Archive of Our Own ^beta

Something is terribly wrong. Wyll knows it is terribly wrong because he is terribly comfortable, and he hasn't been comfortable like this in a very long time.

There is a plush mattress below him. Soft, heavy blankets above him. There is a smell of cedar and woodsmoke in the air—like the scent of a tidy house with the windows open.

None of this had been there when he'd gone to sleep last night.

He doesn't, yet, have a clear memory of last night. But if it had involved a bed, a fire, a house, he would certainly remember. He would not feel a queasy wrongness suffuse him as he stares up at a ceiling painted in buttery sunlight yellow, a nameless absence tugging at him like the tender hole left by a missing tooth.

He would not feel a foreign arm wrapped around his body.

The stranger—an elven man, Wyll thinks, though he's not entirely sure what makes him so certain of the fact—is draped over Wyll’s chest, arms around his waist, most of his body over Wyll’s. His grip is tight, possessive. He is lithe but heavy, his limp weight making it hard to draw breath—though Wyll does carefully, dutifully, his eyes still fixed on the yellow-painted ceiling.

He needs to breathe. Breathe, in and out, and he will find a way out of this.

The man seems to be asleep. That's good. If Wyll can only get out from under him without waking him, perhaps he can escape a confrontation with his captor.

Wyll shifts—but the man does, too, letting out a pillowy murmur against Wyll’s neck. Wyll freezes. He does not breathe again until he's certain the stranger has fallen back into reverie.

There is another way out—if Wyll can't escape without waking the stranger, he could try to leverage the element of surprise. He could attack him; wound him, if only he can find a weapon. Nothing is immediately in reach, but that’s all right. Wyll carefully sticks out his hand, away from the stranger's body—on a bed so unfathomably vast Wyll hasn't come to the edge of it even when stretched to the limit of his limb—and thinks of his rapier.

It isn't the finest weapon—nothing like the true prizes in his father's collection—but it is Wyll’s, made just to suit him as a gift for his sixteenth birthday. Wyll took it with him that night he followed a voice out of his bedchamber to a dark and fiery hill. Father hadn't asked Wyll to give it back before he was banished, and Wyll was grateful—both because the sword has kept him alive in more ways than one out on the Frontiers, and because it's one of Wyll’s few belongings from home. He'd lost his shoes; he has none of his books; his shirt and breeches grow more tattered by the day; even his name is all but lost to him with so few around to use it. But the truth is, he's not sure he could lose the sword if he tried. Mizora’s magic binds it to him. He's not even sure it can be destroyed, so long as their pact holds.

But today, in this pretty room he doesn't recognize, when Wyll summons his sword—

It doesn't come.

Wyll shuts his eyes. Breathes very, very slowly.

There is a horrible thought in his head. A truth he has been trying not to look at head-on.

He could be in the Hells.

There is no brimstone-scent, no screams of the long-damned; but perhaps not all of the Hells are like the dark Avernus battlefields he has spied. Devil magic is often illusory, after all, and many devils are known for their hedonistic whims.

The large bed. The soft sheets on his naked skin. The room doesn't pretend opulence, but it speaks to the lining of his soul that craves comfort, respite, rest.

This little room may well be a prison purpose-built to trap him.

The stranger on top of him shifts again in his sleep. Wyll lets out another breath. Does not make a sound.

Screaming, he has often learned, is a luxury he can't afford.

Eye open, a voice in the back of his mind prompts him. Don't think—just look. What do you see? What are the details, and what do they mean?

It's a familiar little voice; not his own, and not Mizora's either. It's the voice of instinct honed in him by having a seasoned warrior and a politican for a father—instinct that's saved him more than once when in the worse straits than this. He's not safe to fall apart yet. Later, he can drink himself stupid and scream into the night at whatever horror this is. For now he must keep his good eye open, his breath measured, and his attention occupied with his immediate surroundings.

Whatever Hell this is—literal or metaphorical—it's surprisingly homely. The room is neither large nor cramped. The curtains are drawn and the light is dim, though the yellows and orange-pinks in the decor are visible despite the gloom. There is a fire in the grate, low and banked for the night. It is still, miraculously, winter.

He has almost talked himself down from the fractured edge of panic when the man on top of him murmurs. Yawns.

He's beginning to wake. Wyll shuts his eyes.

Gently, he puts his hand against the stranger's throat, where an eldritch blast would spear straight through his gullet and up into the brain.

"Dolor," Wyll whispers.

Nothing happens.

"Mm?" The stranger makes an early-morning noise, starts to lift his head. "What's—"

"Dolor," Wyll chokes. Nothing. "Dolor—dolor—DOLOR!"

This last is a shriek. The stranger atop him—pale skin, eyes red like the Hells themselves—gapes down at him for one crystalline moment before Wyll remembers himself and punches the man square in the face.

A crunch, a smear of pain—Wyll’s wrist didn't like that, but the stranger's nose liked it worse. He reels back, grabbing his face, giving Wyll the opening he needs to scramble out of bed.

He makes it only a few feet. His head feels heavy—off-balance, and somehow his limbs aren't where he expects them to be. Everything is off. His head is heavy but there is an unfathomable lightness to the world around him, like a recently-broken fever.

Has he been drugged?

The door to the bedroom is shut. Wyll fights to get his feet back under him so he can run.

"Wyll—wait—"

The stranger tries to touch his arm.

"Dolor!" Wyll scoots back until his shoulder bumps something—a nightstand, maybe. A stack of books wobbles on the edge beside his head.

"All right, all right, no touching! That's fine."

The stranger is crouched on the balls of his feet, a yard or so away from Wyll’s defensible position in the corner. His pale long-fingered palms are empty and held up in surrender, though Wyll is loath to trust it.

"It's all right," the stranger says, again, in a soothing sort of tone despite the reddened bruise where Wyll's fist struck him, a spotting of blood across his nose. "Take a deep breath for me, darling."

Wyll has the absurd feeling that he should stop breathing altogether, just to deny this man what he wants.

"Gods, this is a bad one, isn't it?" the stranger says, almost an aside, a private joke Wyll hasn't been invited to share. "It's just me, Wyll. We're in our house. We're both safe here, I promise."

From this distance, Wyll can see that the man is naked, save for a filmy linen shirt that stops at the upper thigh.

He is also incredibly handsome.

These facts do nothing to calm Wyll down. If anything, they make it all much worse.

"Do you need to see the wards again—" the stranger starts to lean forward. Wyll flinches so hard he bumps into the nightstand. The stack of books topples to the ground.

The stranger drops his hand. "Ah—I'll just stay over here then, shall I?" he says. His smile is thin, false.

He seems to be waiting for Wyll to speak. Well, Wyll has nothing to say. Any demands to be released will surely fall on deaf ears, or worse. If this man is a devil—and he might be, with his red eyes, and his beautiful foxlike face—anything Wyll says might only dig him further in the grave.

"Just tell me how to help you, love," the man croons, in that soothing tone that sets spiders crawling under Wyll's skin. "You know I'm rubbish at guessing. I'll just keep talking until you're ready to tell me, shall I? We are really quite splendidly safe here. Gale did all the wards for us, remember that? You know he would never make a mistake doing wards, he'd lose all of his—arcane credibility, or whatever pissing contest wizards have with each other, you know how it is. I can tell from here that your eye is working just fine, also, so if you aren't seeing any signs of invisible voyeurs it's because there truly aren't any. We are perfectly safe here. The chance that anyone could find us, even Mizora, is really quite astronomically tiny—"

This is too much.

"How do you know her name," Wyll croaks.

The man stops himself mid-ramble.

"Wyll, darling—" his name again, why does this stranger know so many names— "you told me. Remember?"

There's something unsettling about the look in the man's eyes—as if he wasn't expecting Wyll to challenge his story.

Had this man tried to charm him, and failed? Wyll's stomach clenches; churns.

"If you know Mizora," Wyll says, fighting to keep his voice from shaking, "then you know exactly why I didn't tell you anything."

The man's plastered-on smile is starting to slip.

"Who are you?" Wyll explodes, unable to keep the question safely in his chest. "What—what do you want with me?"

The smile is gone: erased, as if it never was. A serious, grim stare meets him, those ruby eyes uncannily bright even in the faint light.

"If you want me to fight for you it's—it's not going to work," Wyll says, half-bluffing. He's not really sure how the Hells works—he only knows what very little his patron has told him, what scraps he's managed to learn from glimpses of Avernus, off-hand comments, half-remembered stories. "You c-can't compel another devil's warlock into service without—the proper paperwork, a-and—the express approval of someone above them on the hierarchy—"

Wyll's not sure who he's trying so hard to convince. Whoever this man is—be he devil or diabolist—he likely knows the rules better than Wyll himself. And whatever he has in store for Wyll, he is unlikely to be swayed by protests.

