Chapter III: His Laugh, Bitter as Nightshade


"Astarion," the name feels almost as heavy as the pailful of water she's brought when she slogs herself into her tent, arms full.

Astarion curls neatly against the only wooden support he could find between the pegs strapping the textiles down and her modestly arranged strongbox. The tint of the wood casts vermeil shadows onto his neck, and Elyra narrows her eyes against the low-light flooding her senses, receiving enough feedback to recognize how effortlessly smug he looks as he pretends to have not heard a note disarranged.

He's dressed in black leathers to his hip, a belt, and then a loose-fitting, ivory blouse—every detail flattened. His doublet falls loose on his shoulders.

What coasts off-kilter is how Astarion has seen to spreading himself on the bedroll she's brought in, hand wrapped around one of her books, leafing through it, soundless.

This man has no sense of privacy or possession unless he's the one benefitting from it.

"What are you doing on my bedroll?"

"Just some light reading, darling."

"How light?"

"I don't bloody well know," he sighs, a scratch in his throat coming out like sandpaper on stone. She feels whittled down as is, but it looks like Astarion might work towards some more chafing away if she's not careful. Something of a whetstone himself. "This may be something our sage would take profuse pleasure in deciphering—for I'm decidedly not. No killing. No betrayal. No burning sexual tension. It's all very, hm," he runs his tongue across the upper brim of teeth. "dry."

"Well, I'm elated that some of us can unbutton themselves in the midst of all this madness. Let their strings come loose."

With that image, Astarion's fingers become slack at the leather binding, pattering their twos and threes. "And was your day an eventful one?" he asks.

It's probably the most egregious thing she's heard since her sudden encounter with Raphael, so she finds it hard to hawk up an answer, one that properly fits his expectations, anyway. She feels like she's just been waterboarded, dead to the world, then spit right back into perfect, postured place. Without a creature noticing.

How anyone can voluntarily teleport themselves as their choice of transportation doesn't cease to confound her.

Astarion's gaze flickers towards her before carping, "please, don't be so conversational."

"Elaborate on eventful," she says, setting the pail down beside him, then tressing her hair up with clamming palms. She needs another wash. Severely. "I didn't go slaying any goblins or kobolds, if that's what you're asking. Just took a bath. Now, it's your turn."

"Any run-ins I should know of before they tip over, hm?" He readjusts his leg when it starts to lay too heavy, crossing it over the opposing thigh.

"What, did you drown?"

"No."

"Then?"

"Well, Shadowheart and I—"

"Oh, I'm well aware, darling. Unless there's a bit of gossip involved, spare me your feminine dramatics. I don't need to know every detail about the fish or the dreadful snubs either of you exchanged about elven heritage—and misused—just so you're aware," he looks over the margins of the book in hand, "or the way you wrought absolute chaos by calling the Shar worshipper a proper cunt."

With a half-shrug, Astarion rolls his shoulders back, chuckling with satisfaction. "Although, I enjoyed that bit."

Of course. He wouldn't be her doubtful choice in lover if he didn't.

Letting her mind explore how exactly Astarion must have received Shadowheart's bellyaching when she came from the river, whether she'd stomped into camp with swinging arms, whether she'd sought Astarion from the offset, and whether he'd sooner join in on the abuses she undoubtedly laid thick in her absence, or sooner laugh in the cleric's purpling, plum-round face, comes to her as a surprisingly reassuring thought.

Because that would mean she's the opportunity to imagine the curve of his lips delightedly tugged up into a crease at the flagrant, in-character, and then she called me a cunt, and if he just made the most musical sound she would ever fail to hear because of it. Shadowheart would find him all but useless. She wouldn't know, now.

Elyra reworks something into her brain.

"Feminine dram—rich from you."

"What ever could you be insinuating? I hardly act the bitch." Even he can't keep a straight face at that declaration, snorting.

"Right. Just by the skin of your teeth."

"There's nothing feminine about what I intend to do to you later," he says, quick on the offense. "nor, rather, what a certain, little lordling—" cut off, his eyes roll over her again, a beat, and then he's extracted what he senses might not make for pleasant conversation.

"Well, if you're so dismissive of my claims before I even have a chance to expound them, then forget it. Don't come to me when he does something that will inspire the dudgeon of a particularly nettled elf as is. I've been wanting to stab something as of recent."

All of which Elyra wants to say comes out in a deadpan, "excuse me."

"You're excused. He's not. He's been pricking every nerve I have like he's willed to it, the fool. What goes on while you're away ... "

The trail-off leads her in the direction that Wyll, in all likelihood, may have said something about his hand in the supper he's promised to prepare, or how inspired he's become for her work last night, or the rest of which Astarion has no mind to tolerate. She knows how, lately more than ever, he rolls his eyes into the back of his skull when Wyll does so much as flutter his jaw.

And it's not just Wyll's platitudes that serve as the trigger anymore.

Elyra tips her head to one side. "Well, what did? Go on, that is."

"Tell me in truth and clear, if I were to have wandered about this backcountry and found a half-elf taking her customary woodland bath, would I have become witness to a drowning? With her face impressed into the water like a naiad, except not," he says.

Still carrying that irritating hint of suspicion that just won't leave her be, Astarion taps the spine of the book on her coffer. As if to produce a confession from her long before it's overdue. Gods, he must have been one hard-ass of a magistrate.

"Why were you gone for so long?"

"Why are you probing me?" she returns.

He forces himself into a brittle laugh. Just one wrong word from breaking. "I suppose the runt didn't give you too many problems after our last encounter?"

