Hello! It's me! I have not posted anything here in months, but I have nonetheless accumulated a few WIP snippet tags from the likes of @lolthwoven, @meeshrox, @nw39, and @arachnomancer. Thanks to all of you for thinking of me 🖤
While I took a break from writing for a while, and have been a little slow getting back into it, I have recently put some work into this scene from The Hypothetical Jury Duty Genre Thriller Sequel; which features a certain Sharran counterintelligence pro. So, you get a drafty, extended snippet! After this silly Hollywood-style promo image I just rendered for shits and giggles.
“He’s a little sweet, isn’t he?” Shadowheart says, once the gentle creaking of the stairs fades to silence.
“He is.” Strix brings her first finger to her lips, smiling behind it. “Shhhh…”
“Don’t worry, I’m an expert when it comes to keeping secrets.”
“Practically religious about it…”
Both women chuckle, gazing at each other in a conspiracy of mirth and bedroom eyes that continues until Astarion returns, managing two clean wine glasses in one hand, with a third, plus a freshly uncorked bottle clutched in the other.
“That isn’t the one we had open,” Strix remarks, as both she and her companion sit up, rearranging pillows to lean comfortably against the wall.
“No,” he replies. “But I thought I might buy myself a little time, before I am inevitably sent back downstairs.”
Astarion pours a glass of wine for Shadowheart and passes it to her, then does the same for Strix. Then, with his own glass tended to and the bottle set down on the nightstand, he stretches out on the bed at their feet, propped up on his side and resplendent in his nudity, like one of those imagined harem women that men so love to paint in an impossibly appealing state of repose.
“So, Shadowheart, how did you end up working for Jaheira? I can’t imagine old Viconia to be keen on letting one of her flock stray to the employ of another, but for reasons of subterfuge. But Jaheira knows you’re a Sharran, doesn’t she?” He drinks, smugly, then proceeds, “Have you been let out on some sort of Sharran [rumspringa, but Faerûn- suggestions welcome]?”
Instead of answering, Shadowheart looks flatly at Strix. “I take back what I said.”
“Take what back?” Astarion asks, to no avail. That question, too, remains unanswered.
“You know Viconia?” Shadowheart counters, with a single eyebrow quirked in an expression that Strix is both tickled and somewhat chagrined to note as strikingly similar to one of Astarion’s own.
Pretty, secretive, and morally dubious—at best. Expressive eyebrows, in spite of themselves…
“We might have crossed paths, once or twice. She and Cazador both were in the business of secrets,” Astarion replies. “But I don’t ever recall seeing you at the cloister, and I’m sure I would have remembered your face. A rather lovely one, it must be said,” he says, before pausing for his wine. Then he continues, “What are you, just about her age?” nodding his head towards Strix.
“Ah. Well, we must have just missed each other. Assuming you’ve been there the better part of your adult life, if not longer.” He waits a few seconds to add, “You don’t strike me as the sort of person who joins later in life.”
Shadowheart’s expression then is one of light amusement and a little withholding, in that enticing way of hers. She spends a moment considering him, thoughtful and stoic. Then she asks, calmly, “Did it hurt, to discover she’d been hiding things from you? That she’d lied?”
Her question takes Strix by surprise. “What makes you think it was him who found me out, and not the other way around?” she interjects, just before discomfort sets in. But Shadowheart glances her way only briefly, before returning her gaze to Astarion.
“She is clever, I suppose, but she’s no spy.”
“No, that she is not. Just a cold-blooded killer,” he chuckles, switching his wine glass between hands so that he can rest one on her ankle, while Strix glowers back. “Or, a rather hot-blooded one.”
She moves her foot closer to him, inviting touch; and soon, her affected displeasure disappears into the aether, coaxed away by fingers that slip up her calf. She smiles at him, and he smiles back, giving her muscle a squeeze. Then, he turns to look at Shadowheart.
“It did hurt. To answer your question,” he says, gently. “Not that any of it was the sort of thing I could reasonably expect someone not to lie about, not did I have any real leg to stand upon myself, in that regard. Of course. But it did hurt, all the same.”
Strix feels the return of her now familiar guilt—a little softer than before, but still very present—like a stone in her stomach, or something caught at the bottom of her throat. She averts her eyes momentarily, gathers her fortitude, then returns them to Astarion, then to Shadowheart—just in time to see her eyes fall to the mattress. “Funny, how we’re like that,” she says, very quietly, suddenly veiled by her silky dark hair. “Hypocrites, all of us.”
Melancholy pervades the silent bedroom. Strix places her hand on the other woman's shoulder, in a gesture she hopes might be comforting, though it hardly seems to register. It’s a bitter, hopeless sort of a sadness. A lonely one.
She thinks for a moment, biting down on the insides of her cheeks. Then, donning a cheery confidence, she speaks up. “Well, hypocrisy is just part and parcel of subjectivity. And I wouldn't trade that for anything, personally. Although it's good to keep an eye on it, I think. Hypocrisy.” When Shadowheart looks up to her with a faint, skeptical smile, Strix winks.
“Was that a thesis of yours from college?” Astarion asks, amused. “Hypocrisy is part and parcel of subjectivity?”
“No, no. I just came up with that one.”
“Ah.” He returns his attention to Shadowheart. “She's told you what she studied in school, has she not?”
“No. But it sounds like philosophy.”
Astarion grins. “I’m surprised she hadn't told you already. She lures people into bed that way, you know.”
“Please…” Strix takes an emphatic sip of wine. “I’m not sure anyone's ever been lured into bed with philosophy.”
“Gale Dekarios likely would be,” he mumbles in reply; adding, at Shadowheart’s puzzled expression, “A famously erudite and rather pedantic lawyer. The plaintiffs’ attorney from her trial. Or not her trial, per se, but… Well, you get it.”
“I see.” Smirking, Shadowheart's eyes flit between the two of them. She takes a long drink, swishing the wine around in her mouth before she swallows it. Then she says, “My real name is Jenevelle, by the way.”
She snorts. Her lips twitch a little, almost bashfully. “I’ve never actually told anyone that before.”
Strix just gawks, while Shadowheart has another sip of wine. “To be fair, I only recently learned it. Which, to answer your question,” her eyes find Astarion’s curious ones, “is how I ended up working for Jaheira. More or less.”
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