Chapter Text
But daddy longlegs, I feel that I'm finally growing weary
Of waiting to be consumed by you.
- Fiona Apple, “The First Taste”
His name is Sceleritas Fel, and he claims to be her butler.
At first, June thinks he’s one of the goblin raiders they’ve been avoiding, but upon closer inspection, the creature proves to be something far stranger than goblinoid. His beak-like nose is small - as are his pointed, drooping ears. Everything about him is sharp and angular. He wears a black top hat and a black and red suit.
June has no idea what he is. She simply stares, torn between confusion and fear. She’s not even entirely sure he’s real, rather than a creation of her disturbed mind.
“My lordly reprobate, I missed you ever so!” he says. “I found you following the stench of that bard.” He inhales deeply through his nose, as if seeking that “stench” again, and then sighs and chuckles with delight.
The mention of Alfira causes June to tense. She starts to open her mouth to say something, but then, as it so often does, time shifts around her, and she’s no longer standing in the dark woods.
She finds herself sitting up in bed - a real bed - in an unfamiliar room, dimly lit by the glow of moonlight through the window. Her heart races and a cold sweat drips from her neck as she stares at this same bizarre creature, standing at her feet.
“Your clever mind is penning tragedy as we speak,” Fel says. “Your repressed urge longs to kill. And kill you will! Tonight, your favorite person will be brutalized!” His eye sparkle with a mix of glee and something like reverence.
“I won’t do it!” June hears herself saying as her head begins to pound. “I…I love him. I ain’t gonna hurt him. I will not.”
She has no idea who she is speaking of. Only that the thought of killing them is the single most horrifying thing she can imagine. That she’ll do anything to prevent him - whoever he is - from feeling even a moment of pain.
But her butler just gives her a placating smile. “We all kill what we love most.”
The world around her tilts and fades and then she’s back in the woods again, staring down at this smiling gremlin.
“Oh, master,” he says with a little hop of delight. “I know that vacant look in your eye! You were elsewhere, were you not? Perhaps witnessing one of your future grotesque works of art?”
“You know about my visions?” June asks, his familiarity with her making her feel sick.
“Of course I do! I know you better than anyone, my lady. If you’ll permit me to say so. It has been my sworn duty to serve you and keep you on your wicked path for over a decade now. And I have truly missed you during these recent days.” He sniffs. “But I cannot say much more on that. Our betters will not allow me to interfere.”
“Betters? Interfere in what? Who am I?” June realizes that she is no longer sure she wants to know the answer to the last question. Because all evidence seems to point to the idea that she was - is - a monster.
“As I say, my lady, much as I would like to regale you with your deliciously villainous legacy…I cannot. Not yet. However, I have come to bring you a part of your dreadful inheritance.” There’s a buzz of Conjuration magic, and his hands briefly glow before a bundle of silky, black fabric appears in his arms. “You earned this iniquitous prize through your great show of exceptional violence the other night.”
He offers her the bundle, but June takes a step back. “Inheritance?” she repeats.
“Indeed! You are the product of fine breeding, master! Oh, how it does pain me that you cannot remember your family. But I am sure your malicious mind will be restored in no time! And I will do all I can to help.”
So June has a family. She’s wondered this several times since waking up on the beach. Is anyone out there looking for her? Does she have people that miss her? But from what Fel is saying, this family of hers may be as wretched and terrible as she is.
There is a distant sound of rolling thunder and above them, a light trickle of rain drips downt through the canopy of leaves.
“I don’t want this,” June says, taking another step back. “I don’t want any of this. I didn’t wanna kill Alfira, and I don’t wanna kill anyone else.” She has a flesh to her vision from a moment prior, her desperate insistence that she would not kill a person - a man? - she loves. She has no idea who her future-self was protecting, but she knows she must do anything she can to keep him and everyone around her safe. “I do not want this,’ she repeats. “Leave. Now.”
