Archive of Our Own

New ghost is that what you are

Hope and grief are still our wings

Why we cannot fly

What failure still keeps you

Among us the unfinished

The wheels go on praying

—W. S. Merwin, from “Is That What You Are”

Astarion could recognize the trudge of a gallows march from miles away. It was supremely annoying. Especially as one of Gale’s foul little simulacra stood outside his tent, waiting with its hands tucked behind its back. Humming. Nothing living or dead or undead should hum in the festering, putrid air of the Shadowlands. Astarion would not go out there unless dragged by the ankles.

He had tried not to know this was coming. After being plucked from Cazador’s grasp by the Nautiloid, Astarion often ruminated on how to get rid of certain habits he no longer needed. In this new life, where they fought ancient constructs in the lava-hot bowels of the earth, and pulled gnomes down from windmills, and treated telepathically with myconids, he didn’t need to dedicate every waking hour to memorizing the moods inside footsteps, or the motives for someone offering him their canteen of water. It was useful to know when someone was lying, or plotting to knife him in his sleep, but anything else at this point was exhausting. He was constantly preoccupying himself with drivel he wanted no part in.

For example: Gale had planned to blow himself up since that ripened, flaccid-faced wizard had come and gone from their camp, and nobody else had noticed.

Of course, this was by design. If you moved slowly enough, even the sharpest predator might lose track of how far you’d wandered. Astarion had employed this trick himself many times in the kennels—adjusting his position hair-by-hair so no chain links clinked or clanked, and he could rest his head against the wall, or stretch a limb, or hold torn flesh together with his fingers.

But Gale accomplished this with kindness. With little gestures. And each one proved more maddening than the last, not only because their motives went totally unobserved, but Astarion could not stop himself from marking each one on the walls of his mind in a masochistic tally.

If someone else could see it, maybe he would be able to stop. But no one did.

Gale had begun with Lae’zel. It was a bold, arrogant way to start because Lae’zel was as vigilant as Astarion was suspicious. It was one of her best qualities, as long as it didn’t point in his direction. But Gale had been playing a long game—sneaking her most of his portion of meat since they’d started having enough to add to the stew pot when they were still camping on the ravaged beach.

“A Githyanki diet,” Gale informed Astarion, a tenday into knowing each other, cubing potatoes without looking while Astarion mended a hole in one of his pockets, “requires much more meat than any other, well, humanoids walking around. You understand.” He had cleared his throat and dropped his tone because of Lae’zel’s disdain for the word, even though Lae’zel was two miles away with Wyll in the putrid swamp.

“Who are you talking to?” Astarion asked airly, tying a neat knot at the end of his row of backstitches. “I’m busy.”

Gale blustered a little. “I think you could argue a vampire is an obligate carnivore, wouldn’t you say?”

“Want to find out?” Astarion bared his fangs, and instead of looking away, Gale blushed. It made sense now, after putting all the facts together. Gale wouldn’t know how to save himself if he tried.

He had never seen Lae’zel say thank you, but she let Gale try and teach her lanceboard, showed him how to read a few symbols of the Tirsu cipher, and always put herself between him and their largest foes. He could almost admire Gale’s strategy if it wasn’t so flimsy. What use was having such a large sword if Gale was just going to throw himself on it?

The others hadn’t needed such forethought and planning. They were simpler. Even Shadowheart, with her vinegary charm and discerning smile, could be bought with a night orchid.

Gale found Karlach some infernal iron in the basement of one or the other terribly run down buildings in the Shadowlands, and recommended Dammon a book to read if they all ever made it out. Great Feats of Infernal Engineering. Then Dammon was able to do a partial repair of Karlach’s heart, which took care of Wyll too.

Before this little miracle, Astarion was the only other person in camp who knew Gale had been coaching Wyll in the mage hand cantrip. Wyll was no wizard, but he was their fearless leader, a lionhearted little princeling. Nothing could stand in the way of his love, or something.

