Chapter Text
Radovid tried once, and only once, to contribute to the discussion between the other three adults about where they should go, but their unified glare kept him from making any further attempts.
Irrationally, part of him hoped that they still viewed him with suspicion after Jaskier’s brief explanation of how their morning had started.
In reality, he knew the more likely reason was simply that they didn’t think Radovid had any worthwhile ideas to contribute.
Either way, his input would be at best ignored if he tried to speak up again. (Or would being ignored be the worst? Radovid honestly did not know.)
Regardless, he could not have made things much worse.
After all, the three of them could not agree on anything, either.
“Portals aren’t an option?”
“We should go to the chain ferry-”
“Too obvious, there are probably boats we can steal-”
At the very least, the other three adults could concur on going up a hill that seemed to lead to a cliff-top with decent sight lines of half the island. According to Yennefer, it was a popular picnic spot among the young mages in training because of the expansive view. It might give them a clearer idea of the state of Thanedd, and thus the best way to safety.
Radovid idly wondered if seeing the entirety of their situation would make them argue more or less.
“Behind the enemy lines-”
“What f*cking lines, it’s all a mess in there!”
“What about the bridge?”
Cirilla didn’t seem perturbed by her guardians’ disagreement. While she kept an obvious ear on their debate, the princess focused on scanning their surroundings, rendering Radovid entirely redundant.
He could drop dead and they might not even notice, which is why he made his best effort to keep up. They didn’t need him, they didn’t want him around, and Radovid’s only saving grace was that they cared so little about him that they didn’t see the need to actively get rid of him, either.
“Everyone’s going that way-”
“-so we’ll blend right in.”
“Or not see an attack coming.”
On and on they went, none of them seeming a gasp out of breath as they climbed up this damned hill.
The argument had gone in several more circles by the time they crested the slope and reached sweet, blessed flat ground. Radovid gasped in relief, bracing his palms against his knees at the slightest pause.
He tried not to take Cirilla’s derisive snort too personally, but found himself flushed all over again from the embarrassment. An adult prince really shouldn’t be less fit than a teenage princess. He didn’t know if this disparity said more about her or about him.
After he spotted the volume of smoke rising steadily out of Aretuza, he couldn’t care less.
Yennefer trailed off in her arguments as they laid eyes upon her alma mater. Behind her, Jaskier and Geralt shared a look Radovid couldn’t begin to decipher. Jaskier took one of her hands in his own, while Geralt draped his free hand over her shoulder.
“What now?” Jaskier asked, as if they hadn’t spent their entire climb arguing about exactly that.
Both men looked to Yennefer, but when she continued to stare wordlessly, Jaskier looked to Geralt.
Squeezing her shoulder, Geralt released her and stepped back. Cirilla slid into place without missing a beat, looping her arm through Yennefer’s as Geralt walked along the edge of the cliff and scanned the island. Radovid almost followed him, but when he saw how close to the edge Geralt strolled, Radovid stayed rooted safely behind the rest of the family. The witcher could see better than Radovid, anyway.
None of them needed Radovid.
“Over there,” Geralt said, pointing down to a random patch of beach. Radovid had to squint and stare for several moments before he realized one of the shadows could be a cave. “We need to get down there-”
The witcher suddenly whirled around, sword held aloft as he looked in the distance. Radovid followed his gaze, and was just about to ask what was wrong when he heard hoofbeats.
A Nilfgaardian soldier rode over the crest of the hill — a high-ranking one, judging by the armor and tack. Cirilla, Jaskier, and Yennefer all turned around at the sound.
Then Cirilla gasped.
“It’s him!”
“Who?” Radovid asked — then flinched back as she unsheathed her sword. On her other side, Yennefer stared — not at her young charge apparently readying to fight another enemy, but at the man approaching them. Jaskier also squinted at him, as if trying to identify the man.
“The Black Knight,” Cirilla answered, before stalking forward as this Nilfgaardian knight dismounted.
When he turned to face them, Yennefer and Jaskier both gasped.
