Chapter 2
My sword hung heavy at my side, grounding me, as we traversed the empty corridors of the House of Hope. This is me, I thought, savoring the power I finally held in my hand. I am back.
Wait until Raphael sees me.
To my sides my friends cast glances around every corner, eyeing every wall carrying a portrait of the archdevil, as if it might come alive at any moment. Meanwhile I looked straight ahead, a decisiveness in my step I barely recognized. I could feel it in the air, on the taste of it in my mouth: Raphael wasn’t in the house. Perhaps he couldn’t bare it, I thought, the way things had changed. They way Haarlep … Or perhaps he had gone out to make things right. Though I doubted that. I almost snorted out loud.
Wyll cleared his throat next to me, keeping up with my steps. Weapon still ready at his side.
”You’d think this place would have more …”, he pondered, looking around. ”Personell.”
”They’re in Cania”, I said, not slowing down.
”You better have a plan, Tav”, said Lae’zel, badly masking the bloodlust in her voice.
And after another moment’s silence Karlach added:
”… Do you have a plan?”
”Not really”, I said, thinking: I have never had a plan. Still, I felt strangely confident. ”But I have leverage.”
I entered the devil’s boudoir as if for the first time, my friends behind me, weapons drawn. I felt cool, collected. Completely shut off from the quiet heartbreak throbbing in my chest as I passed the familiar arched doorways leading out onto the balconies. The fire crackling once more in the fireplace. The soft ripple of water in the enchanted pool.
We crossed the room, stealthily, our shadows sweeping across the marble walls. The gauzy curtain drawn between the bath and the great bed beyond it moved only slightly with the wind of our passing. On the other side of it we stopped in our tracks.
Stretched out on their back across the bed, to their full glorious size, laid a devil dressed only in inscribed leather harnesses. Hair tussled, wings splayed out beneath them. Every scratch on their body healed, eyes closed and eyelids soft. I wondered if they were under some sort of spell, or if the relief of coming back here – back home – after their time in Cania had really been so great that they slept so soundly, like a child. The latter made my heart ache.
After a beat of silence Shadowheart said, with a low voice:
”Is that …?”
”No”, I said, and thought then that Raphael and Haarlep weren’t similar at all. ”They just look like him.”
”Hotter though”, Karlach added, watching the sleeping incubus and tilting her head to the side.
I lifted my sword, feeling its silent song through the air reverberate through my arm, before slowly lowering above Haarlep’s throat. When the blade touched skin I held it still.
Haarlep opened their eyes. Twin flames lit in darkness. Their eyes widened when they recognized me above them.
”Tav”, they said, a blank expression on their face, before their gaze wandered to my friends towering behind me. At this something seemed to settle, harden even, in their eyes. ”I see”, they said.
And I thought I could see them transform before me, a mask of playful calm slipping over their features. As if they were getting into a character. One they knew very well how to play.
”No tricks, devil”, Wyll said behind me. ”We’ve seen the likes of you before.”
Haarlep raised an eyebrow.
”I’m a incubus”, they said, a smirk tickling the corner of their mouth. ”But I forgive the transgression, and I assure you …” Their gaze slid up and down Wyll’s body. ”You have never seen the likes of me.”
I almost felt Wyll recoil, as Haarlep – looking fairly accustomed to having a sword’s blade pressing against their neck – slowly sat up against the pillows. All the while I kept my sword close, close to their throat, all but letting the weight of it sink into Haarlep’s flesh.
Haarlep looked back to me.
”Am I being held hostage?” they asked.
”Yes”, said I.
”I see.”
Haarlep looked around the room, eyeing my companions and their weapons as if to make sure they were truly overpowered – which they were – before making a slight gesture with a clawed hand.
”So”, they said. ”How should we entertain ourselves while we wait? Raphael won’t exactly hurry back unless he senses some actual damage has been done to me -”
For a split second – old muscles reawakening in me, old reflexes, skills so well honed I could never really forget them – I lowered my sword, only to slap Haarlep hard enough across the face that their great head was flung to the side. A flash of wet crimson on their lip, a wince of pain. And immediately, my sword was back against their throat. My heart was pounding, and even as Haarlep smiled, licking the blood off their lip, I thought I could see a flicker of hurt in their eyes. And I felt it too. The hurt.
”That ought to do it”, said Haarlep flatly.
I steadied my heartbeat, remembering Haarlep’s betrayal. If it wasn’t for what they did, Astarion wouldn’t be chained to a wall in Mephistopheles’ dungeon.
I sighed, soundlessly.
