Page 58 of Astarion

The aasimar snorted. “There’s not very many of us, and we’re widely scattered. It’s been a while since I’ve even seen one.”

“Yes, but do they know that?”

“Clever as well as handsome, I see.”

“My dear paladin, you don’t know the half of it.”

“I look forward to finding out.” Den Suriel winked at him and began to stride down the tunnel. Astarion grabbed his arm. Granted, this was rather like a fox grabbing a draft horse, but the aasimar stopped anyway.

“While I realize that paladins think of traps as those things you open with your face, may I suggest allowing me to check ahead?”

“I came this way once already.”

“Yes, and our friends below are doubtless aware of that fact. If it were me, I would at least have placed a guard.”

“…Yeah, that’s fair.”

Astarion slunk down the hallway, studying the shadows intently. The walls here had collapsed in several places, and the ground was strewn with rubble. Some of the broken areas had spaces large enough for an enemy to hide.

He saw nothing suspicious and turned to wave den Suriel forward. The paladin’s faint glow made it seem like he was standing in his own personal beam of light. Astarion felt his stomach turn over.

Seriously? Those are not butterflies in my stomach. That is ridiculous. I haven’t felt butterflies since that marvelously shy young swashbuckler in Silverymoon. The one with the incredibly impressive sword tattooed across his back.

Den Suriel hurried toward him, and his stomach quivered again. Maybe it’s not just that he’s attractive. Maybe it’s the idea of despoiling all that determined goodness.

It was hard to tell where those pale eyes were looking, but the aasimar suddenly lifted his head, and his mouth turned to a grim slash. Astarion spun around, expecting to see something with teeth and tentacles bearing down on him.

Nothing. The corridor held nothing but dust and tumbled stone. Astarion backed up, wondering what the paladin had seen.

The faintest gleam of light from above caught his eye. He looked up.

A sigil flickered on the ceiling, then died away. It was part of a line carved into the stone that ran down one wall, then vanished beneath the dust. Astarion stared at his own footprints and the sigils just barely visible beneath them.

It hadn’t been butterflies. The quiver had been because he was standing in the middle of one of the wards.

Wards that the living couldn’t cross.

Fuck you, Tymora, he thought, just as a mailed fist closed over his neck.

—

It wasn’t the first time that Astarion had been pinned to the ground with a man’s hands clamped over his wrists. It wasn’t even the tenth time. It was, however, the first time that the other party had been wearing plate mail while he did it.

“What are you?” den Suriel snarled, voice dropping into that strange ringing register. “Ghoul? Wight? Lich?” He was kneeling on Astarion’s chest, and every time he shifted his weight, one of Astarion’s bruised ribs sang a painful sonata.

“Bite your tongue. No lich has skin this good.”

“You can’t be a vampire, or you’d have turned into a bat by now.”

There no longer seemed to be any point in dissembling. Some undead might require dramatic measures, but decapitation would work just as well on Astarion as it had on the mummies. “I’m a vampire spawn. I couldn’t turn into a bat even if I wanted to, which I don’t. I am never turning into a bat.”

“Child of darkness,” the aasimar growled.

“Oh, I like the sound of that.” Astarion smiled up at him, trying to ignore how fast his heart was beating. “Much nicer than spawn.”

Den Suriel’s grip tightened on his wrists, gauntlets digging into the skin. “I should kill you now.”

“Probably.” He lifted his head until they were almost nose to nose. “Of course, you did swear to protect me with your life and soul.”