Chapter 4: Claiming the Prize
The cold night air of Baldur’s Gate was a slap, washing away the cloying scent of blood and ozone. Ishtar ran, the cobblestones biting her bare feet through the thin soles of her practice shoes. Drizzt was a shadow ahead, moving with predatory silence, pausing only to ensure she followed. They didn’t speak. The only sounds were their ragged breaths and the distant, oblivious revelry from the Lower City taverns.
Moonrise Towers wasn’t a tower at all, but a grand, decaying mansion perched on a bluff overlooking the Chionthar. Ivy strangled its pale stone facades, and most of its windows were dark. Drizzt led her not to the main entrance, but around to the eastern side where a wrought-iron gate groaned on rusted hinges. They slipped into a neglected garden, statues of forgotten gods peering blindly through the overgrowth.
“Whose place is this?” Ishtar whispered, her voice still raw from Aurick’s throttling.
“Mine,” Drizzt said simply, pressing a sequence of stones on a seemingly solid wall. A section swung inward with a whisper of well-oiled mechanisms. “For now.”
Inside was a different world. The air was cool, dry, and smelled of ancient paper, beeswax, and a faint, sharp tang of alchemical reagents. He lit a lantern with a snap of his fingers, revealing a chamber that was part library, part armory, part sanctuary. Books were stacked in precarious towers alongside glass vials of shimmering liquids. Weapons of exotic make hung on the walls. Thick carpets from Calimshan covered the stone floor, and heavy tapestries depicting abstract Underdark geometries muffled all sound.
Ishtar stood trembling in the center of the room, the adrenaline finally bleeding away. The full weight of what had happened crashed into her. Aurick’s blood on her face, now dried and flaking. The savage grip of his hands. The final, wet sound of Drizzt’s sword. She looked at her own hands, clean now, but she could still feel the ghost of the silver siphon disc, the heat of Grisha’s stolen bond.
“He’s dead,” she said, the words hollow.
“He is.” Drizzt was checking the door’s hidden lock, setting a thin wire across the threshold. He shed his leather vest, the fabric stained with dark patches. “The body will be found. Grisha will connect it to you. To us. We have until midday, maybe less, before the hunt begins in earnest.”
“Then why are we here?” A spike of panic lanced through her exhaustion. “We should be on a ship. On the road.”
“We need resources. Plans. You need to stop shaking.” He approached her, his red eyes assessing her like a tactical problem. “You’re in shock.”
“I’m covered in his blood,” she hissed, the tremor in her hands becoming violent. “I can smell him on me. In me.”
Drizzt didn’t offer comfort. He didn’t touch her. He just nodded toward an arched doorway on the other side of the chamber. “There’s a basin. Water. Soap. Use them.”
The adjoining room was a small bathing alcove with a deep copper tub. A pump stood in the corner. She worked it furiously, the icy water a shock that grounded her. She stripped off the stained undershift and leggings, letting them fall in a heap. She scrubbed her skin raw with a harsh lump of lye soap, scouring every place Aurick had touched, licked, bitten. The cut below her collarbone stung fiercely. She washed between her legs with a brutal, clinical efficiency, trying to erase the lingering ache, the phantom sensation of violation. The water in the basin turned pink, then rust-brown.
When she emerged, shivering and clean, wrapped in a thick, soft blanket she’d found on a shelf, Drizzt had laid out food on a low table: hard cheese, darker bread, dried figs. Two pewter cups sat beside a bottle of deep red wine. He had changed into a simple black tunic and trousers. His silver hair was loose, catching the lamplight.
“Eat,” he said, not looking at her as he studied a large, unrolled map weighted down with daggers.
She ate without tasting. The wine was dry and strong, warming the cold hollow inside her. She watched him. The efficient grace of his movements, the absolute focus. He had killed a man—a powerful, obsessed noble—for her. Because of a deal. A transaction. Yet, the way he had looked at her in Aurick’s bedroom, after… it hadn’t been the cold look of a contractor.
