chapter fifteen.
pentimento

Outside, the setting sun had cast the sky in blush and tangerine, yet the wind did not carry a fragrance to match. Woody rot seeped into the air's chill, mixing with the earthen scent stirred by countless pairs of boots against damp soil, her own among them, and the bloody aroma of livestock taken to slaughter, for where else could their meal have come from if not the final breath of an animal bred to die.

With quickened steps, she had alighted from the tavern, needing not to dodge and dip for her commotion had drawn most eyes within. She was given a wide berth that previous inattention had not, for now that the strangers inspected the woman, they had to admit she was perhaps best to be avoided. Those mis-matched eyes, the drooped ears and her wary alertness stood her a sore thumb, even as far as passing travellers were concerned. Beneath aesthetics, they detected something else in her, unnameable yet undeniable. What was for certain was that her spirit was not of their ilk.

Fallon's gut told her that Raphael was still near, feet beating wooden stairs to gravel to muck. The tavern was positioned beside a humble forge, currently unattended, no doubt the blacksmith had retreated for some drink. Coals within still coughed flaked ash into the heavens, and built around, a wooden structure to shield a tool bench from the sun, stacked with bars of iron, bronze and copper. To its front, the path they'd travelled and the woods that bordered it, to its back, an enclosure of chickens, pigs, and sheep. Beyond, the open thrust of the vale below.

She heard the faint swish of fabric moving behind the back of the forge. Fallon made for it, rounding the corner and finding the ground thin and near flush to the mountainous edge. Too quickly she moved, and with a bold incautious gait, earth crumbling underfoot and slipping. She made to claw the wood of the forge's shelter, her desperate flail finding a hand extended. He had appeared in place as though birthed by the air itself.

Fallon let herself be pulled forward, what other choice did she have after all, and fell against Raphael's broad chest. For a moment the race of adrenalin trumped all else. She dared look over her shoulder, stomach dropping with the sight of what she had narrowly avoided. Her stomach plummeted just as the tawny rocks did against the steep descent.

"Now now, a death so sudden and unceremonious wouldn't do." Raphael met her with amusement. "You would do better to watch your step."

Fallon startled, suddenly aware, with the rumble of his voice, just how he held her. She made a noise of disagreement, retracting herself a step to his side, her back now visible to the tavern, he just shielded from view. She clutched the palm he had touched, skin warmed by unearthly heat: an opposition to Astarion's undead flesh. Fallon shook the hand, as one does a burn, burying her gaze away from that of Raphael's hard dark delight.

"I suspected you were still close." She said, her voice clipped. She wished to forget their proximity, and quickly.

"You have but discovered my tender Achilles," Raphael replied, "I sense the wanton wills of desire and I am made a Sunite basking in all of the Lady of Love's passions."

She would ignore that look he gave her, she would ignore his tone, his toying gaze. No doubt he wished to send her further off kilter, for she felt as though she still teetered on that edge. For all her years and all her toil, Fallon had never encountered a man of such pernicious guile. She steadied her wits as best she could.

"I need to speak to you."

"After all said in the tavern, it interests me greatly that your sad ears haven't tired of my voice." He produced a flourish, leaned his back against the wood. "For your insistence, I will grant you my time. All the better to look on your feeble desperation."

The bridge of Fallon's nose ran ruddy.

"Believe me, if I didn't feel it necessity, I wouldn't have bothered." She sniffed, chin raised and shoulders squared. Far from imposing, she appeared more like an insolent child. "I want answers, not riddles, I should warn you. I won't be a blind pawn any longer. You knew, didn't you? That I would ... Awaken something if I infected myself with that tadpole."

At its mention, her eye quivered with the illithid's movement. Raphael's smile was wide as it was unscrupulous, and he spread his hands as if to indicate that yes, indeed, he had. Her anger flared, fists balled. Finally, someone to blame who was not herself.

"I should end you."

"Should you just? And by what means would this end come to pass? That umbral bounty in your veins? You would sooner end yourself, girl." He meant every syllable, flicked sharp on his tongue. "You forget I have eyes everywhere: the roads, the trees, your very thoughts. Consider me a spectre, haunting, if you display any doubt of how truly miniscule the parameters of your construct bind you. My medalling has been your blessing, these powers your fate. I claim only a humble, guiding nudge and know that my thanks will arrive in time, when the road has buffed clean that which remains unjaded."

"A blessing?"

