Jane Eyre and Wyverns

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Jane Eyre and Wyverns

Fandom: The Witcher

Ship: Emhyr/Geralt

Rating: mature (has not quite explicit smut)

In which I rip off riff off Jane Eyre. You absolutely don't have to know Jane Eyre. Emhyr does NOT get permanently injured.

> 17000 words will explode into your timeline if you click here:

A New Situation

"Wind's howling." Geralt looked out of the tavern's door, turned around and walked up to the landlord's counter. "Looks like rain. Gonna stay in for the night."

He paid for a room and sat back down were he'd just had his dinner, nursing a mug of ale in front of a window. To his left were the not very clear panes of glass, shielding him from the dreary Saovine day while letting him keep an eye out for possible trouble. He took out a book and started to read - A History of Northern Birds. He didn't care especially about birds but always read whatever new books he could lay his fingers on and this was his latest loot.

"Boh! Where is that mutant!" some boisterous arsehole came hollering through the tavern door. When people knew a witcher was in town, some of them seized the oportunity to make a mess and there was no way to win such a fight; if that yokel got so much as a scratch it would be Geralt's fault, even if he just defended himself.

Geralt sighed, emptied his ale, gathered his possessions and went upstairs to find his room before that John-Jack-or-Dick could clock him.

He opened the door and marvelled at the landlord's approach at interior design. Well. He'd be asleep, it didn't matter if the room was painted oxblood and decked out in red fabrics.

The red room's obvious day job still hung in the air like a pungent spectre but Geralt had slept in brothels before. He used his cloak to cover the pillow and got a good night's rest.

---

The letter had reached him on the Path in Temeria. He'd disposed of two cattle snatching wyverns and when he cashed in on the bounty at a Nilfgaardian post he was handed the envelope together with his money. He was sure every Nilfgaardian encampment, post and anyone tangentially in touch with the new governing force was currently carrying a copy for him.

"If the witcher Geralt of Rivia feels so inclined, a situation can be offered to him where he is to revisit his role as guardian and educational supervisor of her Royal Highness Princess Cirilla and where the salary is 500 Florens per annum.
The gentleman is requested to announce himself at the palace in Vizima for further instructions."

The letter was written and signed by Mererid and exhibited a very impressive imperial seal.

Geralt wasn't sure what to think of it - as far as he knew Ciri and the Emperor had immediately taken off to Nilfgaard when she had decided to take up her role as heir to the throne. He didn't know what contributions to her education they thought he could still provide but he was curious. If Ciri needed his help he would be there for her; and it would probably be an interesting diversion from the tediousness of the Path.

---

Geralt arrived at Vizima palace and tried to 'announce himself' there, as the letter put it. Of course he earned only stares, ranging from threatening to bored, and he'd just decided he'd simply piss off again and leave that letter somewhere littering an expensive carpet when a bored servant came shuffling into the room, asking if he was Geralt of Rivia, and then, with an exaggerated lack of enthusiasm, motioned to follow him.

An equally bored mage in a small, sparsely furnitured room sighed, ticked off an item on his list and opened a portal.

"A portal," Geralt noted.
The mage surly gestured for him to just step through it already.
"Where does this lead to?" Geralt insisted.
The mage rolled his eyes. "City of Golden Towers. Where else did you think you were going." He visibly restrained himself from just pushing Geralt through.

Geralt sighed, shouldered his saddle bags and travelled to Nilfgaard.

---

Mererid was as cordial as ever, effectively conveying his disapproval just by glaring.

He led Geralt through broad palace corridors, up a gigantic flight of stairs and along a gallery with paintings. The floors and the stair case were white marble and Geralt was reluctantly impressed. They were also very slippery and Geralt thought this might explain Mererid's chronically slow, shuffling gait. He glanced at the paintings - portraits. A man in armour dating approximately a hundred years back; people in wigs and pearls; splendor through the ages.