Before she can even recall the owlbear's interruption or what promptly came before, Astarion puffs out his chest, then snarls, "I'm referring to Wyll, of course. The little lordling just can't seem to take a hint."

Has he always been this difficult? Her head's spinning in a thousand directions. She just wants to settle on one issue at a time before another explodes in her face.

"What are you even blabbering on about, Astarion? I don't want to talk about Wyll. I can barely see in a straight line. If a group of bandits decided to fucking spring on our heads right now, I'd be a sore shot. I just need to get some rest, but I know you don't need it, so you don't understand what it's like for other people."

Whatever it means, he trances. Doesn't shut his eyes for anything.

Nearly suffering a fit then and there, Astarion half-gags, half-chuckles at the insinuation, clearly taking offense at what Elyra imagines to be an attack on his character before coming to the realization that this—this is Astarion. He doesn't rightly care if anyone calls him a prick, he is one, and he's blessedly proud of the fact.

No, he's just bothered that she'd refer to herself as a person. He picks his battles well, Astarion.

"You're not people, you're A'Tel'Quessir, something you and Shadowheart blundered over, of course. Leave it to half-elves to talk of culture when they're a bit wet behind the ears," he gives her a once-over, frowning, before his eyes lock onto the head of the bow slung around her back for emphasis across his next point. "'Though, you're wood. Not eladrin. Shadowheart has more to answer for when it comes to her understanding as it stands. Given that she wasn't raised among humans."

He continues when she doesn't have a clever response. "With a name like Shadowheart, I suspect she was surrounded by elves. You, among the humans. In the early stages."

"Well, you're completely wrong about me, so I wouldn't go pigeonholing every half-elf you come across just yet. I doubt that's her real name, anyway. Shadowheart. Odd for even humans."

"I understand the disabilities of your—"

"Good." Oh, she definitely doesn't need to hear whatever pious claptrap he's intent to set before her. "You're a wellspring of empathy. I've always known it. Conceivably, I should ask Alfira to hurry in writing a ballad on your gifts for fellowship. We'll be in need of a song or two when all this is over."

"What happened?" he asks.

"I didn't drown. That's obvious enough."

He raises an eyebrow, fingers dithering on the pages at hand before they finally settle on one of the corners. He's playing with a week-old fold. Considering something.

"Two more minutes and I'd have to pry a revivify scroll from Gale's cold, lifeless fingers after sticking him in the gullet. I don't know why you entrusted the egomaniacal mage who thinks he's the only one apt to use our resources with, well, everything, but I won't sound out your judgement. You're the only one who can survive on berries and twigs alone. Clearly, you're doing something right."

She doesn't know whether to take that as accolade or insult. So, she blinks, mind reeling back on his words. "Gale would give you one if I'd drowned."

"Yes, but he wouldn't believe me. He'd think I was just pocketing it for later, which is not a horrible idea, nor is it a mischaracterization, mind you," he says swiftly. "He'd need confirmation, wish to see your body floating downstream before finally handing me the blasted parchment. You. In the nude. Need I be more explicit?"

"You think he'd enjoy it?"

"No, I think he'd ask Wyll to turn you into an undead for research purposes before his compass got the better of him," he rolls his eyes, the dash of crimson faltering on a patch of light that has it spinning black under canopy. "Blue-blood," he lingers on the handle he's accredited the warlock. Not the most flattering of designations. "That's what he wished for when he made a pact as soon as he saw his first pair of tits," he clicks his tongue. "I hope it was well worth it, if you know what I mean."

"Enough, Astarion—"

"But why must you insist on defending someone who would never look twice at you given," it causes a second of consideration before he says, "ordinary circumstances."

She'll throw him in the Chionthar after this, she really will.

"I can't believe that I fetch and carry your water in a bucket for you every single gods damnned day when—"

"You're too elf for him."

Oh, so that's what this is about. Some kind of territorial rubbish over whose women are whose.

"And I'm too human for you. We've oddly just established that. Yet, you weren't complaining about my pedigree when you shoved yourself inside my—" Without anticipating it, Astarion grabs her arm and carelessly flings her onto the floor with him, nearly crushing himself against her blisteringly furious mouth, tongue worming its way and twisting against hers in a sloppy fold, spit-laced.

He's flung the book away when she has the chance to pit her elbows into his shoulders, sounding protests he does nothing for or against except placidly disregard.

"You're not too anything. You're—" When it seems as though he's racking over the possibilities in his head, Astarion decides on, "everything I'd pray for."

The leather of his glove circles into her skin, bitterly cold along with his lips. "If I thought praying would do me any favors," he snorts.

Screens of sagging cloth crowd against their foreheads, pressing half-crescent shadows onto the skin, still indubitably cast red. Astarion has half the mind to crush his fingers into her unmade braids, inhaling the scent, and with a dull, whispered sound that cudgels her brain, he unlaces a tuft of strings across her tunic. The tallest buckle cracks ajar, leaving him to admire her fuck-me cleavage, daisies of sun flecking her skin, wishing, wanting for nothing more than to give into desire.

It's swallowing her up, the red of the strongbox, the red of his eyes.

"Anyway, Elyra darling, I'm just delighted we've yet to wring out your waterlogged corpse. Now, may we continue from where we took a pause last night?"

"You're outrageous."

"You love it," he says, grinning from ear to ear, gaze raking over the slight bounce of her tits.

"Did Wyll say anything to you?"

