Chapter Text
Chapter 1 Beginnings
The road was dust and blood that day, and yet Vesta remembered it not for the battle, but for the faces she met along the way.
Gale was the first — tall, cloaked, his eyes dark with secrets. He spoke with eloquence, his words flowing like water over stone, every phrase precise and practiced. And yet when his gaze fell on her, some of that polish faltered, a warmth kindling beneath the wizard’s careful mask.
She had smiled at him then, a little longer than necessary, testing the waters. His answering blush was faint but unmistakable.
Inwardly, Vesta had wondered — what might it be like to have those hands, trained in the Weave itself, trace fire across her skin? What might it be like to hear him whisper incantations not into the void, but into her ear, with his lips brushing close? She bit her lip to silence the thought, though it lingered like a spark refusing to die.
And then came Astarion.
She felt him before she saw him — the prickle of danger, the slow, deliberate grace of a predator slipping from the shadows. His smile was a blade, sharp and wicked, as he bowed with mocking courtesy.
“Another pretty soul plucked from the wreckage,” he purred. “How fortunate for me.”
Vesta’s heart had raced, but not from fear. His crimson eyes caught the light like embers, and for a moment, she imagined them glowing in the dark above her, his fangs grazing her throat as he whispered her name. She laughed too loudly at his teasing remark, her flirtation clumsy but undeniable.
The others gathered one by one — Shadowheart with her guarded scorn, Karlach with her booming laugh and horns that gleamed in the sun, Lae’zel sharp as steel, Wyll carrying a hero’s weight. Each brought something vital to the strange new fellowship.
But Vesta’s gaze returned, again and again, to Gale’s quiet intensity and Astarion’s dangerous charm.
At night, when the campfire burned low, she let herself imagine what neither man spoke aloud. Gale’s lips, reverent and trembling, kissing her like she was a spell too precious to risk. Astarion’s teeth at her throat, his hunger pulling her into the shadows.
Fantasies, she told herself. Just fantasies.
And yet when she caught their eyes across the fire — Gale’s warm and longing, Astarion’s sharp and hungry — Vesta knew the road ahead would never be simple.