#chapter 18 rewrite

I am catching up on so many tags I missed over the weekend! Thank you to *deep breath* @missfortunetherogue, @lucretiouswept, @saylofwaterdeep, @gortashsrighthand, AND of course @fireflyeyes!

Guess who is finally caught up on school enough to rewrite chapter 18... ME. IT'S ME. And let me tell you, Limp Bizkit is literally hauling me through it, ngl.

Okay, back to the writing cave I go. I hope you enjoyed my offering :3

No one tagged me, but that does not matter. I am so freaking proud of how far I've come in this chapter 18 rewrite for Stealing Moonlight! Please enjoy this snippet of Chapter 18 that I cannot be more obsessed with.

Tags, anyone? @gortashsrighthand, @unovafarm, @missfortunetherogue, @moon-trix, @baelthi-vp, @dapperpossum, @dynamicducks, @carnivaley, @saylofwaterdeep, @asorceresswrites, @optimisticgrey, @ele-millennial-weirdo, @anacdoce and @jellyfitzjelly!

Finished. Edited. Revised. Sat on for a minute. And finally... POSTED! I hope you've enjoyed the WIPs and snippets for this chapter, because it's FINALLY DONE!! There is only one more chapter rewrite to go and I am so freaking excited!!

Thank you for following along with my screaming and freakouts and big "deleted an entire section" phases. Links to the latest chapter and the first chapter are below!!

Click <<HERE>> for the Chapter 18 rewrite!!

My goodness, I haven't written a THING all week until this morning when I finally got a burst of inspo. Thank you to all of the lovely writers who tagged me in their WIP posts!! @ghost-of-a-dream-girl, @theendofanerror, @ele-millennial-weirdo, @missfortunetherogue, @gortashsrighthand, @asorceresswrites, @dynamicducks, @unovafarm, @archduchessgortash, @fireflyeyes, and @wizard-dagger!!

I have officially finished the Chapter 18 rewrite and am onto the editing portion (FOR GOOD)! Mother Mother has been fueling my music needs and @dynamicducks and @gortashsrighthand have been so freaking helpful in bouncing ideas off of, love you guys <3

Without further ado, le snippet:

All she could think about was him. She wanted him. She wanted him the way she’d once wanted Selune’s light when she was an acolyte. She wanted his hands. Wanted the particular quality of his attention when it landed fully on her, that complete and devastating focus that made her feel seen in ways she’d never experienced before. Wanted the cold of him against the heat of her. Wanted to find out, again and again, exactly what her body was capable of feeling. What she was capable of wanting. She’d spent every day of the past week in that library with him. Every day, learning what caused desire to burn hottest under her skin. And then last night in his chambers- she knew that she was ruined for anyone else. He’d ruined her in the most exhilarating way possible. And she wanted more. Yes, Astarion had taken her. She couldn’t pretend otherwise. He had stolen her from her temple and her quiet, certain, predictable life. She was not going to dress that up into something that it wasn’t. But he had also waited for her. Day after day, extracting his prices from her slowly thawing grip. Always listening when she told him to stop. Had held her face so gently while she wept and asked for nothing in return. Had laughed at breakfast this morning, the sound so genuine that it surprised her, the practiced charm he clutched close dropping entirely for just a moment. She remembered how still he’d gotten when she brought up the guest list. The rigid set of his shoulders, the way his hand threatened to shatter the glass of wine in it’s pale vise. The flat, exposed honesty when he’d said they would come for you. But none of that was cruelty. It was fear. He’d looked at her like she was something he was terrified of losing. Finally, she could feel her heartbeat returning to a slower tempo. The black edges of her vision receding entirely as the courtyard came back into full focus around her. The variegated ivy still clinging to the stone, the untrimmed hedge leaves swaying slightly in the breeze, the pale shafts of afternoon light lying flat across that packed earth path. She remembered her promise to him. Her promise not to leave, not to even try. A promise she had given freely, and she was not the kind of woman who went back on her word so quickly. Not even now. Not even after everything he’d put her through. Not here. Not for this. The very bedrock of her was based in integrity. And she had chosen to spend it willingly on him.

Thank you for the the tags and tag backs @blacklodge13, @asorceresswrites, and @carnivaley! Obvious tag backs to all of you!!

These past 4 months have been kind of crazy, honestly, and I'm so happy to be back in the writing saddle again. I've missed writing like this like crazy, and 100% I'd rather be doing this than arguing with backwards professors or taking awkward student surveys xD

I'm almost done with the rewrite for chapter 18 of Stealing Moonlight and I couldn't be more excited! The horizon is RIGHT THERE and I can soon stop torturing my bb gurl Rhiannon for a hot minute and give her some of that sweet sweet lovin' she so DESPERATELY needs!!

