Chapter 3
The fires in Waukeen’s Rest have burnt their course over the night. It’s hard to tell how much might eventually be salvaged from the smoking rubble, but the stone foundations are intact, at least. There isn’t a soul to be seen anywhere near. The outbuildings were stripped bare, the bodies removed, and the livestock taken away in at least three different directions, judging by the tracks.
They know the surviving Fists have moved on in search of Wyll’s father. Tav doesn’t understand why Wyll hasn’t chosen to join them. With the resources of a dukedom, perhaps to fall in his hands sooner than he expected, surely he stands a better chance of finding the cure than with them?
And now Tav watches Lae’zel run ahead of the group again and again, then turn to glare at them and tap her foot as they travel towards the Mountain Pass. Somehow he doubts she’ll make the same choice Wyll did, once they find her people.
“And they say I ought to be kept on a leash,” Astarion says as they fall in step.
Tav looks at him, wide-eyed. “Who said that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Shadowheart? No, she was in favor of tying a bell around my neck. The wizard? The monster hunter? Hard to keep track of all the negative attitudes. Not that I expected better.”
Tav’s chest swells with anger. “I did,” he mutters. But what can he do? Plead with them? Scold them? Intervening would only make things worse. Besides, can he really blame them? Being suspicious of a vampire is hardly unreasonable. And Astarion certainly isn’t above flinging insults of his own.
“Such shining optimism.” He snorts. “I don’t know if I should pity you or envy you.”
Tav draws breath to challenge this, but then just sighs. Astarion isn’t wrong. Tav tends to cling to flattering images of people even when they are determined to prove him wrong. The only person he never had any flowery delusions about is Mother. Even Grandmother he loved, in a way, well into his teens.
“So,” Astarion drawls after a few minutes of silence. “Did you sleep well last night?”
“Like slain.” Tav glances at him sideways, grateful for the change of subject. “I suppose I owe you now.”
“Ha! If you expect me to act out your sappy script and respond with a ‘you owe me nothing, darling’ of my own, you’re even more of a fool than I thought.”
The mirth in his voice takes the sting out of his words. Tav can’t help but smile at Astarion’s impression of him, made melodramatic with grand gesturing. He truly was born for the stage.
“You do owe me,” he goes on when Tav doesn’t reply. “And I intend to collect. I read an entire page before I realized you weren’t even listening. Can you imagine the humiliation? I felt so grossly unappreciated I may never recover. You’ve quite broken my poor dead heart.”
Tav laughs. “Didn’t the lights go out?”
“Eventually. I didn’t know you could keep a spell up while asleep.”
“Me neither.” The old hag would be proud. Tav takes a few more strides before he shakes his head and says, “I’m sorry. I promise to make it up to you.”
“And just how do you propose to go about it?” Astarion leans closer. “Spare no juicy detail.”
Instantly, Tav’s cheeks are on fire. Astarion’s expectant, taunting stare is like a hand groping under his clothes and he struggles to keep his eyes on the road. By silent agreement, they have slowed down, lagging behind the others for a bit of stolen privacy, but it doesn’t matter. What Tav’s thinking, no one’s ought to hear, Astarion least of all. Image after unbidden image flashes in his mind’s eye, of all the ways he wishes to give himself to the beautiful vampire.
“Ah,” Astarion says, spelling tomes of bored disappointment. “There goes our gith.”
Tav looks up in alarm. Twin towers have risen from behind the bend in the road, and Lae’zel’s slim figure, glittering in the setting sun, jogs towards the gate between them. She’s already well out of earshot. He squints. Is he imagining it, or are there more slim, glittering figures on the other side?
His head starts to pound along with his heart. And just when he was about to celebrate his first migraine-free day since the nautiloid crash. “Damn. We better hurry.”
“Speaking of books,” Astarion says when Tav pokes his head through the flap of his tent, as if they were in the middle of an ongoing conversation, “Gale was surprisingly amenable to leaving this one in my care after all.” He taps the Necromancy of Thay, which has taken the place of the last night’s tome at his bedside. Its mouth still gapes empty, though.
“Oh?” Tav asks sheepishly, stepping in and letting the flap fall after him.
Astarion watches him shrewdly while he settles on one of the cushions. “Don’t be coy. You plied your silver tongue on him too, didn’t you?”
“I prefer gold, in case you couldn’t tell.”
“Did you tell him my sob-story? Appealed to his pity?”
All cheer drains out of Tav as he realizes Astarion is not only deadly serious, but angry as well. “Of course not,” he says, aghast by the accusation.
“What, then?”
Tav opens his mouth, then closes it with a click. Almost fell into the trap there. “If you wish to know, ask him yourself.”
