Chapter Text
Lilah strolled through the streets of the lower city, taking in the sights and sounds of nighttime. The moon was high, the air was warm, and a light breeze kept pushing stray strands of black hair into her face.
It was a beautiful night.
But she had a destination in mind, and as she approached that familiar dock, she saw a familiar figure laying back on the dock, legs hanging over the edge, engrossed in a book.
“I knew I’d find you here,” Lilah said lightly.
Astarion glanced at her and grinned. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you found me. Are you that good a tracker, or am I just getting predictable?”
“I’m sorry to say it’s the latter,” she replied.
His only response was a dramatic sigh. His eyes were already drifting back to the book. “Awful,” he murmured distantly.
She stepped forward and asked, “Mind if I join?”
“If you’d like.” Astarion sat up to make room for her. Lilah took her place right behind him, looped her arms around his waist and set her head on his shoulder, then pressed a small kiss to his neck.
He chuckled softly and kept reading, and Lilah shut her eyes.
Not for the first time, she marveled at the simplicity of their life. She was no longer a cult leader and he was no longer a slave. Now, they were just two lovers enjoying each other’s company on a pleasant night in Baldur’s Gate.
Yes. There was nothing wrong with this.
She let herself be carried away by the coolness of Astarion’s body, the soft sounds of his occasional sighs, and the noise of the ocean lapping at the shore.
—
Lilah wanted to kill everything. Kill the shopkeep hawking potions as she passed. Kill the beggar child that stared at her with a plea in its eyes. Kill herself. She wasn’t even sure why she was angry, just that she was, and she knew what she had in mind for stress relief.
She made her way through the town and into the sewers until she finally reached the Temple of Bhaal. The large doors were shoved open with a flourish of sorcerous magic, one of Bhaal’s gifts, and she stalked towards Orin’s chambers. They used to be inseparable, but now their spaces were separate; unfortunate, in its own way.
Orin sat on the floor, dissecting some small, brown-furred creature. Odd. usually Orin would be smiling and muttering to herself as she did such a thing, but right now, she had the intense look of an artisan.
How worthless.
Lilah kicked the corpse to the side, where it splattered against the wall.
Orin gave her a bewildered, distraught look. “I was using that!”
“Not anymore,” Lilah hissed, and she saw Orin’s expression grow shadowed with the lust they both felt. “On the bed.”
“I was busy.”
“Doing what? There is no glory in the death of a rodent, or whatever that miserable excuse for an art project was.”
Orin glared at her, but she complied and Lilah crawled over her.
With Orin on her back, Lilah pinned her hands down and hooked her legs around Orin’s hips, trapping her against the mattress. She leaned in and said with a harsh sneer, “You’ve been talking, haven’t you?”
“I know not of what you speak,” Orin snarled. She twisted her hands to try to escape, but Lilah tightened her grip and Orin’s struggle was rendered useless again. Good.
“You’ve been telling others what we get up to, have you? You godsdamned whore.”
“Fuck you,” Orin spat. “Bhaal revels in our sin! Our unholy acts please him! You don’t understand, sister mine. If you refuse to let the world know of the beauty of it, how can He know that we are proud?”
“Shut up,” Lilah said and drew back to slap her. To her credit, Orin took it with no complaint, just a quiet hiss. Lilah contemplated spitting in her face. “If you want the world to know what we do, then let’s do something worth talking about, hm?”
For a moment, fear flashed across Orin’s face, followed quickly by heady lust, and Lilah drank it in like a fine wine. She pushed Orin down as she sat back and drew her knife.
“Strip,” Lilah spat.
Orin snarled, but she obeyed without question. “I despise you.”
“Oh, don’t be like that, hypocrite," Lilah sneered. "Remember the other night? You kept insisting, you can take a little more, Lilah, aren’t you the Chosen? Shouldn’t the Chosen be able to take a little more? If she can’t, why not give little Orin the position? Well,” she spat, “two can play at that game. I will hurt you worse than you ever hurt me.”