“What?” Geralt called over his shoulder. The witcher never away from Cirilla and the knight, who both just stood there staring at each other.
“That’s Cahir,” Yennefer breathed out.
Radovid frowned at her, the name tickling his memory. He’s read that name somewhere, he’s sure of it…
“That…that means we helped him,” Jaskier hissed, fury overcoming the latent fear from before. “Yennefer, we helped him!”
“I freed the man who hunted Ciri halfway across the continent,” Yennefer recited hoarsely, in the same tone of voice that Jaskier had spoken with right after Rience’s decapitation. “We smuggled him to safety, we-!” Yennefer stared helplessly between Cirilla, Aretuza, and the knight. She helped ‘free’ him…? The only time Radovid heard of Yennefer of Vengerberg freeing somebody was…
…a Nilfgaardian general captured by the Brotherhood of Mages…which had led to the bounty put on her head…
…oh f*ck.
Cirilla unsheathed her sword, looking even more furious than when she’d fought against Rience.
“He’s mine!” Cirilla snarled.
“Are you sure?” Geralt asked her warily. He held his sword at the ready, but his eyes slid from the Black Knight to Cirilla’s face. “There’s no coming back from this.”
She charged forward with a scream.
Cirilla’s scream of fury startled away the Nilfgaardian’s war horse. The knight in black armor neither noticed nor cared — nor did anyone else, for that matter.
Radovid was horrified enough for them all as he stared at General Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach, one of the chief officers of the Nilfgaardian Intelligence Service — making him one of the Nilfgaardian counterparts to Dijkstra.
A particularly militant and combat-capable counterpart.
Geralt kept his eyes on the princess, maintaining a steady grip on his sword. He stood ready to intervene, but apparently not ready to stop this teenage girl from charging at a fully grown and armed man.
Hissing in frustration and lacking anything else to do, Radovid jogged away from the group and after the startled steed.
Nobody else seemed to care about the horse!
…not that he could blame them, when Cirilla and the knight started fighting. She demonstrated far greater skill with her sword in the following ten seconds than Radovid had in the last ten years, and he might have had a heart attack all over again had he not already observed her righting Rience.
Then the Nilfgaardian knight drove his own blade into the earth and yelled at her, “I do not wish to fight!”
Radovid would have fallen over in shock if he weren’t so focused on the horse. As it was, before he could try to look closely at the man’s face and determine what the f*ck he was thinking, let alone doing, the horse’s antagonized neighs made Radovid have to turn his back on this bizarre display.
To think, barely a month ago, he had been so bored.
Cursing under his breath when a stray hoof tore through the side of his coat, Radovid would have give anything to have interesting incidents stop happening around him.
“Pick it up!” he heard Cirilla shout. Radovid didn’t look away from the horse to check, but he could hear her tears in her voice. “PICK IT UP!” He didn’t bother looking over at them. Even if the knight fought back and overcame Cirilla’s shocking level of competency with a blade, Radovid couldn’t imagine this Nilfgaardian knight being able to defeat Geralt and Yennefer as well.
So he focused on the f*cking horse.
He knew it couldn’t carry all five of them once they killed Cahir, but Radovid couldn’t see how having it would hurt.
“In the attack in Cintra,” he heard the knight say, “when I took you, I did everything I was asked with no hesitation. But now, I can't stop asking questions. I've discovered I was wrong!”
…what?!
Radovid managed to grab hold of one of the horse’s reins, then finally looked over to see…Cirilla holding the grown man over the edge of the cliff with one hand? The other hand holding a swordpoint to his throat? How did she- no, no, that didn’t matter. What mattered was getting this f*cking horse under control in case Jaskier and his family decided to leave Radovid behind altogether.
“My life is yours…so take it.”
“You took everything from me!”
While Cirilla’s scream had startled the horse, at least it wasn’t so scared as to run away entirely. Radovid knew how to handle a runaway horse as well as any well-bred Redanian, and soon had the steed in his grasp as he gently eased it back towards the group for their — his? — own use.
