#accidentally nuked the og post off my blog rip

[ladymdc]

Chapters: 5/15 (~14,750 at present) Updated: 04/28/24 Rating: Explicit Relationships: Astarion/f!Tav Additional Tags: Inspired by Hades & Persephone, Vampire Ascendant Astarion, POV Astarion, Kidnapping, Possessive Behavior, Obsessive Behavior, Powerful Persephone, Spirit of Nature Halsin, Developing Relationship, One-sided Hate to Lovers, Falling In Love, Astarion is an asshole but he’s Trying™️, Vampire Turning, Blood Drinking, Protectiveness, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Voyeurism (once), Explicit Sexual Content, Unreliable Narrator, Manipulation, Minor/background Halsin/f!Tav (not the focus but it is there), Angst with a happy ending

Summary: The moment Astarion saw her, he knew. He could feel the fire in her. See it in her eyes. He decided to take her for himself. To give Asher more than just flowers and trees.

Astarion had always been drawn to the sun. He should have known then that he wouldn’t be able to live without her.

(Excerpt from CH1 under the cut)

CH1: The impatient, burning, dawn.

I asked Persephone, “How could you grow to love him? He took you from flowers to a kingdom where not a single living thing can grow.”

Persephone smiled, “My darling, every flower on your earth withers. What Hades gave me was a crown made for the immortal flowers in my bones.” 

— Nikita Gill

____________________________________________________

He had to have her. 

It was all Astarion could think when she turned to face him. Prior to materializing behind her, he had not decided what his course of action would be. Ask for recommendations on lodgings for the night or drain her dry for the energy and continue on to Baldur’s Gate, but now— 

Astarion wanted. 

She looked as exquisite as she smelled. Her features were delicate and refined, though her beauty was somewhat marred by the scar branching across her right cheek. Or it ought to be, but it only added a brutal sort of grace to her.

The setting sun picked out the strands of gold in her red hair, highlighting the freckles across the bridge of her nose and the crest of each cheek. She stared at him with incredible, dark golden eyes lined heavily with kohl that made them seem to glow in the dying light. 

“You seem lost,” she said. 

The wind picked up from behind him. The golden fields rippled and swayed, seeming to bow before her. 

“I feel like I am right where I’m supposed to be,” Astarion said. 

“In a wheat field just outside of Reithwin?” 

Astarion laughed softly at her wry tone, the sound shocking him. When was the last time he had laughed like that? Something not false and laced through with complete cynicism?

“No, in your presence, darling. It is a fine one.”

“Is that the only reason I’m still alive?” She said it tonelessly, like a casual observation. One surprisingly lacking in concern for someone able and willing to recognize the reality of their situation. 

Instinctively, curiously, Astarion reached out to gently press into her mind. For a moment, he had access to everything. 

Astarion saw a longbow, sunlight drifting through speckled glass into a room and illuminating countless motes around it, a trail of tiny purple flowers. He tasted her wishes, her regrets. Her name.

Her anger. 

“If you could not do that,” her voice was ice. “I would appreciate it.” 

“My apologies,” Astarion lied, inclining his head. “It’s a habit. Though, people do not usually detect I am there.” 

“It appears neither of us are what we seem.” 

Astarion grinned, excessively pleased with that fact, and provided a convenient glimpse of his canines. “Quite,” he said. “Which is why, as delectable as you would undoubtedly be, killing you for a few minutes of bliss would be a waste.” 

“I suppose I should thank you for that.” 

“It would be the polite thing to do,” Astarion agreed.

It was interesting how the very air around her seemed to thaw. 

“Thank you,” she said, that wry tone back again. 

“You’re welcome, my dear, and now that we’ve gotten the formalities out of the way, my name is Astarion.”

A glimmer of amusement lit in her eyes. “Well, Astarion, assuming standard fare will sate your appetites. The Last Light Inn has an excellent cellar, and the main suite should suffice. It’s not Upper City, but it’s better than most places outside the Gate.”

Astarion stepped closer, relishing the slight increase in her pulse. It was not fear, exactly. Nor desire. Anticipation of the unknown, perhaps, because she did not shy away. She just looked up at him as if facing down the prospect of death was nothing new. Astarion had seen enough of her mind to know these fields were not all she had ever known. 

Nor all she wanted to know. 

“Sating my appetites aside, you’re willing to set me loose here?” Astarion asked.

“I doubt you need my permission to go anywhere.”

“I don’t, but we both know that isn’t what I was asking,” Astarion admonished gently. 

