goodnight, my love - goodgirlgonebard (2024)

Chapter 1: The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened?

Chapter Text

The last thing I remember before my abduction was crying. Not sobbing, shaking crying, but quiet tears running down from my eyes on my way home from class in the lower city. Class had gone later than usual and the sight of the stars in the sky had actually been quite beautiful to see, for me, since I was rarely out that late. But the crying came, regardless, knowing how angry my father would be when I arrived back home. He was a kind man, typically, but upsetting him after work when he’s had time to get a few drinks in him is never a good idea.

I knew it was also quite possible that by this time of night he may have contacted my husband-to-be to retrieve me, who had an even worse temper than my father. My father is old, even for an elf - my parents had long given up on being blessed with a child before I actually came about - and always had a hard time keeping me in line, so my betrothed had become my keeper , of sorts. He would be the dog sent out sniffing for me.

It was imperative, then, to make sure I got all of the tears out before I saw him. Lest it tempt him to give me something more to cry about. My tears always fell on deaf ears to the men who kept me caged; telling me I couldn’t know real pain or hard work, but never allowing me to work. Taking classes in the city had taken months of convincing and cajoling, already. I can’t let it be ripped away from me. Not when I’ve learned so much.

It’s a horrible thing, I know, that I was abducted by mind flayers. But it could also be the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I think that I’m waking up from the most horrible dream. So horrible that the details are quite fuzzy. Nightmares have become quite typical for me in the last several months, but this one was not the usual nightmare. I had been on a nautiloid, infected with a mindflayer parasite. I was running around with a Githyanki warrior and a beautiful half-elf we had managed to release from the pod she was being held in, surrounded by unconscious or dead others in those stupid pods. I actually used the magic I learned back at home to fight .

As I try to move my body, I can’t help but wonder, if that was a dream, why do I hurt so f*cking bad?

I wake up on a hot beach, sun beating down on me and burning my pale skin already. I don’t know how long I’ve been unconscious. But I know that the ship was not a nightmare, because bits and pieces of the wretched thing are scattered about the entire beach.

To my left, I see the half elf girl I remember fighting with on the ship. I can’t tell if she’s dead or not, until I get close enough to see the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. I crawl further through the scalding sand until I can reach her arm to shove, and she jolts awake.

“What-?” She gasps, looking around at the burning ship, the beach, and me. “It wasn’t a dream?” She asks me or asks herself, I’m not sure. She must go through the same thought process as me, feeling the heat of the granules below us and the pain of having fallen and realizing that this must be real. No dream could feel this real.

She looks down at herself, clothes disheveled and a little burnt, and I see her creating a white hot light that I recognize to be a healing spell with her hands. She must have landed on her right arm, because I watch as she sighs with relief while running the spell over her joints. “Come here,” she mutters, offering it to me as well. I turn around to let her run her hands gently over my back, which bore the brunt of the pain from my falling. I don’t know how it’s possible that she is functioning and processing everything well enough to be able to perform this spell, but I’m grateful, regardless, as the refreshing feeling of the spell washes over my spine.

“This can’t be real,” I murmur to her, staring at the glittering sand in front of me, wondering if it’s still possible that I can be feeling the heat of the sun, the rough grains of the sand, the pain of my body or the healing she’s providing me, and somehow will this to still be a trick my mind is playing on me.

“I’m afraid so,” she sighs back to me.

“My name is Luna,” I say cautiously, not quite sure if I’m introducing myself to her or trying to convince myself that at least that is real, that is who I am. I am not one of the dead bodies in one of those pods on the ship, my brain just continuing to fire post mortem, creating this dream.

“I’m Shadowheart,” she responds, as I turn back around to face her. The metal bits of her armor glint in the sunlight, reminding me that our fight on the ship was not, in fact, a dream. The sight of her armor had contributed to the fact that I believe our time on the ship to be some trick my brain was playing on me. She looks like she’s prepared to fight - and we did fight, so I suppose I’m the one in the wrong outfit.

I was abducted in a simple wizard’s robe. It used to be light pink, but now it’s been covered in dirt and scorch marks that may wash off, may not. I wore this robe to the spell casters classes I had been taking at night in Baldurs Gate. On the nautiloid, I was able to get by fighting with Shadowheart and the Githyanki with a couple of cantrips and simple spells. But I’m afraid that I need her help much more than she needs mine, and I’m going to have to put on a damn good act to keep her around.

Not only is she strong, but she is also one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen. She has long, raven black hair pulled into a sharp ponytail, barely even budged by the events we’ve been through today. I can tell even through the armor she was abducted in that she’s more muscular than me, clearly from whatever kind of training she has been through.

Bits of the ship and burnt bodies line the shore, and I check pulses until I come to the conclusion that we may be the only souls that survived the crash. I grieve for a brief moment over the Githyanki girl - despite how abrasive she was, she was a good fighter, and it would be nice to have more survivors in our same situation.

“I’m a wizard student, in the city,” I tell Shadowheart as we walk, offering up some information about me to try and lighten the weight of the air hanging around us. I’m sure she can feel it, too, the heaviness of knowing we’re approaching our own deaths away from our homes and our families. “We- I live just on the outskirts, but have been practicing in the lower city for… some time,” I add, and hope she doesn’t notice my pause when I realize I don’t want to tell her it’s been just a few months. “Where did you learn your skills as a cleric?”

She hesitates. “In the city, as well,” she says, but she almost looks confused about her own answer. I decide not to press the issue. If she doesn’t want to learn about each other to try and make this whole thing more bearable, I suppose that’s her choice.

Suddenly she pauses, holding out a hand for me to stop moving. I look ahead to see several of those weird little brain things crawling about on a large piece of the nautiloid that landed on the beach.

“How the f*ck did those things survive?” I wonder aloud, readying myself to fight.

“Let’s hit them from here, together,” she says, nodding at me as if I have the faintest idea what I’m doing or how to strategize. As soon as I see a burst of light leave her hands, I begin throwing out my own cantrips - all I have left in me. We take out the brains one by one until we can’t see any more of them around. Exhausted, out of spells, and no idea where to go.

“I think we should just head up this path a little bit until we can’t see this ship anymore, and camp out for the night. Whatever wildlife we find won’t be as bad as these,” I suggest to Shadowheart.

“I’m not a big fan of sleeping with this thing in my brain,” she answers, looking clearly concerned. She weighs it in her head for a moment, before agreeing. “But we won’t make it much longer without some rest and recharge on our magic.”

I accept that as her answer, and continue walking up the sloped path. We encounter less and less bits and pieces of the ship as we make our way into a more normal looking forest.

“Over there, another elf,” I whisper to Shadowheart, looking up at the road ahead of us. Pacing back and forth on the path, there is a pale elf with bright white curls on his head. Could not miss him in this sunlight.

It’s almost as if he hears me, because he turns to us approaching him on the road. “Come quick! Some of those things I saw you fighting! Can you help?”

I pick up my pace a little bit, hearing what I believe to be genuine concern for his safety in his voice. He doesn’t seem to be carrying anything with him for protection, just the lightly padded, very old-fashioned (yet well kept) clothes on his back. It feels a little silly to be running to this man who is clearly larger than me to help him, but my actual use of my learned magic to protect myself has emboldened me somewhat.

“Where are they?” I ask as I approach him, cautiously looking into the forest in front of him. He points off in the distance, but I can’t see anything. I squint and begin to slowly creep my way closer to the trees, arms out in case I need to cast something.

Everything happens in an instant. I hear Shadowheart gasp behind me, and I’m spun around to face her by strong arms twisting around me. I see a slight metallic glint in my peripheral vision. There is a dagger at my throat.

My attacker has skillful, calloused hands. He smells oddly delightful - like bergamot? - and he is insanely calm for someone who has just sprung a dagger on me. A dagger that I obviously did not see, when I stupidly assumed him to be a damsel in distress. I can’t hear his heart pounding in his chest, but I can hear my own.

“You f*cker ,” I mutter between breaths.

“Tell me what you are, what you did to me,” he demands, both to me and to Shadowheart. His voice is huskier, deeper than it had been when he was pretending to be scared. “I saw you walking freely on that mindflayer ship.”

He thinks we’re one of them. My body relaxes just the tiniest bit. No real way to be relaxed with a knife to my throat, but at least I think I can try to talk some sense into this man. “We’re not mindflayers,” Shadowheart says, lowering the hand she had been holding up in case she needed to cast a spell. “Not yet, at least,” she adds, exasperated.

“What in the Hells do you mean-“ he starts to say. Suddenly, I feel my mind compelling me to connect to his, just as it did with Shadowheart and the Githyanki while we were on the ship. I show him everything. My accidental escape, letting Shadowheart go, not seeing him anywhere. The dagger drops from his hand, almost impaling my foot. My head hurts with the focus, until I release him from our connection.

“What was that?” He demands when he comes back to reality, realizing he’s dropped his weapon and tightening his grip on me, as if he means to choke me if he can’t slit my throat.

“Let me go and I’ll explain it to you, f*cker ,” I struggle out, my chest heaving and heart pounding harder at the loss of blood flow caused by his restrictive grip. Reluctantly, he lets me go, giving me a push to get further away from him. “They put little worms in our brains. They’ll turn us into mindflayers if we don’t get them removed somehow,” I say, still struggling to catch my breath.

My eyes can focus on him up close for the first time, and for a moment, I see nothing else. He is mesmerizing. Skin stark pale, as if he has never been in the sun long enough to get a tan. White hair with bouncy curls, bright in the sunlight. He looks young, but older than me - although it’s hard to guess at an age with full-blooded elves like ourselves. Undoubtedly, though, he is one of the most gorgeous beings I have ever seen in my life. My heart makes an attempt to leap out of my chest, and I can’t tell anymore if it’s from the threat to my life.

“Oh, of course it’s going to turn me into a f*cking monster!” He exclaims, laughing violently at the thought. The sound of it pulls me out of my focus on him. Poor thing must be in shock.

“We’ve got them too,” Shadowheart says, “so we might as well stick together and see if we can find a healer.”

He seems unsure, at first. “My name is Luna,” I offer to him. “And what’s yours? I’m assuming I wasn’t right in calling you f*cker ?”

The elf snorts. “That’s cute,” He says, inspecting me, making me feel more self-conscious than I like. “Hmm. My name is Astarion ,” he adds with a flourish.

Astarion. A beautiful name for a beautiful creature. It matches him well - it’s unique, like his silvery white hair and his bright red eyes. I’ve never seen an elf with such an eye color. In fact, I’m not sure that I have ever seen anyone with quite a color. My own elven eyes are green, just like my father’s, and my hair a gingery red, just like my mother’s. I’m not sure what he meant when he called me cute , but from his lips, I don’t really mind.

Now is not the time for me to get lost in a beautiful face. But it’s like I can’t help it, at all. Something about him, aside from the tadpole, feels like a magnet to me. I’m not quite stupid enough to think there is something special about that magnetic feeling; after all, I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, easily swooned by a pretty face. And this is an incredibly pretty face, on a man who was holding a knife to my throat just a moment ago.

“And I’m Shadowheart,” my new friend adds, breaking me out of my trance.

“That’s interesting,” he mutters, his eyes flittering to her for just a moment in recognition, before moving back to mine. I break eye contact with him, looking at the road ahead and hoping to the gods above that my face is not as flushed as I think it is. Stupid. So stupid.

“We were going to see about resting, wherever we can find some peace,” I tell him, gesturing to the path instead of looking at him. “We fought several of those brains and some imps, as well, on the ship, so we’re fresh out of spells.”

“What kind of magic do you do? Are you a witch?” He asks, a bit of a playful tone in his voice. My eyes dart back to him.

“A wizard,” I tell him, flatly, willing myself not to be playful back. “And Shadowheart is a cleric. A very good one,” I add, remembering the feeling of my back when I first woke up.

“Oh, good!” He says, smiling at me. He absentmindedly points a finger toward me as he scans me up and down. “I was a bit worried you were fighting with your hands. Don’t know that I would trust such a little thing to protect us from a bear leaping out of the woods.”

“You need my protection?” I ask him, my attempt to remain stoic suddenly slipping away as I place a hand over my heart in feigned surprise. I have to bite back; my feelings of self-consciousness only increase at his comment. I’m well aware of my small stature, and that is a big part of the reason I began using magic. But that’s none of his business. “That’s cute,” I add, copying his earlier comment about myself. Two can play at that game.

His mouth gapes for a moment at my response to his own smartass little quip, before settling into a small smirk. The little smile on his face is actually very cute, enough to send a brief flutter through my stomach.

“Enough,” Shadowheart groans, holding up her hands. “I am too tired for this. She is strong, but the way,” she says to Astarion, “though maybe not so much without any magic,” she adds, looking at me. “Which is why we must rest.”

She’s right, and we all know it. There’s a large tree up the hill that we agree to rest under for the night because the grass is a little thicker and softer underneath it. Shadowheart is the only one who happened to be carrying any supplies for traveling when she was taken - though it doesn’t seem that she wishes to share what exactly she was traveling for. I only happen to have my spell book, journal and a handful of nuts on me, having just been at a class. Astarion has his dagger and the clothes on his back, as far as I can tell.

“I’ve only got one spare blanket,” Shadowheart says to us, “so I suppose you’ll either have to share or fight over it.”

I look at him, and he looks at me. “It’s all yours, dear,” he says. “I’ll take first watch.”

I’m not going to argue with him. Shadowheart tosses the blanket to me, and I drape it over myself on the forest floor while Astarion makes himself comfortable against the trunk of the tree for his watch. I have half a mind to suggest we share the blanket, but it is threadbare and small. We would surely have to be on top of each other to benefit from it. Although…

No. Stupid. Is it the tadpole in my brain making me think like a f*cking idiot?