There's just a thought in Wyll's mind, like a line of blue fire—the memory of Mizora reminding him, over and over, that by the standards of the Hells, she has always been lenient with him.

She tolerated his insistence that his targets always be creatures that, in some way, deserve their fate. She tolerated his uncooperative moods, his screaming fits, his recklessness—tolerated him the way one who beats their horse might tolerate a fickle old nag, but tolerated all the same. She saved his life by reminding him what awaits him in the Hells, and kept him from dying when he was too injured to tend to his own wounds, and she is the only person he has properly spoken to in over a year.

He hates her. He fears her.

He fears the thought of anyone foolish or powerful enough to risk her wrath.

"Wyll," the man says, as if he means to go on—but no words seem to come to him. Already, he's run out of lies.

He must have meant to charm Wyll. It may be only a matter of time before he tries again—it may be Wyll has only moments of free thought left to him—oh, gods. Oh, gods.

Wyll does something very stupid.

He starts to beg.

"Mizora," he manages to say between clenched teeth and shallow breaths, "I—I don't know where I am. I think someone took me. My—my magic is—I can't—"

Suddenly, in horrible clarity, he knows that weightless lack in him for what it is. Her presence, the magic of his promise to her, the way the bindings of the pact chafe against his soul like ropes on wrists—all of it is gone.

It ought to be a relief. It ought to be the most joyous sensation of his life, no longer having her fingers in his skull. But there is no joy here. He can't rejoice or relax, not when he's found himself in a stranger's house, in a stranger's bed, fed lies while half his memories have turned fuzzy and beyond his own reach. Like a dream turned to a nightmare.

Either someone's broken his pact for some vile purpose—to make him sign away his soul a second time? To transfer ownership from one hand to another?—or they've somehow suppressed his magic to make him docile, helpless.

Balduran's bones, what if he's held in violation of the pact because of this?

"Mizora!" He has no idea if she can even hear him, if she cares at all. She liked to call him her favorite warlock but it never felt like any favor to have her attention. Now she's turned away from him—by force, or did he displease her? Is this all some sick amusement to her? "This isn’t—it's not part of the pact, I know it isn't—" he knows nothing, he barely understood what he was signing when he signed it, could barely negotiate with his shaking voice and all his thoughts fixed on the horror racing towards him— "Mizora, godsdammit, help me!"

"Wyll, love—" the man is trying to cut him off, trying to reach for him. Wyll does the childish thing and collapses, knees to his chest and head into his hands—

Which is a mistake and not a comfort at all, because he discovers why his head is heavy. There are horns.

They burst from the top of his head, massive, like a true devil's, like hers. This is all just devil-charm and trickery, none of this is real—a nightmare, a drunken stupor, a mistake—he will wake up again and he'll be in a cave somewhere sweating out a fever, he'll be back in his childhood bedroom and this entire horrible year will be a dream—

The horns feel rooted to his skull. He can't pull them out.

He is in the Hells. They've made him into one of them—he's been through the lemure-pits and out the other side and now he's one of them, a shadow of himself, and any moment now the illusion of this house with the sunshine-yellow paint will slip away and he will be there in the blood and the heat and the death and—

"Sine metu!"

—and everything is fine.

Suddenly, everything is fine. The terror, the revulsion, the certain horror welling up in him—all snuffed out like a candle. He slumps to the side. Relief has turned him limp.

His head lolls against the ground. A few feet from him, he sees that the stranger has a spell scroll open in his naked lap.

"What did you do?" Wyll asks.

"I'm s-sorry." Interestingly, the man sounds it. The words are choked. His ruby eyes are wet and somehow bloodshot. "I'm sorry, I—I didn't know what else to do. It’s never—it's never been this—I'm so sorry, Wyll."

"You charmed me," Wyll says, from the floor. He feels anger at the thought, but only a wisp of it. A little flame of hurt, that might flutter away into smoke if he stops looking at it. He holds onto it, for now. It might be useful later.

"It's only a calming spell," the man says, as if that's reassuring, which is interestingly specific. "The emergency scroll—the one we keep in the drawer—you remember, don't you?"

"No," Wyll says, honestly, before he remembers that he shouldn't be giving this person more information he can use. "Who are you?"

The man gives Wyll a very strange look. It's a kind of look Wyll doesn’t think he's ever seen on anyone before—a look that makes even Wyll’s still-enchanted heart give an abrupt violent squeeze. It reminds Wyll, not of a person in his memory, but of the time he accidentally broke a window as a child—the suspended moment right before the glass shattered.

Wyll watches, from the floor, as that expression crumples into a sob.

"It's alright," the stranger says, even as he's crying, openly, tears streaking down the sides of his face as he talks. Wyll wishes he knew if there was a second calming spell somewhere. His crying is oddly gruesome. "It's fine, it's—whatever's wrong we'll fix it, I know we will. You'll be fine, I just—Wyll, I, I just can't—I need a moment. I need a moment, please, I just need a moment."

"Take as much time as you need," Wyll says, as the man puts his head into his arms and, from the sound of it, hyperventilates.

It's a strange feeling, sitting on the ground while a total stranger sobs like the world is ending. Wyll wants to comfort him—and in any other circumstance he would, if he wasn't still half-convinced this is some kind of devil trick, and if he wasn't still holding onto that candle-flame of anger.

Charming a person is one of the worst things anyone can do to another person, Wyll thinks.

"I just wasn't expecting—" the stranger is saying, between rapid breaths and hitching gasps. "B-but it's fine, isn't it? It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. We can fix this. I know. I know." Abruptly, he fixes his red and red-rimmed eyes on Wyll, still lying on the floor, feeling vaguely abandoned and limp, like a child's toy thrown to the ground in a tantrum. "Oh, love, please sit up. Can I help you up? Are you hurt anywhere?"

Wyll sits up under his own power, but he acquiesces to the stranger's fussing. Not because he believes himself to be injured—he feels fine aside from the minor ache from falling off the bed, and if he was wounded he's fairly certain it would be at the hands of his captor, for all that the man is doing a good impression of a doting husband—but it seems a good way to keep the stranger occupied and unsuspecting while Wyll tries to use this moment of clarity to plan his next move.

He has to leave, that's for certain. Whatever is happening here, Wyll is not going to wait around for this stranger to shed more crocodile tears on his behalf, no matter how convicing they are—especially because they are convincing. Wyll is not going to let himself be moved by them when he knows them for the manipulation that they are. Hells, he couldn't afford to let them move him even if they weren't manipulation.

There are very few things that Wyll can afford these days.

He knows this—he's had to learn it the hard way, after all—but it's strangely affecting, the way the stranger checks him over for injuries that don't exist. He refrains, still, from touching Wyll, but his fingers twitch and clasp in his lap, as if it is taking him a good deal of effort to do so. He continues to murmur soft, anxious, encouraging words as he asks if Wyll might do him the favor of flexing his fingers and toes, of looking him in the eye, of standing up, slowly, if he thinks he can manage it—which of course Wyll can, but he moves even slower and less deftly than the extra weight of the horns and tail demand, out of the hope that he might get this stranger to underestimate him when the time comes to run for the hills.

The man's gentle demeanor is like the house—a comforting feeling, warm in a way he hasn't felt in so long; safe in a way that can only be deceptive.

But it's been so long since he's had anyone to fuss over him. Very occasionally, he has crossed paths with someone—usually mothers with children, or folk old enough to be his grandparents—who will show pity on him for being young and alone in the world. He has spent a few nights on cottage floors and in spare beds because of it—has taken extra helpings of pottage, a pair of darned socks or an unused pair of boots, a basket of rations for the road—all free of charge, in exchange for nothing more than being young, and scared, and obvious about it.

And he has lost things for those same reasons.

He has to be careful, he knows, despite how very bad he is at caring these days. In a way he can only really admit now that all his emotions have been turned sideways, he looks forward to the parts of his life that are spent in abject terror because at least that's proof that there's some part of him that still wants to be alive. Most of the time, he's just very tired.

And yet, still, on the rare occasion that someone looks past his scarred face and missing eye, under the outsized cloak and the tattered stolen clothes, under all the signs that mark him for the vagabond he is, when someone approaches him with a cosseting softness, it is so very hard not to pretend, for just a moment, that he is a child again, and someone is waiting for him to come home.