“Why did you kill him?” The question left her lips before she could stop it.
He finally looked up. “The job changed.”
“The job was to sever the bond. You did that.”
“He was a threat. He would have pursued you to the ends of Faerûn. That complicates my payment—your safe passage.” His answer was clipped, logical.
“Is that all?” She pressed, the wine loosening something in her chest. A reckless need. The same need that had made her kiss him in Aurick’s parlor, a desperate gambit for an ally. Only now, the desperation was mixed with something hotter, darker. A survivors’ hunger.
Drizzt held her gaze. The lamplight danced in his crimson eyes. “No.”
The single word hung in the air, charged and heavy.
He stood up slowly, leaving the map. He crossed the room until he stood before her. She didn’t shrink back. The blanket slipped from her shoulders, pooling at her feet. She stood naked before him, her violet skin marked with bruises and the clean, angry line of the cut. She saw his eyes track them, his expression hardening. Not with pity, but with a recognition that mirrored her own—a familiar, intimate knowledge of violence.
“He hurt you,” Drizzt said, his voice a low rasp.
“Yes.”
“He thought he owned you.”
“He did.”
A muscle feathered in Drizzt’s jaw. “Do you want to be owned?”
“No.”
“Do you want to forget?”
She swallowed. “I want to feel something else.”
He closed the final distance. His hands came up, not to caress, but to frame her face, his thumbs tracing the bruises on her jawline where Aurick had struck her. His touch was deliberate, almost clinical, yet it sent a shockwave through her system.
“This will not be gentle,” he warned, his breath warm against her lips.
“I don’t want gentle,” she breathed back, and surged up to meet him.
The kiss was not an invitation. It was a collision. His mouth was hot and demanding, his tongue claiming hers with a possessiveness that was nothing like Aurick’s frantic obsession. This was a claiming by equals. A mutual devouring. Ishtar met it with a ferocity that startled herself, biting his lower lip, tasting a faint, metallic trace of the night’s violence. She poured all her fear, her rage, her revulsion into that kiss.
Drizzt growled, a deep sound in his chest. His hands left her face, sliding down her body, mapping the bruises on her ribs, the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips. His touch was rough, searching, as if memorizing the landscape of her survival. He gripped her ass, pulling her hard against him. She could feel the rigid length of him through his trousers, pressing insistently against her belly.
She yanked at his tunic, pulling it over his head. His torso was pale, scarred with a latticework of old wounds—slashes, punctures, the history of a violent life written on his skin. She ran her hands over them, then raked her nails down his back. He hissed, his hands tightening on her.
“Against the wall,” he commanded, his voice thick.
He turned her, pushing her towards the cold stone near the fireplace. The unyielding surface met her front, a shock after the soft carpets. He pressed against her back, his body a line of heat. One hand splayed across her stomach, holding her in place. The other tangled in her long, damp hair, pulling her head back to expose her throat. He mouthed along the column of her neck, not sucking marks, but tasting, nipping at the sensitive skin near the junction of her shoulder—the same place Aurick had bitten. But this was different. This was reclamation.
“You sure you want this?” he murmured against her skin, his free hand sliding down her belly, and lower, finding her slick, heated core.
“Yes,” she gasped, arching into his touch.
“Say it.”
“I want it. I want you.” The words were a release.
He drove two fingers into her without preamble, curling them. The stretch was sudden, intense. She cried out, her hands slapping against the stone. She was still tender, sensitive from the earlier brutality, but the pain was edged with a sharp, clarifying pleasure. It was her pain, chosen, not inflicted.
“Fuck,” he breathed, feeling how wet she was for him. He worked his fingers, scissoring them, his thumb finding her clit and pressing hard, circular strokes. “You’re soaked. Is this for me? Or for the killing?”
“Both,” she moaned, the confession torn from her. The vision of him behind Aurick, the swift, merciless stroke—it pooled heat low in her belly. It was wrong. It was liberating.
