Thumbscrews. The rags, and the water buckets, meant either for cleaning wounds, or for submerging their heads in. One lit torch, flickering on the wall, casting long shadows across the floor. 

“No use waiting forever,” said Cazador brusquely. “Taviri, stand against the far wall, facing me.” 

She did it. Astarion opened his mouth to hurl more abuses, but he stopped himself at the last second. However much this was destined to hurt for him, Cazador could always make it worse for her. 

Cazador locked each of her wrists into the manacles, and each of her feet. He tightened the chains so she had almost no slack. She let her hair fall in her face to disguise the absolute loathing that bled from her dark, poisonous eyes. Astarion only stood there in the middle of the room, holding a knife to his own throat, until Cazador was satisfied. 

“How cooperative you are, Taviri,” he complimented her, and Astarion watched a muscle in her jaw work like a grindstone. She’d started shaking again, not from bloodlust, but from the effort it took her to stand upright after Bhaal had left her alone. 

“Now.” Cazador turned to Astarion, holding out his flat, still palm. “Astarion, you kept a secret from me.” 

“Yes, master.” Astarion’s knuckles tightened on the knife’s cold steel. 

“For how long have you kept this secret? I don’t believe I asked during our prior conversation.” 

“Ten years, master.”

“Ten years,” Cazador repeated in an exclamatory stage-whisper. “You betrayed our family in this way?” He prowled toward Astarion, and Astarion wanted nothing more than the comfort of Taviri beside him while Cazador took him apart, but his feet were rooted to the floor. “I will tell you this, my wayward son. If you had come and told me the moment you discovered it, I would only have forbidden you from seeing her again, and that would have been that. She would have lived. You both would have been spared this unpleasant business. I want you to remember, after this is all over, that it would have been so easy if you hadn’t lied…” 

Cazador went on talking. Taviri was flexing her hands, thinking, Astarion guessed, of breaking her thumbs and ripping free of her shackles. Knowing, as Astarion knew, that she wasn’t going to risk his life for anything. 

His shaking had stopped, maybe from sheer exhaustion, or maybe from the sudden sense of unreality that washed over him. This whole tragicomic tale had to be a dream, didn’t it? It was like he was watching from somewhere outside his body. The door in his mind opened for him to slip away. The pain would bring him back to the land of the waking, he knew, but perhaps it would numb it a bit, dull its sharpest edges. 

Astarion was about to let it take him when Cazador finished his speech. 

“…and so, I believe this deserves a special degree of chastisement.” 

He pointed to the hand that held the knife against Astarion’s neck. 

“Astarion,” he intoned his commandment, “Put the knife into her heart.” 

“Coward!” Taviri screamed. Cazador slashed his pointing finger through the air back toward her. 

“Or through your own, Astarion, if she will not do as she’s told!” He thundered. 

Taviri fell silent. Footsteps echoed against the kennel walls. Astarion looked down and realized they were his own. He was halfway across the room, and his hand brandished the silvergold dagger. Its blade glinted in the orange light of the single torch. 

Cazador registered the shock and terror on his face and laughed. 

“If it comforts you in your final moments, Taviri,” said Cazador, interlacing his fingers beneath his chin. “You can hate Astarion all you wish, because I promise you there is nothing that he ever gave you that a thousand other people haven’t already tasted first. It was all false. At least this is straightforward.” 

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Astarion shouted. His useless muscles flexed in vain against the automatic movement of his left arm coming up to brace him against the cold stone. His fingers splayed beside her manacled wrist. His gut became a hot swarm of murderous anger with nowhere to go. 

She didn’t cringe back from his closeness. She didn’t react to Cazador’s goading. What a rotten thing it would be, to die while arguing with Cazador Szarr. 

Taviri tipped her head back. Her shoulders dropped. He could smell blood on her strained, shuddering breath. Her lips twitched, maybe with a stillborn prayer, or maybe with something she almost wanted to say and didn’t. And she looked at him like he might still do something surprising, as if she was waiting to find out. 

He stopped in front of her. The blade in his hand was three inches from her sternum. 

The flame guttered. The rise of her lungs when she inhaled brought her chest that much closer to the knife’s tip. Their faces reflected off its twisted surface, warped together into a grotesquerie. 

Cazador’s compulsion had always moved without him, bypassing his will entirely. There could be no resistance, no friction, no argument. At least, there never could be before. 

Astarion decided that, at the very last second, he would close his eyes. 

No, said something very deep inside him, something he thought had starved in the locked tomb. 

The blade crept forward. Astarion clenched his jaw and clamped his hand down and fought his body for every fraction of an inch. 

