AN: Profuse and profound thanks to the munificent thievinghippo on tumblr, who again was kind enough to beta this for me. My advance notice is getting shorter and significantly less coherent, and yet she remains generous to a fault with her time for me. Thank you so much, darling!
I hope you enjoy this little journey into my pathological need for characters to be happy. I liked the poignancy of how my game ended, but that doesn't mean I'll let it stay that way. Special thanks to Jade, who will never read this, for assistance with the title; and to Silksieve, who might, for the endless cheerleading.
Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
—Death, John Donne
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
—The Sun Rising, John Donne
—
"Astarion," Tav said, and he nearly broke her nose jolting up from a sound trance.
"You're back," he said stupidly, because she was, and then all the anger of the last week came roaring up so suddenly his vision went white. His hands clenched around the blankets; his chest blazed hot as Karlach had ever managed in her worst rages. "Excellent. Now I can tell you to your face that I never want to see you again. I'm leaving you now forever—goodbye."
"You can't leave, it's ten in the morning."
"Then I will sit here in furious silence until dusk, and then I'll leave." He threw back the covers and stalked from the bed without looking at her. She let him pass in the curtain-drawn dimness of this inn's upper-story room, let him snatch up his shirt from the dresser and yank it over his head. He gripped the sides of the bureau a moment, trying to scrape together some nominal poise; when that utterly failed he whirled to glare at her. "Honestly—how dare you come back? A few hours, you said. A few hours—and in you walk in a week later, blithe as a lark, no knock and no note and it's ten in the morning, Astarion." So much for sangfroid. He took two long steps, gripped her shoulders and shook her. "Where have you been?"
She blinked up at him like a particularly dim owl. "A week?"
"Yes, dear," he hissed through his teeth. "A week."
"I didn't realize. Ah, shit." She ran both hands over her face. Her hands were bloody. So was the rest of her, he realized, her armor streaked with gore and ash, the ends of her hair singed and stinking, a new nick in the hilt of her rapier. "I didn't…I haven't slept much. I lost track of time. I didn't—wait—" She seemed to remember something, scrabbling suddenly for a little pouch at her waist. "Wait—I practiced this—"
"You practiced what? Why are you so filthy?"
"Astarion," she said firmly, her hand at last closing around something within the pouch. "I brought you a—no, wait. I love you. That's first. Astarion, I love you."
The fury had begun to fade, replaced by serious concern. "Did you find another tadpole somewhere? Has some new parasite begun to devour your brain? Because I'm not sure there's another Netherbrain handy to wither this one into dust, darling."
"No! Listen to me!" She was angry now, even through the bone-shattering exhaustion. "Astarion, I love you. I didn't realize I was gone so long—I didn't mean to be—but a chance came up I couldn't let go, and there wasn't going to be another. It was now or never. Or—then or never, I guess. I had to bring this back for you."
She unfolded her fingers between them. On her bandaged palm lay a slender, beautiful ring. The band was etched silver; at the head had been set a small black stone, polished to a mirror shine and hewn with many facets.
A lovely ring. Expensive-looking. He was panicking badly. "I, uh—now, really, darling, if you wanted—that is, we should really discuss—"
"It's a Ring of Shrouding," she said, thankfully barreling over his clumsy protestations, and she took his hand and thrust the ring into his slack grip. "Armaros made it. It's meant to protect you from the sun."
All her words came piecemeal; it was like trying to catch chaff taken up by the wind. "Who in the hells is Armaros?" he asked, bewildered, and then the second half of what she'd said sank in. "I'm sorry, it's what?"
"It's for the sun, Astarion," she said, visibly anxious now, and she closed his fingers over the band. "Please—please try it. I've spent so long trying to get it back to you, and I need to know if—if it was worth—" She shut her eyes, took a long unsteady breath, and looked up at him. Her gaze was pleading, which he had seen perhaps twice in all their history and which, he discovered, was very upsetting when turned on him. "Please. I won't stop you from leaving if you still want to go, I swear. But let me see if this will keep you safe first."
There was so much he ought to ask. So much for which he ought to demand an explanation—where had she ever heard of such a thing, where had it come from—where had she been, and who was Armaros, damn it? But he knew her too well after all this time, knew—mostly—when she was trying to deceive him, and there was nothing in her voice now but desperation. He could not stop the sliver of that same desperation sparking inside him, a dream he'd tried ruthlessly to crush resurging without pity. There would never be a rescue. There would never be relief. Stop hoping.
He slid the ring over his left forefinger.
At first he felt nothing. Tav's eyes were fixed to him, her graceful hands clenched together at her waist. The silence lasted long enough he glanced up to meet her look, some deprecating joke about inevitability already on his lips; then all at once a gentle grey mist began to seep from the ring's black stone with a faint, almost plaintive sigh. The mist rose around him in a thin cloud, lightly prickling with Weave, cool as the spray off a waterfall. He lifted his arms, watched the mist settle over his shirt and his hands and the creases of his fingers; he touched his face and felt a momentary moisture there before it seeped into his skin and vanished.
He had never known Tav to be a particularly patient woman, and now, clearly stretched as she was to the point of breaking, her patience ran even shorter. "Well?" she burst out, and snatched up his hand in both of hers to peer at it. "Did it work?"
"I—don't know. I can't tell."
"Do you feel any different? It doesn't—it's not acidic or anything, is it? Does it hurt?"
"No," he said slowly, rubbing his fingertips together as she turned his hand over. "It doesn't hurt. It doesn't feel any different at all."
Tav began to swear, making soft and vicious rounds of most of the gods of betrayal, but Astarion could hardly hear her through the tumult of his thoughts. There was only one worthwhile test anyway, and before he could talk himself out of it, he strode to the window and threw open the heavy damask curtains in a single motion. He shut his eyes, prepared for pain.
He waited. The clear morning sun beat hot and red on his closed eyelids, fell with implacable warmth on his forearms.
Any moment now he would begin to burn. Any moment at all. That hateful, sizzling heat as his skin cracked and peeled away in ashy flakes—the streaky, white-hot agony and the smell of charred flesh demanding he seek safety in shadow—a matter of seconds, if even that long. He counted the breaths, let them stretch far between.
He opened his eyes.
The room was very quiet. He could hear some vendor in the street outside hawking his pies; he could hear faint conversation from the inn's common room below them. Tav was still as death at his back, not even her breathing audible. He looked down at his hands.
Nothing. No fire. Just pale skin, filed fingernails, the familiar creases of his palms. Just a little over-warm in the sunlight where it struck him directly, but there was no pain. The silver ring with its black stone shone merrily. He did not burn.
He lifted his head. The sky was so blue. Only a month or so since the final battle above the city; only a month since he'd been forced once more to skulk about, rat-like, under cover of night. He'd already forgotten how the sun fell like a hammer on the metal curve of the watchtower's bell, how it hooked and gleamed on the gilt trim along the roofline of a temple. It shimmered on a pool of standing water from last night's rain, caught like diamonds in the spray as a wagon's wheel splashed through it. How easy it had been to forget it all. How swiftly the despair had crushed out even the memory of daylight.
