Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hazy and dappled twilit sunlight plays through the canopy of leaves, the breeze cool and sweetly scented. Somewhere beyond too bright flowers and luscious green foliage there can be heard the gentle trickle of a stream. It's so peaceful here. So far away from everything. A secret little corner of the Feywild, your own desires shaping it into a haven of tranquility. Belief is important, it can create as surely as destroy. In a realm suffused with magic, where everything is exaggerated, senses sharper, it's easy. So easy, it can make you feel like anything is possible, that you can be anything you want.

Your naked body rolls over on soft cushion moss that's coloured vivid green and yellow, all the way through to darkest purple and brown, grass and clover tickling against delicate skin. Your hand reaches towards a red and ripe apple nestled in a bed of ferns and flowers, you bite though the juicy flesh and taste its sweetness. Such a simple joy. As you savour it, another's hand reaches for the wine carafe and pale rose wine is poured into glasses carved from sparkling amethyst.

“Do you remember yet?”

You lift your gaze to your fey companion. Body as pale as alabaster, a head crowned with long and twisting black hair that floats in the air around them as if suspended in water. Their limbs are exaggerated in length and impossibly delicate looking. You know better than to be fooled by it, can feel the light touch of their magic. Beyond that, you can make out nothing more about them, no sense of their face or what kind of fey creature they might truly be. They ask you the same question every so often, though you can never remember the cadence of their voice afterwards. Of late, you've noticed that the question brings with it an increased sense of disquiet, one you are quick to push back against before it starts to reflect in your surroundings. All you know is that you don't want to remember, but not why. You want to stay here. Forever.

“You cannot.”

The flare of anger is too fast, causing the gentle breeze to gust stiffly through the trees. Leaves that had been lush green a moment ago now fall around you in a drifting shower of bright gold and blazing orange. You look down at the once bright red apple now withered and rotten, maggots crawling over the browned and slimy flesh. Tossing it away in disgust, you pick up the amethyst glass only to see it full of stinking bile. Why! What do a few more hours of respite matter?

You look towards your companion to find them completely unmoved as the once beautiful grove turns to blackened twisting vines and thorns. “Why can't I stay! Why does it matter?” You know you shout the words aloud, but the sound is robbed from you by the gusting wind.

“You cannot stay here.”

It's like breaking the surface after being underwater too long. Heart thundering, drawing in gasping breath after gasping breath. Reaching for something, anything, to anchor yourself to as your head swims violently. There's nothing. Coughing and heaving in one shuddering breath at a time, it's almost like your body has forgotten how to do it. Disorientation and panic grip you, none of your memories doing you the service of filling in the blanks. Whatever tavern you were drinking in last night needs to add a public safety warning to their homebrew, you're going to feel this hangover for the rest of the week.

Slowly, you sit up in the middle of the large bed, silken sheets of deep emerald green pooling in your lap. A lord's bed then, or some minor member of nobility? Not that you can recall a name or a face. You can only be grateful they did you the kindness of not tossing you out before sunrise. Just breathe. Slow and steady in, the same out. Your heart thuds uncomfortably, limbs shaky and weak as if you've massively overtaxed yourself or been gravely ill. As you sit and concentrate on breathing, the physical symptoms begin to settle while the anxiety in your mind only grows and you can't put a reason on why.

This isn't your first time drinking to excess, waking up in a strangers bed. But for your memories to be so stubbornly blank? Hadn't you been walking along the banks of the Chionthar? Maybe performing at a grand soirée in a vast ballroom, or even a sticky floored tavern that stinks of warm ale and sweat? It's no use. You can only guess the moonshine you overindulged in had a little extra kick, the sort that comes in the form of a total mental blackout. Some of the spirits you partook of in the Feywild could do the strangest things to a persons perception of reality and memories.

Rather than force at your uncooperative mind, you look around the room for some clues as to where you are. The bed is opulent in the extreme, a four-poster complete with canopy and tied back drapes in heavy deep green velvet. The posts aren't made of wood but dark stone that glitters with some form of calcite, exquisitely carved with geometric patterns that warp your eyes if you stare too long. Rich antique gold braid accents everything, covers and pillows, cushions and drapes. Beyond the edges of the bed is a room of strange proportions and fit for a queen. A vaulted stone ceiling of different hues, the intersections decorated with the faces of grotesque grinning creatures. The floor, granite polished to a mirror shine and inlaid with marble and bronze in more strange patterns. Macabre paintings hang from the walls, a fireplace large enough for an ogre to warm themselves at, obsidian vases filled with roses of darkest red and deepest plum.

In all your years of touring the estates of patriars either in the city or countryside, you've never seen its like. This feels darker, heavier, somehow. It stirs a sense of disquiet, the front of your head beginning to ache. As you lift a hand to rub at your eyes, you stop, staring down at it, and almost panicked whine escaping you. It's the wrong colour, the faintest texture of a reptilian-esque pattern. Long and narrow fingers that you flex as you turn your hand over, tipped with blackened nails that look thicker and curve into sharp points. Your heart is an ugly thud in your chest. This isn't you. Shouldn't be you.

I'm still asleep. I must be, your mind is quick to reason. There's no other possible explanation.

The slow injection of panic trips your heart rate higher as you pull yourself to the edge of the bed. Standing upright proves more of a challenge than it has any right to be, forcing you to make a grab for one of the corner posts as you almost topple over. Your centre of gravity feels completely off, pulling you backwards. It's pure instinct that causes you to flex the bat-like wings behind you. Wings? Adrenaline and panic fuse sickeningly as you stumble towards the dressing mirror. This isn't what you think, isn't   

You stare disbelieving at your reflected image, legs giving out as you slump to the floor. One shaking hand reaches towards the silvered glass, claw tips clicking against the surface. A devil stares back at you. You are a devil. Diabolic eyes move over your reflection, the tapered ears, small curving horns, the angles of your face somehow sharper and crueller. Those wings pulling at your back are held unevenly and a small, almost hysterical, laugh bubbles past your lips as you carefully pick up the end of your spade tail like it might bite you.

This isn't.... I wasn't.... There's not a single sign of the mortal human you know you used to be. I need to wake up. I need to wake up. I need    The solace of the Feywild is a fast-fading memory and all you want to do is go back. To sleep and when you wake up again everything will be as it should be. It's a wish that holds no comfort. Is this what the fey creature meant when they kept asking if you remember? This really feels like something you should remember, something that would be impossible to forget. Only there's no one else here, no one to ask.

Pulling yourself onto feet that bear their own sets of short talons, spurs that extend from the backs of your ankles, you rush over to the narrow windows. Beyond the glass and bronze leading is an alien world. A sky of crimson smudged with smoke rising from innumerable locations, closely packed buildings that stretch to the horizon in ever growing concentric rings. You don't know this place, but you know the smell and the heat, the ash on the wind. It helps to stop the panic from overwhelming you, that something at least seems familiar, lingering on the edges of your mind. You just need to find the answer. Or to wake up.

Your gaze is drawn back to the dressing mirror, it's reflective surface taunting you as much as the bronze devils that chase each other around the frame. Anxiety simmers as you take one slow step towards it and then another until you once again see the thing you are; a she-devil. Pushing the narrow straps of your shift off your shoulders, the silky material pooling around your feet as you look your new self over. Your hand lifts to run shaky fingertips over the bumpy ridges of cartilage under the skin of your décolletage, the ones that mirror the curve of your hips. Turning slightly, you see the thick base of your tail extending out from your lower back, hanging as limp as your wings. It's so surreal, so alien, like you're hallucinating. Still dreaming. How could this even happen? Why did it happen? You sigh, eyes boring into your reflection and finding no answers.

“Ar, such a refreshing sight.”

You startle, grabbing the shift up off the floor to cover yourself and stare out towards a curtained balcony . A devil, one that looks frustratingly familiar and is dressed in an..., unsettling manner. They're cruelly handsome, stepping towards you with a confident swagger, bright eyes boring through you.

“There's really no call to be so prudish, you've nothing I haven't seen and tasted countless times over. Though I wonder how you'll taste now,” they purr smoothly, that stare stripping you bare despite the shift.

You take a step back. “Who are you?” It's a face you know, but it, like the voice, are ever so slightly off. They aren't who they pretend to be, you're sure of it without knowing why. What their words elude to is something you don't know how to take, or even if they're the truth.

Sensual lips curve into a smile. “He'll be very cross with me if I tell you, but if you can keep a secret just between us.” They step in close to whisper in your ear. “Haarlep,” they breath, the tip of their tongue flicking against the shell.

You gasp as if stung, flinching backwards and almost tripping over your tail. “What kind of devil are you?” You manage to ask, voice shaky as your legs as unnatural lusts wake in you.

They laugh. “Devil? I'm no devil. I'm a demon, an incubus. You do remember what one of those are? I'm sure your body does.” The lewd words are punctuated with the slow down and up of their eyes.

“You know me?” How is that even possible?

“I know you're a naughty little mouse,” they say, walking a slow circle around you, eyes bright pools of lava. You mirror their steps, not allowing them to peek at your nude back. One crooked finger pulls at the shift you clutch to yourself. “I can teach you how to enjoy your new body, it's no hardship.”

“I'd rather not,” you state firmly despite the tremor in your body, some faint sense of half remembered ecstasy.

“Well, when you change your mind, I'll be happy to oblige all and any desires you have,” they hum with a little disappointment and step away.

It's like a thick blanket is suddenly lifted off you and you can breath again. “Would you mind...,” you trail off with a pointed look.

Haarlep tilts their head. “Mind what?”

Your gaze hardens. “I'd like to dress.”

Lava bright eyes blink at you and then they laugh loudly. “Fine, fine.”

You wait until they turn their back and you quickly step back into the shift, then your eyes meet theirs in the dressing mirror and you scowl as they laugh again. “Why are you here?” You demand to cover your embarrassment.

“I'm a houseguest, same as you. Only I don't get to leave.” The incubus saunters over to the bed and makes themselves comfortable on it.

Keeping a wary eye on them, you walk over to an armchair of dark wood and deep green velvet, sitting down proving more of a challenge when there are wings and a tail to take into account. The hearth next to you is cold and bare and you can't help but wish a fire burned within. “Who is this other person you spoke of, the one that would be angry with you for talking to me?” If they're done trying to seduce you, maybe you can get some sense of where you are, what's going on.

“He's the Master of the House,” Haarlep answers grandly, lounging back against the headboard and watching you intently.

You wet your lips, the sense of a memory itching at the back of your mind. “Is he the reason I'm like this?” A devil.

The incubus chuckles, low and endlessly amused. “No, and it torments him.”

“Then who   ”

Haarlep wags a finger at you. “No more questions, it's very naughty of you to keep expecting answers for free. If you come here and lay down next to me, maybe I'll indulge your curiosity.”

You press your lips together and you glare into the cold hearth. If you choose to believe this demon then they know you, intimately. Which doesn't count for much when they profess to be an incubus. It's all there, in the deep shadows of your mind. You're no stranger to spending time with the denizens of other realms, in some ways you've always preferred their company. You take a breath, rubbing the front of your head and feeling the deep throb of a tension headache stirring.

“Was it a séance?” Patriars do like to play with the forbidden. An incubus conjured up for a saucy game that got out of hand? “Did some fool summon you and....” This was the price?

The incubus tuts. “You'll be far more comfortable laying here, with me. Then you can ask all the questions you like while I lavish pleasure you can scarce imagine.”

You're not going to get anything more from them, not unless you want to give into their softly spoken demands. Instead, you get back to your feet, finding your balance easier this time and wander over to the rooms only door. All the while feeling Haarlep's eyes on you. The dark wood is precisely carved in more eye-warping patterns, banded in shining bronze.

“Are you sure you want to leave?” Haarlep asks, a note of playfulness in their voice.

Your hand pauses on the bronze handle and you look back over your shoulder. “Did you stay here while I slept?” Why you ask the question, you don't know.

Haarlep sits forward, sensual lips curling into a knowing and mischievous smile. “Does the thought of someone watching you sleep excite you?” They hum. “I wasn't here all the time. I dropped in and out over the years.” That smile widens.

Your blood chills and your mind trips over itself. “What?”

“Nine in total, a little over. It's nothing to worry about, what's a few years napping to a devil with eternity?” They shrug.

Nine. Years. It's like being told you've lost half your life in the blink of an eye.

Adrenaline and panic surge back through your body and you're pushing through the door before your mind catches up, Haarlep's taunting laughter echoing after you. I'm still asleep. Please, let me still be sleeping. Bad wine that's soured your dreams, a fever, hallucination and delusion. You run through cyclopean corridors, hoping with every turn, every set of stairs, that you'll find the end. A door. An exit. You'll wake up, promise yourself you'll never drink whatever moonshine it was again and nurse the hangover for a week.

Your wings flex to keep you balanced when you almost lose your footing on a wide flight of stars. At the bottom you see devils or demons, you don't know. Some humanoid, others disturbingly insectoid or so grotesquely deformed you know you'll never be able to wipe the image from your mind. Their eyes follow you, unreadable, unknowable. Some towering over you while other crawl on the ground. You stumble back from an amorphous blob of bloody flesh as it reaches for you, only for it to somehow shriek in agony as a massive fiend behind it lashes out with a barbed whip.

Wake up. Wake up!

Another devil tries to reach for you and you twist away, falling into a set of arched bronze doors that rise dozens of meters into the air. They should be impossible for you to move, but they yield with ease at your fumbling touch.

Beyond is a throne room so vast your eyes can't take it all in, nevermind your brain process it. Stone and marble and shining bronze. Fire pits and the acrid scents of burnt hair and worse. One devil notices you, then more, each standing aside as you stumble down the central walkway.

Orders are harshly barked. It's not the common parlance of the mortal realm, it's Infernal, and yet somehow you understand every word that's said. Orders to leave. Now. Directed at you? Those devils around you obey without question, moving back towards the massive arched doors. The room empties quicker than you thought possible, those doors drawn closed with a deep metallic thud and heavy silence descends save for the low roar of the fire pits. You take a deep breath, trying to find an ounce of control, of rationale, as you stand there shaking. You can feel the dread Infernal presence behind you. Something unfathomably powerful. Something you know. Another shuddering breath and you turn around.

The fiend towers over you, at least twelve feet or more in height. A fire blackened exoskeleton curves around scarlet flesh that burns with a molten hellfire core. Elongated limbs of hard-packed muscle protected by the same blackened bone. A sashed belt of maroon and slate grey, shining bronze chains and diabolic skulls. Giant and spiny bat-like wings flex, tipped with lethal spurs, a barbed tail that sways as the fiend walks towards you. It's face.... By all the Hells, you know it. You've seen it before. A sultry summer night, wine and blood, heat and sweat as your bodies move together.

Your mind whites out, then image after image layers over each other as you remember. Your eyes roll, no longer seeing the fiend, lost to memories that play out with a lash of heat and betrayal, spiraling plots and games, the push and pull of a union you always knew would be the death of you.

And then it stops. Leaving you shaking and overwhelmed, a heap on the floor at the fiends clawed feet. It lowers itself to kneel close to your side and you can feel the heat pouring off its body, how your flesh feels like it's starting to bubble and peel. You stare up into three eyes split between a mind-warping amalgamation of three muzzled heads. A twisting and spiny halo of bone crowning them. You lift a hand knowing full well that you shouldn't, that it's going to do more than burn you. Flesh hisses and blackens as you touch the side of one muzzle, looking into those bright unblinking eyes.

“Raphael.” Then the world grows black and your last lingering thought is a wish to finally wake up.

Chapter Text

Slowly, your eyes blink open. A darkly lit room, fire dancing in a large hearth, the mantle above decorated with bas-reliefs of impish devils, twisting bronze candelabras with pendents that glint in the firelight. You rest against a too warm chest listening to the strong and rhythmic beat of his heart under your ear. The opulent dark wood and green velvet chaise is more than big enough to allow two devils to rest at ease. You watch the flames, feeling idle fingers move against your back, occasionally dipping below the hem of your shift. You try to concentrate on breathing evenly.

Somehow, remembering is worse than the anxiety of blank memories. Nine years. Lost. Only for you, it feels like the blink of an eye. A solitary nights sleep and.... You take a quiet breath, not wanting to alert the devil to your wakefulness. The fear and questions feel too close to overwhelming you, and remembering robs you of the comfort of ignorance. So you breathe and try to quell the cacophony in your mind. You are still a devil and you know you're no longer asleep.

Everything is there in your memories, right up to the point you placed the Crown of Karsus on Raphael's head. After? That's where recall starts to fail you. Haarlep said your transformation had nothing to do with the devil you rest so easily against. Yet you can clearly remember him guiding you towards this outcome, tempting you. Your lips twist with derogatory humour, at least you aren't a lemure that remembers everything.

“You are awake,” Raphael's voice is like smooth dark caramel and so very carefully free of inflection.

“Am I?” Some small part of you still isn't sure, doesn't want to be sure. Even if the denial offers no comfort. With a quiet breath, you push against his chest to sit up, wincing as the movement stretches the painfully charred and cracked skin of your fingers.

“You shouldn't have done that,” a quietly spoken reprimand.

You look down at him, the guise of his cambion self, if that's what he really is. His cruelly handsome face is unreadable, but coolness weighs heavy in the backs of the magma pools of his eyes. Distance. Reserve. Two things you've never seen him direct at you. It causes your heart to thud uncomfortably and it's an unwelcome reminder of how much time has passed.

“What did Haarlep tell you?” He asks, again his tone more business-like than familiar.

You ease back on your haunches in the space between his legs, carefully laying your injured hand atop the other on your lap. You can't meet that cold gaze. “Only their name, that I've slept for nine years, a little over. That it wasn't you who made me this way,” you answer carefully. It torments him. You feel the sudden flare of tension in him, lifting your gaze to see the hot flash of anger melt the coldness from his livid eyes.

Raphael surges up, grasping your chin hard, magma pools boring into yours. “You are not his,” he snarls, lips twisting away from sharp teeth.

“I don't un   ”

“Do you recall the nightmares you suffered?” He cuts across you with his demand.

It takes your stumbling mind a few seconds to catch up at this unexpected inquisition. “They were,” you pause, struggling to find the right words. They were terrifying, more than that. You look into his unblinking eyes. “It's like they were coming true, at least in some ways. But they've never been like that before. I remember having the wildest thoughts that they could be a manipulation, only I couldn't fathom who or why.” You want to ask if it was him, only something about his entire countenance stops you.

“Do you recall the figures robed in crimson and black, the ruby tipped staves they carried?” Raphael demands again.

His question stirs a deep unease in your mind, something swathed in endless darkness that you know for certain you do not want to remember even as the mass begins to swell upwards. Untold agony, terrifying and unabating, your mind slowly coming apart as your body starts to....

“Look at me!”

The commanding lash of his voice is enough to snap your thoughts out of the downward spiral, the grip he has on your chin tightening painfully as he gives your head a sharp shake. You blink. Suddenly drawing back claws that have sunk into his forearm, your own hold on him tight. You can smell blood. His blood.

“Those figures act as avatars for the God of the Nine Hells, he is the one who remade you,” he bites out with white-hot loathing. “He coloured your nightmares in blood and fire, whispered insidious plans into your sleeping ear. Stole what was mine to take.” Raphael turns your head left and right, distaste twisting his expression as he looks you over. Then his hand drops from your chin. “I should have made you this.” His expression loses some of its ugliness, eyes turning considering. “But I can make you more. Greater. Did you dream while you slept?”

The sudden and violent switching of his mood and questioning leaves your sluggish and fraught mind with whiplash. You scramble for an answer, trying to pull all your scattered thoughts and memories together. “I dreamed of the Feywild, of laying in a forest grove drinking sweet rose wine. Another was there from time to time, urging me to remember, saying that it was time for me to leave. I didn't want to, refused. Then everything began to rot around me, grew darker and twisted, forcing me to wake up.” And recognise nothing.

His eyes narrow, suspicion evident. “Who?”

“I don't know. I couldn't make out who or what they were, if they were even a fey creature.” There's a strong impulse to give him more, anything to satisfy this interrogation, ease his anger. You don't give into it. Assumptions or plain deceit won't help you out of this unstable position you've found yourself in. Instead, you ask a question. “It was him?” The idea leaves you sick. Even without knowing the creatures identity, you'd still fantasised that it had somehow been your mentor. “I suppose it would be no chore for a god to deceive me.” Even if you don't know why they'd go to the effort after so much time has passed.

Is this what it's going to be like now, doubt and paranoia? You ease away from him entirely, sitting on the far edge of the chaise and letting your bare feet touch the warm floor below. Staring into the flames, forcing your mind to focus on the way your fingers still burn deeply from the touch of hellfire.

“What even are you?” The question leaves you without you meaning it to. At least now you know why he asked you if the idol he gifted the de Lazlo's to worship stirred you in any way. His vanity. Maybe a lingering worry you would turn away in disgust if you ever saw his true face and form.

Raphael snaps his fingers and a moment later you hear wine being poured. It causes you to look down at the bloodied tips of your claws. His blood hadn't burnt you. Another sliver of proof that nothing mortal remains.

“I'm the son of Mephistopheles, born of a mortal woman. A cambion,” he states with arch grandiosity, handing you one of the glasses. “And then I became so much more. I refused to accept the mediocrity all half-fiends are forced to abide by, a barely tolerated outlier useful only in dealing with mortals. Never to see the lofty heights of even a single promotion. My patron gifted me with ascension, promoted me to the rank of pit fiend for my service. And now I reside in this Bronze Citadel as Archduke of Avernus, Lord of Baator's first layer. And you, my sweet tempest, now you have returned to my side.” The pomp dies away into heavy silence, his eyes watching you, cooly calculating. “But are you truly mine anymore?”

It's a heavily abridged explanation, shy on all the details that matter. What a pit fiend is, what it means, is lost on you. But being an archduke is not. There's no contract binding you to him anymore and that's not what he's referring to anyway. Haarlep's words, the way Raphael is acting. The fact you were reshaped by another will always be a barb in his side, a stain on what you share. You need to say something, sure-up the foundations before they collapse under the weight of doubt. The terms of your contract have been fulfilled, but you still swore an oath to him and that's just as binding even without the caveat of a soul.

You set the glass aside on the floor next to your feet and turn to look at him. There's nothing you can read, the use of your pet-name a reminder rather than said with any fondness. “Did the oath I swore to you break while I slept? Because if it did, I'll swear it again.” Rather than let his coldness keep you at bay, you shift back into the space you vacated, hands coming to rest lightly on his chest. “I serve only you, want only you. Raphael, Archduke of Avernus, Diabolic Lord of Ambition.” You lean closer, lips brushing the tapered length of his ear. “God of all he should lay his eyes upon.”

He vocalises a deep rumble, a hand running up your back. “You say the most delicious things.”

You don't let the breath of relief sound as his ego eats the platitudes right up, soothing his ruffled feathers, at least for now. Easing back, you put on a smile that you hope isn't as brittle as it feels. “We were never able to celebrate your victory, or dance in the summer rain.”

“My dear, rest assured there will be time and victories enough for us to indulge in both,” Raphael says with absolute certainty.