His hand jerked forward once, twice. Sweat bloomed along his brow and back, and his muscles turned to lead. The dagger was a magnet, drawn toward her, and Astarion dug into himself for whatever shred of willpower he had left and did not do it. 

“Astarion,” she murmured. 

“I know,” he managed to whisper through teeth clenched so tight it felt like he was going to grind them to powder. 

“Don’t be difficult, boy,” said Cazador with an uncertainty that Astarion had never heard him betray. The knife hung still between them. Taviri gazed up at him with so much raw intensity pouring into him from her that he felt she must be able to see clean through his skull. 

The dagger slipped another half an inch closer. Astarion fought every second with everything he had. 

“Do it, Astarion!” Cazador commanded, and Astarion buried the dagger beneath the edge of her sternum, driven up toward her heart. 

Her blood soaked her shirt and his hand. Then it poured onto the floor. 

Her breath made a strange sucking sound. He had punctured a lung. Each stammering beat of her heart was threaded than the last. Blood and air both drained out of her between the knife’s blades. 

He cringed in anticipation of the pain, but there was nothing, just numb cold and his dry throat. 

Taviri’s lips quivered as she managed to draw enough breath into her remaining lung to speak. 

“Th— half-elf—!”

It took him a second to understand what she meant, but only one. 

As he’d drawn her knife from the half-elf’s shoulder all those years ago, he pulled the blood-drenched dagger from her heart. Then he rounded on Cazador, fangs bared, and Cazador couldn’t so much as lift a hand before Astarion slammed into him, knocking him clean to the ground. His head smacked against the stone floor with a burst of blood and crack of bone. Astarion shoved his kneecap against Cazador’s diaphragm. He’d been caught up in too many tavern brawls not to know how to keep someone on the ground. Cazador tried to speak, or change shape, or raise his hand to cast a spell, but he didn’t have time. 

The bond of master to spawn should have kept Astarion from doing any of this. Thou shalt remember that thou art mine. And yet it didn’t. Every single commandment was suddenly gone. 

Astarion drove the blade into Cazador’s chest. Again, and again and again, tearing wetly at the flesh, cracking ribs, bursting organs, dragging his entrails out of his stomach, slicing ligaments like harp strings, severing muscle, striking hard against vertebrae when he stabbed him in the neck, after his torso was turned half to shredded meat, sliding into the orbital socket, severing the ocular nerve, parting cheek from tooth, vein from artery, skin from fascia, opening both lungs with faint, liquid whooshes of air, crippling the tendons of wrist and arm, until the blade was slick with the fat, and the kennels reeked of Cazador’s unbearably foul blood, and Astarion scrambled back on his heels and sobbed, huge, exhausted sobs that echoed against the dungeon ceiling, sobs that ripped out of him and left him completely, utterly, void of the will to move. 

He fell silent. Tav had long since gone unconscious. Three minutes after he lost the fight with Cazador’s compulsion, her heart finally gave out. 

-

Dalyria knew the screaming was different this time. 

None of them were asleep. None of them spoke, or dared to move. Three hours ago, Cazador had sent them to the dormitories, and then locked and bolted the door. Astarion was the only one not there. 

It took two hours to hear anything. First there was arguing between Astarion, Cazador, and a woman whose voice they didn’t recognize. Then the kennel door creaked shut. Then for a long time there was nothing. The kennel door was thick iron; not many things could be heard through it. Only, the first thing any of them heard was Astarion, and he was crying. 

Dalyria was Cazador’s fourth spawn. She was turned twenty years after Astarion, and she was fairly certain that in all that time she had never heard him truly weep. It took her a moment to recognize the sound for what it was— so strange his voice seemed! 

Petras looked up at her from his bunk, wide-eyed, and his face demanded an answer from her that she didn’t have. What in the world could make Astarion cry? What would rule out the two things he always did when things were at their worst— screaming and begging, or shutting down— and make him cry? She felt cold all over. 

Then the howling began. 

It wasn’t like any sound they had ever heard him make. It seemed able to penetrate any wall between them and him, and it went on for so long, so long she couldn’t believe there was air left for him to scream with. She was cold, and empty, and sick, and Astarion’s screaming just went on and on. 

Dalyria thought she had seen most of the depths of misery before, but she had never heard a sound like that, a sound that, if it had gone on a minute or two longer, might have driven her out of her mind. 

When it finally stopped, she looked across the bedchamber to Aurelia, who looked as shellshocked as she felt. 

All it took was one look for Aurelia to get up. 

“Aurelia, don’t!” said Petras, high and frantic. “You’ll get us in trouble!” 

“We’re locked in,” Aurelia retorted. She was steadier than Petras was, but she also sounded spooked.  “I’ll hear him unlocking the door.” 

“Do you think he’s still alive?” Yousen ventured. 

