The boar was getting away.

Astarion crouched in the undergrowth, perfectly still, watching the fat, bristled thing trot between the trees with all the urgency of a merchant on holiday. His fingers twitched on his dagger. His stomach, or whatever approximation of a stomach two centuries of undeath had left him with, clenched like a fist around nothing.

Boar blood. The culinary equivalent of drinking from a puddle. He'd done it before. He'd do it again. But gods, did it have to taste like that every single time?

The creature paused, sniffed the air, and bolted.

Astarion didn't bother chasing it. He sat back on his heels, pushing his silver curls out of his face with the kind of deliberate grace that served absolutely no audience but himself, and exhaled through his nose. Three hours of hunting. Three hours of crawling through damp undergrowth that was doing unspeakable things to his trousers, and the best Faerun could offer him was a boar with a better sense of self-preservation than most of Tav's party combined.

Speaking of Tav. He'd been trying, with considerable charm and no small amount of theatrical vulnerability, to convince her that a tiny, insignificant, barely-worth-mentioning sip from her neck would be mutually beneficial. She remained, infuriatingly, unconvinced.

Patience, he told himself. You've waited two hundred years. You can wait another night.

His stomach disagreed.

Then — a sound. Not animal. Not monster. Something far more interesting: the soft rustle of silk, and a panicked whisper that cut through the midnight air like a bell.

His ears, better than any human's, honed by centuries of listening for the scrape of Cazador's boots on stone, locked onto the sound. Female. Young. Alone. And very, very lost.

Astarion rose from his crouch, silent as smoke, and followed the sound through the brambles.

Well, well, well.