Page 66 of Astarion

“I was not crying,” Astarion snapped. “I was probably gasping. There wasn’t much water there.”

Den Suriel reached over to his gear, snagged a waterskin, and offered it to Astarion.

The water was tepid but tasted as good as anything that wasn’t blood could taste. He drank, grateful and annoyed with himself for being grateful.

“Did you wake up in a crypt when you died?”

Astarion lowered the waterskin. “I fear the Ancunín family crypt was sold to some nouveau riche trader centuries ago. No, this crypt was a punishment. The old man locked me inside for a year without food or water.”

The aasimar’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth to say something, then clearly thought better of it. After a long moment, he said, “A year is a long time.”

“Believe me, I’m aware.” At the end of the year, Astarion had been a shriveled husk, nothing but bones and fangs and madness. “Did you know that when you’re that dehydrated, your eyes shrink as the fluid is absorbed? I could actually fit my finger into the socket with them.”

Den Suriel’s lips pulled back in clear disgust. “That’s appalling.”

“I was remarkably short on ways to amuse myself. I suppose I should have been meditating on my crime, but that lost its entertainment value after the first tenday or so.”

“Crime? What crime could possibly justify that?”

The words It’s none of your business were on Astarion’s tongue, but he was supposed to be a tragic figure, and this was, in certain lights, a tragedy. And it was all true.

“My master took a liking to a young man and sent me to bring him back to the palace. It was not a task I wanted to perform. He was…innocent.”

Innocent, and he looked at me as if he had just learned what desire was. I should have turned him down that first night, told him to go home and not come back. I should have found some drunken sot and lured him back to the palace and hunted elsewhere. In those days, Cazador had not required so much prey. Astarion had been allowed to take his time selecting a victim, spending days, even tendays on the hunt. So he had gone back the next night, and the one after, and the one after that, and every night Sebastian was waiting for him with all the joy and terror of a man in love for the first time.

“So you refused?” den Suriel asked.

“I tried.” Astarion made a soft, bitter sound in his throat. “I thought I had found a loophole. I was required to bring him back to the palace. So long as I didn’t go back, it didn’t count. I told him to leave the city, that it wasn’t safe, but he thought he was in love with me.” Astarion shook his head. “It turns out that vampire lords are even less fond of loopholes than gods. You can guess what happened after that.”

“You tried, though.”

“For all the good it did me.” Astarion hadn’t been in love with Sebastian so much as with what Sebastian represented. He’d been young and innocent himself once. Even at the time, he’d known it was irrational, and yet he’d felt that if he could save this one foolish child, he could somehow save himself.

He’d only been a vampire spawn for a decade then. He thought he knew how bad things could get. He’d been as naïve as Sebastian in that regard.

Astarion shook out his jacket and grabbed his pack, suddenly disgusted with himself for talking about the crypt at all. He’d used his body to seduce a victim more times than he could count. He no longer felt anything much about it. Spreading his emotions out for den Suriel felt different, though. The one thing Cazador couldn’t get to was his memories, and yet here Astarion was, using them to manipulate a man for Cazador’s ultimate benefit. He felt as if he were selling off pieces of his soul.

“Come on. It’s dark out.”

He was already out of the crawl space when he heard den Suriel say, “Even when we fail, I must believe that trying counts for something, and the world is a little better for it.”

It was such a paladin thing to say. Astarion rolled his eyes. But the worst thing, the absolute worst, was that, despite himself, he did feel a tiny bit better because of it.

He stalked toward the river door but halted when den Suriel called his name. That golden gravel voice did something to the syllables that went straight to Astarion’s groin—and, through a somewhat more roundabout fashion, his brain.

“Just a moment, if you will.” Den Suriel held up one hand. “There’s something behind that wall over there. I noticed it when we came in.”

Astarion followed his gaze to one of the many walls that had been scavenged for brick. Behind it lay a tumbledown corner of the old city ruins, the stones so old and broken that not even the denizens of Baldur’s Gate had found a use for them.

“Just through that gap. I can swear I see something.”

“My dear paladin, we’re in a sewer system. The best thing you can find in a hole here is live rats. Everything else is downhill from there.”

Den Suriel ignored him, stepping cautiously through the opening in the brick. Astarion stifled a sigh. If the man hadn’t been so potentially useful…

“There. I thought so.” Den Suriel leaned back so that Astarion could see. “Don’t you recognize the shape? It’s a shrine.”

“A shrine? To what, the god of drains?”