He removed his fingers, and she heard the rustle of his trousers being shoved down. His cock, heavy and thick, pressed against the cleft of her ass. He rubbed the head through her folds, gathering her wetness, teasing her entrance.
“Look at you,” he grunted, his body a cage around hers. “Pretty violet skin marked up. My marks now. You wear them better.”
Then he pushed inside.
He filled her in one long, relentless stroke. Ishtar screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound that echoed off the stone. It was overwhelming. The stretch burned, a delicious, consuming fire that obliterated every other sensation. He was larger than Aurick, and he didn’t hesitate, didn’t chant, didn’t worship. He fucked.
He set a punishing rhythm from the start, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in to the hilt. Each impact drove her against the wall, knocked the air from her lungs. His hand stayed anchored in her hair, holding her head back. The other hand clamped on her hip, his fingers digging into the bruise there, owning the pain.
“This what you needed?” he grunted, his breath hot on her ear. “A hard fuck to make you feel alive? To remind you who saved that pretty neck?”
“Yes! Gods, yes!” she babbled, the coil of tension inside her winding impossibly tight. The friction was exquisite, a brutal massage that touched something deep, something shattered that was now knitting back together with dark thread.
“You came to me smelling of him,” Drizzt snarled, his pace becoming erratic, animalistic. “Smelling of his fear, his shit, his fucking seed. I can still smell the soap on you. But under it… you smell like mine now.”
His words were filthy, possessive. They should have repulsed her. Instead, they ignited her. She pushed back against him, meeting each thrust, demanding more. The sound of their bodies connecting, skin slapping against skin, was obscene and glorious in the quiet chamber.
“I’m going to come,” she warned, the pressure cresting.
“Come,” he ordered. “Scream it. Let the whole dead mansion hear who makes you come.”
The command shattered her. The orgasm ripped through her, violent and convulsing. Her inner muscles clamped around his invading length, milking him as wave after wave of intense, blinding pleasure radiated out from her core. She did scream, a ragged, broken sound that was part sob, part triumph.
Her climax triggered his. With a final, deep thrust that buried him to the root, he groaned, a guttural sound of release. She felt the hot, pulsing spill of his cum inside her, filling her, a stark contrast to the violation of hours before. This was a claiming she had participated in, had demanded. He stayed there, pinned inside her, both of them panting, slick with sweat, as the aftershocks trembled through them.
Slowly, he softened, slipped out. He released her hair, his hand smoothing down her back. He turned her around gently. Her legs gave way, but he caught her, lowering them both to the thick carpet before the dying fire. He didn’t pull her into an embrace, but he stayed close, his arm behind her, their bodies still touching.
They sat in silence for a long time, listening to their heartbeats slow. The fire crackled.
Ishtar rested her head against his shoulder, staring into the embers. The hollow ache was gone. In its place was a weary, sore fullness. And a new, cold clarity.
“Grisha will come for the siphon,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
“What’s in it? Why is it so important?”
Drizzt was silent for a moment. “It’s not just your bond,” he finally said. “It’s a key. A key to a vault containing every debt, every secret, every piece of blackmail she’s ever held over the powerful people in this city. Your bond was the latest. She collected them. The siphon doesn’t just sever—it steals. It holds the magical imprint. With the right magic, you could replicate any of those bonds, call in any of those favors.”
Ishtar absorbed this. The weight of the little disc now made terrible sense. “So we don’t just have my freedom. We have a weapon that could bring down the Takers’ Guild.”
“We have a target on our backs the size of the Moonmaiden’s grin,” Drizzt corrected. He looked down at her, his red eyes reflecting the firelight. “The deal’s changed again, Ishtar. Getting you out of the city just got harder.”
She met his gaze. The fear was there, a cold stone in her gut. But beside it, for the first time in years, was a flicker of something like purpose. Not survival. Not seduction. Agency.
“Then we change the plan,” she said.
A faint, grim smile touched Drizzt’s lips. “We?”