She could not believe his words, so ridiculous an assertion it prompted laughter, callous and self-effacing. To consider herself lucky in her current predicament was, itself, a punchline better spun than anything he could have moulded in earnest. Bitter mirth subsided, Fallon found Raphael not nearly as entertained. His diatribe had stripped back a formality he had been affording. He truly did think of her as ungrateful.

"Is that the reasoning of one beyond the reach of the gods? This is no blessing, it's a curse, through and through. My touch spurns, I weaken in the sun, I'm haunted by a voice that is not my own, hissing blackened steam into my ears. The hag, the witch, whatever she was, accused me of having Netherese blood and told me to end my life before I met a fate far worse. A blessing? No. You have damned me."

"You speak of the damned with privilege, I am afraid, allow yourself to hope you never know its true meaning. Your state is to the contrary, I insist."

"Insist all you want, it changes nothing. A Shadowking was what she called me, now you send me on an errand, no doubt to forsake me to that fate. How many days do I have left, how many nights. Not enough to get what I want. Not enough for what you promised."

"Ah, but you are sorely wrong, as most mortals are in their ponderance of fate, for the woman you met with in the wetlands was sorely ill-informed."

He paused for her reaction, the ease of her hard brow. Ill-informed?

"So I'm not ... Mutating?"

"To the will of Verraketh Talembar, you'll be relieved to hear, you are not. Metamorphosis is an entirely different matter. Liken it to the chrysalis of the pupal butterfly: wings soon to spread."

Fallon felt like she was going mad. How could she trust his words, as tempting as it was to take them at face value. He had lied to her through omission, and here so much went unsaid, hidden beneath the cool flex of his tongue. It was a splinter of hope though, to consider the fact that perhaps she was not destined for the throes of death. Still, Auntie Ethel's words haunted her. Some fates were worse than death.

"I don't suppose you care to illuminate further," she muttered.

"Alas, these lips move no more until you produce the book, a shame I'm sure you find it. I have already elaborated generously, though I do confess, I have acquired a soft spot for the grit you possess under despair's interminable heel."

The look he gave her chilled the very marrow of her bones. What was worse than angering a devil? Pleasing one. She shook dull fear with her head, not yet satisfied, she would push for more. If not about herself, then all else.

"Fine, we shall move on. I ask you now, what crafts your interest?"

Raphael considered her words, she could see him weighing the consequence of allowing the conversation to sail forward. In the drop of rocky crags, what lay below whistled with a building gust. Golden light dappled his veneer and set it to kindle. Refocused, his eye met hers, and in it she saw something that could have been mistaken for wistfulness.

"Call me a painter, and you, my blackened emulsion. The time will come when my machinations will be made plain and true, but for now, I will say this: this world, with all its tumult and threat, deserves a fresh perspective, don't you think? The beauty of the dusk, and beyond it, unbroken midnight. After all, hope breeds eternal in the toils of a dawn that never comes to pass."

Fallon detected a flicker of romance in the tune he spun, for truly he spoke with the words of an artist. Born in his crisp dictation was a yearning, for something to be made in his image. Fallon knew it should repulse her and yet it didn't, for after the distance forced upon her, and all the looks of reproach, it made her feel oddly content. Not just a means for personal gain, she sensed respect in his tone, a quiet ovation.

She was reminded then of the only other to offer her this grace, no less conditional. Her tone lulled and she sucked pensive on her bottom lip. Raphael waited patient, wiped clean of any expression. Selfishly she wondered if he too had been left with only partial defences.

"But what of Astarion? What is his part to play?" She paused, trying best to consider her words. "I wonder the necessity of leading him astray. Not that I am against it, just that, well, to what ends?"

"My, because climatic zeniths that breed catharsis need but one single, decisive sting. In order for all to take root, your magic needs fertile soil, the tilting of a scale. A single wretch who would sooner have your head than spare your life. Think on it clearly for not but one spare second: if he were in your position, what choice would he make?"

He would stop at nothing, her senseless passenger replied, he would wipe you clean and distant as silt in ancient rubble.

Fallon shivered and pushed aside the thought, for there had been a tremor in the speaker's words, one of utmost certainty. 

"I've spoken enough, though it pains me to part my ways with you." Raphael said, cutting short her thoughts. No, she thought, I need more.

"My mother." Fallon spoke quickly. "She visited me in my sleep. What of her?"

He considered her slowly. A soft spot he surely must have had, for he opened his mouth to speak to her request one last time.

"Your mother is the bleeding proof of what happens when one runs from fate and challenges predestination. Make of her a warning, to not count the deck and overlook the hand. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The book for your lineage: all will be clear."

