Chapter Text
A gorgeous cover art by Jiabisu. Please take a look at her other artworks too, she draws Gale and BG3 often.
It was a moonless night, and the camp was still, thick with a silence that felt like waiting. The kind of silence that wraps itself around the bones of the world before something terrible begins. Even the wind had gone still.
Inside, Iluviel sat on a folded blanket with her boots beside her, her armor half-unlaced, and a book of elven verse untouched in her lap. Her bow rested nearby, always within reach, though she’d been too tired to restring it. Her fiery red hair was damp with sweat from the long day, curling around her shoulders in untamed waves, and her eyes, fierce and blue, were narrowed in quiet thought.
She didn’t hear him approach.
But she felt it when the flap of her tent stirred - and Astarion stepped inside like a shadow with purpose.
“I thought I might find you still awake,” he said, voice honeyed, low. “The camp has gone to sleep. All but you.”
Iluviel glanced at him, her face unreadable, and said nothing, but he smiled as if she’d already welcomed him in.
“You always sit like that after battle,” he continued, kneeling just inside the tent. “Shoulders drawn like you’re still holding tension. Like you’re afraid to set it down, even for a moment.”
He was dressed simply tonight - dark shirt unbuttoned just enough to show the marble curve of his throat, his silver-blond hair falling loose around his temples. There was something ageless about him in that moment, something fae and terrible.
“You didn’t answer when I passed your tent,” he said, softer now. “I thought perhaps you needed company. Or perhaps…” He smiled again, and it was a slow thing. “You were waiting for me.”
Her brow lifted.
“I wasn’t.”
“No?” he asked, tilting his head. “And yet you haven’t asked me to leave.”
She sighed, looked away.
“You say pretty things, Astarion. But you don’t mean them.”
He moved closer, slowly, much like someone who knows exactly how his body moves in the darkness. He crouched beside her, one hand hovering near her knee, not quite touching.
“I mean every word I say to you,” he said. “Especially the ones you pretend not to hear.”
She stared straight ahead.
“You feed on people, Astarion. You charm them so they don’t notice what you’re really doing.”
He chuckled, rich and dark.
“Of course I do. But you’re not like the others. You see the teeth behind the smile, and you don’t flinch. That’s why I like you.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, Iluviel,” he whispered, leaning closer. “You,” he inhaled sharply, “are a poem carved in fire. You walk through the world like it’s something you own by right, and yet I’ve seen you falter when no one is looking. I’ve seen your hands tremble just before the kill.”
She looked at him with furrowed brows.
“And you think that makes me weak?”
“No,” he said, brushing a lock of her red hair behind her ear. “I think it makes you… delicious.”
She pulled back slightly. Her breath was quiet, her body still. The air between them grew taut as a drawn bowstring.
“I shouldn’t,” she said, voice low, almost to herself, “not again.”
“I know,” he murmured. “But want has never been reasonable, has it? Not for you. Not for me.”
His hand came to rest lightly on her wrist. She didn’t pull away.
“I would never hurt you,” he said, voice like velvet over stone. “Let me give you something other than battle. Something without blood or fear. Just this moment. Just… us. ”
She hesitated, long enough that he almost moved away.
Then, slowly, she leaned forward, just a little, but it was enough.
His mouth met hers.
And it was not a hungry kiss at first. It was slow, coaxing, gentle - like he was promising not to break her if she let go. His fingers slipped up to cradle her face, brushing along her jaw, then down her throat.
“You taste like dusk,” he whispered against her lips. “Like something lost in a forest that never should have been found.”
And she kissed him again.
It was a cry for silence, for stillness, for something in the night that wasn’t war.
They came together on the blanket, mouths and hands and skin made urgent by what they never said aloud. He worshipped her with words, with teeth grazing softly along her neck, with fingers that traced desire into her skin. She gasped beneath him, nails curling into his back, her hair falling wild across her flushed cheeks as she gave in.
She wanted to believe it. For just one more night.
He held her tightly as she shuddered around him, whispered her name like prayer, kissed her shoulder like a promise.
