Summary: In the shadow-cursed lands, a vampire spawn named Astarion survives by charm, cunning, and keeping his heart untouched—until he meets Mae, a healer whose laughter defies the darkness around them. What begins as irritation becomes something far more dangerous: a quiet yearning to be seen, to be known, to be more than what he was made to be. As war closes in and old terrors stir, Astarion must decide if he can choose love over fear—or if yielding to the light will destroy him.
~
The first time Astarion saw her, she was laughing.
It was a foolish thing — reckless, even. Laughter like that didn’t belong in the Shadow-Cursed lands, where joy curdled too quickly into grief and silence was the better armor. Yet there it was: bright, unguarded, rising like a bell through the hush of cursed trees and creeping rot. It stopped him mid-step, caught somewhere between the familiar hush of predators and the sharp expectancy of danger.
He turned toward the sound, expecting mockery, or madness.
Instead, he saw her.
She stood in a clearing half-swallowed by moonlight and mist, crouched beside a wounded tiefling boy, one hand steadying a salve-soaked cloth, the other lifting gently as she whispered something that made him giggle despite the pain. She laughed with him then — not to mask the horror, not to deny it, but as though joy itself were an act of defiance. A reclamation.
It unsettled him. That sound. That hope.
Her name was Mae. A healer. A mortal. Too soft for war, too bright for this cursed place. She moved through the camp like sunlight slipping through broken shutters — quiet but warm, gentle but unwavering. She sang old songs under her breath as she worked, cradled the dying like beloved kin, and pressed poultices with hands that never trembled. Not even when the sky cracked with ash and the cursed fog crept nearer.
Astarion had come to the rebel cause with different motives — practical ones. A temporary alliance. A means to kill cultists and maybe, just maybe, buy himself a sliver of freedom from the cruel ghost of Cazador’s hold. There were no illusions in his heart. No loyalty. No light. Only blood and the brittle edge of survival.
But she had no chains. No hidden hunger. She stayed because she chose to.
And that — that — infuriated him.
“You’re going to die,” he said one night, voice low and dry as kindling. The fire between them crackled like bone in frost as she tended a gash on his forearm.
She didn’t flinch, didn’t even look up. Just unwound the linen with measured care. “Aren’t we all?”
He let out a sharp breath that might have been a laugh. “Some of us have… extended timelines.”
Now she met his gaze, and he felt it — that calm, unflinching steadiness in her eyes. Like she saw straight through his smirk, past the fangs and the carefully layered mockery, and into something raw he didn’t want acknowledged.
“And yet here you are,” she said softly, tying the bandage. “Bleeding like the rest of us.”
He hated her in that moment. Hated the way her voice made his name sound like something worth saying. Hated the way she saw his pain and didn’t recoil — didn’t offer pity, either. Just presence. Just care.
She noticed things. The tremor in his fingers after a close fight. The way he lingered at the edge of camp before feeding. The nights he didn’t sleep, watching the stars as if they might offer a map out of the dark.
She never asked. But somehow, she always left a flask of blood where he could find it, untouched and unmentioned. She never made him beg, never forced him to pretend.
It terrified him — that kindness. That soft insistence that he was human, or something close to it. It made him ache in places he’d long ago taught himself to ignore.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
Because it made him want things.
And wanting was dangerous.
Wanting meant weakness. Wanting meant risk. Wanting meant a future — and he’d never been allowed one of those.
Not until now.
Not until her.
~
The turning point came quietly.
Not with a declaration, not with some grand revelation, but in the cold, blood-slick hush between heartbeats — when the forest had fallen still, and the only sound left was the ragged draw of breath in his lungs.
The ambush struck just before moonrise. One moment, the campfire crackled softly, casting long shadows that danced harmlessly across their small clearing. The next, steel flashed in the dark, and shrill cries shattered the night. Figures surged from the underbrush — too many, too fast — and Astarion reacted on instinct, blades drawn before thought had time to catch up.
Chaos unfolded. He moved like water, like shadow, like death. Cutting down foes with clinical elegance. But somewhere in the noise — past the growls and the clash of metal, beyond the blood and snarls — he heard it.
A cry. Sharp. Human. Hers.
He turned, and for a moment, the world narrowed.