“The master would never kill him.” Violet rolled her eyes. “He wouldn’t give up the pleasure of tormenting him.” 

“Really, Violet? Now?” Aurelia snapped. “You can’t keep from spewing nasty shit left and right, after you just heard what I heard?” 

Aurelia pointed at the door. Right as she did, they heard the key slide into the lock. 

Quick as a rabbit, Aurelia bounded back into bed. The rest of them were all swift to lie down and look meek and docile. The screaming still echoed in Dalyria’s ears, and she prayed that Cazador would not want to force that sound out of any more of them tonight. 

As soon as the tumblers turned in the lock and the door creaked inward, every one of them halted their nervous fidgeting and froze. Dalyria swallowed hard against the thick smell of blood in the air. Thinking blood. 

Then she heard Aurelia cry, “Astarion!” 

Dal couldn’t help herself. She sat up to see. Leaning heavy on the doorknob, Astarion was alone. Cazador’s personal keys dangled from his hand. From head to toe, his entire front was soaked scarlet with blood. He was dripping on the carpet and smearing it all over the wallpaper. He’d left crimson marks on the door. There were pieces of flesh stuck to his going-out clothes, and gore crusting both of his hands. His face was a mess of blood, marred with tear tracks: blood drying around his nose, blood gummed in his curls, in the folds of his ears, the corners of his mouth. 

He looked like he was about to faint dead away. His arms and legs trembled, like those of a cripple or a man too old to walk. Dalyria rushed down her bunk ladder. Petras stood up and stared at Astarion in utter bafflement. His tongue flicked out to taste the air. Aurelia hurried to support Astarion with her arm under his shoulders. She, too, could not help but lean in to smell the blood clinging to him. They had all been sent to bed hungry. 

Astarion jerked, like he’d pull away from Aurelia if he had enough strength. 

“Don’t,” he warned her. 

“What in the Hells happened to you?” She asked, ignoring him. 

Leon rose up from his bunk, and Astarion glared at him with so much vile hatred that Dal looked to see if Leon would be struck dead on the spot. 

“If I could,” he spat at Leon, with the blood around his mouth falling in little dry pieces, “I would go and find your wretched daughter and drain her like a pig in front of you.”

“Astarion!” cried Dal, shocked, but he kept going. 

“I hope you live to be more miserable than Cazador ever made you imagine. I hope you spend forever wishing you had just kept your conniving, sniveling, pathetic, eel of a tongue in your mouth instead of wagging it in his ear, begging for fucking crumbs!” 

This must have been enough for Leon to know what had happened, because he stared down at his shoes. 

“Astarion, words cannot express how sorry I—”

“Don’t,” Astarion cut him off, dripping with disgust at Leon’s attempted apology. Aurelia mirrored his contempt, even though she, like Dal, didn’t know what had happened in the kennels. “Don’t you dare.” 

He turned to Aurelia, his upper lip still twisted. 

“Help me to the kennels. You might as well see it.” 

They all went. Astarion was clearly not happy that Leon came with them. Dalyria and Violet, by unspoken agreement, positioned themselves between Leon and Astarion to keep Astarion from ripping him to shreds the moment he recovered his strength. 

Aurelia, with the arm that wasn’t holding Astarion, pushed the creaking kennel door inward. 

Inside it was dark, and it reeked of blood. 

“Who is that?” Petras asked.

On the floor of the kennel was a corpse so badly disfigured that Dalyria only recognized him by the bloody chunks of hair on the kennel floor and the remnants of the clothes that he was wearing. 

“Gods! Oh, gods!” 

Her hand flew to cover her mouth. Violet stared dumbstruck. Petras looked between Dal, Astarion, and the body, waiting for someone to tell him not to believe his own eyes. Leon let out a strange, high sound. 

“Gods!” Dalyria cried out again. 

“But, but—” Petras protested. “How? He wouldn’t let you!” 

“It’s…” Aurelia began, but couldn’t finish. 

Cold, she was so cold. The sight of him dead was so unreal it made her feel like she was floating or going deaf or both. Could it be him? This body had no face, just red gristle and bone. 

They all got over their shock enough to notice the body of a woman curled up on a mattress by the far wall. There was blood puddled beneath the manacles. A mark?  Astarion must have taken her down from her chains and laid her where she was. Her face was hidden by bloodstained hair, and there were bloody handprints on her arms. 

The air was heavy with the vile stench of Cazador’s blood, but also with her blood, not entirely dry, and thinking. They were all very hungry. 

The cabinet where Cazador and Godey kept the scrolls and potions had been unlocked, flung open, rifled through, with half-unrolled scrolls left on the floor and several healing potions emptied of their contents. 