"But I don't want to know about my lineage, I want revenge." Fallon snapped, incredulity skidding across her words. "The powers, fine. I'll take them for what they are, for all they could grant me, but I don't care to know my mother's past, her secrets. My father was a bastard, myself his victim, my mother the collateral. What good is it to know anything else?"

"Ah, though what is revenge but an obsession with one's past?"

This alone would have stopped her in her tracks, for it was a bleeding truth she would sooner ignore than look upon, but Raphael sought more. His hand cupped her cheek, thumb stroked against the jagged flesh of her scar, sliced sharp across her cheek. She felt a remnant of the blade that had given it to her, along with a dozen mottled bruises.

Fallon had been beaten within an inch of her life when she had resisted the night Virric had damned her mother, but a teenage girl would never have been a match for three of her father's men. Like cattle, the lesser spawn of Mossdreamer had been rounded up, she among them, locked in the bowels of his sprawling estate, their death inevitable as the break of dawn. What if it had never come to pass, she wondered now, if the night had held strong. Would she still have been made a murderer for leaving her bastard brethren to dust. Would she still feel that guilt.

His words invaded her very thoughts.

"I hinted at the fruit of retribution, and there is no flesh juicier than that which spills forth on the close of one's own teeth." His hand dropped from her and he smiled, satisfied with doubt sown well. "With that, I bid you adieu."

A blink of the eye and he was gone, leaving her standing alone with only the faint impression upon her cheek where he had caressed her skin. Fallon placed a hand where his had been and turned to approach the tavern once more but stopped. There, just visible beyond the chicken coop and the low picket fence surrounding it, stood Astarion. Watching, and for how long, she could not say.

Their eyes met at a distance. Fallon opened her mouth to call to him, only for his name to stay firmly rooted on her throat. For he had turned away, and soon he disappeared completely from view, lost to the burgeoning twilight.

✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼

When she had arrived back inside, much of the earlier commotion had died down, most retreating to the entertainment of a travelling bard, others preferring to watch the light dim on the wide front porch.

Dalaia had already drunk enough to level an ox and was soapy eyed over her newest fancy, a fascination that would come to pass in the space of a night and lose all its lustre with dawn. She raised her head at Fallon's entrance, seated arm in arm with Lilliana at the bar, several paces down from Orikas, below him a plate of leftovers. He nudged them towards her at her approach, sliding the stool beside him out with his foot. Fallon shook her head.

"Thank you, but I just want to be shown to the room. I assume Marth's already retired." She said, glancing around and finding nothing of the druid.

"He has." Orikas said, rising from his seat. Fallon noticed an anxious flicker in Orikas's golden eyes. She saw something of the boy she had met him as, before the world had made him stone. "There's something we need to talk about."

"Not now, please. I've had enough talk for one day."

"It's important."

"Would it be about Astele?" Fallon said, suddenly. His eyes pinched, discomfort twisting his lips. A low blow perhaps, given the obvious impression Raphael's visit had left on him, but Fallon was impatient, lacking even the most threadbare of tact. "You didn't dare give me an inch when she tossed us out of the Guild, you said it was just like me to put my whims above all else."

"It is." Orikas snapped back, realising too quickly that he had lost all hope of rerouting the conversation. "Consider that blame can know multiple."

"Right, a convenient line now that we're far in the future. What did you do to piss her off? Tell me now and then maybe I can entertain you further."

Orikas glowered at her.

"Nothing worse than sharing a bed while planning her topple."

Fallon snatched the plate of food from the bar top, just managing to keep a hunk of roast pork from skittering to the floor. Her brother did not react to the swiftness of her movements, even as she made to blindly stride away, pausing at the hallway door as she realised she hadn't the faintest clue where she was going.

"Upstairs, furthest door on the right." She heard him say. "Sister I'm sor—"

Distance ate his words, or else she blocked them out, and told herself that Orikas's regret would be his alone. Like an incantation, if she repeated it enough times, perhaps it would come true.

She retired to the modest room in the tavern's west wing, pleasant enough in its décor, which aimed more to create a homely impression than to impress. Candlelit sconces hung either side of a painting of the mountains, rendered by broad autumnal strokes, and below it, a modest bed fit for two, topped with patchwork quilt and two pillows due for stuffing. A room divider sat in front of a wooden tub and bronze kettle, its other side flanked by a chest. Someone, she suspected Marth, had done the liberty of placing her pack against it.