“Take this blade and let yours be the last face I see in this world, Princess Cirilla. The lion cub of Cintra. She who has the power to move the world. I owe you that.”
Why was one of Nilfgaard’s top generals kneeling before Cirilla?
He directed Cirilla’s sword to his own throat!
What could he have possibly ‘discovered’ to drive him to this?!
“Do it…and forgive me.”
Jaskier looked between Cirilla’s other two guardians. “We’re not really going to let her kill a man in cold blood, are we?”
Yennefer and Geralt shared a look, clearly unhappy with the prospect…but not unhappy enough to stop her.
Yet neither did they help when Cirilla halted the tip of her sword in the hollow of Cahir’s throat.
Radovid winced.
He’d witnessed executions before, but he had never killed anyone, himself. As such, he couldn’t blame Cirilla for struggling to do so now. Being born with the royal right of commanding life and death did not make bearing that power any easier.
Shoving the reigns of the commandeered warhorse into Jaskier’s surprised hands, Radovid stepped forward and asked, “What did you discover were you wrong about?”
Princess and knight looked over at him. Cirilla immediately looked back at the knight after her moment of surprise, but Cahir looked around in bewilderment, seeming to only just now remember that they weren’t alone. When he flinched at Radovid’s step forward, Radovid paused and held his hands up in placation.
He twisted his wrist a little, flashing his royal seal ring — and wondered why he was surprised when that got no reaction. Maybe Cahir just couldn’t see it, even at this meager distance?
Or maybe Radovid’s royalty didn’t matter to the knight. That was probably more accurate, a probability which burned through Radovid’s empty stomach.
“Cahir, right?” Radovid tried. He dropped his hands and drudged up what little he remembered reading from reports addressed to his brother. “General Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach.” Radovid hoped he got it right; Nilfgaard had such complicated names.
The knight didn’t correct him. Radovid didn’t know if that was because he got it right, or the knight just didn’t care if Radovid got it wrong.
People normally cared about Radovid, but apathy and dismissal had shrouded him all day.
Not that ‘all day’ meant much; Thanedd’s morning gloom still clung to the edges of the coast, a bleak backdrop for the smoke coming out of Aretuza.
“You’ve heard of him?” Cirilla demanded, still not looking away from Cahir even as she addressed Radovid. “You know him?”
“One of the leading officers of Nilfgaardian intelligence until a few months ago, when he was suddenly demoted for reasons unknown and sent to support supply lines…” Radovid waved at the armor, the horse, the everything. “And yet, here he stands…” He looked down at the knight’s knees. “Or rather, kneels.”
Cahir looked from Radovid to Cirilla, across her three guardians, then back to Cirilla.
“You said you discovered you were wrong,” Radovid reiterated to the general. “What were you wrong about?”
What could drive any man, let alone such a high-ranking officer, to give his life to an enemy?
The Nilfgaardian general looked Radovid up and down, and his mouth started to curl into the faintest hint of a sneer. Cirilla saw it and shook him, drawing the knight’s attention back to her.
“Answer us!” she snapped.
Cahir released his guiding hold on Cirilla’s blade at his throat.
Of course he answered her.
Radovid hated the flicker of jealousy that Cirilla could demand nothing more than exactly what Radovid had already asked, yet she got an answer when he didn’t. It was irrational, it was petty, and it was beneath him…but it was also hard to suppress.
Commanding authority came more easily to the princess who rejected her crown than to the prince who still bore his.
“I thought my emperor was a liberator for providing sanctuary to the elves in Xin’trea, after the North mistreated them so,” Cahir started. “Yet he had Francesca Findabar’s baby assassinated in the cradle to turn them against Redania with violence.”
Radovid gasped. All those babies killed in his kingdom’s streets in retaliation for the murdered elven infant…and that had been Nilfgaard all along?
“He…he…he wasn’t satisfied with the level of their support, but he didn’t want to be seen making sanctuary conditional.”
