Page 21 of Astarion

There was a spring in his step as he found his way to Dalyria’s laboratory. He saw a light on under the door, which meant that she, at least, was still awake and working.

She looked up when he entered and nodded. If she noticed that his hands were empty of the usual mending, she didn’t comment. Instead, she handed him a bowl and said, “Watch this potato.”

“Watch it do what, exactly?” Astarion tilted his head. He had never given a great deal of thought to raw potatoes, but the specimen in the bowl seemed bog-standard to him.

“That’s the question, isn’t it? I can’t watch them both.” She turned her attention back to another bowl, which appeared to contain a turnip.

“Are the root vegetables restless tonight, then?”

“They may be.” She rested her chin in her hand, watching the turnip like a vulture waiting for something to die.

For lack of anything better to do, Astarion watched the potato.

It did nothing. His mind began to wander.

“What were you saying you needed?” he asked after a while.

Dalyria didn’t look away from the turnip. “What?”

“The other night, before we were interrupted by our charming sister Violet. You started to say that you required something.”

“Ah.” The thin line between her eyebrows deepened. “I doubt you can help me.”

“You never know unless you ask.” He waited until she glanced away from the turnip, then gave her a carefully curated smile, charming without being so charming that it would arouse suspicion.

“Why would you help me?”

“Because I’m bored senseless,” he said, which was true. “You have your laboratory to occupy you during the long daylight hours, but I’ve read every book in the palace that the old man doesn’t keep under lock and key, I’ve hand-embroidered three entire coats, and I am at risk of going to the archives and digging through old property deeds to see if I can swindle money out of widows and orphans. Or for widows and orphans. I haven’t decided yet.”

Dalyria’s lips curled in a hint of a smile, but the line between her eyebrows didn’t fade. She went back to watching the turnip. Eventually, she seemed to come to some conclusion. “Unicorn’s blood,” she said.

Astarion choked, swallowed wrong, and started coughing. Dalyria picked up a beaker full of water and handed it to him without taking her eyes off her turnip. When he could breathe again, he said, “Blood?”

“Horn is easy enough to come by. I’ve experimented with it a fair amount already. But vampirism is blood-borne, and I am beginning to think that blood must be used to cure it. Innocent blood. Blood with healing properties. What better?”

“Unicorns can think,” said Astarion. “You can’t drink it.”

“I don’t plan to drink it. The sample I have in mind is too old to be potable anyway. By this point, it is likely nothing but a jar-shaped scab.”

“How very appetizing.”

Dalyria shrugged. “Blood doesn’t keep if you don’t renew the spells on it. You know that.”

Astarion did indeed know that. The goblets in Cazador’s house all had minor charms on them to keep the blood from clotting up too quickly, but every one of the spawn had had the experience of being thrown a dead rat and having to practically chew the blood out of its veins. Most of them had also tried to get clever at some point early on and stash blood in their room, only to find that the enchantments on the goblets weren’t terribly strong and the contents either dried up or separated into a putrid mess within hours.

He was about to ask where she’d learned about the unicorn blood in the first place, but his potato suddenly lurched. Astarion almost dropped the bowl in surprise, but he caught it before it crashed to the floor. “Your potato is doing something.”

“Already?”

The potato had a dozen eyes, which slowly opened into a myriad of tiny mouths lined with infinitesimal teeth.

“…mama?” it said in a small, breathy voice.

“This is disturbing,” Astarion said. “I am disturbed. What in the Nine Hells did you do to this vegetable?”

“I filled several pots of dirt with moss supposedly excavated from the body of the dead god Moander, watered them with an infusion of various unwholesome herbs, and fertilized them with composted otyugh dung.”

“As one does.”