”Now we wait.”
We didn’t have to wait long. Five minutes, perhaps. Then again, I had truly lost my sense of time.
Before anything else, the room was filled with rage. Like a low note, trembling, swelling. Incandescent fury. Then: the heat. The air, boiling. And a wall of fire, roaring, the water in the pool exploding at once into steam. Sweat broke out all over my body, a violent shiver, a gasp of thick, hot air. And in the flames erupting before us, as Raphael took his form in the room, I saw a flash of something else. Another body: not the lord, not the devil. Something other, gruesome. A two headed beast.
In the next moment, as what was presumably Raphael’s eyes – burning red behind the mist of steam – landed on Haarlep – now locked in tight behind the large, curved blade of Karlach’s battle axe – Raphael started to settle. Reeling himself in, his monstrous body shrunk back into its cambion form. Dressed still in the finery that he had worn to Cania, mist swirling around him, he looked shocked to the point of disgust to find us all there. His flaming eyes bore into me.
”You should have told me we expected guests”, he said, voice so icy it clashed against the room’s temperature, and so sharp it tasted like blood. ”I would have brought out the good bourbon.”
A trickle of sweat ran down my back. My heart pounded, painfully, in my chest, but I stood my ground before him.
”I’m going back to Cania”, I said, and saw Raphael’s gaze dip to the sword held ready at my side. A muscle twitched next to his nose.
”So soon?” he said, making a show of languidly strolling over to the crystal bottles gathered on a decorative table. Scoffing, he poured himself a glass of golden liquid. ”I didn’t realize you enjoyed our last visit so much. Need I remind you that you have signed a contract? Quite enthusiastically, too.” Half lifting his glass in a toast, he turned to my companions. ”’Do it’, she begged me, like so many before her. Making herself mine.”
”I’m breaking the contract, Raphael”, I said coldly.
”Evidently.”
Raphael emptied his glass in one swallow, tilting his head back in what looked like an eye roll.
”We want the Orphic hammer”, I said. ”And access to the portal room.”
Raphael set his glass down with a sharp clink, and he shot me a murderous look. Finally, it seemed, his cool broke.
”Well, you may pry it out of my cold dead claws then”, he snarled. ”You delusional little cunt.”
”How about Haarlep’s cold dead claws?”
My voice was steady, and a tense silence followed, during which Raphael seemed to find my threat was perfectly serious. I would do it. For Astarion, I would do it. This was all my fault and I would do a thousand more mistakes to set it right.
”You did show your hand, Raphael”, I said. ”You told me you love them. And I am all out of patience when it comes to your bullshit.”
Raphael shot a look at Haarlep, the incubus’ skin straining against the axe blade, before looking away again. Pouring himself another drink he sighed, under his breath: ”How tragicomical …”
Meanwhile, I felt my friends’ silence vibrate, as if they all held their breaths. The devil, in love? If only they knew the stranger things that had happened lately.
Raphael seemed deep in thought then, scoffing and smiling into his drink as if at an inside joke, softly shaking his head. When he looked back up at me, his smile had all but thawed.
”You have been a disappointment in many ways, Tav”, he said. ”But you have never been boring. It saddens me to see you dive headfirst into your own destruction, but by all means. Take your little friends with you to the portal room and you will find its doors unlocked. If by some divine intervention you were to return … we will talk about the hammer.”
I glanced at Lae’zel, and we exchanged a look, a nod. Silently, she told me: the vampire first. A little warmth in my chest. How could I have survived for so long without my friends?
I looked back at Raphael, and saw immediate annoyance on his face when I opened my mouth.
”Also”, I said. ”Break the spell on Haarlep. Unglamour them.”
I surprised myself. A choked little sound came from behind Karlach’s axe blade.
”Tav, there is no need”, said Haarlep, quickly, like a gasp.
”There is”, I said, staring still at Raphael. ”I dare you to face what they really feel for you. No, I demand it.”
And Raphael, lowering his head while I spoke, as if considering to ram me with his horns, glowered back at me out of the shadows darkening in his face.
”Are you finished?” he said, smiling suddenly, like you would at a child with a strong imagination. I said nothing. ”Mephistopheles glamoured Haarlep. Defeat him and all his spells are broken.”
Then, as if he remembered something, his smile died. His eyes blackened with something unexpectedly soft, somber even. Like regret. And a string of memories flashed before my mind’s eye, sensations across my skin: Raphael’s hand on the small of my back as he lead me in a dance, his whisper against my neck as he gave me his earnest advice. A gentle claw around the curve of my ear, fastening a strand of my hair behind it. Now, when Raphael took my gaze in his, he held it fast, telling me with a low voice: ”He is going to burn you to cinders.”