It was almost too overwhelming to bear. A new world had abruptly opened before him, spread out like a feast for a man who had starved so long he could not remember the absence of hunger. No ritual with its seven and seven thousand souls. No parasite lounging in the safety of his skull, leaching power to him in little drips as it saw fit. No one in his head but himself, no one in his heart but those he chose to put there, and all of it bound up in a little ring with a black stone from—from—
"Where in the world did you—" Astarion began, more shakily than he preferred, but when he turned around, he discovered Tavish had, silently and perfectly, vanished.
The room stood empty, just the rumpled bedcovers and the bureau and an oak writing desk set opposite the unlit hearth. For one wild, ludicrous moment, he wondered if the ring had somehow consumed her in its workings; then he realized her battered satchel still rested where she'd dropped it at the foot of the bed, and as the panic ebbed he saw the door to the private adjacent bathing room, previously standing open, was now shut tight.
He crossed the room unsteadily, lifted a hand which still trembled and rapped twice on the door. "Darling?"
No answer. No shift of movement inside, either, though that meant little; she moved silently at the best of times, and when she wished to remain unheard she became a wraith. This close, though, he could sense her blood. That at least had not waned with the ring's impossible power. He flattened one hand to the door and leaned his forehead against the cool wood. "My dear, I know you're in there."
Still nothing. No matter. He pulled a lockpick from his sleeve, trying to suppress the hysterical laughter that threatened to bubble out of him, and began to pick the door. There was a gasp inside—she did so much of their lockwork she forgot, occasionally, he was just as skilled—and then something rattled in the lock and broke with a sharp, metallic ping, sending his pick recoiling backwards. He did laugh, then. "Come now, my love. Don't be petty."
"Oh, shit and shit and hells," he heard her say, voice damp. There was a little silence; then came a sudden series of clicks at the door's handle, and the entire knob mechanism detached itself from the jamb. Astarion pushed open the door, stepped into the curtain-drawn dimness, and went very still.
She was crying.
He had seen many things he'd previously considered impossible in the last few months. Even the last quarter-hour had been enough to rock the foundations of all he knew to be true. But this—Tav sitting on the warped wooden floor by the door with her knees drawn up to her chest, refusing to look at him, one hand over her mouth to muffle the sound of her tears—seemed the most impossible of all.
"What in the world are you doing?" he asked, astonished.
"Making a mess," she said shortly, but the effect was undercut by the sob that heaved out of her mid-word. "Go away."
"Why should I? The only interesting thing happening in the city right now is right here."
She didn't answer, only buried her face in her knees and linked both hands behind her neck. Her shoulders shook with the effort of trying to keep down the sound.
Astarion discovered with both surprise and disquiet that he did not know what to do. He had been confronted with weeping women before, of course—some of his partners had been more emotional afterwards than others, and besides, not all Cazador's victims went calmly to their doom—but this was the first time in his unlife he could remember that he both wished to comfort someone and desperately cared whether that comfort helped.
That said, such realizations provided little in the way of actual concrete ideas, and after a moment of useless indecision he settled for opening the brass tap above the long, narrow tub. The pipes of this inn rattled and clanked, but they carried hot water as well as any. He made his best guess as to the temperature, then let it run, and in short order a thick steam began to rise from the bath.
The silence continued around the steady trickle of water, around the little gasps she could not quite control. He perched on the broad rolled edge of the tub, doing his level best to ignore how each sound made his chest ache, and looked at his hands in his lap. The ring still gleamed on his forefinger, polished and perfect; a thin layer of condensation had begun to collect over the surface of the black stone with the rising steam, and he wiped it away carefully with his thumb. The material was unfamiliar to him. Not obsidian, he thought; not marble, not slate. Onyx, perhaps, though the luster seemed too strong; or perhaps it was simply some dark variation of another, more common gem, like a sapphire or diamond.
The silver was fine, too, though he did not recognize the etchings on the band. In one light they looked merely decorative; if he angled it another way he thought he caught the shape of letters, though he could not make them out. Regardless, they shone with even the barest touch of the sun, and the enchantment was strong enough he could feel it in his teeth if he paid attention. He supposed it had to be, to embody all the power of Cazador's ritual with none of the needed sacrifice. At least, he hoped.
Her crying had slowed, due as much he thought to her exhaustion as to any withered desire to cry. The bath was nearly full; he cut the water off and stood, then went to Tav and knelt beside her where the wood planks had gone crooked and curved from too many years of damp feet. "Come now, stop that," he said, gentle as he knew how to be, and after only a little hesitation he laid a hand on her shoulder.
He knew both in the general and specific what his touch could do to a person. He knew how to make someone beg not only from pain but from pleasure, and occasionally both. He could play a lover's body like a lute, familiar with every size and sex and race one could imagine; he could tease sounds from even the most stoic, noises they never in their lives dreamed they could make. Those things were easy to him, familiar, mindless from decades of repetition.
This—kindness—was much more difficult. Tav flinched at the touch and he nearly withdrew in dismay, but he remembered all too well when an embrace which surprised him had not been unwelcome, and he leaned nearer instead. "Really, darling, you'll spoil your looks and my breakfast if you keep carrying on like this. Come on, stand up."
She scoffed, though she let him help her to her feet, and she did not object when he began undoing the clasps and buckles of her armor. "Your breakfast," she echoed, a little hoarse, and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. "Ilmater's cord, a whole week. I shudder to think."
"I'll have you know I'm a man of my word," he said primly, though he was encouraged that she made a vulgar gesture in answer. "The chickens have been culled, I admit, and innkeeper's goat may be looking ghastly for the next few days, but you'll be pleased to know I've kept my teeth to myself in your absence. Mostly."
"I didn't know it had been so long," she said again, a little distant, and then she looked up at him in the dimness. "Astarion, I don't mean to be such a sop. I just—" She swallowed hard, dropped her gaze to where she was pulling off her bloodstained gloves. "I hoped so badly it would work that I had to convince myself it wouldn't, because otherwise the hope would have killed me. But then it did—and the sheer gladness—you—if you could have seen your face…"
"A manifest impossibility, my dear, as you well know."
Her mouth thinned, the lines at the corners gone deep. "You were so happy. You were so relieved, and the last thing I wanted in that moment of—of joy, I suppose, was to stomp all over it with my tiresome emotions. Which, I'd like to point out," she added, a little stronger, "I could have perfectly controlled if I'd slept more than twenty minutes at a snatch in the last however-many days."
"Naturally. It never occurred to you, of course, that I would have liked to share such a world-shaking moment with the person I love rather than alone, regardless of her weepy state."
She stared at him like the dog at camp always did when he made a ball reappear out of thin air. "I—really?"
"Idiot," he said with some exasperation, but a slightly stupid smile was playing over her face now, and that was infinitely preferable to the tears. He returned to the business of her armor before either of them could do anything foolish. "Damn this buckle, it's crushed to bits. What were you fighting, giants?"
"Mephits," she sighed, and he gave up on the clasp to help her slither wholesale from the armored jerkin instead. She winced as she always did when the headpiece augmenting her intelligence came free, but let it go without complaint. "A few devils. Another orthon—not Yurgir. Please don't make me tell it all now. I'm so tired."
"Avernus. All this time."
"Yes."
Astarion could not hide his grimace. She saw it, close as they were, and she turned into his hand as he cupped her filthy, ash-streaked face. "Tell me your soul is still yours," he said, voice low.
"Yes."
"And all the years of your life, and all your memories and your thoughts, and all those other little intangibles they're so fond of asking for."
