Chapter Text
5 Marpenoth, 1491 DR - Szarr Palace, Cazador’s Chamber
The marble was cold against Astarion’s cheek. A small mercy, that. The only mercy he’d get tonight.
He knew the routine by now. The air in this room never moved, thick with beeswax and that damned cologne. A heady, expensive and suffocating mixture.
The whistle came first. Always the whistle before the crack.
Astarion focused on the spiderweb of fractures in the marble beneath his face. The Serpent. The Crown. The Broken man. He'd committed them to memory during all past visits to this very floor, this very position. A meditation of desperation. If he could lose himself in the cartography of his own personal hell, maybe he could be somewhere else when the—
Crack.
—It never worked.
Silver-laced leather kissed his spine. Kissed was Master’s word for it. Astarion had other words. Ones that would earn him extra strokes if he ever gave them voice.
“You seem distant tonight, my dear boy.” The voice was worse than the whip. It was cultured and patient. The voice of a tutor correcting a prized student’s arithmetic. Cazador was circling. Astarion could hear the whisper-soft scuff of the seven-foot-tall nobleman in hand-stitched leather shoes. Could feel the weight of that crimson gaze.
“Are you not paying attention to our lesson?”
Lesson. As if this were education. As if there would be a quiz after.
“Recite the first precept.”
Astarion’s throat was raw. From screaming yesterday. From two nights ago. From almost two centuries of this same fucking script. He drew breath he didn’t need, tasted dust and his own crippling hunger. Hunger, that gnawing, vicious thing that lives in his gut, spread through his throat like a second master.
“Thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures.”
The irony would’ve been funny if it didn’t make him want to claw his own throat open.
Thinking creatures.
The very vintage he’d been denied his entire undeath. The delicacy reserved for Master while Astarion choked down rats and beetles. The source of his degradation was the first rule of his existence.
“Louder, Astarion” Still that patient warmth. Still that terrible, false affection. “With conviction. These words are your shield. They should flow from you like a prayer.”
He forced his voice up from the bottom of his chest. Made it echo off the ornate walls, the silk tapestries, the golden fixtures of this beautiful nightmare.
“Thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures!”
The words rang out like a hymn in a cathedral. a perfect grotesque parody.
“Better.” Then, almost gently. “And why do we have this rule, my precious Astarion?”
Precious. The endearment landed like a second lash.
“To keep us weak.” The litany tasted like dirt. “To keep us hungry. To keep us dependent. To remind us of our place beneath you.”
“Excellent. You are paying attention. The second precept.”
“Thou shalt obey me in all things."
The whisper came out barely audible. It was the truth that needed no volume. An absolute and interminable fact.
Wrong answer.
The whip caught him across the shoulder blades. He felt the finery of his silk shirt tear into his flesh. The same one he'd so carefully mended back together mere hours ago. Fabric and skin, one ruined tapestry.
“Louder, boy. I can barely hear you.”
“Thou shalt obey me in all things!”
The shout sent fresh agony spider-webbing across his back. His vision whited out at the edges.
“And yet.” Cazador’s circling stopped. Astarion could feel him now, a column of cold behind him, and the load of his stare pressed down like a physical thing. “Here you are. Being disciplined, once again for disobedience.”
Oh good. The sermon is starting.
“That pathetic creature you dragged in. That…thing.” Cazador’s voice dripped in distaste, each word carefully shaped. “It reeked of disease and your own desperation. Did you truly believe that foul vagrant was worthy of my attention?”
Astarion’s jaw clenched. The vagrant had been in panic. Three failed nights, dawn approaching, and the tomb…
Gods, not the tomb again.
So he’d taken what he could get. Explaining this to Master was like explaining color to the blind.
“The third precept, Astarion.”
“Thou shalt not leave my side unless directed.”
“And yet you wander the city each night. At my direction.” That dangerous, velvet-soft purr. “You are an extension of my will. An extension of my perfection. When you bring me refuse, you don’t simply fail yourself. You stain me. What does that say about my judgement?”