Eventually, when Wyll is standing and the stranger seems convinced he's not about to keel over, the unknown man produces a puffy, soft, vibrantly blue robe from somewhere and drapes it about Wyll's shoulders, which is how Wyll realizes that he is wearing a pair of soft trousers and nothing else. There are scars he doesn't recognize along his torso and chest. Wyll feels the faintest whisper of alarm, looking at them. He puts the alarm next to the anger, clutched tight in the back of his mind.

"Let's go downstairs," the stranger says. "I'll, ah—I'll make you some tea. That sounds nice, doesn't it? A hot cup of tea?"

Wyll allows himself to be lead out of the room.

There are two rooms on the second floor, joined by a hallway. The man takes him past the other door and down a small stairway that hugs the wall and crooks around a corner into what is, unmistakably, the kind of small and cozy kitchen Wyll has seen in farmhouses all up and down the Coast.

The stranger pulls out one of three mismatched chairs from around a very scarred wooden table, ushering Wyll to sit before bustling over to a fireplace. Wyll watches the man flit about the kitchen—still scarcely dressed, his white-bone, hairless thighs peeking out under the hem of his shirt—as he sets about making a pot of tea with the strangest mixture of self-assurance and hesitance Wyll has ever seen. The stranger seems to know his way around the kitchen perfectly, but every time he does anything—from filling up the kettle from a basin by the window, to fetching a battered tin of tea leaves from a cupboard in the corner, to lighting a fire in the grate with a flick of his fingers—he looks over at Wyll as if expecting some kind of reaction. Wyll pretends not to notice.

He has no idea what this man is waiting for, and it seems better to lean into his ignorance than to pretend at something he doesn't know.

Instead, Wyll takes the time the stranger's eyes are off him to study the room for any piece of information he can safely glean.

The longer Wyll looks around, the less convinced he is that this place is an illusion. The stranger seems able to interact with everything freely. The chair feels solidly ordinary under Wyll's weight, as does the plush robe around his shoulders. Someone has, in painstakingly elegant script, carved Lathander can suck my balls into the tabletop, and it's just a little bit worn away, as if it was done some time ago. That seems a strange detail for a devil to put into their illusion, though the sentiment is probably common enough amongst devils and demons.

The house is full of these details—the signs of habitation. The curtains are drawn, and don't quite match; the window over the sink is draped in bright saffron yellow, while the one by the door is a darker orange. There are two sets of boots by the door, tucked into an alcove that seems purpose-built for it. The plaster walls are painted in the same yellows as the bedroom, though there are also hints of green—vines painted up baseboards and down the handles of cabinets, and a pale leaf-colored cushion graces the floor by the fireplace. There are no visible weapons Wyll could take to hand, not even a hatchet for chopping wood, but there are books: a shelf along the far wall bears the strangest collection of texts Wyll has ever seen. Cheap and well-thumbed chapbooks are squashed next to what seem to be thick arcane tomes with stubby cloth-bound novels wedged beside them, with no apparent regard for organization by contents, size, or color.

Whoever lives here—presumably the pale man anxiously threading his fingers together while he waits for the kettle to boil—lives comfortably, and eccentrically, and simply.

There are no signs of children anywhere. No signs of any kind of struggle, either. If Wyll was brought here against his will there is no sign of it, though that means little enough now. Wyll has no memories of this room. Anything could've happened to bring him here, the evidence erased from sight.

Wyll doesn't even know how long he's been here. It could have been one night. It could have been months.

The stranger sets down a mug of tea in front of Wyll. It doesn't seem he's made one for himself.

"Ah, careful, it's still hot," the man says, as Wyll lifts it to his lips and pretends to drink. He's not taking anything he's offered while he's here, but he's not about to offend the stranger's unknown temper by saying so.

"Thank you," Wyll says, politely. He remembers his manners, even if he's had such little chance to use them on the road. "You're very kind."

The stranger makes a horrible noise—something like a laugh that's been trodden on.

"Now I know you've lost your memory," he says, smiling in a way that doesn't reach his eyes. "I'm really not."

Another faraway prickly of alarm. Wyll tucks it away.

"How are you feeling?" the stranger asks, abruptly. "This… whatever this is… it came on suddenly, it seems? Do you, ah… I suppose I can't ask you when you lost your memory—"

"I don't remember last night," Wyll says, before he remembers that he's not supposed to trust this person. Anger, he reminds himself, putting the word down in his head as a fact instead of a feeling. Fear.

"Oh! Well, I suppose you wouldn't if you've, ah, forgotten me." The stranger's smile does a very strange quirk, as if he's thinking about making a joke and decides against it. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"I'm not sure," Wyll says, partly because it is true—his memories are fickle these days, with some details drawn in sharp relief and others faded into murky impressions he does not care to linger in—and mostly because he's remembered his resolve not to tell this charming stranger anything.

If the man is troubled by his evasive answer, he gives no sign. The thin, anxious smile is still there. His ears are still folded flat to the sides of his head. "Do you remember anyone else?" he asks.

Mizora, Wyll thinks. My father.

He can remember the Flaming Fist who used to walk him home when his father was busy with work in the evenings, but he doesn't remember the faces or the names of the people he met in the last village. So many of them are blurs—were blurs almost before he left them behind. Smeared together memories of that woman's laugh and that man's suspicious stare; the innkeeper who swore he had no rooms and Wyll was certain he was lying but has neither the coin nor the inclination to argue; the woman who watched him eagle-eyed as he crossed past her to the door. He knows he looks like a thief. The suspicion shouldn't rankle because he is a thief, these days. He's stolen spare coins off tables and laundry off of lines and fruit off orchard trees. He tries to take only what he needs to survive but sometimes he is hungry, and greedy, and if he feels bad about it later it doesn't change the truth of what he's done.

He looks at the stranger across from him. He shakes his head.

"So you don't remember Shadowheart? Or… Gale?" Wyll shakes his head again. "Well thank all the Hells for that, I don't think I could live with myself if you remembered Gale over me."

Again, it seems the stranger expects him to smile or laugh, but if there is a joke Wyll can't see it. After a pause, the man moves on.

"Do you think maybe one of them could help with—no, of course you don't, you don't remember them. Ha." He makes a tutting sound with his tongue. Then, flops over in his chair. The motion is dramatic and strangely elegant. A stage actor might move in the same way.

"We'll fix this," he mutters, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "We will."

Wyll stares at the top of his fluffy white head.

"What did you do to me," Wyll wants to ask, though he knows it will do no good. He can't trust anything this stranger says won't be more lies. The tiny flame of anger reminds him of that guiding fact like a faint light in a dim, dim room: there is no trusting someone who resorts to enchantment. Even if this stranger was not responsible for whatever took Wyll's memory along with his pact and left him horns and a tail in trade, he is a complete stranger. There is no reason to trust anything he does or says.

The man sits up abruptly.

"Shit," he says. "Ah—how are you feeling?"

"Fine," Wyll says, slowly. He doesn't like the slightly shifty look that's come over the stranger's face.

"Good," the man says. "Ah, well, the uh—the calming spell is going to wear off in just a moment, alright? But you should be fine, now. There's no reason to panic again, is there? You see that I'm—well, I can't say that I'm a good person, but I'm not a bad person to you. So you can just take a few deep breaths and it will be okay, won't it, darling?"

The stranger has, at some point during that halting monologue, reached across the table to squeeze Wyll's hand. Again, there's that strange feeling: the midpoint between loathing and longing. The desire to lean into that point of contact, even as the rest of him knows how dangerous desire can be.

And then it hits him.

Like a wave—like a burst damn—all his stolen feelings hit him all at once.

Anger first. Indignation, the kind he's not sure he's felt since he was banished—and a raw untempered hurt—and then rising, like the whine of the boiling kettle but in the silence of his head, the steadily-building panic.

The stranger squeezes his hand again. "You're all right, Wyll, I—"

"You charmed me!" Wyll says, just as inanely as he did the first time.

"Only a little!" the stranger insists. "And I—well, I just wanted to make sure you weren't going to hurt yourself—"

"Why," Wyll snaps back, "because you don't want to deliver damaged goods to whatever devil you worship?"

"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," the stranger says, with such a mixture of contempt and bafflement that Wyll is so, so tempted to believe him.

This man knows about Mizora—yes, he does, he knows her by name. And Wyll is changed, altered, pactless. But perhaps—are these things really not related?

Is this man not a diabolist at all?

Perhaps he only found Wyll, abandoned on the roadside like so much dross. Perhaps he invited Wyll inside with promises Wyll no longer remembers.

Perhaps he is a different kind of devil altogether.

"You're right," Wyll says, interrupting the man in the middle of another of his rambling protests that he really, truly is not working for any devil, demon, fiend, or other creature of the Hells. "I'm sorry. I made a baseless assumption. I should not have disparaged you, or your hospitality."