You hum lightly, slipping from him and up onto your feet. You can still feel the tension, the precipice each side of the knife-edge, and hate it. This doubt will not take root, not now, not after everything. “Why don't we dance now?” Like it used to be, like it was a moment ago for you. A flash of a smile, you spin on the balls of your feet and drop into a deep curtsy.

Raphael doesn't move from the chaise. “How do you feel?” There's that curious lilt to his voice from months ago, where he would always ask how you feel or what you are thinking. The predator slowly figuring out everything about his prey. Knowledge is power, and devils are insatiable for both.

The façade cracks. How do you feel? You want to laugh but fear it'll come out hysterical and betray everything that's going on in your head. You stand up out of the curtsy, feeling foolish, vulnerable to the point you want to turn and run. Only there's nowhere to go. “I blinked. Slept a solitary night, to my mind. And everything changed.” Your eyes move to the abandoned wine glass, only you don't feel thirsty. Still, you walk towards it on legs you tell yourself aren't shaking and retrieve it. It tastes of nothing more nefarious than grapes and sits heavy in your empty stomach.

“I knew this was where you were leading me, that you were altering me in ways I didn't truly understand. But the way you talked made it seem so far away, and honestly? I didn't believe you could, or that there would be a catch, a detail glossed over. And now I'm this, a she-devil. At least in appearance.” You swallow thickly, the wine churning in your stomach. “It's like wearing a costume, a skin that doesn't belong to me.” One you can never take off.

“Your mind is still that of the mortal you were the night of the inauguration ball,” Raphael nods to himself like something has slipped into place for him.

“Yes.” You dip your gaze away from his, not caring for how closed off it's become, like there's a wall between you that didn't exist a day ago. Nine years ago, you correct yourself. You're fast losing your grip on this conversation, if you even had it to start with. Impulsively, you grasp onto the first thought offered to you. “I can change my appearance though? The way you do when interacting on the mortal plane?”

“Easily,” Raphael states brusquely as he stands. “I want you to rest, my dear. The process your body went through was extreme, by all rights, you should have slept for decades. I've matters that need my attention. We'll talk again shortly.”

“Rapha   ” He's gone in the drifting of embers and you almost double over from the punch you feel in the centre of your chest.

You listen to the crackle of the fire behind you, your mind at once wanting to shut every thought down and overthink everything. Discarding the wine, you lay down on the chaise, breathing in the lingering scent of him and close your eyes.

~~*-*~~

It's hours later by the time the devil stands by the open hearth, watching the flames and lost to his thoughts. He swirls the thick red wine around the globe, lifts it to his lips and drinks. None of this is beyond what he expected. Sooner, yes. But that's all. One of the primary reasons the soul of a petitioner has all their mortal memories stripped from them upon death, is to better shape them into devils. To learn obedience, to be devoted, remade in totality to fit into the Infernal hierarchy. Unthinking, unquestioning weapons for the Blood War. Those with that something more, the innate will to fight and climb and become, those are the ones that will eventually see promotion from a lemure.

The fact Asmodeus allowed her to keep all her memories is no arbitrary choice. Nor is the fact he reshaped her before she was ready. She's a devil in appearance only and the politics of the Infernal courts will eat her alive. The devil doesn't doubt she has a measure of experience, she survived countless years amongst the fey of the unseelie court after all. But the Hells is a different creature entirely.

His lips twist with sardonic amusement. This is why he should have killed her a dozen times over, his distraction, his complication. Asmodeus may well be his patron, but that doesn't make them allies, doesn't mean they aren't intent on trying to outmanoeuvre each other. At least now he has some measure of an answer as to why the bastard did it. The Hells has a bloody and brutal  history of devouring the consorts of archdevils, the very god of this plane included. He will not allow it to happen to his.

Raphael lifts his eyes from the flames at the sound of wings beating, the click of talons against granite. He watches Haarlep walk over to the bed with single-minded intent, crawling up onto it and straight towards the sleeping form of his consort. They lift a hand.

“Let her sleep,” he says firmly, the slightest note of a warning slipping in.

The incubus sits back on their haunches. “But she remembers now. It was fun to tease her earlier, now I'd much rather taste her.” They move to paw at her again.

“Behave or leave,” he orders with a growl.

Haarlep rolls their eyes. “Such a bore. Fine, I'll wait until she wakes up.”

Raphael turns back to the fire, takes a deep drink of the wine. “I'm sending her back to Toril.”

“Whatever for?” They almost pout, only for it to morph into a knowing grin. “Why let it bother you? Enjoy the fact she's a devil, her new body is exquisite. I'm surprised to find you not tasting it for yourself.”

Oh, he's very aware of how much of a temptation she is. Still. Raphael glares into the flames willing them higher and brighter. Press on with the task at hand. His plans haven't changed, nor the role he needs her to take on. There's every chance Asmodeus no longer has any interest in her. That his actions were nothing more than a petulant display of power, a reminder of how easily he can upset his plans, that he knows everything. It'll be safer there too, allow her the time she needs to adjust without fear of treachery. Allow him the time to educate and arm her. At least in principle. Time that will distract him from Avernus. The devil turns away from the fire to sit on the chaise, ignoring the feeling of the incubus' gaze on him.

“You really are in a sulk about all this. It's almost like you're actually enjoying it, tormenting yourself because you didn't get your own way. There's no shame in admitting it,” Haarlep purrs.

“I don't care about your opinion, so refrain from voicing it,” the devil reminds curtly.

The incubus doesn't seem the least but concerned about the reprimand. They slip from the bed and Raphael ignores the slow tread of them towards him. Haarlep eases down on their knees in front of him, a familiar smile curving full sensual lips. “I know what will make you feel better. Stop you being all broody.” Haarlep walks their fingers up the devil's thigh. “You've been so busy, you deserve to relax awhile.” Those deceitful lips curve with mischief. “I could take on her human form if you want to play with something more fragile.”

Raphael snaps a hand around the demons throat, claws digging into scarlet flesh. “You will never use her form!”

The warning rolls off the incubus' skin unnoticed as they push between his legs, curving dextrous fingers around the back of his neck, urging him to bend lower and kiss them.

The devil's hand grips the front of Haarlep's throat tighter, obliging the kiss for a moment before pushing them roughly back. “You know what I want.”

Haarlep hums, licking their lips. “Leave everything to me.”

Raphael leans back against the chaise, spreading his legs wider as the incubus makes quick work of the front of his breeches. His gaze never wavers from the sleeping form of his consort, her cruel Infernal beauty, memories of her deft touch and fragile skin, the taste of her blood. His hand moves through dark hair, gripping tight and pushing them further down on his erection.

The devil's eyes flutter as the sensory feedback from the incubus washes over him. A hand in his hair, his mouth full of his own taste. He brings her back into focus, the slow rise and fall of her chest, the shift of her wings as she stirs. He could so easily reach out and take what he wants, what's already his. Dispense with this infuriating pantomime. This isn't the end she thinks it is, he'll make her see that.

Chapter Text

The last embers of summer linger in the evening air, flickering in the cooler breeze until they finally gutter out. You smile, indulging in the feel of it against your overly warm skin. It's a refreshing balm compared to the dry and dusty heat of Avernus. For you, it only feels like a few days ago you were last here, drained by a suffocatingly hot summer, the storm that blew in to clear the air. The tension and terror. So many fraught emotions you'd been granted no reprieve to sort through.

To be back on the mortal plane after a near decades absence, to look out over the city that will always be your home no matter how black your soul becomes. Or the physical form you take. You hadn't known what to expect, what you would feel on your return to Baldur's Gate. How much your sense of self and how you perceive the world might have changed. But it's like nothing has, and you don't know what to make of it.

The restaurant terrace you stand on overlooks the city, out towards the lower wards below and the harbour beyond that. As dusk deepens its grip, more lights and lanterns are kindled into life in the streets that wind below you. Everything is calm and ticking away in mundane routine. The only signs of what happened all those years ago being the lighter shades of stonework next to what's original. In time, that will fade too. It feels like you're looking at a blank slate, a city scrubbed clean.

You fold your arms and rest them atop the balustrade, the murmur of low conversation going on behind you. Lights from fishing boats bob on the Chionthar, the occasional cry of one wheeling seabird or another carrying on the cool breeze. You had been worried all of these small and inconsequential things wouldn't touch you anymore, that a precious part of you died when you..., died. Your lips press together tightly, you aren't sure what devils feel or how they see the world, but this isn't what you expected. It's almost like you aren't a devil at all. There's no desire for power or to corrupt those around you, or maybe you just hold a very prejudiced idea of what being a devil is actually like. What it means.... You take a slow and deep breath, push the anxiety out and focus on what you've won, the baggage that no longer weighs you down. No contract. No tadpole. In this moment you're as free as you've ever been. Except.

You can feel the familiar weight of the devil's gaze on you. He sits at a table laid out for two, wine, candles, the remains of an exquisite meal. There are more eyes on you both, mutters of conversation and speculation from the establishments other patrons. You pay it no mind, it's hard to imagine anyone remembers your face after such a long absence. No doubt their curiosity is driven purely by seeing two new faces in a restaurant that caters primarily to patriars and other nobility.

That sense of renewal comes back to you, a feeling that you can start again and not be weighed down by the past. Confidence. Control. Both have been missing from your life for so long, now you can feel them both acutely. You close your eyes and bask in the sensorial feedback of a world that's alive and vital. Scents and sounds, the solid wood under your feet and the stone under your hands, the clarity of mind they bring. You know you're guilty of over romanticising this homecoming, but you're not asking anyone to understand what it all means to you personally. It's what you want to take and see, what gives you stability. Your selfishness.

A chair moves against the hardwood floor behind you, slow and measured boot steps, the weight of the devil's Infernal aura moving against your skin as he joins you at the balustrade. You take the glass of wine he offers and bring it to your lips to taste. A deep and complex red from the far south, the best vintage the establishment has to offer. You let it sit on your tongue a moment, picking out the notes before swallowing. It was no idle boast on the part of the sommelier.

Raphael watches you in a way that makes him appear fascinated, the smallest of genuine smiles curving those normally deceitful lips. After leaving Avernus the change in his attitude towards you had been sudden and drastic, the cold shoulder and distance evaporating the moment he pulled you into a fierce, almost starved, kiss. Only then did you realise how wrong you'd read him. It wasn't rejection, but self-imposed restraint. You just don't understand the why behind it.

“It's a very strange notion, to derive pleasure from another's happiness,” there's a hint of confusion in his tone, the words so quietly spoken you wonder if you heard them at all.

It's the sort of confession you don't expect from him, one of those internal thoughts better left unsaid. Still, there's no denying his attitude towards you had shifted over the months before your long sleep. Not that you always saw it straight away. Both of you like to play the game of predator and prey, the slow seduction and corruption. But he wears the charmers mask less, lets you glimpse under it, allowed you closer. You don't know if devils are capable of extending complete trust and confidence in another, what you do know about him barely scratches the surface of a creature thousands of years old. Still, you feel you've earned some measure of his respect, glimpses of what you like to tell yourself is genuine affection. Though it's always tempered with the reminder that none of it should ever be mistaken for softness or humility.

“You shock me, sir. A narcissist, millennia old, considering another,” you tease lightly.

Whatever it is that exists between the two of you, you know he isn't always comfortable with it, that it taxes his patience. Or, your antics do. You distract him and complicate matters, sometimes in ways he handles poorly, that his temper is worse than yours, sudden and destructive and you doubt you've seen that last of it whether you're the trigger or not.

“I've always said you will be the ruin of me,” he huffs with dry resignation, lips twisting, but there's no real heat behind his words.

You ease slightly closer to him, more than is considered acceptable in such an environment. “Thank you for this though. For letting me come back.”

“Letting you?” He arches an eyebrow. “This is where I need you, nothing has changed about that.”

The building of his temple, a diabolic cult, followers who are devoted to and worship him. It's an idea that felt so abstract and unreal such a short time ago, and now? You look down into the deep plum surface of the wine, your reflection distorted and sparking a feeling of disconnection. You frown and look back to his watchful gaze. “You wish me to start immediately?”

“Not right away.” His head turns towards the view of the city, hungry. “All I want of you right now is to settle in and do nothing provocative.”

Be a lady of leisure? You would be a fool to think his reasoning is benign. “There is something I want to ask you; is there any way I can travel to and from the citadel safely?” You can weave the subtle magic of the fey through music, can cast mundane spells, and that's it. Having the potential to be a powerful sorceress means nothing when you lack fine control, and attempting planar travel could leave you a smear across the surface of Avernus.

He slides a glance at you, lips curling with amusement. “I could give you back your necklace.”

It's not your first choice. “If that's what it takes.” You're willing to make the sacrifice if it gives you the ability to come and go as you please. As much as you hate Avernus, it's also the domain of the devil next to you.

“No.” Raphael shakes his head slightly, turning towards you. He curls a finger under your chin, tilting your head up to his, holding you with those intense topaz eyes. “I trust you.” His lips scandalously brush yours, offering the faintest promise of what's to come. “You could sign a pact as my warlock, though I suspect that's low on your list. So, I have something else to gift you.”

“For free?” You gasp in shock, ignoring the increasing number of heads that have turned to watch this unseemly display of public closeness.

“Hardly, my dear,” he chuckles, drawing back slightly. His fingers move from your chin to the small welt pocket in the breast of his waistcoat. What he pulls from it sets your heart skittering and your mind into overdrive for more reasons than you want to consider. A band of smoke-blackened silver set with a single blood red gem and inscribed on the inside. You know exactly what it says.

“Raphael....”

“It works the same way as the necklace, same trigger word both ways,” he explains easily, like he isn't taking your hand and sliding a ring onto your finger. “Is something wrong, my dear? You're so deathly pale all of a sudden.”

The bastard knows full well, could have chosen any sort of trinket to enchant. Nothing he does is a casual whim, that's your domain. “You really are cruel sometimes,” you accuse, breathlessly.

“Cruel? I?” He chuckles darkly. “Did I not say on more than one occasion that I would make you my consort? I'm merely keeping my word.” The kiss he leans in for is firmer this time, full of something dark and deeper and definitely not for gawking patriars. If this carries on, you can see the maître d rushing over to curtly remind you both this is a restaurant and not a brothel.

Your fingers play with the buttons of his waistcoat as you lose yourself in his topaz eyes. “We should leave.”

“As you desire.”

~~*-*~~

The Helm and Cloak prides itself on being the most exclusive inn for visiting nobles to Baldur's Gate, its feasting hall frequented by patriars and other members of the city's elite alike. Having a guest of your stature is something the management are more than happy to accommodate, their best suite of rooms, they state enthusiastically. That your reputation still carries weight after almost a decade of absence is something you choose not to linger on. Fame or infamy, you have no idea what tales were spun about you after Wyll's disastrous inauguration ball. Whatever the truth, this feels a frivolous use of your notoriety. To think you had once been content to sing for your bed and supper at the Elfsong, here they can't do enough for you in the hope you'll extend your stay.

Your back hits the wall inside your rooms, rough hands pawing at your body, claws scratching, hot lips against the side of your throat, sharp teeth grazing delicate flesh. Raphael lifts his head, tongue licking across your parted lips and sliding into your mouth. It's like molten lava moving through your body, consuming and burning you up, settling between your legs. Clothes are reduced to a smouldering of embers that cause pinprick stings of pain along bare human skin. He pushes his thigh between your legs and up against your wet heat, claws digging into your arse, encouraging you to grind up against him.

You moan into the deep kiss, more than happy to use him in such a way, your own excitement driven higher by his rough impatience. You can feel the ridged bands of uneven cartilage pressing up against you, your walls reflexively clenching as you shift to find the best position to use them as stimulation. Heat pours off his Infernal skin as you rock your hips, grinding against the thicker reptilian-like  skin. You pant against his wet lips, the kiss a mess of sparring tongues and rumbling nips before devolving into a breathless and devouring kiss that neither of you want to relinquish. He feels like a devil possessed, maddened by starvation. You seriously doubt he's denied himself over the years, not with his own personal incubus. Still, it's a thrill to feel him this passionate, like he's barely holding onto his precious self-control. Maybe you can loosen it a bit for him. Your fingers dig into the meat of his arse, trying to pull him closer, straying to tease the base of his swaying tail, pressing over ridges and into the dips.

Raphael growls, deep and dark, a clear warning he knows you'll pay absolutely no mind to because it only heightens your desire. You can feel the hard line of his erection pressing into your hip, the smear of wetness that causes all manner of vivid thoughts to play through your mind. The way he tastes, the way he feels, you swear your senses are heightened, keener than they had been before your long sleep. Your breath hitches as he presses closer, his thigh lifting and pinning you to the wall. You ride it with naked lust, heat and tightness growing inside your core with every rock of your hips. You're making a thorough mess on him, can feel every one of his rumbling breaths vibrate through his body and into yours.

The moment your climax hits, Raphael lifts you off his thigh and drives his erection into your tight and throbbing heat. You cry out, head lolling back against the wall as the stretch of him makes your eyes roll with ecstasy, legs wrapping tight around his waist, arms over his shoulders, your hands in his hair. You cling on as he takes you with rough savagery, not giving a damn that you're still riding out your orgasm. Heart racing, breathing harsh, you know he has every intention of driving you straight into a second with him. Your nails dig into his scalp, pull at his hair, your body too hot, the air somehow failing to fill your lungs. You feel every hard thrust, the purposeful way he makes sure to grind up against your overstimulated clitoris.

“Raphael!” You gasp, feeling your eyes starting to roll from the heated pleasure that needs an outlet.

“The way you say my name,” he rumbles, pressing you painfully into the wall, hips driving deep again and again. “I'll never tire of it.”

You cry out, gasping and moaning, the world skewing as your body shudders violently a second time. You feel him pulse deep inside you, liquid heat flooding your already too hot core. He holds you there, breathing raggedly, letting you ride it out this time. Slowly everything comes back into focus and you look down into bright magma eyes, picking out flecks of ruby and gold you're sure you've never seen before. Because he's a Lord of the Nine Hells now or because being a devil allows you to see more, you don't know. One realisation that does suddenly hit you is that this new rank will allow him a lot less time for moments like these, and with him wanting you to stay on the mortal plane too.

“I'm going to miss having you around, I fear my evenings will be so dull.” Especially with how he wants you to idle away your time.

“Mmm, if you think I'll be leaving you completely to your own devices,” he says with false mildness, the back of his fingers brushing your cheek. “I'll be doing nothing of the sort.”

Raphael's lips brush yours, the moment you anticipate it deepening never happening. Instead, he pulls you away from the wall, an arm curling under you as he walks towards a large claw-footed bath tub that sits near the balcony doors open to the late summer night outside. He dips his free hand into the cooled water, easily bringing it back up to temperature, steam rising. The moment he steps over the side into the water, you let out a breathy moan as it shifts his cock inside you. You unhook your legs before he settles down into the tub, the hot water drawing a sigh of pleasure from deep inside as you sit astride his lap and sink down further on him.

He leans back against the slope of the tub, slowly appraising your kiss swollen lips and flushed skin. “Will you stay here?”

It's a question he doesn't need to ask, he'll always be able to find you no matter where you go. The devil claims it's because you've partaken of his blood, because of a myriad of other nuanced things he's done to draw your soul closer to the Hells. And now you truly are of the lower planes, at least in part.

You reach for the wash cloth, soaking it in the steaming water you know should be scalding your skin. “Maybe for a little while.” Such a public place of residence has too many disadvantages. The sort of business you'll eventually be conducting requires a level of discretion an inn even as high-class as this one can't grant. You run the cloth up his chest, through the dusting of dark hair, a little disappointed he's reverted to his human guise. Bath tubs aren't really made for lounging in with a sixteen-foot wingspan. “I owe Astarion a visit, maybe I'll write to the de Lazlo's.” There's no saying Astarion even resides in the city anymore, or that he'll want to see you. He saved your life, risked his own, and you disappeared without a word, breaking your promise to talk later. Nine years isn't really an acceptable timeframe even if events were beyond your control. “I suppose I'll settle into some form of normalcy. See what sort of tales were spun in my absence.”

“You're less notorious than you think, at least amongst the patriars and general populace. It's only the dukeling and his clique. They aren't going to target a hero who saved this very city. They'll watch, that's a given. At least for a little while,” he tells you, firm fingertips massaging the tops of your thighs.

Until boredom and complacency set in, you can see where his mind is going. It's not like time has any meaning to you anymore. You move the cloth along the dips and curves of defined muscle, fingertips trailing after it as you greedily indulge in the freedom to touch as much as you like. By the dilation of his topaz eyes, the growing hardness of his cock deep inside you, he's enjoying the attention.

“Maybe I can use the time to begin writing something a little more grandiose. The challenge of a symphony has always appealed.” You lift your eyes from drinking in his body to meet his intense gaze. “Maybe I'll write it about you.”

“My achievements are certainly worthy of it,” Raphael agrees with unabashed conceit. “Though you will find yourself having to write multiple parts as my victories grow.”

“My life's work then, a Magnum Opus,” you hum, leaning closer to trail the cloth around the side of his neck, placing a kiss against damp flesh that smells of palmarosa with a hint of pepper. A luxurious choice in fragrance that you approve of wholeheartedly. “You'll have to regale me with how you took the Flying Fortress and crushed Zariel.” Did he use the Crown? The thought brings with it another question, memories stained with blood. You draw back, wondering if you should ask, if he'll even answer. “How did you do it, outplay Gale?”

Raphael smiles, eyes glittering with mirth. “With your help.”

You frown. You'd done nothing, aside from baiting him towards a meeting with the devil.

“The masquerade,” he prompts. “I told you to facilitate a meeting between the late wizard and the de Lazlo's, that it must take place. Which it did. I needed him out of his tower long enough for my agents to..., edit his research. Working such powerful magic is dangerous on a multitude of levels, anathema to Mystra's Weave. The smallest of mistakes, catastrophic. It takes an egotist to know one, the difference between us? I'm self-aware . I can bend my knee if that's what the game takes.”

You've seen him do it too, acting with grace and humility to get a target exactly where he wants them, for them to trust him. You suspect that even if Gale hadn't tried to screw over the devil, he would still be on the losing side. Whatever was agreed between them, not being as it first appeared. There's always more, a deeper layer. You know that better than anyone.

“There is one other matter we should discuss,” he begins only to trail off.

Your hands pause in their slow and methodical bathing, unease stirring inside. You know that tone of voice, that smile, it causes your heart to trip with worry instead of anticipation. “What?”

Raphael looks you over, eyes softening, his expression one of benevolence. “Your contract.”

Your back straightens. “There is no contract, there's nothing I want.” And Infernal law states clearly that he can't force you to sign anything.

His eyebrow arches and he purrs one word. “Control.”

Somehow you manage to not even twitch a muscle as he hits the mark. “You can't grant abstracts, and I've no lust for power through a higher position.” If, for some bizarre reason, you ever do choose to walk that path, you can take control without the devil's help. It's only a matter of the right words and the right music.

Raphael hums lightly, eyes dancing with mirth and obviously enjoying your discomfort. “Not now, but you will,” there's easy confidence and certainty in his voice.