I broke away. And once I had I couldn’t look back.
”We will see about that”, I said.
I turned to leave, my friends gathering behind me – Haarlep gasping for air, their claws clacking against the floor as Karlach finally let them go – and I thought that surely, the moment I turned my back to him, Raphael would smite me somehow. But he didn’t. He didn’t even move to stop me, and for some dark and depraved reason I felt a little disappointed.
That was before I heard him call out behind me, as we exited the boudoir:
”Oh, and one more thing, little mouse. If you find yourself in the sizzling hot embrace of our mutual friend Mizora again -”shit … ”Tell her I said ’hello’. And ’I told you so’.”
We set up camp in what was once the house’s dining hall, the logs ever burning in the carved marble fireplace. Our campfire.
There was no point in returning to Cania before a full night’s rest, my friends finally convinced me. Then again they hadn’t seen what I had. Astarion’s body, striped with cuts and carvings. The hollows where his fangs should be … Needless to say I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the floor at the edge of our makeshift camp, resting my sword across my thighs. Its weight my only comfort.
Staring into the labyrinthine darkness beyond the campfire’s halo I thought I could see him there: flashes of Astarion’s pale face, before he turned to leave that final time. Had it really been impossible for me to stop him? And that tremor of fear in his eyes, had it been there then? Or was I imagining it now?
Silently, I called out into the ether, but I couldn’t reach him. It was no use, but I kept on calling. I had little else to do apart for readying myself for the moment when Raphael would reappear in the hall, in an explosion of flames, coming to finally end me. But I waited, and even as the silence tensed and tensed, the moment never came. Why waste time on killing me when he seemed so sure his father would do the job for him?
How had it come to this?
Wyll and Karlach had been pointedly silent since Raphael’s unnecessary little reveal. Karlach didn’t even look at me as she past me on her way to her bedroll.
”You are a right horny idiot, Tav”, she snarled, out of the corner of her mouth. ”I hope you know that.”
Ouch. Was there anything worse than Karlach disappointed? Perhaps Halsin disappointed, so thank the gods that he had stayed in Faerûn.
Now, making my stomach flutter with nerves, I heard the familiar click of Wyll’s boots, closing in behind me. I didn’t dare to look at him as he sank down next to me, with a sigh as if he had aged a decade since I last saw him. If he had, it would surely be my fault somehow.
When he spoke, he spoke softly.
”You are a perfect fool to trust her.”
”I don’t.”
”But you have dealings with her?” A spark of emotion in his voice, a sharp jab in my chest. ”Despite everything that I told you, she … Mizora ruined my life.”
I winced.
”I know …”
Wyll sighed. So much like a disappointed parent I almost wished Halsin was there in his stead. No, like a disappointed friend. And that was infinitely worse.
”If you were to take anyone’s advice on this, Tav, should you not take mine?”
I felt his gaze on me, but didn’t have the courage to meet it.
”But I am not like you, Wyll”, I told him, wincing again. ”You are a good man. I am wicked and perverse, and I’ve found that somehow … I love her.”
Wyll was silent. Sounding strangely far away, the fire crackled.
”I love her”, I said. That flutter again, in my stomach. ”Or something about her that’s … hidden. That feels reserved for me.” Finally, I looked at him. And his face was kind. ”You can hate me if you have to. I have made my stupid decisions and I promise, I promise that their consequences will never affect you, or the others.”
”It’s not myself that I am worried about”, said Wyll.
Once again I sighed.
”I know.”
Together, we looked back out into the darkness. No one was coming. Raphael had left us to our own devices. When Wyll finally spoke again I thought I heard half a smile in his voice.
”I hope to the gods that you know what you are doing”, he said, pulling his legs up to stand. ”Trust that I don’t”, said I.
”We are not done talking about this, you know.”
He looked down at me until I met his gaze. He was perfectly serious.
”I know”, I said, forcing a smile. ”But let’s survive the next twenty-four hours first.”
I tried to laugh, but couldn’t. Wyll simply shook his head.
Long after I heard the familiar rhythm of Wyll’s sleeping breath join the others’ I was still wide awake. I came to my feet, surprised to find my knees steady. For another moment, without turning back to the campfire, I listened to my sleeping comrades. Then I stepped into the darkness.
I would be back. But right now, I needed her. I needed her bad. And even though I had nothing else to offer her, I needed her help. One final favor.