And then, when it was done - when her breath was still trembling and her body still aching - he leaned into her neck, his voice barely there.
“Please. Just a taste.”
She froze.
“No,” she whispered, but it was too late.
His fangs sank in - practiced and hungry.
The pain was distant but the pleasure was sharp. For one dizzying instant, she felt herself unravel completely.
But it didn’t stop.
He drank longer than he should have. Deeper.
She wanted to push him back.
Panic.
She tried - but she was pinned beneath him, her wrists caught under the weight of his body. And it was then - then - that she felt it fully: helpless. Vulnerable in a way she never had before, not even in battle.
No, this was different.
This was danger.
Her fingers pushed weakly at his shoulder, but he held her still.
And drank - with something resembling cruelty or maybe just need, but it didn't matter.
When he finally pulled away, his lips were red and shining and his eyes bright with something dark.
“You are perfect… every time. ” he murmured, kissing the wound once, as if that would make it right.
Then he stood, laced his trousers, smoothed his shirt, and walked out.
Just like that.
Gone.
Iluviel wanted to cry, but she-
She simply lay there, hand pressed to the bite at her neck, staring at the roof of the tent, weak, confused, violated, her body still marked by his.
She’d given him her trust and he’d taken it all with a smile - then dared to ask for more. Her blood, even when she said no.
In the morning, Astarion passed her at the fire with a nod and a bright, careless smile, as if they had never touched.
As if he had never fed.
As if she had never felt.
She said nothing, just watched the flames crackle and die.
And did not look at him again.
The days had passed like smoke after a fire - choking and lingering in the lungs long after it should’ve cleared. The camp continued on, routine anchoring the group in the face of rising dread. The final battle was coming, they could all feel it. The air was thick with the scent of steel and sleeplessness.
But Iluviel hadn’t spoken to Astarion since that night. Not more than a word or two when strategy demanded it. She avoided his gaze, and the entirety of his presence at the edge of the firelight, though he didn’t seem to notice.
Or perhaps he did - and pretended not to.
He continued on just like before - laughing with the others, telling stories, preening and purring when needed.
But he never looked at her like before. Like all those times before, and somehow, that was worse than cruelty.
And although she wanted to shout, the confrontation began with a mere whisper.
One night, she found him alone, near the edge of camp, polishing a dagger that didn’t need polishing. The moon was just rising, casting his face in silver and shadow.
“Astarion.”
He looked up, blinking once. A smile twitched to life on his lips - reflexive.
“Ah, hello darling . To what do I owe the pleasure?” He glanced her up and down with a practiced smirk. “Coming back for another taste of my company?”
She only looked at him.
“Why did you do it?”
The words were quiet and hollow, as if they’d been carried for too long.
His smirk faltered.
“Do what?”
“You came to me like I mattered, and I let you in. You touched me, you kissed me, you... you bit me. And then you left like it meant nothing.”
He leaned back slightly, a flicker of discomfort in his expression, but he was already reaching for his mask again.
“Darling, it was lovely. You were… exquisite. A rare treat. But surely we’re all adults here - what’s a night between companions in such perilous times?”
She flinched, then quickly straightened.
“I thought you wanted me… differently.” she said. “Not the body, or the blood. Me. ”
His face changed for a moment. Something behind his eyes - panic, maybe. Or guilt. But it was gone in a blink.
“You’re not the first to think that,” he said, his voice suddenly cool. “And you won’t be the last.”
That hurt more than anything.
She nodded slowly.
“I won’t ask again,” she said. “I just… I needed to know if any of it was real. Or if I was just a different kind of... prey.”
Astarion looked away.
“I see,” she whispered.
And she turned - wishing he would stop her, wishing he would reach out and say her name.
He did not.
Later, when the camp was asleep and the fire burned low, he watched her from across the flickering circle - her red hair tucked under her hood, her back straight, her silence vast.
He opened his mouth once, as if to speak.
But what words could undo the wound of being made to feel wanted - only to learn it was hunger in disguise?
So he said nothing.
And the silence between them grew into something unbridgeable.