Mae lay crumpled at the base of a tree. Her hair, so often tucked behind her ears in careful braids, had come loose, tangled with leaves and dirt. Blood traced a slow, dark line down her temple. Her cloak was torn, her satchel spilled across the ground. A dagger gleamed near her outstretched hand — just beyond her reach.
He was at her side before he realized he’d moved. Dropping low, he pressed a hand to her shoulder, his voice taut and unfamiliar in his own ears. “Mae.”
She blinked up at him, dazed, pupils uneven. Her lips were parted like she was trying to speak, to rise — but all that came out was a hoarse whisper:
“Don’t let them take me.”
The words lodged in him like a blade.
Not because she was afraid of dying — he could see that clearly. No, her fear was of something worse. Of being dragged into the dark. Of chains. Of being owned.
His chest twisted violently.
Something primal and ancient roared awake inside him — something that had nothing to do with hunger, or vengeance, or even survival. It was rage, sharp and bright and searing, flooding his veins like fire.
Astarion stood, eyes burning red in the dark, and became wrath incarnate.
He didn’t fight for strategy, or freedom, or to prove he was still dangerous. He fought because she was hurt. Because someone had dared touch her. Because she had looked at him, bloodied and broken, and believed he would save her.
He didn’t disappoint.
The remaining attackers didn’t stand a chance. He moved like smoke and nightmare, every step a death sentence, every strike a promise kept. He tore through them not with elegance, but with ferocity — no longer the careful predator, but the cornered wolf. And when it was over, when silence finally fell again over the shredded camp, he stood panting in the ruins of it all, blood spattered across his shirt and throat, chest heaving.
Mae was still beneath the tree, barely conscious. He was at her side again, dropping to his knees, careful this time — so careful it nearly undid him. His fingers hovered just above her skin as he brushed tangled hair from her cheek, not daring to touch too firmly, as if she might dissolve.
Her eyes fluttered open, wide and unfocused, catching on his face. There was a tremble in her lip, a flicker of something like relief — and then she closed her eyes again, safe, for now.
Astarion looked down at her.
And in that quiet, terrible moment, he realized something had shifted.
He had cared.
Not in the abstract, not as a matter of necessity or survival or alliance. No — something in him had cracked open when she whispered his name like that, when her blood stained his hands and it mattered. He hadn’t fought like that in two hundred years.
He’d fought for her.
And that, he thought, was dangerous.
Because the last time he’d cared for anything, it had been torn from him piece by piece.
And yet here she was — warm, breathing, and trusting him with a fear that mirrored his own.
It wasn’t love. Not yet. But it was the beginning of ruin.
~
Later, when they were alone — when the camp had quieted and the others had retreated to their tents or their thoughts — she found him standing just beyond the firelight, half-swallowed by the shadows. His arms were crossed, one shoulder braced against a tree, his gaze fixed on nothing in particular. Not watchful. Not brooding. Just… suspended.
She didn’t speak at first. Just approached with quiet steps, as though afraid to disturb something fragile.
When he noticed her, he didn’t move. Didn’t flash his usual grin or offer a wry comment to fill the silence. He just watched her, red eyes faintly luminous in the dark.
Then, gently — as if testing the boundary of something sacred — she reached up and touched his face.
He went utterly still.
Her fingers barely skimmed his cheek, a touch softer than silk, but it struck him like a thunderclap. No hunger in it. No seduction. Just… care.
“You’re not what you pretend to be,” she murmured.
Astarion arched a brow, the corner of his mouth twitching, defaulting to the familiar shield of charm.
“Oh?” he said, voice low and laced with amusement. “And what do I pretend to be?”
“Untouchable.”
The word landed like a spell, cracking through something unseen.
His smile faltered, then vanished entirely.
For a moment, the air between them was thick with things unspoken — centuries of pretense, of performance, of surviving by being whatever someone needed him to be. A lover, a monster, a prize. Never once had it occurred to him that someone might see past the velvet and fangs.
She didn’t kiss him. Didn’t even try.
Instead, she stepped closer and pressed her forehead gently to his. Her hands settled lightly on either side of his face, grounding him. Her breath was warm against his lips, but she didn’t close the distance. She simply stayed.
And gods help him, he didn’t know what to do with it.
Astarion had seduced hundreds — thousands, perhaps — with practiced ease. He’d wielded desire like a weapon, spun pleasure into a mask that always protected what remained of him underneath. But no one had ever held him like this. No one had ever paused.