The White Flame seemed to be operating from the same playbook as Dijkstra. A single head in a box sent Redania even more virulently against Nilfgaard than half a dozen battles had managed.
“So the thing you ‘discovered that you were wrong’ about is your emperor being a heavy-handed politician?” Radovid asked dubiously.
Cahir shook his head.
“I grew up hearing of the horrific atrocities of north, the way the mages corrupted everything, and how Northern humans brutalized everyone…” Cahir turned towards Radovid- no, he looked past Radovid, at Yennefer and Jaskier. The Savior of Sodden was furious, teeth bared in a snarl at Cahir, while the Sandpiper shook his head in desperate denial, actually crying. “But a mage from Aretuza gave me my freedom and saved my life, and a human from the north risked his life every day to smuggle persecuted elves to safety.”
Cirilla also glanced over, staring at the pair of her guardians. The sword in her grip wavered, which Geralt’s gaze zeroed in on. He shifted his weight and lifted his own blade, ready to charge if the princess faltered.
“And when the elves understandably splintered in the aftermath of the assassination…” Cahir trailed off, briefly staring into nothingness, but Cirilla shook him back into the present moment. “The leader of the Scoia’tael was my friend. The White Flame not only wanted him gone…he didn’t even need to die, but the emperor still…”
“Gallatin?!”
They all turned to Jaskier at his shout of that name. The Sandpiper stumbled, only staying at Yennefer’s side due to the horse whose reins he held.
Why did Jaskier look ready to cry? Gallatin was an overrated bandit at best, terrorizing humans and stealing everything he could.
Jaskier must disagree, given the truncated wail he let out when Cahir nodded.
“You-! I told him where to begin looking for you!” Radovid’s jaw dropped, and Cahir flinched like Jaskier had just slapped him in the face. “If I’d known that sharing what I knew about Nilfgaardian supply lines with my top Scoia’tael contact would get him killed-” Jaskier ran his hand through his hair, and only Yennefer’s hold on his shoulder seemed to keep him from trying to rip it out entirely. “You f*cking prick, Gallatin went to you for help! He wanted to stop wasting elven lives on the hunt for Ciri! And you got him killed for it?!”
The previous flicker of jealousy burned into an even more irrational bonfire — or perhaps pyre — at Jaskier’s suppressed sob. How could he be more torn up about the death of a terrorist than he had been this morning at Radovid’s betrayal?
“I know,” Cahir burst out, now looking almost pleadingly at Jaskier. “I’m sorry. I know. He was my friend, and…and…”
Cahir’s next words got lost in his desperate gasps, and Jaskier might have collapsed if Yennefer hadn’t stepped forward with fury on her face that belied the gentleness with which she held up Jaskier.
“So the emperor killing your friend is what finally turned you against him?” Geralt tried, sounding as dubious as Radovid had.
Cahir squeezed his eyes shut, trembling. When he opened them again, he looked half a step from crying as he looked up at Cirilla.
“He made me do it. The emperor made me kill my friend. The White Flame meant to test my loyalty…but instead, he finally broke it.” Cahir sucked in a ragged, choking breath. “I can’t follow him anymore.” He looked at Cirilla. “I can’t give you back the life I stole, and I can’t return all the other lives I took in the name of my emperor. All I can do is give my life to you, and give you vengeance.”
Radovid tried to shuffle subtly to the side to get a better look at Cirilla’s face. He wielded no chaos nor magic, he had no mutagens nor training, and he couldn’t craft nation-changing songs…but he knew how people worked, how motivation worked, how hearts worked.
His royal power was useless on this day and his crown was meaningless to these people. ‘What Radovid knew’ was all Radovid had left.
Cirilla wanted vengeance, but could not take it herself. Cahir wanted salvation, and could not get it from anyone but her. Jaskier and Yennefer felt betrayed in finding out the man they aided had also hunted the girl they treated as a daughter, and Geralt worried for naught but the wholeness of Cirilla’s heart.
Everyone thought Radovid a fool; perhaps being seen as a soft-hearted fool could help him?