Orin stared at her with that same anger and lust, but there was something underneath, something Lilah did not want to consider. Something like sadness. “Do you love me, Sister?”
“Of course,” Lilah breathed, ignoring the question behind the question. “You’re a disgrace, but I’m here to fix that, aren’t I? I’m your leader, little Sister, and I promise this lesson will be memorable.”
“I will kill you someday,” Orin said somberly as she tilted her chin up to meet Lilah’s gaze. “I will drive my knife through your chest-meat and gouge out the heart that no longer beats. I will offer it to Bhaal and then I will devour you whole.”
“Of course. You fancy yourself an artist, so I’ll just be more art, hm? Will that make you feel better, Orin? You have never had control of yourself.” Lilah gestured to the glistening between her thighs. “Messy, uncontrolled little spawn. I suppose that’ll make this easier for you, then. A shame.”
—
Lilah woke up in her own bed with a start, sweat-drenched as nausea roiled in her gut. She clamped a hand over her mouth as dinner threatened to come back up.
In an instant, Astarion sat up too, a hand on her forearm and an arm around her shoulders. He was as light a sleeper as she, and struggled to trance just as she did. It was a blessing and a curse; she hated to wake him, but she couldn’t deny the comfort he provided.
“Just a dream,” he murmured, and she leaned into him.
Another nightmare. She’d been having a lot of those lately, about this topic in particular. When they first started, she’d thought them little more than a sick fantasy, some twisted remnant of the person she used to be, but the more of them she had, the more convinced she was that they were real somehow.
Sometimes she violated Orin in the dreams. Other times Orin violated her. Either way, she woke up nauseous and panicking.
“Did you carry me home?” she asked faintly, desperate for any distraction from the wretched images in her mind.
“I did. Frankly, you were rather heavy.” Astarion sighed so dramatically that she knew he was trying to distract her. “But I suppose it was worth the effort.”
Normally, she’d throw a quip back at him, but all she could muster for now was a quiet, “Thank you.”
He stroked her forearm and she couldn’t help but lean into the touch.
Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe not. But her fingers still buzzed with the electric current of lust half-remembered and her heart still pounded with something she dared not name.
“Just a dream,” she repeated as he stroked her hair. “I need water.”
“Off you go, then.”
She nodded and headed for the washroom.
Lilah hated the mirror. She could pretend that she was normal when she was out and about, but here, when faced with herself, her eyes betrayed the violence in her.
Her dark eyes looked harried, panicked. Black hair, normally in its signature bun and red ribbon, had been let down, and it stuck to the side of her face. Her dark red lipstick was smeared. The tattoo which painted the left side of her face, solid black ink against brown skin, formed squid-like tentacles that rose up her cheek and curled around her eye, glistening with sweat.
One might assume that it was a sweat of panic, a normal reaction to a nightmare.
One would be wrong.
She reached into the bucket, splashed some water over her face, dried off with a nearby towel, and looked back in the mirror. The person that looked at her now still seemed just as miserable, but perhaps a little less lustful.
Well. She wasn’t going to get much better than this for now.
When she returned to bed, it was with the knowledge that she wouldn’t get any more sleep. She hated herself for it, but when she snuggled under the covers and her darling wrapped an arm around her, she pressed her nose into his hair without a moment’s hesitation, and when his breath stopped as he fell into rest, she didn’t move away.
—
It felt like too perfect a coincidence, then, that their next job featured a shapeshifter.
The pair had taken up work as “heroes” — assassins, rather — after the mess of the Absolute. Lilah was still a gods-born sorcerer, even if she’d been freed of Bhaal’s blood, and that came with all the strength of a child of a god. And as for Astarion, a free vampire spawn with a knack for skulking was an excellent ally to have when killing marks.
Their latest employer was unremarkable at first, a young man seeking vengeance against a dryad that had killed his lover. It was only when they prodded for further details that Lilah started to wonder.