In the back of my mind, though, I know why these thoughts are running rampant through my head. This is my first breath of freedom from the man my father picked for me to marry, over a year ago. A man that never would have let me have the only blanket, or would have used it as an excuse to make me sleep with him. I have to try and push my thoughts about the first pretty thing I see to the back of my mind - obviously, it’s some kind of strange trauma response. Of course I want to jump behind some finely carved, tall elf. And it’s fine to daydream, so long as I don’t allow myself to let my guard down too much with him.

My mind races as I try to get myself to trance. If we get these worms out, surely we will all part ways, and I will be headed back to the Gate. I will be reclaimed by my father, and as such, by Aldous - the wealthy man my father picked for me to relieve him of his duties to care for me.

The way I see it, at this point, my two options are to return to the Gate and accept spending the next 50 years or so (he’s a human, thank the gods) with a man who disgusts me and will surely force me to push out his little half-elf babies, or keep this worm in my head and turn into a monster.

And honestly, I’m not sure which is actually worse.

Chapter 2: Don’t Worry About Me

Chapter Text

When I finally fall into my trance, my nightmares return. It hasn’t been unusual for me to have trouble resting or to awake prematurely due to my nightmares for the past several months, as I lie in wait of my betrothed to decide on a date for him to finally own me. But this is different.

This one begins with me making my return to Baldurs Gate, tadpole free. My father happily welcomes me back and brings me home, and I feel so happy at the thought of seeing my own bed again. It’s not much, but the sheets are clean and the house is warm. But when my dream transports my father and I to our little kitchen, Aldous is there, waiting for me. My father and the kitchen disappear, and the wretched man is screaming at me.

“This is why I told you not to go to those stupid f*cking classes, Luna,” he spits at me, just as he has done many times before. “Because you are too godsdamned stupid to even keep yourself out of a mindflayer ship. Your little magic couldn’t keep you from getting a worm stuck in your head. I bet you’re permanently damaged from it.”

My body is frozen, because that is how I would have reacted in real life. Defending myself or screaming back would only result in this lasting longer.

“Did you like it? Life without me?” He circles me like a snake circling prey, skin pulled taut by anger. “You’ll never be anything without me.” I feel his hands on me, as real as they feel in real life.

“No, please no,” I yell, willing for the dream to stop. “No. No.”

I bolt awake to the feeling of real hands on my face, and when my eyes open I realize that I’m shouting those words into the face of the pale elf I met last night. Of course I am.

As soon as I realize that I am awake, that I am not in my nightmare, I’m able to stop the screaming. Astarion stares at me while I stare at him, unable to speak.

“What the hells was that about?” Shadowheart groans, sticking her head out of her little tent.

“It’s fine,” Astarion calls out to her, “go back to sleep.”

“Is that true, Luna?” She grumbles, undoubtedly wanting to make sure I’m not being stabbed by the dagger man.

“Yes,” I call back, and her tent curtain falls back to a close.

“Like she said - what in the hells was that?” He whispers sharply to me. He realizes that his hands are still on my face from waking me up and he quickly pulls them back.

I pull myself up into a sitting position, but hold my knees up to my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible. “Just a bad dream,” I tell him sheepishly. “I get them all the time.”

“You wake up screaming? All the time?” He asks, looking more concerned than anything.

“I know it sounds crazy,” I concede, “but sometimes I can’t… trance normally.”

He nods, but his wide eyes still watch me intently. “You’re not the first I’ve known to have nightmares, I suppose, but I’ve never seen something like that.”

His words pique my interest - the omission that he’s met other elves (presumably) who have had nightmares during trance. But the look on his face makes me feel the need to lean more into my defensiveness than my intrigue. “It’s hard to explain-“ I start, but he holds up his hand at me.

“Just… try not to do it,” he interrupts. “I’m afraid of what may be attracted to find us out here by the sound of you screaming.”

He makes a really good point. However, I’m not sure that whatever piece of my weird brain controlling my trance nightmares will care that he makes a good point.

“Do you want to switch watch?” I ask him, changing the subject away from my screaming, while also trying to offer up some rest to him as an apology. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get anymore sleep, and it’s probably about time, anyway.”

I have no idea what time it is, but I do feel at least a little bit recovered from the previous days events. I feel safer out here in the woods than I do in my dreams, or in my own home - not that that is saying much.

“I suppose,” he says, almost in a disappointed way. I toss him the blanket I was using, and watch him ball it up to use as a pillow.

I position myself against the tree trunk, much like he did, facing both him and Shadowheart’s tent to make sure that no harm comes to them. I take out my little spellbook and quill, and decide I will just write some words out on one of the back pages to keep myself entertained for the night.

Shadowheart.

Astarion.

I start by writing both of their names, as if I will forget them if I don’t.

We fell out of a nautiloid with tadpoles in our brains.

Like a silly diary entry. I haven’t kept a diary in years, and I definitely wouldn’t have started anytime soon even if I were back home. The most prominent things in my brain, the ones that would make it into a diary, would surely get me into trouble if anyone got ahold of it. No matter how hard I try to hide something, I’ve learned that the only secrets I get to keep at the ones that stay within the confines of my own mind. And I’m not going to take chances like that out here, either.

My eyes wander over to where he is sleeping. Or at least, seemingly trying to sleep. He has the blanket folded up neatly under his head, and his hands clasped together across his stomach, like a corpse at a funeral - just with a bit more color to his skin. Really, just a tiny bit more color than a corpse. He is the perfect picture of an elf properly trancing; calm, steady breathing, twitching at every sound of a squirrel scuttling through the bushes, still aware of his surroundings. Something I used to be able to do but can’t anymore, it seems.

He looks quite boyish, like this. Looking at him now I would have no idea how strong his arms are, or how sharp his tongue is. He has delicate features, aside from the obviously elvish pointed ears, just like my own. Delicate lips, and surprisingly thick eyelashes resting against his cheeks. He’s simply… beautiful.

I move my quill to the bottom of the “diary” page, and begin to try and draw what I see. I start with the outline of his nose, his lips. The disheveled curls at the top of his head. I wish I could somehow capture how the slight night wind makes them quiver, but I suppose that part is only for me to enjoy in this moment.

I spend the rest of my night watch on this sketch of him. I try to sketch Shadowheart on the page, as well, maybe to try and convince myself that I’m just as fascinated by her as I am our other companion. But I can’t see her face, so I can only draw the bits and pieces I remember. Her hair, her full lips, and some of the details of her metal armor. I start working on an eye, but it doesn’t seem to turn out quite right, so I abandon that course of action before I make it to the second one. I used to draw like this more often when I was a bit younger, but my priorities have had to shift as I’ve gotten older. This is a reprieve, for me.

I don’t know how much time has passed when the sun begins to rise, but my portrait of a resting Astarion is fully formed. Through the trees, I can catch small glimpses of the tangerine-pink sunrise. Gods, what I would do for a basket of tangerines right now.

The subject of my portrait is the first to arise. As soon as the sunlight begins to graze his face, he awakens. I shift my eyes from him back to my spellbook before he can look at me. In my peripheral vision, I watch him look around and stretch before getting up.

“I’m going to go for a… morning walk,” he says to me, standing above me and looking down. I quickly hug my book to my chest before looking up at him. “Oh, anything interesting in that little book?”

“Umm… no,” I mutter, trying to sound as uninteresting as possible. “It’s just a spellbook. Why would you go for a walk by yourself out here?”

He chuckles, but it almost sounds forced. “Don’t you worry about me, darling. I can handle myself.”

I shrug, and watch as he walks away into the forest. I just know he has some secrets. But so do I, I suppose. We are just three strangers who fell off of a ship made out of flesh with worms connecting us to each other in our brains, after all. Super, super normal.

As it turns out, we are not the only worm-infested beings walking around in the woods. Shortly after we depart down the path in the morning, we meet a fellow wizard, called Gale. Who happened to have himself stuck in some kind of vortex, and needed saving. Not the type of wizard-y thing I typically find myself involved in, but I suppose I am just a beginner and we are all different. The wizard immediately accepts to join us in our search for a healer, and even gives us some interesting and horrifying information about how we should be turning into brain-sucking monsters within the next few days. Sweet.

Only a short jaunt down the road as a new group of four, we run into one of the strangest sights I have ever encountered. A boar, looking completely colorless. Bloodless. In the middle of the road.

“What the f*ck…” I mutter, as we stand over the poor, dead thing.

“Fascinating,” Gale says, moving in to look closer at it. He’s not the same kind of wizard as me. I read books and collect mushrooms. He gets himself stuck in vortexes and gets too close to dead boars.

“Clearly the work of a vampire,” Shadowheart says, as if there is absolutely no question about it.

“What makes you say that?” Astarion asks her, shifting on his feet.

“The things been drained of blood, you can tell. Not sure what else would drain all of the blood of something, without eating any of its carcass,” she says. She makes a good point. We saw Owlbear tracks a bit earlier in the day, but that creature would have left nothing but bones on the ground.

“I always heard there were vampires in Baldurs Gate,” I muse, looking at the two bite marks on the boar. “But they’ve never bothered me. It seems that if this were a vampire, she was kind enough to kill the boar, rather than one of us.”

“A she?” Gale asks, looking at me inquisitively. “Making assumptions about this being the work of a vampiress?”

I blush a little bit, not realizing what I had said. “I always just picture a tall, raven-haired seductress, you know?”

“Maybe not such a horrible thing to come visit us in the night!” Gale says, “You know, I happen to have a history with very powerful women. As a wizard, you know of Mystra, correct? She was my-“

As we walk away from the boar, Gale entertains us with stories of his encounters with the goddess, Mystra. Gods, that man can f*cking talk. But for me, it’s a welcome reprieve from the silence of walking with Shadowheart and Astarion. Something to take my mind off of… the horrors of living.

Throughout the day, we encounter several different things that I would personally describe as horrors. Someone (not me) decides that it’s a particularly good idea to follow the Owlbear tracks into its own den, where the creature is subdued by what I suppose is some convincing growling from Gale. We’re able to snatch up a couple of sets of mildew-y camping supplies left in its nest by travelers the creature no doubt consumed. Not the greatest, but beggars cannot be choosers. And then we fight off some possessed hyenas.

A day full of things I have never experienced before in the Gate. But much more exciting than my previous life, I suppose.

The day comes to an end before we’ve found anywhere good to camp out. But we’re exhausted, so we resign ourselves to another night in a forest clearing. The one thing I have going for me tonight, through, is that I now have a tent, and a little bit of privacy from the others.

I’m well trained on how to get myself to fall asleep, despite my anxiety and racing thoughts - which were already bad before we had worms in our brains, and has only become insurmountably worse. Conjuring whole other worlds and lives in my mind keeps the thoughts away until I can get myself to slip into trance. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, the daydreams can turn into real dreams, allowing me an actually restful night. Only sometimes.

Tonight, I daydream again of the pale elf. I try not to think too hard about that magnetic pull I feel towards him, because that only makes my anxiety worse, not better. Instead, I simply imagine him in more conceited, skin-deep ways. His lips are the last thing on my mind before I drift into trance.

In the morning, we continue our journey through the unfamiliar forest. We’re all tired and hungry, and maybe that is what made Shadowheart start asking the rest of us random questions about our lives. Of course, we come to find out through asking her questions back to her that she has almost no memory of her life before the nautiloid, for whatever reason. So she continues to ask the questions, for nothing in return. A bad deal.

“So, do any of you have a lover waiting back in Baldurs Gate for you?” She asks.

“I’m quite done with, that for now,” Gale says quickly. He offers up information about himself very willingly. He’s already hinted a little bit at the fact that he used to be sleeping with a literal goddess, so no more questions are needed, there.

“What about you, Luna?” She asks me, directly. I hesitate to answer for a little bit too long.

“No one,” I finally say.

“That was a big pause,” Gale points out. I could slap him. “What’s going on there?”

“It’s complicated,” I say, then realize I don’t want to leave it at that and make it sound like I’m committed to anyone. Just in case. “Well, technically I belong to someone. But I really want nothing to do with him,” I say. I try to make it sound as un-interesting as possible, but clearly that does not work.

“You what?” Astarion asks. He told Shadowheart he was tired of questions about 10 questions ago when she was still asking for one-worded answers, so the sound of his voice catches me off guard.

“I belong to someone,” I repeat. “Like, promised. So that when we’re married, my father gets a… dowry, I suppose you could call it.”

“Are you being serious?” Shadowheart asks, glancing over at me between watching her feet for snags and roots in the ground.

“Oh, unfortunately, I’m totally serious,” I say, managing an awkward laugh. “If I hadn’t been snatched by that nautiloid with you lot, I’d be planning a wedding that I don’t want.”

No one says anything, so I continue. “I don’t come from very much. Pretty much nothing, actually. So when my dad set this all up, I think he really believed he was doing me a favor. He gets some money to pay off some debts, and I get to live in a little more comfort. It’s just not what I want,” I say, “I’d rather live in squalor.”

“Well, thank you for sharing. Sorry for the question,” Shadowheart says. I realize that this is the first real bit of personal information I’ve shared with them. These people don’t know me, don’t know my dad or Aldous. I can say whatever the Hells I want.

“It’s okay,” I say, looking down at my own feet stepping on the ground. “Kind of makes this whole thing easier. Of course I want the worm out of my head, but I can’t say I miss home.”

“Well, it’s important to look at the positives,” Gale says, forcing himself to smile back at me, before quickly turning back toward the path.