“You can show him how to do it,” Astarion drawled one night, sipping wine straight from the bottle, “but does he know how to use it?”

“Now, now.” Gale looked down at him disapprovingly. “Young love should be celebrated and encouraged, like the first lilac shoots in spring.”

Astarion cackled so hard he got wine up his nose and aspirated Esmeltar Red. Gale leaned over and clapped him on the back and it was all so humiliating he ended up splitting the rest of the bottle with him in lieu of having to say thank you.

“How did you know I’m teaching him?” Gale asked, looking much too comfortable on one of Astarion’s cushions.

“I can hear him practicing in his tent,” Astarion said. “And then he gets the same Weave stink you do.”

“Weave stink?” Gale sputtered.

Astarion nodded gravely. “Weave stink. Like a wet dog got hit with a lightning bolt.” He took a swig of wine. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Well,” Gale said, taking the bottle back. “It’s one of those things where everyone’s a bit of an autodidact.” He took a long pull of wine. He always closed his eyes when he drank, as though savoring even the shittiest of vintages.

Astarion sighed. “Hells,” he said. “Only you could make wanking sound like some kind of mortifying disease.”

“Mage hand is a rite of passage for many a young wizard.” Gale’s eyes danced. “It’s perfectly natural, Astarion. I didn’t peg you for being such a prude.”

He pinched Gale hard on the soft part of his arm, and Gale made a satisfying little squeal. “I am not a prude. I’m quite, uh, liberated, thank you.”

“Liberated!” Now Gale really laughed, a deep sound from his soft belly. He lost his balance a little and lurched to the side, hiding his face in his arm. “You sound like my Great-Aunt Mariella.”

“You wouldn’t understand, obviously,” Astarion sniffed, feeling his smile pinch the inside of his cheeks with how hard he was trying to hide it. “Only the boldest among us—such as Mariella and myself—understand the passionate truth of sensual freedoms.”

Gale fell all the way over at that one, and Astarion snagged the wine back in his victory. He couldn’t remember the last time he laughed about sex. It was nice.

And then, many tendays later, Wyll and Karlach practically flounced away to find some remote corner of Last Light Inn, and Dammon had clapped Gale’s shoulder.

“Quite a spot of good you did there,” he said. Dammon was quite strong so Gale wobbled a little under the strength of the pat.

“Well, my friend,” Gale said, “it was no trouble at all.”

Astarion seethed for the rest of the night. Gale was always calling everyone my friend. What good were these friends if none of them noticed he was planning to walk off to his doom?

The only person he didn’t call my friend was Astarion, which made him feel very suspicious but he wasn’t sure why. Gale thought every predator was a friend—why not him? It was difficult to parse and even now he didn’t quite have it figured.

But what he did know was Gale was writing notes in all his books. Astarion looked through them all as they traveled the festering Shadowlands. Most of the fiction was promised to their little party. Karlach—now that you can turn the pages, I think you’ll find this romance quite ‘heated.’ Lae’zel, I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought of the swordmaiden in this book when watching you in battle. I hope you’ll take it as the highest compliment. For Wyll, an apprentice book of spells with hundreds of notes in the margin. For Shadowheart, a comprehensive encyclopedia of anatomy. Even Halsin had been promised his great leather-bound edition of the Complete Compendium of Flora and Fauna of Faerûn.

All the others, complicated and useless and heavy, were promised to some university library in Waterdeep. As though anyone would be bothered to send them there. As though any of them were going to make it out of these bleak lands alive if Gale blew himself to pieces in the middle of Moonrise Towers.

Gale had a scroll of vellum where he was writing little recipes for how to throw together a stew from nothing or how to bake bread by burying it under the coals. Astarion kept finding it and throwing it in the fire. And then the next day Gale would start again without a word to any of them.