Fallon sat atop the chest and made to pick at her food, but found she had little appetite. She was exhausted, and in sitting had heard her joints sigh. The bed sat tempting but she was worn by the road, dirt in her knuckles, dirt on her brow. She took the kettle and what was left upon her plate, discarded its remains and requested water from one of the staff, making sure to angle the handle lest their hands brush on accident.

Soon, though not nearly soon enough, she had drawn a bath for herself, steam dancing from its surface and beckoning her forth. With a look of apprehension towards the closed door, Fallon drew fast the divider. Hopefully he would take his time with his hunt.

Undressed, she stepped into the tub. Its bite was hot at first, though not unwelcome, and not wishing to squander what meagre time she might have left, lowered herself gingerly until she saw nothing of herself but a dim blur of shapes between milky suds. She worked quick as her skin smarted, scrubbing clean every inch of herself, before detangling the length of her dark hair between clawed fingers. 

She let action take the place of thought, clearing a space for nothing but sensation to roost. What little her mind lingered on was all she missed of home, the moment bringing soft recollection, more felt in her bones than pondered. Their Lower City hideout, in the basement of an unassuming house, small enough it looked more like a gardener's shed, with roots that burrowed thick. She loved her baths, loved the prune of her skin from lingering too long, the perfumed oils she bought from a sweet faced vendor with a jaunty limp: orange blossom, oak moss, and chamomile. Her damp hair braided past her shoulder, alone to all including herself, for who was she without the fear of perception? A simple being of flesh and brood.

Acclimatised now, the water's temperature on her skin was divine in its rarity and Fallon sunk low to the embrace until the world existed only in the tub. Beneath the surface, she found the tranquillity she sought, snatched all too quickly. The door had opened, and with it, the squeak of hinges. Fallon shot upwards, gasping air, water sloshing from the tub's sides.

"I thought you'd take the opportunity to nap, not that I disapprove of this other pursuit. A shame though, to go to the effort of bathing when this floor needs more than a decent sweep."

Astarion's voice carried past the divider's shade. To her surprise, he didn't sound nearly as blithe as normal. His footsteps approached, his silhouette thrown against the thin cloth. He stopped, and Fallon was struck by a paranoia that he could see right through to her. She crossed her arms against her chest.

"Is that still your insistence?"

"Hmm ... Yes, yes it is."

"Excellent." She hesitated a moment, and as though he sensed her thoughts, she saw him turn and shrink away. Fallon breathed low, nodding to herself. "Well, I'll be out in a moment."

"Take all the time you need, darling, every last second."

Was that sarcastic? Fallon mulled the thought as she rose, wrung her hair, towelled herself dry. She listened for him as she did so, trying to map his place in the room. He paced a short while, then stood still for long enough that Fallon thought he might have disappeared entirely, then a solid stride to the right. The kick of his boots, the sigh of the mattress. Fresh dressed and hair damp, Fallon parted the divide.

As she had guessed, she found him reclined with arms folded behind his head, though true to tone, the vampire did not wear a look of coquettish glee. Rather he lay pensive and did not glance at her appearance. He was watching the window at the far end, lost in thought. Fallon cleared her throat. Slowly he turned his head.

"Do you need something?" A strain, like he was holding himself back. Fallon frowned, shaking her head. "Then why look so puzzled? Don't say you expect me to arrange the bedroll for you."

"I said nothing to that effect," she scoffed. Back to the window he went, she fastened to the spot. He made a sharp scoff of annoyance.

"Yes, I know, it's hard not to stare, isn't it?"

"Wasn't thinking that either."

"Then what?"

"Have I annoyed you?"

He didn't answer, but tipped his nose upwards, perhaps even rolled his eyes. Fallon pursed her lips. There was no guess to hazard here.

"I'm not dying, by the way. At least that's what Raphael said."

Fallon saw his brow twitch, cast golden from the flicker of the sconces above. She waited out the quiet with that of her own.

"Good news, if true. You owe a debt to the devil then."

He was neither bitter nor particularly amused. The longer it lasted, the more jarring his apathy became. Tentative, Fallon paced forward to the bed's opposite side. He followed her against his peripherals, red eyes but a sliver of feigned disinterest.

"He said I'm no Shadowking. Or queen, as you said."

"Ah."

"He did say there would be change."

"Hmm."

Was he sulking? Against her ear, each utterance was squirming with insolence. Fallon slowly lowered herself but made no move other than to perch. Words percolated on her tongue in the lull.

"Is that truly all you have to say?" She said after a time.

"If you wanted congratulations, I saw Dalaia still nursing a flagon downstairs. The girl can drink, it must be said. Evidently with good reason."