Mererid showed him to his room. Geralt had been slightly anxious about sullying some dainty silk with his barbarian body but all he got was a sensibly furnished bed chamber with a simple bed covered in clean linnen sheets and a nook with a basin and a bath tub.

"What am I supposed to do here?" he tried to ask casually. "Can I see Ciri now?"

Mererid huffed. "This is the gentleman's room. The gentleman can do as he pleases, he has been provided with an evening meal on the tray over here - although, if I may suggest, taking a thorough bath might be an adequate course of action. The gentleman can meet with the crown princess tomorrow in the morning."

Geralt glared back but gave up trying to get information out of the petulant chamberlain. "Alright, good night then, Mererid. Sleep well."

Inappropriately friendly seemed to have been a good flavour of obnoxious because it left Mererid with a loss for words. He retired, huffing.

Ciri

Geralt woke up the next morning in his clean, expensively furnished room and snorted. The sun shone brightly in between two gay blue chintz curtains, showing papered walls and a carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of the rooms Geralt usually rented - when he had a roof above his head at all.

It roused in him a sense of dread. He hadn't paid for this room - yet. Luxuries always came with demands.

Geralt washed up and carelessly threw on some clean clothes that were not armour. He also decided to compromise and left his swords in the room but carried every knife he owned concealed on his body. Then he went scouting out the premises.

He took the route back downstairs and, by strolling down the broadest of the corridors, found his way into an inner courtyard.

Nilfgaard had seasons like the North but it still was a whole lot warmer in general. The air was fresh but not yet crisp.

The highest palace towers reached far into the bright blue sky, their famous golden roofs gleamed in the early morning sun. They and the walls closing in on the meticulously groomed gardenscape were built from white stone but the many beautifully shaped windows, balconies, bays and turrets in them evoked the comparison of being surrounded by a tufty layer of lace.

"The gentleman is an early riser," Mererid remarked from behind. He'd approached quietly enough he would have successfully startled anyone but a witcher.

Geralt hummed in agreement without turning around.

"If the gentleman would follow me. He is scheduled to meet with her Imperial Highness for breakfast," Mererid eventually said.

That definitely got Geralt's attention. Mererid shuffled off and Geralt tried not to step on his heels. They slowly progressed to a different wing of the palace and finally entered a room dominated by a breakfast buffet and a squeaking Ciri. She hugged him in a scandalous violation of court etiquette.

"I'm so glad you came. It was either that or I'd abscond." Ciri grimaced. "See! 'Abscond'. I'm that close to just piss off and hit the road." She steered him towards the buffet.

"I was wondering what obscure knowledge I'm supposed to part with as 'educational supervisor'." Geralt had started putting things on his plate. "I doubt you need help memorising different types of necrophages again."

"No, I told Emhyr I was going to implode soon and he asked if it would help to have you here." Ciri snorted. "I thought he was going to invite you for a visit, not offer you a contract." She had watched Geralt's progress though the buffet. "You know you can get seconds, right? You don't have to cram everything on your plate at once."

Geralt sighed. "Let's sit then. So what's the worst? Politics?"

Ciri huffed and chewed on her toast. "I expected politics. I even expected dance lessons. I did not expect having to sing ballads and recite poetry."

Geralt stared. "Why would you have to do that? Don't they have bards for that?"

"Apparently it's part of a rounded education and supposed to help me projecting my voice better. Wanna hear?" Ciri swallowed her toast with a mouthful of tea.

"No thanks." Geralt frowned. "Well, if you decide to abscond after all you can always become a bard then. Apparently it pays a lot better than being a witcher." He drank some juice. They had orange juice here. "Does that mean Emhyr sings ballads, too?"

When they were finished laughing Ciri sighed and dried her face with her napkin. "Apart from the moral support I could really use a sparring partner, if you're up to. With everyone else I have to hold back. But using my portals in a fight needs practice, too, and I don't want to lose my skills."

"Sure. Say when and where." Geralt finished his tea. "I was afraid they wouldn't let you practise, fighting being unseemly for a princess or something like that."

