Archive of Our Own

The good news—Isobel remains uncaptured. Bully for her. 

The rest of them are far from lucky, and Astarion gives up all pretense of class as he snaps and snarls like a rabid dog. Claws are biting into his shoulder, deep into meat with no blood to give, and the wail of the Last Light Inn falling surrounds him; a municipal destruction any self-respecting warlord would be proud of. More winged horrors pour from the shattered ceiling, wretched pale things, and drive themselves to gleeful madness; tearing down walls, doors, supports. The Inn will not last with them in their battle-frenzy, not in its death throes. It could be a mercy, all things considered. 

It's fucking fitting, is what it is. 

They had been halfway through a lovely conversation where this party of idiots swore to help the Harpers in any endeavors they might have, including the death of a tyrant undying and plague upon these lands, when Isobel had received an unexpected visitor. The Flaming Fist Marcus, newly crowned in grey and black, eyes empty and the writhe of a tadpole within. 

Things go rather poorly from there, and only worse when Karlach claps her mighty greataxe and says, uncharacteristically grim, that there will be no kidnapping today. 

An army of winged horrors, flash of Isobel's blood-slick intestines from some lucky swipe, and echoing crash of the supports later, and the situation devolves further. 

Then comes Wyll, so brave, so bold, so willing to throw away lives more than his own under the pretense of a savior's complex; he holds Marcus back with eldritch blasts and then armour of agathys and finally his bloodied body as Isobel flees down the stairs, the whole of the Last Light Inn behind her. 

All for her to wrangle her pretty little moon shield spell, gather the Harpers who hadn't had the good sense to keel over when the shadows fell, and disappear past the gates. 

Astarion knows they aren't coming back. The job's already done, their hands wiped clean and bloody. The party did as they were supposed to. Pinned the kidnappers until the target was removed, and now these six distractions can be removed as well; no more Jaheira trying to shove klauthgrass down Wyll's gullible throat or Harpers treating them with the uneasy suspicion a tiefling child's declarations can't assuage. Go figure. Go fucking figure. 

And now he's dragged, boneless, dangerous as a drowned kitten—because they hadn't had time to rest before talking to Jaheira, to Isobel, and they'd been on empty before the fight and they're certainly emptier now. His eyes are cloudy, fuzzy in the way of damage he doesn't have the blood to heal, and there's a ferocity in his thoughts more spawn than Astarion. 

The winged horror shrieks and slavers at him, hardly a mind, just a beast lapsed to the shadows it calls home; he knows, he knows it's undead, that the only thing he can smell is the rot of a body kept shambling by vitriolic fury. He knows that. There is acid on his tongue regardless. 

He's not alone, at least. Karlach snarls, a writhing mess of fury and frustration—she tears herself upright, burning hot, irises gone beneath the black of her pupils. Her greataxe is missing and blood scorches pockmarked rings into the Inn's floor, dripping off her fingers, caged in—she's the only one with enough in the tank to keep pushing, to hurl herself past all these aberrations and ignore the pain. 

But she's not. Because everyone else is captured, and she's playing obedient to stay with them. 

Astarion pities her, in a way. After ten years in Avernus, winning a broken horn and legacy of horrors, she's lost her teeth for a heart. He thought her infernal engine would have shown her the fallacy of having one. 

Shadowheart heaves, an old, miserable sound, deep in her chest. She's clutching at her arm, at what's left of it—the skin of her left forearm has been flayed off, the talent of a winged horror's claws, torn with all the precision of a monster. She'll heal it, once she can concentrate, but for now she sags in their grasp and breathes through shallow pants. Gale is next to her, half-crumpled, robes torn and ankle swollen with the fall he'd taken from the landing. The wizard is mouthing something, low and steady, but no magic sparks to his fingers. Nothing left after protecting the entirety of the Harpers. 

Wyll and Lae'zel are ringed in and surrounded, though it's clear the winged horrors are far more concerned about the latter than the former. Wyll's punch-drunk and bloody, Marcus' greatclub leaving blue-purples dappled like galaxies over his skin, but Lae'zel is a spitting nest of vipers still. Sword gone, armour torn from her head, notch through her ear and gap in her snarl, but there is fury, and there is ferocity, and she looks like their little expedition at the crèche was a mere warm-up for what is about to follow. 

Not that anything is, because they are all held in the grasping claws of the winged horrors, and they are not free. 

Astarion doesn't fight, not like the others. Oh, he's biding his time, playing coy, playing sweet—but there is a part of him standing there, shoulders curled, back straight in a way that trickles familiarity down his spine like venom. There's never been any use in running. He knows that. 

It is as it always is, after all. 

There's a claw to all of their throats, for all it wouldn't be enough to kill him, and he hangs there, and gathers what scraps of sapience he can past the hunger clawing deep through the marrow of his bones. 

He's starving, but there is never a moment he isn't, and he will not break. 

Then, from below, the clatter of movement; of heavy-armoured boots trodding up stairs, moving in the stalking presence of someone furious and burning with it. Astarion stills, ears pinned flat. More winged horrors crowd in, hauling Gale up to his broken foot and keeping Lae'zel pinned with claws wrapped around every limb. The air is sick with the gurgling gasp of the dead and the dying and the blood.

Astarion bites deep into his lip and turns to face the entrance. 

Flaming Fist Marcus is a familiar face, though certainly not a welcome one. 

He stalks into the ruins of Isobel's room, past winged horror corpses still steaming from Karlach's fury and the lichtenberg scars of Gale's particular flair for dealing with enemies. His wings are bristling, feathers falling off in clumps, and he's favouring the side where Isobel's radiant spear found purchase. Despite it all, he moves with the stomping power of a predator, and there is nothing in his eyes with mercy. 

He's not human anymore, and he reeks with it; the rotten, sickly-sweet stench of a soul changed from its previous inhabitant. Nothing pleasant. Not that Marcus was ever pleasant. 

The winged horrors clear a space for him, scuttling like kicked pets before a noble, and the air cools in his presence; there is something to a dangerous man, more than the look in his eyes or the way he speaks. It is something sharp; it is something that lingers. 

Whatever Marcus was, he is now little more than the monsters he once hunted. 

"True Souls," he intones, and his voice gets deep and grating in the way of the foolishly pious before their false god. "You have betrayed me, and through me, the Absolute. Pay now penance for your crime."

Ah. It's going to be one of those, then, the smug bastards who enjoy a speech before getting their blades bloody. Those who didn't care if he cried. Those who preferred it. 

Astarion lets a laugh simper up, the kind that comes out light and airy and meaning to be insulting. "Penance," he repeats, soft and slow. He laughs again. It is easier than anything else. "I do love when you say such kind things to me."

Karlach barks her own, forearms knocking together in a spray of sparks. The winged horrors can't grab her, just surrounding, and even in their dead minds they shuffle nervously. "Real telling you're only saying this now," she says, and there's a curl of hellfire in her voice, still the Champion of Zariel, for all she's discarded that title to the pits. "Want to go another round, crow boy?"

Marcus thumps his greatclub on the ground with a growl, supports creaking pathetically beneath him. It won't be long until the whole Inn collapses, with what battle-frenzy the winged horrors were in, and there is the old, familiar shiver down his spine at the thought of splintered wood. Lae'zel's ears flick back like jagged blades. 

"If I could," Gale says, because he's got silver where a tongue should be even with his coiffed hair ragged and robes clinging to him only through the winged horror's claws. He's holding himself steady, not with strength of body, but the kind of determination that comes from a man who knows either side of the path carries too great a fall. "I'd hazard against ending us in particular. We're rather worth more alive."

Marcus laughs, a low, mocking sound, teeth bared for all they're flat. "Let the Absolute decide that."

Gale's jaw tightens. 

And being Marcus is a slavering fool, he doesn't know—can't understand why, out of all of them, Gale is perhaps the worst to antagonize. Wyll could kill him, Lae'zel absolutely will, and Karlach will butcher his forces—but Gale will end them all, and there won't be a moment to savour the irony before Astarion receives the final freedom he spent so long yearning for. 

And everyone else is too busy being pissed to recognize the danger, the threat; though Gale's standing stiff on a broken foot and one arm wrapped around his chest, it's not because of fractured ribs, but the damnable tattoo humming next to his heart. If Marcus keeps pushing, Astarion will just have to hope some piece of his gore lands on Cazador, so far away, one last pitiful revenge. 

"But no matter," Marcus says, with visible restraint. He's not the most eloquent, nor intelligent, nor any manner of flattering phrases; but he does like a speech, and he's using the cadence of a well-practiced one. Some fanciful nobility for a man who sold his soul to a tyrant undying. "I will discover the truth for myself."

Oh, what joy. 

Marcus strides forward, shoulders back. The winged horrors snap and chitter at his presence, but whatever command lurks behind their empty eyes holds strong; they merely clutch their prisoners, claws biting deeper into Astarion's shoulders. He goes stiff with a fury patched over the hunger—the winged horror is only listening to instructions, mindless, obeying. Perhaps it isn't a thinking creature. Perhaps it doesn't count. 

It doesn't have blood. He knows this, he does, he does. The commandments don't matter. He is not feeding because there is nothing to feed on; it is not because he is not allowed. He is allowed. He makes his own rules, carves his own life. It doesn't have blood. He knows this. 

But it means, as he closes his eyes to push past the hunger, to shove down the deep and the gnawing and the endless, he looks up to see the Fist before him, jaw set and gauntlets clenched. 

Ah. He should have seen this coming. 

Astarion is always the first to move in battle, the quickest to react, the fastest to flinch, and he scored the first hit; a pretty little cut right across Marcus' cheek. He meets the man's glare with a pretty little smile of his own. 

"You," Marcus declares, and it's almost quaint, how expected it is. Wyll held him back, Karlach decimated his winged horrors, Shadowheart healed Isobel fast enough for the Harpers to escape—but it was Astarion who drew first blood. 

And besides, it is Astarion who is ever so small, ever so fragile, with pale skin and ghostly hair and no magic to speak of beyond a flashy cantrip or two. He's a spectre next to Karlach's ferocity or Lae'zel's skill or Gale's expertise; must seem an easy target. 

Astarion smiles, all teeth, and inclines his head. "Me," he purrs, and he would stretch in a bow if the winged horror wasn't there. This is the dance he's familiar with, this casual step-and-sway whenever nobles found his fingers in their purse or bedding those with a betrothal under their belt. They were not Cazador; Marcus is not Cazador. There are no commandments in this conversation, no laws upon his soul, nothing to keep him shaking and weeping and begging. They were not Cazador. Marcus is not Cazador. 

So Astarion purses his lips, adjusting his stance, letting the words sweeten in his mouth before release. They emerge breathy and entirely unkind. "You flatter me, love—there's no mistaking anyone else for the leader. I'd hate for you to waste a thought on these cretins."

The silken distractions don't land, this time. His party stays seething; Marcus stays cold. 

"You," Marcus says again, and his eyes light up, and then he is diving into Astarion's head. 

There is no way to prepare. It is fire and death and consequence, the venom of decay and the rupture of volcanoes—he gasps some strangled howl and falls back, hands clasping over his head, the winged horror shrieking for obedience. There is a thing, moving in his skull, through the brain and the grey there; it hunts, he can feel it, the desire, for knowledge, for questions, for answers–

And then, through the tadpole, through the blue-green-red-purple-gold that slips into his thoughts whenever he forgets to drag up shields, he feels something—feels the thing, the artefact, their source of protection and madness in the crèche. Shadowheart's Astral Prism. 

