Chapter Text
“This is ridiculous.”
Kyne paused uncoiling the hemp rope to return Astarion’s scowl. The vampire was bordering on a proper snit, lips pulled back in a sneer and hands on his hips. Like Kyne was a petulant child rather than a crazed murderer.
For someone with such clever words, he really could be such an idiot.
“It’s necessary.” Kyne resumed his work. “We should’ve implemented this a long time ago — after Alfira, at the very least.” He winced, equal parts reminiscence and horror constricting his throat.
Astarion knelt to snatch a length of rope from him. “That was a... fluke.”
“And last night makes a pattern.”
“Oh please — you woke me up!”
Kyne threw the last of the rope to the ground with a huff, meeting Astarion’s red gaze again. “You really have no idea how close I came to killing you, do you?”
“As I told you, darling, you are welcome to try.”
What a delicious thought that was. Something adjacent to pleasure climbed Kyne’s spine as his mind slipped toward sweet, surprise bloodshed… “I’d very much rather not."
A scoff, oblivious as anything. “People already offered to take watch. This doesn't have to be the catastrophe you're making it out to be.”
Kyne cursed under his breath, casting his eyes to the gloom beyond the firelight. The muscles of his chest ticked. The fever that took him in the night had lingered all day. And with nearly a tenday of insomnia at his back, he was quickly running out of reserve for this battle.
Time to change tactics.
“I'm tired, Astarion,” he murmured, letting his voice grow soft. Soft like sloughing flesh, soft like silver hair drenched in gore, soft like sinews buckling around bone— “I'd feel much better closing my eyes tonight if I knew I couldn't hurt anyone. And gods forbid I try to cast magic—”
“—Which you haven't, yet—”
“—binding my hands will limit what I can do.”
“We have a Gale for that, dearest.” Astarion stretched an arm’s length of rope before himself, looking down his nose all the while. “But if it would truly make you feel better...”
“It would. It really would.”
“We'll be demanding finer cord from the Harpers tomorrow. And you'll share my tent, tonight and however long you plan to keep up this melodrama.”
“Astarion—”
“I’ll not have you trussed up out in the open, in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, of all places.” Something in Astarion’s look quieted him. “I’m not leaving you to the darkness.”
That sweet, sorrowful expression hung between them for one blessed moment before Kyne’s mind began picking it apart. He could peel that fine muscle flexing in Astarion’s jaw back like a swine’s cheek, expose the gleaming fangs beneath. Might a dying vampire lap desperately at his own borrowed blood, even as its wine-dark streams stained the fallow earth?
Kyne could hook a blade under the meat of Astarion’s brow, find purchase in its furrow to crack his precious skull. Astarion, who’d drawn so much power from the parasite: hedging his bets against the monster he knew, sacrificing pieces of himself to a monster he didn’t. How might the worm within him look now? Fat and fecund, nestled safely in the hollows it dug? Would Astarion’s dissected brain look even half as butchered as Kyne’s own?
A cold lance, painless but no less unpleasant for it, shot through his waning consciousness. It came accompanied by his lover’s gentle tone, curling with morbid curiosity: “Where have you gone to, hmm?”
Kyne slammed his psychic defences — meagre that they were — against the caress, heart pounding. No. He felt the impression of blood and blade slip past his walls, and clamped down on his tongue to keep from losing more ground. Astarion withdrew — exactly the kind of mercy he pretended not to have.
When he found Astarion’s eyes, they were grim and unafraid.
He should’ve been afraid.
“Nowhere good,” Kyne bit out, proffering his hands against the rope. “Bind me tight, and don’t let me see how you’ve done it.”
Astarion missed the sun bitterly.
The Shadow-Cursed Lands (the name won no points for creativity) were little more than a gigantic open-air crypt. Stoking the campfire and torches did nothing to burn away the stench of death, let alone the chill. The very air hung clouded with a familiar misery; unlike Cazador, however, the shadows killed in bloodless silence. Of course Shar saw fit to strip even the joys of murder away.
Perhaps that was what had finally pushed Kyne over the edge. He blamed it on sparing the Selunite, but he’d called the House of Healing ‘a fucking waste’ under his breath. When they found that doctor and his victim — and talk about eerily familiar sights — he’d barely managed to contain his bloodlust. At least Astarion had an excuse.
Astarion had nearly screamed at Kyne for letting the body go cold while he toyed with Malus. By the time the rotted surgeon hit the ground, his patient’s blood had gone foul. Arabella’s parents were the same. The Curse seemed to accelerate the process of decay: what moved was anemic and undead, what was still mouldered in a single heartbeat.
Now that was a fucking waste.
In the wretched part of him that still hoped, Astarion had hoped Kyne would be sated by turning the surgeon and Sisters against themselves. In the worst corner of his dead heart, he’d hoped Kyne might offer him his neck. It was an unreasonable thought, and he knew it: he’d starved for longer (he was always starving), so he could wait for Kyne to be ready (Kyne told him they’d wait until he was ready). So he didn’t deserve to be disappointed when night fell and that thing in Kyne rose again. He didn’t deserve to be angry when his lover, fever-damp, strained and screamed against his binds.
He didn’t deserve to be, but he was cold and starving and the sun was gone.
Normally, closing his tent up offered some relief from the Shadow Curse. Tonight, though, staring out past the campfire kept him sane. He’d tried his usual quips, but then that thing asked if he’d liked it when Cazador — well. It was angry and baiting him, and Astarion would not bite.
Thankfully, the others gave them a wide berth. He hoped — and there it was again, ugh — that they’d be too focused on Kyne in the morning to recall any half-heard taunts about Astarion’s past. While Shadowheart and Halsin tended the amnesiac’s wounds, Astarion would steal whatever rest he could manage. As morning neared and that thing (the ‘Urge,’ the psionic presence at Moonrise had called it) resorted to battering Kyne’s body in its frustration, the likelihood of Astarion sneaking in a full trance grew to a real possibility. Maybe it did like him, after all!
The smell of fresh blood was definitely going to his head.
Beside him, Kyne groaned. He wasn’t sure how he knew that it was Kyne and not the Urge, but the sound sent his dead heart lurching. His body pivoted as his mind caught up.
Kyne lay curled on his side, panting. A bruise bloomed over his right eye. Blood, smeared from a broken nose, painted the lower half of his face. His lips were swollen and scabbed, bitten raw. Astarion recognized the strained posture of at least one dislocated shoulder; he smelled dozens of scrapes he couldn’t see. A pair of red-rimmed eyes — one an artificial blue, the other a haunting silver — returned his gaze.
Astarion’s anger sizzled to nothing. His mouth watered. He did not know how to reconcile these responses, so he ignored them both as he lunged to undo the knots.
“Don’t.” It was more of a growl than a word. Astarion froze.
“I’m not…” Kyne’s eyes rolled back, squeezed shut. He shuddered, winced. “Not yet. Still coming out of it.”
Astarion swallowed. “Take your time, darling.” Even holding his breath, the smell of blood was dizzying.
After a beat, Kyne huffed. Almost a laugh, if not for the way it caught at the end. Mismatched eyes met Astarion’s once more. “Guess it wasn’t a fluke.”
“No, I suppose it wasn’t.”