"Yeah, they tried that first." Ciri grinned. "Actually I work out every morning. So if you'll follow me, we can start right away."

The training grounds provided them with ample space and blunt practice swords and they spent the whole morning sparring - definitely not goofing around. Geralt actually drew up some exercises for dealing with Ciri's main weak points and only when the morning had advanced to noon she reluctantly left to resume her other, regular, princess lessons.

Geralt, left to his own devices, decided to try getting a better feel for the layout of the palace and maybe find a bookshelf or two.

In other words: to snoop.

Grace

Geralt leisurely manoeuvered himself into the rough direction of one of the palace's three towers.

The lower floors were generally very busy and adorned with the familiar display of black armoured guards lining the corridors. Geralt decided that as long as no-one told him off he was allowed to check things out.

In one wing Geralt had weaved through stuffy looking people standing self-importantly around, chatting with each other, wearing expensive cloth and false smiles.

Another area had queques of ordinary looking people waiting for their turn to enter one of several closed doors; it reminded Geralt of a bank house but they were probably waiting to get some bureaucratic matter dealt with.

Some parts of the palace were rather quiet and only had a few servants going on about their business. Geralt had peeped into a few rooms and was taken aback by the oppulence most of them exhibited. In comparison his own room looked like a pauper's den. He was glad he didn't get to sleep in any of the frankly monstrous beds with suffocating layers of embroidered curtains. He'd probably attack them in the night, mistaking some gem encrusted ornaments for a necrophage's luminescent eyes. He surrepticiously pushed a candle stick further away from the draperies because it looked like a fire hazard.

Up to the third floor it seemed not to matter which staircase you chose but when he took some stairs going up to the fourth floor, he found himself in a more confined area - still as large as a wealthy landowner's villa but the corridor was narrower and Geralt could see the next staircase at the opposite side of it and a single Impera guarding it.

He walked over. "Que aen suecc's?"

The guard eyed him with suspicion.

"I thought I'd look what Nilfgaard looks like from above, from the top of one of the towers," Geralt chatted amicably. "But I'm guessing I'm not allowed up there, since you're guarding the stairs, huh?"

The guard looked nervously down the empty corridor and cleared his throat. "The towers are off limit for the public. Please go back downstairs. There's nothing here to see."

Geralt sighed. "Do you pl-"

A bout of shrill laughter billowed down from the floor above. It sounded sharp, vicious and like the reaction to someone else's suffering. For Geralt's enhanced hearing it had a static edge similar to a wraith screeching. Geralt's medallion vibrated softly.

"Servants are upstairs, cleaning" the guard explained hastily. "Grace?" he shouted up the stairwell.

A ruddy, energetic looking woman came halfways down the stairs and stopped in her tracks when she saw that the guard wasn't alone.

"Too much noise, Grace," the Impera told her off. "Remember directions."

She curtseyed silently and went back upstairs.

Geralt shrugged and nodded a casual farewell to the guard. "Don't mind me, I'm already gone."

On his way back to the crowded parts of the palace he contemplated what he'd just witnessed. The presence of magic was not alarming all by itself. Emhyr personally rather avoided it but the use of portals, for example, seemed to be commonplace enough. Something about that laugh though. He couldn't quite make sense of it. It had been unsettling. And oddly familiar.

Gytrash

Time passed.

Geralt spent his mornings training with Ciri. They were both improving their forms since Ciri's portal technique was a challenge similar to fighting foglets.

The rest of every day was time Geralt could spend however he felt like. At first this was bliss. He'd found some shelves with books he hadn't read yet and napped a lot. But after a while his days, although filled with sweet decadent luxuries like food and soap, became long and slow and he felt like a bee caught in treacle.

The City of Golden Towers was impressive by its size and foreign-ness but in the end it was also just markets and taverns filled with suspicious strangers.