I realize in the silence that follows that I’ve dampened the mood. I would blame Shadowheart for asking the question in the first place, but it sounded innocent enough when it left her mouth. Maybe it’s a reprieve for the group that this stops the line of questioning, and returns us to walking mostly in silence, occasionally getting a story from Gale.

Although we’re technically both wizards, he’s clearly much more well-read and experienced than me. Not having the funds to afford the typical wizarding classes, tomes and the like has been an insecurity of mine ever since I began learning, because it has always made me feel out of place. Kind of makes me wish he would shut up.

Chapter 3: Is It A Crush?

Chapter Text

I can pretend to hold my own next to the more experienced wizard, but it feels like I’m performing while I’m firing off well-placed magic missiles and cantrips with the others. I even deal the final blow on a few of the hyenas we run into down the road.

Not incredibly impressive, however, when we find the Githyanki girl from the ship alive only moments before the run-in with the hyenas, and she cuts through them with a greatsword like they were made out of butter (they weren’t - I saw their guts and bones).

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself weak in most contexts. I have muscled legs from one of my preferred forms of escape from my own house, which is walking all around the city for hours until the muscles grow tired or the sun starts to set. I am well-shaped, at least, with the benefit of the curve of my hips and larger breasts making me look a bit bigger than I would without them, particularly under a loose-fitting robe.

However, compared to the others I have found myself journeying with, I absolutely am physically weak. Small enough that if anyone looks too closely at my robes, they’ll see the simple hemming on the sleeves and the bottom, after tripping over the damn thing a few too many times. I’ve never had a need to try and lift anything much heavier than a sack of potatoes, so the musculature of my arms also leaves much to be desired. If I weren’t so good at pretending to be some expert, learned mage I’m certain they would have left me to fend for myself. And with Gale present, the need to prove myself feels even more imperative; he will absolutely be able to smell the fraud on me if I fail to keep up appearances.

We aren’t friends,or at least none of us are friends yet. We’re absolute strangers, outside of some of the more personal details we’ve acquired from each other through Shadowheart’s bored questioning. So outside of our shared tadpoles and goals to remove them, there is really no need for any of these strangers to care about me.

Even though I already find myself caring about them. I know that is likely just a personal fault.

In my attempts to create a space for myself in the group, I begin trying to be somewhat of a leader - or at least, someone who gives occasional directions. It feels strange to speak up and make suggestions about which way down the path we should go when I have absolutely no idea where we are, but I’m compelled to do it anyway by the need to convince my companions that I’m a real member of the group.

“I think I can hear people yelling down that way,” I call out when we reach a fork in the path. “We should go see who it is.”

“Why should we assume they’re friendly?” Astarion sneers.

“We shouldn’t, and we should approach carefully,” I say, looking over my shoulder at him. He looks at me again with that cute little smirk, but this time it looks less like he thinks I’m being funny and more like he thinks I’m an imbecile, and that’s funny to him. “But we are looking for a healer, and that means we need to find some civilization. Yelling means people, and people might mean there’s something nearby.”

His smirk turns into pursed lips for a moment, before surrendering. “It’s on your head,” he sighs, unable to admit that I’ve made a fair point.

Despite having lived a so far very sheltered life, I’m fairly certain I can read Astarion well because I’ve seen his type before. In myself, particularly. I think we’re two different variations of the same type of person. I’m well-guarded, and when I start to feel like someone is pushing too hard on me, I can be very quick-witted and good at boarding myself back up with a retort - I think in that we are the same.

When that strategy doesn’t work, though, I become sensitive. I cry a lot. I blush a lot. I think Astarion, instead, covers himself back up by being aloof, or uncaring. I can’t be sure about all of this, of course, but I am absolutely sure that he is the type to not let himself cry enough . But so is Shadowheart, and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten on reading her.

This idea of him, though, for some reason makes me like him more. I do love a project.

“I think that’s a great idea, Luna,” Gale chimes in, and I smile with teeth back at him for his words of support. He’s been saying my name back to me every time we talk like a schoolteacher trying to memorize names.

“Thanks, Gale,” I respond, sending his own name back to him.

As we approach the noise, I begin to recognize the distinct sound of hyena screeches among the yelling. As we begin to be able to make out words, we also understand that the yelling is a fight .

Lae’zel, the Githyanki girl and evidently a skilled fighter, lifts herself into a tree for a better view of what’s ahead. When we found her, she had been held by a couple of tieflings, who informed us that there is an encampment of druids nearby that they have been taking refuge at. They had pointed us in the general direction of it, but were wary of the Githyanki after some apparently bad run-ins.

“It’s here,” she says, hopping down from the tree. “And they’re being attacked by goblins.”

“Could be a good way to earn their trust,” Gale says, “to let us in and share their food.”

The others seem in to be agreeable, pulling out weapons and preparing to fight.

“Another fight. Let’s go,” I mutter, stretching out my arms in preparation for what’s ahead.

The idea to help the druids and the tieflings fight off their attackers works surprisingly well at earning the trust of most of those inside, despite the reservations they have about our green companion. I think it must be hard to be immediately judged by everyone around her, but Lae’zel seems to harbor the same feelings of superiority over others, so it may even out.

When we arrive inside the druid grove, we quickly realize that there is a lot of tension between the druids and the tieflings that are taking refuge there. Regardless, after we help them stave off the goblins and offer our protection, they allow us to make camp with them. Or at least, make camp in a wooded area behind their gate that hasn’t been already claimed by refugees.

Another tadpoled freak who helped us defend the grove from the goblins joins us for the night, as well, by the name of Wyll. Our numbers seem to be growing so quickly that I can’t help but worry why so many of us somehow survived and ended up here, together, but I’m too tired and hungry to care that much.

Astarion volunteers for first watch of the night, despite the fact that he has taken a watch shift both of the previous nights. I suppose he’s one of those elves that only needs a couple of hours of meditation a night to feel fully recharged - f*cking show off. Shadowheart immediately offers to take second, knowing that she hasn’t had to watch for us at all since we all came together. And once again, I’m too tired to care about any of it.

“At dawn, we will find the tiefling that the other ones spoke of,” Lae’zel says, as if she is our commanding officer. “To get find out where the Githyanki crèche may be located.”

“Not that I don’t care about finding more information on this crèche you spoke of,” Shadowheart says, definitely sounding like she doesn’t care to find more information on the crèche, “but shouldn’t we be trying to keep the tension to a minimum, if we want their help?”

“We do not need their help,” Lae’zel insists, already ready to fight.

“We at least need their food,” Gale calls out from across the campfire, where he had been speaking to Wyll. “So we should play nice.”

My stomach growls at the thought. All we’ve had to eat in the past few days are the snacks we had on our person when we were abducted, and whatever non-spoiled foods we’ve been able to find while searching for something like this encampment. I cannot keep living off of berries Shadowheart swears are not poisonous, and the nuts I happened to have thrown in my robe pocket before I left for class on that fateful night in Baldurs Gate.

“They are protecting the tiefling refugees, so they are either bountiful with food or stupid,” Lae’zel responds, as if she is actually not sure which one of those possibilities is most likely.

If I can’t eat yet, I’ll have to just sleep. I hope any traders we find will have some new tents, and maybe bedrolls for us. Although I’m glad to have the cushion of the items we’ve found, they are smelly.

As it does every night, my mind is racing and keeping me from falling into trance. Thoughts about the little visitor in my brain, and the powers it has seemingly given me. Thoughts about how my dad may be doing, back at home without me. Does he know where I went? Do the people of the Gate know that many of us were abducted by a stray nautiloid? Do they think us to be dead?

Have to sleep. Have to f*cking sleep.

My mind drifts to my companions. I attempt to think of some of the others, to think of their skill sets and the things we’ve shared with each other so far. But I can’t keep my brain off of the pale elf with the beautiful curly hair; my mind wants to linger on him the longest. I wish I knew more about him. I can’t help but to think about how handsome he is - who wouldn’t? It feels ridiculous now, here, to be having a little crush. Is it a little crush? A stupid little crush?

The problem is, ever since I’ve had trouble falling into a decent trance, my best method for getting myself to actually slip into unconsciousness is to daydream. I always hope that if I daydream enough, my brain will pick up the idea and allow that to be what I actually dream about. It’s not uncommon for me to think about finding someone better, someone who loves me before I fall asleep at night, it just feels… silly in this context. We are all hurling toward our inevitable death or transformation into monsters, and I am thinking about running my hands through that curly head of hair. Breaking through that barrier he has up. Being loved by an elf who is witty and beautiful, allowing my brain to fill in gaps and make him caring and fun, too. I don’t know if that’s actually who he is, but it’s just a daydream, after all.

I am just starting to drift off into trance with these thoughts, when suddenly something makes me stir - the slight sound of a step. I listen again for a noise, but I hear nothing. I relax my body again, before soon feeling a presence looming over me, and I tumble around to come face to face with Astarion.

Chapter 4: A Gift

Chapter Text

The beautiful elf is leaned over me, mouth open, red eyes staring into mine. His leg still lingers in the threshold of the tent, allowing moonlight to slip through and paint his face with light. “sh*t,” is all he says, frozen over me.

My heart races. The subject of my daydreams, suddenly standing before me. Under different circ*mstances, I could have been delighted. But nervousness coats his face and in turn makes me nervous of his intentions. Why is he being sneaky? Into my tent, in the dead of night? There are only two possibilities in my mind of what he could be trying to do to me. Murder, or… worse. I hold up my hand, ready to fire bolt him. “Just wait, please,” he begs, “it’s not what it looks like!”

“Then what the ever loving f*ck are you doing?” I growl back at him. “Explain it to me. Now. And then I will probe your thoughts with this stupid tadpole that connects us to see if you’re lying.”

He hesitates, then sighs in resignation. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just needed… well. Blood.”

“You f*cking-“ I start, about to make him explain himself more. But suddenly it hits me. The red eyes. The pale, almost white skin. Teeth barred in the night. “Vampire,” I gasp.

He looks miserable. His shoulders hang at the discovery of what he is, his eyes sad and tired. “It’s not what you think,” he says, “I don’t kill anybody. I feed on animals. Anything I can find.”

The strange image from yesterday enters my mind - the bloodless creature in the middle of the road that Shadowheart had quickly determined had been ended by a vampire. “That pig?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“I shouldn’t have left it in the pathway like that,” he grumbles. “I was just too weak to bury it. I’m so weak.” I can see it in his eyes that he is telling the truth, but he is already opening up his mind to me.

Hungry. Starving. I can see that he’s not lying about not killing people for blood, I can even see that he’s never tasted blood from another person. In fact, his most frequent meal has been disgusting rats. Not even fresh rats. Sucking out what little blood they have, barely scratching the surface of what he needs. Years and years of eternal life spent starving . Alone. I see the outline of a man, another elf. He controls Astarion. He has kept him starving and tortured. Before I can see too much of this master, he pushes me out.

“Did you see?” He asks.

I simply nod my head.

“I need you to trust me. I won’t hurt you. I need you, and you need me to be strong,” he says quickly. “I’m sorry I tried to take it without asking. I didn’t know what else to do.” He looks forlorn. Exhausted. Sure I am going to kick his ass out of my tent and out of our camp.

That thought does cross my mind. There are risks to having a vampire travel with us. If I hadn’t just seen into his mind, I would have wondered about how controllable his thirst actually is. But he knows that he can live without blood. He’s miserable doing it, but he can. And our group is more important to his survival than anything.

“I trust you,” I murmur, and watch the relief flood his face.

He thinks for a moment, nodding. “Thank you. Now can you just trust me… a little further?” He asks, flashing me his fangs in a small smile.

Right. My blood. He wants to drink my blood.

“Does it hurt?” I ask him.

He looks back at me, shocked. “Uh, well. I guess I’m not sure. But you can ask me to stop at any time. I promise.”

My mind swirls with questions, too many questions to answer in a single night. But I allow a couple to slip through. “That wouldn’t… turn me, would it?”

His head shakes fervently. “I am a vampire spawn, dear. Not a true vampire. I cannot turn you, even if I wanted to.”

“One more question,” I say with a sigh, holding my index finger up to him. He nods. “Why did you think I would not wake from trance if you bit me? Why not bite… one of the humans?” I ask him cautiously. He, out of all of my companions, should know that the way humans sleep and dream would be so much more conducive to getting a bite unnoticed.

He seems to consider the question himself for a moment, before shaking his head. “I don’t know. I should have considered that. I am just… desperate.”

The look in his eyes is sincere. I believe him. And I do need him to be strong. “Okay,” I accept. “What do I need to do?”

“Gods. I never thought you would accept,” he says, almost gleefully. “You can just, er, lie back down. I’ll have a little and then I’ll leave.”

I see an opportunity here. To get something I want, too. Something I need.

“You don’t have to,” I start, and he stares at me curiously, “but maybe you could… stay a little after. To make sure I’m okay and I can rest without dying of like, blood loss or something?”

I’m not super convinced, myself, by my proposition. A little bit of blood obviously won’t kill me. He isn’t super convinced either, by the way he smirks as he says, “Of course. I will keep an eye on you until I can hear that loud heart of yours beating normally again.”

A little mortified, but satisfied with our agreement nonetheless, I lie back down on my pillow. He shifts silently, crouching down next to me with his lips an inch away from my neck. He places one hand on my hip for stability, and his touch makes my stomach flutter.

“Are you sure?” He asks. I can tell he is dying to bite me, but he needed to ask one more time.

“Just be gentle,” I answer, closing my eyes.

The next thing I feel is two little simultaneous pokes into my neck. Nothing worse than a needle, but freezing cold for a moment before fading into numbness. He is gentle, as promised. I feel his lips only lightly against my skin, and that part feels… nice. The blood pulls out of me softly in a barely perceptible stream. I allow him to drink, uninterrupted, until I begin to feel lightheaded.