Astarion lurched away from Aurelia. She tried to catch him, but he seemed intent on crumpling to the floor beside the woman’s corpse. He grabbed an orange bottle from the floor, one of the few that was still full, uncorked it, and drank it. A strength potion, the kind Godey took when he meant to keep lashing them without any interruptions for an hour straight. 

“Dead!” Yousen stammered again. No one made fun of him. They were all in such a stupor from the smell in the kennels and the sight of Cazador dead— dead— dead!— that they could hardly think. 

Astarion dragged himself nearly overtop of the body on the mattress, making himself a barrier between it and the rest of them. 

“Is he really… dead?” Aurelia asked. 

Dalyria watched him blink as the potion returned his strength to him. He still looked as wax-faced as a corpse. 

“Yes,” he told them all. “He’s dead.” 

Aurelia marched over to Cazador’s mutilated body on the floor. How strange it was to see him still and limp, nothing but meat! She gave him a timid kick to what was left of his ribs. 

When nothing happened, she raised her boot and stomped down on Cazador’s face. Violet jumped when his skull cracked in two. Half-dry blood globs spattered the wall. 

An empty sob, much like the ones they’d heard Astarion make earlier, burst from Aurelia’s throat. She flinched away from Cazador like she’d been burned. 

“Gods, Astarion. You’re really certain it’s him?” 

Astarion didn’t scoff at Petras for asking the question. He knew the feeling, like all of them did, that no matter what happened, Cazador would find a way to emerge from the shadows, and then the nightmare would begin all over again. 

“If you’re not sure, Petras, go find one of the servants, and have yourself a drink. If it works, you’ll know he’s dead.” 

Petras didn’t wait for Astarion to answer more questions. He just turned and dashed up the stairs, on the hunt as soon as the notion entered his head. The velvety carpet muffled his footsteps. 

“What happened?” Dal asked. 

Astarion jerked his chin toward Leon, who flinched like he’d been slapped. 

“This worthless, inbred leech told Cazador about her.” 

His fingers curled beneath the dead woman’s shoulders. Dalyria saw the tip of a pointed ear through her hair. She was an elf, like they both were. 

“He made me go and find her. He ordered me to bring her back here.” Astarion pulled her limp body closer to himself. “Then he made me kill her.” 

All of them fell utterly quiet. 

“And I did. And then I killed him. I don’t care how I did it or how it worked, but it did, and he’s dead, dead, he’s dead. And he didn’t have any more scrolls of Revivify. Nothing worked. I tried everything.” He gestured to the unrolled scrolls and empty potion bottles scattered all around “So she’s gone too.” 

“And she was your—”

“Yes, Dal, she was my thiramin, and now she is dead.” 

Astarion slipped his other arm beneath her knees, and scooped her up as if she weighed nothing at all. He cradled her to his chest. The bloodstain over her heart was so dark it was black. 

“So it’s over for the lot of you. Goodbye. I hope I never lay eyes on any of you again.” 

Astarion shouldered through the dumbstruck pack of them and headed for the stairs without looking back once. 

-

He could feel them watching. He could feel them brewing up more questions to shout after him, but he didn’t care. He left them behind. 

He carried her up to where her knives were discarded on the soft carpet. He didn’t stop to pick them up. It wasn’t like she’d need them again. 

There was healing potion dried around the edges of her mouth. He’d known it wouldn’t work, but he’d tried anyway. The memory of the pain was almost enough to make him weep in terror, and it was all over, all of it. 

Astarion used his shoulder to nudge open the door to the parapet. He didn’t shut it behind him. Let all the cold air in, why not. Outside, the moon still shone on the Chionthar. 

As soon as they were alone, he buried his face in her hair, with his lips against her cold ear. 

“What a night we’ve had, darling,” he told her. 

Some part of him believed that she’d still wake up. Maybe one of the spells was just taking a while to work. Maybe one of the potions was just taking a few minutes to soak in. 

In the kennels, after the pain had left him balled up and dry heaving, wondering how he could still be alive, and then after he’d tried everything in the world to get her to come back— once the dreadful certainty settled in, then he had shut his eyes and put his tongue against the wound in her chest and tasted the warm blood still flowing out, and known Cazador was really dead. 

It was the only thing that made him able to stand. It was the only reason the fear that the pain would somehow return hadn’t paralyzed him permanently on the kennel floor— that he had finally drank. 

“It was a gift,” he whispered so quietly only a ghost could hear. “I’m sorry if you’re angry, my love, but I don’t think you are.” 

He’d reached the top of the stair that went down into the city. 

Astarion smoothed the hair away from her forehead and tucked her closer in, with her face in the crook of his neck. 

Then he disappeared, down the stairs and through the corridor, and into the streets, and into the endless shadows of night in Baldur’s Gate.