Fel sighs, eyes closing as a look of deep sadness crosses his pointed features. “Oh, my lady. You have always struggled with decorum. But do not fear. It is my role as your butler to keep you on the path. I’ve done so before, and I will again.”
Another roar of thunder, a little closer this time, and the rain picks up slightly. When the butler opens his eyes again, they seem to glow with a terrible determination.
June does not remember anything after taht.
***
By sunrise, the rain has turned into a raging storm that threatens to wash their camp away. As thunder booms and lightning streaks across the gray sky, June and the others pack up their tents and fight through the battering winds until they find a small cave they can take shelter in for the day.
“We are wasting time!” Lae’zel protests. “It is merely water. Are your species so weak as to let such a trivial inconvenience hinder you?”
“But it’s more than just water,” Gale says. “There’s also lightning. And you, my friend, are wearing metal armor.”
“I am not your friend. And I fail to see your point.”
“Harsh, but fine. My reluctant acquaintance then. The point is that metal conducts electricity. You’re a walking lightning rod out there. I can give you a demonstration, if you’d like? I can conjure electricity with a cantrip and–”
“Touch me or my armor, istik, and I will plunge my blade directly into your testacles.”
“All right,” Gale says. “No demonstration then. Understood.”
Lae’zel makes a sound of frustrated rage before stomping off, deeper into the cave.
“She’s such a lovely person. I’m so glad we brought her along,” Shadowheart snarks. “But…I admit, I am concerned about lost time. Do you think the storm will stop early enough for us to get any travel in today?” She pauses. “June?”
“Huh?”
June and Shadowheart, both still soaked from their trek through the rain, are sitting in their underwear by the fire. All sense of modesty had quickly been chased away by the discomfort of heavy, wet clothes. Well, except for Gale, who remains in his camp clothes while he alternates between blowing Gust cantrips at himself and at the other’s clothes and bedrolls, all draped over rocks and hanging on hastily strung up lines of rope. There is one piece of clothing June hasn’t hung up to dry, though.
The cloak.
She had hoped so badly that her encounter with the strange figure claiming to be her “butler” last night was just a dream or another one of her hallucinations. But when she woke that morning, startled by the loud crack of thunder and the torrent of water pummeling her tent, she had found his gift draped over her like a blanket.
The bundle of silky black fabric he had attempted to hand her was a cloak. Simple and elegant but with a small symbol embroidered with glowing blood red thread at the collar: an uncomfortably familiar skull.
No one else had noticed, too distracted by the rush to pack camp up, but its presence and the memory of everything Sceleritas Fel said has June shaken.
The cloak, with its dark fabric glistening from the rain, is folded in her lap now. She hasn’t been able to stop touching it, both hoping and fearing that it will vanish.
“Never mind. It’s not important,” Shadowheart says. “What is that, by the way? You’ve been fidgeting with it all day, but I don’t recall seeing it before.”
“I…I ain’t entirely sure,” June says, and that’s mostly true. She used magic to identify it earlier. She understands what the enchantment on it does. But where it came from, why Sceleritas Fel gave it to her, and what having it in her possession now means - that was all still a terrifying mystery.
“Mind if I take a look?” Shadowheart asks, already reaching for the cloak.
June spins around in a flash, both hands grasping Shadowheart’s throat. The other woman’s eyes go wide with shock and terror as June’s hands squeeze and twist. She smiles when she hears that satisfying snap of the neck breaking. Joy and relief flood her as the life leaves her companion’s eyes.
And then June blinks, and Shadowheart is still there, still reaching for the cloak, completely unaware of the violent act June just committed. Or feels like she committed. She raises her hands quickly, away from the cloak and away from Shadowheart, allowing the other woman to take the magic item from her without a word.
“Hm.” Shadowheart unfolds the cloak, examining the high quality fabric, running her hands over the stitching. “It radiates with dark magic. Palpable dark magic. Where did it come from?”