The stillness of it was terrifying.
It made him want to recoil, to sneer, to laugh it away — or else crumble beneath it.
He did none of those things.
He closed his eyes. Not in surrender, but in something quieter. Something that felt dangerously like trust.
And in the hush that followed, where neither of them spoke, something old inside him stirred — something untouched, something human. Something that dared to believe he was not beyond this.
Not beyond being seen.
Not beyond being held.
~
Their love was not easy.
It was forged in the spaces between silence and struggle — in the ache of old wounds that refused to close and in the flicker of hope that maybe, this time, things could be different. Astarion was still learning what it meant to choose instead of manipulate, to offer rather than seduce, to stay when every bone in his body had been trained to flee.
Some nights he woke choking on air, the ghost of a collar tight around his throat, hands clawing at nothing. The chains were gone, but the memory of servitude remained like smoke in his lungs. Mae would wake with him, not speaking, only resting her hand over his heart as if to remind him that it still beat — that it was his, and his alone.
Other nights, he didn’t come back at all.
She would find the bed cold, the door left open, the wind dragging whispers through the floorboards. He wandered then — sometimes hours, sometimes until dawn — prowling the edge of their camp or the fringes of cities, testing the boundary between solitude and abandonment. Trying to prove, perhaps, that he didn’t need her. That he could still be the master of his own world, untouched and untethered.
But when he returned — disheveled, pale, hollow-eyed — she never asked where he’d been. Never scolded, never wept. She was simply there. Present. Steady. Not to save him, not to change him — but to see him. Fully. As he was, and as he might be.
It made him ache in ways he didn’t understand. To be known like that.
And then came the night he said it.
They were alone on a rooftop in the city, high above the din of the world. The air was cool and silvered with moonlight, casting soft shadows over their quiet vigil. Below, the world moved — lanterns swinging, lives continuing — but up here, it was still. Timeless.
He sat beside her, legs drawn up, hands knotted in his lap. She was speaking of something inconsequential — the shape of a cloud, a story from her village — when he interrupted.
“I love you.”
The words came unbidden, dropped like pebbles into the calm of night. His voice barely held together.
Mae turned, slowly. She didn’t gasp. Didn’t blink.
She smiled — a quiet, knowing thing. Not radiant, not surprised. Just real.
Like she had always known he could say it. Like she had only been waiting for him to know it, too.
“I know,” she said, reaching out to brush his hair from his brow. Her fingers were warm. Grounding. “And I love you, too. Even the parts that still scare you.”
He broke then, just a little. Not into sobs or trembling — but into stillness. Into surrender.
He drew her into his arms, careful as if holding something sacred. And for once, he didn’t think about what he was supposed to do, or how he should look, or what version of himself he needed to become.
Here's the last bit I've written of Portrait's next chapter 💜
He appeared to her in a haze of light, a pretty blur of white and silver against the dark burgundy of the bed’s canopy, like the few times she’d dreamt of him making love to her.
No pressure tags: @karinamay @bardic-inspo @deadly-diminuendo @xxnashiraxx
New Art Release! Finally got to post this chapter and this awesome art by @emperor-ofthe-sun
Chapter 12 : Tumblr AO3
In the aftermath of their victory over the Nether Brain, Astarion, now newly Ascended, and Sima’s love is tested by dark obsessions and a quest for independence. As they navigate perilous power struggles and inner demons, their bond teeters on the edge. Will it endure the encroaching darkness, or be consumed by it?
Tags: gothic romance, character study, pov alternating, slow burn, costumes and masquerade parties, mystery
Summary:
It’s been 10 years since Astarion and his companions have saved themselves and Baldur’s Gate from many great perils. The pale elf has killed his master and has resisted the temptation to ascend, but now finds himself all alone in the ruins of a life that used to be his in Baldur’s Gate, long before Cazador and the mindflayers. He is now a very famous tailor, spending most of his nights sewing elegant corsets and petticoats for nobles from all over Faerûn, but feels like his life is a series dull and colorless moments. His love for Tav has withered and died, like everything he touches, and his old friends are busy living their own lives. Consumed by solitude and struggling to find a purpose to his immortal existence, Astarion crosses path with a young painter named Selene. She has lost her artistry, he has lost his reflection. Could they find in each other what they have been looking for all along?