"No. You needn't worry your head about things you've no control over, kit. It doesn't matter what others think of you or where you divide your interests. Hasn't your mother told you that?" A pause, and then he breathes, "does she have your eyes?"

Decidedly, she ignores that particularly unwanted line of questioning. "I'm worried about what they think of you."

"You'll do marvels at improving my reputation then," he says, hands cusping the arch of her ass given that she's flung across him. She moves away like a scalded cat, rolling off his chest and hurdling herself against a corner.

"We're sort of an odd-fitting pair, wouldn't you agree? Our alignments are slightly askew, contradictory even, yes, but there are so many memories we've already made because of that," he says. "And we're incredibly attractive together as well—as per my effect, mainly."

"I'm serious about being a sore shot."

"Well, fortunately, darling, there doesn't seem to be any of the unsavory types lurking about your curtains for evening target practice," he stands, and flaring with his usual eccentricity, he begins to make paces around the the table that hosts her arrows and their tools. "Discounting the warlock," he says, shifting through the rest of the tent, "maybe the gith. Although, I loathe to say, she is rather amusing when she's made her way through a bottle or three. Smashing goblin skulls! What violence!"

Perusing through her storages, Astarion's attention is devoured by a crate that doesn't seem hollow when he promptly gives it a strike with his foot. It peals with glassy echos, indicative of either wine or medicine—nothing else being of value to him. "Shadowheart just goes outrageously limp before she can even consider her hand at a fourth cup. You've seen it. Slurred. Degenerate."

As though he's discovered a cryptic vault in some draugr-infested stronghold, Astarion slides the cover of the crowded casket to one side with exuberance pressing his fingertips as hard as iron.

"I'm not going to bond with you over our companions' drinking ... choices."

Astarion's face brightens, eyes becoming feline in their way of roguery.

"No, you've just decided to hoard an entire cellar's worth in your bunk, you naughty thing. Now I know you've no brothers or sisters. No one of—significant consequence in your heart. Not one worthy of sharing your spoils with, hm? How crude."

She wants to ask whether he has any siblings himself, what his mother looks like, if she's just as beautifully composited as him, if he even remembers any of them at all, but she already knows what he'd fling back at her, despondent at best, tetchy-lipped at worst. If he can't even recall the color of his eyes before becoming a vampire, she has her misgivings about how far gone his memories are—cradled in the vanguard of her skull. Remember not to push too hard, she thinks.

With practiced fingers, Astarion slips one of the bottles from its casing before flipping it through his hands, examining it for dates, notes, and tannins.

"Care to partake?" he asks, shaking a squat one into view.

"The chalices are—"

"I know where they are. I'm quite familiar with your dwelling. We've had many a conversation in here, need I remind you."

He saunters towards the strongbox, unearthing a pair of simple, silver goblets sitting atop her chaos of hunting clothes and gear lumped together in a pile. He picks up the silver with delicate precision before pouring a generous amount of what he's chosen and handing it to her like a he's owed a purse for his troubles.

Before she can temper the instinct, she snatches the chalice up from its stem and takes a swallow as her stomach begins to roil with the saccharine tang of the claret red—going through her posthaste. Astarion brushes aside the tools on her table before springing up onto it, looking earnestly at how she receives the drink.

"It's nice, I suppose. I'm not trained in wine-tasting, don't really know what I should be looking for, but I can't complain. Has a spicy afterthought."

Irritation casts in his voice. "Taste. Aftertaste."

"Mhm."

"Where did you find these? I thought we nearly drank ourselves to an early grave that night." Turning the cork over in his hands, Astarion comes across another thought that has him all but glaring in his reference to the night with the tieflings. "At least I made an effort with that pigwash."

"Halsin had them sent over a while ago. After we cleansed the cove."

There's an unpredictably long break in Astarion's mind, one where the more it persists, the more Elyra wants to wedge what she just said back into her throat.

Shit.

Any allusion to Halsin, and she's making a case for how he means no harm, how he merely supplicates for her my thanks, how he asks for nothing beyond that in return, and how he's only flooding her tent with crumbly slabs of cheese and centuries' old wine because they're both druid-folk. Not for any other reason.

Astarion, the cynic, would disagree.

"Oh, did he now? He seems rather fond of you for one so keen on preserving the natural order of the world." It sounds like he's gloating whenever he talks about druids. As though he knows something she doesn't. Astarion glosses over her now flushing face, drowning, instead, on a conspicuously offensive thought.

"Shouldn't he be, I don't know, fucking a bear instead?"

She grunts into the chalice, spluttering a streak of wine across her nose. "What does that mean?"

"You see, I thought Wild Shapes assumed complete responsibility of whatever animal they bound themselves to. As a—trade-off, if you will. Nothing comes without cost, no?" he shrugs, picking up a half-whittled shaft, appraising what little he knows when it comes to making arrows. "They'd have to—have to engross themselves as the creature. Really get into it. Where are the limitations, then?"

"I'm positively certain Halsin doesn't need to romance a bear to keep his form. Druid school of practicality."

"Did I say anything about romancing? He'd have better luck romancing the stone, I'm sure," he says, surly, just as another idea perforates his mind. Oh, dear.

His eyes go slightly askance. "Do you think he'd ever—as one?"

"No. He wouldn't do that."

As though he's hardly convinced of her being so resolute on this for lack of intuition, Astarion smirks triumphantly, tongue pressed to one of his fangs before drawling.