It hits him like a storm, like a too-cold bath, like dying all over again from ice—and the scorching fades. The fires dim. His fingers claw through his hair. 

Astarion hisses, ears pinned back as if a furious cat. His tadpole writhes like a leech, crazed and threatened, but it holds; his mind, his mind, stays huddled under his grasp. It will not break. He will not let it, not when the choice is finally here—when it is merely a question of strength, of will, instead of two hundred years fighting against what could not be broken. This is nothing. It is nothing.

Marcus reels back, and the probe dissolves. 

The world returns to muddy focus. 

"-rion!" Someone yells, a cry in the echoing din. The wince grows and blooms over his face, something dark and heaving, mind trembling under the assault—under the near-successful assault, for all he broke it by the knees in the end. 

Gods. His freedom from one master comes with another, and one he can't kill without killing himself; and instead of putrid rats and mausoleum air, this time he must rely on them for protection. For life.

If he were in a kinder mood, he would call it poetic. 

But he is not, so he drags himself back upright, winged horrors chattering darkly by his sides. He swallows saliva pooling over his tongue and looks up, meets the eyes of his companions, barely a glance, then flicks further up to see Marcus. The man is wincing, hand clasped to his temple, jaw clenched. 

Astarion hopes it hurts.

"Fangs," Karlach says, fretting and frantic, but she's not the main course, and the butcher is still in the shop. So he doesn't look at her; just tilts his head to the side, licks lips cracked like a dried riverbed, and does not break.

"You gave it a devil of a try," he coos, purring, shoving it all down to the ice he drowns everything in. There is no terror here, no worry; Astarion hangs in the claws of a winged horror before the man who seeks to kill him and smiles, rolls his shoulders back, lets his gaze linger as he drags it up to meet Marcus' crow-eyes. "Fancy another? I'd love a little peek back, if you're in the sharing mood."

Marcus bristles, wings flaring, but he's cautious. The threat lingers between them, for all there's no real weight behind it; Astarion isn't like a trained True Soul. The tadpole doesn't listen to him, and certainly wouldn't wriggle into someone else's brain if he begged it. 

But Marcus doesn't know that, and the thought is there, and sometimes that's enough. 

Astarion lets a smile crawl over his face, charming and empty. "I do appreciate a man with stamina."

Marcus' face twists with disgust, gauntlets clattering as he clenches his fists. Whatever his plan was, it fell apart at the seams, and he's fuming with it. Not a problem he's often encountered, given how easily he used his tadpole. 

Only now he's encountering prey that bites back. 

"It won't work," Wyll says, ever the soldier, ever the champion, reading off lines from the savior's script he must sleep with like a childhood teddy bear. "Let us go, Marcus. I won't warn you again."

Marcus turns to face him, brows raising, and the rotten remains of wings unfold to block the distant torchlight. 

Wyll smiles at the unsaid threat, the Blade of Frontiers swimming to the surface. "We will tell you nothing," he says, and for all it is a terribly heroic thing to say, there is a devilish bite to it all, to the darkness that swallows his glowing eye and crowns him in horns. "We can be lenient, if you surrender."

Hells. There is an awful lot of trust in the word we.

Something complicated flashes across Marcus' face, the quick and steady movements of changing plans—he was a general once, long before, and not all of it has been poisoned away by a false god. He clicks his fingers, slinging his greatclub into the sheath on his back, and strides off. Winged horrors scuttle from his path, bloodless mouths agape and eyes wild. 

His footsteps echo long after he's left the room. 

Lae'zel's ears flick and her tadpole reaches out, barely a whisper, the barest brush of quiet power she's never stooped to use before. Even now, there's disgust written over her thoughts, but it reaches them all regardless—hold.

Karlach, from where she'd taken half a step forward, huffs a furious breath like an ox but doesn't press it, letting the winged horrors surround her again. Fury and rage beside, Lae'zel is the commander amongst them all, and the githyanki has never existed without a plan of some sort. 

Astarion wishes it helped, in any way. That he could believe she'd get them out. 

But what is likely is that they will die, and if Gale does not blow them all up, then they will be killed in terribly mortal ways until Astarion is the only one left, choking through a slit throat or stillness that seems as death to those unfamiliar with vampire spawns, and he will be left to rot until the Astral Prism wears off and the thrall returns. 

It is not comforting, but the truth rarely is. 

"Steady, my friend," Gale whispers, and Shadowheart doesn't– it's not quite a growl, but it's certainly close. She tightens her grip around her arm, cloak stemming the bleeding, the blood. But the smell is sharp and undercut with cloves, and he knows that scent, and he will not drink, and he will not think on it, and Astarion keeps his eyes focused on the doorway Marcus disappeared through with a fury. Three weeks. Merely three weeks. It is nothing in face of a year. 

Once more, the stomp of heavy boots, winged horrors fading to the edges like rats before a predator—and the Fist returns, wings flared high, one arm tucked behind his back. Through the shadows, his face has sharpened into a smile. 

Astarion's sight is clouded, wavering at the edges with broken damage; but he doesn't need it, because the scent reaches him long before. 

Old, dry fields—a hint of spice. Something pinned to his face as he wept and shivered past unfamiliar senses until it was known to him, until he would never be caught by it, until there was no risk he would fall victim with secrets that were not his to share. 

Klauthgrass.

Marcus produces a goblet, silver filigree, and within swirls a deep red wine. 

An unfortunately familiar wine. 

If Jaheira fucks them over even more than her abandonment, Astarion is going to push Karlach's resigned acceptance of him with some truly creative desecrations to the name of her beloved warrior druid. 

There's a moment where they all drink it in, where they understand just what he's threatening them with—a terrible choice, because it reveals they know what his plan is, but no one is functioning at their quickest. Marcus' smile hones itself to a dagger's point.

Astarion flicks his gaze away like it doesn't bother him. His tadpole wriggles, still gnawing through the meat of his mind, and there is a shiver that has nothing to do with illithid powers. 

Gale hums, something soft and curious, like this is another damn scholarly book to prod through instead of a dagger to the throat. Lae'zel's narrowed her eyes, like she thinks she could push past the compulsion, and Wyll has something working around his jaw. 

It is a cruel thing, this threat, but it is not insurmountable. Merely another in the endless line of monsters they've encountered on this hero's journey. 

Not all of them are so cowed—skin ablaze, Karlach leans forward, drawing attention where her bulk isn't enough. The winged horrors chatter and snarl. 

"I'd love to see you try, mate," she says, and grins; flashes the jagged points of her ivory teeth. Twice her infernal engine has been repaired, but it is still fire from the hells, from the Blood War; never has Astarion assumed it was tamed.  

She's looking at the goblet, just metal at the end of the day, and exhales a laugh; lets everyone imagine just what she'll do to it, like how the temperature jumps five degrees isn't confirmation enough.

Marcus scoffs. "Do you take me for a fool?"

Astarion, who very much does, opens his mouth, takes a long and delicious pause, and settles back into the winged horror's claws with a quirk to his lips. Just enough to be infuriating, to draw attention, to get him off center. Karlach only needs a second of distraction before she can cleave his skull from his shoulders, even without her greataxe, and Marcus does not seem the balanced type. 

It is not a noble on a spinning ballroom floor, or a vapid tavern-goer with a knack for dancing, or a tailored extravagance on the hunt for tamed fangs, but it is similar, and he sinks into that understanding with the ice he has always used. Easy to drift, to glide across unhindered. 

Gale huffs his own polite laugh, and Shadowheart has an eyebrow climbing to her scalp. Even Lae'zel cracks a smile at what she must think is terribly brutish Material Plane humour.

"Not you," Marcus sneers, as if it somehow makes him the winner of that little exchange. "The vampire."

Ah. 

Astarion keeps his delicate smirk and does not react, but the ice cracks. 

It's– he will regret it, later, when he is alone in his tent and can assuage his jaw with leather and tear shreds of fabric just to feel something; but in the corner of the room, tucked under twitching limbs sprawled flat, is a winged horror without a throat. Or, rather, a throat made of viscera and short-lived agony. 

He shouldn't have done it. He knows that. There was no blood and no reward and nothing but black bitterness splattered over his chin, but he– it was lunging for him and its eyes were bright with fever and its skin was warm and he just–

It has been three weeks in the shadow-cursed lands, where there is no sun and no prey and no food. 

Three weeks. 

He's fed on everything they've come across but that is nothing, not in these starved fields of reborn monsters. Deprivation of creatures and beasts leaves him shaking, weary with the hunger, but there's nothing he can do. Twin punctures on Wyll's neck nearly earned him a stake through the heart and he will not make the same mistake again, not by stealth, not by asking, not with the growing understanding that there is a line in the sand, demonstrated by his own prowess and lack of it. Precious few of his companions has he managed to trip into bed; if the voting comes to call, they will not defend him, and the Astral Prison will drift and fade until his mind is once more lost. 

So it has been three weeks, three weeks of combat and travel and torn, vicious bites from the undead corpses of gnolls and twitching grey-blue vines without blood, and he is starving, and the hunger roars a bestial war cry in his hollow stomach. 

Biting the winged horror was useless. Worse than useless—it bought him a reminder of his fangs, of the hunger, as if that ever goes away. It carried black bile down his throat instead of blood. It choked him. 

He'd thought he'd been careful; had twisted away from Isobel, away from the Harpers, taken precious seconds to scrub his sleeve over his face until the streaks were less obvious. 

By the fire in Marcus' eyes, he was not successful. 

His companions are looking at him. Astarion swallows. 

He's lucky, in the way of the mouse given swift death by a viper's venom. You don't have to worry about shaking hands and quavering voice and flushed cheeks when there's no blood to pump or air to breathe. He can go doll-still, let his body shut down, fall back into the rigor mortis it yearns for, and then he merely looks prim, standoffish, annoyed. Perhaps bored. 

It's easy, then, to roll his eyes. Purse his lips. Raise an impetuous brow. "How terribly original," Astarion drawls, taking his time to make love to the word. There's no fear when he's this way, when he's traded his tongue for gold and conversations for mockery. He can't be scared because his hands stay stable, and he can't be breathing hard because his chest isn't moving, and he is merely peeved, and that is all. "I do hope you're aware wine isn't blood? I suppose that might be asking too much of your particular intellectual status."

Marcus sneers at him, the vicious expression of a man who believes himself wronged, and pulls out a blade. 

Ah, Astarion thinks distantly, and waits. It's been some time since there was anything deliberate, more than slashes in the heat of battle or the scorch of roaring spells, but two hundred years tends to leave one with an expertise. If the Fist thinks he will break, he is sorely mistaken. Astarion has dealt with this since before the man was born. 

And Marcus hardly seems as creative as Cazador, besides. 

Karlach growls, taking a stomping step forward as the winged horrors chatter and shriek. Lae'zel's baring her teeth, Wyll half-struggling upright despite the truly impressive concussion he must be sporting, heat crackling to Gale's fingers; all incensed, which is terribly predictable of them, though Astarion can't deny he's touched. 

But Lae'zel told them to hold, which means she must have a plan, and Astarion is rather invested in getting out of here. He won't even bleed, not enough running sluggishly through his veins. All things considered, he's the best choice for the Fist to carve his frustrations into. 

And then Marcus lays his dagger to the edge of his own gauntlet, to the sallow flesh underneath, and presses down. 

A single bead of scarlet curls over his wrist and drips into the goblet. 

Astarion hisses.