Her eyebrows furrowed into a faint v. “There is no need to cause problems for you, no matter how minor,” she said. “You haven’t done anything.”

Astarion almost laughed again. “Oh, darling, I’ve done plenty.”

“As much as I don’t doubt that, I also don’t care as far as it relates to me.” 

“How…” he tilted his head to the side. “Pragmatic of you.” 

“Not everyone has a death wish,” she said simply. 

The wind picked up again, and his fingers itched to tuck a lock of hair that had fallen loose from her bun back behind her ear. 

“You should come with me to Baldur’s Gate, Asher Claill,” Astarion said, permitting her name to touch his tongue alongside the decision. “This place is too insignificant for someone like you.” 

“And die in a week when you get bored? No, thank you.” 

“I believe tiring of you would be impossible.” 

Asher did not say it, but Astarion felt it. How the comment touched on her pride. It was in her smile, slight as it was, and in the whisper of warmth in the air that hadn’t been there a second before.

“Goodbye, Astarion,” she said. Then Asher turned and walked away as if she did not comprehend that she had piqued his interest more than anyone had in his entire existence. 

Or what that meant. 

____________________________________________________

For the time being, the Last Light Inn would suit his appetites precisely as Asher had said. It did have an excellent cellar, and the main suite was, in fact, sufficient. Despite his lack of a retinue, his attire and chain of office marking Astarion as a magistrate opened both to his immediate disposal. Not that Astarion had suspected anything to the contrary. 

Asher had exhibited no telltale signs of deceit. No increase in respiration. No hesitation. However, Astarion dealt in lies and embellishment. Disappointment, it seemed, had somehow become his standard. That he was left feeling satisfied, for once, only added to the appeal. 

It was with thoughts of her filling his head that Astarion selected another grape from the cheese platter. 

“Are these grown here?” he asked the innkeeper. 

The power behind it was barely a push. It was a nudge more than anything. Hardly a compulsion when a charm could make someone believe Astarion’s thoughts were their own or be a force to turn someone’s body and mind against them. 

“They are, my lord,” the innkeeper said. 

Astarion allowed his fang to pierce through the skin and release a burst of flavor onto his tongue. He hummed, pleased. 

“Delicious,” he said, then selected a slice of bread to be the vessel for some goat cheese pressed with chopped almonds. “Cheese from the Dalelands is a pleasant find all the way out here.”

The absent comment struck a chord of unease. Astarion paused for a moment, considering its value. Then he finished smoothing the cheese over the crusty bread. Lesser vampires needed eye contact to maintain compulsions, but Astarion was not lesser. 

“Is its absence going to cause problems for you?” Astarion asked. 

“No, my lord.”

“Then what’s the issue?” 

“There isn’t one. I like to have it in stock for one of the residents, is all.” 

Her voice had been dark and fluid, accented like the honey touched by lavender that Astarion drizzled over his creation. 

“Who?” he asked, seeking confirmation. 

There it was again, that tension tightening as the man tried to tip toward breaking free to protect this individual. Astarion smothered it. Pressed into the innkeeper’s mind, digging into it like a spike. 

What little mental fortifications this half-elf possessed were immediately broken. The man’s life was laid out before Astarion in still frames and fragments of memory, but he only touched on what he was looking for and withdrew.

“The wood elf with red hair,” Astarion prompted. “Tell me about her.” 

“There’s not much to say, my lord. She keeps to herself for the most part.” 

Astarion didn’t speak for the space of two to three bites. “I’m sure she does, though that doesn’t help the rumors, does it?” he asked, at last. 

“It isn’t as bad as it used to be,” the innkeeper said. “Time and memory work in her favor, but it’s believed she’s responsible for the eternal spring here.”

Astarion swirled the wine in his glass, triple-checking his own memory, but no, he could not recall ever hearing the name Reithwin or of a place untouched by winter. Not that the information would necessarily reach him, and if it did, Astarion had centuries working against him. 

So much of the outside world still seemed new as time reshaped the land while his focus remained on the Gate. It was pure circumstance that Astarion’s errand had sent him farther south than planned, putting this pocket of color and warmth in an endless grey landscape directly in his return path to the city.

“Do you believe it?” Astarion wondered. 

“I do, my lord. It’s a rarity now, and it wasn’t always that way, but I remember a time when flowers used to bloom in her footsteps.” 

“Where does she live?” 

Astarion could feel the innkeeper trying to stop himself, but Astarion had control, and he pushed until the man was hemorrhaging secrets.

“I don’t want to harm her,” Astarion soothed, keeping his voice low and persuasive. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

(read the rest on Ao3!)