You don't bite into it, taking a breath to ease back your anger. You are not about to agree to anything, now or in the future. And you're not going to let him plant that fear in your mind, that something is headed your way. You can create your own control, starting right with this moment.

“No, I won't.”

Topaz eyes glitter, his smile never faltering. It's like you've given him exactly the reply he wants. He takes the cloth from your hand and pulls you down against his chest, his lips finding yours in a hungry kiss. You sink into it, letting the anger go and basking in the heat radiating off his skin, the water that gently laps against your body. His firm hands press down your back, trailing sharp nails that curve under your arse. The message is implicit and you're of no mind to deny him or yourself.

You moan into the kiss as you lift yourself slightly, only to sink back down around his solid length. Hands resting on his chest, feeling every low rumble that vibrates through them as you ride him. You sit back, feel him slide deeper, eyes fluttering half closed. Water sloshes over the side of the tub completely unnoticed as you lose yourself in the feel of him. Reveling in the way he always watches you with unblinking intensity, how he grips your waste tighter than necessary. It's delicious, driving the heat of your desire higher, making your heart beat faster. Your eyes slide all the way closed, head rolling back as you stretch your arms up toward the gilt ceiling and trust him to keep you balanced. A smile of smug satisfaction curves your lips as you hear the hitch in his rumbled breaths, his hands moving up your body, over your breasts.

You'd held back from letting the mortal guise dissolve into the Infernal when he did, unsure if he even desired you that way, worried it would kill his ardour. Because it's another's hand that reshaped you. Because he acted so distant.

“Come here.”

The darkly growled demand sends a thrill right to your core, derailing such intrusive doubts as he pulls you down against his body. His arms wrap around you, holding you firmly in place as he starts to buck up into your tightening heat. You gasp against the damp skin of his throat, every savage upward thrust jarring your captured body. Your teeth graze his skin, biting, stopping just short of breaking the skin. The sound of his snarl is a dark thrill, your walls clenching tight as he roughly grips your hair and pulls you to his waiting lips. The throb of him deep inside is a sin you'll never be able to get enough of.

You rest heavily against his chest, listening to the rough purr of each satisfied exhale he makes, the drip of water onto the soaked floorboards under the tub. Lulled by the warmth of his skin and steady heartbeat, you close your eyes and drift on strange dreams of devils and the end of everything.

Chapter Text

You slowly blink your eyes open, stretching against the luxurious sheets and feeling the cool breeze coming in from the open balcony doors. It's no surprise to find yourself alone, the other side of the bed long grown cold. Still, you pull one of the pillows towards your body, holding it close and breathing in the lingering scent of the devil that's never out of your thoughts. Of course he wouldn't stay, you can count the amount of times he has on one hand, and that was before he became the ruling lord of Avernus.

There's no rush to get up, nowhere you need to be, no one to meet. It's been so long since you felt so at ease, free. Not since those twilit years you spent in the Feywild. The stray thought makes you think of the grove you slept in and the fey creature that kept watch over you. It's already growing blurry around the edges, the vibrant colours bleeding out. As the years roll by, those memories of the Feywild feel more and more like a strange fever dream, like none of it really happened. You were lucky to keep any of your memories at all, most visitors don't. One final parting gift from your mentor.

You roll over, looking towards the oversized bathtub and the dull morning light coming through the gauzy curtains. Maybe you can take your breakfast out in the open air, the cooler months and turning of the trees are fast approaching and you intend to make the most of them. You reach across the bedside table and pull the cord that will summon up a meal from the kitchens. Probably best to use the wait to make yourself presentable.

As far as you know, Raphael has arranged for you to stay in this suite for as long as you want them. While you're grateful to not have to live off the graces of yet another patriar, these grand and soulless rooms have already lost their appeal. There's no vitality here, only waiting vacancy, an emptiness that only emphasises the feeling of loneliness. You let go of the pillow and slide from the bed, padding barefoot to the wardrobe and pulling a plush robe from inside. You pause as you close the dark wood door, your hand resting against it, one finger adorned with a band of blackened precious metal, the facets of the red gem seeming to draw in the light and consume it.

Raphael's last gift came with a catch, the necklace allowing him to eavesdrop on any conversation you had. There had also been no way to remove it, short of removing your own head. The devil had taken it back just before the inauguration ball, a sign of trust in you, or so he is happy to let you believe. You press your lips together, placing your fingers around the band and turning it. He said the gift isn't free, the inscription in Infernal on the inside suggesting as much. A rough translation would be something like: into eternity. As much as such a gift, its laden meaning, turns your heart over. There's only one question currently buzzing through your mind. You hold your breath, gripping the band tighter, and pull. The ring slides off your finger easily.

You almost laugh at how palpable the sense of relief is, tilting the band to read the ornate calligraphy. Again, your heart trips. He's always kept his word. Could he have reshaped you when the time grew right, given what he truly is? A pit fiend. It's a name that means nothing to you, but the image of what you saw in the throne room is burned into your mind. The briefest touch searing your skin despite a devils natural immunity to fire.

Before your mind can spiral down that path, there's a loud knock at the door. You slip the ring back on and pull the robe around you. “Come in.”

“Good morning, my lady,” the grey haired wood elf greets as he opens the door, his expression schooled to professional courtesy. Behind him is a trolley laden with a covered breakfast tray.

“Good morning,” you reply, feeling the strangest urge to reach out and connect with someone that's completely unrelated to the mess in your life. “I'd like to dine out on the balcony.”

“Of course, my lady.” He wheels the trolley out into the cool air and begins to lay the table. “There are also a number of letters that have arrived for you.” He indicates the envelopes propped up against the teapot. “Will there be anything else, my lady?”

You want to stall him, ask any number of mundane questions about the city, about life, gossip. You hold them all back. “Not right now, thank you.” You watch as he bows sharply and heads back out the door, it clicks shut and the sudden silence is crushing. The seconds tick by before your feet suddenly stride towards it and turn the lock. It's not paranoia, it's common sense.

You step out onto the balcony, taking a deep breath of the cool and fragrant air, feeling the way it soothes the heat of your skin. As much as you don't want to acknowledge them, your eyes still stray to the stack of letters. How are there so many so soon? You've barely been back in the city a day. Though patriar tongues like to wag and Raphael's choice on where you dined last night would have done just that. You honestly hadn't expected anyone to care, patriar memories are short if you aren't going to weekly parties and voicing an opinion loudly and obnoxiously. You can only hope that this time you find no attempts at wooing you through terrible verse mixed in with the offers of residency. In truth, you don't want to see any of them either. You have so little desire to return to that sort of life, to be at the beck and call of patrons.

Sitting down, you move them aside and pour tea into a dainty porcelain cup. All you need to do for the next little while is mind your business and you can do that better away from the machinations of patriars. At least until they become of some use to you. How hard can it possibly be to enjoy life as a lady of leisure? Not having to worry about where you'll sleep or who's providing your next meal.

People are a little too quick to romanticise the life of a bard, the freedom and hedonism. And sometimes it is frivolous fun and self-indulgence. Nobody ever talks about the hard times, those nights where you barely made enough coin and had to choose between a full belly or a roof over your head. The agony when the music doesn't flow and the words to a new song won't form in your mind. You've been luckier than most, offers falling your way at the right time, the right people being in the audience. And yet, there are still times when the loneliness bites, even with all eyes on you. There's no real sense of friendship or of planting roots. The fight against the Absolute had been a brief taste of fellowship, and look how that turned out once the danger was past.

You press your lips together, stopping the flow of maudlin thoughts before they spiral ever deeper. This isn't as gloomy as you think. There's Astarion, providing you can find him and he doesn't refuse to hear you out. There is another too, an image of a sacrred face that causes your treacherous heart to ache. That's a road better left untrodden, for both your sakes.

Sipping the bright copper tea, you cast your eyes out over the Upper City, in the distance you can clearly make out the imposing frontage of the High Hall. Colourful pennants fluttering in the breeze, indicating that the grand duke is in residence. The memories of that night trouble you more than you want them to, but you reason you aren't accountable for all the decisions made. That you didn't see all the manipulations going on around you. Wyll chose to trust Gale, and Gale chose to try and outplay a devil who's been plying his trade for countless millennia.

The teacup settles back on the saucer with more force than you intend. You're slipping back into those same gloomy thoughts again. The only distraction immediately offering itself are the letters and you pick one at random, tearing it open with little care. The paper is thick and expensive, the writing unnecessarily ornate, there's an embossed coat of arms that you recognise as belonging to a minor patriar house. The first few lines almost make you laugh with how blatantly the lord in question is trying to appeal to both your ego and generosity. You won't deny you have one of those. There's a real temptation to just toss them all on the fire, but this is information that a certain devil might find very useful. Or even you. Opening the rest of the letters, they all follow a similar vein, either outright asking for a meeting or words of belated congratulations.

So this is the influence Wyll's so concerned about. Influence that has somehow endured over nine years of absence. You wonder how the grand duke will feel about the exact sort of influence Raphael wants you to cultivate, or how the duke himself is going to unwittingly help. Still, these are all things that feel so far in the future. Right now, you're going to enjoy a slow breakfast and then see how the management feel about having a piano or harp delivered to your suite.

~~*-*~~

A total of three days pass before you find yourself feeling oppressed by the walls around you. The silence eating into your brain worse than the tadpole ever did. A piano sits in a corner of the suite purely to mock you for your impotence, each stack of letters that arrive with your breakfast, a pressure they have no right to be. It all leaves a swell of anger in your chest that crescendos with one particularly self-important patriar spending an afternoon waiting in the bar downstairs expecting you to invite them up. You don't. They left furious and no doubt they'll voice their opinion of your behaviour to anyone and everyone. As far as you're concerned, it'll only do you a favour. In the future, hopefully any visitors will make prior arrangements rather than petulant demands. For your own part, you've sent two letters. One to Astarion, another to the de Lazlo's, only Marta has replied. The rebuff stings and you tell yourself there's every chance he's out of town, or busy. You don't know how much has changed in the years you slept, how deep he's gone with his desire to walk in the sun and feel the joys of living again.

Closing and locking the balcony doors, you stop by the writing desk and ignore the empty bars of sheet music. Instead you pick up the knife belt hanging off the back of the chair. The narrow black blade safely sheathed and hopefully you can keep it that way. It's not like you haven't always carried a blade of some description, either for utility or self-defence. Since the Absolute, it feels different. Since coming back from Avernus that first time. Maybe because you know their are those who would actively do you harm. It's true you can't die on this plane, it would only be an annoying inconvenience to be teleported back to the Hells. Still, the fact you're a devil is something you don't want known. You take a breath as you fasten the buckle. This is exactly why you're going to spend the next little while being as bland and unthreatening as possible, to quell the need for such antics.

You pick up your lute out of habit rather than any actual desire to play it. The suite door closes behind you and there's a whisper of magic as you ward it against uninvited attention. The inns interior is all light wood and open rafters, large windows and flowing tapestries of brave knights upholding law and liberty. You take the wide curving stairs down, the murmur of voices growing as the staircase flares outwards into an open lobby with plush seating and tables for drinks and games. You spot the halo of copper hair and the bright colours of Marta's walking coat immediately, a smile easily finding its way onto your lips.

She flows to her feet and dismisses the young man talking to her with easy grace. There's still an air of the delicate and fey about her, but you also see the march of time. Laugh lines that are deeper than you remember, her face that little bit fuller, and she wears it well. A creature of vice and pleasure. Once you saw her as innocent and harmless, a dedicated patron of the arts and music. Now you know you were only half right. That you were the one who was naïve.

Ignoring the eyes that follow your passing, you both embrace. She smells of honeysuckle and lilacs with just the faintest sulphurous twist. “It's good to see you again Lady de Lazlo,” you greet as station dictates, dipping into a graceful curtsy.

She laughs lightly, blue eyes sparkling, smile coy. “My sweetest bard, Saviour of this fine city. I'm so glad you finally decided to return home.”

“As am I.” This little reunion is drawing more attention than you like. “Should we take a walk in the gardens?” It won't get you away from all the prying eyes, but a measure of privacy is better than none at all.

The air outside is fresh and clear, the slightest bite of a cool edge to the breeze. The trees you both walk under starting to show the first signs of changing colour. The gardens attached to the inn aren't as vast as those of the de Lazlo's estate and as you walk you see they've been designed with privacy in mind. Secluded pergolas, unobtrusive water features to mask conversation.

Marta reaches inside her coat pocket and withdraws a sealed letter, offering it to you. “From a close mutual friend. I promised to see it delivered should you return.” A knowing smile plays across her blush pink lips.

Taking it, you recognise the handwriting. Astarion. Why wouldn't he send it himself, or just call in on you? “He's out of town?” You take a guess and hope it lands.

She nods minutely. “He's never lost faith, always said you'll come back. Every time he leaves, he gives me a letter to see into your hands should it come to pass. I've always found him to be such a fascinating fellow, not at all like the bores I normally have to deal with. And just so we aren't tip-toeing, I know about his, um, condition.”

Your gaze drifts to her neck, obscured by the high collar of her coat. Not that it's any of your business. You carefully slip the letter into your pocket, Marta's words sparking a release of fearful tension. He believed in you, never gave up on the possibility of seeing you again. None of this means he isn't angry or hurt of course, but there's a chance you'll be able to explain.

Turning your steps towards a carved stone bench nestled close to the gently running waters of a small fountain, you sit down and swing your lute around to rest across your lap. The moment you set your hands to play, they feel paralysed. It's not that you've forgotten how, there's just nothing inside you to draw from. A familiar classic then, again your fingers don't move. The bite of grief is hard and merciless and you take a few breaths to compose yourself, eyes downcast.

Marta hums, settling next to you and seemingly oblivious to your paralysis. “I have missed the sound of your playing. Does your shoulder still trouble you?”

Her question lights up a memory of deep hazel eyes full of genuine concern and compassion, a helping hand offered far too late. You flex your fingers, feeling the ache in your knuckles and tentatively touch the strings. You wonder if Halsin regrets his belief in you, for refusing to be a part of Wyll's murderous plot.

“It's much better, thank you.” Heavy fingers pluck at the strings, the sound harsh and discordant. If your paths ever cross again, you doubt you'll receive the same consideration. He wanted to see and hear you himself rather than blindly believe the words of another. To see the disappointment and loss in those eyes is something you don't think you could stand. “I hope you weren't hurt in the chaos of that night,” you say, pulling your fingers away from the strings before they can continue their atrocity.

“It was shocking,” there's the slightest quaver in her voice all these years later and her mood visibly dims. “I didn't sleep well for weeks afterwards. Unbelievable as it is, I still wake from the occasional bad dream to this day.” Then she leans closer. “Do you know Ravengard almost became the shortest ruling grand duke in the city's history? There were so many crying such things are bound to happen when you invite someone touched by the lower planes to sit on the throne. Fortunately, the hysteria was quelled by saner voices.”

“Of which you and Alessando are part of.” Members of the Parliament of Peers, and some would argue, the real power in Baldur's Gate. Personally, you can't imagine anything worse. It's not a world you'll be able to avoid completely, you fear. Right now though, you're happy to stay as far away from it as possible.

She laughs. “It has been quite the invigorating experience, a decision I have no regrets about making.” The glitter in her eyes tells you more than you want to know. Then she lifts a hand to touch your arm. “Aless and I do have a small party planned for the end of the week, it would be the perfect opportunity for you to reintroduce yourself. Music, conversation, the right ears bent.”

“No,” you refuse in a soft and easy voice to take any perceived sting out of the word. “I've decided to retire from public performances for a while. I just want to write.”

It's like you've just waved the most enticing proposition under her nose, her eyes widening slightly, lips curving. “Is that why you've sequestered yourself here? You can always return to the estate and write. Aless and I won't place any expectations on you.”

Her offer is tempting, more than you thought or want it to be. Still, you shake your head. “Not right now. But, if it's an open invitation, maybe at some point in the future.”

“Of course it is. You're more than welcome to visit as you please, stay for dinner. Aless and I have dined here enough to know the food is good, but you know how much of a genius Stefan is. And you do love the pastries he bakes. Am I suitably tempting you yet?” She asks with a not so innocent blink of her eyes.

“I can't deny he does bake the best I've ever tasted,” you agree readily enough. “I'll let you know about the rest.”

Marta hums, eyeing you. Like all patriars, she doesn't like it when she doesn't get her own way, but she's not the sort to start a fuss or be bad tempered. “I hope you don't cloister yourself for too long. It feels like such a waste of living.”

You can't help the laugh that bubbles past your lips, it isn't really a concern for you anymore and it's not like you've become a sister in the service of one temple or another. Well, not yet. And you'll be occupying a rank far higher than that of a lowly acolyte. “Oh, I intend to live. In my own way and through my music.” You just need to get through this creative bleakness, whether it lasts another day or another decade. It's not an uncommon affliction. When the silence stretches too long, you lift your gaze to find Marta watching you shrewdly. “My lady?”

“It's like you've shed a coat or mask, I'm not sure which yet,” she says with a hint of wonder rather than judgement. “When you came back to us all those years ago, you were so closed off, hurting. Though I suppose it was hardly surprising given the trials of your adventure. Now,” she looks you over, “you've changed, or found something you lost.”

Lost. Buried. Denied. You let your fingers rest on the quiet strings. “Maybe.” Then you chose to steer the conversation away from you. “I'm guessing your days are taken up by politicking rather than parties now.”

“It should be no surprise to you how much goes on at parties,” Marta says, seemingly unconcerned by your deflection. “Aless deals with the paperwork, I focus on people and charitable work. Honestly, it's not much different than before, just the players and stakes are bigger. Sometimes, a little more delicacy is needed in certain matters.” The look in her eyes conveys what she leaves unsaid clearly.

You don't doubt a creature of Marta's appetites is more than eager to be holding clandestine soirées in dedication to a certain devil. Over the years you've slept, she's probably worked quietly to find those who are amenable, maybe already has a small group willing to take the bigger step. Though you wonder how much of a stomach she'll have for it all when she finds out it's about more than carnal lusts. Patriars really do have a dangerously skewed view of what devils are and what they're capable of.

“There are some strange rumours moving through certain circles,” Marta continues while you're lost to your thoughts. “Our grand duke has become the city's most eligible bachelor. Yet, apparently he's turned down every advance made by patriars on behalf of their daughters. He's under no pressure to choose right now, he's still relatively young, but that's not what's most interesting. After Counsellor Florrick's death, he took a new advisor, no one known to the city either. Tall and slender, a countenance of carved ice, straight copper hair and blue eyes. Charming as they come and a tongue sharp as any blade. Some say they're too close.”

Mizora. It's far from a surprise to hear, she had been of no mind to let her pet ex-warlock go so easily. Though given Raphael killed her patron, you wonder how much power she still wields, if she's even capable of renewing the terms of the pact she once had with Wyll. “Have you ever had much to do with her?”

“On a few occasions. I get the distinct impression she doesn't like me very much. A shame really, I wouldn't have minded seeing what's under all that ice,” she sighs wistfully.

You toy with the idea of warning her away and dismiss it. Better to leave the management of Raphael's assets to him, you don't know what plans he might have in the making. “Would you like to come up for a glass of wine?” You ask more out of courtesy than any actual interest.

“I wish that I could, but I have an appointment to keep with Aless' parents and they do not abide tardiness,” she laments. “I do hope you will give some thought to staying with us again. You are missed.”

The cynical part of your brain supplies the correction that it's your influence she misses and would end up using whether you agreed or not. You slide the lute off your lap and push to your feet as Marta stands and adjusts the fall of her coat. “Should I see you back to the inn, my lady?”

“Always so polite, I remember a time when your lips were anything but.” The back of her gloved hand brushes your cheek.

“It wouldn't do to tempt the ire of a devil,” you warn with a cool smile.

“He's such a charmer, but also a rotten spoilsport.” Her hand drops all the same. “It would have been fun to give out audience a little more to mutter about to their friends. I hope to see you soon.”

You drop into a curtsy as she takes her leave, half of your attention on the well dressed young man reading a book a few benches away. Your heart gives an uncomfortable thud as you see straight through the glamour to the crimson skin underneath, your nose catching the faint scent of sulphur. A devil masquerading as a mortal, just like you are. It's not Raphael's doing, you're certain of that. Cursing yourself for not even considering the possibility of more than one devil being interested in your actions, you walk back towards the inn at a steady pace rather than remain alone in the gardens.

The walls and bustle of noise inside the inn offers a false sense of safety, rich smells of cooking food as people make their way into the banqueting hall next-door for luncheon. Rather than follow, you take a stool at the bar, waving down the server to order a pot of tea and a few pastries. Ten minutes later the devil walks in with his book under his arm, orders his own drink and settles down into a plush armchair a few tables away from you. There's a furious part of you that wants nothing more than to walk right up to them and demand an explanation. Only that's not behaving yourself. That's causing a scene in a public place where you'll probably be loudly rebuffed for your ludicrous accusations.

So you nurse your temper and pull Astarion's letter from your pocket. The plain wax seal doesn't look tampered with and peels away easily enough, you open it to find only two short sentences. My offer stands. Feel free to settle in, I'll return shortly. Pins prick the backs of your eyes and you blink quickly before anything treacherous can fall from them. He really did believe in you, all these years later. Before you can get carried away, you caution yourself. Do you really want to be drawing diabolic eyes in his direction? The fury surges again and somehow you manage to keep it from showing on your face. An hour outside your suite and you're already beginning to feel the itch of worry and paranoia. Raphael's silky voice purrs one word through your mind; control. Bastard.

The tea grows cold and the pastries left uneaten as you while away hour after hour watching other people in the bar and listening to their conversations. Your solitary watcher never moves. This is absurd! Draining the cold and bitter brew, you slide off the stool and don't resist the urge to walk past the devil this time. Jostling his elbow hard and almost causing him to spill his drink over his expensive clothes.

“My apologies, sir,” you say, smiling benignly and keep walking.

Chapter Text

One. Two. And.... The door swings open and their eyes meet. It's a fraction of a second, barely a full heartbeat, and she swiftly dons the mask of composure, tries to pull a mantle of control around her body. Raphael offers a charming smile, taking it all in instantly. She's rattled, angry, not that he's even mildly surprised. Neatly refolding the letter he's finished reading, he slips it back into the envelope and moves onto the next. Patiently waiting to see what she will do, what she will say. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches her settle the lute onto its stand with unnecessary care. Buying time, trying to cement the control he knows is brittle to the point of being useless.

“I'll admit, there are more of those than I thought there would be,” she states a little too neutrally.

It's a wonder to him that she even thinks such a thing, that she's genuinely surprised, even annoyed, about it. This is exactly as it should be. An individual of influence, returning to a city that has never been more divided under its polite façade. An individual who has never shown favour in any particular direction. Someone who is ripe to be brought. Or so they think. Fortunately for them, their petitions are being read by a very generous minded devil.

Raphael carefully watches as she takes a seat on the opposite side of the small table and picks up the wine glass that has been waiting for her return. “You seem somewhat ill at ease, my dear.” And he knows exactly why. Of all her concerns about her notoriety in mortal circles, she completely neglected to consider the Infernal side of matters. This will serve as a valuable lesson. He can see the sharp anger at the back of her eyes, notes the momentary pause before she answers.