She stopped at its edge, looking down into the pool. Her own reflection looked back at her. Hair wild. Eyes wide and angry. Brows drawn together tight. The face of a woman who’d seen a chance to escape and had done absolutely nothing to take it. Hadn’t even tried. She’d walked in the opposite direction, further within the confines of her prison, back toward the monster who’d stolen her. Rhiannon pressed her lips together, hard, gripping the edge tight as her fingers traced the scabbed over punctures along the side of her neck. Because she knew why. It sat in her chest like something swallowed wrong- sharp and insistent and uncomfortable. She thought of him leaning close across the breakfast table. The cold he radiated pressing against her skin. His nose just barely touching hers, his pale thumb tracing along the curve of her jaw. The flat, absolute certainty of his voice when he’d spoken the word that caused her to burn- Mine. Not as a threat, but a fact. A fact he’d stated with such unshakeable confidence. As if his claim over her was something so obvious, so absolutely evident, that it was foolish of her to even deny. But she was not his- she knew that. Still believed that, mostly- the argument was still there, it was just getting harder to hold on to than it had been before, the edges of it going soft in her hands. Yet the gate was open… and she had walked away from it. Had consciously chosen, with her whole body and in full possession of her mind, to stay. To come back to the palace. Back toward him. “Stupid girl…” she scolded it, striking the surface of the water. “You should have run when you had the chance.” Her reflection in the pool offered her nothing useful in return. Suddenly, every muscle in her body went taut. The smell hit her before anything else. Metallic and pungent, underneath the damp earth and the wild green of the courtyard- powdered iron-vine. Sharp and distinct, the kind of scent that warned, that had to be prepared, ground down by the careful hands of monster hunters. Gur. Rhiannon kept her hands pressed flat against the stone ledge of the fountain. Kept her eyes forward, trained on the rippling water before her, on the fractured pieces of her own reflection slowly finding their way back to one another. She did not dare move. “Vile creatures such as you,” said the voice behind her, low and rough with barely contained contempt, “should always run.” The silence stretched long between them, filled only by the distant, ordinary sounds of the city just beyond the palace walls. She learned long ago, that the first person to speak in a silence like this was always the one who lost themselves in the end. And it sure as hells wasn’t going to be her. “Nothing to say for yourself, sun-walker?”

I was trying out the leather version of the Selûnite armor from The Inconstant Moon - Shar and Selûne Cleric Gear Nexus mod on Rhiannon, but I don't think I'm feeling it and will definitely go back to the Selûnite plate armor.

I see the tags, I do, I promise, but my depression brain has been telling me "haha you suck," for the last two days. BUT TODAY I FINALLY HAVE SOMETHING TO SHARE!! Big Thank You's to @missfortunetherogue (2x!!), @ele-millennial-weirdo, @theendofanerror, @optimisticgrey, @archduchessgortash, and my homegirl in the flesh @gortashsrighthand!

Without further ado, a snippet from the Chapter 18 Rewrite of Stealing Moonlight :3

Rhiannon slowed to a stop as she approached. She pressed herself flat against the wall of the palace, the rough stone cold and slightly damp against her shoulder blades through the thin linen of her blouse. Her fingers finding purchase in the mortar between the stones. She hid herself, crouching low behind the hedges. Looking through a gap- a thin place where two shrubs had been planted a little too close together, the branches sparse, leaves small and young. This was a side entrance. And it was wide open. Not the grand front gates, with their wrought iron crests and large stringent of guards. No, this was a working entrance- wide enough to admit a cart, the stone frame plain and unadorned, the cobblestone approach worn pale and smooth. The doors had been propped back with iron wedges, and through the, past the delivery wagon sitting half inside with its canvas rolled back and its straw-packed bottles catching in the late morning light, past the two servants relaying crates hand to hand in a neat, efficient line- The street. A real street! Cobbled and uneven and entirely ordinary. A woman with a market basket going about her day. The distant call of a vendor, his sing-song cadence carrying over the rooftops, the words too far away for her ears to make out. A child running ahead of their mother, chasing something that kept skittering away across the stones. There were only two guards that stood at this entrance. Both sets of scarlet eyes watching the deliverymen unload their cart. Neither of them watching the hedge line where she hid. Rhiannon’s fingers tightened against the stone. She knew these streets. She’d walked them more times than she could count when she’d first arrived at Baldur’s Gate all those years ago- had known the Upper City like she knew the back of her hand. She knew where the nearest station of Flaming Fist patrolled. She knew the narrow turning two streets off the main thoroughfare, the light blue door with the crescent scratched into the frame, the old hostel that hosted new clerics of Selûne before they started at the temple in the city. She could be through that gate in thirty seconds. Less maybe, if she moved quickly and kept close to the hedge line. Barefoot and penniless, but out. Past the wards. Into the open city, away from the palace, away from Astarion. Out where he could not follow her- not without consequences at least. She could be screaming her lungs out in the middle of The Wide, every passing merchant and Flaming Fist guard as her witness, and there was nothing he could do about it lest he risk tarnishing his reputation. The gates were open. The guards weren’t paying attention. Yet she did not move toward them. Rhiannon stood with her back against the cold palace wall, her toes curling into the dirt, the path to freedom right in front of her, and she did not move a single muscle. Her hands still pressed against the stone. Her body- the same body that had ached for freedom, that had been building mental maps of every possible exit she could find- simply refused.