I gently paw at his hand on my hip, but he does not budge. I shove at his arm a little, next, and I feel him move slightly, but he stays in.

I realize it wouldn’t be such a bad way to die, being sucked dry by a vampire. It’s like falling asleep, knowing that my body will simply be too weak to wake back up again. However pleasant a way to die it could be, though, I’m not ready to die. My vision begins to darken from the lack of blood flow to my head, and I know that I have to get him to stop.

“ Astarion,” I gasp out, testing if using my words will work better, and he finally pulls away.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes breathlessly. His eyes are still on my neck. “Oh, you’re dripping,” he says, and he very quickly licks over the holes on my neck.

The feeling of his tongue against my skin sends a shiver down my spine. Not a bad or uncomfortable shiver. But an interesting kind of shiver. “Wouldn’t want any of that going to waste,” he says, happily.

Knowing what little I know about vampires, I still know that he must have seen the shiver, and must have heard the heart beating like a hummingbirds wings in my chest. I’ll choose to not think too hard on that.

“That… wasn’t so bad,” I tell him, watching the look on his face. He already looks brighter, stronger than he did minutes ago, the circles under his eyes less prominent. “But I would have appreciated it if you stopped a bit earlier.”

“I meant to. You pulled me out of it when you said my name. A little bit of that every once in a while, my dear, will keep me strong enough to keep you alive when you run out of spells,” he says, beginning to get up but seemingly remembering our deal, and resigning himself to getting comfortable next to me. His hand still rests on my hip, though he’s had every opportunity to move it. “That’s a promise.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” I say, shrugging my shoulders slightly. “But I guess I’m… weirdly fine with it. For now, at least.”

His hand slides away, and a little wave of disappointment washes over me. “It will be better for you, too, if we get you fed,” he says, furrowing his eyebrows together like he’s thinking. “I’ll make sure you get something tomorrow.”

He is happy. I don’t have much to compare it to, given that we’ve barely known each other for a couple of days, but he surely hasn’t looked this happy or spoken to me so easily in those couple of days. I suppose I would be quite miserable, too, if I had to live off of some boars and rats. I’m quite miserable as it is living off of nuts and berries.

“This is a gift, you know,” he murmurs, pulling me out of my thoughts for a moment. “I won’t forget it.” He sounds… genuine. Grateful.

“Goodnight, Astarion,” I whisper, as I close my eyes once more to try and rest.

“Goodnight, my delicious treat,” he says back, and I feel his breath against my ear. I feel my body tingle again in response to his words.

Don’t take it too seriously, stupid. He just thinks my blood is literally delicious.

I have no nightmares tonight. Maybe it’s the delirium of just having had my blood sucked by an actual vampire to the point that I thought he would kill me, or maybe it’s the presence of the beautiful man himself next to me, but I have good dreams. Fun and bright ones about making it back to Baldurs Gate with my new friends, going to the carnival. Nothing incredibly memorable, but that’s what normal dreams look like, right? Weird, thrown together messes that you can’t remember or cry about in the morning.

When I awake the next morning, Astarion is gone. But my bedroll and my tent still smell like him - mixed in with the mildew smell from the cave. I shiver as I think about him watching me fall into trance, listening to the sound of my heart and my breathing before quietly slipping away.

That is the first night that I have rested through the night, uninterrupted, since long before the nautiloid took me. I feel strangely renewed, and I can’t tell yet if it’s from the solid bit of meditative sleep or my little crush, which has somehow grown all the bigger.

Vampire. A f*cking vampire? It’s obvious, now, thinking about it. He’s so pale, and he has bright red eyes like I’ve never seen before. The words he uses, the cadence with which he speaks and the clothes he wears didn’t seem out of ordinary to me before, either, but now I realize it’s possible that he’s quite old. I wonder how old?

It doesn’t completely surprise me, though, that he’s been able to keep up the appearances of the living with us. The elvish ancestry helps, since it’s not completely out of the ordinary for elves to be a bit behind on the times, seeming strange to less long-lived creatures. My own father insists on drinking only the oldest wines he can get his hands on, claiming that the brewers on the sword coast just don’t make it like they used to 300 years ago.

Without a mirror to look into, I only brush out my hair to pull back into a braid before leaving my tent. That is my first mistake. Apparently, I have slept in later than usual, and the others are all up and getting ready to get a move on. That is my second mistake.

“Good morning, sleepy head!” Gale says, much too cheery as he runs up to greet me. “I wanted to see what you thought about this book,” he says, opening up a large tome to show me. As I’m inspecting the pages of the book with him, Shadowheart begins walking over to me with some tea.

“What is that on your neck?” She exclaims. Oh, f*ck.

“What is what?” I ask her, my eyes darting around frantically for Astarion while snapping my hand over the spot I distinctly remember him biting me. I lock eyes with him, and I know from the horrified look on his face that he heard Shadowheart.

I connect my mind to his for just a moment. I’m so sorry. Please help me.

He rushes over, attempting to intercept Shadowheart, but her fingers reach the new scabs on my neck before he can join us. “It looks like you got bit,” she says, disgust in her voice. “But these are huge, not like a bug.”

“Oh, I had no idea,” I laugh, trying to shrug off the conversation. “Maybe from yesterday’s little fight with the hyenas.”

“That can’t be from the hyenas. It looks like a person bit you,” she says, thinking all too hard about my new wound. “Oh my gods. You got bit by the f*cking vampire in your sleep.”

“I wonder why she didn’t kill her?” Gale blurts out, with more curiosity than concern.

“No, I did not-“ I start, and I see Astarion shake his head at me.

“It’s okay, Luna,” he says, in resignation. “I may as well let the cat out of the bag,” he adds. I notice, now, the large, scarred-over bite marks on his own neck. Another obvious tell that I missed before.

Shadowheart braces herself, readying her body to fight even though her weapons and her armor are both still away in her tent. “ Astarion is a vampire?” She says it still like a question, looking back and forth between us. “And you bit her.”

“With my permission,” I say like a plea, willing her to drop the defensive stance. The others are beginning to gather, drawn to attention by the conversation growing louder.

“Why?” She asks, looking away from him and only at me, deep concern furrowing between her brows and in her eyes.

“He asked me to help him, to make him stronger,” I explain, finding myself involuntarily putting my body in between the vampire and the others. “If I thought him a threat, I would have murdered him right there.”

The comment is meant to bring levity to the conversation, but the others stare at me like I’m speaking another language. “She would have tried to murder me,” Astarion adds from his position slightly behind me. The tickle of playfulness in his voice is a relief to hear, considering it’s my fault that his cover was just blown.

Gale holds up a hand briefly, still by my side and holding the tome he had been showing me. “Astarion, if you don’t mind me asking, how are you standing in the daylight?” An excellent question that I did not think to ask.

The vampire grins, revealing his fangs to the others. “I’m not certain, but I believe it’s the tadpole. It’s given me… some freedom, from my condition.”

I’m not well read on vampires, so about a million questions pop into my head. I turn to look at him, and his gaze shifts downward to look straight into my eyes, head co*cking to one side. For a moment it feels like I’ve blocked out the others, just to speak to him. “Have you tried out anything else? Walking into houses, mirrors?”

His brows furrow together. “I haven’t tried,” he says, before the smile creeps back onto his face. “But we’re going to have to.” I smile back at him, nodding in agreement. The look on his face is excited, desperate, and I am ready to help.

The other wizard clears his throat, and I turn back to look at the others, snapped out of my Astarion trance. “Well, as long as you don’t come for my neck,” he says, no apparent concern in his voice.

Shadowheart seems to soften at Gale’s words, but she narrows her eyes at Astarion. “If you so much as breathe on my neck, I will stake you,” she says through gritted teeth.

“I don’t want any of your blood,” Astarion says, annoyance starting to creep into his voice. “She is the only one of you that doesn’t smell foul,” he adds. If I didn’t know he was trying to deflect with the insult, I would have taken it as a compliment for myself.

Shadowheart hands me my tea, finally dropping her defensiveness. “As long as you’re really okay with this,” she says, searching my eyes for uncertainty.

“We already know I can scream loud enough to wake you up if I ever need help,” I tell her, knowing that only the three of us who were there on the first night will understand what I mean. This comment earns a small curl of Shadowheart’s lip, along with a nod of acceptance.

The group that had been gathering around us - all of our companions now included in the fray - seems satisfied with his answers and my reassurance. I take a slow sip of my tea, and continue my conversation with Gale about the book of spells like nothing has happened. I guess having worms in our brains that could turn us into monsters at any time has softened us up to the idea of traveling with a vampire.

As I am packing up my tent, I feel a familiar presence looming behind me. “Yes?” I ask, not losing focus on the tent. He comes around behind me, and begins helping me with my packing up.

“Just checking in?” He says, like a question.

“I actually feel fine,” I say, giving him a slight smile. “I slept very well. But I’m sorry for blowing your cover.”

“It was bound to happen, may as well get it over with,” he says, sounding a little grumpy about the whole thing. “Maybe should have bit a less conspicuous area,” he adds, his fingers ghosting over the part of my neck that he bit before pulling away, back to the tent. I can feel the heat rush to my cheeks and the skin prickle under his touch, but I can’t bear to look down at my own body to see the goosebumps that I know are present.

“The vampire conversation did leave me curious,” I start, trying to distract him from the sight of my body reacting to his touch. I get a raised eyebrow in response. “Did you really pick my tent because you can smell my blood?”

He laughs, almost doubling over himself, but I can see his eyes dart over to the others to make sure they aren’t listening. Shadowheart and Gale are both distracted by packing up their own tents.

He slides a little closer to me, so he can speak quietly. “I can’t really smell your blood, at least not while it’s still in your body. Although, you do smell generally better than some of the others,” he pauses, and if I didn’t know any better I would think he’s watching for the flush of my cheeks again, something my treacherous body is happy to provide for him.

“But if you must know, I decided that you were the least likely to try and drive a stake into my heart, as it were. Even when I was holding a dagger to your little throat and I could hear your heart pounding out of your chest. You gave me a chance,” he says. He hands my fully rolled-up tent to me, and his hands touch mine. I wonder if he can hear how loudly my heart beats now. “May not be the smartest decision you have ever made. But I’ll try not to disappoint you.”

“I’ll take the compliment about smelling better,” I shrug, trying to pretend that his words don’t impact me in the slightest. But they do. Maybe he thinks I’m silly, or not the smartest person here. At least I still smell good.

“Let’s make a deal,” I add quickly, before he turns away from me. He co*cks his head, interested. “Come to me when you need help. If I can provide it, I will. And you… help me rest.” I say the last part sheepishly, afraid that he won’t agree to the terms.

Instead, he smiles smugly at me. “I can surely do that,” he says, running a finger over the bite mark again before turning away from me, heading to pack up his own tent.

Unfortunately, that’s all it takes. I want him bad.

Chapter 5: Not Much of a Drinker

Chapter Text

The night after the revelations about our pale traveling companion, someone pulls at the curtain to my tent and I expect to see Astarion coming in for another bite. It’s a little soon for that, I think, since he nearly drained me dry the previous night, and I intend on telling him exactly that until I come face to face with green eyes instead of red.

“Are you getting ready to sleep?” Shadowheart asks me, peeking only her head through the curtain. “Or trance I guess is what you lot call it.”

I chuckle at the comment. “I usually call it sleep, to be honest. Trance feels too… pretentious sometimes,” I respond, before I remember that she asked me a question. “I was about to sleep, yes.”

The hand she was holding behind her back swings around to her front, revealing a bottle of wine still corked shut. “I was wondering if you’d care to join me for a bit before you rest?”

The suggestion catches me a little bit off guard. Outside of the questioning she’s subjected all of us to on our walks through the forest, Shadowheart has never approached me directly like this, just to hang out. I was actually starting to think she hated me, since she refuses to share any personal information with me, regardless of how easily she gets me to spill my own guts.

She’s here now, though, and thought this through enough to bring along a bottle of wine for us, so I may as well join her.

I’m still in my tunic and leggings and haven’t yet slipped off my bra, so I shut my spellbook and throw it on the ground before hopping up to meet her. “Let’s go.”

She leads me just to the shore of the beach near where we’ve made camp for the night before settling herself into the sand. She’s brought two glasses along with the wine bottle, revealing to me once again that she came to see me with the intention of drinking together.

“This looks better than any wine we’ve found on the road,” I muse, smelling the drink as she pours it into the glasses. It smells less like pure liquor and more like the grapes it was made of, sweet, dark and fermented.

“It’s from my personal stash,” she says as she hands me my glass, full to the brim with wine. “If I get something good, you’d best believe I’m keeping it for myself and not throwing it in with the dinner slop.”

I take a tentative sip and my nose crinkles at the sweet, strong taste of it. “I’d just about forgotten what real wine tastes like,” I mutter before taking a larger sip.

Shadowheart drinks the wine down quickly without her face making any weird movements. Like she’s drinking water. “We haven’t been out here that long,” she remarks.

“I’m not much of a drinker,” I admit. “My dad never leaves any bottles full at home.”

She chokes a little bit on the sip she was taking. “The one who’s selling you off?”

Her question makes me laugh, the wine making the heat fill my face faster already. Leave it to me to overshare at literally every moment possible, revealing that the man planning on collecting a dowry for me also has a drinking problem. “I’ve only got the one dad, yes.”

“You never know,” she shrugs.