There were moments when the madness of it felt as keen as anything under Cazador. Without the omnipresent pain, perhaps—the obsession, the agony, the panic, the flaying of flesh—but the way they all went about the little circles of their lives as though something very terrible wasn’t about to happen.

Astarion tried to tell himself it bothered him because Gale had made no such overtures his way. No book was set aside for him. It poked at his ego, especially the petty part of him—which was a rather large part, truth be told. But this only added to some greater irritation he was unable to identify.

And yet, Gale had been the first to volunteer when Raphael bid them to kill his orthon. Everyone else had thrown their lot in immediately, but Gale had been first. When it was done, he wiped blood out of his own eyes and grinned at Astarion. Some of the blood ran down the lines of the orb on his face, like tracing a map.

“I’d like to see Raphael argue with that,” Gale said, gesturing to the spattered remains of Yurgir on the ground.

“Oh, he’ll be satisfied,” Astarion said, picking a merrigon tooth out of his boot with the tip of his knife. “Though devils love to wiggle out of their commitments.”

Then Gale’s smile had turned sharp. “I’ll immolate him from the inside out if he tries, Astarion.” The expression on his face was quite bloodthirsty. Astarion felt breathless looking at him, which was saying something. “Even a devil can burn.”

Even a devil can burn. If Astarion had repeated that to himself more than once in the darkness of his tent—well, no one had to know.

He wondered briefly if that was it. The sign. The thing Gale wanted to do to smooth the way. It was just so guileless. And they weren’t even finished. Gale had carefully examined Astarion’s scars, then made a perfect little illusion of them he could hold and examine in his hand. He called it up whenever Astarion asked, and even Raphael had gone hmm when he saw it. Cazador’s plan, the ascension—Astarion had things to do. 

But now, as Moonrise Towers loomed just beyond the bridge where they camped, there was the problem of the simulacrum standing expectantly before his tent.

“Good evening,” it said when Astarion came a little too close to the tent flap. He sighed and stepped out. How could anyone confuse this for Gale? The only thing it had in common was the chipper tone he adopted when he was trying to hide something.

Astarion waved his hand back and forth through the simulacrum’s face.

“I knew you would do that,” the simulacrum said, a little exasperated, and then it told Astarion that Gale of Waterdeep had requested his presence, if he would be so good as to follow him. And he did, meandering through a poorly made path through battle-scarred grounds and twisted, tumorous trees, before being suddenly enveloped in some kind of illusion.

It was still night. But Astarion had stepped into a little clearing of soft grass, with tall trees lingering nearby as though they’d just found the edge of a forest.

In the center, Gale sat, admiring the sky, weight settled on hands stretched behind him. He wore his usual violet tunic—Astarion liked the color on him, even though he was dying to pick out the white embroidery around the collar and replace it with something else. The breeze played with the strands of Gale’s dark hair. It had gotten longer, and a little grayer, since Wyll pulled him out of the portal. A few waves spilled down his shoulders. His feet were bare, toes in the grass. Gale inhaled a breath and sighed it away contentedly.

He was utterly at ease, and he had never looked so beautiful, and it was terrifying beyond measure.

Astarion wanted to toe off his shoes and feel the cool, plush grass beneath his soles. But he couldn’t. He had no interest in complying with madness.

Then Gale looked over his shoulder at him and smiled. Astarion realized, with all the cold certainty his three hundred and fifty years of existence had granted him, that Gale saved his last overture for him. For tonight. The night before he—

“Astarion,” Gale said, pleased. “You came.”

“This isn’t going to work on me,” said Astarion.

A wrinkle appeared in Gale’s forehead. “This,” he repeated, like a question.

Astarion brandished a finger. “I’m not stupid. You’re going to blow yourself up.”

Gale visibly deflated under the accusation. “Please, sit.”

“No,” Astarion said, and then they stared at each other.

After a while, Gale tried again. “I—yes,” he said, finally. “This might be my last night alive. You’re right.”

“I’m not right,” sniffed Astarion. “I don’t approve of the idea. I’m onto you. There’s a difference.”