June sits on her hands, terrified of what they might do after that….vision? Hallucination? Fantasy? She still isn’t sure how to classify those brief breaks in reality. It takes her a minute to register that Shadowheart has asked her a question. “Oh. Um, it…”
She looks at her companion. A woman she hopes to call a friend. And she wants so badly to tell her the truth. To tell her everything Fel said. To beg for help or forgiveness or anything that could make this all stop. The headaches, the impulses, the frequent shifts in time and space that bring her face to face with gruesome sights that - horrifyingly - leave her with fleeting feels of delight.
But she remembers the look on Shadowheart’s face yesterday morning when the sun had come up and poor Alfira’s fate had been revealed. She remembers the fear in Shadowheart’s eyes, even as she’d vaguely tried to defend her. And the cautious glances she’d been giving June ever since. For good reason.
June doesn’t want to lie to Shadowheart. But she doesn’t want to scare her more, either.
“I found it,” she says simply.
If Shadowheart suspects the lie, she doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she just folds up the cloak again and puts it back on June’s lap. “It’s amazing the strange things we’ve found on this journey so far. Potent magical items just lost or buried. Not that I’m complaining. That thing has dark magic to it, but it could certainly prove useful. If we can figure out what it does, that is.”
June nods.
Before either of them has a chance to say more on the subject, however, they are interrupted by Gale’s voice from across the cave.
“Well, hello there little friend. And who might you be? I – wait, no! Don’t do it! Don’t!”
It’s too late, though. The dog that has just strolled into the cave, soaking wet and tail wagging, shakes its whole body, sending water flying in all directions, and drenching Gale’s nearly dry clothes again.
“Was that really necessary?” Gale asks.
But the dog just wags its tail faster and turns its head, spotting June, and begins to bound toward her.
“Scratch!” June exclaims, her feelings of dread and guilt temporarily evaporating at the sight of the pointy-eared dog she had encountered the day before. She extends her hand to him, but instead of giving it a mere sniff, the dog rubs its wet face against her palm, seeking pets. “Hey there, boy.”
“Friend of yours?” Shadowheart asks.
“I found him yesterday near the stream I was washing up in,” June says. “Wasn’t sure if I’d see him again.”
“Seems you left quite an impression on him.” Shadowheart offers her own hand to Scratch, who gives it a sniff before allowing her to pet behind his ears. “And like we may have a new companion. One that, unfortunately, currently stinks of wet dog.”
Scratch whines at that.
“I don’t mind,” June says, continuing to pet the dog. She’s relieved there are no visions or urges to hurt the animal. For a moment, her mind is at ease. Even if her head has started to ache again. “He’ll dry. And if he still smells, we’ll give him a bath when we got the time.”
“You use the word ‘we’ quite presumptuously,” Shadowheart replies, but based on the soft cooing noises she makes as she continues to pet Scratch, June knows she won’t refuse, when the time comes.
Gale, on the other hand, might be a different story.
***
The storm doesn’t ease up, even as night begins to fall over the Sword Coast. With clothes and bedrolls now dry, the party settles in for supper around the fire. Not long after, everyone falls asleep.
Everyone except June and Astarion.
June drags her bedroll farther back into the cave, away from her peacefully slumbering companions. She is afraid to sleep, afraid of what she might dream or what actions she might take outside of her control. There is no real way to protect them. Not really. But being farther away at least give them a chance to hopefully wake up before she can sleepwalk over to them. Even the thought of that, though, of waking up standing over the body of Wyll or Shadowheart or any of the others, covered in their blood - it makes her physically ill.
But a deep, terrible, wretched part of her longs for it at the same time.
Scratch follows her, laying down beside her bedroll like she is the one who will need protecting. June reaches out and pets him again.
“You bark if I get up, all right? You let ‘em know. And let ‘em do whatever they gotta to stop me,” she whispers to the dog. She knows it’s a pointless request. She’s not capable of speaking to animals. But the way he wags his tail in response is some small comfort. “Good boy.”
She turns and looks toward the mouth of the cave. Astarion is there, pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back, stopping occasionally to stare out into the storm. Like he’s waiting for something.