The stranger blinks. "Well. You don't need to apologize to me, love. I can… understand why you might be suspicious of me."

That sad smile, again—lips so soft on his sharp features, with those ruby-red eyes that Wyll can see, now, clearly lack a Hellish heat to them, despite how strange and striking they are. Striking like the blood-colored eyes of an elf of the Underdark, though his skin is so pale, and when his lips part—

"I meant what I said, before," the stranger says. "Whatever happened—whatever's wrong—we'll find a way to fix it. But for the moment, you're completely safe here—so safe that's, ah, actually a bit of an inconvenience. Do you—do you know what a sending stone is?"

Wyll pushes away the stinging pain in his hollow eyesocket. It is only the memory of pain, and not one he needs to think about right now. "…yes."

"Right. Right. Well, I need to use one to talk to some… people. Friends of ours! Who you apparently don't remember, but they should be able to help. They're very… helpful."

There is a thick note of uncertainty in his voice, as if he is trying too hard to convince himself, or Wyll.

"But the wards—you don't remember the wards? No, of course not—sending stones don't work inside the house, you see. So I'll just have to step outside to talk to them. I won't be more than a minute," he adds, as reassurance or a veiled threat, Wyll is unable to tell. "But I, I really think I ought to talk to them as soon as possible. If you're alright with being left alone."

"I think I can handle that," Wyll says, though he can't quite keep the nerves from his voice. Thankfully, that seems to be what the stranger expects.

He squeezes Wyll's shoulder—again, the instinct to flinch from the touch comes a second too late—and stands from the table. "Only a minute," he promises. "I'll cut Gale off mid-sentence if I have to."

He takes a small unassuming box off the bookshelf—presumably containing the stone—and walks to the front door. He opens it to the crisp smell of snow—shocking, after the warmth of this little house—gives Wyll one last look, as if waiting for him to jump or cry or overturn the table—and vanishes outside into the cold.

As soon as the door shuts behind him, Wyll runs to the largest window he can see.

Opening the curtains and the tight shutters behind them reveals that it is still dark outside—a black night starting to turn lavender at the edges from the first hint of dawn. It is the hour when bakers start their work and farmers rise from bed; an hour Wyll has grown familiar with out on the roads.

There are no visible weapons to hand, and Wyll can't waste time searching for them. He darts over to the front door to don the larger of the pairs of boots and a discarded coat over his borrowed dressing-gown: the only preparation he thinks worth the risk before he clambers out of the window and into a world of deep shadows and newfallen snow.

He knew he would have, at most, only a few minutes of a headstart before his captor realized he was missing. He hoped the man might decide Wyll wasn't worth the effort of chasing down in the cold and dark.

No such luck.

"Wyll!"

The stranger's voice echoes behind him through the trees. The snow and bristling forest muffles the sound, Wyll thinks, makes him sound further away than he is. Running into the woods was a gamble and Wyll isn't sure if it's paid off. On the one hand, the trees should help to hide him from view. On the other, the stranger likely knows these woods much better than Wyll does.

He is certainly gaining on him.

"Wyll, please—"

"Stay back!" Wyll shouts.

Stupid, stupid—the more noise Wyll makes, the more likely he is to be caught.

"I'm armed!" he shouts, anyway, just in case that makes his stranger any less likely to keep chasing him.

"I know!" Well, that wasn't the response Wyll was expecting. "I just don't want you to hurt yourself. Love, please, come back—"

"Don't call me that!" Wyll sucks in a breath, hard, as if to take the words back. Instead, more come out of his mouth between panting breaths. "I'm not your love. I don't remember you! Whatever I agreed to, I—I take it back. I take it back! Please, just leave me alone!"

"I know you're scared, just come back to the house! I can explain—"

One moment, Wyll is in the woods, running from the stranger chasing him through the snow-covered forest. The next, Wyll tumbles into a world of white.

He's fallen into a snowdrift—no, into a hollow in the ground, concealed by the snow. Wyll isn't sure if there's a difference; what snows they got in Baldur's Gate were never so untidy. He scrambles, panics, batting the stinging-cold clumps away from his face. His bare hands hurt so badly they are starting to turn numb.

"Wyll?" his captor calls. "Wyll!"

Wyll knows he should be silent, should wait until the stranger passes him by, but fear has taken hold of his tongue.

"Leave me alone!" he shouts again, pulling at the snow. Surely, somewhere underneath this fluff there must be solid ground but he can't find it—he can only dig up snow by the handful, distantly aware that his thrashing is making it worse but unable to make himself stop.

He is so tired. He is so tired of being so scared.

"Oh—oh, darling, don't kick about like that! You're only getting yourself more stuck."

Shit!

The stranger has caught up to him. Is peering, now, over the side of the pit, crouched low a cautious distance from the edge.

"Did you forget how snow works, too?" he says. "Oh, you're still in your dressing gown! Gods, Wyll, you're going to freeze out here!"

Wyll's teeth are already chattering. He might snap that they didn't get this much snow in Baldur's Gate, if he wasn't so concerned that speaking might cause him to bite his own tongue.

"I'll help you out," the stranger says. "But please don't, I don't know, cut my head off—"

"I'm never p-promising you anything," Wyll snarls.

For some reason, this makes the stranger laugh. High, and cold, and a little mad, and something in the sound makes Wyll freeze faster than the snow.

"It's a bit late for that," the stranger says, "since you already promised to marry me."

He holds out his hand. If it weren't for the snow making the night uncannily bright, Wyll wouldn't know what he was looking at—but he can just see the faint band of a ring around the man's finger.

A wedding ring.

"B-but I don't know you," Wyll blurts out. "I wouldn't—I—"

He can't tear his eyes away from it. This must be another trick, but—what if it isn't?

There's a ring on Wyll's finger, too.

It just doesn't make sense.

The man laughs again, harsh and heavy as a coughing fit. "Is it really that hard to believe? You don't remember the first thing about me, and you're that disgusted by me already?"

He was so certain that he'd only forgotten last night. Maybe a few days—maybe a month. It's still winter, so it can't have been that long.

It can't, can it?

"I suppose it's my fault." The stranger has crouched down next to Wyll's snowy trap, hands on his knees. "I keep treating you like Wyll Ravengard, but I've really been addressing the Blade of Frontiers."

"…who?" Wyll says, utterly lost.

The man blinks at him. Retracts his hand, suddenly, as if Wyll has leapt up and bitten him.

"How… how old do you think you are?" the man asks.

This is hardly the first time Wyll has had to deal with similar questions. He squares his shoulders. "Old enough," he says.

For some reason, this makes the stranger's eyes go wide with horror. "Oh Gods. Oh, Gods, you're just an infant, aren't you?"

"I'm old enough to be on my own, thank you," Wyll says, though he's not sure the stranger is listening.

"But you know Mizora," the stranger says, still gaping at him, eyes wide as saucers. "You must be… seventeen?"

"Nineteen," Wyll lies. It's close enough, anyway, to the truth. "Not that I see why that's any of your business. Why do you care?"

"No particular reason," the stranger says, "save that the Wyll Ravengard I know is about a decade older than that."

Now it is Wyll's turn to stare.

"A d-decade?" he whispers, horrified at the thought, and the way his teeth take that particular moment to chatter.

"But that doesn't matter right now!" the stranger says quickly, fluttering his hands as if to bat the words out of the air. "I—just let me get you out of the pit, and—"

"Have you had me thralled for that long?" Wyll asks.

"I—no, love, what—"

"You're a vampire," Wyll says. "Or—something close enough to one—"

The man flinches with his entire body. He wraps his arms around himself, looking for the first time as if he's been affected by the cold.

"I don't know what you did to learn about the pact—" Or why you'd want to marry me. The thought is too absurd to speak aloud. "Has it really been a decade?"

Wyll can't fathom it. Half his entire life—no, a third of it, now—stolen out from under him without a moment's notice.

"I haven't known you the whole time," the stranger says, oddly curt, though he won't meet Wyll's eye. "Only the past five years, though they were memorable enough to me. And I have never thralled anyone. Least of all you."

"You charmed me."

"I used a calming spell on my husband before he did permanent damage to himself in a sudden panic," the stranger says—almost snaps, for the first time since Wyll woke up in his bed. "I'm not going to let you judge me for that. Gods, you're a child."

"I'm old enough," Wyll repeats, though the man seems to have stopped listening again.

"I am not the thralling kind of vampire, anyway," the stranger says. "I enchant with only my natural charms! Which you would remember if you were my husband and not some fussy little doppelganger."