She gave him a crooked smile, then leaned forward until her forehead rested on his chest. His arms came around her in undisguised relief; she sighed at the touch and he let them tighten, and she sighed again. Her shoulders seemed so much narrower in the stained linen undershirt; he forgot, sometimes, how delicate she became without her armor.
"I'm free and clear," she breathed, and her hands came up to fist in his shirt. "No cost of any weight, intangible or otherwise. A shame, really. I wouldn't have minded shedding a few of these memories."
"If you're lying to me, I'll be extremely cross when I find out."
Now she leaned back to look him in the eyes. "I swear it, Astarion. No debts. No unfinished deals." She smiled again, and the fatigue in it pained him. "Just a lot of sweat and blood."
"Fine," he said, not fine at all, but there would be other times for this argument. "Now, shirt off. Hop to it."
"Let go, then."
"I will not," he said, and she laughed. He was forced to release her, however, when she could not quite get one arm above her head—a dislocated shoulder, she told him, in joint once more but still very sore—and her bare skin was battered enough beneath the undershirt and trousers he couldn't quite bring himself to take hold of her again. Deep bruises, every shade of black and purple and sickly green, blossomed flower-like over her waist, thighs, and arms. Her hands had been hastily bandaged over uncountable cuts and scrapes; both knees were swollen and angry. She turned away to fetch a towel from the rack behind the tub, and Astarion could not stop the sharp gasp.
"What is—were you whipped?"
"Was I what?" she asked, craning her head back over her bare shoulder. "Oh. Yes."
"Darling," he said, sick with shock.
"Oh, no," she said, seeing his horror, and she came back to him with hands outstretched. "It wasn't like that. It wasn't some sadistic sex thing, it was only incidental. We fought a devil and he happened to use a whip as his weapon. That's all."
"That does not make it better," he said through clenched teeth, though he kept his touch light as he brushed a stray singed hair from her face. "Fine. I'll keep my questions until you've slept. But rest assured, my love, the interrogation will be merciless."
She'd leaned into his touch again, her eyes fluttering shut, and he had the distinct impression she wasn't listening to a word. "Yes, yes, that's all well and good," she said, her hand coming up to cover his, "but—can I kiss you?"
"Certainly not," he said, affronted, but she looked so abruptly crestfallen he scrambled to backtrack. "Oh, fine—a little one only. Come here."
She tasted of soot and iron; she smelled of blood. The latter could only be appealing; the former, he found, did not matter at all in light of what came with it. For seven days he had cycled endlessly through every possibility of her absence. She had died. The portal to visit Karlach had collapsed in the moment of entry and she was trapped between planes. She had decided to leave him after all, to fade quietly out of his life with as little warning as she'd entered it. She had died, surely, because that was the sort of fate the gods would choose to give him, and he would have to come to grips with a loss he could hardly begin to fathom.
But here she stood in his arms once more, an entire world cupped in her bleeding palms, proffered to him as freely and easily as an apple. Alive. Alive and well and here, still in love with him, still thinking of his safety while deep in the pits of Avernus. Even with her mouth tasting of ash, even as angry as he still was, the relief was staggering.
Tav drew back, rested her forehead against his chin. "I didn't want to be gone so long," she murmured. "I know you're still upset."
"Livid," he said honestly, "but that's for later, my dear. For now, let's focus on ridding you of this truly disgusting layer of filth. This inn is pungent enough without the stink of the Hells adding to it."
"I missed you, too," she said, and after a short lather to rinse off the worst of the gore, she stepped carefully into the water and sat, wincing only briefly at the sting to her scrapes and burns. The tub had been built narrow but deep, and as she sank against the rolled-copper sides the steaming bathwater rose nearly to her chin. She leaned her head back and shut her eyes. "Thank the gods."
"Thank me," Astarion countered, and then with as much offhanded nonchalance as he could manage, he said, "Shall I open the curtains? Let in a little light?"
She looked at him then, her gaze clear and appraising, more steady than it had any right to be given her raw exhaustion. "Yes," she said after a moment, voice steady too, and then she smiled.
He could not face that affection directly, and he went to the window without meeting her eyes. He'd drawn all the curtains when she left and had not bothered with them again—what would have been the point?—and even now the habits of the last month, and the two hundred years which had come before, weighed heavily enough on him that he hesitated. Then—enough of fear—he gripped the damask and pulled it aside with a hiss of brass rings.
The morning sun fell over him through the window like mead spilling from an upturned tankard. He flinched despite himself, but again, there was no blinding heat, no crackling skin. Just that same, slightly-too-warm feeling on his bare arms, his face. Still impossible to believe. Any moment now he would wake and find his room still dark, his bed still empty. He was sure of it.
"You're doubting," Tav said behind him, and he heard the lapping of water as she reached for something on the nearby tray of soaps and scents.
"It's all very unlikely," he countered, but he came back to sit on the side of the tub anyway as she scrubbed something flowery and very sudsy into her hair. The sun had cast both her freckled skin and the copper tub in a glowing golden light, and it took him a moment to force his voice back into his control. "That smells surprisingly nice."
"It's the nicest one they have."
"Little guttersnipe," he said, leaning over her to rifle through the collection of bottles and vials himself. "If it's scent you're after, you'll want—let's see. This—this, too—yes, here." A handful of salts, a scattering of jasmine-blossom and rose petals, a healthy dollop of oil of lavender. It was too late for the soaps that foamed with running water, but this would do. Certainly better than simple bathwater and a brick of lye.
"How kind you are," she said when he was through, and he sneered, though there was no strength to it. He was fussing, and she was allowing him to fuss; to come any nearer the truth would frighten them both, like deer gone skittish at a snapped branch. It was the same reason she would not ask if he would stay, and the same reason he would not tell her he could not bear to go. "How difficult it must be to bear my filthy, common ways."
"If you think some bath oils and scent are the peak of luxury, darling, there's a whole world I need to show you."
"Mm," she said, and she sank back into the water to rinse her hair. The room had begun to smell strongly of lavender and jasmine, though the steam had faded. A shaft of late-morning sunlight fell over the side of the copper tub where he sat; he moved his hand into it, then out of it again, marveling at the simplicity of the gesture. Here—mundane reality. Two inches to the left—a miracle beyond understanding. The little black stone glinted cheerfully in the sun.
He swallowed back the inconvenient joy that was threatening to throttle him. "You'll need to trim your hair," he said instead, and ran his fingers through his own. He hadn't even combed it yet this morning, distracted as he'd been by all—this. "The burnt ends…well, 'fetchingly crisped' is not a good look for you, I'm afraid."
"Will you do it?"
"If you insist," he said with enormous longsuffering, and she laughed as he meant her to. "Hearts, backs, your lovely locks—they all come out the same under a properly sharpened blade. How delightfully trusting you are."
"You've had a knife at my throat more than once, and you've failed yet to kill me," she said with asperity, running a damp cloth over her arms.
"With the knife, yes. With the teeth…"
"Fine, I'll grant you the teeth. And yet I still let you try again later."
"A mark more of your foolishness than any particular guile on my part, my dear," he said, smiling himself, and then she set the cloth aside, reached up, and cupped his cheek. "Hm?"
"I missed you," she said abruptly, and her thumb feathered over his cheekbone. "I'm glad you're all right."