This was going nowhere, and he had to nerve to call her stubborn. She was no fool. Their silent exchange was more than remembered, no doubt producing this abruptness. Fallon did not want to broach the topic head on, unsure of where it might lead. She chose a different tack.

"I guess that, well, it just begs the question. That night at the lake." She saw him perk at this and continued forth, emboldened. "You saw something, but at the time you were scant with the details. I ask you now, what did you see?"

She had eased further, scooting upwards to rest her back against the wooden headboard but remained at arm's length. Astarion held his chin in thought, his vexation present but slightly dissipated. At least that was something.

"A twilight swallowed you, no, spun, like silken threads dyed with coal. Your hair floated as though underwater, each exhalation born of fog, and your eyes twinned in their onyx, turned blind and unseeing." 

Despite the evocative description, Astarion's voice was bored. It was an act he could not maintain. His hand dropped from his face and clenched his fists by his sides. When he spoke next it was gravely. Almost as though what he had seen had pained some part of him. 

"There was beauty in it, but I confess ... I found it a bitter reminder. You were brought to heel, so to speak. Seeing you that way ... Well, it wasn't lost on me."

It clicked for her, finally, just why he had turned away from her that night and all that had followed. His reaction, to proposition her so abruptly, not a whim but a weapon brandished. In the face of all unknown but the past, he had sought control. Pity deflated her. It was in this moment, as she wilted into her thoughts, that Astarion swung face her. He unwrapped his spine, drawn to a height, surveying her with the countenance of a marble statue. Fallon found herself taken woefully unaware.

"On Raphael, though, if I can change the topic. I find myself wondering less about that man's words and a great deal more about his presence itself."

"I don't understand your meaning," Fallon muttered.

"Well it's just that, when he made his entrance, I sensed a great many things. Confusion, obviously. Fear, undoubtedly. Familiarity ..." 

Astarion paused, not to gather himself for now he was nothing but composed, but to allow space to breed agitation. Try as she might, Fallon could not ease the writhe in her gut.

"Did you have a tell when you lie? Like you're seconds away from sneezing. At first I thought you had allergies and made a note to not end up in the spray but quickly I noticed a pattern."

Her breathing had grown shallow with his words, throat constricting, almost as if she were willing herself to disappear entirely. He had noticed what no one had before, the bastard, and now he intended to use her stupid nose as a weapon. She had no doubt in her mind that he had seen Raphael caress her cheek, the sight had giving his accusation enough weight to confront her with.

"I've never seen that man before today." Fallon replied, too fast, too hostile.

"I've been thinking, as well, about when you insisted I join you. Your kindness was sudden. Quick. Uncharacteristically so for someone who mulls between the pages of a journal. Almost as though you were swayed by another force." Astarion may have listened but he hadn't heard anything beyond her tone, that much was clear. "Tell me, have you signed your name above a dotted line as of late?"

"I was thinking of the others, considering what Cazador might do if we returned empty-handed. I didn't think it wise to make an enemy of a vampire."

He laughed at this.

"Ironic. You don't fool me. I doubt you've thought of another's wishes a day in your life."

"That's not true." She snapped. "I care about them."

"Do you? You fashioned yourself a leader, why not an equal? Don't answer, I already know the truth. You like the glory, the attention, the power. It's far from a criticism, but if you wish to make it as such, fine. Be my guest. Doesn't make it any less true."

"How can you be so certain of my nature? I have barely known you a moon cycle."

"I had an inkling. I suppose the saying is true. It takes one to know one."

"Well, if you felt that way, why offer yourself to me? And why bare your back if you're so concerned about my lack of honour."

"I wanted to test you. To prove the suspicion to myself, and I was right. You don't know a boon you wouldn't try to swipe with your grubby little hands, even if you should know better, because you cannot help yourself. You prove treacherous, even with something as simple as sex. Gods only know what else you would try to take."

There came a lull as he glowered at her, his truth revealed. Fallon felt a muscle in her cheek twitch.

"So that is your estimation of me. That I'm greedy and power hungry and spiteful." Fallon meant her tone to be incensed. Instead it grew frail as a maiden. She seemed to lose something of herself then, the truth in his words proving too much to stomach.

Astarion stirred, looked down at her as if from a great height, watching thin lipped. Maybe he took pity on her, though more likelier was that he searched for deception. Either way, his anger slackened.

"I think that you are a dark, uncompromising creature." He replied in measure. "And that there is not a single thing you value higher above your own infernal wants, whatever they may be. For that I cannot trust you."