“Are you the one who keeps tossing my recipe vellum in the fire?”

“Of course I am,” he snapped.

Then Gale smiled, a rueful little curve. “I’m flattered,” he said.

“You’re an idiot,” Astarion fumed. He crossed his arms and glared. “Everyone’s got lead for brains when it comes to you. At this point I’ve been swayed to favor ceremorphosis for the lot of us.”

It was terrible, how that made Gale laugh. It wasn’t sad, or pitying, or even agreeing, really. Just fond.

“Astarion,” he said again, a little softer. “I just came here to think. You make everything clearer.” He paused, as though reconsidering his words. “It’s like the air is easier to breathe.”

And Astarion didn’t know what to say to that at all.

After a moment of silence, Gale said, “You don’t have to stay, or keep me company. But you were the only one I wanted to ask.” He swallowed once, steeling himself. “I understand if you don’t want to—”

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Astarion interrupted, crossing the clearing between them in a handful of strides. He kicked a tuft of grass, just for good measure. “But I’m not interested in little fantasies. I know them inside and out.” He sat down just close enough so their shoulders didn’t touch. “Believe me, I was one,” he muttered.

Gale made a protesting noise. Astarion finally looked up to see he’d been admiring above them—an aurora in all its shining and starry resplendence. Astarion turned so he was facing Gale instead, his legs crossed under himself, hunched forward like they were about to negotiate a business deal or play dice.

“I don’t understand,” Gale said. “Not the—I think I know what you mean about, well, you, but—”

“Since what’s-his-name—”

“Elminster, Astarion.”

Astarion waved his hand, as though the notion of Elminster having a name at all was below both of them. “You’re—I don’t know. Being helpful, I suppose.”

“I do that,” Gale said dryly.

“No,” said Astarion, brandishing his finger again, unwilling to concede even a single inch of ground on this. “Not like this. It’s a trick.”

“Astarion.” Gale sounded like the edges of his patience were beginning to fray. “If you’re going to level such accusations at me, I’d ask you to do me the kindness of actually leveling them.”

Fine. “Maybe if you were useful enough,” Astarion said, slowly, “kind enough, one of them might ask you to stay. And did they? No.”

Gale shook his head.

“No to which part? I know I’m right,” Astarion argued.

But then Gale remained quiet for a while. “I wasn’t trying to convince anyone of anything,” he said simply.

And that was a puzzle, because Gale prided himself on being useful. This was why he had spent many of his precious hours still left in the Material Plane rewriting stew recipes for a band of idiots with tadpoles in their brains. Astarion had been sure part of this was a sort of pageant to prove how they all needed Gale, so someone might intervene. It didn’t mean it wasn’t true. That was just—an easier solution.

“Then you wanted to dampen their suspicions,” Astarion said.

Gale shook his head again. Something cold and dreadful began to churn in Astarion’s stomach.

“They’ve all asked me,” he said. “Not lately. But since Elminster came to visit, each one has told me I should stay my hand. In their own way, of course. Every time we’re alone, Lae’zel just frowns and says no.” He gave Astarion a crooked smile. “You’ve a keen sense, Astarion, but you’re not omniscient.”

Of course Astarion wasn’t fucking omniscient. But he always knew when Gale was lying. He had several tells: he looked to the left, he blinked twice, he slipped a hand into his pocket. To most people, this would be indecipherable in the great symphony of all his expressions: all the ways his wide, hazel eyes could look at you, the many quirks and curves of his soft lips. Even his eyebrows had their own lexicon of bend and knit.

He always knew when Gale was lying. And Gale wasn’t lying at all now. His stomach twisted again. The problem was much, much worse than he’d thought.

Astarion thought Gale’s walk to the gallows began in earnest with Elminster. But it had started long before any of them had met. Perhaps even before Gale put in that seven-pointed star in his ear. But it was like music playing in another room. It had always been there. Astarion could just hear it more clearly now. It was ringing in his ears.