He has been agitated all day. More snappish and irritable than usual. Even Lae’zel had pointed it out over supper, when Astarion had stalked off in a huff after complaining about the rain. He hadn’t eaten any of the soup Gale had made.
Though, now that she thinks of it, June can’t recall ever seeing Astarion eat with the group. He nearly always waved a hand, saying he’d eat later or insulting Gale’s culinary ability as an excuse to turn down a meal. Perhaps that’s why he’s so agitated now. Maybe he’s hungry. Too used to the fine cuisine of a Baldurian magistrate to stoop to the lowly camp food being offered. She rolls her eyes at the thought.
But still, she can’t help watching him for a while, taking in the tension in his shoulders and the hard set of his jaw. She wonders if he’s feeling trapped, between the cave and the storm. He does volunteer to keep watch most nights. Perhaps it’s because he has the need to wander, to walk freely in the quiet dark to clear his mind. The way she had needed last night.
The memory of last night turns her veins to ice. She looks over at the cloak again, folded by her bedroll, and swallows the bubbling guilt and terror down.
Her headache is getting worse.
June lays down on the bedroll, turning away from Astarion and the others to face the cave wall. She doesn’t want to sleep, but exhaustion is dragging her down, down, down into the depths of treacherous dreams.
Pools of blood. Shredded flesh. Anguished screams and pleas for mercy. And a feeling of pleasant contentment. Of being at home.
She wakes to the sound of Scratch’s low growl and sits up with a start.
“sh*t.”
Astarion, who is crouched over her, scrambles backwards with the panic of a criminal caught red handed. Scratch continues to growl as June scoots away from the pale elf, the fog of sleep leaving her confused and fearful. What was he doing, hovering over her while she slept?
“No, no! It’s not what it looks like, I swear!” he insists, and she can hear the panic in his voice. There’s no pretense, no liar’s smile. His mask is down, and he’s terrified. “I…I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just needed - well, blood.”
It’s only then that June sees him for what he is. The pale skin and scarlet eyes aren’t just striking - they are markers of his true nature. And the glint of fangs when he speaks confirms it. She’s surprised she couldn’t see it before.
“It’s you,” she murmurs “You’re the vampire.”
“It’s not what you think! I’m not some monster. I feed on animals. Boars, deer, kobolds - whatever I can get.”
“You realize kobolds are people, right?”
Astarion either doesn’t hear this in his desperation to explain or chooses to ignore it. “I’m just too slow right now. Too weak. If I just had a little blood, I could think clearer. Fight better.” He looks at June with an expression she hasn’t seen on his face before - a mixture of fear and tentative hope. “Please.”
She feels that strange sensation of their tadpoles connecting. Unsettling visions that - for once - eren’t created by her own mind flash before her. A dark crypt, a cruel laugh, the searing pain of a blade carving into her back, and the foul taste of rat’s blood filling her mouth.
When the connection breaks, Astarion is still staring at her, waiting for an answer.
“You could’ve just asked me, you know,” she says quietly.
He sighs. “At best I was sure you’d say no. More likely you’d run a stake through my ribs.”
In a flash, June is standing over him, plunging a sharpened wooden stake into his chest. Blood bursts from his punctured heart as air wheezes from his lungs. His eyes go wide and round like an insect’s before he goes limp. She’d been right on their first meeting. He does make a pretty, perfect corpse.
And then she’s back - sitting up in the fetal position on her bedroll, staring at Astarion as he continues to speak. He hasn’t stopped. He doesn’t know what she’s seen. She rubs at her face, as if she can rub away the spray of hallucinated blood.
“No. I needed you to trust me,” he says. There’s a sort of pained sincerity in his voice when he adds, “And you can trust me.”
June watches him for a long moment before answering. “I do trust you, Astarion.”
He looks surprised, clearly not anticipating this response. “Really?”
