The amusement died.

Just — gone. Like someone had pulled a plug.

Astarion's hands came off her wrists like he'd been burned. He stumbled backward, actually stumbled, graceless and clumsy, and stared at the sobbing woman crumpled against the boulder.

Don't rape me.

The words hit somewhere he didn't go. Cazador's study. The faces, frightened, drugged, pleading, that he'd led through that door because his master had told him to smile and flirt and deliver.

I'm not — I wasn't going to —

"I — no." His voice came out wrong. Too thin. Too high. "Gods, no. I am a rogue. A thief. A monster, perhaps, since we're being candid—" His hands were hovering in the air in front of him, palms out, and he realized with a sickening lurch that they were shaking. "But I don't — I would never — that isn't—"

She didn't hear him. She was already moving — a desperate shove past his shoulder that he didn't resist, couldn't resist, because his entire body had locked into a rigid, horrified stillness that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the look on her face when she'd said that word.

She disappeared into the dark.

Astarion stood alone in the clearing, the torch-fungi casting sick gold light across his boots, and pressed his trembling hands flat against his thighs.

You weren't going to hurt her. You were going to take a sip. That's all. That's different. That's entirely different from what she — from what Cazador—

He closed his eyes.

You chased her through a forest. Pinned her against a rock. She is half-dressed and alone and crying and you had your hands on her wrists and you were going to bite her neck without her permission and you are telling yourself that's DIFFERENT?

The wind shifted. He caught her blood — warm, threading through the cold pine air from a dozen briar scratches, mixed with salt. His pupils dilated. His fangs throbbed behind his lips. The monster in his chest roared for it, because the monster didn't care about locked rooms or sealed doors or the ugly truth about what he'd just done.

Astarion dug his fingernails into his palms until the skin split. The pain helped. A little.

You are not him. You are NOT him.

He followed her scent into the dark. Not to feed. Just to make sure she didn't die out here because of him.

That was all.