It is an entirely unconscious sound; it rumbles from his chest with air he does not have and does not need, a harsh and desperate thing. His eyes narrow to slits, nostrils flaring—the room hollows in until there's just the blood.

There is plenty of blood around. His party is bleeding and breaking and scattering red in their wake, but those are familiar scents, of spice and heat and fire. He knows the smell of their blood, memorized it, ground it into his skull until he couldn't forget—because there was nearly a stake in his heart, and he will not let it strike. 

But this is not those. This is new, and this is fresh, and Marcus squeezes his fist over the goblet as crimson trickles from his fingers. 

Saliva pools heavy on his tongue. 

He's not feral, not yet—he knows what that feels like, the ache, the burn, when he scratches his fingers to bone trying to reach rats he hears in the walls. This is not that, the mind-blank, until nothing but Cazador's thrall can pull him back—he is still thinking. He is still thinking.

Astarion swallows a pathetic keen. It has been three weeks. 

His eyes flick, slow, wary, the flinch of a whipped dog, to the goblet. 

Because it is not merely blood, something to satiate the hunger, within. There is also an herb he knows, because he was forced to know, because he sprawled through the Lower City taverns and the dark places of Baldur's Gate with secrets that could not be shared. The commandments held him, kept things locked behind teeth and tongue, but there would still be suspicion if he drank it and said nothing, and he was not to draw attention. 

Klauthgrass is not much of a threat, to the point he merely pushed Wyll not to drink it instead of drawing his rapier on Jaheira. It loosens the tongue, smooths inhibitions, the kind of truth that still has to come with careful questions and conjoling habit. 

But that is for mortal men, and he is not. 

The cuts on his arm are not bleeding; no bruises pepper his skin. The winged horror's claws bite into stuffed cushions for all the red they get—Astarion does not have anything left, and the klauthgrass will not be diluted, and it will strike him like an elixir of truth. 

Marcus is a man serving the Absolute, who hunts alongside monsters, who is familiar with them. By the gleam in his eye, he knows these particulars. 

If Astarion drinks this, it will not be him anymore—he will lose himself to the truth, sure as any commandment, as any thrall.

Three weeks. 

"I see," he says, and it comes out distant even to his own ears, from lungs that force themselves through the motions of breathing. "I'm sure you think yourself terribly clever, treating me like some starving beast who laps for scraps so graciously given. As if I haven't had my fill time and time again without any aid of your type. As if I have ever gone hungry."

Astarion licks his lips. "And I suppose that is your last effort? I certainly have higher standards than your blood, darling, and if it is as revolting as your wings, I've no desire to grow sick on it. A wretched thing, I'm sure. Some blend of piss and vinegar."

He's talking, because if he stops talking, he will have to smell it, and if he smells it, he will have to think about it, and he cannot do that. 

Karlach barks a laugh, something forced and licked by furious flames; she's looking at him and for once he welcomes the distraction, turning to her, meeting eyes alight. She's got her teeth bared, winged horrors pushed back by the heat rippling off her skin, and she looks like she's two seconds from sprinting over, Lae'zel's plan be damned. 

He doesn't know what's in his eyes, but it's nothing good, by the way she blanches. 

Marcus clicks his fingers, right by his ear. 

"Don't snap at me, you miserable asshole," Astarion hisses, hackles up to his hair, no blood to fill the crescent cuts opening over his palms. He's beginning to crumble, he can taste it, can feel it; the goblet is all he can see. It swims before him, crisp in his cloudy eyes, and he smells it—gods, how he smells it, the depth, the richness, the freshness. There is nothing animalistic, nothing fetid, nothing rotten. It is warm and red and pure.

Astarion has not fed on more than shadow-touched blood in three weeks. 

In battle he can ignore it, can push through with the threat of dying hanging over his head, the threat of failure; but this is not battle, and this is not chaos, and it is before him, and he cannot ignore it. 

And he knows, with an understanding that finds home in his shattered chest and curls claws through his throat, that if the goblet touches his lips, he will drink. 

Cazador took his body, took his tongue—whatever was commanded, he did, but there was still the freedom of not wanting to. Of having thoughts that hated it, even as his fingers dug through the scarlet slick of his own intestines to pull out a prize for his master. Of being able to think freely.

He cannot not lose his mind. 

So Astarion gathers what's left of himself, drags the shreds up like some cloak to hide under, peering through his lashes in fragile distress. "There's hardly a point, darling," he says, simpering, and his voice raises to high pitches and fluttering vowels; to the courtesan, the seductress, the spawn. He can't look away from the goblet. "Have those feathers filled your brain or have you forgotten who you're talking to? I'm a vampire. You're lucky you got here before this group staked me through; they certainly haven't told me anything."

It's not even false. Since their first tenday together, when he didn't take more than a mouthful from Wyll before the monster hunter woke, Astarion has known they've kept their secrets from him. Oh, larger things spill forth, as they're wont to do when six people sleep together in a miserably small camp—but Gale's explosive heart and Shadowheart's chosen deity are hardly things you can hide. Other things go unspoken, he knows. 

He is the worst to ask for answers, because he has none to give.

But Marcus is looking at him, and this vapid tool of a man with his desiccated wings and tadpole for a brain has gleaming eyes, because he's made the first intelligent observation of his life, and it is purely at Astarion's expense. 

"Oh, I think there's something you can tell me," he says, and steps forward; crowds the space with his bulk and his wings until he's swallowed what last scraps of light the Inn has, enormous in the dark. "What will it be, monster?"

It isn't dog, isn't boy, isn't slave, but it is enough he flinches. 

"Astarion," Gale says, twin suns in his dust-choked face. They're all watching, clutched in claws of the winged horrors, gazes fixed. They're all bleeding, filling the air with spice and depth and fire and stars and heat. They're all seeing him, the weight of being noticed, of being known.  

If he tells the party's secrets, he will be lucky if they abandon him without a stake through the heart. If he stays silent, the threat is no longer being carved up but being forced, in whatever manner Marcus can summon, and then he will lose the freedom he has clawed from the world for miles, gutting himself all the way. 

The blood is before him. It is all he has ever wanted, all he never had, and he cannot let himself drink.

"I mean it," Astarion rasps. He's trembling. There is no thrall to hide behind, no command writ over his soul; it is only him, in the dark, in the ruin, and the want to succeed. He wants to hold strong. He wants to tear Marcus' trachea out. He wants to read shitty romance books and drape himself in silk and feel the sun again. 

He doesn't want to drink. 

He doesn't want to drink.

"I don't know anything." His tongue clicks in his throat, fangs biting into his lips, and the world has shrunk to the rim of the goblet and the red swirling behind. It's hardly anything. A few drops at most, more wasted in crusted flakes over Marcus' wrist, and he wants to believe the wine will drown the flavour. It won't do anything for him. It will not take the bite off the hunger; nothing ever has. "I don't know anything."

The room echoes hollowly around them, the shadows-cursed lands slithering inside. 

Marcus reaches out and grabs the back of his neck, scruffed like a kitten to be drowned; his gauntleted fingers dig in but there's no blood to bruise, nothing but the ache of healing that can't be done. Astarion sags in his grasp, kicking once, twice, but he has never been able to fight before, and the urge dies before it draws breath. It has always been easier to take it, to bury the memories under ice once they are done. To survive.

"I don't know anything," he says, one last time, useless. 

"Then," Marcus says, and it is not Cazador's lazy smile, nor the hollow apathy of his fellow spawn, nor a skeleton with a broken jaw, but it is still cruelty, and Astarion goes stiff. "Surely this doesn't matter."

He presses the goblet to Astarion's lips. 

The world fades away in fragile shards of glass. 

There is a moment—a desperate, frantic moment, where he thinks of the thrall. Where he looks at Marcus and sees the mind, the thoughts, the thinking behind his eyes. The commandments will not allow him—he cannot drink. If his strength of will is not enough then Cazador will have to be; if he falls into the memories of the crypt and the kennel and the knives then he will know he cannot drink and he will not and he will not–

The blood-scent strikes him, inches from his nose. 

Astarion's lips part. 

It strikes like a blow, like a blade to the gut, because it's good. The wine is vinegar and ash but alongside it, in dancing currents that dart over his tongue and spill down his throat, there are sparks of brilliance, of heady warmth and flavour and life. It's less than a mouthful, hardly a taste, but it is there and he sinks into it, goes limp and boneless as he cracks his mouth wider, letting Marcus pour everything in. 

Gods, he hasn't– what he took from Wyll was more than this and it had been his first but desperation turns this into ambrosia, into liquid gold and immortality. It's thick and rich and the wine doesn't hide it at all, doesn't give him the luxury of pretending he was ever going to hold out, that he could ever resist. It spills into his mouth and his tongue flashes forward, lapping at the goblet, a dog at a puddle and just as frantic; up until the cool metal disappears. 

Astarion can't help the keen that leaves him, pathetic and trembling, and the world swims back into focus—there is hardly a drop in his veins and the hunger has not abated, only sharpened to a cutting edge now he remembers blood, remembers the warmth he can find nowhere else. And there is more, something deeper, an acrid taste on the back of his tongue. Klauthgrass. Truth. 

Nausea roils in his stomach. 

Perhaps he should have expected it. Cazador always called him weak. 

Karlach has shoved her way closer, fire erupting under her feet, fists clenched and heart thundering under her chest. Half a dozen winged horrors crowd in around her, the scorch of melting flesh, undead minds blind in their servitudinal fanaticism. But she's standing there, unmoving, eyes locked on Marcus' gauntlet around Astarion's neck. "You motherfucker," she whispers, and it carries death in every word. 

But the Fist doesn't seem to notice. Just smiles, eyes black in the shadows, and leans forward, so the world beyond the two of them is shut out. 

"Well," Marcus says, and tosses the goblet over his shoulder with his free hand. It clatters once, twice, a spray of scarlet from its lip; it echoes like the toll of a bell. His wings flare, rolling back, and there's a particular kind of self-satisfied smile on his face. "That was certainly easy, wasn't it? How long has it been since you've fed?"

Astarion stares at him with half-lidded eyes, hazy in the dark. He feels the answer pool, oil-slick, in his throat. The klauthgrass worms old roots into his brain, and it's not like authority, the bite and gnaw of an illithid presence; it's a far more insidious thing. Sweet, cloying, pushing him to speak and speak true; there is no force to battle against, no soul contract or miscast spell or psionic compulsion. It is only himself, and his mind, and the knowledge there is something living inside that wants to obey.

"Three weeks," Astarion says, and the words spill out with ease.

He closes his eyes. 

There was nothing to fight, no wall to hurl his mind against. That is familiar enough, in the early days of his servitude, when the rules of being a vampire spawn were laid out in bitter detail. He had been angry and stupid then, gnawing at the leash like it was a tangible thing, something to be broken, something that obeyed laws beyond those of the master that made it; but that had been when he was angry and stupid, and now he was just angry and cold. 

He couldn't fight Cazador then, and he can't fight Marcus now. 

It is enough of a struggle just to look back up. 

Gale's staring at him, taken aback, like he hadn't noticed—maybe he hadn't. Human eyes are truly useless things. Karlach is grey around the edges with smoke. Wyll furrows his brow, pressing a hand to his neck like the memory is resurfacing—Astarion can't even bring himself to be mad, heat disappearing underneath the ice. One mouthful, so many weeks ago, and beasts afterward. The shadows-cursed lands have none. 

That is the knowledge of hunters. Feed the monster or become food. 

Sometimes the choice is neither. 