“The devil downstairs, he's not one of yours I take it?” The clipped anger doesn't quite mask the anxious adrenaline suffusing her heartbeat.

He chuckles, pleased that she so easily identified the spy, but not amused in the slightest about the situation. “No, not an agent of mine. There's nothing to fear, after all, you can't be struck down on the mortal plane.” His choice of words score the intended hit, the slightest tension entering her shoulders, how still she goes for a moment. “This is a valuable lesson,” he adds coolly.

A sharp snap of his fingers and he feels the weight of the silence bubble settle around them. They might be a whole plane of existence away from the prying eyes and eavesdroppers that pollute his court, but he's not fool enough to blindly trust their privacy to chance. And they need to talk plainly.

She stares at him as the silence bubble closes. “What are you...?”

Raphael casts aside the flippant expression and easy smile, letting the weight of severity settle on his brow. Vapid letters pushed aside, he takes up the wine glass out of habit rather than any intention of imbibing. His attention is solely for the woman who upended everything in his world by simply existing, for having the sheer audacity to try and see past the devil, freely doing so. She's never asked for anything, never tried to use him. Even when it might have been in her best interests to do so. It's confusing and frustrating and runs counter to the logic that normally rules his existence.

“Do you know why I'm disinclined to keep you with me in Avernus?” He doesn't care for the way her gaze drops away from his, it's a sure sign she's hiding something or considering something she thinks he won't approve of.

“I complicate matters,” she says the words with too much care.

It's a none answer, one that could lead in a multitude of directions without proper context. “What you saw downstairs, it's expected behaviour that the different Infernal courts spy on each other, that there are many complex layers of deceits being played out. There's no initiation, no choice to ignore their petty spite and malicious intent. You are smarter, or you die.” He pauses to allow the warning to sink in. “You, are not ready. A devil in form, but not mind.”

The flash of indignant anger is there in the back of her eyes even as she tries not to give into it. The mask she tries to wear is imperfect, mostly because she's too emotional. The potential is there, her natural skill as a performer guarantees it, but it needs to be nurtured and refined until it's less of a mask and more a way of being.

“You would do well to remember that Haarlep is also a spy in my court. I don't want you spending time with them if I aren't also there. Am I understood?” Her continued silence is starting to saw on his nerves.

“Is that all?” She asks the question tightly, eyes dark and stormy.

Anger, hurt. Does she know how easy she is to read, or does she simply not care? He can feel the frustration wake, the strange conflict that haunts him whenever they are together. She needs to understand the severity of the situation she's in, that it could cost her dearly. Cost him. “I'm trying to keep you safe, give you back the time that was stolen from you,” he tells her tersely.

She takes a delicate sip of the wine, blatantly buying herself time, trying to assert control. And he can't help but drink it in. “If that's what you want, I'll stay out of Avernus.”

Raphael almost flings the glass into the hearth across the room, he doesn't want her to stay away, doesn't want to be dancing any of these steps! He takes a moment to bask in the bright and violent imagery and resets. He wants none of this particular game any more than he wants another's hand on her soul. He stands smoothly, never taking his eyes off her as she watches him over the rim of her wine glass. Eyes hard and sharp, the fire behind them whipped into an inferno by stormy emotions. They draw him, quicken his pulse. Two fingers trace the edge of the table as he walks around to her side.

“Tell me what you're thinking.” Because there's more, something he's not seeing. His fingers move up her arm, brushing hair off her shoulder as he comes to stand behind her. She's unduly tense, the barest shake in her hand as she puts the glass down. He sees it right there, what the anger is hiding. Fear.

“I'm honestly trying very hard not to,” is her reply, a tight shudder edging the words. The cracks in her composure, glaring.

Barely a week old fledgling devil with the mind of a mortal. His hands come to rest on her tight shoulders and squeeze slightly, his thumbs pressing into the back of her neck. “I wanted to prepare you for this transition, to make sure you had the knowledge of all it would mean. It should have been a slow corruption we indulged in together, like we had been.” A slow fiery burn that rooted deeper and darker. Ordered. Meaningful. His.

She leans her head back against his chest, looking up though long lashes at him. There's a spark of defiance in those eyes that stirs deep and dark desires. “So why don't we?” She asks quietly, letting go of the glass to run her hand up and over his. The Infernal gem drinking in the light around them. “What's to stop us?”

For her, it's that simple. She doesn't care that it was a god that reshaped her soul, it means nothing. He curves a hand under her chin and bends to kiss those waiting lips 

“I want you to make me a devil, the way you always intended,” she whispers only to him.

“Then I will.”

~~*-*~~

She sleeps soundly, just like she has every night since her reshaping. Head pillowed on his thigh as he reclines against the headboard, exhausted, every soft breath helping to ease the jagged shards in his mind. Raphael knows he needs to let go of the anger, the seething fury that came with realising how perfectly the God of the Nine Hells had played them both. His influence lingering like a rotten wound. One that will open up a gulf between them if he drags her into his maudlin obsession over it. He'll explain it all to her eventually, help her to make sense of it. For now, his tempest has the right of it, even if it is a stubborn mind-set born of ignorance and naïvety. Deny a god his petty victory, continue on as they were. A deluded roleplay, cheap mockery. Does it matter to anyone but them?

She'll step down her own path the way she always has, regardless of the designs of others. Regardless of the cost. He's witnessed that with his own eyes. This is the reminder he needs, the clarity he's been lacking. Since ascending to the rank of archduke, life has become an endless back and forth with the other Infernal courts. Many ignoring his coup at first, believing a mere cambion would be murdered in his bed before the first month was done. Only he wasn't a cambion, hadn't been for centuries, and he quietly had Asmodeus' backing. When he continued to persist in his new role, that's when the spies and emissaries started to turn up. A sure sign the other lords of the Hells were willing to take him and the threat he represented seriously.

Avernus' throne has a turbulent history, having more rulers than any of the other layers. Behind locked and warded doors, he'd met with the Dark Eight, made his intentions clear to them. He wasn't going to interfere in the Blood War, at least, not yet. He's content to let the eight pit fiend generals continue with running the endless war against the Abyss, it'll keep them busy and their eyes off the throne. Besides, they don't want to be distracted by the trivial plots of the other Infernal courts. He's had to delegate so much of what happens on Toril to other agents. Only, not this one. Never this one.

“Raphael?” She stirs sleepily, turning onto her back to look up at him. “You're still here.” Her eyes drift shut again, a small smile on her kiss swollen lips. Happiness. Contentment.

The spark of discomfort it wakes, a pain that is at once delicious, infuriating, and at its core, one he doesn't truly understand. Addictive in the worst way, one that he knows is dangerous and he would be wise to rid himself of. A caution he is long past listening to. He takes a breath. Let it go and reset. He's done it countless times before when plans have gone awry, coming back stronger and smarter. Crushing those that dared to stand in his path. It took a thousand years, but now the Crown of Karsus is in his hands. And not just the crown either, the ord and scepter are his too. Mephistopheles is furious, outplayed by his half-fiend son. Only he knows better now, they all do. A careless oversight that will cost them all dearly.

Raphael feels the faintest tug at the edges of his mind, times up. His thumb brushes her lower lip and he bends to place the lightest kiss. “I won't be away long.”

~~*-*~~

You wake with a satisfying ache in the backs of your legs and arms. A smile on your lips, you brush your fingers out across the cold and empty sheets as you replay yesterdays heated indulgence. Suddenly you let out a pained hiss and are wide awake, snatching your hand back and staring at the bloom if blood gathering where you pricked yourself on a thorn. A pair of roses lie on the vacant pillow, one darkest blood red, the other deepest plum. You pick them up carefully and brush the velvet soft petals, breathing in the delicate scent. Once you would have seen such an offering as a manipulation, a gesture to keep you sweet and tempt you with thoughts you have no right to think a devil capable of. Accepting it for what it is, accepting the devil for what he is.

It doesn't fill you with joy to know you are a person of interest to the many Infernal courts. Or that you've been used to weaken Raphael. Trying in vain to cheer yourself with the knowledge that being aware is half the battle. Likening the attention of a spy to having a rather overzealous fan. The question is: what to do about it? Raphael offered no instruction on that point and informing the Watch isn't going to help.

You sigh loudly in frustration, massaging the front of your head. Less than five minutes awake and your mind is already running laps inside your skull. Slipping from the bed, you place the roses in an empty wine decanter, filling it with water from the pitcher on the chiffonier. You can drive yourself crazy, become paralysed by indecision and fear if you let it fester. You've tasted what it's like to be dictated to by others, to lose complete control of what you want. I am not a pawn on the board.

There's the snap of Infernal energy as a portal opens in your room and you make a quick grab for the robe laying across the bottom of the bed.

“Good, you're awake,” Korrilla breezes in, tone business-like. She's carrying half a dozen books.

It's been weeks since you last saw her, then your mind trips over itself and you add another nine years to the total. The books hit the table with a heavy thud and you eye them warily. “Do you think I could have breakfast before we dive into whatever those are.”

Her plum lips quirk, eyes shrewd as ever. “What do you think devils lust after as much as power?” She asks, fingers tapping the top book. “Knowledge, information. They want to know everything about anything that ever was or is. The vast libraries and archives of the Hells make all other collections look insignificant in comparison.”

You tilt your head and read the spines. “A crash course in lore and hierarchy?” Raphael did say he needed to educate you.

“Dry as ancient bones, but you'd be wise to absorb it all. There's plenty more when you're finished with these,” she informs you with a smile, thoroughly enjoying this.

You pick up the first book, noting how it feels so much heavier than it looks. “I might drop by the Devil's Fee, see what they have.” You wonder if a plane as driven by law and order as the Hells are, if different points of view exist outside the confines of individual heads. Raphael certainly isn't happy with the way things are being run.

Korrilla's brow pinches slightly. “You want my advice? It'll do you better to stay away from that place. She'll take your gold and give you beans in return. A warlock of Mammon only cares about one thing, avarice.”

“What about you?” You ask before considering just how personal such a question is.

She gives you a hard look. “He asked, I accepted,” she answers simply, her eyes daring you to pry further.

You don't. It's not like you would offer up the unwashed truth if anyone asked why you signed his contract. “Anything else I should know? More spies in the lobby, don't go wandering down any dark alleys?”

She laughs. “Don't let it bother you. If it were a demon, they'd straight up shank you. Devils just want to mess with your head, it's all psychological bluster. My betting is a spy saw how out of sorts you were when you first woke and thinks it makes you easy prey to screw with. A fresh young devil ripe for testing. Some in the court might view your close position to the archduke as a reason for caution, others as the perfect reason to snap at your ankles. Don't give them the satisfaction.”

Rivalry for position and favour? That's at least something you have experience with even if you detest the game. “Hazing the new blood,” you snort.

“Essentially,” she confirms. “Knowledge is power and the other courts want to know everything about you.”

Such as how you react to pressure and uncertainty. “Thank you, Korrilla.”

She blinks. “I haven't really done all that much.”

“I understand this all a little better, what's going on, how best to deal with it,” you elaborate.

“Ar.” She nods with a knowing smile. “You never heard this from me and I'm sure it'll be of no surprise, but the boss isn't the best at understanding these subtle little things. Seeing matters from another's perspective. To a devil, it's just their nature. To a mortal changed, it's anything but.”

You wonder if she went through this steep learning curve too, who it was that guided her. “Can you stay awhile, join me for breakfast?” It would be nice to talk to someone about all that's gone on during your long slumber.

Korrilla shakes her head. “Another time. I've a number of debtors to whip up and remind of their obligations.”

You mask the disappointment, watching as she portals out to her next destination. The heavy silence that settles on your shoulders is one you're fast beginning to loathe. You could start reading over breakfast, or you could damn it all and eat out. Fill your world with a little light and life, even if only vicariously. If some bastard devil wants to watch you eat, you'll make sure to take hours over it.

Chapter Text

Dusk is settling and the lamplighters move quietly through the streets of the Upper City as citizens head home or out with a late dinner or drink in mind. Your footsteps take you in the direction of neither, it's someone else's residence you're heading for. A modest sized townhouse by patriar standards and one where you don't know if the owner will be in. Astarion's letter suggests that you shouldn't let any lack of occupancy bother you.

Somewhere in the lengthening shadows behind you, another follows your footsteps. You can feel the itch against the back of your neck and shift the weight of your satchel away from the handle of the blade you carry. You're not going to blindly trust Korrilla's assurance that the devil in your shadow won't try to shank you.

The wide thoroughfares empty out as you leave the central district and draw closer to the high walls and decorative gates of the city's nobility. You try to keep your steps even and unhurried, refusing to give into the pressure you feel at your back. The devil for his part has done nothing more than watch, and as you've watched back, you noticed how no-one else pays him any attention. Marta had, servers could if he wanted something. Some sort of subtle obfuscation?

As you see the gates of Astarion's manor grow closer, there's a temptation to keep walking and not pull him into whatever this is. Though you're also assuming the devil tracking you doesn't already know. Given their lust for knowledge, that you can't claim to be a person of no consequence in the city's history, chances are he already knows of your past associations. Fear and doubt bite at your heels and you take a shaky breath, you won't be harassed like this.

Your hand rests against the metal gate and you push, as soon as you look over the front grounds you can see Marta's hand over everything. Prim box hedges, tall grasses and lavender, pale yellow gravel walkways, neat and very austere by her standards. The shutters that had once covered the front windows are now folded back, decorative ivy's trained to climb up and around them. Soft amber light glows from a few of the windows, a pair of lanterns hanging either side of the front doors. You can't help but smile at the thought of Astarion refusing every time Marta suggested adding beds of colourful flowers to the manors front gardens.

Boots crunching on the gravel, you feel the pressure at your back ease. So he won't follow you here, can't? You don't look over your shoulder as you climb the few steps up to the front doors and suddenly feel the thrum of magic, a warding. It crawls through your fingertips and up your arm as you touch the door, the spell working to identify who it is that seeks to gain entry. There's a moment you worry if your new diabolic nature will cause it to react defensively, then the lock clicks and the sensation recedes, the doors swinging open soundlessly. Taking a breath, you step over the threshold.

The foyer looks nothing like you remember, all the dust and cobwebs gone, dark wood panels brought back up to a healthy sheen, thick carpets and gentle lighting. For as polished as it all looks, you can still feel that edge of disuse and emptiness, that same silence that seems to follow you around. It feels like walking over a grave, a memory of something. Your footsteps bring you into the receiving room where old memories play over your eyes. Astarion and you talking here after meeting again that night near the High Hall. Now it's fully furnished with seating and paintings, bookshelves and cabinets. Neat and uncluttered, yet to accumulate the usual collection of trinkets that seem to litter every surface in the homes of nobility. Your eyes drift to the unshuttered windows, though all you can see is your own slightly distorted reflection rather than the night outside. You realise all of this is a front facing façade, an appearance of normality for a building you know is anything but. Aside from Astarion being a spawn, you wonder if he continued to indulge his curiosity surrounding darker magic and necromantic arts.

To settle in here and wait, or to wander about the manor? If he's in residence, your triggering of the ward will have alerted him already. If he's not..., nosing around rooms could be dangerous. You can easily imagine there are less benign wards guarding more sensitive areas. He could be gone for weeks more yet depending on where his journing took him. You heave a quiet sigh, listening to the steady tick of the grandfather clock out in the hallway. The idea of walking back to the Helm, and the heavy silence waiting in your suite, makes your stomach turnover.

Instead, you move towards the drinks cabinet, one you find to be surprisingly well stocked. Again, you can see Marta's hand all over the choices in spirits and clench your teeth. You tell yourself it's irrational to feel the anger, the guilt that you weren't the one to do all this. There's nothing you could have done to stop the petty whims of a god, and at least Astarion felt comfortable enough with someone to ask for help. Not that rationalisation stops the bite of knowing it should have been you. A laugh almost escapes you as bright amber whiskey is poured into a heavy cut glass tumbler. Is this a slight inkling of what Raphael feels, of being cheated out of what should have been his?

You settle down on the ornate couch nearest the empty hearth and ease off your boots, might as well make yourself comfortable while you wait. Pulling one of Korrilla's books from the satchel, you curl up in one corner and begin to read.

~~*-*~~

You jerk awake, disorientated and confused. What? Where am....

“Gods, you finally stir! Do you know how long I've been shouting at you? How much of that reserve did you bloody well drink?”

Pushing up from the couch you find yourself sprawled across, you wince at the sunlight streaming in through the windows and shield your eyes. Then you look behind you to the open doorway. Astarion stands there, sheltered by the deep shadows in the hallway, arms folded, brow knotted in annoyance.

“You're back,” you somehow manage to articulate as your heart thuds with a dozen different emotions.

His chin lifts, haughtily. “At least I mentioned going away,” he snips at you. “Now, if you would be so kind as to close those blasted curtains.”

You hurry to do as he asks, pulling the heavy brocade material across the windows and plunging the room into darkness. A moment later, lamps are kindled into life and a very irritable spawn crosses the threshold stalking straight towards you. You brace for the tongue lashing at not keeping your word, formulating explanations that don't feel adequate. Only you're shocked to silence when he suddenly pulls you into a tight hug.

“Almost a damn decade you've made me wait and worry!” Astarion berates, but there's more shaky relief in his voice than real anger. “Do you know that infuriating devil wouldn't tell me a blasted thing, wouldn't even deal for the information! What in the Hells happened?” He steps back, holding you at arms length and looking you over.

You submit to the scrutiny, wondering if he can sense the glamour you wear, if you should tell him the truth. The more you watch his face, see the open expression of genuine concern for your wellbeing, you know you can't. Stalling serves no purpose and if you skirt the truth now, you know you'll pay for it later. In the past he trusted you with what made him most vulnerable.

You wet your lips. “I slept. I only woke up a week ago.”

By the hardening of his red eyes, you know he's about to accuse you of lying. It's instinct, a gut reaction because he feels hurt, maybe even betrayed. Then his expression shifts, maybe he's noticed something. He leads you back to the couch and you both sit.

“What happened?” Astarion asks in a quieter and sober voice.

You hate how much your next breath shudders, how much you can feel the nervous adrenaline making your muscles weak. “It might be easier if I just show you.”

Standing, you move a little away from the couch and hearth and close your eyes, mostly because you don't want to see the initial reaction on his face. You let slip the mortal guise, suddenly feeling the weight of your wings, how your nails lengthen into claws, the sway of your spade tail behind you. You hear his sharp intake of breath and count to ten before you open eyes that glow with inner diabolical fire.

“He did this?” There's nothing but cold anger in his voice, he's absolutely incensed. “He turned you? As a reward, or did you have no say in it?”

You hold up your hands, asking for peace as you quickly pull the glamour back around yourself. “It wasn't Raphael,” you quickly correct as you feel your mind starting to jam up, trying to find an explanation or excuses. “I'm lucky I didn't sleep for decades more than I did.” You feel the razor sharp and broken edges of memories you really don't want to go anywhere near. The agony of being.... You swallow, pushing back at a flood your hands can't hold back. “I died.” You know you did. “And then I woke up like..., this.” Inhabiting a body that all at once is and isn't yours. Yes, you'd fantasised about the idea of being a devil, but not like this. You swipe angrily at the first treacherous tear until you're suddenly wrapped in a tight and cold embrace and then you can't stop the flood.

“I cried that first night too,” Astarion huffs with forced control next to your ear. “The loss was.... The sense of violation.” Another forcefully controlled breath. “It's okay to not be okay. This isn't somewhere you have to pretend.”

That's all it takes. You let your body purge itself, letting go of so much more than just what Asmodeus took from you. It's ugly and feels like it comes up from the blackest depths, the front of your head pounding and pressing painfully against the confines of your skull. When it finally begins to ease, you find yourself resting exhausted and boneless against him on the couch. Your eyes too heavy to keep open. Astarion asks nothing, makes no move to let you go as the silence is punctuated only by the occasional shuddering breath. Maybe you stay like that for hours as you drift in the out of exhausted blackness, but the glow around the edges of the curtains has grown dull.

You're afraid to move, afraid to look at him and what you might see. Under your cheek, his silk shirt is sodden with your tears and worse. “I've ruined your shirt,” you say roughly, in lieu of being able to think of anything else. Your head hurts so much, even the muted glow of the lamps is like spikes in the back of your eyes.

Astarion snorts indignantly. “I'll send you the bill for a new one.” Then his tone shifts, long and dextrous fingers squeezing your shoulder. “Feel a little less like you're losing your mind?”

“No,” you answer with shaky honesty. “I just feel hollowed out.”

He nods, red eyes knowing and grown distant. “I'll listen, if you want to talk.”

“Not right now, but thank you.” If there is one bright star in your life, it's right here. A friend who holds no judgement, someone who doesn't have an agenda. Finally you dare to ease back from him and lift your gaze to his. “Has Wyll..., did he come after you?” It's a blatant and heavy-handed deflection, even if it is a genuine concern. It wasn't a minor risk he took to save you from Wyll's blade that night.

Astarion's lips curve with cold amusement. “Honestly, he had bigger concerns back then than me. Barely a day into his reign and already having to avoid a coup. There really is nothing quite so terrifying as patriars united by a cause. It took weeks for the hysteria to cool down. At this point, I just accept his inaction as a gentlemen's agreement, that if I stay out of his business, he'll leave me be.” His gaze hardens slightly. “Do you have any plans to call in on him?”

You shake your head and immediately regret it. “Not if I can avoid it.” Which you know you won't be able to do indefinitely, someone or something will drag you back in. “I see you managed to spruce the manor up while I was sleeping.”

He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “The good Lady de Lazlo decided to make it her personal mission.” Astarion lounges back against the couch, seemingly content to let you meander the conversation in any direction you like. “It did me a service at least, only now everything is done, she continues to make a nuisance of herself. Calling in, invites to parties, or her bedroom, constantly asking if I knew where you were. The woman doesn't know how to take a hint or a clear no.”

“That sounds like Marta,” you try to laugh only for it to come out tight and with an edge that feels a little too close to envy. You reach for what's left of the whiskey reserve and pour it into the empty tumbler. It's more habit than anything else. Since waking you haven't felt hungry or thirsty in the way you used to and could probably go quite a while without both. Near as you can tell, devils must engage in the activities either for personal pleasure or social camouflage when amongst mortals.

“Now that you're back, what are you going to do?” Astarion asks into the lengthening silence.

You nurse the tumbler between your hands, watching dim light play off the amber surface. “Nothing. Adjust, I guess.” Learn what this new nature means while Raphael's of a mind to let you do as you please. “I'm staying at the Helm. Marta's already visited and urged me to go back to the estate. I declined.” You lift the tumbler to your lips and take a sip.

“You can always stay here, there's a whole half of the manor that's locked up and unused,” he offers with a casual shrug that you know is anything but.

A smile graces your lips as you toy at the edges of such an idea. “Far enough away that my music won't bother your research.” Not that there has been any since your return to the city, you think sourly. Maybe a change of scenery and amiable company will do you both no end of good. “It's kind of you, but I come with a lot of diabolic complications. There's at least one devil sitting out there and following me.”