“It was a weird sort of dryad,” the man had said. “Could shapeshift, an’ not just into trees an' flowers an' the like. People, even. That’s what I heard, anyway…”
She’d frowned, tried to speak and couldn’t seem to find the proper words. Astarion carried out the negotiation as planned, but when they’d stepped away, he gave her a skeptical look. “Are you quite alright?”
She’d been having the nightmares about Orin for quite some time, and she couldn’t pretend they didn’t weigh heavy on her mind. They were just one segment of a mosaic of vile memories which returned in fits and bursts, but they were the ones that disturbed her the most.
Still, the thought pressed heavy on her tongue. She forced out, “It’s fine.”
He raised a brow. “Somehow I don’t believe you. But carry on, I suppose.”
“When… when you found out about the spawn, you decided to take responsibility, in a way. You let them free, to the Underdark. You let them forge their own path.”
“Well, if you want to frame it like that,” Astarion said drily, but she detected a hint of pride in his smirk. “Why do you mention it?”
“I…” Lilah’s eyes were unfocused, locked in the space beyond Astarion's shoulder. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “If… if something came back from my past, would you think I should deal with it?”
At that, Astarion snorted, and Lilah flushed red. He gave her a look. “Of course not! We both know damned well that you made a lot of enemies in Bhaal’s name. If you had to, then yes, fine, deal with it, but if you could avoid it, why wouldn’t you?”
She shook her head. “To take responsibility, I suppose?”
“What in the worlds brought this on, anyway?”
“Dreams.” She didn’t want to elaborate, so she didn’t. Not now. Not… not until she knew.
“Listen,” he said, his gaze fixed on her. “Whatever may have happened, it’s absurd to hold yourself responsible for it. You’re not that person anymore.”
Lilah shook her head, unable to come up with a convincing argument that wouldn’t make him hate her. But, gods, he deserved to hate her. He, of all people, deserved to hate Lilah if she was actually a rapist.
“It’s not like that,” she said suddenly. “It was about Orin.”
“What, you think the dryad is Orin the Red?”
“No, just…”
“Of course not,” he said derisively. “There are plenty of doppelgangers in Faerun, darling. And simple spells, and disguise kits, and—”
“I know, alright?” Lilah snapped.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Besides, we watched her die. Quite brutally, in fact.”
He was right, of course. It would be ridiculous for someone to come back after a death like that.
Then again, Lilah had done so just over a year ago.
It made her sick to even think about. That was the day when she’d finally escaped her urges, when Bhaal had abandoned her for good, when she’d returned as herself — finally herself — for the first time in her life.
But Orin… she had slain Orin as sure as the moon was round. For the gods’ sake, she’d watched the woman dissolve into a puddle of steaming, hissing blood right in front of her.
She had watched the woman who gave her a second chance, accidentally or not, die without receiving the same chance for herself.
“I suppose you’re right,” Lilah murmured. “Well… let’s investigate this dryad, then.”
The “dryad” wasn’t hard to find. They simply followed a path of corpses and sightings of a shapeshifter. This wasn’t even the first shapeshifter they’d tracked, but something about the killing pattern…
It was familiar. It made Lilah sick.
Their trail led them out of town, towards a cave that had grown over with moss. They made their way in, and they hadn’t been walking for long when Astarion cast a hand in front of Lilah, which stopped her in her tracks.
“Wait,” Astarion murmured. “I hear something.”
“Where?” Lilah whispered. They were both elven, but Astarion’s vampirism meant his senses were better than hers.
“Further in.”
They slowed their pace, hushed their steps. Lilah began to hear it too, heavy breathing punctuated by an occasional high-pitched groan. Dread twisted in her gut..
But when they approached, still cloaked in shadow, the twist in Lilah’s gut turned into a stabbing pain.
“Oh, gods,” Astarion said.