"Three weeks," Marcus repeats, and there's something delighted, something smug, in his voice. "Well-kept, then. Tell me, was your plan to bite me if you won?"

The klauthgrass pushes words to his tongue, but it cannot control his tone. "I was going to kill you," he snarls, fingers curling like claws. "To bleed you dry and blame it on a slit throat, the others be damned."

Gods, drinking someone from life to death—he cannot even imagine it. Saliva laps against his fangs. 

Wyll shifts, but he doesn't dare move, not with Marcus' hand wrapped around Astarion's throat. The rest of the party stays cautious, wound like rusted machinery, watching him. 

Marcus smiles a little, indulgent. The threat doesn't carry far when Astarion's pinned like a caught butterfly in glass, limbs barely supporting his own weight. He bares his fangs regardless. 

The Fist tilts his head to the side, assessing, staring like he can see past pale skin to the flesh beneath. "What is your name?"

He sneers. Surely the crow already heard it. "Astarion."

It is only the knowledge of how slaves do not earn family names that keeps the klauthgrass from adding Szarr to the end, and he is disgustingly grateful. 

The man hums. "Where are we?"

Marcus is just testing the waters, making sure the klauthgrass worked, and Astarion bites deep into his lip. It feels like being jerked around, leash tugged to blindly follow, and he can't do a fucking thing about it. 

"The Last Light Inn," he snaps, and the truth unspools from his lips like lace. "Lovely little retreat. Filled with all the idiots who'd prefer to fight a war unwinnable instead of living under the sun and a darling habit of trying to drug visitors. You'd get along swimmingly."

Marcus tightens his grip. Astarion chokes off in a wheeze. 

Such a callous reminder of the power here, and whose expense it comes from—useless, really. He can't be killed by this, merely tortured, and if his companions were to ignore him and just attack Marcus now, while his back is turned, the stars would be more in their favour than they have for any other time tonight. 

But while it wouldn't kill him, it would certainly weaken him; to the point that if the party runs for the hills like Isobel before them, he will not be able to follow, and he will be left in the grasp of those who have shown themselves to have a frightful lack of consideration. 

The chance is not one he will risk. 

So Astarion hangs there, lips opening fruitlessly, and glares. 

"I would suggest," Marcus says, low, rumbling, "you answer only what I ask. I have no need of anything else."

A command. At least there's familiarity. 

Astarion bares his fangs and stays silent as bade. 

Marcus runs a thumb over his jaw, metal pressing hard into flesh that should bruise if it had any blood to give. "As I asked," he says, darkly, "where are we?"

"The Last Light Inn," Astarion bites out, and snarls insults through his eyes.

The Fist just smiles, callous, letting his grip relax back to merely pinning Astarion in place. "Seems you can be brought to heel," he says, and mockery sinks through his words like stones in a river. "Was that so hard?" 

The klauthgrass scorches through his marrow. "No," Astarion hisses. 

Silence burns between them, the rasp of undead monsters and drip of the last of the wine spilling over the floorboards. He's hanging there, tense, trembling with a fury he hasn't felt since he was young enough to still believe escape was possible; but it's a shoddy cover for the fear that sinks deep into his bones. The klauthgrass is in him; he cannot lie. His mind wishes only to speak.

Marcus exhales, wings curling in behind him. Astarion goes rigidly blank. 

It's time, then. For the questions that necessitated this damnable show. 

The room echoes like a held breath, the intrinsic understanding that lines are about to be crossed, that there will be things said that were not supposed to be uttered aloud. Even the winged horrors quiet as Marcus shifts his grip on Astarion's throat, gauntleted fingers clicking against each other, eyes dead and cold. 

"Why are you trying to kill Ketheric Thorm?"

Astarion grits his teeth. 

There's a reason he doesn't speak for the group, why he stays to the shadows and laughs mockingly when the opportunity presents itself. No one asks him why he's here, why he stuck with the group with knives in their hand and no kindness for monsters; and that is when they think of him at all, when they spare a thought beyond the annoyance he so carefully cultivates. If they want to present themselves as heroes, saving the Grove and rescuing idiots and kissing babies on heads, then the most heroic must stand in front, and that is not Astarion, and they all know it. 

But there's a reason beyond that, too. 

In another world, Astarion would laugh. Whip up some story about removing his parasite, about getting power, about finding delirious pleasure in pissing on a man who thinks himself invulnerable. 

But in this world, there is klauthgrass in his throat, and his mouth opens to say, "Because I was told to."

The words hit the air like ice. 

Marcus' eyes light up. They are twin cold flames. "By whom?"

A shiver races down his spine, the putrid taste of klauthgrass sinking into his tongue; the truth claws up his throat with all the slavering grace of a carrion crawler. It festers but he bites down, gnaws on the words like they'll dissolve, like he can hold it back–

"Wyll."

Marcus blinks. 

Behind him, the party shifts, whatever secrets they braced themselves to hear not being what came out. Wyll makes a soft noise of confusion. Astarion cannot look over. 

Karlach furrows her brow, hands clenching. There's uncertainty in her eyes, wondering why he said that, if he's able to sneak around the klauthgrass' truth. Wondering if he's lying, even though she knows he's not. 

If Marcus had asked any of the others this question, the answer would be far different. 

But he asked Astarion, and the answer is because I was told to.

It's the truth, and it's ugly like it. Wyll said they would attack Ketheric Thorm, and if the party was doing that, if the Astral Prism would be traveling that direction, then at their heels will Astarion go. It is not a choice, between death and life, between illithid and follower, when you are bleeding out in the back alley and a man with red eyes kneels beside you. It has never been a choice. 

He doesn't care about Ketheric. He is not a hero. But he can play one, much as he plays swallowing cocks or lapping between thighs like he wants it, and this group wants a hero. The rougher edges of his existence can be smoothed down if he goes along with their plans. 

But it is not his choice, and he is not a hero. 

The klauthgrass is frozen heavy in his throat. It would be easier if this was different, if this was pain, if this was sex; if he could push his mind from his body and drift away, let two hundred years of experience play nice and pretty into Marcus' hands. If he could scream the way Marcus liked, or flatten his tongue with hollowed cheeks, or simply sit and cry and plead. If it was the spawn he wanted, the body, the corpse; not Astarion, not answers. 

Marcus' gaze sweeps over the party, landing on Wyll; he traces over the devil horns, over the glowing eye. Wyll stares back, jaw set, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of looking away. He's a strong man, under the layers of scars and stone. There's a reason he's the leader. 

When Marcus looks back, there is something like consideration in his eyes, pieces of two separate puzzles managing to fit together. "They have you as a thrall?"

Lae'zel stiffens like she's been stabbed. "We are not ghaik," she snarls, low and furious. "There is no–"

Marcus' hand tightens around Astarion's neck. 

She stops, the rest of the party alongside, but her eyes boil. Wyll is similarly incensed, half risen even as his head bobs and sways under the bruises, Shadowheart's fists clenched.

Astarion just stays boneless, even as the question sinks its hold into his tongue. A thrall to this group of heroes, at their beck and call instead of anyone else's. It's a reality with softened teeth, with dulled claws; a fanciful thing, in another world. It would have been preferable. 

But it is not true. 

"They don't own me," he says dully. It's not his voice, not any of them he's practiced and purred and spent years honing; it's something far more dead, far less there. Truth keeps spilling out. The terror's still there, puncturing up and down his spine, but cold dread is replacing it, the understanding that this is happening and he can't stop it. 

He's never been able to stop it. He doesn't know why he's so fucking surprised. 

"Oh?" Marcus asks, and leans forward; spreads his wings so they frame the conversation, black feathers on black bone, scraps of the moon shield still fluttering away overhead. "And who does own you?"

Astarion freezes. 

It isn't a question about Ketheric Thorm, about the party, about their goals—but the klauthgrass digs deep into his throat and tugs the answer forward, so easy, so ready to spill. 

He bites his lips hard enough to puncture the flesh below. 

Not this. He cannot see this secret bared after years of clutching it with fragile desperation; after scouring the shadowlands in the service of those who hate monsters, who do not trust the vampire in their ranks, who would cast damnation on what he has done to survive. 

Astarion trembles; there is no heart to pump blood nor blood to pump but he shakes regardless, a hurricane under lily-pale skin. They are watching him, he knows, feels it, can sense the scorch on his flesh like the worst of any brands; they are watching and they are knowing, and he is ripped raw beneath them, and he will not say.

Marcus leans in, wings arching, the black of his eyes like rotten blood. "I said," he repeats, quiet, a man relishing in power, in obedience, "who owns you?"

The command settles deep in his skull. 

He chokes on saliva dripping through his pierced lips as his gaze grows clouded, grows blurred; he tastes not blood but merely flesh, torn from his own tongue, teeth sinking into the pain. He is standing in a room of silk and decadence, of heavy curtains and hardwood floors, and he is alone, and he is shaking, and there is blood running down his bare body from marks carved between his shoulders, and he cannot move, and he cannot speak, and he cannot react; and if he does it will begin anew, like it has before, like it has before, like it has before. He will not move. He will not speak. He will not do anything–

"My master."

Astarion sags in his grip. 

He meant to say sire. It seems the klauthgrass will not allow him to lie to himself. 

"Master," Marcus says, tasting the word. It comes from his lips without weight, without significance; he has never experienced what it truly means. "Is it Orin? Gortash?"

Unfamiliar names, though they're spoken with the reverence of a follower of the Absolute. Astarion scoffs. It's supposed to be a derisive sound, cloying pity for a fool unknowing; it comes out wane and wearied. It comes out tired. "My master is not involved in your games."

The vampire lord was not one to care what happened beyond the walls of his palace. 

Marcus' brows furrow. "Then who are they?"

The commandments cycle through him, endless, choking, thou who art nothing, thou who art spawn, thou who art mine. Astarion shakes in his grasp, a chattering mess of obedience and disobedience and desperation, but his mind is not his own, and his mouth opens. "Cazador Szarr."

There is no recognition in Marcus' eyes. It makes it worse. 

"A master who owns you but you do not stand at his side," Marcus muses. His gaze flicks over Astarion's body, the discerning look of a street trader, searching for flaws in their product. "And one whose name you despise." A pause. "Or is it the master you despise?"

Astarion grits his teeth. "Yes."

The Fist's wings flick back as he tilts his head to the side, birdlike. There is nothing in the voids of his eyes. "What did he do?"

These are not the party's secrets, the questions Marcus should be asking, and bile hangs on the back of Astarion's fangs. It's like being flayed, skin stripped away for shivering flesh beneath, and he can't fucking hide. 

"He turned me," he bites out, each word hooked and dragged from his throat. "Made me his spawn. Had me dig myself out of my own grave."

It comes out hollow. There's no soul behind him anymore, no token resistance, no pretending this is anything other than what is happening and what he cannot ignore. Ash sits heavy over his tongue. Karlach's gone pale, white around the knuckles, and Wyll's mouth falls open. He will not look at them. 

"Oh?" Marcus says, damn near delicately. "What else?"

Astarion can't stop. He can't fucking stop. "He killed me. Forced me into the streets to bring him victims. Kept me for entertainment. Used me." The words are acid and they keep coming, keep pouring out, drawn to the siren's song of klauthgrass festering in his empty gut. "Bound my soul to his so I could never be free. Fed me rotting rats when I did well and starved me when I failed. Took my skin and teeth and bones and let me heal only long enough to do it again."

