#irenna

I gasp: pain and shock and hitting the water all the way from the sky, and for a long, hideous moment, I can't remember how to swim.

Thrashing my way to shore — and it aches in me all the while, bleeding out youyouyou where are you are you— I shed my armour as I go, dropping metal into the glittering Chionthar. The Brain is an island slowly sinking, swallowed by the red-foam river, and all around I see ruins.

I don't see You. Pacing along the shore, armour half-off, all-ruined, hands bare and shaking, I call your name, Our names: Astarion-Wyll-Irenna, over and over. The river laps red and warm at my feet. When I look back, later: it's only been minutes.

It's only been minutes, but the wound in my head bleeds, and a person can drown in a few inches of water, and the Chionthar is ravenous-red.

There's no sign of you.

It occurs to me, brief and blasphemous, how much I've asked of Kelemvor these past months: whether this is the price. You, for Us.

And then I see you: minnow-dark, shedding your armour just as I did, all of us killing-heavy in our metal and leather. I run to you, feet loose in the sand as you thrash in the shallows. More graceful than me; no less dying, blood and water in rivulets down your shoulders. I slide my hands under your arms, haul you up the beach, and for a moment—

—and this, I will always remember—

I think you'll bite, twisting reptile-vicious in my arms.

Then you say my name, and the bleed in my skull stutters. Pain clarifies: your voice like gauze. Your mouth like raw meat and low tide, and the kiss ends when you cough water into my mouth, but your hand is a claw on my cheek and the pressure is easing, the scales in my chest swinging towards balance.

The blood in my mouth is fresh. You did bite — just not to kill.