"I'm not a—"

"Hush, dear, the adult is speaking." The vampire's change in demeanor should, perhaps, put Wyll in mind of Mizora, but it does not. If anything, it reminds Wyll of the way some of his father's Fist would speak to him when Wyll tried to offer his opinion on city-wide affairs. "I know you've had a terrible shock tonight. I appreciate that. But I need you to appreciate that I am having one of the worst nights I've had in—in a very long time, and I am holding it together by a thin fucking thread, and I am not going to be lectured on morality by some puffed-up little brat who has temporarily repossessed my husband!"

He finishes this entire monologue in what seems to be one single breath of ecstatic fury. He still, somehow, has the air leftover to gasp at the end of it.

"Now, if you please," he says, quieter, "let me help you out of that snowdrift. We can go back to the house and wait for—for one of my friends to arrive and put you to rights."

The most horrible thing happens again: Wyll wishes, again, that Mizora was here. Not just for the power and security of the pact, but for her commentary in his ear. Mizora—as snide and vicious and cruel as she is, as much as he hates the way her words reverberate inside his thoughts, as much his skin crawls under her phantom touch—she would at least tell him if this man is what he seems. If there is any truth to his telling, if he has any intention of restoring whatever memories Wyll lost, if he wants Wyll only for his blood, body, soul.

His pretty red eyes are unfathomable. Even Mizora had once seemed almost beautiful to Wyll, for all that he'd been terrified from the first sight of her.

"Please," the stranger says, unexpectedly. "We don't have a lot of time."

"B-before your friend comes?" Wyll asks as another brutal shiver rips through him.

"Before you become hypothermic and die," the stranger says dryly. "And before I die of sun exposure. We have maybe, hm, ten minutes before I catch fire, so I would really rather we settle this stalemate before then."

He says this so casually Wyll would assume it's only another chance to manipulate him, if he couldn't see the way the deep-purple shadows of the trees are offset by the lavender-blush creeping into the sky. Even the thick forest doesn't provide a vampire much protection from the sun, Wyll realizes, with all the winter trees stripped bare.

"You could leave me here," Wyll says, not sure if it's a suggestion, or a fear, or a hope.

"Not unless I want to watch my husband get frostbite," the man snaps. "You may be but a babe in the woods, but I don't want to see you die like one."

Still, Wyll hesitates. It doesn't seem possible—not even Mizora would risk her own skin for the chance to possess his soul. He almost wants to watch it happen, just so he can know the truth of it.

Is there really someone who wants him badly enough that they would die for him?

The very thought is heady. Terrifying. Mollifying, too, in some even more horrible way.

He'd dreamed of it, once, a year and a lifetime and a decade ago, when his biggest concern was choosing the right partner for each dance of the evening, and whether or not anyone would cast aspersions on him for being there despite not being a patriar's son. He'd dreamed of finding a love worth dying for.

He'd never pictured finding it with a vampire.

"How—how can I trust you?" Wyll asks.

"I don't know," the stranger says without the slightest hesitance, like the answer has been on the tip of his tongue for a very long time. "I don't know how you can trust me, I don't know why you married me, I don't know why you've suddenly regressed into the mind of a paranoid little shit. I just know I'm going to stand here until one of us dies or you make up your bloody mind."

The man pauses. Adds, in a quieter voice, "I'm not going to reach for you unless you ask me to help you. I've had enough of playing the monster tonight."

He seems so… sad.

That's not a reason to trust him. But it seems enough of a reason to trust, at least, that he can get Wyll out of the snowbank in one piece.

Wyll stretches out his hand. "Help me, then," he says.

There is no particular joy or hope in those ruby eyes, but there is a little something like relief reflected in their depths. He takes Wyll's hand in a cool, bare palm, long fingers wrapping about the base of Wyll's wrist.

"Don't thrash about, now," he instructs. "Dig through the powdery new snow with your toes and try to pack the icy layer underneath into something you can stand on."

Wyll obeys. The man pulls—hard, but not hard enough to dislocate Wyll's shoulder from the socket, as he'd been afraid might happen. With the snow turned from a treacherous enemy into a surprisingly-helpful ally under his feet, he slowly digs his way out of the pit. The man lets go of him as soon as Wyll is no longer in danger of sliding back into an icy grave. Wyll tries not to mourn the loss of the touch.

"Now, if it's all the same to you," the stranger says, picking up his biting drawl again as Wyll catches his breath, hands on his knees. "I should like to get back to the house before I have to drag your frozen corpse behind me like a sledge."

With that, he turns and starts striding back the way they came, marching swiftly through their tracks in the snow, his long elven ears flat to the sides of his head. If he glances back to see if Wyll is following, Wyll doesn't see him do it. But he doesn't need to, anyway—Wyll blunders after him in his snowy wake.

"Wait," Wyll says.

The stranger doesn't so much as glance at him. "No."

Wyll is not jogging to keep up with him—he is matching the stranger's pace, although he might occasionally have to duck behind him to avoid a branch or a tangling root underfoot.

"The sun is coming up," Wyll says.

"Yes," the stranger bites out between his fangs, "that's precisely why I'm trying to get back to the house before—"

Wyll grabs his arm. Or his shirt, really—the man twitches out of the way before Wyll can get more than a pinch of his sleeve.

"What?" the vampire spits, fangs extended—and freezing, instantly, when he sees that Wyll has taken off his puffy dressing-gown.

"Put it over your head," Wyll urges. The sky is turning from dove gray to dewy pink between the bare branches.

The stranger eyes him—Wyll has the oddest feeling that he is being judged as either a threat or a snack, the way a great cat might stare down a child daring enough to poke their fingers through the bars of its cage—and snatches the robe from him.

"Now we really need to get you warmed up before you die of exposure," the man says without gratitude, even as he throws the fluffy blue thing over himself. The contrast of the soft velvet plush and his deep scowl in the shadows beneath it is almost comical.

When they get to the edge of the trees with the cottage in sight, the robe quickly becomes a necessity. The first rays of sun sparkle painfully bright off the surface of the snow, and the stranger runs for the door almost entirely engulfed in the robe. He seems to have a slimmer build than Wyll does, which is a strange thought—Wyll has never been particularly tall nor broad, but this elven man is willowy by comparison. Perhaps after ten years (ten years) Wyll has finally filled out, some, in addition to becoming a devil.

The stranger throws himself into the house like someone throwing themself into bed after a long day. The relief is plain on his face, as is the savage way he tosses the cloak to the side of the room.

Wyll hesitates in the doorway, neither in nor out.

This may be the best chance he has to run for it. Surely this man wouldn't leap out of the house in full sunlight when he knows he has no chance of catching Wyll before he catches fire.

But despite all of that, Wyll finds himself hesitating. The tale this stranger spun—that Wyll gets to survive for another ten years, that he will befriend others with strange magics, that he will find himself married to a vampire—it's almost impossible to believe. It's so impossible, in fact, that it's hard to imagine that it could be a lie.

Perhaps this is only a very vivid dream. It feels that way, almost, standing in the doorway, watching a stranger flick melting snow out of his hair and bemoan the state of the fire, in this cozy sunrise-colored cottage in the woods.

"Stop hanging about with the door open," the vampire scolds, snapping Wyll out of his reverie. He has the robe wrapped around his arm like an oven mitt as he pulls the shutters of the window Wyll left open firmly shut once more. "You need to get warm, you imbecile."

Wyll takes a breath. Takes one step into the house.

"I—I'm not going to have sex with you," he blurts out.

It's a stupid thing to say—not the sort of thing to deter anyone with charm magic and predatory intentions, even if they weren't a vampire lord intent on spreading the story that Wyll is, somehow, his spouse.

The man sneers. "No, you're definitely not. I'm not in the habit of molesting children."

"I'm not a child," Wyll reminds him, though it seems to be a lost cause. Sure enough, the man snorts.

"To your father, maybe," he says, with an odd viciousness that makes Wyll's stomach flip over, though that may just be the shock of hearing someone mention his father—someone other than Mizora. "But you are a child to me. In any case, I am faithful to my husband—outside of some very specific hypothetical circumstances which very much do not include being temporarily repossessed by younger, snottier versions of ourselves. So no. You can keep your pants on, thank you ever so much."

Wyll wanders in the direction of the fire. The floor cushion, he notes, has been occupied by a small beast—a fluffy white creature with luminously pale eyes. Its paws are tucked under the bulk of its body as it watches him, unblinking.

"You have a cat?" Wyll asks, kneeling down beside it.

"We have two," the stranger corrects, sniffing. "You won't see Minxy, she hates commotion and will be shunning us for the next 48 hours. That's Massa."