He tried to socialise with some Nilfgaardians, but having acquaintances wasn't the same as having friends. He'd actually started to regularly meet with the Impera guarding the staircase to the tower: Piet played a passable game of Gwent and was bored out of his mind guarding the stairs. Geralt was still curious about the source of the laughter but although Piet was lackadaisical enough with his duties to play cards on his watch, he still had enough sense keeping his mouth shut about whatever secret he was guarding. Most days there was only silence. Sometimes Geralt heard quiet murmurs and some cackling but his medallion didn't twitch anymore.

In all those weeks he'd never seen Emhyr even in passing, which was exactly as much contact as he wished to have with the bastard. He only knew the emperor was indeed present at the palace and not touring the provinces or something like that, because Ciri said so.

Ciri also noticed Geralt's growing restlessness and had organised a Roach for him. The horse was not witcher trained but calm and sturdy and when Geralt left the outskirts of the city behind for the first time in weeks, he sighed with relief.

Nature looked different in Nilfgaard but it still had dirt and some wilderness, it smelled of earth and woodsmoke and had a horizon. It was good.

Geralt stayed outside late into the afternoon and evening, loosely mapping the lands east of the capital, checking villages for message boards out of sheer habit - nothing on them looked like witcher work.

Since it was Winter dusk came early, and soon a pale but steadily brightening moon appeared over a hilltop above Geralt. He was aware he was procrastinating getting back to the palace and sighed. How foolish it was to feel nostalgic for the Path. He didn't exactly yearn for meditating injuries off in cold ditches, just for the good moments in between, and there had been few enough.

A movement downhill caught his eye. Someone was racing their horse along the narrow road winding through the valley. The horse was fast and the rider very skilled, although apparently crazy. Then Geralt saw the reason for this lonely race - a large black shape shot out from the copse the path had led through - Geralt's first thought was 'barghest' but it was larger and looked more substantial than that.

Brand new Roach got her first ever axii and sped fearlessly downhill, cutting the mule sized black dog thing off sharp enough to make it topple off the road.

"You're a gytrash, aren't you!" Geralt leaped off his horse and almost landed right on top of it. It snarled and stank and dodged the silver blade just barely. "So the South has some monsters after all," Geralt snarled back and attacked.

The fight wasn't hard. Geralt stayed away from the beast's business end by rolling behind it a few times until he managed to land a fatal hit. He beheaded it for good measure and out of old habits. It had been a good workout and Geralt felt at ease with the world for the first time in weeks.

He turned to check up with the gytrash's intended victim and cursed under his breath. Their horse must have slipped on the half-frozen ground and now lay on its side, thrashing its hooves in vain. Geralt jogged over to the rider who fortunately hadn't ended up underneath the horse and...

"Bloede pest, a d'yaebl aép arse!" Emhyr glared up at him.

"The fuck?" Geralt responded.

"The least you can do is help me up," the emperor demanded. "I seem to have injured my ankle thanks to your monster."

"My monster?" Geralt stared at him before he reached around Emhyr's rather broad chest, pulled him up with ease and then kept supporting him while he tested out how much weight he could put on the injured foot.

"You can thank me later for saving you from your endemic Nilfgaardian gytrash," Geralt muttered. "What the fuck are you doing out here all by yourself?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Emhyr tried to derail.

"Yes, but it wouldn't make any sense." Geralt rolled his eyes. "I can frollick around your countryside as much as I want to because I'm not the emperor of the whole damn world."

Emhyr glowered. "Well I am and I don't have to answer your questions. See to my horse, will you?"

Geralt took a deep breath, counted to ten and looked after the horse. It wasn't the animal's fault after all that it had an ass for a master.

"I don't think it's hurt," he explained while pushing at the horse. Emhyr breathed a sigh of relief while Geralt helped it back on its hooves.

"Your palace is really nice but there are too many people around all the time and I needed to see the horizon." Geralt petted the horse's neck. He didn't know why he told Emhyr that, since he hadn't actually asked. Apparently he'd missed having someone to talk to just as much as he'd missed the smell of petrichor.

The emperor huffed. There was a pause. Then he grunted "Me too."