It was her. Orin. Orin the Red, Orin her Sister in Bhaal’s Name, Orin of the Murder Lord, Orin sitting on the floor, entirely naked and covered in blood, some of it crusted and some of it fresh. Her head twitched every few seconds, and she picked at her own chest, stripping flesh from her sternum.
Orin yanked a piece off of herself, placed it in her mouth, and started chewing.
The knife in Lilah’s guts twisted and she swallowed hard against the vomit which rose in her throat. She stared at the creature before her and thanked any god who was listening that they hadn’t been noticed.
“Shit,” Astarion whispered. “What happened to her? How is she alive?”
“I’m not sure,” Lilah replied weakly. “We have to do something.”
“We don’t,” Astarion whispered, his voice firm as he grabbed Lilah’s wrist. “We can leave her here. Look at her, she’ll die on her own. The problem will handle itself.”
It was true. The killings had reduced in frequency, grown increasingly spaced out. If they left, Lilah was sure that Orin would die.
But that wasn’t an option, was it? She couldn’t just leave that pathetic thing to rot here on its own.
Despite everything, Orin was still her sister.
Astarion glanced at her, then did a double take. “No. I see what you’re thinking. Don’t.”
“I have to,” Lilah said softly. “Inveniam Viam.”
She dissolved into mist and reformed just behind Orin, then wrapped one arm around the changeling to pin her arms flat. Lilah pressed her other hand over Orin’s mouth and nose to prevent any verbal spellcasting. Orin shrieked, immediately struggling against Lilah's grip, but her hands were weak with blood loss or malnourishment and Lilah was able to maintain her hold.
“Subdue her!” Lilah shouted. “Don’t kill her!”
Orin sucked two of Lilah’s fingers into her mouth and bit down.
Lilah screamed.
Teeth cut into flesh and tore as Lilah wildly tried to pull her fingers out of her mouth. The teeth just bore down harder, threatening to crack bone.
“Damn it!” Astarion yelled as he dashed forward to clobber Orin in the skull with the butt of his knife.
One bash, then another.
Orin’s jaw went slack.
It was over.
Lilah gasped and tears spilled from her eyes as she let go of Orin’s limp body. Her fingers slipped out of the girl’s mouth, bloodied and painful, her flesh torn to bits.
“Shit,” Astarion muttered. He knelt down before Lilah and pulled a healing potion out of his pack which he poured over her wounds.
Lilah hissed, still sobbing. It hurt, flesh knitting back together in awful stitches. Her teeth ground together as she shut her eyes against the pain.
When she reopened them, her index and middle fingers were misshapen but whole. She tried to flex them and found them weak.
Astarion’s lips pursed. “I’m sure it will heal on its own. For now…” He gave Orin’s body a disdainful look.
Did it even make sense to take her with them? The woman was clearly a mess, probably too far gone to save. Lilah gazed upon hay-colored hair stained with streaks of red and brown, the fragile rise and fall of her chest.
She looked so small like this.
Quite suddenly, Lilah remembered that Orin had always been a few inches shorter than her and something in her shattered
“We have to take her,” Lilah said. “We have to.”
“Are you serious? She just tried to kill you. Again! This isn’t even new for her!”
“It doesn’t matter if…” She touched the mottled white skin of Orin’s face — so soft, so filthy. “Please. Please.”
“Shit,” Astarion said, his cold hand rubbed her back in small circles. The look on her face must have been particularly concerning for him to react like that.
But she couldn’t let herself care. Right now, they had to get Orin elsewhere. Anywhere else.
Soft and soothing, Astarion spoke with the same tone that he sometimes used when reading stories to her at night, “We should kill her.”
“No!” Lilah said. “We can’t. We can’t, we can’t, we—”
“Gods, Lilah, look at her! She’s a wreck, there’s no saving—!”
“She’s my sister!”
A heavy silence fell over them. Lilah could tell that Astarion didn’t think it mattered all that much, but at least he’d stopped arguing. Could she convince him?