"Spoilsport. You never let me get a word in about anyone who's endeared towards you. How am I to dissuade you from them when you refuse to hear an outside opinion?" It's a genuine inquiry if Astarion was one to care for her beyond the usual blood-letting purposes. He's never insisted otherwise. "Say what you want, I know how men function. I know who's befitting of you. Who's not."

This could be interesting.

Elyra deigns to agitate the vampire when she asks, in her most trilling, little-girl voice, "what about Gale?"

"Gale?" He wants it to roll off his tongue like a whip, she notices, only it's dreadfully tart and as clotted as molasses when the discovery of yet another unforeseen competitor draws nigh. Sorely, he hems out a mordant cough before tossing the shaft back onto the table.

As if he professes, stop talking, Astarion sees to occupying himself with swaddles of milk-white curtain scudding his face when he fixes his posture into a neat design.

"Yes, why not? He's right gorgeous, plenty of people seem to think so—"

"Plenty of refugees who've not seen a man in months and would take an orc to bed if one were present, maybe. You're comparing yourself to them."

"And he's kind enough. Has a sort of whimsical air about him. Talks in tethers, but makes everything sound lovely. A poet if I've ever heard one—he did say he dabbled," she says, quiet. "I can see how he could charm a goddess."

"You describe liars differently than I do," he says with a hand cradled against his chin, nose scrunched into a two-layered wrinkle before exhaling, "I blame your inexperience, sweetheart."

"As though you've never lied to me."

"In case you haven't noticed, darling, I'm a vampire strutting about under sunlight, walking through doorways, uninvited—hale and hearty, all that nonsense. I'm the most dangerous monster there is to be hunted in all of Faerûn, and you're questioning why I would need to make up a story? I thought you more cunning than that."

"I'm not talking about you hiding your condition for the sake of your safety, which you needn't even do anymore, but not having the will to speak your mind when it matters."

"When it matters," he echos back, sordid. She's reminded of all the wicked he's done through talking up whomever she's trying to talk down in the dozen conflicts they've stumbled across thus far. Between that and the falling into moving water bit, she can't keep justifying why she brings him along when scouting for supplies or haggling with the merchants. "Perhaps, it isn't you I'm concerned with. Have you ever ceased this interminable attitude about the world? That everything and everyone in it are amenable? Governable? Easily handled?" instead of lingering on the moment of uncertainty developing between them, he gives an easy answer. "Conflicting interests."

"I don't see why we all need to have interests."

"That is our nature, and you'd do well to get a grip on that before your time comes to an end. Trust me, it doesn't get any better afterwards."

She shakes her head, steadfast in her belief or steadfast in the instinct to deny him, she isn't sure.

"I won't force myself to believe that everyone's only out for themselves. You, yes. Not everyone."

"Then allow me to make this simple for you, Elyra," for the first time he's used her name in this discussion, Astarion makes it sound apologetic, resigned to letting it strain through him with a severity he doesn't do much to hide. "Wyll has an interest in you. Yet, woefully for him, he's discounted that he must contend with me. And I'm not too inclined to share the first person I've had the satisfaction in taking without a word to command me otherwise since my release," he says, all of it stern. "If I were not part of this picture, it's possible that he could get any woman he sets his mind upon given his status, but not this one. Not while I'm breathing, that is."

"Although, I'd hardly call you a woman grown, lyth |child|. You're older than him from what I've gathered, but you don't scratch a single score when it comes to my centuries on this plane as eladrin alone." Listlessly, he presses the heel of his boot onto the ground, toe pointed towards the swathed ceiling. "You did something earlier."

"What?"

"Rather, it's what you didn't do," he remedies, now pressing ever so hotly against her thighs when he scoots beside her, crumbling onto the dirt.

She fidgets. He pins her in place shortly after with a kindling nip to neck, all lips and tongue and shallow-ended depressions. He's an oracle in breaking skin, knowing just how much pressure he effectively needs to make a puncture so that he doesn't. He pulls away before bringing his knee to shoulder.

"You've never imposed restrictions. When we had that discussion about what I would or wouldn't be partaking in, you could have simply told me that people were off the cards."

A rare instance of vulnerability and he's lost his unbreakable guard just like that—eyes half-lidded as they stare leagues inside her. Making her feel seen through. Transparent.

"I ascribed it all to your benighted ignorance. Not quite grasping the severity of a vampire. How one feeds. You've never so much as heard of the githyanki before meeting Lae'zel—that must have come as considerable shock because she's a temperamental gith as it remains—so," he whispers, "it made sense as to why you couldn't recognize my peculiarities for what they were. How they could manifest into something far more conventional to loathe. Pitchforks as I've said."

"Is there somewhere you're landing with this—"

"Has the worm finally had its way with you, you precious idiot? Why wouldn't you just say, no? Like a normal person."

He laughs, unfailing in his approach of making sure she knows what she is. On a technical term. "A normal A'Tel'Quessir."

"You want normal?"

His chortling transforms into a half-rendered sigh, the cool touch of his gloved hand slipping between her fingers like ribbons of crumpled velvet. He captures the goblet from her grasp. "I want you to answer the question."

It's as loaded a question as Astarion tends to ask, but she finds the resolve to speak truth when she notices how rheumy his eyes appear, how utterly at her word's mercy.

"Trading one master for the next—something like that? I can't really visualize what you've been through, Astarion. Even when you see fit to tell me. That's where the tadpole has its uses, I suppose," she says, her tragic attempt at pleasantry. "All I know is that it's rather twisted for me to instruct you to only feed on animals when that's what you've always done. Without choice in the matter."