Geralt looked at him. Emhyr looked back and if he'd been physically able to look embarrassed he probably would have. "I sometimes sneak out by myself. The alternative is being surrounded by a whole cohort. It is ridiculous and negates the purpose of riding out for pleasure."

Geralt grinned at him. "How are you going to explain your ankle?"

"I won't." Emhyr snorted at Geralt's exasperated expression. "Just help me get back on my horse, witcher."

He swung himself into the saddle quite effortlessly because Geralt basically lifted him up, and looked down with a surprised frown. He seemed to be sorting through some thoughts. "Thank you," he said, eventually, and before Geralt could reply anything he spurred his horse on and vanished like a spectre into the night.

Dinner

The next morning was exactly like every morning in Nilfgaard had been: Geralt had breakfast with Ciri and then they trained until noon. He didn't mention his encounter with Emhyr. Looking back it felt like a weird dream, something removed from reality, and even though Ciri would be the last person to disapprove of her father's little escapes it felt like a secret he'd been asked to keep.

Mererid caught up with him in the rose garden in the afternoon. "The gentleman needs to get ready for dinner," he declared without making eye contact.

Geralt looked up from his book and frowned. "The gentleman just had lunch, thanks."

Mererid's face showed he was suffering as no-one had suffered before. "The gentleman will present himself at the blue parlour for dinner with his Imperial Majesty. I am going to see to it that he will exhibit an adequate demeanor. The gentleman will follow me to his chambers now."

Geralt rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Are you going to watch me bathe again?"

Mererid didn't deign to answer that and just waited for Geralt to slip in a bookmark, gather his stuff and accompany him to his room. Geralt walked briskly and grinned. At least he could force Mererid to run after him this time.

Mererid watched him bathe. He also watched him not being shaved as Geralt had pointed out how several people - including Nilfgaard's spy master - were absolutely allowed to have beards in the presence of his effulgent Magnificence.

Then Mererid watched Geralt lay out the set of clothes he'd worn to the masquerade in Beauclair and huffed with derision. "The gentleman will not-"

"Alright." Geralt sighed. "I still have the clothes you forced on me in Vizima. They are too tight though."

Mererid did not care. "Those are just barely acceptable but they will have to do. They are not too tight. They are closely cut."

When he had made sure Geralt's appearance was as appropriate as possible, he led him in another slow procession to the private imperial chambers - to Geralt's surprise those weren't far from his own room. Apparently he'd been housed in the furthest corner of the private wing.

The blue parlour was indeed very blue with curtains, carpets and upholstery in matching fabrics that reminded Geralt of the Temerian Blue Stripes and he snorted at the thought of the decore being made of war trophies.

The curtains were drawn close and it was rather gloomy. Only a few candles helped illuminating the room, the main source of light was a large blazing fire place.

The emperor was reclining on a recamiere in front of the fire, one bandaged foot propped up on the settee, reading a book. He must have been aware of Mererid and Geralt entering; but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice them, as he never lifted his head as they approached.

"Your Majesty: the witcher," Mererid announced solemnly from slightly above floor level where a low bow had taken him.

"Let the witcher be seated," the emperor said, gesturing at the armchair positioned close to his own perch. He was wearing a tailored velvet robe in a red so dark it was a shade of black, over black trousers made from some slinky but heavy material, which might have been Nilfgaardian fashion or his pyjamas, both was equally possible.

Geralt sighed quietly at Emhyr's usual theatrics and sat down. "How's the foot?" Then he lifted his weight off the chair again and started pushing it sideways a little to maintain a less intimate distance to the ruler of the world.

"Stop." Emhyr held out a hand. "Don’t draw that chair farther off, sit down exactly where I placed it. As I am confounded to this position on the recamiere I do not wish to add a strain on my neck to the things that annoy me."

Geralt's eyebrows went up but he sat back at close distance and basically between Emhyr's legs. There were whores more subtle at advertising, but on the other hand this was so bizarr it probably was just Emhyr's complete and often intentional lack of polite decency.