He covered her hand with his own, turned his head enough to press a kiss to her palm. "And you," he murmured into her skin, and he felt her shudder. "Even if you were blindingly stupid about it all."
"You must be hungry."
The softness of the moment shattered like glass. "You must be joking," he snapped. "My dear, at the moment you're less a woman than a butcher's showcase window. I'm hardly desperate enough to pinch pennies from the cups of beggars."
She sat up with a slosh of water, slid her fingers into the hair at his temple, turning his face until he had no choice but to look at her. "I'm fine," she said softly, "and I'm offering. I've a dozen potions in the bag I can take after, if I need it. I missed you, Astarion," she said again, and this time there was a little thread of fire in the words that made his mouth go dry.
"You have ruined me," he said raggedly, the sincerity painful, and he kissed her palm again. Then the heel of her hand, and then the inside of her wrist where the blood ran hot and strong, and her fingers curled against his cheek. She lay back in the water once more, watching him. He held her wrist lightly in one hand, let the other trail down her forearm to her elbow. The room was quiet, the air heavy and still and sweet, and in that silence, her skin smelling of lavender and jasmine-blossom, he bit her.
Her blood burst on his tongue like biting into a pomegranate. He did not try to stop the sound that came out of him, something between a moan and a gasp; she gave a little sigh of her own and let her head loll back against the edge of the copper tub. Her wet hair tumbled down over her shoulders. Her eyes were very bright as she said, "Don't kill me."
"No," he panted against her wrist, half-mad already at only this little taste, and meant it as much for himself as for her. The heady euphoria of her veins had only been heightened after seven days of goats and chickens; already powerful, it was now profoundly dangerous, and more than once he had to tear his mouth away to catch his breath. Her blood was rich and hot—invigorating, he thought vaguely, had been a pathetic undersell—and as he drank he felt her flex and clench her fingers to keep the blood flowing. A new, unbearable gratitude swept through him, painful almost to the point of agony.
All too soon the world faded into the warm, smeared streaks of gold that always came with a sated thirst. Her pulse was still strong against his tongue, but it would not remain so if he did not stop himself. He swallowed hard, licked clean the two neat puncture wounds in her wrist—Cazador had always mocked him for being fastidious when he drank, sharp contrast to the grotesque slobbering of Leon or Aurelia—then forced himself to withdraw. He ran his tongue over his teeth for any last remnants, found a drop at the corner of his mouth; then he kissed her forearm again, just below his new injury, just above a long bruised scrape that reached nearly to her elbow.
He was breathing hard, his mouth still tingling. Every inch of his skin vibrated with the ecstatic flush of having fed. Her eyes were lidded heavily when he looked over at her, her exhaustion and the natural soporific of his bite catching up to her at last, but she was still enough herself to give him a lazy, satisfied smile. "The noises you make," she murmured, but her body could not match the promise held in her eyes, and she only trailed her fingers down his cheek and over his shoulder. "Help me get up. I'm a little dizzy."
He did so without complaint, still more than dazed himself, helped her towel dry and stumble into the loose linen nightclothes she preferred when they travelled, the ones she'd left behind for that oh-so-brief visit to Karlach in Avernus a week ago. He made her take a potion while he watched, checked for himself that the marks of his teeth had faded to pinpricks and the florid bruises had all receded by at least an inch, and then with a groan she tumbled into the unmade bed and clutched his pillow to her face.
"I'm so tired," she mumbled, as if it were not patently obvious. "You're on your own tonight. And probably most of tomorrow. Please don't do anything monumentally stupid without me to protect you."
"You abominable little hypocrite," he said venomously, but she only hummed as his fingers ran through her damp hair. "You have no idea what I'll do with all this newfound power. By the time you wake up I'll have a seat on every council in the city. I'll have become Archduke overnight. All who fail to present their lovely throats to me by dawn will be killed."
"I'll depose you by dusk," she said, but the effect was lessened by a terrific, jaw-cracking yawn. "I love you. Go paint the town red."
"I adore you, my darling. If I come back and you've gone to the Hells again without me, I'll come kill you myself." He bent down and kissed her.
"Be safe," she said, smiling against his lips, and then she shut her eyes and slept at last.
—
For several minutes Astarion stood by the bedside and watched her sleep. Even here she made no accidental noise, not even a huff of breath as she turned her head and sank deeper into his pillow. She'd drawn the covers tight to her throat, though the room was not cold; an artifact, perhaps, of a week spent in the unrelenting fires of Avernus.
Every moment seemed to come stretched and strange, not quite connected to the one before. His thoughts danced like the lights Gale sometimes cast deep beneath the earth, flitting here and there without reason. She had come back to him. He was furious she had been gone so long. He loved her desperately, with a frightening eagerness to give her all she could ever ask of him and even more besides; he longed to take everything she offered and consume her whole. She had in one stroke returned to him all the living colors of a world he'd thought utterly beyond his reach. He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled.
Avernus. A ring from someone named Armaros in Avernus—he didn't recognize the name. A bauble with as much power as Cazador's ritual, seemingly hand-crafted to give him all his greatest desires with none of the bitter cost. Whatever price had been set, Tav had paid it for him without his even knowing. That stung, more than expected; it turned out he did not particularly prefer to be shielded from all danger like a child. But—one chance only, she'd told him, and he believed her. One chance and then never again. She had not kept it from him by choice.
Restless, Astarion stood and dressed. He needed to get out of this room. He needed to stand in the sun, feel it strike him without burning. He checked once more that Tav slept soundly, that her heart still beat strong and steady; when he was satisfied he locked the door behind him and went downstairs, where he stopped a parlor maid with a series of explicit instructions regarding meals, privacy, and the building's general security, then took the main door past the staring innkeeper and went out into the street.
Just past noon. The sun blazed directly above him, not a cloud in the sky to be seen. The buildings' shadows had drawn close to their foundations; there was nowhere for him to hide. Dozens of passersby would know him for what he was in an instant, should the magic of the ring give way.
It did not fail. The enchantments held without faltering, without even a flicker of fire. Whatever shroud the ring had passed over him was stronger than broad daylight, and he walked from the inn's door to the end of the street in a blank stupor. At the crossroads stood a number of city folk in small gatherings, some eating meat pies from paper wrappings, some absently calling after their children playing nearby in a fenced garden, none paying him any mind at all. Why should they? He was unremarkable in every way, some haughty visiting nobleman in a city already bursting with them, hardly worth the noticing except to be mocked as he passed and perhaps pickpocketed, if some urchin could scrape together the gumption.
He could go anywhere. He could pick any road he liked and walk it until it ended, not a fig given for inns or groves of trees or the next day's weather. He could complain about the sun like any man when it was hot, not because it was fatal but because it was inconvenient. He could find all the places in the world Tav wished to see and go with her to see them without fear of burning alive if the rain stopped.
His chest had begun to ache again, the possibilities overwhelming. He pressed a hand to it, looked down the bright crossroads to where the street bent away from him between a pair of bustling businesses. Then he turned and went back along the road, found the inn again and went upstairs. A tray of cold cuts and watered wine had already been set by his door—at least the maid was efficient—and he brought it inside before relocking the door behind him.