Gale’s eyes searched his face. He looked so worried. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“You really think the world is better off without you,” said Astarion faintly.

It was as accurate as any bolt fired from his crossbow: Gale inhaled sharply, eyes glancing to some innocent patch of illusory grass. One of his hands clenched a little.

Astarion pressed his tongue hard against one of his fangs. It was one of the old ways he used to bring himself back when he couldn’t think straight.

“Fuck,” he said out loud, and there was blood in his mouth.

They sat there in silence until Gale finally spoke. “Hearing it out loud is—” He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he swallowed and said, “I’ve never heard it out loud before.”

“Well,” Astarion said, “I’d never seen my scars before you made that little illusion. It’s called tit for tat, darling.”

Gale’s rusty laugh was welcome, despite it sounding a little broken.

“You wanted clearer air, or something,” complained Astarion. “Like I’m a drafty old house. Honestly, Gale.”

“Oh please,” Gale said. “No one could mistake you for a draft if you tried.”

“You’re the one with windbag in your name.”

Gale reached over and flicked him hard on the knee. Astarion batted him away, Gale sat back on his hands, and then they both were quiet.

“The idea,” Gale began, “of going out on my own terms—”

“Whose terms?” asked Astarion. “I just heard ‘my own’ when I clearly remember the order coming from someone else. Who was it? Oh yes. You were ordered to blow yourself to smithereens by a god.”

“By my goddess, Astarion. Who, I remind you, I betrayed—”

“So what?” he said, and Gale choked. “I mean it. So what?”

So rarely was Gale rendered speechless. Astarion would have been rather proud if he didn’t also want to shake Gale to pieces, and then gather them all up, and then drop them into the river behind Last Light so nobody could ever find them. (It wasn’t his most coherent plan, but it felt right.)

“So what?” he finally echoed. “I’m a wizard. I wield the Weave, and Mystra answers me every time I cast a spell. She’s not just some, some lover I left in the lurch one town over. She’s who I serve—don’t make that face, Astarion.”

“I’ll make what face I like.” Astarion waved a hand, nose wrinkled. “I’m not afraid of her.”

Gale sat up and gave his most petulant scowl. “I betrayed her trust in me. I hurt her. I traded the faith in what we had to satisfy my hubris. I wanted—” He looked away. “I wanted to be as important to her as she was to me. But that was selfish. It was my folly.”

“The real folly is thinking you can hurt someone who can tie your life in knots and then walk away,” sighed Astarion. “You didn’t learn anything, did you? I suppose that’s why we’re here instead of drinking the last bottle of Jaheira’s wine I lifted.”

“There’s nothing pitiful about seeking forgiveness.” Gale’s eyes flashed. “Not from someone you loved. Death is promised one way or another, but mercy is another story altogether.”

“I do so enjoy your little lectures,” said Astarion. “What would I know about death or mercy?”

Gale looked stricken. “It’s not the same. I don’t even want to imply it’s the same, not after everything you went through—”

“Why not?” Astarion met Gale’s gaze squarely, clearly.

“Because—” Gale flushed in his search for words. “It’s insulting, isn’t it? To act like a year or so locked and suffering in my tower can remotely compare to two hundred years as a thrall—I brought this on myself.”

“Darling, I have no idea what decision I handed down for the Gur,” he said. “But there’s a good chance it was terrible. A lot can change in two hundred years, and I don’t remember much, but.” He smiled a little wickedly. “I know my inclinations.”

“You certainly didn’t deserve to be beaten to death,” huffed Gale. “Or to be wrangled into thralldom for centuries.”

Astarion spread his hands wide, and said nothing. Gale shut his mouth with an audible click of his teeth.

“It’s different,” he finally muttered.