When the laughter fades away, I notice her straighten her back in preparation for what she’s about to say next. “Part of the reason I wanted to talk to you, alone,” she starts, staring into my eyes with such an intensity that I straighten my own back. “Is I wanted to make sure that you’re actually okay with the whole… Astarion thing.” A tinge of disgust crosses her face as she says his name.

“I appreciate that,” I tell her, nodding and thinking through what I’m going to say next. “But really, it’s okay.”

There isn’t much I can say without revealing things about Astarion that I can’t help but feel should be his to share, if he feels inclined to. The images he shared with me when his tadpole connected to mine were horrifying. Up until this morning the only thing we knew about him was that he was a magistrate back in the city. Every other piece of information he has given to the group was in his own defense as they weighed the idea of staking him.

Shadowheart sighs. “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to help him, or whatever it is. I can only imagine how painful that was.”

“To be completely honest with you, it wasn’t that bad!” I respond with a chuckle, trying to get her to break a smile. She doesn’t.

“Listen, I’ve already decided that my life out here is going to be different than my life back home. I’m not going to force myself to be a dutiful helper for some… man,” I tell her, wrinkling my nose on the last word. “Unless I trust him and want to help. Which I do. Trust him. I poked into his brain with the worm and everything.”

She relaxes her posture a little bit at my words, slumping her shoulders slightly in relief. I even spot a curl of her lip before she speaks again. “See anything interesting while you were in there?”

“Not really,” I answer with a shrug, laughing so that I don’t have to actually reveal any information about what I saw. Sure, it’s not nice to imply that there isn’t much going on in his brain, but I figure he would prefer it to the alternative.

“I’ll take your word for it, then,” she says with a sigh. “I don’t ask because I think you’re weak or anything, by the way. Quite the opposite. I’d like to keep you around.”

I can feel as my face lights up at her words, happy to get the acknowledgment from her. “That’s funny. I was starting to think you didn’t care much for me.”

“And why’s that?” She asks, co*cking her head to the side.

“Well, I don’t really know much about you. I figured there was a lack of trust,” I answer, worrying as the words leave my lips that she will react poorly to them.

Instead of anger, she looks down at the sand with an almost sad, forlorn expression on her face. “You’ve been so honest with me. It’s time I give you some honesty,” she says, before looking back up at me.

Finally, I get to learn about Shadowheart. Or at least, I get to learn as much about Shadowheart as Shadowheart can tell me. She tells me about her religious beliefs, and how she is so devoted to Lady Shar that she was willing to lose her memories to embark on this mission - which, as far as she knows, is to return the strange artifact she fell off the nautiloid with back to Baldurs Gate.

She’s nervous while telling me these things, and I’m certain there’s a reason why, but I don’t really know enough about her religion to have any preconceived notions of her. Maybe if I knew more I would, but at this very moment, she’s just my friend, telling me about herself over a few glasses of wine.

We come to an understanding by the end of her sharing that she doesn’t want to speak on that matter anymore, and I don’t want to speak on the matter of Astarion anymore, and we switch easily to other topics. The light slips by quickly as we chat, mostly about my life or the things that have happened to us so far, and drink up the bottle of wine. It’s nearly completely dark by the time the bottle is empty, and we sit watching the waves hit the shore.

“Thank you for this,” she tells me, leaning back on her hands in the sand. “I know it must have seemed strange, just showing up to your tent. But I’ve been trying to come up with a way to thank you for saving me from that pod on the ship.”

“I didn’t really save you,” I respond. “I should be thanking you for how quickly you ran to that transponder so we could get out of the Hells.”

She doesn’t say anything but offers me a smile. “Anyway, that’s what friends are for,” I add, holding up my empty glass in a toast.

“Right. Friends,” she says, smiling back at me and clinking her empty glass against mine.

Chapter 6: Like Friends Do

Chapter Text

After our arrival at the Druid grove, Astarion keeps his promise on making sure I’m fed. He makes a point of keeping my bag stocked with food he either finds, trades or steals for - I’m fairly sure I’m the only one who has caught him stealing before, but it’s a talent of his - and on the premise of keeping me well enough to bolster his own sanguine hunger.

When we first visit the most well-stocked trader in the grove, he even asks me about my favorites.

“Cheese,” I answer quickly, eyeing the round of light-colored cheese the druid trader has. “I love cheese.”

“Even the smelly ones?” He asks, wrinkling his nose.

“Especially those ones,” I answer, nodding my head fervently. “I like other things that are more nourishing, like nuts, mushrooms, whatever… but cheese is my favorite.”

Despite his distaste for it, he trades for the cheese. “You don’t need to buy that for me,” I insist, even though I can feel my mouth watering at the thought of eating it. Salty, soft cheese to match the bread I have that will surely be stale soon. Perfect.

“Think of it as preparing my own meal,” he says with a simper, stuffing the paper-wrapped cheese into my pack.

It’s an odd gesture, but I find it sweet nonetheless. Several nights go by before he asks me for blood again, and I catch him walking back in from the forest enough times to know that he hasn’t decided to rely on me completely for his needs. Several nights go by with a hard time resting, but at least a full belly and a more comfortable, less smelly tent setup. We find enough to trade during our travels around the grove that I’m able to get an unadorned, mildew-free tent and bedroll, as well as several patchwork blankets to line my floor.

The night after we pick up a new companion, a fiery tiefling, I’m trying and failing to fall into trance when Astarion enters my tent. He hesitates at the curtain when he catches me still awake, a furrowed brow of concern flashing across his face before it’s gone just as quickly as he kneels down next to me.

“Hungry?” I ask him, my voice sounding more hoarse than I had imagined it would.

“Yes. Tired?”

“Yes. But can’t rest,” I say, rubbing my eyes.

“Do you always have trouble with this?” He inquires. The gentleness in his voice catches me off guard. I thought he would be rushing to get some blood and leave, but he seems genuinely curious about my sleeping.

“I’m not very good at trancing,” I respond, “as you learned the first night after we met, I have trouble with nightmares. Which is unusual, as you also know.”

He stares at me for a moment, as if he doesn’t know what to say now that he’s gotten his answer. He didn’t ask me to elaborate on the nightmares the first time I woke him up to the sound of them, and I’m almost a little disappointed that he doesn’t want to ask now.

I wouldn’t want to tell him. But asking would tell me that he cares.

“I didn’t have any nightmares the last time you bit me,” I blurt out, trying to fill the silence.

“Oh? Does the blood loss keep them away?” His face brightens, seemingly pleased by this addition to my answer.

“I have no idea, but I’m willing to see if it works again,” I say, and I push myself up a little bit higher on the pillow of my bedroll, allowing better access to my neck.

“Right down to business,” he mutters as he gets closer to me, hovering right over the now fully exposed flesh. My heart starts beating faster just from his proximity, nearly jumping into my throat. “You’re sure?” He asks, “you don’t have to say yes just because I’m starving.”

“I’m sure,” I answer, sounding more breathless than I wish. I close my eyes, and my stomach flutters with the anticipation of his bite. Just like before, he places one hand on my hip and the other on the ground as he leans in to bite me, ivy cold teeth plunging into my neck. I feel his lips, again, maybe even a little more than last time - but maybe that’s just me.

My body slowly begins to warn me of its own weakening, vision blurring and world spinning with faintness. “Astarion?” I breathe, testing to see if saying his name is the best way to pull him out of whatever kind of trance my blood puts him into. It takes him long enough to acknowledge my call of his name that my heart pounds the slightest bit in worry, and he pulls his teeth out so immediately after the hammering begins that I wonder if he can hear the fear. Either way, it works.He lingers near my neck for a minute while I feel the hot blood begin to start dripping. I expect the feeling of his tongue this time, but it still causes an involuntary giggle from my lips.

“That tickles,” I explain between the giggles, not wanting him to get the wrong idea. Or, I suppose, the correct idea that I just don’t want him to know about. A little chuckle escapes his lips as he pulls back for another moment, before going in for one more lick, more languid than the previous one.

Either I really must be delicious, or he’s just messing around with me. Either way, I’m enjoying it.

This time, I don’t have to ask him to stay with me. He lies down on his back next to me, our arms just barely touching. “Thank you,” he says, sounding a little bit like he just forced it out of his mouth.

I think for a moment before I speak next, listening to the sounds of my own slightly-labored breathing with profound embarrassment. I should not be breathing so audibly since the blood drinking isn’t physically exhausting for me; rather, it’s my tell-tale body giving away the fact that the feeling of him doing that is mentally exhilarating. I need to cover the sound of it with something.

“Can I ask you questions?” I ask, staring at the ceiling of the tent.

He hesitates. “What kinds of questions?”

“About you,” I answer, “you know, like friends do.”

“Friends?” He scoffs, and I feel his eyes on me for a second before he rips them away to look at the ceiling, too. “I suppose.”

“How old are you?” I ask first - the question that has been burning in my mind since I learned about the whole vampire thing.

“Rude,first of all,” he says, but continues anyway. “I am about your age, permanently. But I was turned two hundred years ago.”

The way he slightly brushes over the question makes me laugh a little bit. “So… quite young? Less than 100 before you… stopped?” It’s still hard to estimate, even with his given answer. He has more lines on his face than I do, but I’m not sure if that’s how he looked before he was turned or if two centuries of torture and blood deprivation have created them.

“Something like that,” he sighs, dramatically. “It’s been a long time, dear.”

Despite his non-answer, when I put actual thought into how old he was when he was turned, it’s quite devastating. We’re not like humans, where we begin hurdling toward our deaths after a handful of decades. At that age, he was likely just as I was before the abduction - working, since he’s already told us he was a magistrate, but not even dreaming of having a family of his own, yet. At my age, other elven families around us are shocked when they find out I’ve already been sold off. And yet Astarion was thrown into a life of servitude and torture. Terribly, horrifically young.

“Okay, no more about the age thing,” I concede, wracking my brain for another question to ask. “Whereabouts do you live, in Baldurs Gate? I’ve never seen you before.”

He hesitates again. “Do you ever leave your home at night, when the sun goes down?” Something in his tone shifts. He’s annoyed.

“Not much, only to walk home from the classes I was taking at night. It would be quite dark,” I answer, honestly. “I’m sorry. That was stupid question. I forgot that the tadpole-“

“It’s fine,” he interrupts, flatly. “My master, Cazador, and his other spawn live in that palace on the hill.” He doesn’t need to be more specific than that before the image of it appears in my mind.

“Wow, that’s… more obvious than I would have thought,” I say, imagining the large palace in my head. Gothic and gaudy - very appropriate.

“No more questions tonight. I’ll just be here until you fall asleep,” he says, before I can ask anything else.

My heart sinks into my stomach at the sound of his annoyance. His totally understandable annoyance. Of course I never would have seen him - he wasn’t wandering the streets during the day for me to pass by him. I’m sure I would have noticed that bright white hair in the sun, just like I did when I first saw him a few days ago. Or was it a few tendays ago? I can’t tell anymore.

“Goodnight, Astarion,” I murmur as I roll over onto my side to rest. This time, I roll over to face him, to take another look and breathe him in before I force myself to close my eyes. Promising to myself that I will be more careful with my questions.

I only hear the shift of his hair against the pillow to know that he turns to look at me. “Goodnight.”

Once again, I rest through the night like a baby. A baby with no nightmares, no screaming. When I wake up, I feel well rested and ready to start another day of trying to get a stupid tadpole out of my head. And I wonder if it just might be worth it to allow him to drink my blood whenever he needs, if that means I can feel like this every day.

Of course, in the back of my mind I wonder if it’s the blood loss that keeps the nightmares away, or just the presence of him. I’m not sure if I will ever know the answer to that question, considering that I would sound absolutely insane if I asked him to just sleep with me. This is a transaction, an agreement. Nothing more.

The day that follows goes by in a blur. We start by taking out the paladins that the tiefling girl, Karlach, insisted that we go after before we can take her back to the Druid grove. It feels a little unreal, the way we keep finding side quests to do when our real mission is to just get the stupid worms out of our brains. The worms that, by all accounts, should have taken us out already. But it seems that everywhere we turn the other poor, wretched souls with our same affliction are causing innumerable issues, and we are the only ones who can do anything about it.

This night, I don’t get as lucky as I did the previous night. Astarion does not come to see me, and I go to sleep without any bites in my neck or company in my tent. I never thought I would be wishing to be bit by a vampire. After what feels like hours of trying to fall into a trance, hoping that I may feel the gust of wind of my tent open, I’m finally able to rest.

When I wake up, I’m in the dark, tiny room of my home in Baldurs Gate. I’ve been waiting up for hours, waiting for my dad to come home from his night out at the pub with Aldous and his father. Worried sick that something has happened to him. Though I couldn’t give a single sh*t about the other two that he’s chosen to spend time with.

Eventually, I hear the familiar thud of our front door smacking against the inside wall of the house. It’s flimsy, so it doesn’t take much for the wind to whip it right out of your hand. The creak of the floorboards follow and I settle into my bed, relieved that my father has made it home.

Except it’s not him.

Instead of my dad crawling into his bed to rest, the demon, Aldous, crawls into my bed instead. Not to sleep.

When I actually wake up, it’s to the all-too-familiar sound of my own scream leaving my mouth. My world is spinning, heart beating like a racehorse. As soon as I gain awareness of what is happening, I shut my dry lips together as tightly as I can, hoping no one heard me. I’m still hyperventilating when the tiefling girl opens the curtain to my tent, flames flicking off of her fingertips.

“What the f*ck just happened?” She whispers, kneeling down to the ground to meet me at eye level.

“Uhhh…” I can only stare at her for a moment, unsure if I should be honest, or make up a lie about a spider or something crawling up my leg. As per usual, the truth ends up spilling out of me like vomit. “I had a nightmare. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Well, don’t be sorry,” she says, sounding more confused than anything else. “I was beginning to nod off, anyway. You’re just helping me do my job tonight.”