He's shivering. The ice fractures and shatters and things he has– not forgotten, never forgotten, but ignored are coming back, pulling him down to the water rushing darkly by. "Locked me in the kennel until I went mad with hunger. Chained me in silver. Sold me to nobles looking for tamed spawn." His voice dies. "He was my master. I was his slave."

If he were alive he'd be panting, breaths stained with desperation and fury, heart thundering in his chest. 

Instead he sways in Marcus' grip, a corpse caught in the gallows. 

That was his truth. What he kept in shackles to his chest, trapped in the hollows where a heart once sat. Two hundred endless years only to be saved by being plucked from the streets, a shadow caught unawares—two hundred years of fighting and it wasn't even freedom won, freedom earned. It was freedom by chance. 

Only luck set him free. There was never anything he could have done. 

And for weeks he sunk into it, wove delightful tales of being a Baldurian magistrate with merely an appreciation for knives, let the ice carry away all his past until it glided beneath him. Lithe little rogue, so fast to flinch, so quirk with arrows, as the rest of the group spoke of the Blood War and Netherese magic and warlock pacts. 

And though it wasn't his decision, his secrets are revealed. 

He never gets a choice. He should have known that by now. 

They're looking at him, he knows, the weight of their stares like fire over his skin. He doesn't look back. Just keeps staring at Marcus, empty, the docility of a dying noble surrounded by the bodies of fallen Gur. 

"I see," Marcus says, considering. The truth is little more than words to him, ink upon pages, the story of some distant stranger. There is no caring, not in his mind, not in his soul, if he has one left. "You ran."

It is a disgusting parody of what happened. Astarion nods. 

"You ran and ended up here," Marcus muses, free hand tapping at his chin. "Not to lurk in the shadows, to flee your master's reach, but to kill Ketheric Thorm."

He leans in, winged horrors circling to keep them contained. His wings flick, head tilted to the side—there is a dark curiosity in his eyes, an interest, the draw from a necromancer's servant. 

"You have not fed in three weeks," he says, low, splaying the words before him like the edge of a blade. "You are the only monster in a group of heroes. You fight for an impossible goal only because you were told to." He shifts his grip so he can push Astarion's head back, throat bared, until their eyes lock. 

"So why are you here?"

The question. The question he fought so long to make sure it was never asked. 

Maybe the klauthgrass is wearing off, maybe the delirium is setting in, maybe the gods are giving him one last breath of mercy, but Astarion is able to laugh. It doesn't float and simper like the laugh he trained himself to have. It's harsh and it growls and it burns at the back of his fangs like bile. "I don't say no."

And there it is, isn't it? The truth. 

He lost the ability to say no after a year of bones battered against marble and the staleness of decay. Oh, he'll play coy with it, express disapproval and bitch whenever the party does things he doesn't agree with, but he does them, doesn't he? Lets them shove their goals down his gullet to play along with their heroic suicide. Follows at their heels and barks when prompted. 

He's still a dog. He just handed his leash to someone else because he knows, in the empty hollow where a beating heart once sat, that he'll never be free. 

Marcus' hand curls around his neck, not to choke, but something softer. A faux comfort. Astarion shivers underneath it, familiarity dragging wretched claws up his spine; Cazador could get like this, when he grew tired of mere pleadings for the pain to stop, of frantic begs for mercy that never came. When he wanted the game to change.

Because it isn't just about the kennel; it is about having the kennel and the special bedchamber. The understanding that it could be better, that it could be kinder—and it was not. It was just another power. 

Marcus' fingers are cold. Astarion stays shivering and wonders if they will slip lower, if the Fist will take him here, push him to his back like his last master. If this will go the same way it always has. 

But Marcus just looks at him, crowned and decayed, and says, "We are not dissimilar."

Astarion goes very still. 

"I was powerless," Marcus says, and his eyes are like voids. "Fighting against a world that didn't want me, that didn't give back what I gave it. I was to listen to those above me and strike when directed. I lived and died on their command, little more than a sword. I was nothing."

"Until," he says, and there's pride in his voice, iron snaking through the words. "Until I wasn't. Until I chose to be more. Until the Absolute freed me."

The room is silent in the hollow way of dead things, the creak of rubble and ruin beyond. 

"She could free you," Marcus says, and in his eyes, there is only belief. 

Astarion stares at him, and does not see the Fist—he sees Petras, so convinced Cazador will one day elevate him in reward for servitude. He sees Dalyria, so convinced keeping her head down will hide her plan to cure vampirism. He sees Leon, so convinced obeying Cazador will spare his daughter. 

They don't get it. They never fucking do. They argue chains don't hurt unless you pull on them, that following instructions means punishment comes less—and maybe it would, to a rational man, to a person. But not to Cazador. 

Those who seek to be called master are not those who offer freedom. 

The Absolute is not Cazador, but it is close enough. 

Astarion stares at him, at the man who believes himself unbound, who lets the tadpole wriggle through his mind and welcomes it. At the man who gave away his choice for someone else at the helm. At the man who wraps himself in chains like home. 

At the man who calls them similar. 

He feels the hilt of the dagger, of the blade, tight in his grip. Feels the tip circle over his stomach, pale skin, smeared with blood he cannot drink. Looks up. Meets red eyes. Hears the command. Again.  

The dagger is plunged in. His own hands guide it. Scarlet spills slick over his fingers. 

Again.

He removes it. He returns it. All he can see is red eyes. 

Again.

The truth makes it easier, but these are the words he was always going to say. Astarion lets himself lean forward, throat taut against the gauntlet with lungs that flutter uselessly for air they don't need, the slightest rebellion after a lifetime without. He locks eyes with Marcus. 

"I am nothing like you," he says, and it comes out very quiet. 

Marcus' eyes narrow, a viper's hunt. "Pardon?" He asks, equally quiet, a chance for some other truth to come forward. As if the answer will change. 

"I begged for death," Astarion hisses, and the klauthgrass joins with the hunger, with the burning pain that never removes its claws from the hollow of his chest. "I fought until I could not fight. You–" the words tear at his throat. "You sold yourself."

Marcus rears back, wings snapping, gauntlet a garotte around his neck. Astarion does not stop. "You gave yourself up to a master and let them chain you—all I have ever done is to escape. I was powerless and remain powerless so long as he lives, and I will kill him or die trying. You put a price on your freedom and let it be paid, sold it willingly. But I will never be a–"

He chokes off. The klauthgrass sings a funeral dirge in his skull, the pounding summons of obedience a dagger's blow behind his eyes. It hisses at him for the paltry attempt to spin resistance into words—a fool's defense against the inevitable. 

But I will never be a slave.

Astarion hisses around what he knows is a lie and does not stop glaring. 

He's shaking, a spider's web spun up his spine, and there's rot in his throat where words lurk. There are no cajoling simpers here, no appealing begs for mercy, no coy words and pretty smiles. It is just the truth, and the agony that comes with it, and he will not take it back. 

Marcus stalks forward, dragging him along, a hawk with rotten wings. "The Absolute requires obedience," he snarls, and there is no light of life in his eyes, but there is fury, the transparency of a moonlit pool to the horrors beneath. "Willing or not. You would be more useful as a True Soul, but a vampiric thrall has its place."

The year in the tomb, scratching at marble, screaming, fading away into croaks, into wheezes, into silence. Losing the strength to trance. To move. To even close his eyes. 

He starved for a death that wouldn't come; for the end of a life without the decency of living. 

He will not endure it again. 

"I will kill myself," Astarion says, voice blank. 

Marcus scoffs. "Much like you did under your last master, I'm sure. It takes more than pretty words before you've got the strength to shove a dagger in your gut."

The room shifts and trembles around them, the ruckus of shadows, little more than the darkness the moon swears herself against. There is no sunlight here. There has never been sunlight. He is in the back of an alley, pressed against a tavern, sounds and laughter trickling under the door. He clutches the broken leg of a chair, splinters and lacquer, the jagged edge at his chest—the tip, frozen against his skin. He cannot push it in. He tries. Red eyes, lingering in the corners of his vision. 

"I was not allowed to," Astarion hisses, and smiles. His fangs burn. "Believe me. I tried."

There's a low sound, achingly distraught, from the side. He blinks, turns bleary eyes, and sees Karlach—she's staring at him, caged in, eyes white-ringed and choked with worry.

Oh. The– the others. He forgot, hazy thoughts moving too slow, that they were there, that they're still trapped and encircled by winged horrors all around. His torment is not in the deep dark of the cellar or the kennel with closed doors; his answers are not only for him to hear. 

Not that it fucking matters, with klauthgrass on his tongue; he can't change what he says. 

"Be as that may," Marcus snaps, and the sneer affixes itself to his face like it belongs. "You will serve."

Astarion laughs again. It comes out strangled, and he chokes through words that force themselves to his lips. "I will die first."

Marcus snarls. Any ploy at warmth is gone, burned away, and there's fury in its place, of a man who believes himself wrongly insulted. He drags Astarion into the air, boots kicking heedlessly, as his wings snap and flare out to fill the space. He's enormous in the dark, an aberration of what was once a man, a slave who dances for his chains. 

"The Absolute will have answers," he growls. "But She does not need you unharmed."

It is not a question. Astarion bares his fangs in silence. 

Marcus doesn't bother for his dagger or greatclub—just balls up his free fist, gauntlet heavy and roughshod, and slams into his stomach with a roar. Astarion swings back, hacking, useless organs clustering together—can't fight back, can't flee. Marcus is fury incarnate, eyes burning with grey fire, and the room swims and sways around him–

Silver blooms from Marcus' throat. 

The world shudders to a halt—the Fist stands there, eyes blown wide, air caught between his teeth. The hand grasping Astarion's neck quivers. More silver, a moonbeam wrought over his skin.

Marcus opens his mouth, takes a stumbling step, and collapses under the weight of a torn throat. 

Astarion falls with him in a tangle of limbs too weak to support himself, clattering to the ground with a hollow echo of pain. Sound erupts overhead, battle, shrieks; Marcus shakes and writhes through his death throes but his neck is shredded, magic carving it apart, and blood splashes down, warm, rich, boiling. Astarion keens, a pathetic, miserable sound that grinds at his fangs and sends acid up his throat. He shakes, trapped under the man's chest, wings flopped over, and he can't move, can't fight, can't flee.

Blood pours over the ground, wasted, pointless, and he can't reach. 

Battle rages around him, but the world's gone grey and indistinct, trembling, eyes locked on the corpse pinning him down. He can't get his arms free and his fingers scrabble uselessly at the man's armour, at feathers flaking apart at his touch, at warmth he can feel splashing over his chest and thighs. 

Three weeks starving, three weeks empty, and a feast drips through the floorboards and soaks into the wood; noise echoes and howls around him but he can't focus, not with the hunger, visceral in its agony, rending through his chest. Astarion whines again, chest hitching, tugging for air he doesn't need except to keen like a wounded animal. He claws at the body with a ragged gasp, barely there, a mind splintering around itself. 

Sound, movement; somewhere in the din the battle falls away, clattering broken to the ground, and now there's just the pounding of footsteps and the gurgle of the dying, and he's trapped, and Marcus' corpse pins him to the ground like a rat in a trap. 

Something brushes his shoulder. 

Astarion writhes, energy summoned from desperation as he lunges and kicks at everything and nothing. "Don't touch me," he snarls, wild, frantic—his eyes have clouded over and the smell is thick and rich and dripping, heavy in the air, near boiling. Marcus is dead and he's dead but he's still bleeding, and the room reeks with it, blood-scent alight with fire and sparks and red.

The hand retreats with a muffled curse, voice undercut with a growl; then there's movement, the shudder of floorboards beneath him, and Marcus' body topples off him with the groan of the dead. 