She took a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes with her palms. “We have to get her to Shadowheart. She’ll be able to fix her.”
“Doubtful.”
“We have to try,” she insisted. “If we don’t, I’ll never be able to live with myself.”
His lips were still pursed as he gave her another one of those worried looks, then he sighed. “Only for you. Ugh…”
—
The moon was still bright at this point in the month, but they managed to stay cloaked in shadow as they made their way to Shadowheart’s little cottage just outside the city. It was a small place, crafted of wood with a stone chimney, just a few rooms in total. Lilah had raised an eyebrow when Shadowheart had decided to move in there, but it seemed she was happy enough.
Now, Lilah carried Orin over her shoulder and prayed to no god in particular that she wouldn’t wake up, though it seemed like she was solidly out for the time being. Astarion carried both their packs, but for once he didn’t complain.
When they arrived, Astarion banged on the door, and Lilah shouted, “Shadowheart! It’s us!”
They heard rustling, and an anxious minute later Shadowheart opened the door. Her eyes widened. “Oh, sweet Lady.”
She was clothed in a simple tunic and pants, presumably her nightclothes. For once, her pure white hair was down around her shoulders, but she still wore her usual thick black smudging around the eyes. Lilah wondered, not for the first time, if it was actually an illusion.
In any case, Lilah was sure Shadowheart wouldn’t have wanted to be caught dead like this.
Then Shadowheart noticed the body in Lilah’s arms and immediately shifted to a defensive stance, and Lilah interrupted, saying, “No, wait, she’s not a danger!” At that, Astarion snorted, but Lilah carried on. “Just hold on, please, Shadowheart, please help—”
“That’s Orin the Red,” Shadowheart said, voice low, hands raised in preparation for spellcasting. “Why would you bring her here?”
“She’s badly injured.”
“Why?”
“She’s my sister,” Lilah pleaded. “Please.”
“You killed her once,” she said warily. She eyed Orin’s body, the blood drenching Orin and now Lilah too. “How did she return?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Lilah admitted. “But she wasn’t… she wasn’t herself.”
“I’d imagine that’s a good thing,” the cleric said snidely. “I can’t see any benefit to keeping her around. Unless something’s changed?”
Lilah opened her mouth, but hesitated. “I… I can’t tell you.” It was the closest thing to truth that Shadowheart would get from her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just can’t. Do you trust me?”
“I do,” Shadowheart said warily. “But you’re not exactly known for your common sense, Lilah.”
“If she acts up I will kill her myself, I swear. I will take responsibility for it.”
Shadowheart frowned and considered for a moment, then nodded. “Fine. Put her outside. Blood is awful to get out of a rug.”
“Thank you,” Lilah breathed. “Gods, thank you, Shadowheart.”
As she headed towards the back of the home, searching for a relatively thicker patch of grass to cushion Orin’s body, she heard Astarion whisper, “This doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“Not at all,” Shadowheart replied quietly.
Lilah knew they were right, at least from their perspective, but how could she explain? Instead, she laid Orin down on the ground, positioned her limbs to hopefully be more comfortable, and knelt beside her.
She was still breathing. That was good, at least. But she looked so fragile, rising and falling in short, shaky bursts…
Lilah balled her fists in her lap and watched as Shadowheart approached. The woman’s nose wrinkled as she knelt at Orin’s other side. Astarion sat down and leisurely put his legs up, crossing his ankles and laying back on his forearms, watching with something between disgust and fascination.
“I never greeted you,” Lilah realized. “Hello, Shadowheart.”
A wry smile. “A bit late for that, isn’t it?”
Lilah opened her mouth, but she didn’t have a good response, so she shut it again.
Shadowheart approached cautiously, as if she expected Orin to jump up at any moment. It wasn’t unreasonable, all things considered. “We’ll need to tie her up. She can’t be let loose.”