“I probably can’t sleep anymore. Do you want me to take over for you?” I ask her, starting to reach around for my robes. It isn’t until I’m holding my robe in my hands that I begin to realize she’s been looking at me, disheveled from my nightmare, with one strap of my corseted bra hanging off of my shoulder. I’m a mess.

Her eyes light up at the suggestion of sleep, but she seems unsure about me still. “Why don’t we hang out for a second? I’m gonna be honest, you don’t look like you could fight anything off right now,” she says, a little bit of a smile curling at her lips.

“I appreciate your honesty,” I nod at her, “give me a second and I’ll be out there.”

I join Karlach by the fire as soon as I finish throwing on my robe and fixing my hair, and we trade stories about home. She tells me about how she grew up in Baldurs Gate, but has been in the Hells against her will for a decade - her entire adult life. I tell her about my unfortunate dowry situation, and how I came to start learning magic. She’s a lot like me - grew up with nothing, trying to make herself into something, despite having seemingly no one around her for encouragement. Except, her demons are literal demons, and my demon is just a human man, double my size. By the time we’ve both finished trading our stories, a glimmer of daylight is beginning to creep up on the horizon.

“sh*t,” she mutters, seeing the thread of light at the same time I do. “Do you mind if I get another wink or two in before it’s time to go?”

“Go ahead!” I tell her, fully awake and functional by now. “You’ve earned it. Thanks for staying up with me,” I leave out the after I woke up screaming part, but she gets it.

As soon as she is tucked away in her tent, I flip open the book of spells I’ve been reading on my own watches and start flitting through the pages. I’m committed to using this wretched experience to make myself better and stronger, to defend myself when I return home. That’s the first step. The second step would be working up the guts to actually do anything. And I’m not sure if I’ll ever get there.

As the sun starts to rise up further on the horizon, I watch the different colors forming in the sky between moving through each page of my book. During one of these glances upward, I see a familiar figure skulking back from the forest, the orange-pink sky rising behind him. The skulking figure sees me at the same time and switches directions from his tent to me.

“I didn’t know you were on watch,” he states, as he gets close enough for me to hear him.

“You didn’t hear the scream?” I ask, jokingly.

“I definitely did,” he answers with a sigh. “I can hear the sound of your heart beating from here. Of course I heard that blood curdling scream from across a few trees.”

I can’t help but feel the rush of heat to my cheeks, both at the thought of him hearing the way my heart is skipping - flying, dancing, the wretched thing - and of him hearing me scream while he’s trying to hunt. “Oh. Okay. Well, I offered to take over for Karlach after that.”

He sits down on the ground next to me, as delicately and silently as a dove landing on a branch - somehow. His knee just barely touches mine, and my body becomes well aware of his proximity. I beg my own heart to calm down, but it’s useless.

“What have you got there?” He asks, his voice low as his eyes flit to the book in my hands.

My own eyes stare back into the book, suddenly not remembering a single word that I read in it. “Just some spells,” I answer, tilting it enough to allow him to see it. “Probably not anything that interests you.”

His eyes dart up and down the pages, almost too fast for him to possibly be actually reading them, before he glances back at me. “I’m more of a stabbing kind of person, myself,” he agrees, maintaining eye contact with me.

Something about this completely normal encounter feels almost flirtatious to me, but I push those thoughts out of my brain as much as I can, lest the truth spills out again like vomit on our just-barely-touching knees. Surely, he’s just naturally like this. Surely, he’s been talking to the others while they’re on watch and he’s come back from a hunt, just like this. I wonder if all of their stomachs flutter like mine does.

“Anything new in there you’re planning on using when we meet this next batch of goblins?” He asks, breaking me out of my own thoughts while I stare into his red eyes.

That, I can manage. I have absolutely been perusing spells that may help us when it comes to taking out a large number of goblins. I show him a couple of them, and he offers up some of his tactical opinions, as the sun continues to rise before us.

“This one, I can throw a wave of fire in front of me, hitting any number of them. The only problem is, I’d have to be very considerate of its range to not hurt any of you or any innocents,” I tell him, biting my lip a little bit while staring at the spell on the page. I don’t know if I’m good enough yet to trust myself with that kind of firepower.

“Nothing wrong with a bit of friendly fire, as long as the goblins are going down,” he says, lightheartedly. “And as long as you don’t fire at me, your favorite traveling companion.”

“Who says you’re my favorite?” I shoot back, trying to cover up the fact that my heart skipped a beat in my chest. After he literally just told me that he can hear my heart beating.

He looks at me quizzically before answering. “If it’s not the vampire that you’ve generously allowed to drink your blood, then who would it be?”

I do actually consider it for a second, who else might be my favorite if not for him. I do tend to like everyone else; Shadowheart would definitely be a close second, despite her distaste for him. Maybe Gale for sharing his knowledge with me, and Karlach now, too, for last night. But none are quite like him.

“I suppose you could be,” I answer slowly, watching the smirk grow across his face. “But then I would be your favorite, too? Because everyone else seemed to want to put a stake in your chest when they found out.”

My response seems to catch him off guard, because he doesn’t give me a quick-witted answer right away. “I suppose you’re right,” he says, sounding a little defeated. “We are the best people in this whole camp.” He says the last part less seriously, as if he’s just being dramatic. But for some reason, I feel as if the drama in his voice is just him trying to cover up the fact that he thinks it’s true.

The conversation comes very easily, with him. We switch back to the book of spells, finding new ideas of what I can use against the goblins.

Of course he’s my favorite. He’s also the only one that I daydream about try to fall into trance. But I’m keeping that part to myself.

Chapter 7: He’s a Vampire, Luna

Chapter Text

Over the next couple of tendays, we begin to learn new things about the tadpoles in our heads, and I begin to learn new things about my friends.

The tadpole can’t be removed by a Druid healer, a crazy hag, or a goblin priestess. However, by all accounts, we should have already turned into monsters. And we haven’t.

Astarion comes to me every few nights, when he hasn’t gotten enough from nearby woodland animals. I ask him questions each time, trying to learn more about his life before our abduction. He asks me questions sometimes, too, but I’m not nearly as interesting, it seems.

One night after drinking from me, I ask him a particularly stupid question.

“Do you think we would have been friends if we met back in Baldurs Gate?” I ask while absentmindedly unraveling my hair from my braid before settling into my bed roll. I’ve grown comfortable enough with him that I put my hair down and even slip my corseted bra off under my tunic before going into trance, as he still holds up his end of the deal.

“No,” he answers quickly. There’s no humor in his voice, no joking. Someone who knows better would have stopped there.

“Why not?” I ask him, not knowing better.

He takes a deep breath before answering, not making eye contact with me. “I did not have friends. I had siblings, other spawn, and my blood conquests for Cazador.”

“What do you mean by that? I’m sorry, I don’t know that much about vampires,” I admit. I can tell he’s uncomfortable, and I just hope while saying it that this line of questioning will be acceptable, at least.

He takes another deep breath, then does look at me. “My master, Cazador, made six other spawn. Those are my siblings, because the bastard likes to pretend we’re a family,” he says. There’s annoyance in his voice, but I don’t think it’s meant to be directed toward me. He looks away from me again, before educating me on his life as a vampire spawn.

The more he tells me, the more I wish I could hug him. I realize how f*cking stupid my question was when he tells me how his job for Cazador was to lure people back to the palace, thinking they’d be spending a night with him, only to be drunk dry by the master vampire. If he didn’t perform, he would be tortured, and he could never run away because Cazador can control his spawn in such a powerful way. The tadpole, for him, has been freedom.

“You wouldn’t be caught in any of the places I prowled. I tried not to take home nice people like you,” he continued, “people I could have liked. I would have taken you home just for Cazador to drink dry.”

“I’m sorry, Astarion,” I say, involuntarily holding out my hand to touch his but pulling it back before I reach him, hoping he doesn’t notice. That is surely too intimate of a gesture. “I didn’t know all of that. In my head I was asking about… before. When you were a magistrate,” I add, trying to explain why the stupid words came out of my mouth.

“I can’t answer that, either,” he says with a bitter laugh. “I don’t remember. I don’t even remember what color my own eyes were before they turned red.”

Despite myself, I can’t hold back from him. He’s my friend, and I need to comfort him in this clearly distraught state that I caused. I scoot myself over to him on the floor and throw my arms around him before he can stop me. His body stiffens under my touch at first before softening again, a deep breath exiting his lips.

“I’m sorry. We’re friends now, though,” I say quietly.

“I suppose we are,” he responds, his voice going slightly back to its normal state, but still ragged.

I don’t ask him anymore questions for the night.

My interest in him, and my heart fluttering under the feeling of him when he bites me does not go away with time as I hoped it would. Actually, I’m quite sure that I’ve gotten worse.Somehow, learning about his life before and realizing exactly why he can be such an asshole at times has been a comfort. I suppose I would be prickly, too, if I had been forced to do horrible things against my will for two centuries. In a strange way, I feel connected to him by this - by being forced to do things we don’t want to do. But I keep this part to myself, because there is no real way that my few months of being too afraid of some human man could compare to his story. All he knows is that my father put a price on my body and my future - none of the gory details.

As a group we grow stronger, and all of us begin to realize that we must take out the large goblin camp that has been terrorizing the Druid grove, for a myriad of reasons. The largest one being that the people who were with the Druid Halsin - a renowned healer with a particular interest in the tadpoles - when he was taken believe he is being held at the wretched camp. And he may just be our only salvation.

The night before our planned attack, we camp out at an abandoned village we found previously. Well, abandoned now. There were some goblins present when we first found it.

“We’d better check and make sure it’s still empty,” is what Wyll says as we approach the village. We’ve got maybe a couple hours of daylight left, just enough to eat and prepare ourselves for the morning, when we will make our move.

“Let’s split up,” I say, agreeing with him. “Do a quick round to make sure all of these houses, cellars and attics included, are empty before we get comfortable for the night.”

We’ve been splitting leadership duties, I suppose, between myself and Wyll. For him, it seems like such a natural thing to do; for me, still, I feel like I’m just pretending to be a leader to cover up the fact that I’m physically the weakest person here. I’ve seen Gale coming back from bathing in the river and he is unfortunately not the typical, scrawny wizard - leaving me to fill that last place spot.

“Great idea, Luna,” Wyll responds, smiling at me. “We should go in pairs. Why don’t you and Shadowheart go through that house over there?” He continues creating pairs - except for Astarion, who quickly exclaims that he would rather scout by himself - until we all have a couple buildings to investigate.

The house that Shadowheart and I are first tasked with is larger, with a cellar, a main floor, and a second floor. We decide to split the work, quickly covering the main floor before Shadowheart descends to the cellar and I take the upstairs.

The house is mostly unremarkable. It’s been pilfered fairly well by the goblins already, with no valuables or non-spoiled food in sight. There’s a few dusty books, but nothing that would be useful to me on our travels - I can’t imagine I’ll have time to read The Salty Mermaid between taking out goblins. But in the corner of the master bedroom upstairs, there is an unbroken, stand-up mirror in one corner, perfectly aligned with the window for light to shine through on the person using it.

I really shouldn’t look. I’m afraid of what I may see. But my curiosity inevitably gets the best of me, and I close my eyes before positioning myself in front of it.

Last chance to walk away, Luna.

I open my eyes.

Ragged. That is the word I would use to describe the girl I see in front of me in this mirror. The hair I once loved - coveted, even - looks dry, uneven and stringy from a lack of proper washing and an abundance of blood and sweat. My face has a few different scratches running across my forehead and my left cheek, and I can’t even recall which foe created which scratch. One little notch on my forehead looks as if it may leave a scar. On my neck I can see the whispers of Astarion’s healing teeth marks as well as the tiny, fresh scabs from his most recent bite, but those marks don’t bother me as much. He doesn’t favor any one spot, to prevent leaving any permanent scarring.

My eyes travel down to the rest of my body, and the situation only becomes more bleak. Even through the robes, I can see the toll that the rationing of food has taken on me. Against my better judgement I unclasp my robe for a closer look, pulling up my tunic to see my stomach and my hips. There are green-yellow bruises dancing across my pale skin, making the sight even worse. The belly that I used to feel so sensitive about for its small protrusion is now absent, leaving behind visible hip bones in its wake. I can only look for a moment before I have to yank the tunic back down so quickly that I hear one of the stitches pull.

Suddenly the girl looking back at me in the mirror is crying, then sobbing, but unable to look away from herself. Her ragged self. My own breathing and sniffling is so loud in my ears that I don’t even hear it when Shadowheart makes her way up the creaky stairs, and I only notice her when I see her reflection in the mirror, standing in the doorway.

“Did something happen?” She asks, not sounding horrified so much as nervous.

“No,” I deny, quickly wiping up the tears before reaching to clasp my robe shut again.

“That’s a lie,” she says, co*cking her head at me in the mirror. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s stupid,” I mutter, ripping myself away from the shell of me in the mirror to turn and face her. “I just… didn’t realize I looked like that.”

“Look like what?” She asks, furrowing her brows. “You look fine, Luna.”

The noise that comes out of my mouth is similar to a chuckle, but the shakiness of my sobbing still lingers in it.

“Really,” she says, staring me down despite me not being able to meet her gaze anymore. “What’s so wrong about what you saw?”

“I look like I’ve been ran through a meat grinder,” I mutter, just loud enough to allow her to hear it.

“First of all, you look fine. Secondly - why are you so worried about how you look? We’ve been fighting monsters nonstop,” she says.