“Well, I’m sure you can do a bit more than that,” Radovid began. “If anything, a clean death seems like the easy way out, don’t you think?”
“And what would you have me do?” Cahir snarled at him. He shook where Cirilla still held the neck of his armor, but his contrition evaporated when he addressed Radovid. “Turn my back against my people? Betray the very ones I followed my emperor for in the first place?”
Alright, Radovid’s initial idea won’t work. How best to find a solution for all their hearts’ respective desires? Out of all the ways Cahir could benefit Radovid, which would come closest to giving Cirilla vengeance and Cahir salvation? Which would ease Jaskier and Yennefer’s sensation of betrayal?
He tried to take another step forward, but this time Cirilla hissed at him, “Stay back!”
“You’re shaking,” Geralt told her. Cirilla looked at him, then followed his gaze back to her trembling arm; her grip on Cahir’s armor weakened.
With a wordless cry of frustrated fury, she shook the knight once — nearly snapping his neck with the force — before releasing him. Bounding back a few steps, she wrapped both hands around her sword, keeping it aloft and pointed right at Cahir.
The knight slumped, sucking in desperate breaths as he fell onto all fours. Lifting his head to look at Cirilla, he asked her softly, “What would you have me do?” The fallen general spoke with far greater sincerity than the sarcasm with which he’d addressed Radovid.
Cirilla’s chest heaved with her every breath, and Radovid winced when she shed a tear from one eye.
However, when she opened her mouth to answer, nothing came out.
“Either deliver the girl,” Radovid remembered Philippa extorting from Jaskier, “or we single-handedly undo every good deed you have done for the elves. We will kill them all.”
He had thought Philippa was bluffing at the time…but if she could assassinate a queen and get away with it, then maybe not. Did she know whatever magic Yennefer used at Sodden?
Radovid did not want to find out.
If he couldn’t bring Cirilla home for his brother to marry, then perhaps Vizimir could be placated if Radovid brought him something else — someone else.
“Jaskier’s smuggling operation is under threat,” Radovid informed Cirilla. “The leaders of the Redanian Secret Service feel as if they have not gotten anything in return for what they invested into the Sandpiper’s activities. If we can give them a Nilfgaardian general…” And here, he turned to Cahir. “One whose intelligence would only aid in counteracting Ehmyr’s armies — those still marching in the name of the emperor who broke your loyalty — without harming the subjects of the empire…”
“Oh, don’t kid yourself, Radovid,” Jaskier snapped from behind him. “This has nothing to do with me or them. You just want to show off for your brother.”
Radovid cursed the tremble in his lip that Cahir and Cirilla no doubt noticed, but he took a deep breath and pushed back against his growing grief at Jaskier’s disregard for him.
“I will not do any of you the disservice of denying how this would benefit me,” he answered. “But that does not negate what such an arrangement can do for you.”
“I am not helping some foreign kingdom against my comrades,” Cahir started.
“Then what’s the point of your life, Cahir?” Yennefer challenged, eyes flickering between looking sidelong at Radovid and straight ahead at Cirilla and Cahir. “Why should she forgive you?”
On Cirilla’s other side, Geralt didn’t let go of his sword, but did he lower it and transfer his grip to only one hand; the other hand wrapped around Cirilla’s shoulder in a supportive squeeze.
Radovid expanded upon Yennefer’s line of questioning: “Why should she give you the salvation you want, General?”
Geralt glared at Radovid, who swallowed down a frustrated scream at the condescension packed into a single glance.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Radovid snapped at Cirilla’s guardians, before turning to address the princess. “As General Cahir just pointed out for himself, he cannot give back everything he stole from you. However, he can make sure the sanctuary your former home now provides for the elves does not get stolen from them.” Radovid glanced over his shoulder at Jaskier and Yennefer, who approached Cirilla’s side, before refocusing on Geralt. Waving between the girl and the man who’d hunted her, he added, “If nothing else, the Redanian Secret Service can find out why Ehmyr var Emreis wants Cirilla so badly, given he already has Cintra without her.”
