Page 31 of Astarion

He ran the mental calculations in an instant. If this was about the unicorn blood, then even if Dalyria tried to hide his involvement, Cazador would torture it out of her eventually. By then, the old man’s blood would be up, and it would be very bad to attract his attention.

Best to defuse it now, before it starts. He feigned a yawn. “Dear me, is this about that little bottle of unicorn scab?”

Cazador’s nostrils flared. “You knew about this?”

“Of course I did, Father. I’m the one who got it for her.” Astarion sauntered into the room. “Why, did it explode or something?”

The vampire narrowed his eyes. He was a high elf as much as Astarion was, but his face was thinner and sharper, all pale angles and dark hollows. “Why did you acquire it for her?”

Astarion’s shrug was a masterpiece of nonchalance. “She said she wanted it for some experiment or other, and I felt like doing her a favor. And that ratty little magic shop—you know the one—was on the way to the night’s hunting ground.”

Cazador had clearly been deflected, but he wasn’t put completely off the scent. “You know that my children are forbidden to drink the blood of thinking creatures.”

“Father, if I may…” Astarion leaned toward him and let a faintly patronizing smile play across his lips: two senior family members discussing the foibles of a young one. “Regardless of what my sister may have intended, no one could have drunk that blood. Chewed it, possibly, if you could chisel it out of the bottle. That unicorn has been dead since the Time of Troubles, at least. Its blood probably has more use as a paperweight.”

Sometimes the best lies were true. There was a brief moment in which things could have gone either way, and Astarion waited, trying not to look like he was waiting. Either he laughs and walks away or he tells me he’s disappointed, and Dalyria and I spend a fortnight in the kennels with Godey dropping rats through the bars…

Cazador laughed, and Astarion’s guts unknotted. “You need a special enchantment to keep the blood fresh. It loses potency so quickly. A vial of fresh unicorn blood, now…” He tapped one sharp nail against his lips. “Do you know, that gives me an idea? Dalyria, attend me.”

He swept from the room. Dalyria followed in his wake, flashing Astarion a grateful look as she passed.

That’s two favors you owe me, sister. Astarion smiled to himself and sat down to mend his sleeve in the light of the empty lab.

—

The next evening, Astarion dressed carefully for the nightly hunt. He was in the rare good mood that came from having successfully pulled off a heist, coupled with the fact that Cazador had been closeted in his study all night and the spawn had been left to their own devices. He smoothed his embroidered jacket over his hips, adjusted the cuffs, and ran a hand through his hair.

It was a damn shame that he couldn’t see himself in a mirror. When I am finally made a true vampire, I shall keep a tame doppelganger on staff to mimic me so that I know precisely how good I look.

The unpleasant little voice in the back of his head pointed out that it was likely he’d never be made into a true vampire, but Astarion was in too good a mood and tuned it out.

Perhaps tonight he could even begin a hunt the old-fashioned way. A slow seduction, over the course of days or tendays. Like the early years, when Cazador expected only one or two victims a month, when a hunt involved craftsmanship, not simply leading drunken boors to their doom.

Like when he’d met—

Ah ah ah. He caught himself mentally before he could start down that road. It would spoil his pleasant mood. Don’t do that to yourself, darling. Focus on the hunting, and how good you’ll look doing it.

Astarion’s good cheer lasted until he turned down the corridor that led to the outside world and ran into an invisible brick wall. Then it ran out of him like blood from a slashed artery.

He knew immediately what had happened, but he tested the wall anyway. His hand went through the space in front of him just fine, but if he tried to walk forward, the air became as solid as stone.

Cazador had revoked his permission to leave the palace.

Dread rose up inside him as if some small, sharp-toothed creature were gnawing on the underside of his stomach. It might be nothing, he told himself. It might be that he had something else he wants me to do. It was just that the things he wanted Astarion to do almost always ended in screaming.

“It’s not just you,” Aurelia said, coming out of nowhere with a stealth that would have been alarming if he wasn’t so distracted. “Seems to be everyone.”

Astarion relaxed, but only slightly. Personalized attention was the worst, but there were only a few reasons that Cazador would want his spawn confined to the palace, and almost all of them were bad. He might be bored and want to amuse himself by having the spawn act out torturous tableaus. He might have found or manufactured some betrayal and wanted the others to watch the punishment he meted out. Conceivably, he could have made a new spawn and wants to introduce us, but he only made Dalyria a few years ago. And someone always winds up being humiliated for the new spawn’s edification, so that’s not the best scenario, either.

Regardless of the reason, there were a dozen ways out of Szarr Palace, and all of them were closed until Cazador gave his children leave to hunt again.

“I suppose we should go see what the old man wants,” he said, straightening his jacket. “Since he’s gone to so much trouble to keep us at home.”

Aurelia undoubtedly knew that his bravado was false, but as with so many other things, she said nothing. She simply fell into step beside him, garnet eyes as unreadable as ever.

He glanced over and saw the thin scar on the side of her neck. It vanished under the collar of her shirt, but he knew just how far down it went and exactly where it crossed the shoulder blade.

Aurelia had taken him to her bed half a dozen times, in the earliest days. Not even Astarion’s well-trained ego could make him believe that he had seduced her. It hadn’t felt like pity sex so much as mutual comfort, as if the sex were merely something they had to get through so that they could hold each other in the dark. Like everything else in Szarr Palace, though, comfort had to be rationed out so that it could not be used against you. It had been a long time now, and Astarion, at least, would rather sleep alone.