“What's new?” He dismisses flippantly. “If it's not Raphael, it's someone else. I suppose that's the curse of making a deal once, they keep popping up to give you a nudge and wave temptation under your nose. It's like an obligation with them.” Then his gaze turns serious. “The offers there and open, I won't press you.”

Do you really want to go back to that cold and silent room? You can't even fill it with music because of this damnable block in your mind, the lack of desire to write. You are thoroughly gloomy and sour company and why is it so hard to take the hand being offered? You put the tumbler back down. Didn't you come back with a sense of renewed confidence and control? The resolve to prove Raphael wrong? At this rate.... You can feel Astarion's gaze on you, the quiet concern that rolls off him.

“A whole half of a manor?” Yours without condition or expectation?

“If you want it,” he nods. “Marta can chatter at you about fabric and colour palettes if you want to redecorate. It'll keep her away from me.”

You take a shaky breath. “I've a few items to collect from the inn.” Certain books you would rather not trust to a courier, then you flick a small and genuine smile in his direction. “Then I need to see about getting a few musical instruments relocated.”

Chapter Text

A week whiles by and then into a second. Slowly, you can feel yourself settling into a routine, the facsimile of a mortal life. You tell yourself it's not denial, or hiding away from what happened. This is what Raphael asked you to do, it's all part of a bigger plan. Not that it ever manages to completely quieten the nagging in the back of your mind. A doubt that only sinks deeper the more days that slip by without any word from him. And then you grow angry at your maudlin, firmly reminding yourself you aren't defined by the devil or his wants. So the cycle continues and you press on trying to learn how to live again. The pieces will never fit back into the places they broke from, but you can smooth the edges, make them work for you. At least, that's the mantra you repeat to yourself every night as you lie awake.

Cool autumnal sunlight streams in through the large picture windows at the front of the manor. Astarion's let you have more rooms than you know what to do with, all of them on the front which suits you fine. You spend most of your time occupying those upstairs, the large windows giving you an uninterrupted view of the grounds and towards the thoroughfare beyond the closed gates. Sometimes you see a figure loitering by those gates, a devil waiting for your next trip out.

You stretch your arms above your head, feeling the vertebrae in your neck pop, before picking up a quill and making an alteration to the sheet music in front of you. Or, that's your intention. Instead the quill remains stubbornly still, bleeding ink into the paper as both mind and hand refuse to cooperate. There's a sudden spike of anger, a stinging in the back of your eyes, as you stand with a sharp breath and walk away from the piano. You've sat at the bench all morning, struggling against the block in your mind. There's no desire, no inspiration. It torments you to the point you're seriously beginning to worry if parts of you were lost when Asmodeus reshaped you, either as a consequence or by design. Devils do delight in psychological torment rather than physical, and what better way than this? It's crushing and devastating, like a part of your soul has been ripped out.

With a breath, you close your eyes and count slowly. When you open them again, you quietly walk back to the piano and close the lid over the keys. Better to just leave it for now, return later once you've had time to calm down. It's too early to pester Astarion, he'll still be meditating and you're too restless to sit and talk anyway. Knowing he's there, having that option of company, it's been something you desperately needed. While you've noticed your conversations stay around none-incendiary topics, gossip and seemingly ludicrous tales of his adventures over the years, you know he keeps an eye on you. Sometimes that knowing gleam in his eyes makes you angry and you can't figure out why. He says you can do as you please with the rooms you've taken, redecorate, repurpose. All you know is you want to wipe Marta's hand off everything, claim the space as your own. A task that will be a lot easier than wiping a gods hand off your soul.

Your eyes drift from the piano to a small table with a pile of stacked books and an arrangement of roses, ones that are blush pink and pillar-box red. Despite asking at numerous florists, and even a botanist, none have seen or heard of the sort Raphael gifts you on occasion. As for the books, they're as ancient and dry as Korrilla warned. The information however, it's a lot to absorb. Knowing what Raphael truly is, how he ranks within the hierarchy, how powerful he is even without the artefacts he's collected. It grants a context you lacked, opening your eyes to all the signs that were there from the start. Signs that screamed he's so much more than a mere cambion. Your lips twist with a wry smile as you toy with the ring around your finger. And to think at one point you honestly thought you had the chance to beat him, that you were in control. He must have enjoyed your bluster and stumbling about at least, found the fight amusing. You might be a devil now, but to claim you're even remotely on a similar level is laughable.

Pulling your pocket watch from your waistcoat, you click open the face cover. It's well past time for a break from tormenting yourself and head out for an hour. There's a fabric merchant from the south you've been waiting to return to the city, today might be your lucky day. You don't spare the piano a backwards glance as you pick up your jacket and the blade that's now a constant reassuring weight at your side.

The cool air outside brushes against your skin soothingly, the sun on your face still carrying a little warmth. Your eyes automatically glance toward the bench across the street where your shadow usually sits, waiting for you to leave the grounds. Only, he's not there. You pause, waiting. Ignoring the urge to wander over and take a closer look. So he's finally decided to play a different game, change up the dull routine. He knows you visit the market, maybe he's waiting there. Or at the café you like to sit in for hours on end, watching people who pass by. Your hand unconsciously drifts over the handle of your blade, then you huff under your breath and turn to walk down the wide cobbled street.

You've grown accustomed to the sensation of eyes on you, how it differs from the rapt attention of an audience. Whether it's from the outside or the worm that once lived in your head, to suddenly feel nothing isn't the relief it should be. It leaves you with an uneasy sense of anticipatory anxiety that only eases slightly as the crowds of people out and about begins to increase.

The market is bright and lively, a hive of noise and odours. As you push deeper through the crowds the catch sight of a group of troubadours performing on a makeshift stage at the markets hub. The smells of street food, stall owners yelling above each other, people gathering and laughing. Life and vibrancy that warms the cold that's taken root inside you. Your eyes move over faces of every type, and you pay just as much attention to the empty spaces between them. It's not just your diabolic shadow you're looking for, it's anyone whose gaze lingers too long. Wyll must know you're back in the city by now, and eventually he's going to want to know why.

As you pause to watch the troubadours tumble about and recite verse of a rather questionable nature, something raises goosebumps on the back of your neck. It's not triggered by a physical touch, just the sensation of someone paying far too much attention. You glance over your shoulder and catch only the blur of someone moving further towards the back of the crowd. So this is how it's going to be today, is it? You press your lips together, brow furrowing. Your shadow isn't going to find it that easy to rattle you.

Or that's what you tell yourself. You waste time looking over vendors you have no interest in, purchasing a spicy meat skewer and a mug of ruby ale. Every time you feel that shiver at the nape of your neck, your eyes find the watcher a second too late to make an identification. You grumble under your breath, downing the rest of the ale and turning to leave. That's when you see him. Leaning casually against the side of a vendors stall, his gaze lifting from examining his nails. Topaz eyes glitter with amusement, the half smile curving his lips that of a confident predator.

Your breath catches, heart thudding. You haven't seen him since that afternoon you returned to your suite at the Helm in a foul mood. It's been a longer two weeks than you want to admit. Especially when his own mood had been so uncharacteristically conflicted, or rather, it had been uncharacteristic of him to let you see it. A group of young nobles jostle you, causing you to look away. The moment you look back, he's gone.

Frowning, you ease quickly through the crowd to where Raphael had stood, anxious anticipation mixing with a knot of worry. There's nothing to be found but the faintest scent of his cologne. Your pulse quickens until that sliver of anxiety begins to sour the anticipation. Your shadow hadn't been waiting in his usual spot to follow you, what if this is all a lure? Tempting you in the most obvious and easy way. Absently, you twist the ring and try to taper back the adrenaline. Better not to bite so readily, and you still have business here.

Taking a breath, you draw back your shoulders and head towards the one stall that's your whole reason for coming here in the first place. With every step you can feel eyes on your back, burning across your skin. Resisting the urge to keep looking behind you every few steps, you greet the merchant before turning your attention to the colourful array of silks and brocades on offer. You want to be rid of the soft palette of upholstery Marta chose and also avoid the stark colour blocks that seem to dominate the Hells. The intricate brocades with their florals and leaves, spirals and geometrics. Rich royal blues with golden yellows and vibrant greens. Embossed patterns and embroidery. You're immediately spoilt for choice and the obvious answer is to just get them all, give each room a different theme.

Suddenly you're jarred from your musings by the cold ice of claws at the back of your neck. You suck in a sharp breath, spinning around to see nothing out of place. Lifting a hand to the back of your neck, your fingertips come away with a faint smearing of blood on them. You take one slow and steadying breath, looking between people and stalls as your heart thunders. The devil that shadows you has never made such a brazen move, never made contact of any sort. If this is Raphael's idea of an amusing diversion, it's becoming plainly obvious he's after a game of cat and mouse. The last time you spoke, you made the suggestion of carrying on as though nothing had changed. Ignoring what Asmodeus did, ignoring that you're a devil and playing the role of a mortal. One a certain devil wants to corrupt, and he's just tagged you to make the next move.

“That's a remarkable fabric, my lady,” the stall owners voice snaps your thoughts back to the mundane. “A dozen people work on these bolts for months, every one is individual in its creation. For you, I will offer my best price.”

“These two,” you say, absently indicating the bolt of royal blue and another in an almost mottled mossy green. “I'd like them delivered to this address.” Your eyes are drawn past him as a flash of blue and red catches them, your pulse skipping higher. It's like you can sense his impatience on the cool breeze.

“Of course, my lady. Maybe I can interest you in adding one of these beautiful beaded trims, at a discount for your most generous purchase today.”

There's a sudden lash of searing heat at your ankles. Maybe you point to one, but your mind and body are in motion before you register which one it is. You stride away, panicked and trying to force your pulse to even out to no avail, trying to stop yourself from breathing too quickly. The heat of Raphael's gaze is on your back, trying to press you. It's a satisfaction you don't want to give him, even as your pace quickens slightly.

You feel like he's purposely shepherding you away from the relative safety of the markets crowd, so the veer for the heart, back towards the raucous noise of the troubadours. The dark growl is so close to your ear, you startle into the side of a group of chattering ladies. You quickly mutter an apology as they watch you stride away with bemused expressions.

There's no way to shake him in this crowd and you know it. Taking a shuddering breath, you worry at the ring, contemplating. Only you promised to stay out of Avernus. If you can't disappear in a crowd, what does that leave you? There's really only one thing you can think of to thwart his pursuit. Your steps turn towards the edge of the market and you feel the pressure against your back ease up a little. A park is ahead of you, beyond it is a temple dedicated to the celestial gods. Maybe as a denizen of the Hells, a devil won't be permitted to cross the threshold of such a holy building. Then you suddenly realise your error. You've been so caught up in playing the role of his mortal prey, of playing the role since coming back to the city. Stupid, stupid!

Boots crunch onto the gravel path leading into the park. This isn't lost, you can loop back. Or you could just refuse to play along, only it might lead to something far worse than a growl and a scratch across the back of the neck. You don't know the reason for this turn in his mood, whether it's for his pleasure or something else. Hells, if you're being truthful, you aren't even completely sure it is Raphael. The park isn't empty. There are couples out for a stroll, ladies walking their tiny dogs and nannies pushing prams. A solace of normality and calm away from the bustle of the market. As the path begins to curve, you chance a look behind you to see nothing out of the ordinary.

Only the hand clamping down over your mouth stops your panicked cry from alerting anyone close by. One moment you're in the bright autumnal sunlight, the next you're pulled back off the path and into the consuming dark of a derelict building. Scents of mould and damp fill your nose as you're roughly pushed face first into a stone wall. You kick backwards, aiming for an ankle or a knee as your hand drops to the handle of your blade. A bruising grip of iron curls around your wrist, levering your hand away and twisting, forcing it up behind your back. You snarl a curse, channeling pain into anger and try to hook your foot around the back of their leg, attempting to sweep it out from under them. Your reward comes in the form of being pulled enough away from the wall only to be slammed right back into it, knocking all the air out of your lungs. As you gasp for breath, a too hot tongue licks over the racing throb of your carotid, firmly pressing as it rests over it. His hot breath is as fast as yours, pluming against your throat. He twists your arm higher, making you gasp in pain. You could set the bastard on fire, thunderwave him back long enough to run. Then the luxurious scent of palmarosa finally registers in your brain, dispelling the remnants of any doubt in your mind. It's still very tempting to push back, to try and twist away. But it's dark excitement that's winning the fight of bright emotions and you don't have to wait long to see what's on his mind.

Raphael's hand slips from you covering your mouth and pushes between your body and the wall, down between your legs and roughly groping you through your breeches. You bite into your lower lip to stifle your moan, very much aware that a public park exists on the other side of the stone wall. The deep  hum he vocalises against the side of your throat is full of smug amusement and it makes your heart trip with a mix of fear and anticipation. Exactly how far will he push this and how much of a damn does he give about discovery? His hand draws back enough to slide free one button, then two, then a third. The devil's hand slips under fabric, finds the hem of your underclothes and... You bite harder, tasting blood as your head falls back against his shoulder. To your surprise, he releases your arm, then his hand clamps back over your mouth as he slides two fingers through the wet folds of your vulva and deep into your tight heat.

Your gasp is muffled, his lips moving over the taut and exposed line of your throat, sharp teeth plucking at the delicate skin over your throbbing pulse. There's no easing in, no gentle touch. It's greedy and he plays you exactly the way he wants, fingers moving deep, the heel of his palm pressing against your clitoris. It's hard to get enough air with his hand clamped tight over your mouth, holding your head back against his shoulder. You bare your teeth to nip at his palm, his immediate response isn't to let you breathe easier, it's to drive two fingers between your parted lips in a mimicry of what he's doing between your legs. Your tongue moves over them, pushing between the two digits as your lips close around them to suck them deeper.

The higher he pushes you, the harder it is to keep yourself under a modicum of control. Your fingers digging into the damp stone wall you're pinned against, restless need running through your legs. You can feel the curve of his lips against your damp throat, the heat of each harsh breath he takes. He answers the whine of frustration you make by pushing a third finger into your wet heat, sharp teeth grazing your throat. You repay him by biting the fingers in your mouth, tasting the heated coppery brimstone of his blood and moaning wantonly. He tsks next to your ear, pulling his wet and bloody fingers from your mouth to clamp his hand tightly back over it.

You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to draw in enough air through your nose as his fingers mercilessly pleasure you. Dizziness begins to creep across the front of your head, pins and needles in your palms. You twist your head, try to push away from the wall, but it's not another mortal you're tussling with, it's a damned pit fiend. The knowledge tightening your insides in excitement. He could crush you between massive claws and leave nothing even a lemure would pick at.

You're playing at struggling only excites him, a deep rumbling filling the dank air, sharpened teeth digging into the delicate flesh of your throat. You claw at the wall, insides burning with need, his fingers sawing in and out at a frantic pace. There's not enough air, not enough.... Your muffled cry as you climax still sounds too loud, your heart pounding with more than just ecstasy. When he finally releases his grip on you, your legs give out refusing to support you. Gasping for air to fill your starved lungs, you slide down the wall, eyes closed and listening to the thunder of your pulse in your ears.

Boots crunch on debris behind your back and you sense him kneel down close to you, his breathing even and completely controlled. Bastard. “It doesn't become you to kneel in the dirt,” Raphael states in a voice that's heavy with something you can't quite identify.

You huff a laugh. “Whose fault is that?” You recall the last time he pursued you through dark woods, had you pinned to the ground. His low opinion of those who indulged in a tumble in such surroundings.

His hands grip your waist, pulling you back to your feet. Turning you to face him, he presses you back against the wall, slowly tracing perfectly manicured fingers over your cheekbones, thumbs brushing your reddened lips. You can't identify a single emotion on his face and yet your heart trips over like a flustered maiden. Raphael bends, his kiss insistent, his tongue pushing past you lips and tasting of the most intimate part of you. Just as you think he's about to contradict his own standards, the kiss breaks with the sort of slow sweetness that you aren't entirely sure he means to happen. For a moment, he stares deep into your eyes and you can see how dilated his are.

“Come with me.” He moves away and the spell shatters.

Taking a moment to regain your wits, you're about to ask where, then you see just what sort of building he pulled you into. Before time and neglect claimed it, it's easy to imagine the pavilion painted in bright white or a rich green. A shelter against inclement weather, or somewhere quiet to sit and relax while admiring the park beyond. Now all the gaps that would once have held glass are bricked over. It strikes you as odd that the building still stands in a public park at all. That one patriar or another hasn't petitioned for its removal.

“The tale goes that this unassuming pavilion is haunted,” Raphael tells you grandly as he waits for you to straighten your clothes and follow him further back into the darkness. “One bleak winter brought with it freak snowstorms the likes of which no Baldurian has ever seen before or since. It's said that two young boys, brothers, were caught out while playing in this very park. Captivated by the thrill of experiencing such a spectacle, they underestimated the danger. When the snows fell heavy and silent, they took shelter in here and perished to the slow creeping cold, wrapped in each others arms in a vain attempt to keep warm. So very tragic,” he says with theatrical feeling and letting the silence breath from a moment. “Ever understanding visitors to the park wanted the pavilion taken down, the grieving parents of the boys, did not. I gladly assisted them with their wish,” he finishes, smiling benevolently.

Of course he did. Though the question running through your mind is why? Just for their souls, or was it more? He didn't draw you here for conveniences sake, isn't telling you this story purely for his own amusement. The dark creeps in you conjure a ball of gentle light above your upturned palm. You suddenly see what Raphael's devil sight allows him to see clearly. At the back of the pavilion is a heavy wrought-iron gate that's incongruous to the rest of the building. Simple and unadorned, it swings open at his touch.

“What is this?” You ask, very much aware of the sensation of a powerful ward pushing against you, trying to make you turn and run.

The devils smile is one of pure indulgence, the light from the orb reflecting eerily off his topaz eyes. “It's time to show you a marvel. Steps down into the darkness of the pit. Try not to fret, my dearest. I'll be right behind you.”

Chapter Text

Raphael's assurance is coloured with the sort of fake concern you've heard a dozen times over from him. Whatever this is, whatever he has planned, he's really enjoying the build-up. You can feel the ward pushing on you even with permission to enter, or maybe it's simply your own reluctance to step past the threshold. The last time you descended down into the darkness, it had very nearly cost your life.

“Shepherded to the right place and lured down into the dark,” you say quietly, eyeing him as you step past the gate. You feel your ears pop, an unnatural silence crawling up the spiral stone steps to curl around you. A dozen fireside tales stir in your memory, the sort for a foggy and moonless night, meant to thrill and scare. To live it, you can only feel the low anxious tick of fear.

“You've always known what this game is,” Raphael tells you plainly.

Yes, you have. You cast your eyes back towards the steps and begin to descend, the tread of the devils boots just behind you. The steady descent seems to go on and on, when Raphael could easily have teleported you both to the bottom. The fact he hasn't is telling in its own way. This is a slow and purposeful build of tension as you walk further down into the earth below the city. A spiral staircase hewn through rock and worked to an unnatural smoothness, narrow, low and claustrophobic. Much as you know you can see just as well in the dark as any devil, you're thankful for the soft light you carry, the flimsy sense of comfort it offers.

The bowels of the city hold so many rotten secrets already, most of it related to Bhaal and his obscene cult. There was also the strangely disorientating multi-layered complex under Cazador's mansion. Given Astarion had seen what was above ground demolished, you belatedly wonder if he had those underground caverns blocked up too. Those are ruins no one needs to stumble across.

You pull your thoughts away from past memories to the measured tread of two pairs of boots against stone. The sound should echo, only it doesn't. Swallowed instead by a darkness that feels disturbingly sentient. This downward spiral feels endless, like it could stretch all the way to the Hells. But instead of the temperature rising, it's notably dropped. There's a dryness to the air where there should be dampness, the barest scent of sulphur and the mustiness of age. When the steps finally even out, the narrow passageway gradually transitions into a triangular shape. The black void at the end refusing to be lit by the orb you carry even as you draw closer.

“Extinguish the light,” Raphael says at your back and you can hear the smile in his voice.

You take a quiet breath and do as he asks, reaching a hand towards the inwardly sloping wall to help guide you. Now your boot-steps echo loudly, making your teeth clench after the crushing silence of the descent. Then your hand loses contact with the wall as you pass beyond the triangular void. You hold your breath, sensing a cavernous space open out around you, the cool and dry air brushing against your skin. You feel disorientated by this unnatural darkness, dizzy even, your devil sight useless. You could be walking a narrow ledge and not know it.

“Stop.”

You do as the devil instructs, feeling the warmth of his body close to your back. Then his hand comes to rest over your eyes.

“Close them.”

You do. Eyelashes brushing against his warm palm.

The Infernal he intones is hard to understand, almost like it's a different dialect, or older, archaic even. Now that you have an intrinsic understanding of the language, you easily recognise it as the same sort he's used before. Like that sultry and passionate summers night before the inauguration ball, how listening to it made your eyes roll and your sense of self begin to slide dangerously. You swallow, unconsciously leaning back against him to feel something real and grounding, fists clenched at your sides. The warmth of his hand slides away from your eyes.

“Open your eyes,” he breaths against your ear.

You blink once, then twice, adjusting to the shifting illumination around you. The sudden step backwards you take is instinctive as you inhale a sharp breath. The devil is a sold presence that doesn't move as you lean into him and away from the edge of the yawing precipice right in front of you. A firm hand curves around your waist, keeping you close. He knows fullwell how terrified you are of heights.

“I don't advise jumping,” Raphael tells you without any hint of humour at your past antics.

“What is this?” There's nothing but endless darkness below your feet, vast and with that same disturbing feeling that it's reaching up towards you. The stone outcrop you both stand on is a few meters in wide, narrow obelisks rising from each corner and polished to a glossy smoothness.

Raphael hums with dark amusement. “You haven't pieced it together yet?”

You aren't sure what you're supposed to be piecing together, but your overactive imagination can provide any number of macabre assumptions. Deep below the earth, hidden away.

“Then this should make it clear.” He draws you back from the edge, turning you around to look upon the place he's brought you to.

In an instant, everything is clear and you swallow dryly. Raphael lets you step away from him and towards the vast open space before you. The floor is in the shape of a huge octagon, long triangular alcoves rising from each straightedge and curving like spines far above your head. Steps descend to a sunken dais at the centre, inlaid with a tracery of precious metal in eye-warping designs. Everything is precisely carved from pale and mottled blue-grey stone, every angle exact and so smooth the joins are near invisible. His temple. The skeleton of it, at least. Empty and hungry. The dark spaces and strangely shifting light worrying at the edges of your fight-or-flight response. There's no way this was built in the years you slept. This has been in the making for centuries. Waiting for the right time to have life breathed into it.

“The stage needs to be dressed,” Raphael says with an edge of breathless anticipation as he comes to stand at your side. “You will also find the acoustics to be perfect, whether it be songs or screams.”