Light, cursed light—he claws upright and sways, barely able to sit, head empty and spinning, a keen still trapped behind his teeth. Something shifts before him. 

Astarion flinches back, hands up, fingers curled like claws and fangs bared. The world's trembling or maybe he is, leaf in a hurricane, eyes swimming into focus with terrifying delay. 

Someone's before him, crouched, ruby-red skin pulsing with heat and hair casting over shoulders. Her horn twines around her ear, armour ragged, grime and dust painted over her cheekbones and brow. 

Karlach.

"Hey," she's saying, soft, anxious. "Hey– fangs, hey, look here, yeah? Eyes up?"

He stares at her, and can't piece together the thoughts, can't force them in, can't think past the fucking blood.

"Don't touch me," he rasps, arms curled to his chest. "Don't–"

"I won't," Karlach says, gentle, eyes enormous in her face and palms held up. "Not gonna touch you, alright? Just want to give you this."

Carefully, like she's scared he'll spook, she pats through her pockets and tugs out a glass bottle, large as her fist, filigree laced over its rounded sides. Red bubbles within, similar enough saliva pools at his tongue, but she pops the cork and bitterness hits him, sharp and medicinal. 

Herbs. He hisses. 

"Not that," Karlach says, undeterred. "Healing. See?"

She takes a swig, letting it sit in her mouth for a second, and makes a show of swallowing—waits again, brows furrowed. "My skin is blue, I'm terrible at fighting, and the shadows-cursed lands make for a lovely vacation."

Astarion chokes on something. It might be a laugh, humour or desperation, or a sob, or some wretched thing caught in the middle. A healing potion, one they force down whenever Shadowheart can't muster the energy to do it, well-stocked in each of their packs. He should have recognized it on sight. 

Karlach is here, and the battle must be over, winged horrors defeated—still it echoes, the rattle and ruckus of destruction, but the screams have faded and the world shudders in bleak emptiness. He inhales, a sharp thing, grinds his thoughts down with brutal apathy. His senses spindle back, tender thread in a spider's jaws; he blinks once, twice, focusing in. 

They won, and he didn't help, and now she offers healing.

What avails him isn't necessarily injury, but he can't afford to refuse anything she says. 

"Of course, darling," he manages, and winces—his voice comes crackling and weary, rough like he'd been screaming. "Who would I be to refuse such generosity?"

Karlach's eyes crinkle at the corners, and she sets the bottle down between them, heat from her hand brushing close before she pulls it back. She rocks off her knees so she can sit down, still a full head above him, mirroring his posture. There's movement beyond her, swaying grey shapes and muffled voices, but he can't see them. He can't see much of anything. 

Astarion, very carefully, reaches forward to grasp at the bottle, hefting it even as the weight buckles his arm. He grits his teeth and drags it up, ducking his head just to slip the glass between his lips; the potion tastes godsawful, ash and mud, but warmth pools heavy through his chest like the whisper of a distant fire. 

There's nothing in his veins to carry it and the healing comes slowly, crawling through his limbs as it stitches holes from the winged horror's claws and Marcus' general appreciation. His neck throbs and aches as it heals, and he knows it'd be swollen to high hells if he had the blood for it; there's not so much as a whisper of bruising. Perfectly pallid and flat, as the rest of him. Part of a vampire spawn's charm, where Cazador could take time to cut entertainment from his skin and still send him out to the taverns and flophouses. No bruises on his hips or neck, not with his typical diet. Nothing but pale skin. 

But soon the bottle is empty, and the world sharpens as the clouds drift from his gaze, and suddenly those amorphous grey shapes behind Karlach reform themselves into the other four members of their party. 

He doesn't have a beating heart left to drop to the floor, but the feeling comes regardless. 

"Hello, loves," Astarion says, and it comes out in a rasp, throat dry and scratched. "I take it we won?"

Karlach huffs something resembling a laugh, elbows braced on her knees. "Kicked their shit in," she says, and grins with all teeth exposed. "Shame you were the only one to see Marcus' face when Isobel popped his throat. Would've loved to remember that."

Isobel? Astarion squints around, at the blurry mounds of winged horror corpses, scattered and steaming over the ground. In the distance, more shapes stitch back into Harpers, armed to the teeth and nursing injuries. Isobel and Jaheira are there, talking quietly, Isobel with a hand clasped to the shoddily-healed gash over her stomach and Jaheira with fists still clenched around her twin rapiers. 

They came back, then. A little fucking late. 

But they're here, and they're alive, and Marcus has been killed. 

"Well," he says delicately. "I won't be forgetting it."

No, he won't. Because tonight he will go to trance and his mind will be full of Marcus—not of his face, not of his death, but of the scarlet that poured rich and heavy from his throat. The blood that even now seeps through the floorboards, scattered droplets arching before him, soaking into the waistband of his armour. 

His fingers tangle themselves into white-knuckled knots, back held perfectly straight even as the hunger bellows frantic demands. The Harpers are surrounding them, those who don't know he's a vampire, and he will not win the trust he needs from the party if he starts lapping at the ground like a dying dog. 

It's hard. It's hard enough it hurts. 

Three fucking weeks and he's been fine, pushed through with a ferocity to never lag, to never falter, and now with a drop in his stomach he's trembling like a newborn fawn. Two centuries mindless with the hunger, and yet here he crumples without. 

"That's the spirit," Karlach says, grinning. She tilts her head back, one eyebrow raised. "Rest of you lot can sit down, you know. I'm not standing."

Astarion is, at once, disgustingly grateful—the healing potion has softened the edges of the ache pouring through his limbs, but removing weakness doesn't bring strength, and he's running on far too empty to rise steady to his feet. He hasn't even been able to look up to see their faces, to see the consequences a whisper of blood bought him. 

He wonders, vacantly, if he's shivering. But if he has to ask, it's likely because he knows the answer. 

Wyll's the first to sit, right by Karlach's side, though he shuffles a touch away so his knee doesn't get a hole burnt through the cap. He's wobbling, concussion loosening its claws in his head but still present, and his brows are furrowed and jaw tight. Worried, maybe. Unlikely. Gale is next, pressed tight to Shadowheart to steady his fragile ankle, helping guide her down as she keeps a death grip on her arm. She's healed the flayed flesh, but a mid-battle spell is the kind that only takes the sting off—she'll need at least half a tenday before her arm's back to normal.

Lae'zel's last, and her face is drawn into a scowl, something fierce and unbreaking. Astarion's stomach withers. 

He turns to Karlach before he has to acknowledge it, before he has to think about what the outcome of this conversation will be, before he has to make desperate plans to keep himself free without the Astral Prism. 

So he does as he always does. He deflects. 

"Five doting heroes to help me," Astarion purrs, and shoves himself back to the sotto voce he's perfected to pair with half-lidded eyes. "How ever will I thank you all?"

The fineries don't seem to land, this time. It wafts off their skin like a gentle breeze for how effective it is, despite the time he's spent to hone it, to curl the words until anyone's willing to ignore the threat for the thrill. The party stays looking at him, faces worn, more than their injuries. Something past it. 

Karlach grimaces. "You can thank me by staying alive, soldier. Hells, you look like death warmed over."

The laugh bubbles up easily. "Well, I am, darling. I'm hardly able to change that."

Normally she would laugh back, bark out that hells-touched chuckle that rumbles through her engine like a storm, banter with all the quick wit he has grown to be uncomfortably fond of. 

She doesn't, though. Just stares at him, eyes soft, lips drawn. 

Ah. 

It seems they are not willing to ignore what happened. 

"I sense there's something you want to say to me," Astarion says, very delicately, even as tar curls through his gut. This is where it begins, then. Where the curtains get drawn back, now that the truth sits rotted and dying between them, when the party learns just what they let into their midst. 

He has a master. And it isn't them. 

That's the thing, about a monster in a party of heroes—he isn't like the others, where their goals overlap, where what they bring matches with what they want. A hunter looking to save his father, which protects Baldur's Gate; a wizard searching for a second chance at life or forgiveness, with the promise of taking down the Absolute; a githyanki looking to free her people, keeping the Astral Prism safe in their grasp. All heroes.

What do they gain, from bringing the threat of Cazador down on their heads? From killing him? From not? From leaving him to hunger in his dark study and the glow of tallow candles, letting Astarion disappear back into the ruby-eyed clutches he spent two hundred years in?

They lose fangs and daggers, a skulking thing in the shadows who deals less damage than Karlach with less precision than Lae'zel and none of Wyll's magic for a far less kind patron. They gain back jokes and laughs and a significant boost to their comfort with each other. 

That's the thing, about a monster in a party of heroes. 

The monster has everything to lose. The heroes have everything to gain.

"Don't keep me waiting," Astarion purrs, peering through his lashes, ice crawling over his chest and drowning all things he wants drowned. He cannot afford to fall into memories now, when he's clinging to freedom with a child's grasp, fingers easily pried off and flung away. Everyone is injured, same as him; but they're surrounded by Harpers, armed and dangerous, and it is his head that ducks and weaves under starvation. Running will not work. The hunger claws, insidious, through the murk. "I'm ever so impatient, you know."

The words come out more stilted than he wants. He curses. 

"Astarion," Gale begins, and pauses. Wipes his hands on the hem of his robes. He's the sacrificial lamb, then, his innate loquaciousness the only thing with a chance of cracking past the tension . "I– ah, well. We want to extend our apologies for not stopping him. What he did to you was barbarically cruel, well beyond what any of us could have imagined, and it falls on our heads for letting it go as far as it did." He winces. "As well as apologize for… hearing what was said. Those were your secrets to share when you wanted, not to be forced." He waits for a second, pushing back knotted hair to free his face. "Do you– well, I suppose that's a less than necessary question. Are you hurt?"

In comparison to what he's familiar with? He's a noble sprawled on a gilded throne. "Nothing more than I'm used to," Astarion says, and leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. His head lists more than he wanted. "So kind of you to ask, truly."

Gale coughs, a flush over his cheeks. "Hm. Well. You're welcome." He dithers for a second, all the social hesitation from a man unused to conversation beyond spouting archaic facts. "But that was the easy question, then. Are you okay?"

Well, that's a delightfully open door if he's ever heard one, a proffered hand with such sweet promises behind it, airy and uncompromised. It is not the offer that would be made to a vampire spawn who willingly drank a truth potion and spilled secrets to an enemy. He doesn't know what it is.

So Astarion lets his lips flick up, the kind of smile that sits lazily on his face like a cat stretched in a sunbeam. "Of course, darling. Water under the bridge, really—you've all told such terrible little secrets, it was simply time I took my turn."

Or, rather, that is what he means to say. 

"No."

Ah. He goes very still. 

It was a fool's hope, perhaps, that Marcus' death would bring the end of this nightmare; but that is for dreamers, and he has not been one for a very long time. 

The klauthgrass sinks, acrid, over his tongue. 

Something in Karlach's face crumples, cracking down the veneer of her smile so he can see how fragile the illusion was. "So it was all true," she says, like she doesn't want it to be, like she truly thought Astarion would just– just make all those things up and cry weakness before the Flaming Fist. "About your… sire."

He doesn't have to say anything. His face is answer enough. 

Karlach grits her teeth, tugging roughly at her horn like she's going to break the other one off. "Gods, mate," she breathes. "What did he do to you?"

Astarion thinks. The klauthgrass whispers to him, digs through the ice, pulls up things dead and drowned. "Buried me," he says, and blinks eyes choked in the memory of dust. "Trapped me in a marble sarcophagus for a year. I had tried to run, you see."