She can't take the way the stillness is polishing her off like a meal, so Elyra exchanges it for more of her fidgeting. Fingers fussing with the curled, rust-colored ends that come loose in her fingers. Astarion looks as though he wants to reach out and embed his own in the thick of her scalp—for a moment.

"Usually, I wouldn't go as far as to murder a man who's oblivious to the bounty standing right in front of him. I would have let the Gur go if you hadn't asked to kill him. He didn't seem like bad lot to be honest with you, but that was never my decision to make," she says. "It was yours, and it always will be. I don't have regrets about meeting you and following your direction—even if you've shoved us knee-high into utter shit."

If taken with the sentiment, Astarion's eyes don't betray him. Limpid pools of blood. "This may be the only time I'll honor you with some gratitude."

"The second," she says.

"Come again?" He doesn't even want to entertain the idea that he's thanked her before—because then he'd owe her something more than the intimacy his body has to offer. Astarion doesn't like racking up debts, that much is clear.

"Well, whatever the number is, it's the last," still holding onto her goblet, he slopes it to the side, what's leftover churning around the rim. "Don't build your altars around me. I'd be a rather disappointing patron."

"As you say," she nods, "something like Umberlee?"

The corner of his mouth presses into a dimple. "Something like that. I'm surprised you even know who that is," he says. "Has Gale spoken of how much coin Waterdevians throw away in the Fair Seas Festival alone?" Sensing an unspoken rivalry, Elyra lets the silence encourage him into airing out his grievances. "Foolish," he adds, making a pointed gesture through his fingers as they flex around the cup.

"Only the goddess of the sea herself? Astarion, I'm insulted by how small you think your tree-faring cousins to be."

"No, I'm just intelligent enough to know that your clan wouldn't be interested in learning about some Faerûnian divinity when they're most likely stretches away from any ocean they'd chance to see in their lifetime. Holed up in some ancient forest, of the mind that travel is pointless, that sailing is pointless."

When she doesn't seem wholly persuaded that she's been caught, he groans, thumb pressed between the groove of his brows.

"Tell me, what advantage does knowing of one of the most vain and insatiable goddesses entitle them if they were to even extend a branch into the sea? You're not granted any more success than if you didn't," he says. "It's a poor fib, dear. Just say you've been fostered by humans and leave it at that. I'm not asking for much in the manner of your guarded secrets. This is fairly run-of-the-mill information you're withholding, and I couldn't hypothesize on the why when you're so eager to drone on about all forms of other nonsense."

Outrage and restlessness and part of her shrouded embarrassment spills out of her all at once.

"Fine. I was born in Baldur's Gate. Weaned in the wilds, however. Went back to the city for an education before my father's clan returned for me. I've lived with them ever since, but I'm a bit more open-minded than most are led to believe about the wood elves. Is that all fair to you?"

"Not nearly," he snorts, eyes now smoldering and darting between the way she's bunched her fingers together into a white-knuckled fist and her awful, awful expression holding him hostage. He hasn't seen this since they'd wiped the Shadow Druids with their own entrails. "However, I sense it shall make do for now. Onto the subject of Umberlee, then."

Wanting to salvage the rest of this conversation, Elyra makes her best effort to come up with a question that will neither bore nor offend him. "She's not well-worshipped?"

"Worship is certainly a word," he says, "I'd say placating is a better one. You know, we have a temple dedicated to her in Baldur's Gate. The Water Queen's House." As Elyra furrows her brows into a wrinkle, Astarion clicks his tongue, agreeing with her disapproval. "A polite title. The irony's not lost on me, darling."

"Have you been there? I didn't realize you had aspirations in becoming a seafarer. Not many choose that line of work if they've better options," she says. "Umberlee may be part of the reason why they'd avoid fishing or trading altogether."

"Ah-hah, no. I wouldn't torture myself with fantasies of escape from my master's control. Even if I were due to the directory of these so-called options, lending myself to the Sea Bitch wouldn't exactly be my first instinct as free thrall. No, no, I was sent to court one of her priestesses."

Curiosity comes victorious. "Why?"

"I suppose Cazador found her appealing enough to entertain him for a while, but I never cared to ask what made him plough some and torment the others. They all ended up the same way when everything was done with," he plays it down as though Elyra isn't thoroughly horrified right now—Umberlee's or otherwise, the woman is a devout. Was a devout. "Didn't feel too rotten about the whole thing on this occasion, however. She was a widow of one of the more recent sailors lost at sea. Euphemism for dead."

A needle-like shine in her eyes rears against him, and Astarion acknowledges it with daft concern. "What?"

"You don't know that."

"Anyway," he says in a sing-song, hand reaching up to wrest a curl away from the corner of his eye. "We could dance around it for ages, but you're not any more inclined to hear about how I just didn't, frankly, my dear, giveadamn about all of Cazador's victims. I was one myself not too long ago," seeing it as thorough explanation, he cradles the chalice with wry contempt. "Besides, you become acquainted with the feeling of shame and remorse once it's bashed over your head enough. You just become—numb."

"You haven't tried the wine."

"I don't need to," he smiles, trading off the cup for one of her hands as his artful fingertips unfurl around the green veins. He lets go. "All this talk, and you're growing more shades of scarlet than usual, and I don't fare it has anything to do with the subjects we've careened through," now, he's leaning into her ear, tongue dancing on innuendo. "Matching your hair, matching it underneath your skirts, too."

"The wine was for us. That's why I'm squirreling it away, not because I'm especially inclined to become an inebriate. I just thought it'd be a bit of safe fun opening a few corks in the hope that one might match your standards. Eventually."