Massa sniffs Wyll's fingers and allows him to scratch under its chin, though the judgmental look in those blue eyes does not change.

"Is that an Elvish name?" Wyll asks, scritching obediently as the cat presents more scruff to scritch.

The vampire snorts. "No. It's short for Massacre."

The cat gently puts its claws into Wyll's hand when he tries to pull away.

"So you… like cats?" Wyll asks, attempting to make conversation with the man who claims to be his husband.

"Gods no," the man says. "I can't stand the little beasts."

Wyll startles, just a bit, as a blanket is abruptly and unceremoniously dropped onto his shoulders.

"You need to get warm," the man says again. "It's a miracle you still have all of your fingers."

"It didn't seem that cold out," Wyll admits.

"Well, you do tend to run hot." The man clucks his tongue. "Not that that's any excuse for—"

"Because I'm a devil," Wyll whispers.

He feels, again, the overbearing weight of the horns on his head. The ground seems to lurch underneath him, both far away and too close for comfort—the vertigo of standing over an abyss.

A cup of tea is forced into his hands. The hot ceramic is scalding against his palms, though not hot enough for him to flinch away.

"No," the man says firmly. "Well—it's complicated. Yes, you have horns and a tail and a penchant for rare steaks. But you own your soul. You're not in the—hierarchy."

He says this with a slight hesitation—because it's a lie? Or because he doesn't entirely understand it himself?

Wyll tries to breathe slowly. He can't afford to panic.

He doesn't want to be charmed again.

Abruptly, Wyll's vision is filled not with the fire, but with the stranger, crouching down in front of him.

"Do you want to know how it happened?" the stranger asks him.

Wyll stares blankly at his face—he can't think enough to divine meaning from the creases around the stranger's eyes, the flat hard line of his mouth. He can barely take air into his lungs. He tries to nod. Tries to remember he can still move his limbs, no matter how heavy they are.

"You spared someone," the stranger says. "Someone Mizora told you to kill."

"…why?" Wyll asks, without volume.

"Because she was innocent. Or, well, innocent enough for you—she was a deserter of the Hells, anyway. She'd been trying to escape for ten years. You were the last obstacle on her way to freedom. So you let her go." The man pauses. "You're still friends, you know."

"And that's how I met… Gale?" Wyll guesses.

"No!" The man seems disturbed by the thought. "Ugh, no. Her name is Karlach. She's six feet tall and almost entirely muscle, and she's the furthest thing from a wizard I can possibly imagine. I think she once tried to cast Misty Step by sneezing with emphasis."

Wyll tries to picture a person to go with this description, but all he can imagine is Councilor Florrick with larger muscles. And perhaps horns. Karlach is an Infernal name, he thinks.

"That was one of the first things you did after we met," the stranger says. "Refusing to kill her, although you knew the cost would probably be your eternal suffering. I thought you were insane for that. I still think you're insane," he adds.

Wyll looks down at his hands. His skin, at least, is the same warm brown, even if his hands have scars from wounds he doesn't remember, and the nails of his hands seem thicker and darker, more akin to talons.

"…Mizora did this to me," he says, softly.

"She did. Her idea of punishment for your disobedience." The word is harsh and mocking, an obscenity in the stranger's mouth. "Personally, I think she was just looking for an excuse to hurt you. Bastards like that always are."

Wyll shivers. Has been shivering, though he's not certain if it's from the cold.

Massa bumps a fluffy head against his knee. Absently, Wyll strokes between soft velvety ears.

There's a strange relief in that. His hands, at least, remember how to pet a cat.

"I meant what I said, you know," the stranger says. "You don't have to be afraid of her anymore."

Wyll can't imagine not being afraid of her. He would have an easier time being unafraid of an executioner's axe, a hangman's noose, a viper in his boot. At least those dangers are predictable.

At least those dangers are escapable.

…but she isn't here now, is she?

"The wards," Wyll starts, and for some reason this makes the stranger pull a face, like he can't decide whether or not to laugh.

"Finally, you remember! Yes, Wyll, the wards," the stranger says. "We had the entire house bespelled after—well, it doesn't matter. It's thoroughly enchanted now. Mizora isn't getting in, and neither is any attempt to see, scry, or spy on you, from her or anyone else in the Hells. Or anyone on this plane, for that matter."

Wyll touches his face. He can't help it—the scars are still there, sunk into his cheek.

And now, for the first time, as he's thinking clearly and not focused on either the details of his surroundings or the strangeness of the situation, he puts words to one of the many surreal parts of this experience.

"I can see," he blurts out. "I mean—out of my right eye."

"Of course you can see," the stranger sniffs. "We had that nasty little 'gift' of Mizora's replaced at the first opportunity. It's still a prosthetic, but a rather better one. No unpleasant surprises. And you can see into the ethereal plane."

Wyll looks around the room again, almost disappointed that there is nothing else to see but the same quaint, homely features that were there a moment ago.

"We had to call in a favor with—well, he's not a friend. More of an acquaintance. More of an annoyance, actually. But he did give you a very nice eye, so I will forgive him the dreadful taste in poetry."

Wyll takes this in along with his surroundings. Massa has crawled into his lap, rumbling softly under his fingers.

"I… don't understand," Wyll says. He doesn't want to ask, but he feels like he has to—he needs to know. "Why did Mizora let me change the eye?"

"Oh, she didn't let you do anything," the stranger scoffs. "She fought us tooth and claw. But she didn't exactly have a choice about it, once we broke your pact."

The world around him crystallizes; shatters.

"B-broke?" Wyll can't stop himself from stammering. "You mean… it's really—"

"Yes, Wyll." For the first time since they escaped into the woods, the stranger's voice turns almost soft again; soft as a cat's fur sliding back over the claws. "It's gone. For good."

Wyll looks down at his hands again. The cat is purring away, unaware of pacts and souls and the words inscribed in blood on human skin.

"…how?" Wyll whispers.

"We renegotiated," the stranger says.

There's an entire novel in that sentence; there's an epic, a saga. Wyll is reeling trying to fill in the empty space around those words. He just can't imagine a situation where he'd have such power over her—where anyone would, not without leaving him more indebted, only this time to some other holder of his soul.

Did he truly manage to get so lucky?

"I keep trying to convince you that it's time for another trip into Avernus," the stranger says, apparently unaware of the crisis in Wyll's heart. "It's past time for us to kill her, really. But we missed it the first time through with Karlach, and now I think you're just making excuses not to face her again—not that I can blame you, of course, it's not like the Nine Hells makes for a pleasant holiday. But really, a little spot of revenge never hurt anybody. You deserve to be able to live without looking over your shoulder."

It's impossible, what this man is describing. Every word is another story Wyll can't help but latch onto—they've been in Avernus before? With the woman whose life he spared at the cost of his flesh? He's free of Mizora, but they have plans to kill her anyway? Just for the sake of revenge?

"I can still fight," Wyll says, scarcely able to believe it, "without the pact?"

"You're a better fighter now than you ever were," the stranger says, with an odd viciousness, as if he's winning a long-held argument. "You relearned it all twice, no fucking thanks to her wretched idea of help. You've never needed her to be able to fight, Wyll."

The cat gnaws companionably on Wyll's fingers, reminding him to keep petting. He does so, though he's not sure how he manages it. His hands feel numb again.

For a year, his life has been Mizora, and very little else. Every trial and every solution, every mistake and every success, his banishment, his magic, his hatred, his fear, his sorrow, his indifference—it's all been Mizora. The only memories of life before her, now, are childhood things—how it felt to be his father's son, in Baldur's Gate, to have a future of politics and patriars and sparring practice ahead of him.

This little storybook cottage with two cats, with a vampire husband, with no pact—with Mizora gone—it's all so beyond his reach he doesn't know if he longs for it or fears it. Even his questions have questions underneath them. Even his fears have hopes.

He wonders—would he kill Mizora now, if he had the chance? If he's freed from the pact, if doing so won't damn him, could he face her, could he plunge the knife into her, could he return her to the pits of Avernus where she could never harm him again? He can barely imagine it; his thoughts skip over the images, his fear scatters over the emotions.

He pictures her voice, the cold croon in his ear. I've trained you better than that, haven't I, puppy? Never bite the hand that feeds you. Not if you want to keep eating.

He hates her. He hates her so much he can't breathe.

Somewhere in the house, there is a distant chime.

"Oh, that will be Gale," the stranger says. "This is actually rather punctual for him. It usually takes him a moment to get here, with all the wards—and because he packs an entire library every time he leaves his tower—"

It is not Gale at the door. Or rather, it is, but he has brought someone else along.