“You’re right, I shouldn’t care,” I concede, meeting her eyes and holding out my hands in a show of surrender. “But for some reason, I do. And I didn’t like what I saw. Bruised, beaten, cut up, and malnourished.”

She walks closer to me, close enough that I can see the green in her eyes, much like my own. She sighs. “Do I have to start telling you how beautiful you are, despite the things we’ve seen?”

I feel blush creep at my cheeks, and I vehemently shake my head. “I don’t need you to try and… boost my confidence. I just didn’t like what I saw, and I had a moment of weakness - that’s all.”

“You really are,” she says anyway, ignoring my rejection. “Never mind what you see. What we see is a strong, fire-haired girl, destroying goblins with fire from her hands.”

“We? That’s what you see,” I respond, trying to deflect the complimentary words. After a pause, I think better of it. “But thank you.”

“Not just me,” she says, taking another sigh. “I’m far from the only one seeing that in you. You’ve got a couple of those boys awestruck, but you can’t see it when you’re too busy performing spells like a mad woman,” she must realize that I may need more convincing, because she plops herself down onto the ripped-up bed.

“I do not,” I say, rolling my eyes. I sit down next to her, staring at the ceiling and trying to get the images of myself in the mirror out of my mind, and replace them with whatever woman she is talking about.

“Mark my words,” she says, shaking her head. “Wyll looks at you like you’re the greatest thing he’s ever seen.”

Wyll? That is not a name that I expected to hear out of her mouth. “He’s just a boy,” I mutter, before taking a gulp to try and clear my suddenly itchy throat. A human boy, younger than myself but already at least a quarter of the way through his fleeting life. I’m not going to say it in front of the half-elf herself, but I would never torture myself in such a way if given a choice.

“Well, if you want someone a little older, I think you already know who else looks at you like you’re a ten-course meal,” she says, but her voice is less dreamy about that one. She sounds a little… disgusted.

I already know how she feels about Astarion, and how she feels about his teeth in my neck. I will my cheeks to not flood with blood while she looks at me, but I can’t stop them.

“Luna,” she says my name as if she’s scolding me.

“What?” I shoot back, looking at her and trying to muster up anger to cover up the blush on my face.

“You haven’t,” she says like a question, her eyes searching mine. “He’s a vampire, Luna.”

“No, we haven’t,” I answer, truthfully but ignoring the comment about him being a vampire. As if I’m not the most well aware in our group of his blood-thirst. She holds my gaze for a moment longer, before sliding herself off of the mattress.

“I suppose we needn’t continue this line of questioning,” she says with a sigh. “The point I was trying to make, is that you don’t need to worry about whatever’s in the mirror. Stupid thing could be enchanted, anyway.”

Despite the odd turn, I do feel a little better after listening to her talk about me. “Thank you, Shadowheart,” I say, my voice softening from my previous words. “For what it’s worth, you did make me feel better. And I think you’re quite beautiful while you’re swinging that mace around, too.”

I’m successful in my attempt to bring us back into the realm of pleasant conversation, and we talk while we search the other building assigned to us by my human admirer. Despite her clear distaste for Astarion, I like Shadowheart, and I want to continue to be her friend.

If my mind weren’t so occupied with thoughts of the vampire, it’s very possible that my late night thoughts would have drifted to her, instead - since my thoughts of him are clearly just driven by insatiable loneliness, coupled with lust. At least, that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.

Not that either of them are particularly good choices for someone to take an interest in, given their clear (but not clear at the same time) issues with connecting with others. But maybe I like that, in a weird way. They are my little project friends that I’m slowly working on cracking open.

I try not to pay too much attention to her commentary about the way either of those men look at me, especially not the comments on Astarion’s gaze. He’s probably just looking at me and thinking about the blood rushing to my ever-flushed cheeks, and we are nothing more than friends with blood benefits.

As night falls, we decide to make camp inside of one of the larger buildings with a large cellar, to give us more protection in case of an ambush in the night. Astarion does not feast on his ten-course meal, and I do not rest well at all, until I become so desperate that I decide to get up and pay him a visit myself.

Chapter 8: It’s Not the Blood Loss

Chapter Text

“Astarion?” I whisper as I appear at the curtain of his tent, for once.

I find him in a trance, but he stirs at the sound of his name. “Luna?” He asks, his voice still heavy and deep from the not-sleep. He looks at me with hooded eyes from where he is on the ground. A couple of his curls hang lower on his forehead than I usually get to see, not yet pushed back by his hands. “Is something the matter?”

“I’m fine,” I whisper back, trying not to think too hard about the immediate concern in his voice, “just… couldn’t rest. And I remembered I want to show you something.”

He sits up slowly and his hand does push back the curls, which is a little bit disappointing to me. “What is it?”

“I found a mirror, earlier,” I tell him, decidedly entering his tent enough to close the curtain behind me, dropping into a sitting position on my knees. I’ve never been in his space before. It’s mostly barren with some scattered books and clothes, and none of the coziness of the blankets like I have.

He frowns, the curiosity gone from his face. “I did, too,” he says.

“And you didn’t see anything,” I finish for him, my shoulders slumping. He nods. “sh*t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says, the familiar annoyance in his voice, just like when I ask too many stupid questions. “I can stand in the sun, I could enter the hags house uninvited. But I cannot enjoy petty vanity.”

“It’s a tragedy,” I whisper, looking into his sad, red eyes, so close to my own jade ones on the floor of his tent. “You’re really beautiful.”

Surprisingly, I don’t regret the words as they come out. His beauty has always been so obvious to me that it doesn’t feel like an admittance or a revelation; it feels as simple as describing the sunset. Beautiful.

The sadness shifts, but I can’t tell what takes its place in his eyes. Whatever it is, he shakes it off after a moment. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

“I’m sorry for bothering you,” I say apologetically, bracing my hands against my legs to push myself back up to leave. His hand reaches for my wrist, softly stopping me, and it works because my body completely freezes at the feeling of his cold touch.

“You said you couldn’t rest?” He says it like a question, not a statement.

Cautiously, I nod. “The usual, you know.”

He shifts and lies back down against his bedroll, but leaves space on the side of it nearest to me. “You can stay,” he says softly, patting the space next to him once. An invitation.

My heart pounds in my chest. It squeezes, releases, screams, glows, squeezes, releases.

“To trance, darling,” he adds, closing his eyes as a little smirk curls at his lips, giving me the slightest inclination that he hears exactly how my body reacts to the offer. After all, we’ve only just been pretending that he can’t.

I shouldn’t do it. I’m just digging myself deeper and deeper into this hole with every bite and every night spent next to him. But I’m exhausted,and he smells good, so I settle in on the floor.

When I come to in the morning, I find that my tranced body has betrayed me. The crown of my head is nestled into the beautiful elf’s armpit, my body turned over to face him. Thankfully, my arms are wrapped around myself. But the rest of the situation is quite bleak.

I try to pretend that I’m resting for a little longer, equal parts not wanting to leave this position and not wanting to face him when I do. His body doesn’t feel warm like a person typically would in such close proximity, but the mere existence of him next to me is a comfort. The smell of him - the herbs I know he uses to cover up the undead smell, but still - filling my nose, the slightest pressure of his body against mine; it makes my heart skip in a way that I know gives me away before he even has to say anything.

“You’re going to have to get up before the others do,” he murmurs, and the sound of his voice makes me jolt, despite my existing inclination that he knew I was awake.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, laughing at my sudden movement. I feel his hand rub only briefly against my head as if comforting me, before he snatches it away like it was a mistake. “I thought you realized you can’t pretend to be in trance still with me. The change in breathing, heart beating, it’s all so loud.”

Reluctantly I prop myself up on my elbows, looking at him with eyes still heavy from sleep. “You f*cker,” I mutter.

“I thought we were beyond that nickname,” he tsks at me, watching me with bright eyes.

I’m not sure what I expect from him, waking up like this, but this wouldn’t be my first guess. He isn’t perturbed that I’ve invaded his space, or annoyed that I ended up cuddling into him. He seems almost pleased by the whole thing.

“Thank you for the sleep, Astarion,” I say, pointedly exaggerating his name and earning a curl from one side of his lips.

“It’s not the blood loss then, is it?” He asks softly.

My nightmares. No blood gone from me last night, and still as soon as I could rest next to him they were gone.

“I suppose not,” I answer. I stare at him for a moment, beautiful in the darkness, smirking at me. I turn my chin up to look at the ceiling of the tent, running a hand over my exposed neck. “Well?”

He only chuckles in response. “I drank an entire bear just last night, my treat. Save it for yourself.”

I pull myself up to my knees, blushing at the comment and looking at him one more time before standing up. He doesn’t move, so I can look down at the spot between his abdomen and his arm where I was resting for the last several hours of the night, until moments ago. It still looks so welcoming, making me wish I could stay. Making me wish this could be my real bed, with him, so I could be nightmare-free every night, as bloody ridiculous as that sounds.

The little smile stays on his face. “I’d better get ready to murder some goblins,” I mutter, making my way out of his tent.

I can’t help but wonder as I make my way back to my own bedroll, relieved at the sight of our companions still tucked away in their tents, if last night was a mistake. I was earnestly coming to see if he wanted me to take him to the mirror, before I realized that he had already found out for himself that the tadpole has not freed him of that particular vampiric condition. And somehow, I ended up sleeping next to him.

Part of me, though, wonders if it was not a mistake. He was the one who offered to allow me to stay, after all. I simply took him up on it.

I cannot allow myself to dwell on these thoughts for too long, knowing what our plan is for the day. I distract myself by focusing on trying to create a couple of more complex braids down either side of my head without a mirror to view them in. I’ve been favoring this style since becoming Astarion’s supplemental meal, since the doubled braids at least slightly cover the parts of my neck that he favors better than a single braid would. Having my hair down would cover it up better, but I would rather have visible bite marks than sweaty hair sticking to my neck all day.

Despite sleeplessness and nervousness galore, we follow through on our plan to invade the goblin camp at dawn. And we win. Somehow. We save the Druid Halsin and take out every leader and goblin standing in our way.

The Druid is not quite how I pictured him in my head. I suppose I figured he would be more… Gale-like, being a brilliant, expert healer and all that. No offense to Gale, but he definitely seems like a man who has spent much of his life studying. Not a hulking, incredibly tall elf with thoughtful braids in his pretty hair. Very pretty, but not the prettiest hair nor the prettiest elf in our little ragtag group. In my opinion.

“They told us to find you, the people in the grove. They said you would know how to get the tadpoles out of our brains,” I tell him, once the big baddies of the camp have been beaten down enough to chat.

He chuckles. I’ve got a freaking worm in my brain, and the man chuckles.“I’m afraid not. My research has only brought me to discover the place that I believe to be the source of the outbreak: Moonrise Towers.”

“Oh,” is all I can manage. We just brought down a camp of goblins to find the person who we believed to be our salvation, and he is not, in fact, our salvation.

“Come, now,” he says, clearly not understanding that he has perhaps just delivered some of the most devastating news of our collective lives. “Let us discuss your next steps while we get back to the grove. To celebrate.”

Of course, we pilfer the entire place before heading back to deliver the good news to the druids, and I find some things of interest to me. I claim some clothes and supplies from the Drow leader I took out with a well-placed cantrip who was roughly my size. She has some leggings I may wear, and some leather garb that I may not wear, but take regardless. I also nab a small, handheld mirror from her desk drawer. I may live to regret the decision to take it, but part of me wants to not let so much time pass between the next time I have to face my own reflection. If changes are more gentle, will it soften the blow?

Most interestingly, I scoop up an enchanted locket that I can feel has a simple teleportation spell in it - a misty step. I don’t need it, given that I can perform the spell myself, but I pick it up anyway. What I really want to do is give it to Astarion, who was quite nearly shoved into a spider pit several times while we raided the camp, but I know for a fact that if I give him a gift he will say something that will make my cheeks flush and my heart flutter. And I’m still trying to push back my stupid little feelings about the beautiful elf, especially following what Shadowheart said yesterday and my stupid decision to sleep next to him anyway. I’m his meal. Nothing more.

That’s what I’m trying to make myself believe after speaking to Shadowheart. But our late night conversations sometimes last long after he gets his fill, and it’s not just him listening to me talk. He answers my questions - unless they’re too much - and throws his own back at me. Until last night, I could convince myself that it was completely transactional; last night, though, there was no blood in it for him. Just my desperation for rest, and his cold, comforting body allowing me to get what I needed.

I’m inclined to believe that my best friend here would naturally be one of the other women, or maybe even the other wizard. But I haven’t connected to them in the same way as I have with Astarion. It’s him.

Chapter 9: Little Witch / Tall Vampire

Chapter Text

When I hear the noise of the party begin to start, I am still within my tent, trying to make myself look decent with the bits of makeup I had on me when I was abducted. Green powder for the lids of my green eyes. The tiniest bits of red for my cheeks and my lips, because I don’t have much left of that gel. Outside of Baldurs Gate, and while we are making do with whatever fish heads and cheese we can find for dinner, getting my hands on more makeup is likely not a possibility. And showing a bare face around this many people… is not something I feel comfortable doing. Even while actively trying to not feel self conscious since my conversation with Shadowheart.

Not to mention my hair, which hasn’t been washed with proper soap in days. The grime of it is unpleasant, but it does help hold together two plaited braids down either side of my head very well. I don’t feel satisfied with what I see in the little mirror I took from the goblin camp when I’m done, but I know it will have to do, and if I drink enough I might start to even feel good about it.