His deep chuckle sets an icy chill running down your spine. You watch as he leaves your side and takes the few steps down towards the dais, a snap of his fingers and fire ignites into life across its surface. It's not normal fire either. It's hellfire. Thanks to those books you've been reading, you know what the difference is, why it burned you so badly despite a devils natural immunity to fire. Even as far back as you stand, you can feel its arcane heat prickling your face, drying your eyes.

Seeing all of this, physically standing in this cathedral-like space, rather than talking about it in abstracts. You can't deny the tension that crawls through you, the nerves. Religion and faith are two things that have played no part in your life. Even if you were to only look at it from the perspective of a performance, you've only ever focused on the music. All the fussing over invitations, catering and endless other tasks were left to your patron and the household staff. What do you know about running a temple, a cult dedicated to the devil that's watching you so intently, anticipating your next words.

“I suddenly feel very unqualified,” you admit quietly and find he's right about the acoustics, your voice carries clearly.

Raphael tilts his head, topaz eyes sparkling with curiosity and the promise of new knowledge. “You've never bent your knee to a god in devotion?”

“In the house I grew up in, there was a shrine to Ohgma and Milil. But no, I never bowed my head,” you pause, restlessness spurring you to begin walking the edge of the steps above him, trying to ease the itching of crackling hellfire against your skin. You wonder if you should voice anything more and you know Raphael senses your hesitation.

“Tell me,” he orders smoothly, always eager to know your thoughts. What makes you tick.

“I've known a lot of bards who worship one god or another, praise them for the gift of music. I..., I never felt like that. My music is mine. I'm the one who worked hard, brushed myself off whenever a door was slammed in my face. There was no divine touch, only the machinations of mortals. I've never believed, never kept faith.” Your lips twist downwards with sour amusement. “Which I suppose damned me from the very beginning. I've always been destined to wash up on the banks of the Blood River, even if our paths had never crossed.” It's too late of a realisation, and what would it have even changed?

“This moment was always meant to happen, my dear. One way or another,” he corrects with complete unabashed certainty.

“Because it was manipulated, not destined,” you challenge right back.

“Is destiny not a manipulation by the hand of a higher being? Mortals have such a quaint understanding of the word, romanticised. It's nothing of the sort,” he tells you with a knowing smile.

“And you are that higher being?” You ask even as you already know the answer.

“Of course.” His conceit is total. “Have you not already offered worship to me?”

To a devil, yes. Not a god. But you'd be a fool to not see his end game. “I have.”

“I wonder what atrocities you might commit to the dark and heavy spaces of my temple. A new born slit toe to lobe? The blasphemy of a celestial priest renouncing their misguided faith on my altar, crying out their newly found devotion?” He chuckles low and dark. “But do you not think the first sacrifice made on these stones should be your own?”

Your heart trips and your steps falter. You've already sworn a vow to him, or is this about a contract? It's a notion you dismiss quickly, he's not going to press that particular matter, he's going to wait and watch you crack. Or so he thinks. You begin to walk the sharp edges of the octagon again and Raphael follows you, staying close to the burning hellfire. It's like he's stalking you through the market again and that same creep of ice slithers through your body.

Maybe you're thinking about this too literally. Amongst the fey, symbolism in ritual is everything. A lot could be gleamed about a persons understanding of a situation by how they would act, or react. Whether devils go in for such things, you don't know. What you do know is that Raphael understands theatre, the dramatic, playing a role. And that's what all of this is, the devil and the mortal, the game of corruption. The way it should have been.

So what would best symbolise a mortals acceptance of the role of high priestess to an archdevils temple? Your sacrifice upon these blue-grey stones? Your steps come to a stop right where you started, the triangular opening behind you leading out onto the promontory. “A sacrifice?”

Raphael doesn't answer. His topaz eyes have shifted to black and magma in his nobles guise and it's a striking image, one that steals your breath for a moment. You can feel the goose-bumps as you take the visage in, backlit by hellfire in this most unholy of places.

You bend down and start to unlace your boots, hands steady and unhurried. The weight of the devils gaze on you is something you don't look up to meet, not yet. Stepping on the heel of one boot, you slide free of it and then the other, setting them aside. Then you straighten and shrug out of your jacket, hands moving to the buttons of your blouse. Your eyes meet his, cool and considered. There's nothing sexual about this and he knows it.

Slowly, you shed every article you wear, even the ring he gave you. Casting off everything you are. Turning your back, you walk out onto the promontory, trying to steady your too fast heartbeat, the dizziness that swims through your head knowing all around you is a sheer drop into unending darkness. One you know he won't save you from if you were ever to misstep and fall. A little of the vertigo subsides as you kneel on the smooth stone, even this far away you can feel the heat of the hellfire itching against the bare skin of your back.

You take another breath, ignoring the way it shudders as you listen to the measured tread of the devils boots drawing closer, feel the pressure of his Infernal aura moving over you like a thick blanket. You bow your head in supplication, waiting, fear and anticipation colliding inside you. The images that play through your mind are ones you know can't happen, no matter how much they make your breath quicken. His true form, the horrifying magnificence of him.

Raphael's steps stop right behind you, close enough that you can feel the heat that radiates off him against your skin. Then you sense him ease down onto his knees, his hands coming to rest on your shoulders. The words that he solemnly speaks are in Infernal, a question.

Do you fully understand what you are agreeing to, what it means to take this step?

You reply in the same diabolic tones. Yes, I do.

Do you solemnly vow to keep my name and temple, to not waver in your duty? To guide, to nurture, to corrupt?

I swear to keep all in order, in darkness and secrecy. To show the way, to offer comfort and revery in the embrace of the Infernal.

It's not a contract you're signing, but words have power, a vow even more so. It's real and binding. His thumbs press into the back of your shoulders, claws biting.

High Priestess in my name, Raphael intones. Are you prepared to make your sacrifice?

I am.

Then turn and face me.

Raphael's hands slide from your shoulders and you lift your head, turning in the narrow space between his knees. You take in the archetype of a devil as he pushes you back to lie against the cold stone floor. A snap of his fingers and you hiss in a breath of pain as Infernal chains snap around your wrists, pulling them tightly towards each stone obelisk. Your eyes widen, heart tripping at his expression of total focus, cold and inscrutable. There is solemnity in this act, the complete antithesis of the physical lusts that usually grip you both.

The blackened tips of claws score along your collarbones, down over your breasts to your waist. Thin red trails left in their passing sting and you feel the leak of blood run down your sides to drip onto the stones below. You know he can feel your fear, how fast your heart beats, the breaths that grow shallower. His magma eyes don't blink, utterly transfixed by the ooze of your blood, how he used his claws to trace patterns through it. Painting Infernal runes on your skin with your blood as the medium.

The Infernal he intones is the dialect you don't understand and your fear begins to creep towards something deeper. You feel the words slide through your mind, heavy and cold, your head curving back against the stone floor. Swallowing, you try to say his name, but it won't work past your lips. Instead, you gasp out sharply in pain as his claws dig deeper into your flesh. There's an instinctual part of you that suddenly kicks into life, pulling against the chains frantically, panicking. Or that's what you do in your mind. None of your limbs respond and you can feel your eyes starting to roll into the back of your head. Heart thundering, the agony of every fresh cut, you want to scream and can't.

It's sheer force of will that lets you bring your eyes back into focus on him, your breath quickening to the point of hyperventilating. There's a bone-white blade in his hand, curved and cruel and poised right over your heart. Raphael leans forward, sliding the blade slow and deep, making you feel every millimetre of the razor edges. Your screams echoing through the temple for no one but the devil who killed you.

~~*-*~~

Awake. Breathing. Sat on the steps of the temple, your body resting limply against the too warm chest of the devil. Not dead. Your skin not even marred. Psychodrama. Smoke and mirrors. So why do you feel so different? Heavy and alien inside your own body. You move a hand up his chest to curve around the sides of Raphael's neck, feeling his strong pulse. He's real. You are real. Some of the fey you spoke with so long ago told you rituals weren't always about magic, sometimes it was purely about the psychological changes it would cause in those who participated. Stronger in some, less so for others. A symbolic death to make way for the birth of something else.

“How long was....” You feel too much like you're drifting, the question hard to formulate.

“No more than an hour,” Raphael answers with little concern. “You always wake sooner than I expect.” A curled finger brushes across your cheek, it's almost a tender sensation to your slippery mind.

“I feel....” You're not sure how to phrase it. Disturbed? Displaced? “It's like the world is tilted, or I am.”

Raphael hums with a note of satisfaction, but says nothing.

Under this deadly game you're playing, you are a devil. Yet, it's hard to believe. Especially when you feel like this. Is it stubborn denial or a trick of the psychodrama? You look beyond the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, towards the triangular alcoves, watching the unnatural way the light and shadow play, the shapes cast. It all feels so surreal, almost like you're still dreaming.

“Is this real?” You find you have to ask the question, seek the reassurance.

He takes your hand from the side of his neck and you suddenly jerk away from him when he bites down hard on your fingertip. “Real enough?” He smiles, licking up the red bead of blood.

You pull your hand back, eyes narrowing. It's one way to prove it. “The magic you use, the Infernal you intone. Why is it different?”

“To explain a trick is to rob it of its impact, don't you think,” he replies mildly.

A none answer. If it's all pseudo, an act, then why are.... You try to stop the weaving thought abruptly only for it to roll right on. Slow corruption, altering the way you think and feel, the way you see the world. See yourself. It isn't all that long ago to your mind that you resigned yourself to fate, that letting it carry you along would allow you to see another day. That maybe a day will dawn where you finally find the third option you hinted at so long ago. Am I really still doing this? Still trying to find a way out after everything I've said and done? The situation is different now, no contact, not even mortal. It's no position of power against an archduke, but from where you started, it's exponentially better.

Your eyes flick up to his face, finding him watching you. For as mild and relaxed as he outwardly seems, you know better. The devil can scent your doubt a thousand leagues away. “Psychodrama isn't magic, but its effects can be just as real,” you say quietly, your hand lingering over where you felt him plunge the blade.

Raphael's hand moves over the back of yours. “Not every blade is made of metal. Nor is the intent always to kill.” His hand moves up into your hair, drawing you back to rest against him.

You close your eyes, listening to the steady beat of his heart. This feeling, this doubt. Your fingertips flex and press into the muscle of his chest. It's nothing more than mental fatigue, you're overwrought and still adjusting to this new sense of being. Feeling out of sorts is to be expected. Those are the placations your fatigued mind offers, showing you the easy way out. You try not to grind your teeth.

“Raphael?”

“Yes, my dearest?”

“When you were still a cambion, did you ever feel your two natures were in conflict?” Opposing sides of a personality, morality? Or maybe you simply need to accept the fact you are, and always have been, flighty and inconstant. The whim of the moment taking you wherever it deems.

“No. The woman who carried me was simply a vessel. I've never seen myself as half human or half fiend. Only a devil,” he dismisses with a sneer.

Did you really expect any other sort of answer? “I need some air, need to clear my head.” It feels so oppressive and heavy in this temple.

“Hush,” Raphael coos, a hand carding through your hair. “I'm all you need.”

Chapter Text

The air is heavy with the scents of damp and earthy rot, a forest in the bleakness of winters grip, grey and brown and bare. Nothing grows in this mire, the river silted up, an oozing of foul smelling sludge rather than sparkling crystal water. The mud sucks at your bare feet with every step, sapping your strength as you press on endlessly. Ever slower. On your hands and knees, trying to drag yourself through it. Exhausted, muscles burning, heart pounding, sweat coating your chilled body. You slump forward into the foul and cold muck, heaving a final sigh of relief as it pulls you down into the darkness.

You blink awake with a sharp breath, fingers digging into the soft cushions of the sofa you lie on. It's dark, but your senses tell you where you are. The tick of the grandfather clock out in the hall, the ash of a fire that's burnt low in the hearth, old wood and dust. Slowly, you sit up and rub at your eyes, your head aching dully. You don't remember walking back to the manor, settling down here, nothing. What you can recall is distorted and unreal, distant and dreamy. Had any of it really happened? Out in the hallway you hear soft footsteps, a moment later Astarion walks in and places a tray down on the low table in front of you. Freshly brewed tea, camomile by the smell, a small pot of honey sitting next to it. You look up at his pale and drawn expression, how guarded those red eyes are. It instantly has you on edge.

“What happened?” You ask in a thick voice, not entirely sure you want to know the answer.

“I'd think you'd been out drinking again, only you don't stink of smoke and alcohol,” Astarion tells you tartly. “I find you stretched out here, thrashing around like the bad old times.” He suddenly loses the attitude, worry knotting his brow. “I couldn't get you to wake up.”

Nightmares? You don't remember dreaming about anything. The last conscious memories that play through your mind are confused and uncomfortable. That temple. What lurks in its shadowed corners. Instead of answering, you reach for the teapot with exaggerated care, slowly pouring the steaming liquid into a cup.

“What happened?” He echoes your question, sitting down in the armchair opposite you. “Did you finally have a run-in with that Infernal shadow of yours?”

Damp air and mould, a hand clamped tight over your mouth as. You shake loose of the memory. “No. I went to the market, brought a few bolts of fabric.” You rub the front of your aching head, settling the teapot back down heavier than you mean to.

The concern sitting in the back of his eyes doesn't lift. “Yes, they were delivered a while ago.” He pauses, gaze never drifting from you. “There was nothing else?”

You spoon a little honey in your tea and stir, trying to not let this almost tip-toeing caution of his get to you. Waking groggy from bad dreams isn't something you're unfamiliar with. “I saw Raphael.” The moment you say the devils name, you see his expression darken to anger and your worry only grows. “What aren't you telling me?” What is it you don't remember?

“It wasn't today you went to the market, it was yesterday,” Astarion tells you plain.

“What?” That isn't right. You've slept away a day and a half?

"I found you here last night and you hadn't moved by dawn. I assumed you'd get up sometime after I retired to meditate. You didn't. Only instead of being out cold, you're thrashing around like you used to in camp.” He takes a breath and you know he's mulling over his next words rather than ploughing straight on. “You've seemed well enough of late, distracted, a little low. But all things considered, who wouldn't be. Now I'm wondering if it was the right thing to do, letting you muddle along, not trying to talk about what happened.” His brow furrows, frustration rising. “Oh, I don't know! That devil is five minutes back in your life and..., this is going on! You look awful, aren't exactly coherent. I just have this terrible feeling, like I should be doing, saying, something.”

You smile, trying to ease past your own anxiety to reassure him. “More than giving me a safe place to stay? Not judging me? Like you say, given all that's happened, it's hardly surprising that I'm going to have bad days, be a little out of sorts.” You pick up the tea, taking a cautious sip. Though, he is right about one thing, Raphael is a catalyst to all this.

Astarion sits forward, hands laced together, elbows resting on his knees. His red eyes have turned hard, serious. The very fact he hasn't become all prickly over your kind words should be all the warning you need. “I don't know what sort of game Raphael and you are playing, but don't you think it's run its course? You owe him nothing, aren't bound by contract anymore. You can walk away and tell him to stay in the damn Hells.”

“I can't walk away from the fact I'm a devil,” you state like it's all the explanation he should need.

“So? Look, I know I'm guilty of talking a lot of nonsense about the possibility of signing another of his contracts. It's bravado, darling. You don't need to go back to the Hells, don't need to keep entertaining him. You have a choice!” He tells you emphatically. “It probably doesn't feel like it because he doesn't want you to recognise it, but you do! Don't you understand he's just another monster like Cazador? That all he cares about is power and control? I'm no saint, neither are you. The things we want? There's a price. The difference that matters is we both recognise that, agonise over our choices. The guilt, the doubt, knowing others will pay. They don't.”

Evil with a conscience? Like it makes it acceptable. It doesn't. You wonder at the twisted logic and self-deception as you take a breath and nurse your tea. He's not wrong, you do carry the guilt and doubt, but it's never been enough to make you stop. Never been enough to make you believe you're a better person.

“I can handle myself and him.” It seems your own self-deception is doing just fine.

He looks at you, hard. Like you've just said something utterly stupid and he's clearly aggravated by your stubbornness. “I could so easily have become exactly like Cazador, but you stopped me. Saved me. I'm not going to stand idle and watch you fall into a similar trap because you can't see the way out.”

The flare of anger is instant and blinding. “You're comparing me to Raphael? I don't give a damn about power or conquering realms! I just want to be left alone, to live my life the way I want to!”

“But you aren't!” Astarion near yells, almost up on his feet.

“And you are? Still chasing an ascension I ‘saved’ you from?” You snap unkindly.

Hurt slaps him across the face, stunning him for a second. “I knew you'd be impossible about this!” Astarion sits back, lips curled downward, head turning dismissively.

You slam the teacup down on the table, storming from the room and right out the front door. Is it a measured response? No. Do you care? More than you want to admit. What you should do is stop, take a breath to collect yourself, and go back inside to apologise. Instead, you keep walking. The cool night air brushes against your heated skin as you stride down the street, mind buzzing angrily with guilt and anxiety. It's late. More members of the Watch on the streets then citizens, at least until the taverns close. There's a real temptation to head for the nearest one and have a strong drink or three. It's a bad tempered thought that causes you to wonder if devils can even become intoxicated given their poison immunity.

You walk past the open doors of one, light and music leaking out onto the dark street around you. Your pace quickens to leave the noise and temptation behind, pushing on down the steepening hill. At the gate to the Lower City, a Watchman steps out to question the lateness of your passing. All it takes is an intoned word to glaze over his eyes and you breeze past unchallenged. You know where you're going and you know the questions you want to ask.

It's anger that's driving you, not common-sense. Too many conflicting emotions, doubt and the bite of fear that you can't clearly remember what happened in that temple. But there's a bigger fear. That old and dark magic, the way it makes you feel. The fact you aren't sure it's even real. Given the hour, it's unsurprising to find the doors to the Devil's Fee are closed and locked tight, but you can see the amber light cast by lamps through the narrow windows. Considering the proprietors vocation, you're sure she's used to out of hours visitors in need of a touch more discretion.

Before you can think to knock, the door cracks open and Helsik smiles up at you. “Well here's a surprise, a ghost come creeping out of the dark. I remember you being a lot more human when last week met.” The gold dwarf steps to one side, gesturing for you to enter.

Of course she can see straight through your glamour, she'd be a poor diabolist if she couldn't. There's nothing fake about her shop and she's not someone to deal with lightly. Without her special type of ‘help’, the rise of the Absolute would never have come about. You would never have been infected or signed a devils contract. Though as far as Raphael is concerned, all of that was inconsequential to your meeting. It would still have happened, a patriars soirée, a scandal you found yourself embroiled in, him offering you a way out. You step inside, eyeing the flat metallic stare of diabolic statues. The door closes behind you, Helsik's robes rustling as she walks up the steps and gesturing for you to follow her.

“You certainly know how to rock the Infernal planes, don't you?” She muses wryly, moving behind the shops counter, ready to conduct business.

You don't bite, don't offer any information for free. “I've a question about Infernal dialects, if that's within your remit of information.”

Her head cocks slightly with curiosity and she taps her fingers against the counter. “Gold can find a multitude of answers.”

You have an ear for words, especially if they're used in music, even if the language in unknown. A song or an intoned chant, you can remember the words and pitch, the nuance they are delivered with. Taking a breath, you recite a part of what you can remember Raphael intoning before your mind began to slide away from you. Watching as her amused expression becomes utterly unreadable, the smile gone.

“It's Infernal, but not.” The way it sounds to your ear is older, more theatric and ornamented. Almost like a higher dialect that would have been used by ruling classes. It's obvious why it has such an appeal to Raphael. “Does it have a name?” You want to know a lot more than that, but you suddenly have the uneasy feeling this isn't going to be cheap.

Helsik manages a droll half-smile, her expression shifting to one of pity. “Sounds to me like your peers are having a little fun at your expense. It's gibberish, maybe a constructed language used by an Infernal group for secrecy,” she shrugs. “It's not unheard of.”

So it's not magic at all? At least if you chose to believe her interpretation. What happened in the temple leant heavily into psychodrama and your mind soaked it all in to the point reality and illusion blended. It's not out of character for Raphael to play all in to his role as the corrupting force in your life, to go way above what is necessary. He likes nothing more than to conduct the drama, play the leading man in it. You reach into your pocket and toss a few coins onto the counter, Helsik eyes them and then pushes them back towards you.

“Let's just say that you owe me instead,” she says mildly, smile never faltering.

“For such a pittance of an answer?” You scoff.

“A pittance that helped to put your mind at ease,” she's quick to correct.

You leave the coins on the counter and turn to leave.

“How about this then,” Helsik calls after you. “Where did you hear those words spoken?”

“If you wanted an exchange of information, you should have set terms first,” you reply firmly.

The diabolist smiles. “You're not as clueless as I thought. So be it. Lord Mammon accepts your coin and I'll bid you a good night.”

Anger simmers, bubbling like acid in your chest and mostly reserved for yourself. This is not being in control, this is not taking control. This is you letting a stupid argument and anxiety stoked into something it might have no right to be, take control away from you. Why come here? Why would you not just ask Raphael, or Korrilla? Because you don't trust them, because you feel the need to be secretive about it? There's already deep regret burning in your gut. The look on the diabolists face, her tone of voice. Your temper might have just lead you to revealing something you really should have said nothing about. To a warlock of a rival Infernal court. Or you might just be blowing this vastly out of all proportion. You twist the ring, worrying, doubting. The ache in the front of your head throbbing deeply.

Raphael would prefer you to stay out of Avernus, but can you really afford to sit on this if it is important? So much for not being a complication, you inwardly deride. Stepping off the main thoroughfare and into the shadows of a side street, you whisper the rings trigger word. The last time you used this teleportation spell the transition between planes had been rough, almost like you had to force your way through and ended up dumped on the floor of Raphael's boudoir. This time it's like stepping from one room into another, your boots on cobblestone one moment and then onto polished granite the next. The red cast of Avernus' light is easier to adjust to, the intense dry heat not even a consideration. Because you aren't human anymore, not mortal. The Hells are accepting you home.

It's not the boudoir you find yourself standing in, it's a large study, packed with filled bookcases and curios. A fire crackles in a massive basalt black hearth and you take a step back as you see the creature laying asleep in front of it. At first you think it a wolf, but it's bigger, packed muscle and long sharp ears, fire seems to curl around its spade-sized paws and tail. A cerberus? Only it's lacking the three heads. Burning red eyes crack open to regard your sudden appearance and then just as quickly side shut again, dismissing you as a threat. Your own gaze travels further back into the room, to a vast dark wood desk littered with books and scrolls. The devil seated behind it lifts his eyes from whatever he's writing and smiles with deep satisfaction.

“I knew you would come.”

~~*-*~~

Raphael lifts the bloodied quill from the parchment and places it back on its stand. He sits back and regards her as she skirts the hell hound at an unnecessary distance and walks towards him. The anger and frustration are easy to read, but there's so much more behind it, a delicious and heady mix of confusion and doubt. He watches her approach, the attempt she makes at smoothing over her expression, trying so valiantly to assert control over herself and failing. It's enough to make him shiver. Oh, how he wishes he could have a front row seat in her mind, that he could personally witness the anxious twisting and turning as it happens. He taps his smiling lips with a finger, wondering if she's even remotely close to figuring any of it out yet, if it's even crossed her mind. How Asmodeus clipped her wings before she had even attempted to fly.