"I thought it might be best to have an expert in both memory loss and healing magic for this particular venture," Gale says, indicating the white-haired woman beside him, who marches into the house with a look of mixed boredom and irritation that softens when she sees Wyll by the fire. She kneels down beside him, so smoothly that Wyll doesn't think to back away until she's already there.

"Hello, Massacre! Who's the biggest scariest little man," she coos, and doesn't seem to mind when the cat presses both sets of claws into her thigh.

Wyll likes her instantly.

The next few minutes involve quite a lot that Wyll doesn't entirely follow. The pale woman, Shadowheart, asks him a few questions, and then Gale the wizard asks him quite a few more. They feel his pulse, tap him on the head, recite incantations, and retreat to debate. Shadowheart insists several times that this "isn't Sharran magic" and Wyll can't tell from her tone whether that's a good or a bad thing, though privately he is a bit relieved. He doesn't care much for any of the Gods, and Shar seems even more indifferent to mortal suffering than most.

The stranger watches his two "friends" argue from the corner, standing as silent and judgmental as a statue in a law-office, or perhaps someone at a party who would really rather be home with a book. At some point he retrieves a snarling, ugly, hairless creature from the pantry, which he holds tightly as he mutters into its ears, too softly for Wyll to make out the words. Wyll assumes that this is Minxy.

Eventually, Wyll stands. He tries to leave the cat behind on the cushion, but Massa refuses to be set aside, putting claws into his dressing-gown and the blanket still around his shoulders. Wyll is forced to scoop the tiny creature up with him. Despite the fluff, the cat is lighter than it seems.

Wyll wanders over to his husband, who does not look at him.

"I'm sorry," Wyll says.

The man doesn't react, aside from tightening his grip on the hairless cat until it hisses.

"I didn't mean to offend you," Wyll tries, again. "When I said that I knew you were a vampire."

"I'm not offended," the man hisses, radiating offense in every angry line of his body. "I don't put much stock into the opinions of actual children."

Wyll nobly elects not to correct him.

"Still. I handled it poorly. It is not your fault that you are…" Wyll hesitates.

At last, the man looks at him, eyebrow raised. "A monster?"

"By some definitions," Wyll allows. "I've never actually met a vampire before, if you can believe it. Or—I mean—I don't remember meeting any," he corrects, fighting the blush in his cheeks.

"Oh you are young," the man says, though it sounds a little less tense, this time.

Wyll gazes at the two arguing strangers for a moment. Gale has drawn some kind of diagram on the top of the kitchen table in chalk, which Shadowheart seems vaguely mad about.

"What you said in the woods," Wyll says. "About this being one of the worst nights you've had in a very long time. Did you mean that?"

The man doesn't answer. Minxy makes a low snarl of complaint.

"I'm sorry," Wyll says again. "I haven't… it's been a very long time since—" A tight, painful ache snares Wyll's throat, but doesn't stop the words from slipping through. "I don't exactly get a lot of chances to make conversation—"

"Don't," the stranger says, softly. "You don't have to explain."

But he does. But something has snapped inside him, very far down, and this might be the only chance he'll ever have to say this—except it won't be, because this little cottage is his life now, somehow, but it doesn't feel like his life, it feels like a dream, and in only a moment someone is going to bespell him again and rip it all away—

"I feel like I'm losing my mind," Wyll whispers. "I d-don't know how to talk to people anymore. Every day I'm alone and it's just—it's just her and—I know there are good people in the world but I don't know how to f-find them and I—I'm so alone—"

He's crying, now. There are tears in his good eye and he can't stop them—he thought he would never cry again after the night he was banished now here he is, trying to stop himself from bawling like a spoiled child unable to have the one thing he wants most.

There's the sound of a cat being released onto the floor and then a hand brushes his shoulder and Wyll can't stop himself. He barrels into the arms of the perfect stranger who is his husband, hiding his face and his shame in his neck, fighting to keep his breath from stuttering, fighting off the instinct that says Mizora will appear in a moment just to ensure the salt is rubbed into the raw, sore wound.

"He's fine," the stranger murmurs, and Wyll feels him wave off the attentions of the others in the room. "It's fine, Wyll. I… I've got you."

And it is fine, somehow. Because even though he doesn't truly know this man's face or his voice or even his name, he remembers his touch. All the parts of Wyll that are afraid, cringing, telling him to recoil—none of those instincts hold a candle to the way this embrace spells safety right down through the skin. His body knows exactly the way those cool hands will press into his shoulder and his waist, the way his husband noses under the horns that protrude from Wyll's skull as if they've done this a thousand times.

They've done this a thousand times, haven't they?

A thousand times—two thousand days—a hundred thousand untold intimacies, spilled out into a span of time that Wyll can scarcely fathom. Never, since leaving Baldur's Gate behind him, did he imagine having a future so warm, so real, so bright.

Massa, eventually, protests being crushed between their bodies, and Wyll lets the cat escape to join Minxy on the floor. He doesn't stop holding his husband—instead he takes the chance to let his hands find their way to forgotten familiar spaces, to pull himself closer to the stranger who holds him with such care.

The stranger strokes the back of his neck with the lightest, dearest touch, as if expecting to be thrown aside at a moment's notice. Wyll wants so fiercely to duel everyone responsible for that hesitation, up to and including himself and any number of cats. His stranger has been so kind to him, despite all the paranoia and ingratitude, despite how scared he must be for the state of his husband, this future Wyll that Wyll as he is now can barely reconcile himself with—

"Kiss me," Wyll says, suddenly.

The stranger freezes midway through patting his back.

"Wyll—"

"Please," Wyll says, desperately. "I—I know I'm not really your husband but I—I just want to know—"

Cold hands cup his cheeks, thumbs wiping away the tears that keep spilling out despite Wyll's best efforts. His stranger looks at him—they're almost the same height, Wyll realizes, yet another impossible thing—and kisses him, softly, on the forehead, and then very briefly, on the lips.

It doesn't feel like very much. There are no choirs singing, no overwhelming electricity between them. Mostly, his lips are soft, and a little bit wet from crying. And Wyll feels like he is going to take it to his grave all the same.

There's a soft, pointed rustle of papers behind him. Gale the Wizard is doing an impressively unconvincing job of moving papers around on the table, which somehow makes Wyll feel more ashamed of his outburst than if he'd been openly staring. Shadowheart isn't looking away.

"Wyll," she says, in a voice that somehow manages to be indifferent and gentle at the same time, "are you ready?"

Wyll steps out of his husband's arms, though not out of his reach. "Ready?" he asks. "For what?"

"Well," Gale says, "to be perfectly frank, we're under some disagreement about the nature of the spell you're under. I still think it seems like some kind of altered version of Modify Memory, perhaps as a result of poor spell-craft, though I think it more likely that this is a bespoke offshoot intended for some kind of combat purpose, only for the effect to be delayed by approximately twelve hours from the time of casting, which could very well be the result of a mistake in craft. However, there's also the possibility that this is, in fact, some manner of experimental time magic—"

"You're under a spell," Shadowheart interrupts. "We're not sure which spell, but I think we know how to cure it. Are you ready to be cured, or do you want to let Gale study you for another four hours?"

Gale seems a bit annoyed, either with the interruption or with that summary of events, but he doesn't protest them.

Wyll has the sudden childish desire to ask if it will hurt, like a child going to see a healer for the first time. Shadowheart does not look particularly apprehensive, only that same odd mix of bored and fond, like she's looking after someone else's slightly-too-fussy pet.

"I think I would like to be cured, thanks," Wyll says. "Sorry," he adds, to Gale.

Gale sighs. "No, that's perfectly understandable. Shadowheart, if you would…?"

Shadowheart raises her hand. A faint glow, almost imperceptible, flits between her fingers.

"I'll just touch you on the forehead," she says, as if in answer to the question he made sure not to ask. "You'll be back to normal in a moment."

Wyll resists the urge to reach for the stranger behind him, to squeeze his hand as she approaches.

"Wait!" he bursts out, turning to his stranger as Shadowheart reaches up to tap his head. "I—I never got your name!"

From eye to ruby eye, the stranger smiles; the expression as sudden and softening as a sunrise.

"Astarion," he says.

And Wyll remembers everything.

Gale is a bit crestfallen to learn that Wyll doesn't have any memories of getting a glimpse of his future during his early years on the frontiers.

"Well, I suppose that shoots down my time magic theory," he says.

"Not necessarily," Wyll says, petting the cat in his lap while politely not looking at her. Minxy has certainly not forgiven him for the morning's events just yet, but she is currently tolerating contact as long as she gets to pretend they haven't noticed each other yet.