Catching up on these tags since I don't use tumblr on the weekends!

Thank you @gortashsrighthand (you absolute fucking maniac, I love you), and @optimisticgrey (The Bhaalist story you posted gave me CHILLS)

I have been trucking along with the Chapter 18 rewrite for Stealing Moonlight!!! Let me just say, we are cooking with bacon grease, people!! I hope you enjoy my possessive Ascended Astarion as much as I do :3

“Does that frighten you, my sweet?” He asked. Soft. Tender. That infectious charm he possessed woven so thoroughly through his voice that she could never quite tell where the performance ended and the truth began. She lifted her eyes to look at him. She tried to keep them away from his lips. Tried very hard, actually, and failed almost immediately- her gaze dropping there before she could stop it. Thinking about the way he’d kissed her last night. The way she’d stopped fighting his advances with a quickness she hadn’t known she possessed, a fact that still embarrassed her to think about. And, by Selûne's moonbeams, she wanted it again. Wanted him again, and again, and again, in ways that hadn’t quieted even slightly. In ways that made the burning reignite low in her belly. But there was something else beneath all of that wanting. Fear. Not of him, exactly. It was more fear of what wanting him so openly might have told him. What impressions it might have given him that she hadn’t intended. What last night might have looked like from his point of view. Future consort. He’d spoken those words against her skin once before. Back in her temple, with his hand at her throat, offering her the illusion of having a choice: become his consort or remain his prisoner. “Something like that,” she said. “More uneasy than anything else, honestly.” The corner of his mouth curved. “How adorable.” His thumb dropped from the scab at her lip, tracing down her chin and along her jaw instead. “I’ve seen you stand before a god, Rhiannon. Face against the Elder Brain itself without breaking. Yet here my precious priestess sits, uneasy over a little party.” “That isn’t what I meant.” He tilted his head, white curls falling over his brow. Waiting. “It’s the way you said it.” She held his gaze. “Your most prized possession. Your future consort.” The words left her tongue carefully, as if she was setting something sharp and dangerous down between them. “You talk about me as though you’ve already decided my fate. As though I do not get a say in the matter, whatsoever.” He was quiet for a moment. But the smile came back. Slow. Unbothered. “And what if I told you,” he said, his voice dropping low, “that I intend to spent a very long time showing you exactly how precious you are to me? That this palace, this city, and every ounce of power I have means nothing without you by my side?” “That isn’t what I mean and you know it.” “Isn’t it?” His fingers slid from her jaw into her hair, tucking a rogue wave back from her face. “You’ll find, my love, that I am very rarely interested in giving you the answer you’re looking for.” She opened her mouth, a retort on her tongue- until it died. He leaned in- not far, just enough that she could feel the cold he radiated against her cheek- and the smile became something that made her stomach flip. “Besides,” he murmured, “I’m not so sure that you’re in any position to object to being wanted, darling.” A pause. “Especially not after last night.” Heat bloomed across her face in an instant. “Don’t-” “Don’t what?” Pure innocence laced through his voice. “I was only going to say that you don’t seem quite so untouchable this morning.” His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth. “Not so pious. Not so righteous. Not so-” “Astarion.” She pressed her palm flat against his chest and pushed- not hard, just enough- and he went, pulling back with a soft laugh. An expression of complete and unbothered delight plastered across his face that she was beginning to think he reserved specifically for moments like these when he’d undone her successfully. “All right, all right.” He conceded with a smile, reaching for his wine glass. “I’ll behave.”

There we go. 650 words for you fanfiction sluts (lovingly) :3 If you haven't yet, please go check out my fic Stealing Moonlight over on AO3! Or not, it's whatever (it'd be pretty cool if you did though) 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

Thank you @junoswritingpit and @carnivaley for the tags!

This is a little bit more of an elaborated version of yesterday’s WIP 🙃 Please enjoy my snippet of the Chapter 18 rewrite!

Now I go to chem lab 🥼 🧪