"Safe fun," he drawls. A look of smarting annoyance plasters across his face, and he gives a show of his teeth when he twitches his fingers expectantly, hand extended towards her. "What an oxymoron, dear. Give me the wretched bottle."

As per his command, she slides the fat-bottomed jug into his outstretched palm, and he doesn't so much as hesitate to tip the bottle backwards. Mouth wrapped around the narrow opening, she can see his apple bob underneath his pallid throat, engorged.

"What does it taste like?"

"Piss."

Immediately, Astarion spits out the half-mouth he's mistakenly begun to swallow on good faith, spraying it all over the stripped furs Elyra's been substituting for carpets. Tears settle in her eyes as she dissolves into unanticipated laughter, ferociously kicking her feet into the case of wine, plunging over to her side when the glass keens like jangling carillons against the crate—as though they're shattering. She leans onto Astarion for support, back still bouncing in hysterics.

"You'd better have your apology prepared in advance. And, no, you'll not be forgiven until I get something worthy of my forgiveness."

Culminating into a spire that's been constructed ever since he took his first blood from her, Elyra's inhibitions shatter. All at once. She reaches for his weather-beaten doublet. The pads serve as a bolster for her fingers, so she can be as forceful as she wants without feeling too guilt-ridden.

"Come here, 'starion ... "

She kisses him, hands framing his frozen skin when she curls those fingers around his temples. Astarion drinks in her smell, how old parchment flits off her skin, how salt and thyme still linger in her hair—then, a burned-out hearth barely catches his regard before she's flush up against him, tits doughy through the sheer undershirt. "If you're Halsin in your ridiculous scenario, can I be the bear?"

When she can't read surprise from disgust across his unstirring expression, she coils a lock of hair around a finger, skin aflush. She can blame the wine. "Hypotheticals. We adore them."

"As if I'd ever let you take off after that, you sly, little pup," he says, a buzz beginning to settle on his face, and she knows that's not from the wine.

"Do you want to get fucked? Is that it?" he asks. "How about if I just leave you to whomever can get their greedy hands on you first. Would you be satisfied with that? Or would something in you—throb for more? Would you always feel me with another?"

Another—what he concerns himself with—she doesn't have the sense to think about bedding another at this point. When that occurs, rather, if it ever will, Astarion shall be long wiped from her story once they've cured themselves of their parasites.

"Gods, you're drenched for me."

"Because I like your voice."

"You do," he says, blinking, slow. He wasn't quite expecting the makings of praise from her lips when she's three quarters through the bottle, just one moment away from gutting out her most sincere thoughts. Get away from me, cold-blood, she finds he's more accustomed to that.

If Shadowheart can be summed up as a problem drinker and Lae'zel as punchy, Elyra is—for all her objections—honest. She babbles on and on about anything from Lae'zel's strangely endearing stories about gith meritocracy to Gale's dumb, dainty earring that no one else had cared to notice after they've played a game of cards and she's, for the tenth time that evening, the only one to lose.

She's refused to play since, and thank the gods because they've fucked since.

"What else do you enjoy?" he presses, entirely too ready to hear every delicious word.

"How pale your cock looks against my skin," she heaves out a breath twisted under what feels like muscle. More high color comes to her skin, blossoms, even, transforming her into a particularly vibrant flower growing amidst the marshes that surround the greenwood. "I love the contrast."

Suddenly, the tadpole squirms against a wall of bone in either of their heads, connecting an image of Elyra and Astarion lost in the woods, jointed together as she mounts his spine-flat figure, welded into a knot that refuses to unfurl. Then, the image contorts into one where he plunges himself inside her as she steadies herself against a tree with splintering bark, his hand crested between thigh-fat and waist.

The indentations from the gnarled crust of the tree were on her palms for a day before Gale had finally asked to see them. He didn't say anything if he had his suspicions.

Astarion, meanwhile, couldn't keep his amusement about their clandestine, little rendezvous hidden, taking his chances with the end of an obsidian arrowhead when he'd pointed out how it looked like she'd repeatedly shoved herself against the bark, and just her hands—how bizarre.

She'd had to stand on her toes to match his height in the woods, which drove Astarion to madness as he pumped his stone-hard cock into her folds. Unrelenting. Even when their fluids started milking out of her, droplets smattering the pine-littered floor.

Through grated teeth, the recollection of Astarion growls, "gods, I can't get enough of you."

Elyra endeavors to will the memories away, blaming her diabolic tadpole for that, swiftly finding focus on the way Astarion is now looking at her like he wants to cleave her apart with his member and guzzle the juices greedily with soaking tongue. He'll find use for most of her anatomy, blood, spit, and all.

She flounders in his arms, worm-like. "Your face. You're so devilishly handsome, there's no conceivable way that you didn't fall out of the sky long before the ship. Then there's—" just as he's relishing every twist and turn in her eyes, they catch on him, waiting, and he's marooned around her emerald shores until they drift again. "No, I can't say it. You'd explode from arrogance, you vain creature."

"What a tease," he grounds out, patently delivered from remaining coy, and still growing further intrepid. "I'll have those words before the night is over, you know. You may as well tell me."

Her heart's beating through to her ruby-colored ears, but she returns the affirmation, anyway.

"The way you fucked me—I haven't felt like that in years. Used. Fucking used and in raptures I was. Cock-dumb and void of any thought. I don't want to think. I want you to make me into that again. Just a whore to use at your discretion."