Tavish was still asleep, of course, burrowed under the quilts like some mole from the Underdark, only a bit of her hair visible above the hem. Astarion set the tray on the desk, shucked his shoes and vest, and circled the bed to crawl under the covers beside her. He was not particularly tired; the last month had destroyed any regularity of sleep he'd acquired with the tadpole, and time had not yet been considerate enough to replace the schedule. Besides, the rush of revelation still had him in a forceful grip—but he found that when the entire world lay abruptly open to him, there was only one place he wished to be.
"Astarion?" she mumbled, and she reached for him without opening her eyes. Her arm tangled in the sheets and she fought them a moment before he caught her hand, freed her from their grasp. "You came back."
"Yes, darling," he said softly, and she drew her arms around his neck as he lay down beside her, pulled herself into his chest. He draped his own arm over her shoulders and tucked her head beneath his chin. Something at last gave way inside him with a great rush of relief, some awful hunger—different from his usual—finally sated, relaxing into the comfort of her warmth. "Go back to sleep."
"Already have," she said tiredly against his throat, and within a few of her heartbeats her breathing deepened, evening out once more.
He had thought the tadpole had been a glimpse of freedom through a cracked door. For a few months he had been forgotten by his curse and allowed to live again; then the worm had died and he had been remembered after all, herded back inside into the succor of shadows, the door firmly shut and locked behind him. He could have been satisfied with that, eventually; could have learned to live with only memory to sustain him; could have come to grips with the knowledge that for him, such reprieves would only ever be temporary. He had learned to accept inevitability long ago.
But all she did, it seemed, was find ways to thwart those inevitabilities, ways to force open a lock shut for so long even the key had rusted to dust. Not because she was any stronger, or smarter—certainly not smarter, and he knew how much that pained her—or even wiser than any other, but because she simply refused to believe she was ever out of options. There would always be another road. There would always be some third choice, some hidden door, if she could simply find her way through the cobwebs and iron that disguised it. She believed that like she believed in air.
It sounded, Astarion thought, very much like hope. But that was a line too far for him even now, even with a miracle wrapped around his left forefinger, and with a little effort he forced the thoughts from his mind, buried his nose in Tav's jasmine-scented hair, and closed his eyes.
—
He woke again near dusk. Tav was still in his arms, though she was stirring with some dream. Disoriented as he was from hours more trance than his habit, it took him several seconds to remember exactly where he was and exactly why the weight of her body against his was such a comfort. Then it all came rushing back, and after a brief glance to reassure himself the ring had not vanished in his sleep, he threaded his fingers through Tav's hair and hummed something mindless and soothing. She calmed at his voice, settled again; a moment later her eyes fluttered open and she lifted her head from the pillow, searching their rented room with mild confusion before she landed again on his face.
Her voice was throaty, crackling with sleep. "What time is it?"
"Nearly sunset."
"How long did I sleep?"
"Six or seven hours." He glanced over her shoulder towards the window, trying to gauge the time more accurately. He'd left the curtains open earlier—intended to again, in fact, for the foreseeable future—but the reds and purples of the sky outside provided him no further clues. "You'll have to wait for the bells to know for sure."
"What good are you to me, then?" she asked, and she sleepily pressed her mouth against the underside of his jaw. "I hate that I'm awake."
"Go back to sleep, then. Obviously."
"I can't, not yet. A different sort of tired." Her hand slid up between them to rest lightly on his chest. "Mm, how many times did I dream of waking up like this while I was in Avernus?"
Aha. A better game altogether. "Oh, do go on."
"Often," she answered herself, and she kissed him again in the same place. "Part of the deal was that we only had so much time to hunt. It didn't leave a lot of time for sleeping. I got very used to catnaps." As if she sensed his rising questions, she gave the barest scrape of teeth over his jaw. "How much will you preen if I tell you that you were in nearly all my dreams?"
"Preen, darling? I hardly know the meaning of the word." She nibbled at him again, a little more insistent, and he shivered. "Delightful as all this is, I think you'd better try harder if you want to win my forgiveness."
"Oh?" Her fingers slipped under his undone collar, slid warm across his collarbone and back to the hollow of his throat. "Is your forgiveness so worth winning?"
He laughed, low and intimate, and leaned forward until his lips brushed her ear. "I think you'll find, my love," he murmured, and felt her breath quicken, "that my forgiveness comes with certain…generosity. Generosity I think you'll very much enjoy."
"Why do I get the feeling you'd enjoy it even more than me?" she asked, and then she kissed him. It was slow, tender, her fingers light along his throat, a little hum escaping her here and there as he pressed back against her lips. He was still learning how to kiss someone who loved him, to enjoy the new and unfamiliar pleasure that came with such simple touch; but before he could grow too complacent she breathed in sharply through her nose and opened her mouth over his. It was an abrupt transition, not quite usual for her, but he was markedly adept at rolling with this sort of punch, and he only laughed and nipped the tip of her tongue as it slid against his own. She pressed harder against him for a few long, sweet minutes, then drew back just enough to catch her breath.
"Eager, are we?" he asked with a smirk he knew infuriated her at the best of times.
"You are impossible," she snarled, throwing back the bedcovers, and then she pushed him back into the pillows and rolled up over him to straddle his waist. She bent down and kissed him again, let her lower lip drag across his fangs with each parting. Her now-dry hair fell thick and loose over her shoulder; the sunlight had grown rich with the late hour, and where it snared in the glorious mess it lit the strands red and gold.
He reached up and tangled a hand in it, saw how her eyes flickered when he tugged, and failed utterly to suppress the chuckle. "And yet here you are anyway, engaging in such licentious behavior in pursuit of my affections. Outrageous."
"Oh, by all the gods," she said, mouthing her way down along his cheek, "if you would just shut up—"
"I'm afraid that's your job, my dear, not—" he began, and then she bit him, and every thought in his head vanished behind a jolt of blinding white lust.
It hadn't been a violent bite—likely hadn't even broken his skin—but it had been hard, and she'd picked the place right at the junction of his throat and shoulder, almost exactly the spot he usually bit her. She'd kept the pressure, too, her blunt teeth holding him in place like she was making a point, and he would very much like to have expounded upon some sort of keen rebuttal except that he couldn't come up with a single word aside from yes, please, thank you.
Someone was shuddering for breath, the sound thick with arousal. It occurred to him belatedly that the voice was most likely his, but the realization fluttered away as soon as he'd grasped it, because she'd let him go at last only to suck gently on the place where she'd bitten him, and that was a new shock of pleasure altogether. He was vaguely aware that he was rocking up against her, his hands clenched around her hips, and that she had begun moving with him, and that they were both wearing altogether too many clothes for how stifling the room had suddenly become.
"Get this off," he said, rough as gravel, pushing up her sleeveless linen shirt. He had been bitten before during sex. A dozen times, a hundred times, in places much more provocative, so why was this so—why did he—
"Yes," she said breathlessly, and yanked it over her head and threw it off the bed. So many injuries still. So many bruises. He certainly refused to stop on their account alone, even if he hated the look of them; besides, she wouldn't let him if he tried. He ran both hands across her scarred stomach, over her bare breasts, up to cup her face and pull her lips back down to his. "And you—" she gasped against his mouth, "now you—"
Because it was her. Because he loved her. Because she loved him, and it turned out that mattered a great deal in something like this—
"Gods damn you," he snapped, the words trailing off into a pained groan, and between the two of them they freed him from his own shirt, from the trousers and underclothes that stuck and tangled at every inopportune moment. She was still wearing hers, but one problem at a time; she settled back in the cradle of his hips, his cock pinned flushed and heavy between them, her palm flat on his chest, and even with the layers she still wore he could feel the heat of her as she rolled against him once, twice, her eyes burning into his.