‘If nothing else.’ Surely, they would want to know why their young charge was being pursued so relentlessly, right?
As Jaskier shoved the reins of the Nilfgaardian’s warhorse back into Radovid’s hands, Cahir looked between Cirilla and her guardians.
“He called you his daughter.”
All four northern adults’ heads snapped over to the knight, who flinched under the weight of their collective attention.
“…He what?” Cirilla demanded. Her voice dripped with so much venom that the hairs of the back of Radovid’s neck stood on their ends…or maybe that was just the storm beginning to gather over the island.
“When…when he was…justifying assassinating the elven baby,” Cahir answered, lip wobbling like he might cry. “The White Flame said he had to, because it was the best path to helping him find his daughter — he meant you. I never found out why he said that.”
Cirilla’s sword drooped to hang limply in her grip as she stared at him, before she shook her head, closing her eyes with the force of it.
“No. My parents loved each other! My mother would never cheat on my father!”
Geralt and Jaskier shared at look, while Yennefer looked away. For a second, Radovid thought perhaps she knew something and didn’t want to share it, but then he realized she was staring at Aretuza. It looked even gloomier now than it already had from the burning alone, but he thought that was just from the darkening clouds.
“Even if Pavetta had cheated-” Jaskier started. Cirilla snapped to glare at him. “Not that I think she would! I was their friend, I know how hard it was just for her to sneak out to see Duny in the first place. She could not have snuck in another affair on top of that. I just mean that even if she had, I don’t see when or how she could have cheated on Duny with a Nilfgaardian noble. Cintra never had diplomatic relations with them.”
“Especially given all the magic she unleashed at her betrothal feast just to have Duny in the first place,” Geralt continued, frowning in thought. “Law of Surprise? That’s how Ciri became my daughter.”
“The Law of Surprise wouldn’t let him claim someone who had already been claimed with it,” Yennefer over her shoulder, still not looking away from Aretuza.
Cirilla’s scowl deepened into something approaching grief.
“How f*cking dare he?” she seethed, re-sheathing her sword with so much force that Radovid was surprised she didn’t tear the belt off her waist entirely.
Cahir flinched again, pushing himself upright again. Behind him, the skies darkened to match Cirilla’s fury…
…over Aretuza, anyway. The rest of the skies over Thanedd were as clear and bright as any other early summer day.
“My grandmother, the last family I had with whom I shared blood, died in Ehmyr var Emreis’ invasion of Cintra,” Cirilla continued, not noticing the unnatural storm slowly but steadily expanding towards them. “Eist trained me in knucklebones and naval navigation, and he was slain in the battlefield by a soldier fighting in Ehmyr var Emreis’ name. Mousesack read me bedtime stories and natural histories, and you had him copied by a doppler and killed to lure me away from safety and deliver me to Ehmyr var Emreis.”
Cirilla pointed over her shoulder at Geralt.
“Geralt protected me as we traveled up and down the continent, trained me to fight, and is preparing me for every kind of monster this continent has…all after being relentlessly pursued by the Nilfgaardian army on the orders of Ehmyr var Emreis.”
Her rant grew louder and sharper as she moved her arm to point at Yennefer.
“Yennefer sacrificed herself to the Deathless Mother for me, humiliated herself before the Brotherhood of Mages just for a chance at my safety, and is teaching me everything she knows about magic…despite that putting her in the path of Ehmyr var Emreis!”
“Uh, Ciri?” Jaskier tried, finally noticing the storm as well. Cirilla didn’t hear him, even as she pointed at him.
“And Jaskier drops everything to travel across the continent when I need him and sings me to sleep every night we’re together — all after a fire mage working for Ehmyr var Emreis f*cking tortured him to get to me!”
“Cirilla?” Radovid tried, mind spinning as he rapidly re-contextualized Jaskier’s reaction to Rience’s death. Cirilla didn’t hear Radovid, either, her arm dropping back to her side and both hands curling into furious fists.