He bounces her in his lap, nose and mouth brushing the hollow of her shoulders. The feeling of his hardening cock buried underneath his leathers makes her aware of just how badly he wants the same.

"Oh, darling, you're—" Astarion's masterful, slender fingers creep below her trousers, tone mirthful before her wetness swarms his digits like a rush of warm water. "Fuck," he pushes them out abruptly, turning them over to look at the coating its left, then pistoning them right back inside of her. "Put this in order if I'm wrong," he pumps in and out, in and out, sighing, "would it be too much of me to presume that you've wanted this for just as long as I have," his nostrils flare, "and that you want to join my bed again, and again, and again?"

With each syllable, he's driving his fingers deeper, wriggling—in whichever way that's possible. She can't make her objections to his touch coherent even if she had her mind to herself. Pliant in his hands as he skillfully works them against her pearl, flicking.

Elyra doesn't know how she doesn't just melt where she's lying. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."

"Really? I'm not sure I've heard you correctly, kit."

"Astarion," a grave warning edges her voice, "don't make me beg."

An idea for another time, she's certain. A sense of accord comes to take Astarion, and he weasels all the way onto the ground, trawling her alongside him. Here, deers and wolves come together through the furs Elyra's hunted herself, but Astarion swipes at them with roguish intent all the same—having settled on an idea long before they'd found themselves here. His fingers tug at his breeches, unfastening the metal of his belt buckle, letting it hang around his boney hips.

"Get rid of your clothes before I start shredding them."

Beginning to fist his cock at a torturously sluggish speed, Astarion lounges on the floor, a wash of stars lighting his soft-sharp features under the half-open cut of curtains overhead. The pale strokes of light make him look ethereal, silver-spun curls a contrast to her fierce colors, and his face, gods, he was religiously made. She's never seen a more beautiful man.

She tries to make a sufficient show of undressing when Astarion tugs at her boots.

"Show me your tits," he angles his head for a more unobstructed glimpse of her, drinking in how she's unfettering her cords, no longer constricted, no sooner naked before him from the top-half of her body. When she gestures towards shedding herself of the tunic entirely, Astarion loudly says, "leave them like that."

Spilling from the now flowing bodice, and with shell-pink buds indiscriminately swelling from the attention, Elyra feels downright obscene.

Through shaking, spilling lips, Astarion mumbles something incoherent.

"Astarion, we shouldn't—we really shouldn't."

Somewhere between a moan and a snarl, Astarion's voice strikes metal. "Why not?"

"Last time, you were—"

"Hells, this is different," he rasps, palm still clasped over his length, stroking himself to the way her cunt peaks out from behind as she continues to strip herself nude. "I don't trust that I'll stop even if you ask nicely tonight. So, don't try to convince me to do anything but take what I want. As you always do. When has it ever worked, Elyra?"

"Come here and let me impale you," he says.

Heartbeat climbing into her throat, Elyra wriggles towards him, swinging one leg over his pelvis. Astarion isn't fully reclined, wanting to savor every image and have it singed into the back of his brain. He's ready to receive her when his hands gather at her skull, forcing her into another kiss with corded spittle ghosting their mouths, one of his hands maundering on a path down her spine and settling at her waist.

Blearily, she cracks open her eyes, lashes fluttering so wild against Astarion's skin that he spits out another ear-rending laugh, saliva spraying onto her face. Instead of the ice-cold prick of his bite she's forced herself to grow accustomed to, only a flutter of warmth comes, palpable in its fondness for her sponge-touch skin, impossible to lash away.

"You're so soft, kit," he says, humming as he works another finger inside of her, mouth closing over the cushion of her neck, sucking, rolling his tongue back and forth.

Then, without a word of warning, she descends onto him, and he groans.

It's tender at first, what with the way Astarion slinks inside her, buckling, skewered from the bottom-up before she's forcefully made full and throbbing from it. The tenderness quickly devolves to discomfort when Astarion guides his leg underneath her for more anchored support, and with a grunt, he breathes, "gods, you're clenching my cock."

She most certainly is when her walls clamp down even tighter, their unconscious effort in extracting all that they can from Astarion's length as he spearheads into her with another thrust. "Just as tight as before, my gorgeous, little treat. Taking me—taking all of it so insatiably, so, so eager. Why, it's almost as if you—you—ugh."

Perhaps it's the way he's so uncharacteristically abandoning himself to her that makes her as feverish as when she's ill, but Elyra feels the hotness circulating inside her stomach bubble up into her throat with a sharp whine. Everything alludes to him dominating her.

It always begins like this—her dragged on top before he wants to fill her to the brim.

He places a hand on her side, tracing a web of colorless scars and Autumn-hued freckles before attempting to guide her onto her hands and knees.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. Not unless you have the mind to ask," he chuckles.

With a press forward and one more rearrangement that has her knocked against the ground, threads of grass between the furs now tickling her face, Astarion begins to fuck into her with short, whistle-ended strokes. He's feral. Lacking a check on his impulse to do anything but move. And rut, and fuck her until she can't believe she'd ever wanted anyone else.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes," she feels like she's choking on her own innards when he brings one hand across the top of her head, shoving her cheek flatly against the dirt, his unhitched belt jostling averse to the flush of her ass with a repeated ting-a-ling. It's the only sound that's making cover for the wet spanks reverberating through the tent, and, Hells know, the campsite. "Astarion—"

"Kit," he says, and her eyes are just now starting to cloud over in pure, fucking delight. Astarion, conversely, is trying to hold himself together in the continuous throes of pleasure he's taking from each push inside of her. "Kit, my darling, you'll have to be quiet if you don't want the others to turn the corner," he says, peppering in a laugh, "they'll assume you're in need of assistance as opposed to receiving a severely needed fucking," he propels himself forward, hard, stuffing every inch of himself inside of her with another dragged-out motion, withdrawing it once again. She grouses at the cruel emptiness his cock leaves.