Slowly, I open the curtain to my tent and peer around. I look for Astarion first, finding him looking incredibly bored while speaking to Halsin, the giant elf man who I believe will be traveling with us now. It’s really a handsome sight, the two of them. But my eyes linger on the paler elf’s annoyed face. I’m not sure that the taller man can perceive the look of the slight wrinkle between Astarion’s eyebrows like I can, but either way, he keeps talking.

I already decided in my tent that the first person I need to seek out is Wyll. After he decidedly did not murder Karlach, he was gifted a set of devilish horns by his patron cambion. I can only imagine how difficult it must be at his young age to be living such a heavy, difficult life; I feel a powerful, almost motherly urge to make sure that he’s doing alright.

Tightening my robe just a bit, I begin walking around the crowd. “Great showing today, Luna!” I hear from my right, and it’s Gale’s mouth that it came from. If it were anyone else, the excitable tone of his voice would have made me think they were at least three meads deep. But that’s just Gale.

“Thank you, but it was a team effort,” I smile back at him. He offers me a goblet already full to the brim with some kind of alcohol, and I accept it without question. “Have you seen Wyll?”

Gale tsks at me. “So quick to get away from me, I see,” he says. “But I think I saw him sulking over by the water.”

“Oh, hush, if you grew horns the other night you know I would be coming to see you as well,” I respond, rolling my eyes at him. “Thank you.”

Wyll is over by the water, just as Gale said. Andmaybe it’s just the sun beginning to set across the water, but he does look quite sad. I take a few generous gulps from my goblet before walking over. The ale feels good going down my throat, and the sand of the beach feels warm against my bare feet.

“Hey, Wyll!” I call out as I make my way over, trying not to scare him out of his dramatic stare into the water.

He turns, and I see the most giant mug of beer I’ve ever seen before in his hand. He cracks a smile when he realizes it’s me coming over to see him. “Well met, Luna,” he says, “savior of the emerald grove.”

I feign embarrassment, waving my hand at him. “I don’t know why everyone keeps saying that, when it was clearly our entire team that got it all done.”

“But you are our unofficial leader, are you not? Confidant for all, including the vampire,” he says. I laugh at the comment, and try to convince myself that it’s the alcohol making my cheeks warm.

“So, how are you feeling?” I ask him, trying not to be too obvious.

“About the horns? About Mizora?” He asks. He takes a swig of beer, then gives me a surprising smile. “Trying not to dwell on it tonight. We will do what we can after we celebrate a little bit.”

I breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of his smile. “You are absolutely right, Wyll. We will do everything we can to get you out of this pact,” I say, seriously. “But I like the horns, I think they will grow on you!”

I can see the tiniest bit of pink on his face after I compliment the horns. “Well, thanks, Luna, it means a lot to me that you like them.”

We are silent for a moment, having had the conversation that I came over to have. Just as I’m about to invite him to come with me to talk to some of the others, he clears his throat.

“I, uh, I wanted to just thank you for all of the work you’ve done, and for being such a good friend to me,” he says earnestly.

”You do not have to thank me for being a good friend, Wyll!” I exclaim, reaching out to touch his arm. “You make it very easy to be.”

It’s a true statement. His moral compass does not need any guidance from me, and he’s remarkably easy to get along with in general. I think Wyll and I could have been good friends even if we weren’t fighting baddies together. This moment with him feels so genuine, so tender and lovely, that I don’t notice the way that he is looking at me until he starts to lean in, and I realize I’ve been looking back at him with a smile as his soft lips come into contact with my own.

“Oh, Wyll,” I say, not out of pleasure, but out of shock. I use my hand that had been touching his arm - too intimate of a gesture, I now realize - give him the gentlest push back. The look on his face is deeply hurt. “I’m so sorry, Wyll, I didn’t mean-“

“No, I’m sorry,” he says, “I should have asked before doing that. I just got caught up in the- the moment.” The little stutter in his words could break my heart into two. He’s a confident man, but he’s still so young, and he’s dedicated his entire young adult life to being the blade of frontiers.

On some level I hope that he’s been rejected before, not wanting to be the first - but isn’t that a horrible thing to hope?

“That’s okay,” I say, giving him a little, probably very awkward, smile. “I really care for you, Wyll, and I mean what I said about the horns, but I only see you as a friend.” I choose not to say that I see him as a younger brother, which is my initial inclination, but may sound a bit too embarrassing for him.

He nods, and some of the hurt starts to slip away from his face. “I understand, Luna. I hope I have not damaged our friendship.”

“Come here,” I say, opening up my arms for a hug. The alcohol has started to cloud my judgement enough from just a few big gulps that I can’t think of anything comforting to say, and I figure a hug is the second best option. He obliges, and his arms feel warm and steady. “This is good,” I say into his chest, trying to relish in the warmth of the hug but just feeling like I’m bathing in awkwardness. When he releases, he immediately takes a large sip from his mug, and I do the same from my goblet.

“I’m going to stay over here for a bit longer, but you should go see the others,” he says, nodding at me. “I’ll be over when the beer starts to do its job.”

I smile and offer him a wave as I begin to walk away. My face turns hot, and my eyes dart around, wondering who may have caught such an uncomfortable moment. When I get to Astarion, of course he’s staring right at me. When my eyes meet his, his eyebrows shoot up at me, inviting me to come see what he has to say. I gulp down the rest of my drink and toss the goblet to the side before taking him up on that offer.

No longer talking to Halsin, he is standing alone by his tent with an entire bottle of wine in his hands. He hasn’t put his dagger away for the night, either, and it still hangs on his belt.

“You should probably put that knife away with so many drunk people walking around,” I say to him as I walk up, hoping to delay the inevitable conversation about whatever he just witnessed.

He doesn’t work to hide the fact that he looks me up and down before responding - in fact, I think he wantsme to notice. “Well, darling, maybe you shouldn’t be locking lips with the warlock while there are so many lonely people walking around,” he says, amusem*nt in his voice.

“I was not- I didn’t-“ I stutter, “he tried,and I told him not to,” I manage to get out in a whisper. There isn’t anyone else particularly close to us, but I would feel horrible if anyone overheard that I rejected Wyll.

“And why might you have done that?” Astarion asks, co*cking his head to the side. The smug look on his face is one of a man who absolutely knows why I may have rejected the warlock. If he didn’t know before last night, it was definitely revealed to him then.

“Maybe he’s not my type,” I answer with a shrug. I reach out for the bottle in his hands, and he surrenders it to me gingerly. “Maybe he’s too… prince-like for my tastes.”

It takes me a second to think of the right word. I don’t want to say too sweet or too kind,because I don’t not think Astarion is those things. Many of the things he’s done for me could definitely be described as sweet, even if he’s doing it - or at least pretending to be doing it - for selfish reasons, it’s still sweet.

Astarion chuckles, watching me take a few large sips of the wine, which is just barely passing for wine and tastes more like pure alcohol. “I think he could’ve romanced you quite well, darling,” he says. He pauses for a second as I hand the bottle back to him, passing it between his hands while watching me stare back at him. “Humor me, then. What do you want, if not Wyll’s prince-like charms?”

I suddenly feel quite silly, standing here pretending that he doesn’t know, or I don’t already know that he knows.

I roll my eyes at him dramatically. “You know,” I say, yanking the bottle back from him before he has even taken a sip.

“I know what?” He says. His voice grows quieter, “Tell me.”

A little tipsy, I can’t fully decide whether he’s asking me to describe my ideal first date, or if he’s asking me to whisper dirty words to him. Alternatively, I wonder if I am misreading the situation entirely. Regardless, I take another swig from the bottle before answering. “Maybe someone a little more rough around the edges,” I answer.

“You can do better than that,” he murmurs, still playful, but softer.

“A little romance is quite good,” I start, thinking through each word. “I do love being taken care of, caressed, just like everyone else.” I pause, watching his face and getting nothing more than hooded, curious eyes back at me.

The daydreams I’ve had while trying to fall asleep run through my mind, flash after flash of the pale elf in front of me. Hands in his hair, skilled fingers running over my body, finding out what that tongue does other than licking the blood from my neck, sleeping next to him again.

“But that’s not all I want,” I continue, trying to muster up the confidence. He already knows,I just have to be confident, sexy, witty enough to get him to admit it. “I want roughness and sex and maybe a little hair pulling and…” I hold the bottle up, pointing the neck of it toward him, “biting, for example.”

His steely gaze breaks into that smirk of his that I’ve grown to love. “I was beginning to think I was going to have to do all of the hard work,” he says with a chuckle.

I feel the heat flood my cheeks, and I lift the bottle back up in an attempt to hide it from him. His hand stops me from tipping the bottle back, taking it right out of my hands. “You’d better stop drinking, little witch, otherwise I won’t come to your tent later.”

I scoff at him, but don’t attempt to take the liquor back. “I don’t recall inviting you yet, tall vampire,”I know as the words come out of my mouth that it isn’t my best retort, but it’s all I could muster in my current state. Tipsy, world spinning, horny, excited. Completely f*cked.

“I won’t come if you don’t want me to,” he sneers back, “but then you won’t come either, will you?”

The confidence. The gall. The heat forming between my legs - oh gods, I can’t believe this is happening right now. “Fine, you’re invited. But you better not just be a big talker about me coming.”

“Judging by how excited your little heart and body get when I suck on your neck, I actually don’t think it will be hard at all,” he whispers, pulling in closer to me, making me tip my chin up further to maintain eye contact.

I already know all of this, of course. But it’s nice to hear him finally admit to it, so I’ll play into it anyway. “What do you mean by that?”

“You like it when I bite you. Love it, even,” he says confidently, not breaking eye contact with me. “You can play coy all you want, my dear, but your body gives it away.”

Now, too, my body surely gives me away. My heart performs its typical dance for him, beating faster and squeezing hard in my chest. As much as I don’t want to, I have to get away from him, before my hunger becomes noticeable to the entire party.

“Well, then, you’d better not disappoint me later,” I say simply, turning on my heels and walking away before I can say anything else that embarrasses me. I am completely out of my league with him. I can barely even flirt - how on earth am I going to have sex with this man without embarrassing myself?

The only sex I’ve ever had has been… sad. Disappointing at the very best, and forced upon me at the very, very worst. The thought crosses my mind - am I supposed to tell him about that? Like a disclosure statement before he enters?

No. I can’t. He wouldn’t want to touch me with a ten foot quarterstaff if he knew, and I’m sure of it. I’m damaged. Broken. But I just want to be treated like a person tonight. A real person, who gets to experience real pleasure, with a sexy f*cking vampire. Is that too much to ask?

I look around anxiously, wondering if anyone saw the heat of that interaction, but it appears that everyone has been having their own fun. Wyll is still by the water with his beer, now speaking to a couple of teifling children, who look up at him like he’s a king. I don’t think Wyll would bite my neck or rough me up. He looks like someone who only makes slow, sweet love, in a real mattress, by candlelight. Which is something I would surely love to do with someone I am deeply in love with, but right now… I just want to have some fun. With my closest friend. Or so I’ll tell myself.

And the vampire has had my eye since the second I met him, when he threatened to kill me in front of Shadowheart. Having the dagger pulled on me was more terrifying than it was sexy, but watching him do it to others since then has absolutely been sexy. Because I’m insane, I think.

Despite the danger of him, I still feel safe in his presence. Every time he has come to me for blood, he could have let his hunger overcome him. Hells, he could have drunk me dry and killed me. But he stops when I ask him to stop. Verbally, at least. Nothing is more important to me than that.

My first thought is to just go back to my tent until he comes for me, because I can’t imagine holding a decent conversation with anyone while my heart is banging out of my chest like this. I realize, though, that the party has only just started and I have more people to celebrate with. So I make my way over to Karlach instead - the person I know will help distract me from my own thoughts.

“Hey, soldier!” She proclaims, holding up the goblet in her hand. As soon as I get close enough, she leans and nudges my shoulder, “getting a little cozy over there with ‘ole vampy, huh?”

“Karlach!” I exclaim, shocked. “I didn’t think anyone saw that?” I whisper, like it’s a question.

“Oh, relax, I think I’m the only one who did,” she chuckles, but keeps her voice low. “But you’ve got to be more careful with the way you look at each other, if you want to keep a secret.”

I beckon her closer to her tent, for a little more privacy. “Does he look at me like… that?” I ask her sheepishly.

“He looks at you like he wants to eat you, but more than just your blood,” she answers, sounding a little awkward. “Honestly, I’m a little jealous, soldier. I wish I could hug you for saving the grove, and I wish I could maybe get a little piece of Mr. Tree Trunks for Arms over there, but I’m still burning up.”

I frown, remembering how badly she wishes she could touch. Before I can say anything, she stops me.

“Don’t worry about me,Luna. You deserve to have fun.”

And maybe she’s right. I do deserve to have fun without worrying about my rejection of Wyll, or the possible consequences of sleeping with the beautiful vampire.

I linger with Karlach a while longer, because she makes the time feel like it is going by faster. Some of the others - Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and Gale - stop by us to chat, but no one else brings up my conversation with Astarion earlier in the night. And no one seems to care that I completely stop drinking after my conversation with him.

The end of the party goes by in a blur, as some people begin to fall asleep on the ground, and their friends debate on carrying them back to their homes or not. Others are sober enough to decide to leave after a sufficiently good time. Somewhere in the middle, I make my way back to my own tent.

As soon as I’m alone, I allow myself to thinking about what the night will bring. That is, if he actually comes to get me - I may just wake up in the morning alone, awaiting his sneering about my desperation for him.

In my bedroll, I run my hands over my own body, imagining what it will feel like to be touched. Imagining what it will feel with his hands instead. Willing to push the thoughts of insecurity out of my mind.

I don’t have to imagine for long, before the light of the fire makes my eyes snap open when he slips through the curtain.