"And yet you need me, just as I need you."

Fallon hadn't meant to speak the words aloud, but there they were, rolling as a fog. Astarion's wariness compounded. She remained still, a hunter's bent gait, surveying a vigilant deer stood in sunlit clearing. One false move and she would shatter the peace.

"To what ends does this need of yours conspire itself?" He murmured.

Deep into his eyes, Fallon interwove her gaze and reached towards him, hand brushing the skin of his cheek. Beneath her touch, the weft of his skin fell supple and shallow as the breath stoked dim in her throat. Fallon felt a swell in her chest, like harp chords plucked, then in a generous swipe, strummed. In her lingered hand came not warmth but a tremble of cold, a dark mist bleeding from the pads of her fingers and feathering soft his outline. 

Astarion saw it too and he made no effort to move. Faster still, the shadows encroached, until they swirled like smoke around them, not in spurn but in a delicate rapture, swaddling them incomprehensible. Fallon looked at all she had crafted with pure wonder, then to him. Against black cloth, Astarion shone before her, as though crafted of pure ivory and rose, thorns and all, a silver flame breaking the gentle night. Such beauty, she found herself thinking without interrogation, and let out a stammered sigh. Oh gods, what was this force stirring inside of her?

She was in bloom, though just as quick, wilt struck her. Fallon gripped her temple, feeling an intrusion sharp against her brain. The tadpole squirmed, her eyes pricked, shadows shrunk to nothing but a faint puff. She felt her mind smothered, a crimson veil of crushed velvet, realising with its tightening grip just what it was.

Astarion held his temple steady, fingers flexed. He was trying to peer inside her mind. Aghast, she pushed back, perspiration breaking her forehead at the clench of her brow. She tried to will her body to move, to make distance between them both, but his grip on her mind was strong. He was a fierce adversary and she had underestimated him.

"Get out!" Fallon cried through gritted teeth. He made no moved to relinquish, digging his harder his proverbial heels.

"What are you hiding?" His voice was so cold, sapped of mercy. "Show me."

The voice snapped not from his lips but inside her, drumming the bone of her skull. Fallon resisted but she could feel his determination, the acid of his distrust, for why resist so stubbornly if she had nothing to hide? There must be something there, squirreled away out of view. Where was it, no, what was it. She meant him harm, didn't she. She wanted to bury that blade of hers right in his back and send him sprawling into ruin. Thoughts in his tongue ensnared her, breaching past her defences. He would find them, dammit, and then he would show her just what it meant to try and play him the fool.

Leave.

The voice was no whisper, it was a bellow — hard, cruel, commanding. The force of it cut clean the connection of their minds and Fallon fell backwards, as though a fist had met her chest, sprawling to her side on the floorboards below. Nausea tossed her stomach, gulping air into her lungs to stay the urge to upend her meagre dinner. That had not been the voice of her mother.

Astarion looked at her, astonishment transfixing his pale face. He blinked rapidly, aghast at what he undeniably had heard. For a tense moment, neither spoke.

"What was that, in your head? That wasn't the tadpole, was it? No, the thing lacks a mouth to speak. That was a person."

Fallon picked herself up slowly and folded her arms against her chest. She had not wanted anyone else to know of the whisper, for no good ever came of voices in the head, least of all ones without explanation. To even consider allowing the truth, she had first needed to acquire the knowledge of its speaker. Baked within her trepidation, however, was a small relief. The voice had defended her. 

"I heard that voice, in all the ruckus your blood stirred." Astarion murmured, twisting his jaw. "It stood out amongst the rest, yes I remember it now, but I shut it out, thinking it was just some roaming lord with a mouth as big as his head. Now I wonder ..."

He paused in thought, conjuring the memory. Her brows ascended, searching him for any lingering suspicion but found none. It seemed, at least for now, he was distracted enough not to try his hand again with her.

"I should drink from you. Perhaps I can glean something more this time." He said suddenly. Fallon balked visibly.

"After what you just tried to do, how can I possibly trust you not to kill me."

Despite it all, Astarion smiled. His cunning had found itself once more.

"Because it's just like you said, my dear. I need you just as you need me."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

AUTHOR'S NOTES

i. everyone's bisexual and no one is happy </3

ii. i think this fic is gonna end me, i slowed down a considerable amount because i feel like i'm writing something i would like to read and i don't want to rush through that feeling :') it means the world to me that other people enjoy it too. a lot of the stuff i have planned is a bit diabolical so i keep getting sad for the characters (even orikas lmao)