Karlach rears back like she's been slapped. "I didn't–"

But she did. She did ask the question. She just hadn't expected a response. 

And now she can get them. 

Astarion sits there, stiff, fingers curled like claws. Marcus' blood pools hot and wretched in his lap and a keen locks itself behind his fangs, the desperation of a dying dog. Fleeing is admitting guilt, is letting go of the fragile possibility he can slither his way back into their good graces—and that means he has to sit here, shivering, the truth poised to spill. That he has to answer all their questions willingly.

Though he is dead, Astarion feels the phantom curl of Marcus' gauntlet around his throat. 

"I'm hardly so fragile," he says, and it comes out with an empty lilt around the edges. Ice isn't fragile; it holds back a rushing river and he glides across it, unhindered, nothing visible beneath the cold. "There's no reason to worry your pretty little head."

It's true, because he can only speak the truth, but the klauthgrass roils at the words—it doesn't like that. Doesn't want him skittering around the edges of a lie, that as much as there's no reason for her to worry, there is still a cause worth worrying over. 

He's an easy thing to pity, by choice and by circumstance; he lavishes himself over the camp and complains about long traveling days, simpers and suckers and slips into bedrolls with honeyed ease. But true weakness is a knife to the gut and proof of inadequacy, so he does not show it, and this is the first time they have seen him brought low. Perhaps they are surprised. 

But he is a vampire spawn, and pity alone will not keep him within the aura of the Astral Prism. 

So Astarion smiles at her, tilting his head to the side, snowy curls rank with grime and dust fluttering before his eyes. "I'm an open book now, darling. If you're curious, I'm quite willing to be persuaded for answers."

He's said something wrong. 

The reaction is immediate, darting through the party, in narrowing eyes and tightening fists. Gale has gone pale about the cheekbones, Wyll swallowing shock. Shadowheart curls her lip, dark hair curtaining before her eyes. Follower of misery as she is, he'd half-expected her to delight at this, no more hiding under lies—but there's a disquieted pull to her brow, a set to her teeth. 

He's said something wrong, and he doesn't know what.

"Fuck you," Karlach bites out, eyes mere slits in a crackling face of flame. "I'm not like that godsdamn dick, stringing you up for questioning– just because you've kept some secrets under your skin doesn't mean shit–"

"Chk. Steady yourself," Lae'zel barks, ever the pragmatic. She's watching him with flinty eyes, the same she always wears, but there's a lack of bite there. In someone else, it could almost be called soft. "We are wasting time. There is no need to question him further."

Something strangled echoes up Wyll's throat. "We can't just move on," he says, concussion rooting in alongside his words and bringing a near delirious fervour as their backing. "Not when that– that monster is still hunting the streets of Baldur's Gate. Who knows how long he's been doing this?"

That answer is easy enough. "Two hundred years."

Wyll inhales sharply. It's nearly a hiss. " How–"

"Oi," Karlach snarls, and slams her fist into the ground hard enough the walls tremble. "We're not fucking doing this, you get me? Everyone keep their damned traps shut until the shit's out of his system."

Astarion frowns. 

He– he would prefer to do this through lies, slip away to force fingers down his throat so he vomits up whatever scraps are left until the truth loosens its claws, but they won't trust that. This has already proven how much he lies, how little he speaks from the honesty of his empty heart, and whatever pleading begs he gives after this won't be listened to. 

The threat is no longer limited to a stake through the heart. Now it's them simply deciding he's no longer worth bringing along. 

There is no corner of his soul he will not bare if it means freedom. 

"It's fine, darling," Astarion says, lips still quirked at the corners in lazy desperation. "What's a few secrets amongst friends as good as us? Ask what you will—I'll do my very best to keep the answers entertaining."

"Yeah?" Karlach challenges, all teeth. "Sure sounds like the klauthgrass talking, not you."

"I willingly drank it," he says, gritted, because he doesn't understand. So long have they bitched over him and his jagged ways, and now his secrets are laid out like a fucking feast, something to worry their teeth into like the marrow of bones, and they won't bite. And that's before the truth he spilled already, that he's only here because he was told to be, that Marcus learned of their plans, that he betrayed the party for little more than a few drops.

"Because he slit his wrist and held it to your fucking mouth," she barks, fists clenched. "Starve me enough and I'd eat any shit slapped before me."

I'm not starved, he goes to say. 

The klauthgrass chokes him off before he can manage it. 

Worse, when he recovers enough to look back up, past the red sinking through his waistband and the blood-scent hooking claws into his thoughts, Karlach looks like she guessed what he was about to say. Her anger drains away, leaving bitterness, the swell and fall of a tide pool. "Aw, fangs," she whispers, and draws off. 

Astarion cannot have her look at him like that. He tries for a careless smile and is quite certain he does not achieve it. 

At her side, Wyll presses his hands together, knuckles white. Whatever fills his eyes is shrewd and cautious, plucking at the thread of a tapestry, some piece of a mystery he wants to solve. 

"The shadowlands," he guesses, brow furrowing. "No animals, and what beasts we fight are already undead." 

Prize for your observation, Astarion wants to snarl. Three fucking weeks late. But instead he just tilts his head to the side, careful to keep fangs tucked under his lips, and raises an eyebrow in the idle, practiced motion of curiosity. "The scenery leaves much to be desired, yes."

"You haven't been eating," Wyll says, careful, hands plucking at each other like lutes. "Why didn't you ask one of us?"

Astarion stares at him, head wobbling under its own weight as he drags his gaze over. Another question. Klauthgrass tears the liquid gold from his words, leaves them empty and flat. "You nearly killed me," he says, and raises an unconscious hand to press into the skin over his heart, to scratch at the weakness there. "I'm not going to risk it again."

Wyll's expression cracks, horror dawning in the corners of his face. 

That night had been when the party was still young, less than a tenday together, and he'd just been so hungry. Shaky from illithid captivity, limbs ungainly and slow to obey, the prey had been fast and skittering away from his claws. It was still far more than he'd ever had before, but that had been for a lifestyle of breathy words instead of blades, and he ran dry with aching speed. 

And he had needed to know. Know if the commandments still held, if he could press himself to a thinking creature's neck and still not drink. 

So he crept, quiet as death, and stopped before the only member of their party he thought he might be able to reason with, after his refusal to kill Karlach despite the horns that now bloomed from his head. He'd knelt like in prayer, desperately afraid, and dug his fangs into Wyll's neck. 

One mouthful. One delicious, breakingly wonderful mouthful. 

And then he'd been pinned on his back, sword at his heart, and it had only been babbled agreement to a deal that kept him unskewered. 

So no. He hasn't exactly felt the urge to ask.

Astarion just smiles, pretty as you please, pulls himself upright and does not look away. "I would hate to put you in an uncomfortable position," he manages, like that had been the only reasoning, not the fear that clawed deep through his gut. "I can do without."

"Fangs," Karlach says, cautious, something warring in her eyes. "You said you haven't eaten in three weeks."

Ah. The revelation of how little a spawn can bring in preyless lands, where the only blood available is shadows-cursed. He's kept his reaction minimal, tranced for longer and tore painstaking strips of leather to bite down on, but Cazador starved him when his job was to purr demurely and arch his back under wandering hands. Combat is another thing entirely. 

But they keep him around for fighting, and he cannot lag behind. 

"Don't be so dramatic," Astarion snaps, and still the klauthgrass pours heavy over his tongue. "Vampires can't die from a lack of blood. That you can be assured of."

"And I wouldn't have died from being carved up by Marcus," Karlach says, gritting her teeth so hard he can hear them creak. "Doesn't mean we'd just let it happen." 

Because it's stopping torture, the act and action of cruelty—it's certainly not letting a monster feast on your blood. Precious little heroes keep to themselves, prefer to pretend the rest of the world functions like they do. It's easier that way. 

Astarion bats his eyes, charming and vapid, his patented expression of emptiness. "I don't need to feed, lovely. I'll survive."

Karlach hisses, some hollow sound of fury he can't tell what it's directed at, and jerks her arm out. Splays it on her knee, inching closer so the heat licks at his shaking hands, and extends her inner forearm.

"Not fucking starving on my watch, soldier," she says, teeth bared. "Drink up."

Astarion goes very still.

Something trembles in his chest and it becomes war to keep his eyes fixed on her, to not let them drift down to the way her arm rests on her leg, wrist pointed up. He can hear the blood pumping through her veins, soft, rumbling with the sounds of her infernal engine. His fingernails bite deep into his palms. 

"There's no need to test me," he says, and it comes out strangled, raw in his throat, caught between truth and lie. "Need I remind you how your lovely necks have stayed fang-free? I've held up my side of the bargain and I intend to keep it, thank you kindly."

Karlach stares at him, pale pinpricks for eyes, tension stretched taut over her shoulders. "Fucking hells, fangs," she breathes, rocking back. "Do you think we'll shove a stake through you just for trying not to starve?"

You said no more questions, he thinks wearily. 

But what he says is, "Yes."

There is silence, afterward. 

Wyll's gone stiff, a statue of a man, poise ripped away and shredded. Gale presses the back of his hand to his mouth, holding back some variety of words, and even Lae'zel has clicked her teeth shut. Shadowheart stays placid, some glassy winternight pond, hair hiding her eyes. 

Karlach is not so quiet. 

"Bloody fucking bastard–" whatever work Dammon did on her infernal engine runs dry as fire crackles to life over her skin, charring a perfect circle beneath her legs as the wood shrieks and burns. She slams a fist into the ground with a barked shout, enough other Harpers spin to face her, and snarls—drags in a ragged breath, hands kneading at her chest, eyes squeezed so far shut it looks painful. "Motherfucker," she whispers, and pries her eyes open to stare with a weary sadness that leaves him bristling.

Whatever this is, he cannot stomach it.

Lae'zel makes a derisive sound in the back of her throat. "You are a fool," she says, hot in her gaze. "Assuming death instead of asking, and now rejecting what is freely offered. You will drink."

You will drink.

It would be an innocuous phrase, one undeserving of scrutiny and welcomed with open arms—but he's heard it before, hunched over gold-filigree tables and elaborate china, lapping at coagulated blood as garlic oil scoured his veins. The rat, desiccated—him, well on his way to match. 

"I will not," Astarion says, paltry resistance in wary eyes. "Is that what you want to hear? Or will you press bloody fingers to the monster's mouth? I won't bite."

It comes out ragged, acrid truth boiling over his tongue. He wants to bite, to tear into them, to drink the fill he's never satiated—but it is food and death, or starvation and life. It has never been a choice. He knows that. 

It's an odd form of torment, this. Options proffered in gilded wrapping, a noose to hang himself in. They could all be chatting like thieves to lower his guard but instead they just watch him, tense, a terrible awareness in their eyes. He shivers beneath it. 

Karlach snarls. "Fuck that. You're not a monster—you're our friend. So what if you've got a bit of a diet?"

His fingers are digging into the meat of his palms. If this is a test, it is a dreadfully good one, and he is so painfully aware of Marcus' blood seeping into the fabric of his armour, settling in rapidly-cooling puddles. Soon it will disappear beneath the floorboards, to the dirt he cannot recover it from, and it will be back into the shadows-cursed lands and the ache and the hunger. 

"It matters quite a bit," he hisses back, acid from his lips. "I'm a monster, but I'm not so much a fool as to abandon my only chance of freedom. Whatever– whatever ploy this is, you've gotten your answer. Leave me be."