“You believed me yesterday, about…about Alfira.” June nearly chokes on the girl’s name. “You believed that I don’t remember. Didn’t mean to. And you didn’t look at me like you were scared. Even though I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I ain’t a hypocrite. At least, I don’t wanna be. You trusted me. So I trust you.”
The tension in Astarion’s body eases, his shoulders relaxing with the relief of her words. “Thank you,” he says. That devious little spark returns to his eyes before he asks, “Do you think you could trust me just a little further? I only need a taste.” His voice drops to a purr. “I swear.”
Logically, June knows she should say no. He’s a cat, lying in wait, and she’s the mouse. She’d be a fool to get closer to the deadly predator. Especially when she has already seen his lack of empathy for others. When she knows he’s a liar - and not as good of one as he thinks. Saying yes would be like walking straight up to the cat, letting it put its jaws on her tiny mouse body, and trusting it not to kill.
But she can’t unsee the fear and desperation that had been in his eyes before. She can’t forget the vile taste of rat blood or the distant, cruel laughter she’d experienced when linked to Astarion’s mind. And isn’t he trusting her not to kill him the way she may have done to Alfira, just by staying in her company?
Besides, she’s the one who has had multiple visions of slaughtering him. She’s not a mouse at all. She’s just as much a predator as he is.
“Okay,” June says. “Just…be careful.”
“Really?” His mask drops again. He’s genuinely surprised by her trust. But just as quickly, he recovers and smiles sweetly at her. “Of course. I won’t take a drop more than I need.”
That isn’t what June had meant by ‘be careful,’ though. That thought she has had several times over the last few days slithers into her mind again: the feeling that her blood itself is rancid, cursed by some unknowable darkness. She wonders if it will taste as terrible as it feels in her veins. She wonders if it will hurt him. Maybe that’s part of why she has agreed, so that she can find out if her blood really is as vile as she believes.
“Let’s get comfortable, shall we?”
Scratch growls again, moving to stand protectively in front of June before Astariion can shift closer to her.
“It’s all right, boy,” June assures the dog, reaching out to give him a pet. “He ain’t gonna hurt me. Not real bad, at least.” Scratch whines and leans into her hand as she pets his ears. “Go on, now. Go check on the others.”
Scratch looks between June and Astarion for a moment before giving one final growl in Astarion’s direction and then bounding off toward the fire and the circle of sleeping party members.
Astarion watches the dog go with clear fascination. “The mutt has taken a liking to you rather quickly, hasn’t he?” He turns to look at June again, a flirtatious smile curling his lips. “Though, who could blame him? You are a…captivating creature.”
“Captivating?” she repeats. “Really? That’s the word you’re gonna use for why a dog might like me?”
“It’s the word I’ll use for why I like you.”
June doesn’t have the energy to call his bluff tonight. Instead she just sighs and asks, “So how do we do this?”
“You lie back,” he says, his voice a low purr as he shifts closer to her. “And let me take care of the rest.”
June resists the urge to roll her eyes as she unfolds her legs and lays down on the bedroll. She wills the tension from her muscles as Astarion moves to hover over her, crawling up her body until his face is only a few inches above hers. One of his hands moves her curls away from her neck before sliding beneath her head and cradling it gingerly.
“Just relax,” he whispers. But June can’t help feeling like he’s talking to himself, not to her, when he says this.
This thought is quickly chased away by the sudden, icy pierce of fangs in her neck. June gasps and her back arches, but this only serves to press herself closer to Astarion. The pain fades soon enough, overwhelmed by a rush of adrenaline. June’s heart races, her body trembles. She finds herself clinging to him in an effort to hold herself still, one hand in his hair and the other on his beck, clenched in the soft fabric of his shirt.
Astarion’s chest rumbles against hers as he makes a noise of intense satisfaction into her neck. His knee pushes between her thighs as it presses down into the bedroll, and the hand beneath her head tightens in her hair. His other hand rests on her ribs before it begins to make slow, soothing caresses along her torso.