He grasped mindlessly at every inch of unbruised skin he could reach, thumbed across one of her nipples to make her throw back her head and gasp, leaned up on one elbow to take the other in his mouth and suck. That sound was almost a sob—for as silent as she often was, he delighted in forcing such things out of her—and she clutched the back of his head to keep him there. He obliged for several moments, listening to each noise she made with avid greed, then moved on to little bites at the flesh of her breast which startled out a series of equally appealing moans and sighs. No blood drawn yet, only little divots and scratches among her freckles, his affection marked out in a wandering trail wherever the interest took him. Magnificent. Her skin gleamed with sweat in the light of the setting sun, caught in fiery lines down the elegant arch of her throat. He ran the point of one fang lightly over her nipple again.
"Astarion," she said, her voice almost maddened with desire, and she wrenched his head back by his hair to stare down at him. "I want you. Now. Right now. If you toy with me a moment longer I'll throw your knives into the Chionthar."
"Who's toying with whom?" he asked indignantly, but she rocked down her hips very hard and very slow over his cock, and the last word broke off in a sea of stars. "Tav, darling—my dear—please—" Oh, gods. He was babbling. He hadn't babbled in decades. She ground down against him again and he nearly shouted. "Get rid of your trousers," he gasped, scrabbling at her waistline with shaking fingers. "Get rid of them or I swear I'll rip them off you."
"How perfectly brutish," she said, kissing him hard enough he forgot the reason for the insult, but she lifted her hips—torturous absence—and shoved them off and out of the way. Then it was just heat on impossible heat, not quite yet joined but the mutual friction its own sort of sharp relief, and she leaned down over him and moaned so sweetly into his ear he nearly finished in that moment. He did not, because that would have been humiliating beyond measure and because among the forced lessons taught by Cazador had been infallible control, but it was a near thing, and he flung his head back into the pillow and gasped.
"Wretch," he choked out, "you awful—monstrous—"
"Astarion," she sighed, taking his earlobe lightly in her teeth, sucking along the ridge to the tip, her fingers toying with a nipple, pinching, tugging, "do you forgive me yet?"
"You wretch," he snarled, surging up onto his knees, bringing her with him as she laughed, sweaty and beautiful, her thighs tightening around his hips as he reached between them and rocked up into her at last. She gasped at the stretch, clawed down his back; he did not wait for her to adjust and began moving immediately with mindless need. He found a thick scabbed welt on her shoulder and pressed it; she let out a juddering moan and arched up into his hand, twined her fingers into his hair and pulled back his head so that she could kiss him, messy, open-mouthed. Her other arm had wrapped around his neck, holding him tight against her as she could, and as he thrust up into her she met his movements, rolling her hips into each stroke, matching his rhythm.
"Astarion," she breathed again, her cheek hot as hellfire against his. "Do you realize how wonderful you are?"
His pace faltered in surprise. "Darling—"
"Beautiful, of course," she continued over his interruption, her low murmur a music of its own, reaching in mercilessly and seizing his heart spellbound. "But you know that, don't you? You know you're one of the prettiest men I've ever seen."
Oh, gods. He was not prepared for this.
"But that's not what I love about you. For a while I didn't even know what it was myself, only that I knew you could never be just another fuck in the dark. And then I realized it was a whole host of things all at once." She drove their rhythm now, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back with every thrust—he hadn't even realized the shift. He could not seem to find words to interrupt her.
"It was your will to live, first. Your defiance. How many impossible odds—" she kissed him again mid-sentence, as if she couldn't wait, and he reached blindly to where they were joined and stroked. She gave a delicious shudder. "But you never stopped fighting, even when you wanted to. Even when it would have been easier. Inspiring," she said, and the word cut off in a sigh as he thrust almost involuntarily into her. "And you were kind to me in the woods. In the Shadowlands. Do you remember?"
"Yes," he gasped. She had been badly upset by the taken tieflings, silent and grieving in the camp—he had stolen her away into the trees for a distraction. It'd been the first time he'd realized his feelings had moved beyond the physical—distressing enough on its own, but the way she had looked at him after—the way she had thanked him—
"Because you give me what I want," she sighed into his ear. Oh, gods, she was still going. "And you let me want you, and you stop when I ask. Should I stop, Astarion?"
"I'll kill you," he got out, ragged as a torn sail. One hand had somehow made it to the back of her neck; he clutched it like a lifeline.
She laughed, soft and satisfied, and she guided his mouth to the hollow of her throat where her pulse thundered. He was going to die. He was going to break another dozen laws of the universe and find a way to die again, right here, his cock fully buried in his lover and his mind as scattered as a shipwreck. "Darling," he managed, and the groan that came with the word was so deep he could hardly recognize his own voice.
"You have protected me over and over," she breathed, and her pace quickened, little hitching gasps escaping every few words as she writhed in his lap, and he was not going to last, was not going to— "When you told me you wanted to keep me safe too, that was when I first knew I loved you. Then I looked at you this morning in the window and realized your happiness was more important to me than my own, and I knew I'd never stop."
The heat he knew very well; the lust he could easily control. The tenderness tore him to pieces, bright and lethal as sunlight.
He sank his teeth into her throat.
He could taste the arousal in her blood. She wanted him badly, even like this—even now, as close as they were—she wanted him closer yet. He clenched his mouth to her neck and drank as hard as he could, her hot blood surging over his tongue, her gasps gone high and sharp as she gripped the back of his head and pulled him tighter against her. Deliciously sating—a coarse, perfect divinity—a wine richer even than his excellent imagination, scalding the back of his throat as he swallowed over and over. Her rhythm had completely broken; she jerked and bucked against his thrusts, messy as they'd ever been together; he could hardly keep hold of her waist. She scraped her nails down his shoulders, tossed back her head restlessly and then pushed her throat up against his mouth once more—he couldn't pretend to even a semblance of control, gods, oh, hells—
She yanked herself away an inch or two, her neck smeared with her own blood, her eyes blazing like flames as she grasped his face in her hand and forced him to meet her eyes. "I do love you, Astarion," she said fiercely, and then she kissed him, and he came so hard the world went white.
Someone was swearing. He thought it was him—thought somewhere he was still clutching Tav in his arms—he felt her seize around him as she came herself, and whatever was left of his mind shredded into an impossible bliss. He hadn't known this could be—he'd never realized—
Then the wave swept him away, and he stopped trying to think anything at all.
—
The sun had gone down. The sky was dark, spattered with stars; someone had begun to light the lamps on the street outside. Still the first thing Astarion noticed as he gradually came back to himself, even after an absolute shattering.
Gods above and below, he was a wreck. He lay flat on his back, gasping for air he wasn't sure he needed. Tavish sprawled, boneless, across his chest, one of his arms still wrapped around her; she was cursing quietly into his shoulder, but they were the fortune-goddess oaths she only swore when she was deeply satisfied, and he was charmed to hear now them despite the vulgarity. He bent one knee, easing a hip that had begun to ache, and she caught her breath—still joined—and then, without speaking, she carefully slid up his chest to kiss him.