The whip struck the backs of his thighs. His legs seized, muscles locking. Astarion bit his tongue and tasted copper. A mockery of the real thing he’d never be allowed to drink. His own vintage. How delicious.
In the blood-bright spark of pain something stupid and suicidal stirred in his chest.
“It says you have poor judgement in your tools, Master.”
The silence that followed was a held breath. The temperature dropped.
Oh, you absolute idiot.
Cazador moved. Not the lazy circle anymore, preternatural speed. Suddenly, he was kneeling beside Astarion’s head, and the cologne was a suffocating shroud. Underneath it, grave dirt. The scent they all carried.
“Such wit.” Amusement colored the words, and that was worse than anger. “Such defiance. After all these years, a flicker of that fire remains.”
A cold hand, ring-laden, nails perfectly manicured; It tangled in Astarion’s silver curls. Wrought his head back with brutal strength. He was forced to look up into those eyes. The deep pits of spilled wine on dark wood. Beautiful, but absolutely terrible. Utterly devoid of anything resembling mercy.
“It’s what makes you so effective, sweet boy.” Cazador tilted his head, studying him like a butterfly pinned to velvet. “And so very tiresome.”
Astarion tried to close his eyes. The grip in his hair tightened.
“The fourth precept. The one that matters most.”
Not this one. Anything but—
“Say it.”
The words came out broken. Pieces of shattered glass. Each one a small surrender, a small, reimagined death all over again.
“Thou shalt know that thou art mine.”
“Precisely.” Cazador released him. Astarion’s head hit the marble with a dull crack that rang through his skull. “Mine. My creation. My property. My responsibility.”
He stood. Astarion heard the whisper of silk, the creak of leather. Above him, Cazador smoothed his waistcoat with the air of a man who’d just finished an entirely unremarkable task.
“When you fail, I fail." The sneer exposed the crack in the stoicism. "And I do not fail.” The whip sang.
“Five more should suffice to remind you of your standards. Count them.”
Oh, gods.
“One.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Forced the word out. He vowed not to shed tears. Objects didn't cry. Beautiful, broken things didn’t weep.
Crack.
White fire. His back arched off the marble.
“Two.”
The gasp tore out of his throat. His body convulsed.
Crack.
“Three—”
The lie shattered. One hot tear escaped, carved through gods-only-knew what on his cheeks.
Crack.
“F-four—”
Crack.
By five he was sobbing. He tried to muffle it into the ground; make it sound less helpless. The marble swallowed the sounds and gave nothing back.
A long moment passed. The whip sang a gentle note as Cazador set it aside with the delicate care one might show a Stradivarius.
“Clean yourself up.” That calm, refined voice again. The cadence of a nobleman, patriarch, philanthropist. “Wash the stench from your skin. See that Dalyria mend you properly. You have duties in the boudoir tonight. The merchant Bolvane specifically requested you.”
Astarion’s vision swam.
“And I will not have you disappointing me twice in one evening.”
Cazador’s footsteps moved toward the door, pausing at the threshold. A silhouette of perfect composure.
“Oh, and Astarion?” Almost kind now. “Do try to bring me something worthwhile tomorrow. I should hate to have this conversation again so soon.”
The door closed with a soft, final click.
Silence rushed back in. The absence of his Master’s voice was the closest to peace as Astarion ever got. He lay there. A map of fresh agony, drawn in blood laced kisses. His frame quivered. His throat was raw from screaming words that were supposed to be his shield. The blood wept from his back to the swirling marble that had seen this scene play out a thousand times before.
The tremors eventually subsided. Astarion pushed himself up. Knees first, less painful than using his hands. Every muscle screaming. Fresh wounds burning.
One foot in front of the other. Don’t look at the whip. Don’t look at the place on the floor where you broke.
He focused on the cracks, counting the etched lines until his legs moved.
He stumbled down the corridor. Fading into the suffocating stillness of the palace halls.
Behind him, Cazador’s chamber door stood closed. Inside, no evidence would remain. The marble would be clean by morning. The blood, the tears, the broken thing that had sobbed on the floor. all of it would be erased by dusk. As if the lesson never happened.
Even if the evidence never remained, the scars below the surface were eternal.