Karlach sags like her strings have been cut, knees clattering against each other and ash drifting upward. She looks at him, something deep and dark in her eyes, and he can't help but blink blankly back, no matter how much he wishes to play along. 

"You absolute asshole," she whispers. "We're trying to help."

Oh. 

He does not have a working heart, but something shudders in its place. 

Astarion looks at her, past the smoke billowing around, and then through—abandons the eyes that only search out marks, for signet rings and slender arms and gazes addled by alcohol. He takes in her flickering skin, the injuries she's ignoring to sit cross-legged on the ground to match him, the pocket of space she left after he rasped for her not to touch. The care in her eyes, not scrapped clean by derision, by hollow apathy, by anything else he is so achingly familiar with. 

There is no klauthgrass in her throat, keeping lies locked beneath servitude—but he wonders, only for a moment, if she needs it. If she's ever actually lied to him. 

We're trying to help. 

He is not so foolish as to underestimate them. To assume there is anything but ulterior motives; that they want him back fighting, much like how they deliberated over which artefact to feed Gale's curse or repaired Karlach's engine only to offer her soul coins. To abandon him would be to give the Absolute another thrall, to create an illithid hunter on their trail—and to kill him now means the Harpers would cast doubt on them, sully their heroic legacy. 

But all of those things, any of those things, do not involve feeding him. 

If this is a trap, they are better liars than he has ever been. 

We're trying to help. 

"I–" Astarion starts, and draws off, answers drowning his tongue as he struggles to find the right one. "I suppose," he says, delicately, rolling the words between his teeth to break them up, keep them soft, unobtrusive. "I suppose if you are truly offering, I would agree."

This is not their victory, there is nothing in it for them to gain, but the party brightens like the sun just landed on their shoulders. 

He doesn't understand.

"Can't be me right now," Karlach says, and sounds so genuinely apologetic Astarion can't think. "Running too hot. Who else?"

"Ah, likely not me," Gale says, raising a hand like he's worried no one will pay attention to his answer. "My blood is… well, it is still blood, but I would hazard a guess it would be less than filling at best, and potentially disastrous at worst. There haven't been many experiments done on my type, you understand, although I would be curious as to your reaction."

Astarion wrinkles his nose without meaning to. He knows Gale's blood-scent with unfortunate recollection. The wizard smiles at his reaction, self-deprecation draping over his face. "Yes, I seem to recall you didn't appreciate the smell."

An understatement. But blood is blood, and now that the option is laid bare before him, something aching tears through his chest—if he scorches his white fangs black on Karlach's skin, or swallows the bile of Gale's blood, anything, as long as he drinks–

Then Wyll leans forward, rocking onto his knees. "Me," he says simply, and doesn't wait for an objection before he starts to roll up his sleeve, unwrapping his leather vambrace to peel it off. 

Astarion swallows. If this is a trick, they're letting it extend long after he's already revealed himself to break under pressure—he cannot discount the fear that they're dragging him along, waiting for the final confirmation he is little more than monster, but he can't tear his eyes from the umber stretch of skin before him. What little he got from Marcus is nothing, a balm over hollow starvation, merely a reminder of what he doesn't have. 

This could be more. 

The rest of the group shuffles back, gives Wyll room to set the stage, working with the deliberate ease he has always had. He sets his vambrace in his lap, adjusting his posture. The world is very small, circling, and Astarion cannot force himself to maintain the illusion of breathing. He's frozen stiff, eyes locked on the wrist, on the offering.

"For what it's worth," Wyll says, softly, pinning his sleeve under his arm. "I'm sorry, Astarion. I misjudged you, and treated you like something you're not. I would take it back if I could."

The prince-type, the monster hunter, the Blade of Frontiers. His apology comes soaked in honesty. He means it. 

"Oh," Astarion manages, and finds he can say no more. 

Wyll adjusts his clothing and inches forward, still leaving a hollow of space between them, but enough neither would need to stretch. He pulls his leg forward to rest his elbow on it, arm extended up, freely given. 

Blood, simply for blood's sake. 

Still cautious, a wound wire, something deep and achingly afraid—Astarion leans forward, eyes flicking up, scanning the party. They're all watching him, as they always are, but there is no condemnation in their gaze. Merely acceptance. 

Gentle as the westerlies, he presses his mouth to Wyll's forearm. Laps once, a flat brush of his tongue, numbing saliva pooling heavy from the glands behind his teeth. 

And then he bites.

His fangs pierce the man's skin, digging through with ease, and there is a moment where he pauses. Where he doesn't know the next step, no fur catching in his mouth, no putrid death scouring at his throat. 

But the hunger urges him to pull, and so he does. 

Blood explodes through him, a waterfall, flooding over his tongue and teeth and throat. A mouthful, two, three—it pours through him rich and deep and red, splashing down his throat, warmth his dead heart has never managed to have. Astarion keens, fragile and desperate, as he drinks; closes his eyes as the world shudders to a crawl around him, only the blood, only the meal, only the deep, enormous feeling of being filled.  

It's more than he's ever known. It's more than he's ever imagined.

A hand, on his shoulder. 

Astarion rips himself back, fangs tearing out and arms curling over his chest—blinks hard for his sight to slither back, a snake in the grass, echoes pounding through his ears. His lungs gasp for air they don't need. 

It's Wyll. It's just Wyll, hand frozen between them, a pale cast to the man's skin and scarlet slipping from the twin pinpricks over his forearm. He exhales, leaning back, raising his palms in gentle surrender. "My apologies," he says, still so fucking earnest, like there's nothing wrong. "I didn't mean to startle you." 

Astarion sags back, near delirious, the hunger dying to a lingering croak under his skin. There's warmth in his veins, the ache and pound of movement, thoughts that spring readily and freely at his summons. His head drifts and solidifies, stabilizing, and honest strength floods through his limbs, what he has not felt since there was a pulse beating under his skin.

Marcus' blood cools in his lap, and for the first time, he is able to wrench his attention away. 

"Thank you," Astarion says, and there's no simper, no fluttering vowels. Just thanks, as deep as his undead heart has to give. "You– I–"

He cannot find the words. 

Wyll smiles, a small thing that crinkles around the corners of his eyes. "It's nothing," he says, and though a pallor stretches over his skin, he doesn't react, other than to pull his arm back and wrap an off-white bandage over his wrist. "Hardly even hurt, to be honest. Your fangs are sharp."

A helpless laugh bubbles from his chest, something crackling at his composure like lightning. Your fangs are sharp. He is an undead monster, one who feasts on the living and exists for little more than to kill for his continued survival, the very thing Wyll swore his life to defend against. 

Your fangs are sharp. 

"I suppose they are."

Karlach grins, something fierce in her eyes. "Then I volunteer for tomorrow," she says, fingers tapping along her thigh. "I'll be plenty cool by then, and I can't let Wyll have all the fun." 

Astarion can't help how his eyes flick to her, brows furrowed, the klauthgrass dragging confessions from his tongue no matter how much he wishes to bury them. "Tomorrow?"

Lae'zel tches. "You fight along us," she tells him, arms crossed. "A warrior does not let her sword dull from mere inconvenience. You will not starve."

"What she means," Gale hastens to say, "is that you're our friend, Astarion. And we've quite an amount of blood between us all, and there's only one you, hungry as you might be. In my opinion, a priceless magical artefact seems a far greater cost than a nicked vein every day, and so long as we rotate, I doubt we'll even notice."

Astarion swallows. He cannot quite meet their gaze. "Every day," he repeats, like it's little more than words, the same empty platitudes he knows to whisper and croon. "Was it?"

"Every day," Karlach says, so gentle, like she can peer through his eyes to read the thoughts behind. "Not going hungry, fangs. Not when we can stop it."

There is something traitorously like love in his chest, love for these simpletons, for these idiots, for these fools. 

For these heroes.

"I see," he manages, and licks cracked lips. "I suppose I could. Agree to that."

Wyll huffs a laugh, airy, tongue peeking through his teeth. "Then we'll provide, Astarion."

There is so much he cannot begin to understand about that, about any of this, and that weight sits heavy over his chest like a gargoyle; but it is not choking. 

For the first time in weeks, in years, in centuries, something like hope sparks through him. 

"Okay," Karlach says, and claps her hands together, embers singing off her fingers. "We've got hells above hells to talk about, but we're not doing it while you're drugged. The Harpers can sweep up this mess, yeah? I think it's time we rest."

Rest. A part of the group, safe in camp, with a trance that will be calm and quiet and filled with more than the hunger for the first time in weeks. 

Karlach pushes up to her feet, hissing through a groan as her skin stretches and warps around the cuts peppered over her limbs. The healing potion she should have drank, but gave to him. She catches herself on Wyll's shoulder, the man standing alongside her, and flashes him an ivory-toothed grin. "Hells if I don't need to sleep like the dead." 

"I believe that is an ailment we could all hope for," Gale says, equally dry, striking an odd balance as he and Shadowheart take turns shifting all their weight on each other. Even Lae'zel bites back a wince as she stands, pronged ears flat to her skull. Though the Harpers crawled back at the last second, the siege was hard-fought, and they've been running on empty for too long. 

But the battle is won, and the Inn is saved, and they are all still alive. 

Astarion sits there, fingers splayed over his legs, and just breathes for a second, filling his lungs with useless air and letting it out. Blood sinks through his stomach, beginning to pump through his veins, healing injuries that have had weeks to grow familiar. There is no starvation, nothing to drag at his awareness like iron weights. His thoughts flow freely, moving. Full. 

A noise, from above. He looks to see Karlach standing before him, tail curled around her ankles, ash trickling from her shoulders. The rest of the party is making their shuffling way across the room, leaving behind the corpses of man and aberration alike, to softer pastures and gentler beds. But she's waited for him, stayed to make sure he follows. 

"C'mon," Karlach says, and stretches out a hand, palm up. "No use staying on the ground." 

Astarion stares, a moment caught between worlds, and takes it. 

She hauls him up, letting go the second he's stable, giving him back the freedom of not touching. Just bobs her head, horn tilting her smile sideways, something soft in her gleaming eyes. Behind her, the Harpers bustle and clatter around the room—if they saw him feed on Wyll they aren't showing it, aren't staring at him, aren't fingering wooden splinters left behind by the wreckage. 

Tomorrow, there will be questions, but klauthgrass will not drag answers unwilling from his throat. Tomorrow he will face what he said here, what he revealed, what he kept buried and locked under the ice—but that is for tomorrow, and today he merely turns to slip out of the room, out of the misery, and into the familiarity of camp. 

"And fangs?" 

Astarion glances back, a quick two-step to keep the rest of the room in his peripheries. "Yes?"

Karlach tightens a fist, curled sharply into her chest. "When we get to Baldur's Gate," she says, and bares her teeth. "First thing first, we're killing Cazador Szarr. Sound alright to you?"

Oh.

For the first time in a very, very long time, Astarion laughs—it isn't the courtesan's or the thief's or the charmer's laugh, soft and simpering. It is loud and brash and tugs at his vocal cords like the rumble of an approaching storm, something deep through his cracked chest. 

He has not heard that laugh in two hundred years. 

He finds he's missed it. 

Karlach's grinning when he turns to her, all sharp-toothed ferocity, fire crackling through the braided loops of her hair. She's got a heart under that engine of hers, but it looks like she hasn't lost her teeth, either. Perhaps you can have both. 

When he smiles back, both his fangs flash. 

"My love," Astarion says. "I would like that very much."