“Of course,” Lilah said.
“But, Lilah?”
Lilah’s mouth went dry again. She bit her lip. “Yes?”
She knew that Shadowheart trusted her. She could see it in the way Shadowheart looked at her, in the fact that the Selunite had agreed to help them at all with this. But she was still braced for the worst when Shadowheart said, “You have to explain yourself. Soon.”
A bit of tension eased from Lilah’s shoulders. She rubbed her elbows. “I don’t know if I can,” she said simply. She didn’t want to lie.
Shadowheart peered into her eyes for a long moment, then sighed. “Fine. I’m no stranger to secrets that can’t be told. But don’t let me regret this.”
“I won’t,” she said solemnly. With that, Lilah turned to Astarion. “Could I have my pack, love?”
“Certainly,” Astarion said. He pushed it over to Lilah, who caught it and dug out the long coil of rope she had brought along just for this purpose. Just in case.
But Lilah hesitated. “We should clean her up, shouldn’t we?”
“Squeamish?” Astarion asked dryly.
“Not at all,” Lilah said as she looked down at Orin again. The woman’s body seemed so fragile. Hair, matted and loose, stuck to her body in sticky red clumps. Body thin and wounded still, despite Shadowheart’s spell. The blood across her body, pooled in places and spattered in others.
How much of it was hers? How many victims had Orin claimed?
“Let me heal her first,” said Shadowheart. “Then you can clean her all you want.”
The process of tying her up was messy at best. Lilah had to hold Orin upright while Astarion wound rope around her and tied it securely, first ‘round her chest and then her legs.
Gods, Orin looked even more wretched like this. Helpless. It sent a flash of something through Lilah which she refused to acknowledge.
A vestigial impulse. It had to be. She was not that, not anymore.
But there was a reason she’d stayed in the killing business. It came naturally to her, even after her father had finally let her free. But normally she could contain the perverse joy it filled her with. Normally she could pretend that she was entirely free of her impulses.
Tonight, she found it much harder than usual.
Shadowheart skimmed across Orin’s chest with two fingers, then raised them to peer at them in the moonlight. She squinted. “Light, please.” Hurriedly, Lilah cast Light on the grass, producing a soft white glow that flowed out over the lot of them. Shadowheart inspected her fingers. “Whose blood is this?”
“Some of it is hers,” Astarion said darkly. “As for the rest? Who knows.”
“She’s got a number of wounds. Some are still open…”
“Some of them were self-inflicted,” Lilah explained as she watched Shadowheart’s slow movements with an anxiety she hardly recognized. The cleric didn’t seem concerned in the least, but then again, who would be concerned over Orin the Red? “Astarion hit her over the head a few times, but that’s it. The rest is probably from her victims.”
Shadowheart hummed in thought, then wiped her fingers on the blades of grass and held her open palms over Orin. “Te curo.”
Soft blue light flashed over Orin, then coated her skin and sunk in. Some of the wounds quickly knit themselves closed while the deeper ones at least stopped bleeding.
“That takes care of the worst of it,” Shadowheart said. “At least, the worst that I can handle for now. Go clean her up. I’ll bring over some soaps…”
“Thank you, Shadowheart. Gods, thank you.”
The woman gave her a self-satisfied smile. “Of course. Anything for an old friend.”
With that, Shadowheart left and returned with a few washcloths and some soaps, and Lilah lifted Orin over her shoulder again with a grunt. Together, she and Astarion made their way to the river.
The trek over the hill wasn’t that long, but it seemed that Lilah’s strength had been drained by the events of the night because each step felt like ten. Still, they eventually made it over to the riverbank.
It wasn’t a huge river by any means, but it was more than suitable. Lilah lay Orin down on the shore and wet a cloth, prepped it with soap in the running water. Meanwhile, Astarion sat by the edge of the river and sighed. He extended a foot towards the water as if curious of what he could no longer touch, then he pulled back and wrapped his arms around his knees.