Astarion scoffs. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Approach him with sincere interest instead of mockery, and he will. He craves conversation and comradery as much as you’d expect from someone who’s lived most of his life with his mother.” The joke’s on Tav, of course, as he had lived most of his life with his mother, and unlike Gale, he definitely can’t boast of having had a goddess for a lover. But it will be lost on Astarion, because no one has thought to approach Tav with an interest in his past so far. Least of all this irresistible but inattentive man he’s slowly falling for even though he knows it’s a death-trap.
“Does he, now?” Astarion says. Tav blinks, having gone too far in his sad little reverie to make sense of the cold, calculating expression that ghosts over Astarion’s face before he rearranges it into a more pleasant one. “I suppose he has a sob story of his own,” he says, waving dismissively.
“Most everyone here does.” Tav sighs, relenting. “Honestly, it’s the ears that deserve the credit, not the tongue. All I did was listen. And I can tell you this much: Gale wasn’t talking out of his backside, the other night, when he said he has experience with opening books that are best left closed.” Tav looks at the tome, bound with bones of small animals and leather that’s very likely made of human skin. Even from afar, he can feel its invasive power like a caress of ghostly fingers on the back of his neck. He shudders. “I think he lost the taste for this one in the telling of his tale.”
He wonders if he should say more. By now, the whole camp must know of Gale’s arcane hunger. Perhaps, if Astarion knew the reason…? But no. If Astarion knew that Gale brought his curse upon himself, out of love, hubris and folly—he’d despise him even more.
Astarion hums, wrinkling his nose in boredom and distaste. “Well, I’m going to open it. Tonight.” He reaches behind him for a soft leather pouch, and produces the monstrous amethyst from the caverns beneath Moonhaven. Its glow paints the walls of the tent in eerie violets perfectly matched to the malignant magic lurking within the book.
Tav extends a hand, and Astarion lets the gem slide into his palm. It’s as cold as ice, and far heavier than it looks. Filaments of light swirl inside it in nauseating, hypnotic patterns. The whispers of the book, barely audible till now, swell to a distracting noise, like the patter of hail everywhere around, and Tav hurries to unhand the stone, grimacing.
In truth, after his talk with Gale, he’s no longer sure Astarion isn’t the best person to do this, if it must be done. His behavior might belie it, but he is more than two hundred years old, and most of that time he spent enduring unspeakable abuse. Yet he is still sane. At least, no less so than the rest of them. Tav recalls the fortress he had glimpsed in Astarion’s mind the night they met, the bone-white of its aged walls and the crimson ivy issuing from them like blood out of a thousand cuts. And what would his own mind look like to someone as sensitive as he is? Like a nursery full of toys where a hyperactive toddler has been left to his own devices for too long, he’d wager. Chaotic, yet insubstantial, and desperately, dangerously lonely. Of the three of them, he’d be the at the greatest risk of succumbing to the dark temptations between those covers.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he murmurs, casting aside the pathetic excuse he’d rehearsed before coming in. Something about inviting Astarion ‘out for a bite’. Ugh.
“Oh. You’re not going to talk me out of it?”
Tav studies him a moment. “Do you want me to talk you out of it?”
“No. And just so we’re clear, you couldn’t, even if you tried. I’m just… surprised, is all. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
Perhaps he isn’t so inattentive after all. Tav gives him a small smile of thanks and claps his knee. “Just be careful.” He makes to leave.
But Astarion covers Tav’s hand with his own, cool and light as a feather. “Perhaps it’s better if you stay. Just in case,” he explains. “I can tell the book doesn’t want to be read. Who knows what it might try.”
Tav’s impression is exactly the opposite: that the book very much does want to be read. How strange. Perhaps it affects each person differently, according to their own affinities and needs. One wishes to hide; the other, to be seen.
He turns his palm up to hold Astarion loosely by his slender wrist, excitement coiling in his belly. “Perhaps. I came here to ask you to read for me anyway,” he lies.
“Was that all you were going to ask for?”
Heat simmers into Tav’s face. He bites his lip, and Astarion’s gaze follows, bright with mischief. They’re feeling one another’s forearms now: gentle, cautious. Astarion’s skin is cold and smooth as water.
“We should take one of these nights for ourselves,” Astarion murmurs when Tav doesn’t reply. “Gods know we’ve waited long enough.”
Feeling lightheaded, Tav lets out a breathless little laugh. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Honestly? I hoped you would be the one to ask. You’ve already given me so much more than I dared hope for.” Astarion’a voice has gone soft and deep, and Tav can feel it inside his chest, plucking at his heartstrings, playing him like a living, willing instrument. The hopes he’s been keeping in check all these days, just barely, are breaking free and running rampant. In his mind’s eye, he’s already kissing those pale, cool lips again and it’s all he can do to stop himself from indulging the impulse right away. “Wouldn’t want you to take me for some greedy, immodest ingrate,” Astarion concludes.
“You, immodest?” Tav laughs shakily, already shivering with anticipation. “I would never.”
“Well, then.” Astarion takes Tav’s hand and presses a soft kiss on his knuckles. “It’s a date.”
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