June’s breathing becomes deep and slow and the trembling eases as she begins to relax against him. This is the first time she’s been touched since waking up in that pod. She hadn’t realized how starved she was for physical contact - for tenderness - until now.
It’s so much more than that, though. She can feel her blood flowing into him. It’s a connection unlike any she could have imagined. She doesn’t know when the last time she had sex was - or with whom - but she can’t imagine it compared to this sort of intensity. This intimacy. This is what it feels like to become a part of another person. This is what it feels like to sustain someone.
This is what it feels like to be consumed.
Her heart rate slows and her vision begins to swim. It’s a pleasant sort of delirium as her consciousness begins to ebb away. Astarion keeps drinking. The hand on her side moves so that his arm slides under her back, pulling her even closer. June has the distant realization that he is as lost in this as she is. He isn’t going to stop.
Does she want him to?
After all of the visions of gruesome acts and urges to kill, she can’t help but wonder what it feels like to be the victim. And with what happened to Alfira, June thinks she probably deserves to die. For the sake of everyone around her
And if this is what dying feels like, it’s not so bad.
But despite all these quiet, swirling thoughts, her pesky self preservation instinct once again kicks in.
“Astarion…” Her voice comes out quiet and breathy. She releases her grip on his shirt and slips her hand around to his shoulder, giving it a weak, half-hearted push. “That…that’s enough.”
“Mmm.” Astarion makes a desperate whimper before - with an obvious effort - he rips his fangs from her neck. “Of course,” he gasps. A scarlet trickle of June’s blood drips from his mouth.
June has the strange desire to lean up and lick that blood from his bottom lip. But the way he’s staring at her keeps June frozen beneath him. His crimson eyes are glazed, looking down at her with an expression of surprise. Awe, even. Like he’s never seen her before. For a long moment, they stay there, faces mere inches apart, bodies pressed so tightly together than June can feel every taut muscle beneath his pearlescent skin.
“I was just…swept up in the moment,” Astarion finally manages to say.
“That’s…That’s okay.” June swallows. She still feels light headed. “Did it work?”
“Did it…? Oh. Yes.” A soft smile curls his lips. “I feel good. Stronger… Happy.” He says the last word almost like it’s a marvel. Like happiness is a concept so foreign to him he can barely believe he’s experiencing it.
“I’m glad.”
Neither of them has moved. One of his arms is still around her while his other hand remains tangled in her hair. One of her palms is flat against his chest, where a heart no longer beats. Time seems to stand still for once. June isn’t being tossed through visions or hallucinations or gore. And her head, swimming as it may be, doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. She feels grounded in the here and now.
Astarion’s head dips ever so slightly closer to hers. His breath dances across her parted lips, and June finds herself tilting up to meet him –
A low growl and a whine from Scratch, coming back to check up on them, is enough to break the spell. Astarion gives an irritated sigh, but June can’t help laughing.
“She’s fine,” Astarion tells the dog as he pushes himself up and off of June. “See? No harm done. Your friend will be right as rain by morning.”
The dog comes closer, sniffing at June as if needing to confirm this statement. She reaches up to give his chin a reassuring scratch.
“Speaking of rain,” Astarion says, his eyes looking toward the mouth of the cave. “It seems the storm has finally passed.”
June sits up carefully and follows his gaze. Their companions are still fast asleep around the fire. Gale’s slow, comforting snores echo off the cave walls. Beyond them, though, she can see that the rain has stopped. The wet leaves and grass outside glisten in the moonlight, but the forest is quiet.
“I should go,” Astarion says, getting to his feet. “As invigorating as you are, I need to find something more filling. Now that I have the energy.”
“Right.” June reaches up to massage the tiny, stinging wounds on her neck. “Uh…happy hunting, I guess.”
“Thank you.” He starts moving toward the cave entrance before pausing and turning to face her again. “Thank you, June,” he says again, this time with more emphasis. Maybe even sincerity. “This is a gift, you know. I won’t forget it.”
All June can do is nod as she watches him disappear into the night, moving with the lethal confidence of a cat on the prowl.