“Ehmyr var Emreis does not get to call himself my family.” Cirilla slowly stalked forward at the cowering Nilfgaardian knight. “Not when he’s the one constantly trying to take my family AWAY FROM ME!”
When she roared those last words, the world around them shook.
Radovid flinched, and only barely managed to keep his hold on the warhorse when it startled at the sudden earthquake.
“CIRI!” Geralt shouted, using his sword to hold himself upright on the shaking ground.
Breathing harder from her outburst than she had from any of the fights and climbs today, Cirilla finally snapped out of her grief-stricken rage.
The ground stopped shaking…
…but the storm over Aretuza continued to amass.
While Radovid knew little about magic, he guessed this meant that unnatural storm was not Cirilla’s doing.
“Tissaia,” Yennefer breathed out. “She’s summoning Alzur’s Thunder.”
Radovid looked at the others, hoping one of them knew what Yennefer was talking about.
One of them did.
Cirilla swallowed as she finally stepped away from Cahir and explained to Geralt and Jaskier, “The spell of last resort.”
“Oh, that does not sound good,” Jaskier muttered. He re-shouldered his lute as if he were getting ready to run. Was he?
“It isn’t,” Cirilla answered, looking from Aretuza to Yennefer. “And that’s why Yennefer needs to go to Tissaia.”
Yennefer whirled around, eyes wide, even as Jaskier shouted, “NO!”
Radovid winced and rubbed at his ear from Jaskier’s volume so close to him.
“We didn’t come all this way just to abandon each other!” Geralt snapped.
“Then don't abandon me,” Yennefer countered, mouth wobbling as she tried to contain her own tears. “I have to do this.”
Despite her claim, she seemed to know that walking back into Aretuza would be akin to walking back into death, because she turned back to Cirilla and said, “I've searched so long. Fought so long. Hurt so many. And it was all worth it.”
“That sounds like goodbye,” Jaskier whispered in horror, looking at Geralt. “We can’t…” He even looked at Radovid, though what Jaskier hoped from him, Radovid had no idea. They didn’t even let him chime in on their walk, nor did any of them take seriously his custody compromise regarding Cahir. What did Jaskier think Radovid could do about Yennefer? What could anybody do to stop the Savior of Sodden?
“No matter where you go or where you hide, we will never be apart,” Yennefer continued, even as Cirilla sobbed. “Destiny brought us together.”
Geralt looked at Jaskier, matching the other man’s fear and grief with his own.
Yennefer pressed her lips to Ciri’s cheek, a firm and desperate kiss. “I love you, my daughter.”
Unlike the most powerful emperor on the continent, Yennefer was not rebuked for calling Cirilla her daughter. For a moment, mage and princess — mother and daughter — pressed their foreheads together.
“Let’s go find our family,” Jaskier had said to Cirilla in the cabin in Loxia. At the time, Radovid hadn’t realized just how seriously Jaskier meant that.
Here and now, Yennefer pulled away, ready to run back into a burning Aretuza.
“You’ll come back to us, right?” Jaskier grabbed onto Yennefer’s hand before she could run off.
Yennefer’s tears finally spilled and trailed down her cheeks.
“Never lost; always found,” she answered. Jaskier made a punched out sound. Radovid’s hand twitched with the desire to comfort him, but he pulled back at the last minute; his touch would not be welcome just now. Yennefer sniffled as she turned her attention from Jaskier to Geralt; for a moment, witcher and witch shared an unfathomable look, but then she squeezed Jaskier’s hand before letting it go.
“Wait!” Cirilla cried out — but she wasn’t looking at her adoptive mother. She was looking at the knight who was still kneeling before her. “General Cahir Mawr…whatever. You said your life is mine?”
Slowly and softly, Cahir nodded. “I…yes.”
Cirilla turned to snatch the reins of the warhorse from Radovid’s hands, shoving them into Yennefer’s startled grip, then focused back on Cahir.
“Then this is what I would have you do.” She pointed at Yennefer. “Guard her with your life.”
~*~