"Look how naturally you come undone beneath me. As though you know this is what you've needed from a man all along—what you were made to do, bred for," sliding his length across her divine, puckering slit, he stifles a breath—but not before popping himself back inside the hole, now weeping around him.

It squelches when he begins to ride her out, hand hastily finding its way underneath her hips, jerking up in a flurry, the other hand still barged against her skull.

He blithely marks every pump with a well-earned pause, crooning against her muffled whimpers as they're swallowed up by the ground. "This is just a necessary—demanded—release of my passions flooding inside you, dearest," he says, bottoming her out with a slap, hips locked onto hips.

"I'm only doing what you've asked."

She senses he wants nothing more than to break her, bones snapped, insides warped with his imprint. "Godly. This is godly. Who could have sworn that half-elves were so flawlessly clinched? Like a gods damned keyhole, fuck," a hand strikes, harsh, against the flush of her now crimsoning ass as retribution for his lost composure.

Knowing him, he'll accuse her of being fey before accepting that he simply likes her. Takes fulfillment from their conversations—his bread and butter.

"Who needs blessings when I have my own Khalreshaar to worship me?" he asks, a hiss wreathing its way from the bottom of his gut.

He's purring when he revels in the delirium of it all. "Such a sweet stretch."

He's merciless with her cunt—not much in the way of size, yes, but fucking her like he's a brute who's had his first woman in ages. He enjoys bleeding her in more ways than one. He had the nerve to jest in the woods—asked her if she was a virgin when he'd torn through her like a red currant pie.

"Astarion, Astarion, yes—yes, fuck!" she grits through what feels like teeth clamped together in a vise, matching his intensity, confidence finally bursting forward. At this, Astarion finds a quicker, harsher rhythm in his efforts to pound her brainless. Pound the parasite out of her, too. Make her incapable of registering anything but the absolute pussy-bruising he's giving her.

It wouldn't come as a shock if she stumbles over her bedroll on the morrow, unable to even stand, and if the others might match that to Astarion's blustering attitude.

Oh, Hells.

"As—Astar—" she swats at the arm crushed against her.

What if they know?

Astarion's panting so hard that he can barely register a sound in the first instance. "What is it?" he asks, breath-hungry, but receptive to the panic approaching her tone. So, as to not cause any more discomfort in the case that he is, he slows his pace into uniformly registering thrusts. A dull ache charges her stomach.

She half-turns to face him, sousing eyes like jewels. "Th—This is a secret, right?"

Amusement or something far darker flickers in his gaze. Perhaps, as he spades her cunt, he's annoyed that she's still going through considerable lengths to conceal their more raw connection. If Elyra does host attraction for anyone else, it's nothing compared to this. Unparalleled to the whimpering hums she makes when Astarion eats her like a spread of assorted, tongue-flagging delicacies bequeath only to him, he knows how he's working magic of his own.

For a brief interlude, she sees into his mind.

Whether he's conscious of that fact or not remains to be discovered.

She doesn't need the wizard.

He draws a furtive glance at the bottles of wine, a half-dozen strewn alongside her bedding.

She doesn't need the druid.

Then, as though they're still unequivocally connected through their tadpoles, an image of a dead eye pairs with one nut-brown, taunting.

And as sure as the dark encroaching this bloody camp, she doesn't need a bastard who's wrung himself to her hair. Only because it looks like his devil of a bride.

"Yes, you're my filthy, fucking secret, darling," he jeers, "but I don't often concern myself with the opinions of sheep, and neither should you. Let them hear you scream for all I care. Call out to your valiant monster hunter to save you from the vampire," he laughs, "even if I am just a spawn."

Astarion returns to making her wonderfully full, so she would, evermore, have to compete with the throbbing he's instilled inside her whenever he's absent. Although, something about the way he's snapping his hips against her ass makes her believe that such occasions will be few and far between infrequent.

"No, you're mine. All of you, mine. Mine," he squeezes her cheeks together before growling, all too suddenly letting go—her head bobbing back into place like a floating lump of wood in-river.

"'I—I can't take any more," all bright, flooding eyes, she mewls against his fingers, which are now taking their rightful place inside her mouth. Abstaining from the severity of completely digging his nails into her skin, Astarion thinks himself beyond generous when considering the alternative that is painting her with blood.

"Don't you dare," he says, another guffaw ringing aloud. "I want to see your pretty face when I come."

True to his word, Astarion flips her over once more, wringing out circles against her precious clit as he fucks her until she loses all sense of time.

He comes in ribbons on her stomach, her breasts, her hands as they shoot up to shield them, splattering into a messy puddle across her midriff. He groans as it shoots angrily onto her face when he angles it upwards, voice stretched with the ting of the Seven Heavens and wrapped in the transports of delight he's so profoundly missed from Elyra's sheathlike cunt. Astarion presses another series of crescents onto her ass as he holds her—fearing that he'll topple over otherwise.

With no objections to it, slumping forward, Elyra buries her cheek into the downy coat of furs beneath her, one side smeared with a light film of dirt. Astarion curves against her.

"I'll wake you for supper, pet," he chuckles, threading frigid fingers across her skull, "you'll need your rest for what I've in store for you."