With Astarion’s eyes on her, Lilah reached for Orin’s face.
She moved to start with Orin’s face and saw soft skin and a light frown. She hesitated. This seemed… too intimate, somehow, as if wiping the face of a—
She ground her teeth and moved down to work on an arm instead. There was no point in considering such awful things.
Blood sloughed off easily, left nothing but scratched, mottled skin in its wake. Lilah’s fingers traced the creases of the wounds, some healed and some not, and wondered how old they were. “How long do you think she’s been back on this plane?” Lilah asked quietly as she continued to scrub.
Astarion made a quiet noise of consideration as he peered at Orin before he said decisively, “Not long. In the state she was in, I doubt she managed very many fights.”
“That’s good, at least.”
“Darling, you aren’t stupid. Rescue her all you want, but what next?” Astarion raised a shoulder in question. “Will you keep her tied up forever? And what if she escapes?”
Lilah kept silent. She didn’t know.
Astarion just sighed. “Please tell me you at least have a plan.”
“The beginnings of one,” Lilah replied. She moved to Orin’s left leg and started at the foot. The bottom was callused, an errant shard of glass sticking out from the sole. Lilah grimaced as she gently pulled it out.
“She’s bleeding again,” she said.
Astarion’s nose wrinkled. “No thank you.”
“Not quite what I meant.”
Lilah kept cleaning in silence, and she slowly moved up the leg to the thigh, then Orin’s other leg, ever higher, then…
Well, she could do Orin’s stomach first. By now, the washcloth was utterly soaked, so she put it in the river and squeezed it out once, twice, three times. It came back red each time, and Lilah’s mouth watered a bit.
It seemed that this cloth was too saturated with blood and grime to be of any use for now, so she grabbed another and continued.
Next was Orin’s stomach. Lilah saw a twitch as she pressed against soft, fragile skin, gentle in its paleness in the quiet moonlight.
When she got to Orin’s chest, she worried her teeth against her lip at the sight of the mess there. It was clear that Orin had been picking at the skin; the area over her sternum was a bloody wreck covered in scabs in various sizes and stages of healing. They’d closed with Shadowheart’s spell, but they’d take further time to heal.
Ribs first, Lilah thought. Then breasts, then the space around the wound. Then the wound itself.
Her movements were mechanical. When she was done, Lilah lifted Orin by the shoulders and turned her over, putting her head in Lilah’s lap.
The weight of her skull and the warmth of her breath did not feel intimate in any way. The way that Lilah’s forearm brushed against long blonde hair did not make her feel anything but sorrow.
She couldn’t let it.
Lilah glanced up and saw Astarion staring. “Something the matter?”
Astarion’s brows were furrowed, eyes questioning. “What’s going through your head right now?”
“That I need to get her clean.” It wasn’t a lie, not technically, though she knew already that Astarion wouldn’t be convinced in the slightest.
“You look ready to burst.”
She swallowed. Astarion’s gaze didn’t flicker.
Lilah went back to scrubbing.
“Fine,” Astarion sighed, leaning back again to stare at the moon. “Let me know when you’re finished, hm?”
His concern was well-warranted. But Lilah already knew what she would do if Orin turned out to be a threat. She would kill the woman, and if she died in the process, then so be it.
That in mind, she made a decision. If she could explain nothing else, she could at least say this. “You’ve no reason to be worried.”
He tittered. “I’ve no reason, but you don’t, hm? Your tongue isn’t as silver as you think it is, Bhaalspawn.”
She shut her eyes. “Please.”
“I’ll drop it. For now,” he said. “Until she wakes up. Who knows, maybe she’ll tell me what you won’t.”
Gods, Lilah hoped she wouldn’t.
Gods, if Orin became coherent then Lilah would have to tell him, wouldn’t she?
Gods.
Eventually, the time came that all was done except the space between Orin’s legs.
She kept cleaning.
She refused to think about it.