This kiss was gentle, sweet. He managed to brush the backs of his fingers over her cheek; then she dropped her head against his shoulder and let out a gusty sigh.
Blood still smeared over her neck. This close he could smell it like perfume. There was so little hunger now he hardly felt the need—a miracle in and of itself—but to waste it would be unthinkable. With the last of his strength, he trailed his fingertips along her throat and brought them to his mouth. She hummed, watching him lick his fingers clean with dark eyes, but the very idea of moving more than this exhausted him, much less any idle suggestions of a second round. He suspected, based on the huff of regret she gave as she settled back against him, she felt the same.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Blood of Lathander," Tavish muttered. "Please go away."
"Excuse me," came a man's voice from the hall. Astarion thought it was the innkeeper, a peevish rubberneck with a hooked nose and a perpetual scowl. The knock sounded again. "Excuse me, good evening, please come to the door."
"Just wait," Astarion said, and he threw an arm over his eyes. "He'll leave if we don't answer."
"He won't," Tav sighed, and she slipped free of him suddenly enough they both shuddered. He heard her pull on a robe, heard her light a few candles with perfectly mundane matches—he'd never in his life seen someone so defiantly ignored by the Weave—and the door creaked open. She said—something—and the innkeeper said—something—but their voices were low and he couldn't be bothered to try making out the words. She laughed, the descending little chuckle she gave when she thought someone was an idiot, and then the door closed and footsteps faded away down the hall.
The mattress dipped as she sat again beside him. He lifted his arm enough to see her combing through her hair, picking out the worst of the burned places, her eyes thoughtful and distant. "Well?" he asked, not because he particularly cared but because he wished to hear her voice.
"A noise complaint. Someone's been disturbing the other guests." She was using his ivory comb. Thief. "I managed to convince him it was rats in the attic."
"He didn't believe you, surely. Not with me lying right here, looking so deliciously debauched."
"Come now, don't fish."
He dropped his arm over his eyes again, delighted with her annoyance, and as if she had not just done so for several wondrous minutes, he asked, "If you won't tell me I'm beautiful, who will?"
"Vain twit. Besides, why should I repeat myself? You promised me all sorts of generosity, remember? And yet I'm not feeling very rewarded." She put her hand on his chest when he began to rouse in serious alarm. "I'm only joking. I'm going to go rinse off, and then I'm going to eat." Her face had sobered with the words. "We should talk, Astarion."
"I'd rather not," he said with some petulance, but she was right. The windows across the street had begun to gleam with candlelight; for all the time his curse had given him, there were only so many hours in a day, and they could not put this off any longer. He ran his thumb over the etchings on the ring's band and shut his eyes.
His, now. For better or worse. Time he understood precisely what that meant.
—
Later, after they'd both cleaned themselves up and he'd dressed and she'd devoured the rune-chilled cold cuts—with her fingers, like the street rat she was—he sat himself in the armchair beside the hearth and she sat on the thick woven rug between his feet. He'd lifted his comb back from the pocket of her robe during the meal in a very pretty maneuver, if he said so himself, and now he worked it through the thick singed fall of her hair once more, sorting out what could be saved and what could not.
The city had grown cool with night. She'd lit the fire in the hearth along with the rest of the room's candles, brightening their surroundings and giving unearned beauty to the oiled wood furniture, and the logs crackled merrily behind the iron grate. She reached out both hands to the warmth and sighed. "How bad is the damage?"
"Nothing fatal. A few inches should take care of most of it." He separated out a section more burned than the rest and draped it over her shoulder. "I suppose you'll still be fit to stand beside me in public."
She pinched his calf, nearly upsetting the cosmetics kit balanced on his knee. "I know where you sleep."
"You know more than that," he purred, but she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. He let her sit with her thoughts a moment; then he took the finely bladed scissors from the kit and began to trim her hair.
They were quiet a while, the silence broken only by the snip of scissors and the distant murmur of voices elsewhere in the inn. Strands fell together to her shoulders as he worked, the auburn a pleasing contrast to the dark blue-green of her robe. She'd liked that color as long as he'd known her, meticulously dying her leathers to match on the slower nights in camp. He'd bought the robe on a whim when they'd first come to the city; he'd seen it in a shop's window and thought of her, the fabric thick and woven soft as silk, printed all over with small white blossoms. A taste of finery for a woman who hardly knew what it meant to have three square meals a day, who still hoarded gold like a miser despite accumulating more than any one person could spend in a lifetime.
She'd never had many beautiful things, she'd told him when he'd given it to her, uncharacteristically shy. She'd hesitated to touch it, as if her habitual poverty might have profaned even the paper it had been wrapped in. Just this, she'd told him. And him, now, though that went without saying. And her hair.
"You said you wanted to talk," Astarion said at last, deftly maneuvering the scissors behind the curve of her ear. "So drink your potion and talk."
He felt her sigh, but she uncapped the vial he'd forced into her hands earlier, finished it off in three great gulps, and fit the cork back into the empty glass mouth. One of the scrapes down her neck, already diminished from yesterday, shrank further. "It all started…oh, gods, I hardly know where to begin." She squared her shoulders, and her voice took on that clipped cadence he heard more often in a fight. "The portal travel was uneventful. Karlach and Wyll were waiting, just as always. We went to the House of Hope first, because Karlach said there was some message waiting there—remind me to give you her letters. She and Wyll wrote to us both."
"And you kept them unburned all this time? I'm impressed, my dear."
"Yes. Unlike—anyway. It was a message from—shit. I know I'm going to get this wrong. Karlach could tell it all so much better than me." She passed a hand over her forehead, as if searching for the band she normally wore. "An archdevil had made a deal with a mortal. The Resolver of Enchantments, he's called. Armaros. One of the best enchanters in any plane, devil or otherwise—a master craftsman. But he'd been exiled to Avernus by Asmodeus. I don't remember why—Karlach does. I think I'm right so far."
"It's all perfectly clear to me."
She let his sarcasm pass, sign enough she was distracted. "Armaros makes deals with gods and mortals all the time for powerful enchantments, for items of such magic people are afraid to speak of them. But that's part of the terms of the exile; he's not allowed to treat with other devils, because there's some fear he could grow too strong and challenge Asmodeus. Anyway, a mortal came to him, a priest of Cyric, who struck a deal on Cyric's behalf for this ring." She turned to see it on his hand, and he gently straightened her head again. She asked, "Do you know Cyric?"
"I can't say the name has come up. At least, not in any of your inventive, educational curses."
"I didn't know him either. That makes me feel better. Strife, lies, trickery, that sort of thing." Tavish waved a hand. "The priest said Cyric wished to honor some vampire lord who had served him well. The price was high—I think the priest lost an eye, and few other things, but Armaros made the ring."
"This is getting better and better," Astarion said, voice dry. "I can hardly guess what horrible fate is about to befall this fellow."
"Well, that's the problem. Right before Armaros was about to deliver the ring, he discovered the priest had deceived him. He wasn't a priest of Cyric at all, he was one of Zariel's devils in disguise. She wanted the ring for one of her generals, as part of a war she's waging against some other ridiculously powerful devil." She shifted, resettled herself a little more securely against the chair. "Armaros was furious, but the deal was ironclad, and he was bound to deliver the ring as promised. But what happened to it after that…"
He ran his fingers through her hair, found the stiff, roughened texture of a burned place he'd missed. "And so an archdevil who crafts enchantments for gods came to tell you personally to steal a ring for him."