Astarion laughed, or something like it, high and sharp. “I can see it now,” he said. “The arrogant little shit in you. I thought I’d seen it before, but this is something to behold.” He rested his chin in his hand. “I bet it happened this way too, didn’t it? The ancient tome. Everyone telling you no, don’t do it. But it’s you, isn’t it? Only you can. So you will.”

Gale said, quietly, “I haven’t decided yet.”

“I saw what you wrote in your books,” said Astarion.

He shrugged. “It’s better to be prepared.”

They were quiet again, Gale looking haggard and Astarion scowling at the conjured aurora in the sky. Gale raised his hand and little shades of pink joined the purple and green gloaming, like he was a painter putting a finishing touch on his canvas.

It seemed to calm him. Astarion watched his fingers as they moved, each delicate motion so precise that even someone with little understanding of magic clearly saw their perfection.

“You really loved her?” Astarion asked, and watched the memory of Mystra knit Gale’s brow.

“Yes,” he said.

“And you told her this?”

“Often,” he said, and then frowned. “Don’t ask it.”

“What?” said Astarion innocently.

“If she told me the same thing.”

“I didn’t. You brought it up.”

“She’s a goddess,” Gale said, for the hundredth time. “She made me her Chosen. It’s different, with the divine.” He folded his hands in his lap. “The tree knows it's loved by the sun because it looks upon it. It grows. It’s nourished.”

“Or it dies from rot.” Astarion pointed at Gale’s chest. “Or it gets hit by lightning. Or—”

“It’s close enough,” said Gale.

“You’re right.” Astarion leaned forward. “It’s actually quite accurate. She’s always looking down and you’re always looking up. Exactly what I’d call”—his lips pursed bitterly around the word—“love.”

“And what do you know about love?” Gale snapped.

“Everything you do,” he snarled back, “because this is servitude.”

Gale’s eyes were wide and hurt, and maybe damp. He was breathing hard. But he didn’t look away, and neither did Astarion. They both were trying to see beyond what they’d said, because there was something there. They just didn’t know what it looked like, or the word for its name.

Finally, Gale sighed, and let his head rest in his hands. “I thought—you would understand this,” he whispered. “It’s my choice to make.”

Astarion laughed, high and sharp. “I understand it perfectly,” he said. “I spent two hundred years under the thumb of a tyrant. They adore it when you think you’re choosing them. It makes their job so much easier.”

Gale’s shoulders shook briefly, almost like he was laughing. Astarion was seized by the impulse to touch his arm, his back. Not to comfort him, but because the tremor, and what it was, could only be learned by touch.

When Gale finally resurfaced, he folded his hands in his lap and gave a long exhale, eyes closed. Astarion realized his own hands were clenched into fists. He loosened them, brushing imaginary dust from his trousers. He did not know a way out of this. It wasn’t even his job to find a way out. He couldn’t.

“I thought we would sit here,” Gale said, his voice a little hoarse, “and look at the stars, and it would be very peaceful.”

Astarion snorted. “You shouldn’t have invited me.”

“But the stars suit you,” he said. He smiled a little. “You both hold a great deal of light.”

Gale looked at Astarion with such warmth it was almost like touch. It shone through the sadness in his wide eyes. Astarion couldn’t imagine such contact, but he knew heat. Knew the soft flicker of it against his skin, before it hurt.

And then anger rippled through him. “Did you think I would bat my eyelashes and tell you how brave you are?” Astarion asked in a silken, deadly voice. “Or maybe I’d beg you not to do it?”

Gale shook his head, but something had been loosed in Astarion, and it came pouring out with venom. “Shall I wail and beat my breast? Assure you we’ll make it through the next hundred horrible days without you, and in the same breath, promise I’ll never forget your face?”

Astarion didn’t know when he got to his feet; he only realized it when Gale pushed himself up off the ground to slowly stand in front of him. “Astarion,” he said, like he was trying to soothe him, and Astarion thought he would scream. It was madness, all of it, all of it.