“What happened in the temple?” She asks tightly, managing to keep the demanding tone out of her voice.

He smiles and nods to himself, this is the head he's been expecting, the limit to what she'll unquestioningly go along with. But she's coming at it from the wrong direction, emotive, in the moment. Raphael pushes the chair back and stands, gesturing for her to follow him. “Tell me, do you remember how you felt at the inauguration ball?” He sees the way her brow creases in annoyance at the seemingly unrelated question, no doubt thinking this is a way to derail why she came here.

“What's that to do with anything?” Her anger is sharp and impatient as they step into the more comfortable surroundings of a nook, tall bookcases doubling as privacy screens. She sits on one of the high backed, ornate chairs as he opens the doors to the drinks cabinet and pours them both a glass of wine.

“Everything,” he says clearly, drawing out the word. “Or am I wrong to think you had reached a point of resolution in the blood and screams of that night?” He's not wrong. Handing her one of the glasses and taking the chair opposite hers, lounging back and crossing his legs. Between them is a small table, a lanceboard set up and ready for the first move. Tempted as he is to set a game in motion, he needs her focus elsewhere.

She doesn't answer immediately and he doesn't expect her to. So he waits it out, pleased she's giving the question due consideration. Raphael watches every shift in her body language, how she isn't focused on the present. She's sharp enough to see the answer, but her vision is so often clouded by anger and second-guessing. She trusts her instincts with music, but not with herself.

“I woke up and nothing is as it should be,” she says, eyes drifting down to stare into the surface of deep burgundy wine. “Sometimes, I think I'm still asleep.”

As ever, she's working her way through from an unintended direction and needs a little guidance back to the correct path. “Why?”

Her brow furrows, voice quiet. “Because I don't want it to be like this.”

That's a bitter denial he knows all too well. “But it is. Now, an answer to my question,” he reminds firmly. Her eyes lift from the glass, hard, cold and sharp. A slow and easy breath soothes over the enticing lash of heat that look sends through him.

“I was resolved,” she admits with care. “I had so many ideas, plans. And then....” Her gaze slides away from his, lost to the regret in her mind.

Forced back to be stuck in the same quagmire she thought she had pulled herself from. Fighting, only to sink deeper than ever. Raphael rubs at the shadow of stubble along his jaw. He's had the better part of a decade to work out his rage and find his balance again, to assess what went wrong and to make certain it can never happen again. “Can you see the sense in the move that was made against you?” And in turn, against him.

Her eyes harden, anger stirring. “Answer my question first. What happened at the temple?”

Raphael's lips quirk at the flare of impetuous temper. “We are treading a path towards your answer.”

She doesn't go to any pains to mask her doubt and he wonders if she will press her demand. He watches as she lifts the wine glass to her lips, eyes turning inward again. Can she see past the tumult of emotions to cold logic? Again, he waits. To all outward appearances as calm and imperturbable as ever. Inside, he feels strung taut with excited anticipation, wanting her to find the right answer, wanting to hear it from her lips. He watches her eyes dip to the lanceboard and he allows himself the slightest of smiles. That's my girl.

“I have no strategic worth,” it's sobering realisation in her voice, not pity.

Raphael hums with deep and pure satisfaction. “As an asset to me, you have been neutralised. He made what appeared to be a gift on the surface into a deadweight. Reshaping you and allowing you to keep your mind fully intact robbed you of all effectiveness. Instead of forging ahead with those plans you had, you are conflicted, riddled with doubt and fear. You don't know who or what you are.” And her closeness to him made certain he would be affected by it. It's true he could, and should, cut her out, remove the problem from his life forever more. Only, he can't. And why should he? This isn't his design. “We can play this game, you and I. Hunter and prey. But it's a poor fit when you can hunt as well as I, when you are a predator at your core.” And he's aching to see her spread her wings and embrace what she is. To hunt with her in the courts of mortal rulers, twisting them to their shared design.

She places the glass down next to the lanceboard and stands stiffly. Arms wrapping tightly around herself as she slowly walks towards the narrow windows that overlook the endless sprawl of the citadels districts. He doubts she sees any of it. “And what happened at the temple?” She asks again, quietly, almost as if suddenly dreading the answer.

“When a mind is fractured, it becomes very amenable to influence, the control of another. Yearns for someone to show the way and offer the answers. When the game slides too deep, if the mind in play is too broken.” Raphael lets his words drift into silence, quietly getting to his feet and making no sound as he walks up behind her. He stands close enough to touch, but holds himself back with a force of will. Her Infernal scent is maddening this close up, the ashen bite of brimstone, smoke and cinders. He closes his eyes and breaths it in, feeling his heart trip faster, his fingers flex unconsciously. What he wants....

She quietly repeats some of the incantation he used, her delivery and intonation is perfect, like she knows the language intrinsically. “So it really was all smoke and mirrors? My own mind sliding too deep and... well,” she sighs tightly.

“Absolutely not.” He allows himself to run the back of curled fingers down her arm, knowing fullwell he shouldn't allow such indulgences here. One careless touch could lead to another. “These planes are full of many languages, dead and lost. Languages of old ways and older powers. All any of them need is for someone to breathe belief back into them.” His head drops slightly as he takes in another deeper breath just above her hair. Tempting himself like this is unwise, as is drawing out this conversation and keeping her here. It has nothing to do with spies or plots, and everything to do with his slowly eroding control to not touch her as a devil. To continue spurning what Asmodeus made her.

“So it's not gibberish, completely made up for the drama of it all?” She continues to question, oblivious to his torment.

There's a note of tension in her voice that's enough to draw him some way out of his careless indulgence. “No. Why do you ask?”

Her shoulders slump, head bowed. “I asked Helsik about it. I was angry, not thinking. There wasn't any context offered. She dismissed it as nonsense, but there was something off about the whole interaction.”

Raphael chuckles. “That temper getting the better of you again, hmm? It's of no consequence.” Even if the diabolist did recognise it, without the who, where or why, such information has no worth.

“I reacted so much stronger to its use this time because my mind..., is what it is,” she chews on the words, hating them.

“Yes. I stayed with you as long as I could, then took you to the vamplings manor.” What he wanted to do was bring her here, an indulgence that wasn't worth the risk.

There's a low rumbling grumble from the hell hound that causes them both to turn around, Raphael sighs in exasperation. The two pups he's picked from the latest litter to train have managed to clamber over their sire to amble towards them. All gangly limbs and bobbing heads as the pair scent the air and stare with large red eyes at the source of newness in the room.

“Of all the things I expected to see in the Hells,” her voice is full of disbelief.

“Don't let all the fur and wide innocent eyes fool you,” Raphael warns as she kneels down and offers a hand for them to sniff. “They'll bite and set things on fire as well as any adult. Both Asmodeus and Mephistopheles have vast kennels, breed specific traits into the lines they keep.”

“And you're going to do the same?”

Raphael arches an eyebrow as she lets one play-bite at her fingers, the others tail sparking with flames as she scratches it between the ears. “It's a trial.” In many ways. The pups are rambunctious and always up to mischief. With time and training they make loyal, territorial watchdogs and bodyguards, so long as their innate needs aren't ignored.

“Can they exist outside of Baator?” Her question isn't as casual as it sounds and doesn't fool him.

“They can, though I wouldn't recommend it. Aside from their penchant for setting their surroundings on fire, they need a firm hand and be allowed to hunt, a side of beef from the butcher won't sate their instincts,” he explains, watching as the pups shift closer to her, completely relaxed despite her being a stranger. How the tension has melted from her own shoulders.

“I see,” she doesn't bother to mask her disappointment.

He knows it's not wise to indulge this whim, she doesn't know the first thing about the taming and training of such beasts. Yet, is this something that would make her..., happy? It's a consideration he isn't sure what to do with or how to handle. True, it could be useful to know if she has any natural inclination towards their taming. “Why not take them with you, at least for a little while. Though I need to make it perfectly clear that you will have to be dedicated to their training and discipline. Allow them to hunt naturally. They grow fast, so this can only be a short-term arrangement.” His lips quirk. “You may also wish to consider fire retardant lodgings. I doubt the vampling will thank you for burning his manor down.”

Her eyes look towards the sire still laying by the fire, red eyes watching everything. “He won't mind?”

Raphael almost rolls his eyes at the absurdity of the question. “My dear, he's not a pet or an anxious ward. He's a fiend who obeys the law, mine.” Replacing the two he picked is no hardship and at least he knows the ones in her care are robust.

She scoops up the wriggling pups without a second question, almost like she's afraid he'll change his mind. Then she suddenly pushes up onto her toes to place a lingering kiss against his lips, bringing with it a stronger wave of that dizzying scent of hers. “Thank you.”

His lips twist as he bristles at her careless antics. “I give you less than a week before you're begging me to take them back.”

Chapter Text

The evening air carries with it the smell of burning grass and the sound of teeth gnawing on bones. There's a chill in the breeze that feels good against your overly warm skin, helping to keep your mind that bit clearer. Your lute rests on the garden bench next to you, silent and forgotten. So many thoughts spin through your mind, only it's not the oppressive cacophony it once was. You doubt you'll ever be capable of the cold logic Raphael is, and you don't want to be. Being able to make some sense of the games you're caught up in is enough, even if the picture it's beginning to paint is an ugly one. Layers on layers, muddled and confusing at first glance. On the surface, what Asmodeus did to you looks like a reward to a favoured vassal, but start scraping back those layers and it's a new image that begins to form. You can't see it all, you know there's a lot Raphael isn't telling you about his dealings with the God of the Nine Hells. Why would a being so powerful be concerned about one mortals influence on a servant? Enough to completely upend the growing synergy that had begun to take shape between the two of you. It feels absurd.

Now you exist as a deadweight, asked to conduct yourself with minimal intrusiveness on the world around you. His words don't torment you, they weren't intended as a petty hurt or slight. It simply is and you need to be aware. So is this to be your life now? Quiet. Static. At least until it's deigned you've reached a point you are of use. The morbidity you feel, the pressure, it's all self-imposed. Raphael has asked nothing of you, made no demands. He's content for you to take all the time you need. It's at these moments you have to remind yourself that time is no longer a consideration, not in the way it was when you were mortal. There's no clock ticking, no need to act swiftly. You both have the luxury to wait until the moment is perfect. This stasis isn't a punishment, it's simply how the game is played for those with eternity.

At the sound of footsteps on the gravelled terrace, you lift the lute off the bench in a silent invitation for the other party to sit, placing it to rest against your legs. You haven't seen Astarion for near a week since you stormed out.

“I'm going to guess these little monsters are the reason you've had a room stripped bare and half of it now has a granite floor,” Astarion states with exasperation. “As a bard, you should understand the difference between the words redecorate and renovate.”

The pups pause in their bone gnawing long enough to lift red eyes and regard him with open curiosity, and then just as promptly dismiss him. “They have a habit of setting things on fire.” That first night you brought them back, they slept against you on the bed and burnt right through the comforter.

“So I gather from the smell and the scorch marks across the lawn.” He eyes them warily. “I hope you realise those are human femurs they're so innocently chewing on.”

You nod. “Bones of the damned.” A favourite according to Korrilla.

“Even better,” Astarion snarks.

You look across at him, the furrowed brow, the stern profile of his face. “I'm sorry I snapped the way I did, for storming out.” Yes, you hadn't been in a sound state of mind, under duress. But you'd been coherent enough to recognise he shouldn't have been the target of your anger.

Astarion meets your gaze, back straightening a little. “Fine. I'm sorry for pressing the way I did.” He turns away, leaning forward to look the pups over. “You can certainly argue they're smaller than a peacock, at least for now. What even are they, besides hellish?”

“Hell hounds, litter brothers.” The fluffy deep blue-black slate of their fur will become a sleek coat as they grow, gangly legs putting on pure muscle. The tips of ears, paws and tail are colour tipped in reddish-orange, though you don't know how much of that is the aura of fire that clothes them. Wide and endlessly curious red eyes will harden like their sires to reflect deadly intelligence. You've already found out they have a firm understanding of Infernal, will obediently carry out any order or task you give them so long as it isn't contrary to their alignment. You've had the pair a week and already don't want to face Raphael's warning that this can only be a temporary arrangement. “Even without that ridiculous law, it's not like I can openly walk them in the street, or let them hunt in the surrounding countryside. They're cutting their teeth on chickens.”

“I know who to blame for all the feathers on my lawn too then,” he sighs, though there's no real heat behind his grumbling. “They have names?”

You say them in Infernal and their heads instantly snap towards you, eyes bright and attentive, hunches shifting in expectation of an order. Raphael made it sound like training them would be a trial, yes, it's only been a week and it's been nothing too taxing. Maybe you got lucky with their dispositions, but everything you've asked of them, they've understood and obeyed. “Havoc is the bigger of the two, Jester has the floppy ear.” With another word, they relax and go back to their gnawing. You wonder if the beast tamers in the Hells bother to name their charges, or is it closer to nonsense like Devourer of Eternal Torment?

“They sound better in Infernal,” he snorts, then his attitude softens a little awkwardly. “Are they..., safe?”

He's giving them a wary look over, maybe expecting to find spines or spurs hidden under the thick coat of puppy fluff. With a knowing smile you pick Jester up, femur still clutched between his teeth, and plop him down on Astarion's lap. “They're like any other pup, at least for the moment. I wouldn't try petting an adult on your lap.” You hide your smile as he begins to tentatively scratch behind the floppy ear. “Do you miss him?”

“Always carrying around that insufferable squeaky ball,” Astarion huffs fondly.

“Bringing us everything he dug up. I hope he got to live out his best life.” Because morbid as it is to consider, so much time has passed while you slept.

“Funny how it was the small things that kept us sane during those weeks,” he says quietly.

Like looking after a pair of hyper energetic puppies with a tendency to ignite their surroundings when excited. Did Raphael consider that, or was...? You shake free of the thought. “Better than over indulging in wine.”

Astarion arches an eyebrow. “Until they set the manor on fire.”

“Which is why I'm training them.” Silence falls for a few minutes, just the happy little grumbles of pups, the cool breeze against your skin as the sky begins to darken towards twilight.

“This is..., strangely nice,” Astarion admits, relaxing back against the bench, a hand ruffling the pups fur.

“A strange sort of normal.” Just a devil, a spawn and a pair of hell hound pups, sitting out in the garden and taking in a pleasant autumnal evening. “Do you think it can last?”

Astarion gives you a pointed look. “I've certainly no intention of bringing any undue attention to myself. I rather like the reclusive persona I've cultivated, the mystery of it. At some point I might decide to attend a party or two, who knows.” His red eyes suddenly widen and he hisses as Jester decides chewing Astarion's fingers is better than the bone.

You laugh. “They do get a little overzealous with the play-biting.”

He mutters under his breath, settling the pup back down on the ground and then rolling his eyes at the drool stains on his trousers. “Take your blasted bone back, little monster.” He levels a glare at you as you continue to laugh. “Do you not have any desire to go back to wooing patriars? I can't think I've heard you play or sing since moving in.”

It's a carefully asked question and your fingers idly touch the neck of the lute. “Good times or ill, music has always been my solace. Gale once said that he didn't just use the Weave, he composed it. Music isn't just a tool, something I know how to use. It's a literal part of me, or... it was. I'm not me anymore and it's hard to find the door back inside.”

“Maybe I'm not the best person to offer advice given it took two hundred years, an illithid parasite and murdering my maker,” he says hurriedly. “It's easy for me to say stop worrying and live for yourself. But Raphael isn't hanging around your neck anymore, no one has come knocking on our door. You can step free of the past, when you're ready.”

Your lips twitch. “Maybe that's the problem. I'm a bard, I thrive on drama. This stasis, this purgatory I occupy. It's maddening. I thought I'd love nothing more than to have time to myself, to do whatever I please or nothing at all.” You snort derisively, lips twisting. “What do I know about housekeeping, homemaking? Like I'm the lady of the house. It's like standing in the shadows of a stages wings, watching everyone else live while fading into obscurity.”

It's been more than a month since you came back to the city. You've sat quiet as Raphael wanted you to, stirred nothing and no one. It's not like you purposely want to go out and provoke a reaction, but you're done with pretending to be a wallflower.

Astarion quirks a mischievous smile. “There's no reason we can't go out tonight,” he suggests. “A dockside tavern, nice and anonymous. A few bawdy songs if you feel so inclined, I can see to a few matters of my own. And seen as you've made one room mostly fire retardant for your charges.” He lets the offer hang.

~~*-*~~

Thick clouds of pipe smoke sting your eyes while your nose is assaulted by the ripe smells of sweat, ale and piss. The small dockside tavern more of a repurposed storage house with rough chairs and tables, kegs set in one corner with a counter in front. Intimate places like this that see the same patrons every night are always a rough testing ground for any bard. If those drinking don't like you, you'll be wearing that ale and piss rather than just smelling it. Even dressed down for the occasion, the two of you stand out. You ignore the dip in conversation, the glazed and beady eyes that follow you. Instead of feeling the intimidation, it's exhilaration you feel as you step away from Astarion and hop up onto a vacant chair like it's a vast stage. There's already jeers as you unsling your lute and play a cord loudly.

“Fookin bards!” Something is thrown and you sidestep it with a flourish and another cord.

“Good patrons of this fine establishment!” You declare in a voice that rings bright and clear above the dissent and disinterest. “Tune your ears and listen sharp, for I've a performance ripe to start!”

Hoots join the boos as you smile and pay it all no mind. The melody flows from the strings, weaving around the hostility. You could push on them all, but there's no satisfaction in that. They'll listen because they want to. The song is impromptu, of the moment, sailors and sirens, the lure of the deep. It's sinuous and enchanting and you let it sooth the crowds ill mood into unwavering focus. Easy, so damn easy. You're smile widens as you hop lightly to your left and exchange the chair for a table, stepping with a dancers grace around tankards and bowls of fish broth.

Ale is thrown about, their rough nature no longer directed at you as one drunken fisherman attempts to jig around a barmaid. Your eyes rove over the crowd, looking for Astarion, instead they fall on someone you didn't expect to see. The self-assured smile, deep and dark topaz eyes that glitter with pleasure. Your pulse trips and you look away as someone paws at your ankle. You kick his ale off the table causing bellowing laughter from those around you. With the mood more amiable, you transition into a well-known, bawdy jig and cheers go up along with mugs of ale. Your eyes move back to where you saw the devil only to find a group of sailors instead.

Paying it no mind, you choose to indulge your own perverse curiosity and move into the next song, one about a devil. Only it's not the customary tale of woe and warning, it's about their aid while others stood idle, of a promise upheld and seen through to the end. You doubt the message will sink into any of the ale-soaked brains around you, but you can't deny there's just a little self-satisfaction at daring to challenge the stereotype. Rocking the boat and singing temptation. It's like you've taken on the role of the siren, you muse idly.

The night wares on. Astarion long since returned from whatever he needed to do here. You ignore his look that time is getting on and at some point he slips away from the crowd and into the night. As much ale is drunk as is spilt from mugs as people dance, the barkeep seemingly torn between ordering you to wrap it up or continuing to take the free flowing coin. Some of which has even made its way into the empty tankard at your feet. Eventually it's the barkeeps wife that rings the bell for last orders and you decide it's best to take your leave before everyone is kicked out. A few patrons try to paw at you as you slide towards the door and the cold night outside. It's easy enough to evade the drunks as you smile and hum to yourself, your steps feeling lighter than they have since any of this madness began.

You hop up onto the harbour wall, singing for no one but yourself as you weave one dance step into the next and keep your balance with ease. If the Watch ever bothered to come down here after dark, they'd probably try to arrest you for being drunk and disorderly. Or, more likely, hang back taking bets to see if you would misstep and topple into the frigid water far below.

Up onto your toes and spin, your eyes drifting up to the black sky above, a scudding of cloud across the moon. A spotlight all of your own. You wonder where the devil went, if it was him you really saw. There's no feeling of eyes on you, familiar or otherwise. It's startling to realise how much you miss the sensation. Miss him. So much of his time is now obviously taken up by his duties as the Archduke of Avernus, all of the intricacies that comes with it. Avernus stifles you, the dry and dusty heat, the endless red lit sky, streaked with cloying grey smoke and flaming rocks that rain down on the battle scarred ground below. You want to be by his side, an asset instead of a distraction, not a complication or a deadweight. To be a consort in truth. Maybe the only way to do that is by accepting yourself as a devil, that mortal concerns are no longer your concerns.

Before melancholic thoughts can steal your good mood you take a breath, snap your fingers and a moment later you step out of a flurry of embers to be immediately pounced on by two overexcited pups. Flames spark and scorch the carpet as you stoop to fuss them. Why they're in your rooms, you don't know. Unless Astarion let them out assuming you wouldn't be far behind him. A moment later, you get your answer.

“It seems they're rather taken with you.”

With a sharp command the pups sit, still and attentive, red eyes bright and ears pricked. You stand and watch Raphael slowly approach. “They've been a joy to train, intelligent, loyal.” Another Infernal command and they scamper over to their granite lined baskets and lay down.

Raphael stops in front of you, a curled finger slipping under your chin as your hands come to rest lightly against his chest. He tilts your head up and lowers his lips to yours, the kiss painfully chaste. When he draws back those topaz eyes bore into yours as if desperately searching for something. “It feels like an eternity since I last heard you sing, felt the effortless weave of your playing.”

You can feel the uncharacteristic tension under your hands, see the hardness in the backs of his eyes and the slight pinch between his brows. It's not irritation, it strikes you more as if he's holding himself forcefully in check. Ever since you woke there's existed this self-imposed distance about him, one you've put down to his anger over Asmodeus' actions. A broody sulk because he didn't get his own way. There have been cracks in it on occasion, moments when you felt closer to him. And then he would leave. It's something you try to not take personally or at face value, nothing is ever that straightforward when it comes to interacting with devils.

Your fingers fuss with the buttons and braiding on the front of his doublet, a small smile playing across your lips. “It felt good to let go.” He's too sharp not to pick up on the double meaning of your words. It's more of a question of whether he's in any mood to entertain it.

Raphael's head cants slightly, eyes narrowing with all the warning of a braced predator. “I remember when you used to smell like fresh citrus and cotton, overlaid by my Infernal touch.” He lifts your head higher, turning it slightly and letting his nose brush the exposed side of your neck. “Hot cinders and ashen brimstone. Do you have any idea how maddening it is?”

It is? Your pulse quickens at the frustration of his confession. You've purposely stayed in your human guise because you thought he despised your devil form, what it reminds him of. The corner of your lips curve as you let one hand slide up over his shoulder and into the back of his hair, urging his lips to touch your skin. “Tell me more.”

You can feel the way his lips peel back from his teeth in a silent snarl, his hands dropping to your waist and gripping tight. The points of blackened claws puncturing through fabric, sharp teeth grazing your skin.