"No, you peacock. He sent out lieutenants and messengers to Zariel's enemies, promising the ring as prize to whomever killed the false priest before he could present it to Zariel. A cambion who liked Karlach sent the message to the House of Hope for her, and Hope sent it to us."
Ah. He began to see the shape of things now. "An arms race, so to speak."
"Yes, exactly. Anyone who hated Zariel more than they feared her were on the trail of this priest. Most of them, I think, were more interested in winning the favor of Armaros, or one of Zariel's enemies. But I wanted the prize itself."
He was running out of charred places to trim. A good thing, too; his chest was starting to ache again. "And Karlach and Wyll helped you with this? Zariel's ex-pet and the Blade of Avernus, striking down devils left and right?"
"And Shadowheart, of course."
"Shadowheart went?" he said, outraged.
"Ouch! Don't pull so hard."
"Apologies," he said, and meant it, but the indignation lingered. "Did everyone know about this except me?"
"I told you Shadowheart was coming," Tav said with biting patience. "The morning I left. I said, 'Shadowheart is meeting me at the portal. Do you want me to tell her anything for you?' and you said, 'If she's still trotting about in those garish bright colors, tell her to stop pairing green with orange,' and I called you a tosser and you said I had the sartorial acumen of a magpie."
Ah. Yes. Right. "Yes, of course. I seem to recall…something of the sort." He set the scissors aside and dusted off her shoulders, the trimmed ends falling atop the cloth he'd laid over the rug for that purpose, and smoothed out the collar of her robe where it had flipped itself over. "The three of them, then. And you. Dodging archdevils and warlords and exceptionally suicidal mortals, all hunting and killing each other for something absolutely useless to every single person involved."
You went because you loved me.
"Karlach said she'd love to stick it to Zariel any way she could, and you know Wyll goes where Karlach goes. And Shadowheart said we'd get ourselves killed in an instant without her, so she'd better come along and look after us." She turned her head abruptly and kissed the inside of his knee.
We went because we loved you.
"You won, of course."
"Of course. The last few fights were bloodier than I'd have liked, but we won. When the priest was dead Armaros showed up just long enough to make us all very nervous—Zariel did not, thank the gods—and then he left, and we fled back to the House of Hope like bats out of—well. You know."
A silence fell over the room. He began to run the comb through her hair in long, slow strokes; Tav sighed even as her shoulders began to slump in renewed fatigue, and she rested her chin on her knees. At last, into the quiet of the crackling fire, he said, "I thought you'd died."
He saw the sharp line of tension ripple down her back. "I know," she said after a moment. "I saw your face."
"If they had killed you doing something so unbearably stupid for me—for my sake—it would have destroyed me."
"I know."
The slender teeth of the ivory comb passed through her hair over and over, gentle, unresisting, no tangles left to catch. "If you ever do something like this again, my love, I will place that ring atop your horrible bag and I will leave, and I won't come back."
She shuddered, and when she spoke her voice was thick. "I understand."
"And at the same time…" This part came easier. "Honestly, darling, it seems passé to keep thanking you for my newfound freedoms. You kept me alive after the Nautiloid crash, you gave me your delectable blood, you defended me against my brothers and sisters. You helped me kill Cazador and kept me from losing myself in the process. And now…" He looked at the ring on his left forefinger, where the firelight shivered over the silver band and danced in the heart of the black stone. "Every time I'm ready to resign myself to something, you hand the world to me instead."
"I love you," she said, as if that explained it all. As if that were enough.
"I love you," he told her in answer, and he gently tipped her head back as he leaned forward, over her, to meet her eyes. "Your hair is still lovely," he said, meaning every word, "despite being a little shorter than it was. And I would love you and think you were beautiful even if you had no hair at all. Every part of you is wonderful—including that tender, generous heart of yours—and if I cannot spend eternity with you, I will still demand every year from you I can possibly get. There is no one like you in all the world, my darling, not in the Hells or the Astral Sea or anywhere else, and wherever you go—whatever you do—I want to do it with you."
He had cupped her cheeks lightly; she reached up, wrapped a hand around his wrist. Her eyes were shining, damp. "I don't want to leave you behind."
"Then we are going to have to work very seriously on your sense of self-preservation," he said, and he leaned down and kissed her.
It was a quiet, fond kiss, without any heat at all. It was meant for comfort alone, one lover to another, a simple mutual affection and forgiveness and the delicate beginnings of a promise. Astarion was not sure he had ever kissed anyone like this; he was very certain he never wanted anything else again.
The kiss came to a natural end. She kissed his chin, still upside down, then the tip of his nose, and then she reached up and ran her fingertips along his cheek. "I'm glad you like it," she said, just a hint of spirit returning to her smile. "I'm glad it fits, if nothing else. How terribly awkward that might have been otherwise."
"Aside from the pleasure of your company, my dear, it is the single greatest gift I've ever received."
"Better than killing Cazador?"
He winced. "Second-greatest?"
"Better than surviving the fight atop the Netherbrain?"
"That wasn't a gift, that was your fault."
"Better than the first night you drank my blood?"
"You died, dear heart."
She burst into laughter. He shook his head in annoyance, but he was laughing too, and then she pushed to her feet, stretched luxuriously in the firelight, ran her fingers through her trimmed hair and tied it up atop her head. The blue robe fell in a beautiful drape to her knees, the printed white blossoms shimmering with candleglow. "I'm going back to bed, Astarion," she declared, and then she propped both hands on the back of the armchair above his shoulders, leaned down, and kissed him on the forehead. "Whatever you choose to do now, get some rest before dawn. Tomorrow's a brand new day."
"Indeed it is," he murmured, inexplicably soothed, and he watched from the armchair as she changed back into her nightclothes, made a perfunctory assessment of the sheets for ruin, then sat cross-legged on the bed and looked back at him across the room.
"You haven't noticed," she said, almost as an afterthought.
"Hm? Haven't noticed what?"
Her smile was awful, the repressed giddy smugness of one who knew they were about to utterly delight the other. "You show up in mirrors now."
"I—what?"
He lurched so quickly from the armchair it toppled to its side. A small gilt-framed mirror had been hung above the bureau; in his haste he slammed hard enough into the bureau's edge that his fingers went numb. He braced himself, looked up, and stared.
White hair, curls coquettishly tousled. Red eyes as expected, though the brows were handsome and arrogant. Pale skin. His nose was longer than he remembered. The jaw—pleasingly chiseled, and he couldn't deny the fangs added a certain seductive air to the whole appearance. No moles, hairy or otherwise. No wrinkles of any note. Excellent cheekbones. Astarion looked himself in the face for the first time in two hundred years and found exactly what he had expected.
"Gods above and below," he breathed with tremendous satisfaction, "I look amazing."
"Yes," Tavish said, laughing so hard she was crying, and as he began running through a series of his favorite expressions, testing each of them for soundness and general allure, she curled back into his pillow, pulled the quilts to her chin, and went, still laughing, to sleep.
—
end.
AN: I very badly wanted to call this fic "The Ring of SPF 150," but I thought that was too much, even for me.