“What in the hells did you want from me?” he cried, his voice shrill in his own ears. “Was it gratitude? Thanks for Yurgir and Raphael, but I’ll just figure out Cazador and the Ascension by my lonesome.”

“No,” Gale said, stepping closer. “No, I wouldn’t—”

Now he was shouting. “But you know that’s what happens. Oh, but I forgot! You die for your transgressions and we thank you for it. Better yet, we venerate you for life. Like a painting on a wall. I’m sure they’ll commission it for one of her temples.” He bared his fangs. “I’ll be there every night ruining their work. Smearing the oils and rubbing out all the lines, because you decided it was over when nothing was done, Gale, nothing is done—”

Gale took his hand. He did it in one gentle lift of his arm, cradling Astarion’s palm against his, almost pulling it to his chest. Gale held his hand so lightly it took a moment to feel the pressure of his fingers, as though giving him a moment to decide whether or not he wanted it. Astarion didn’t know for sure, but it quieted the flood coming out of him. His thumb twitched, and then Gale’s olive-skinned fingers squeezed in a soft pulse, and stayed curled around his.

Then Gale said, “I only wanted you. Just you, as you are, and how you came here, and how you were.” When Astarion glanced up, Gale was already looking at him. “Nothing else, and nothing more.”

His words bore the tone and timbre of a spell. The conjured breeze floated over them, and this was the danger of an illusion. You only had to forget what it was for a moment for it to work its power. It was as though there was no one else alive in the whole world but them.

Gale raised Astarion’s hand and kissed it. Lips, roughened from the road, pressed tenderly against the slope of his knuckles. Just once. Long enough for the breath Gale inhaled to coast along the fine hairs of Astarion’s hand, before he raised his head. And then he let him go.

Astarion’s hand remained in the air, as though held in place by a ghost.

“There are other ways,” he said.

“Yes,” Gale agreed, “but is it—the right way?” The question in his voice was genuine. He looked haunted.

That’s the trick, Astarion thought viciously. But it hadn’t worked any other time he said it, and it wouldn’t work now.

“Don’t choose,” he said. The back of his hand burned.

Gale blinked. “What?”

“Right way, wrong way.” Astarion fluttered his fingers. “Fuck them all. Don’t choose. Just stay.”

The last two words slipped out, unbidden. He hadn’t planned them, just like he didn’t plan anything. Relief smoothed the lines in Gale’s face, just for a moment. He looked wonderingly at Astarion, as though seeing him for the first time, as though looking away would hurt.

Astarion realized he wanted to kiss him. But he had kissed too many men on the last night of their lives. He wouldn’t do that anymore. Even so, the desire lingered on his tongue, like a flame he couldn’t bear to swallow.

Then Gale looked down, his jaw tightening, a shudder running through him. For a wild moment, Astarion thought it was the orb digging its claws in. But what had he said? I’ve never heard it out loud before. It was like Gale’s body heard Astarion’s words too, caught them and staggered, surprised by their weight. It learned how long and deep the ache of their absence had been. These were not the kinds of wounds that could be filled, or soothed, or sutured.

The edges of Gale’s illusion shuddered too. The grass faded and disappeared, and the trees wavered. Then the sky began to dissolve in waves of glittering mist, like the stars could no longer hold themselves up. The sickly puce and black shadows of the curse threatened to slide their fingers through the air, but the illusion came down around them like a cloud, and the air was thick with shimmering green, pink, and violet waves.

It stained everything—a fog not even Astarion could clearly see through. The edges of Gale’s form rippled just in front of him. The crown of his head, his shoulders, the dip of his clavicle under his collar. In the rosey mist, Gale’s arm stretched out towards Astarion, like the limb of a tree. All his instincts told him to run, but he couldn’t.

Instead, he stood very still. He let Gale reach for him. They lingered between two worlds, and Astarion didn’t know which would follow this one. In the span of a breath, everything would change. He would feel the moment it happened. He knew the gentle touch of its hand.