“Would you watch me while I slept?” You ask into the taut silence. “Admire me? Loathing and desire, the toxic swell of it.” Taking a breath, heart pounding, you let the human glamour drop and immediately feel how rigid his body becomes. The rumble of warning he vocalises, the threat that you better stop plucking at how strung tight he is. It goes completely unheeded. Your hand tightens its grip in his hair, pulling his head away from your neck so you can drink in how thin his control is. “Why deny yourself? One touch, a small taste? Where's the harm?”

“This is not a game you want to be playing with me,” Raphael warns you verbally this time, eyes hard and dark with threat.

Is it not? You hum thoughtfully, giving his words a moments consideration. Letting your hand slide from his hair, you step back with a knowing smile on your lips as you dip your gaze coyly and turn to walk away. A flick of your spade tail, the slightest sashay to your hips. It's blatant temptation and you reveal in the audacity of it.

You hear the low growl of anger a second before the leathery beat of wings. Claws making a grab for you as you twist and sidestep. Your own wings unfurl, helping you to move quicker, slightly lifting you from the ground. It's not graceful, you've never attempted to use them functionally before and it shows.

It's a dance of hop-steps and wing beats as you tussle with him, trying to slip from his grasp. He could end this game right now and it elates you that he doesn't. Furniture is knocked over, ornaments sent crashing to the ground. You suddenly see the sense behind why rooms in the Hells are so spacious and vaulted. Mortal buildings aren't made to accommodate fiends with massive wingspans.

You crash back against the table, hear the wood creak under you as the devil pounces, wings knocking against each other as you try to push up and he tries to force you down. You're also quickly finding that your tail is far more dextrous than you thought, wrapping it around one of his legs and trying to yank it out from under him.

Sharp teeth graze your neck and you feel the deep inhale he takes, how his body shudders. Then he bites, hard. Nerves light up with bright pain as pleasure floods your core. He doesn't bother to use magic to disrobe you, the sounds of tearing fabric mixing with his rumbles and tight exhalations as you try and force your arm under his chin to prise him off. You pull hard with your tail, kicking with your leg to try and disrupt him. A forceful beat of wings and twist, finally managing to get out from under him.

You fly-hop a little distance away, breathing hard and lifting a hand to touch the side of your neck. Your fingers come away wet with blood and you lift them to your smiling lips to lick clean. Raphael stalks a slow circle around you, burning eyes unblinking, he takes a deeper breath and rolls his shoulders as he tries to reassert control. That won't do, you don't want him to be controlled. A lazy snap of fingers and the shreds of your clothing fizzle to floating embers.

“Did you dare to touch this while I slept?” You ask, letting your claws trail lightly over the swell of one breast. It's a wildly erotic thought, that maybe the devil and incubus indulged in each other right next to you. “Or was the torment of denial too much to resist. A deep pleasure all of its own?”

You see the crack in his countenance, your laugh of triumph cut short by savage lips, the air knocked from your lungs as your back hits the floor hard. You moan into it, arching up against him as he forces your hands up over your head and pins them there. He breaks from the kiss with a low rumble, magma eyes flashing.

“My dear,” he states, breath harsh. “You are in dire need of a few lessons in decorum.”

“And I suppose you are the one to teach them,” you reply archly even as your heart thunders in your chest.

“I expect a certain level of good manners, of deference, from my consort,” he tells you smoothly, some of his imperturbability returning.

You sigh dramatically. “You do not enjoy the sway of my tail, the flutter of my wings, dear lord?” You aren't repentant in the slightest, and it's not like you would ever test him so brazenly outside the walls of your private rooms.

Raphael's grip becomes painfully tight around your wrists, his lips dipping close to yours. “Order. Law.” He nips hard at your lower lip, breaking the skin. “You will obey mine.”

You slowly lick up the bead of blood, catching his lips as you do. Raphael's response is immediate, his tongue sliding against yours, the kiss quickly deepening into something that starkly shows you how thin his façade of control is. It spikes exhilaration through your body as you test his grip, wanting to touch him. He snarls into the kiss, letting his entire weight rest atop you, pushing you down into the unforgiving floor.

The moment the kiss breaks, there's an utterance of that strange Infernal dialect from him. This time it doesn't make your head swim, instead you feel thin and icy-cold tendrils wrap around your wrists and forearms. They hold you in place, allowing him to let go and touch as he pleases. It truly is magic then, real and tangible rather than a calculated manipulation of your mind. He told you the truth. You pull at the seemingly flimsy tendrils and find you can't move at all.

Raphael's chuckle is dark and silky, ghosting over your Infernal skin along with that covetous gaze. “Sublime,” he murmurs, claw tips tracing over ridges of cartilage that line your décolleté. “Maybe I could be persuaded to paint someone other than myself.”

You blink up at him, unable to mask your surprise. You've seen the paintings in his House of Hope, the easels set up in various rooms, and always assumed the portraits had been commissioned, or used by debtors. “You flatter me too much, my lord.” Your words carry an edge of breathlessness, the depth of such a consideration not wasted on you.

“You are due more than the vague flatteries of words,” he purrs against your skin, his too warm hands finding every ridge and spur and exploring them.

Raphael's lips follow the trail of his hands, his magma gaze selfishly taking everything in. Obsessive focus that ignites a restless need in you. He's never been this attentive or indulgent, and you honestly don't know if it's born of a want to please you or his own need to explore every part of your devilish body. Lingering wet kisses, the graze of sharp teeth. How he pauses on occasion to just breathe deeply of your Infernal scent. Maybe it's a devil thing, or unique to Raphael. Whatever the answer, it sends a thrill of pleasure through your body and you arch up into his touches in lieu of being able to touch him. You curl a leg over the back of his, running your foot down the back of his thigh, curling your toes to press the points of sharp talons into crimson flesh. He rumbles deeply at you, the sound sending tremors through your stomach as his tongue dips into your navel.

Your eyes screw shut as you try not to whine your impatience, arms pulling at the cold tendrils as you entertain lurid thoughts of pushing his head lower, of feeling him.... Firm hands push against the insides of your thighs and you need no more urging, your breath catching as he buries his face right where you ache for him the most. All that obsessive attention focused on indulging you. That sinuous tongue slides the length of your vulva, a wanton moan drawn from you as it slides inside, tasting you. The dark and bubbling rumble he makes, the rigidness you can feel in his body. Let go! You silently plead, hooking a leg over his shoulder, talons scratching between heavily muscled shoulder blades, causing his wings to flex. He rumbles low again, the noise vibrating right through your clitoris. Your tail curls up between your splayed legs, looping itself around his neck, selfishly intent on keeping him right where you want him.

Raphael snarls, and for a moment you think you've pushed him too far. His hands close around the backs of your knees painfully, claws digging deep. Then he pushes them up towards your shoulders, near folding you in two, exposing and opening you up to his undivided attention. Your tail tightens around his throat on reflex as his tongue pushes deep, tasting, moving with single-minded focus against your heated walls. You heave in a sharp breath, only to loudly moan it back out, the rough mimicry of sex, the snarled and suckling kisses as you purposely vary the tightness of your tail, or just give him an encouraging tug.

It feels so long since the two of you have lain together, longer than any conscious point since you signed that contract. You desperately want him to let go of that self-imposed discipline, the rigid control, and it's maddening, intoxicating, and more than a little bit dangerous. You know he's done with your antics when he yanks at your tail and you let it slide loose. He doesn't let go however, curling it around his fist as he moves up your body. His lips fall on yours, hard, demanding, sharp teeth catching on careless tongues, copper blooming inside the unforgiving kiss.

Your loud gasp is hungrily swallowed as his rigid cock presses into your soaked heat, stretching and sinking deep. No mind given to your comfort, each hard thrust driving deeper than the last, heavy and tight balls slapping against the wet mess he's made of you. Pulling at the tendrils that hold you is useless, the frustration of not being able to touch him only making your need burn hotter. His free hand slides into your hair, gripping at one horn and roughly pulling your head back, exposing the taut lines of your throat and the bloodily weeping bite mark. He licks up the front, teeth nipping at the bob of your Adam's apple as you pant for breath.

“Raphael,” you gasp, feeling your body beginning to tighten and trying to push back against it.

The hard slide of his hot and rigid length against your tightening walls, how he purposely changes his rhythm into a deeper, grinding one, sending shocks of buzzing pleasure through your overstimulated clitoris. His wet mouth finds the elongated shell of your ear and nips hard, his grip tightening on your tail and horn.

“Who is it you belong to?” He demands harshly, dark possessive obsession edging the question, his bright and hot gaze boring into yours.

“My Diabolic Lord,” you moan, voice laden with naked passion. “Raphael, Archduke of Avernus. Uniter and liberator of Baator, Conqueror of Realms.” The titles spill from your lips, feeding his ego, feeding your lust. You feel the curve of his lips, the pleasure in his harshly rumbled breaths.

His lips brush against yours, pure indulgence oozing from him. “My Queen.”

There's something in his smooth and dark tone, in his heated gaze, that pushes you over the edge. Body constricting, fists clenching as you cry out his name. He pulls it all from your helpless body, taking it greedily and muffling your cries with a savage kiss, burying himself deep inside you again and again as you squeeze him tight and he floods you with liquid heat.

~~*-*~~

Pure indulgent indolence. She dozes lightly on her front, wings lax, the occasional sway moving down the length of her tail. Raphael relaxes next to her on the ruined bed, taking in every inch of her Infernal body he can see in privacy, away from her watchful gaze. The shift of small reptilian-like scales moving in the low light cast by the moon outside, the waxy membrane of her wings marked by the striations of dark veins, the slight mottling closer to the sharp spurs at their tips. Curved ridges of bumpy cartilage follow her hips, dipping to meet the base of her tail. He keeps his touch light, not wanting to wake her, not wanting to be disturbed from his voyeurism.

Had he touched her during the long nine years she slept? No. Torn between desire and hate. His indignant wrath vented in the direction of anyone who tested him, sometimes not even for that reason. So much for their slow game of corruption, playing at the dance steps until they reached the final climax. He won't claim to be frustrated that it happened this way and he knows they'll still indulge in the dance regardless. It's too much of a temptation not to.

Raphael places a reverent kiss against the small spurs that protrude from each vertebrae down her spine, fingertips tracing over the ridges at the base of her tail. She vocalises a breathy sigh, shifting slightly. He stills his hand, waiting for her to settle down again. He can't help but wonder if she's found the tentative beginnings of a new resolution, firm ground to plant her feet into. Or was tonight an impulse, and easing off of the pressure inside, allowing room for the conflict to fester again.

He wraps his hand tightly around the base of her tail, smiling as he feels the contraction of pure muscle, the cat-like twitch that runs down to the spade tip. A kiss graces the small of her back, the lash of her tail in response stronger this time. Raphael knows she won't say anything, that she'll continue to play at dozing, surreptitiously enjoying the rarity of such attention from him. Or so she thinks. The want to continue indulging her, worshiping her, is powerful. It still confuses him to feel something so strongly for anyone other than himself, but it no longer frustrates or angers him. It's oddly satisfying, her presence soothing. It strokes his ego in a way that feels so very delicious. Claws trail down the back of her thigh and this time her tail curls up around his forearm, a deep hum sounding from her that he's never heard before and it ticks his pulse higher. There's the slightest edge of her own deep possession to it.

“Tell me what you're thinking,” he says against the heated skin of her back, desperate to know.

“You.”

Raphael smiles, pleased at the note of sultry desire in her voice. “In what way?” He wants to hear more.

There's a poignant pause. “Your true form.”

Oh? His brow arches. “And?” He prompts, lips falling on the curve of her arse.

“It's the hellfire, isn't it? The reason touching you burnt me so badly?” She tries and fails to sound nonchalant about it.

His smile deepens. Devils are immune to fire by their very nature, hellfire is a different beast entirely. “Hellfire isn't just fire. It's born of the very essence of the Hells, arcane in nature. It burns hotter, consumes everything.”

She shifts into her side a fraction, looking over her shoulder at him. “So how can you stand to be wreathed in it?”

“The process of becoming a pit fiend entails being bathed in hellfire, being stripped to the bone and born anew. We have a natural resilience other devils lack, are able to wield it.” Even as a cambion he possessed that particular gift thanks to his lineage, as a pit fiend, it gave him an edge over his rivals.

“I see.” She doesn't quiet manage to temper the disappointment out of her voice. “So a devil could never achieve immunity.”

“Resilience, my dear,” he corrects lightly. “Not immunity.” Hellfire burns everything, and is part of the glorious ecstasy of using it.

Raphael looks up the curve of her spine to those gently glowing, iridescent eyes of hers. Drinking in the smouldering heat that sits in the back of them. Does she desire to touch the magnificence of his true form, or is it purely morbid fascination? Her mind is still that of a mortal, all be it one that's been drawn to the dark and Infernal from the very start. The pleasure of conceit blooms in his chest as he frees his arm from the loose grip of her tail and moves up the bed to settle against her. She watches him, breath a little shallow, pulse that fraction elevated.

He holds that gaze, schooling himself to indifference. “Does my lady desire something in particular?” He asks, feeling the knowing curve of his lips despite wanting to play this with coolness. “To worship me in truth, mayhaps?”

Her eyes don't blink, don't stray a millimetre. “Yes.”

He takes a very slow and controlled breath, the shot of savage desire almost making him reckless. Should he be surprised by the pure honesty of her answer? That sultry night out on Marta's terrace when he asked her how she felt about the icon he chose for worship. She told him it had a certain forbidden allure, he simply never guessed it was one she desired in the darkest reaches of her mind.

Raphael cups the side of her face, brushes a thumb across the sharp line of her cheek. “In due time, my sweetest temptation.”

Chapter Text

The ale houses of Grey Harbour provide the perfect setting for you to begin finding your feet as a bard again. There isn't much in the way of competition, the folk of the seas have always been competent when it comes to making their own music and entertainment. Another much appreciated fact is, near as you can tell, no one knows who you are. What it is you did all those years ago. There's no expectation, no one pulling at the threads of plots in the background, just honest people in all their colourful rawness enjoying music. So it fouls your mood one evening to see a heavily cloaked figure walk stiffly into the ale house that is your current stage. Painfully awkward and not in the least bit clandestine, you recognise their gait immediately and grit your teeth. Marta de Lazlo.

You don't falter in your performance as you watch her sit down at the bar. It's not just your eyes that watch her either, there's suspicion in the gaze of regulars, calculation in those people who sit in the shadowed corners. She leans over the bar, demanding the attention of the barkeep who would much rather ignore her presence. If she's after a glass of wine, this is the wrong place to be asking. You inwardly wince as a tankard of frothing ale is slammed down on the bar in front of her. This could go downhill very quickly if she attracts the wrong sort of attention, this isn't the sort of place patriars are welcome.

Temper bubbling, you ease it into the music and a more lively shanty, effectively drawing the majority of narrowed eyes away from her. As you sing, your mind fights with the thought that this really isn't your problem. Marta isn't stupid. If there's some desperate need to speak to you, she could have waited back at the manor. Astarion would have told her you would be back eventually. By coming here so brazenly she's trying to force your hand, demanding your attention like a petulant child. Your good mood is well and truly gone, your chest full of acidic anger. This is your place, your solace. None of the inner turbulence shows on the surface as you bring the song to its end and lower your lute. The cheers turning to half-hearted complaints as you step down off the table and pick up the tankard with a few coppers in it.

You wind your way over to the bar and count out the coins, ordering a double of dark rum. In your peripheral vision, Marta ignores her tankard and slides over to you, tugging at the sleeve of your blouse. There's a violent want to slap her hand away that you don't give into.

Calmly turning, you peer into the depths of her hood with feigned disinterest. “Can I help you?”

Angry blue eyes glare at you, her voice hushed and urgent. “Why are you wasting your time here, singing for a few rotten coppers?” She's actually incensed. Whether on your behalf or because you chose to perform here rather than her estate, you don't bother to ask.

You smile benignly, eyes hard. “It's honest.” She won't get it, the jibe will go straight over her head.

There's a soft and dismissive huff from under the hood. “We need to talk.”

No, she needs to talk. You don't give a damn about the machinations of the city's elite. “Fine,” you say abruptly as you pick up your drink and head towards a vacant table. No doubt Marta was hoping you would head for the door instead and the annoyed tut she makes gives you a perverse feeling of satisfaction. Sitting down, you wait for her to decide if she's going to join you. Eventually she does and you try not to smile at the reluctance in every step as she walks over.

“This really isn't something for an audience,” she says quietly, using the bottom of her cloak to wipe down the seat before sitting on it.

“You could have waited at the manor, or left a note,” you tell her pointedly, watching every mannerism and micro-expression. It's at this point you have to remind yourself to blink, to recall such mundane human actions. Something is very off with all of this. As a seasoned bard you've always prided yourself in being able to read individual people as much as a rooms mood. Since your rebirth as a devil, it's like your perception has shifted to a much higher level. Reading body language is a skill anyone can learn, but you can sense how deep she breathes, the pace of her heart, how much she perspires. All very useful for a devil wanting to know everything about their prey.

“I hardly dared to believe Astarion when he said this is how you spend your evenings. I had to see it for myself,” she huffs with disapproval and you can see straight through the false concern. “It's all so worrying, the strange redecorating, debasing yourself in a hovel like this. Your talent is worth so much more.”

You take a sip of the dark rum, purposely taking your time, feeding the discomfort she feels in these unfamiliar surroundings. She wants to leave this place so very badly. It's past time you set your boundaries, make your stance clear to her. “Where I choose to perform is my business, it's not a personal slight against your offer.”

“But why?” Her voice is an octave short of a whine.

She really can't understand it, you doubt any patriar would. The only direction a person should ever move is up, more power, more control. Your lips twitch as you fight to keep the smile off your lips. Lady de Lazlo has no idea of the predator that sits across from her as she tries to correct your seemingly nonsensical behaviour.

“What do you see here?” You ask her mildly, enjoying the deception. Wondering how she'll interpret the question, will she look at you or those around you?

“See?” Marta draws back her hood a fraction, confused as her sulky gaze moves about the room. “Fishermen, dock workers. It smells like most haven't bathed in a tenday,” she answers with predictable distaste.

Now you smile. “I see potential.”

Her nose wrinkles. “For what?”

You laugh lightly and take another sip of the dark rum.

Marta's blush lips press into a grim line as she clasps her hands together and leans across the table towards you. “What's going on? What is it that troubles you? I feel like I don't understand you anymore. Won't you come away from here? We can head back to my estate and take a walk in the gardens, talk like we used to, drink something that doesn't smell like it's been fermented in a fish barrel.”

You notice with irritation that she's becoming less cautious with her complaints, running the risk of antagonising the regulars drinking around you. They're watching and she knows it. It's a blatant attempt to force your hand and you can feel your anger beginning to stir and bubble again. “Marta, I would ask that you respect my decision, your understanding isn't required,” you tell her firmly, offering her a final chance to change her mind and let this go.

She sits back and takes a breath, eyes growing hooded, her expression pensive. “I really didn't want to bring this up here, but so be it. I'm worried that our mutual patron is growing impatient with this idling of yours. We do have an obligation to fulfil.”

Your smile turns cold in an instant, the anger inside jagged. Setting down the glass, you stare at her in unblinking silence until you see the first tick of discomfort across her face. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Lady de Lazlo,” you state coolly, ignoring the flash of hurt in her eyes at your unfriendly tone. “Don't ever try to play Raphael and I off against each other like that again. You'll find him a whole lot less forgiving than I am.”

Draining the last of the rum, you slam the glass down, refusing to cave to her expression of open hurt and confusion. Anger boiling, you stand and leave her to deal with finding her own way home.

~~*-*~~

A pair of rambunctious pups greet you on your arrival back at the manor. Jumping up and singeing the laces of your boots, their antics quickly beating back your foul mood. Stooping to fuss them and pat out any material in danger of igniting, you suddenly feel so very glad for this simple and wholesome interaction. Affection, loyalty, given and returned with no grander expectations. You knew this was coming, that Marta wasn't going to leave you alone indefinitely. Whatever game she's playing, it leaves a knot in your gut. It could just be the self-entitlement that infects patriar society, but you're loathe to believe it. Marta is after something more, something her inclusion in the Parliament of Peers doesn't grant. Given many would quietly argue the parliament is the true ruling force in Baldur's Gate, this probably isn't a move you should ignore.

The pups have grown a little calmer and you extract the end of one soggy lace out of Havoc's mouth. You call them to attention and give them a single order: to find the master of the house. They dart through the foyer and up the wide staircase while you follow at a slower pace. The pups lead you to the closed door of Astarion's study, though it's as much a laboratory too. Havoc and Jester sit by the door, sparking tails thumping the thick carpet, red eyes bright and attentive. You offer a word of praise in Infernal before knocking on the door.

“Come in.”

The door is heavy, the ward woven into it buzzing against your hand as you push against it. You signal the pups to follow and stay close, mindful that there might be sensitive work going on. There's a fresh cadaver laying on an examination table, its chest cavity laid wide open and missing a few choice organs. The air is heavy with the scents of blood and chemicals. Jester whines, snorting and pressing closer to the side of your calf.

“I hope Marta didn't see any of this,” you hum, closing the door and walking towards the workbench Astarion sits at. The space has changed during the time you were away, more books, more specialist equipment and strange looking artefacts.

“Could you imagine,” Astarion muses with a touch of morbid humour, not looking up from his work. Then you see his brow knot as the deeper meaning behind your words finally hits. He looks up, takes in the dark expression you wear. “Don't tell me she actually went down to the docks looking for you?”

“The lady had a few choice words about my decision to perform for the great unwashed masses instead of nobles and politicians.” You peer at the bloody mess on the workbench, heart, kidney, liver. There's nothing subtle about the art of necromancy, its ingredients or the way to obtain them.

“Her reaction to your redecorating wasn't much better,” he says flippantly. “I neglected to mention your charges need for non-flammable surfaces.” Astarion glares down at the pups, Havoc on his hind legs trying to stretch enough to see over the top of the workbench.

“Did she say anything beyond wanting to know where I was?” You pick up a few chunks of what looks like liver and toss them down to the pups at your feet. They don't even bother to chew.

“By all means, feed your mutts with my hard won endeavours,” he tells you tartly. “Honestly, I think seeing the way you mix patterned fabrics threw her off her stride. She wasn't willing to wait though. The fact she even ventured down to the docks alone says a lot, don't you think?”

It really does. A calculated risk weighed against displaying fake concern. “She's up to something.” The question is, do you press it and hope to gain an advantage or leave her to strew for a few days.

“Well, obviously.” Astarion near rolls his eyes. “It's a little drama I'm afraid I'll have to leave all to you. There's a trip I need to make,” he laments with absolutely no geniality. “I don't plan on being gone long, maybe just over a week. I trust my manor will still be standing when I get back.”

“Any company needed?” You won't deny there's a long ignored itch at the back of your mind to get out of the city, to stretch your legs and travel again. This time without a parasite in your brain, ticking down the remainder of your life.

Astarion offers a small smile. “It's sweet of you to offer, but it'll have to be another time.”

He doesn't elaborate and you wonder if this trip is personal in nature. You nod, masking your disappointment. At least you won't be rattling around the manor alone now you have the pups. “Bring me back something nice.” Quietly, you head back towards the door, unable to shake the feeling it's not just Marta who's up to something.