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Devi’s eyes slammed open as she registered the sound she'd just heard. A scream. But it wasn’t just anyone’s voice that she’d heard piercing through the dark numbness of her sleep. Pained, tormented, anguished. Astarion.
Instinctively she reached for the dagger she always wore on a belt at her hip, only to find it wasn’t there. She looked down to see the bed sheets coming up to her middle, her bare chest exposed. Fuck! She swore to herself, remembering that she hadn’t slept with a dagger at her side since that horrific night in the shadow-cursed lands. The night her erstwhile father called to her and demanded she murder her lover as he slept.
Shaking the memory from her mind, she leapt out of bed and ran to the chest where their weapons were stored every night before they went to sleep – a precaution she had insisted on since then. As she slammed the chest open and reached for her dagger, her superior darkvision lighting the way, she heard a second voice. Not anguished. Not pained. Instead: deep, and calming. Soft.
It only took her a second to recognise the voice. Halsin.
Hearing his voice finally forced Devi to turn around to face the bed she’d just leapt out of, and see what was really happening and hear beyond her own racing heartbeat and the spectres of her worst fears.
There she saw Halsin, gently holding Astarion. The large wood elf was holding the pale, smaller high elf as he shuddered, his face contorted into a painful grimace. The pair were sitting up in the bed they all three shared every night since they had made the journey back to Reithwin so many years ago.
“Shhh… It’s alright. It’s alright, Astarion. You’re safe. I’m here.”
The vampire spawn held Halsin’s hand to his own face, as if trying to reassure himself that the touch was real.
“It was him again,” Astarion said with a sneer, only moments before his face again contorted with pain at a memory. “He was… carving me. Carving Devi.”
Still crouched by the open weapons chest, Devi realised then what had caused her lover’s scream that night: Cazador. Astarion’s former master and tormentor.
It had been well over two decades since she, Astarion and Halsin had brought an end to the vampire lord’s reign of terror and his claim on Astarion’s soul. But after having spent more than two centuries enslaved to Cazador, a mere twenty years wasn’t near enough for Astarion’s unseen – but no less painful – wounds to heal.
Halsin pulled Astarion closer to his chest. “It’s alright, Astarion. He’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Gently, Devi closed the lid on the weapons chest and stood, walking silently back to the bed she shared with the pair of elves. She slid back under the covers and gingerly took Astarion’s hand from his face where he still gripped Halsin’s and placed it in her own.
At the feel of her touch, Astarion opened his eyes to look at her, his breathing finally starting to slow. Devi reached over with her other hand and gently stroked his cheek, wiping his tears away. “It’s alright, my love. I’m here. I’m safe.”
As soon as the word left Devi’s lips, Astarion’s eyes welled up with fresh tears. He shifted out of Halsin’s embrace where the wood elf had held him to his chest, and firmly, but gently, clutched Devi to his own.
“Thank the gods,” Astarion whispered into her neck, barely loud enough for Halsin to hear. “I dreamt he took you again. That he turned you, and carved your back. He made me watch.” Devi could hear the disgust in his voice, and felt him tightly grip the back of her head at the memory of the nightmare.
She wrapped her arms around him, her hands settling on his lower back as Halsin gently, lovingly, stroked the Infernal runes carved into Astarion’s skin. Scars. The only remaining physical remnants of Cazador’s brutality – and Astarion’s torment.
As she tried to think of what to say next, Halsin shifted in their bed, moving closer to where Devi and Astarion held one another in a tight embrace. The wood elf, unusually large for his race and much larger than both Devi and Astarion, wrapped his arms around them.
“We’re here, Astarion. Devi is safe. You are safe. And as long as I draw breath, no harm shall come to you.”
Devi lifted her face from where she had held it against Astarion’s shoulder so that she could look at Halsin. Her heartbeat had yet to slow and return to normal after she heard Astarion’s scream and had feared the worst. As she looked up, she saw Halsin was already watching her as his arms encircled them both. He looked deep into her eyes, which always seemed to glow brightest during even the darkest night. “You are safe,” Halsin repeated, holding Devi’s gaze. While both she and Astarion still felt their fear deep in their core at that moment, not a shred of it was to be found on the druid’s face.
“You are safe,” Halsin repeated, never breaking eye contact with Devi. He was calm. He was resolute.
“No harm shall come to you as long as I draw breath,” he repeated, staring deep into Devi’s eyes with a confidence she never truly felt herself.
“Either of you,” he said, before gripping them both so tightly that Devi truly believed he would never let go.