"Oho?" Gale eyes him over his cup of tea.

"If I remembered anything, I think there's a good chance I assumed I was dreaming," Wyll says. "And dreams fade. It might be that I simply let the memory go."

Gale's infectious enthusiasm returns with this, though he has to leave by the end of his second cup of tea anyhow—something about returning home in time for one of his classes at the Academy to start, and Shadowheart has obviously been ready to leave for half an hour by the time they shuffle out the door.

She gives Wyll a brief hug and a promise to visit soon, which is very sweet of her considering they made her get out of bed before dawn. Then she hugs Astarion and whispers something about how he needs to reimburse her for the cost of Greater Restoration and the hourly rate of her healing services, which is probably her idea of revenge for making her get out of bed before dawn.

And then it's just him and Astarion, alone again in their house with their cats and their memories and the ringing silence between them.

"Well I should—" Astarion starts, at the same time Wyll says, "Thank you."

They stare at each other.

"Thank you," Wyll repeats. "Balduran's bones, Astarion—come here. Can I hold you?"

It's a selfish ask, and Astarion knows it—Wyll mostly asks to hold him when he knows that the alternative is watching Astarion go skittish around him for the next tenday, holding himself stiffly and apart until whatever internal knot inside him has been unworked by time and the pace of their days. Wyll can already see it forming in the way Astarion holds himself, the way he looks slightly to the side of Wyll’s face. Perhaps it's cruel, tricking Astarion into baring the burdens of his soul before he's ready, but it's a trick Astarion walks willingly into every time.

As soon as he is in his arms again, Wyll kisses him. Properly, this time, more than a peck meant to calm down a hysterical boy. Then, Wyll holds him tightly, lets Astarion’s head rest against his chest, ear over his heart—Astarion is always so soothed by the rhythm of Wyll’s heartbeat, the beat of it seeming to speak to him in a primordial way that even undeath can't strip from him.

"Thank you," Wyll says again, kissing his cheek. "You handled that so well."

Astarion laughs. It is a wet sound, and an angry one.

"You ran out into the snow," Astarion says, muffled, into Wyll’s robe. "You couldn't stand to be in the same room with me—"

"I was scared," Wyll says. It's strange how fresh to the surface those emotions are, when the person who felt them is ten years gone. "That wasn't your fault. You could've been a kindly old grandmother and I would've been scared of you."

"Obviously, old women are terrifying," Astarion says, dabbing his eyes on the plush of Wyll’s robe. "Half of them are hags and the other half want to adopt you and marry you at the same time. Miserable."

"Do you know," Wyll says, "one of the reasons I was so scared was because you are so devilishly handsome? I was half-convinced someone had conjured up this perfect dream of a man just to trick me into another contract."

Wyll means it to be teasing, a sideways complement, but Astarion doesn't laugh.

Perhaps he is thinking too hard of those times when he was that handsome devil leading hapless young men to their ruin.

"And then," Wyll says, tone light, thumping Astarion gently on the back, "the moment you asked me my age, you snapped at me the same way you snap at every street urchin you've ever met. You know I wasn't really a child?"

"You," Astarion says, fighting a smile, "were a snotty little upstart who thought I was a monster." He pauses, looks away again. "And you were right."

"Astarion—"

"We're both monsters to that child you were." His grip around Wyll's waist tightens. "It seemed I might as well act like one. It wasn't like I was doing you any good anyway."

"You saved me from freezing to death," Wyll suggests. Astarion huffs.

Wyll enfolds him deeper in his arms, inhaling the familiar cold scent of his cologne.

"This whole place felt so much like a dream to me," Wyll remembers aloud. "I didn't know how to trust it. I couldn't believe that I'd gotten so lucky."

There is tension, still, in the way Astarion curls around him. Wyll wants so badly to ask his love what's wrong—or more realistically, which part of the wrongness is bothering him most—but he knows than to pry. It's achievement enough to hold him in his arms. The words will come in time.

After a small eternity, Astarion says, haltingly, as if the words are barbed, "Do you really hate it that much? The—the calming spell."

"Is that what you’re worried about?" Wyll almost laughs, though he knows it would sound forced. "No, Astarion. I wouldn’t have insisted we keep all those spell scrolls if I hated it that much."

"Your younger self was very… adamant."

"My younger self didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't—I didn't—remember that we have those scrolls for a reason. All I knew—" Wyll stops.

"You can say it," Astarion says, lifting his head. "I'm listening."

Wyll lets out a breath, grateful for how little it shakes.

"I didn't know you. I didn't know what the spell was, or that we'd talked about it, or, Hells, that we've cast it a dozen times before—I just knew that I'd been..."

"Charmed," Astarion finishes for him.

Wyll swallows. "But, I know it isn't the same. I trust you, Astarion. It doesn't matter that I didn't trust you then—it doesn't even matter if you trust yourself. I trust you, in the here and now. I know you would never…" breathe, again, inhale, exhale. "Hurt me. Like that. Like she would."

Astarion squeezes fistfuls of his robe against his back.

It feels good to say the words out loud—like putting his feet back on solid ground. The world becomes a little steadier again.

"Thank you for using it," Wyll says. "You made the right call."

Astarion buries his face in the robe again.

"I just didn't know what else to do. You were so scared—Wyll, I've never seen you so scared—"

That's because I'm much better at hiding it now, Wyll doesn't say, because he's supposed to be reassuring his husband, and that doesn't sound very reassuring.

Instead, he speaks a different part of the truth aloud.

"I'm not sure I've ever been that scared when I'm with you," he admits. "Those first years—before I became the Blade—I'm not proud of them. Or of who I was, then."

Hands stroke his cheek—the same hands that thumbed away his tears, an hour and a decade ago. "You were so young," Astarion murmurs. "I'm not sure I really knew it before now. You were so young, Wyll."

"I was." Wyll runs his hand along Astarion's arm, savoring the press of those soft, cold fingertips against his scars. "I was young, and… I was numb to a lot of things I should've felt. I wasted two years of my life on numbness and anger."

And fear, he doesn't add. He doesn't need to. Astarion already watched him cry once this morning.

Astarion strokes his cheek again.

"Wyll," he says, quietly, "why did you tell me you weren't going to have sex with me when we got back to the house?"

Oh. Right.

Wyll opens his mouth, but the words he expects to find waiting for him don't come.

"You don't have to tell me," Astarion says. "But I'm here. And I'm listening. If you want to say it."

It's true, in a sense, that Wyll doesn't have to tell him anything. But not speaking won't stop Astarion from thinking, and likely coming to all the wrong conclusions in the process.

So pulls Astarion close, and he speaks soft and fast, so there is no danger that he will be misheard.

"You weren't a devil," Wyll says. "And you didn't seem to want to drain me dry. There was only one other thing that I thought you might want me for. It was nothing about you. Not really."

"Nothing about me," Astarion repeats. "But what about you, Wyll? What happened to you, out there on the frontiers?"

Wyll picks his words very carefully.

"No one ever took anything from me that I didn't offer," he says, finally.

"But they still took." Astarion watches him—how unbelievable it is that these were the eyes of a stranger only a moment ago, that Wyll looked into those scarlet depths and puzzled at what they were hiding, when every emotion is writ so plainly in them, omens Wyll has spent half a decade divining. "Didn't they?"

Wyll shuts his eyes. Allows himself the mercy of darkness, the sanctity of a moment's silence with no one else's words to rattle in his head. He loves their cottage where they spend their winters, loves their cats with all their catlike affection and disdain, he loves their life. His life. His, to spend as he wishes, for the rest of his days and beyond into infinity.

He imagines the world on the other side of a decade. The soft young man in the hard cold world, unable to reconcile himself with a sunrise-painted ceiling and a house with someone waiting for him to come home.

And on the other shore—a decade from now—there is a blank space, undefined, knowing no shape but the man across from him. A man who followed him into Hell once and would do so again, if it meant sparing Wyll the slightest discomfort. A man so selfish he turns it into a kind of selflessness, just as he turns Wyll's heart in knots the same way he did from the day they met.

Wyll opens his eyes.

"I love you," he says. "You know that, don't you, my star?"

Astarion, predictably, scowls. "Yes. Stop avoiding the question."

Wyll angles forward—careful of his horns—to nose into Astarion's neck and let his weight drop, knowing that for all his slightness of frame Astarion is more than strong enough to hold him.

"I'll tell you everything," Wyll promises. "But right now… I just want to be now again."

Astarion cradles the back of his neck, curling his fingers, so gently, into the base of his twists. "You're here," he murmurs. "You're with me. Here and now."

And miraculously, he is.