"The foot had a fracture," Emhyr actually answered Geralt's question. "It has been taken care of but I have to give it some additional rest." He cleared his throat. "Mererid, we'll have some refreshments now."

Mererid bowed and left.

"Cirilla seems to have regained her equilibrium, I believe," Emhyr intoned. "I should thank you for accepting the invitation to stay and ease her transition."

The door opened and several servants brought in a small table, trays with tiny sandwiches and cured vegetables in small bowls and assembled everything next to the emperor's recamiere.

Geralt couldn't draw up his eyebrows any higher and only snorted. "Don't need to thank me for that, I'm doing it for Ciri. You don't actually have to pay me for it either."

Emhyr looked puzzled. "I am paying you?" His hand, holding an olive, stopped on its way to his mouth.

Geralt stared. "You've hired me as a tutor for Ciri."

"Mererid?" Emhyr frowned. "I said invite him."

Mererid bowed again. "I did, your Majesty. As a tutor. It was within the budget."

Emhyr grunted and ate his olive. "Well, we may as well pay you for your efforts. I prefer remuneration to begging for favours and moral debts."

"That's-," Geralt interrupted himself and laughed. He stalled some time by choosing a sandwich, but decided to just say it: "You still owe me a lot, including several apologies and a few explanations. But I'm not going to insist on cashing them in."

Emhyr just chewed on this and his food and maybe even grinned a little.

"I've always interpreted the Child Surpise to be a responsibility, not a prize," Geralt added.

The emperor's expression changed like he'd just bitten bone. "You are quite right, of course." He drank from his glass of water but the broody frown stayed on. "Once destiny has chosen we are stuck with all the consequences."

Geralt frowned at the enigmatic mood change. "I'm not complaining, Emhyr. Helping Ciri isn't a burden."

"Of course. Cirilla is different." It was an odd non-sequitur as if they were talking about two different things. Geralt felt vaguely lost and just resumed eating his way through the food trays.

At least the unsettling sensual tension at the beginning of the evening had changed into equally weird personable familiarity. Emhyr slowly slipped back into a better mood and when he announced he was going to retire now and Geralt traced his way back into his room he was left with some confusing thoughts and it took some time until sleep found him.

Other Girls

For several subsequent days Geralt saw little of Emhyr. The forced intimacy at dinner had kicked into gear some unruly thought processes and having been the focus of Emhyr's unsettling charme followed up by... nothing, gave those thought processes plenty of time to rattle around Geralt's brain.

He didn't closely observe his surroundings to maybe catch a glimps of Emhyr because he hadn't seen him around at all for the first weeks and why would that be different now. Also he didn't care, of course.

Nevertheless he saw him twice. Once while Geralt was reading in a small library he'd found, apparently was allowed to peruse and had been spending time at when it was too clammy to sit in the rose garden. The emperor had been discussing something with a harried looking person hugging a briefcase, two Impera were following three steps behind them. They had walked in, Emhyr had caught and held Geralt's gaze for a heartbeat too long, then they had swept out again.

The other time the emperor had walked along the barracks accompanied by military staff, not even looking out into the court where Geralt and Ciri had just finished with their daily training.

Then one afternoon Geralt came back from playing cards and found a message in his room, summoning him to the blue parlour for a glass of wine with his Imperial Majesty. (The whole "Deithwen addan yn Carn" part took more space on the card than the rest of the missive.)

Geralt glanced into the mirror - he was his usual self when not in armour, wearing a plain white shirt and some nondescriptive trousers - and decided there was nothing to retouch. He was a witcher, not some courtly fop, and the only person who actually cared deeply about dressing him up was Mererid. He also looked much better in a shirt, but that was neither here nor there.

Mererid was nowhere to be seen when Geralt approached, only two guards who opened the doors for him. The blue parlour looked as it had several evenings before. Although it was still only afternoon the curtains were drawn close again, shutting out the beating of winter rain against the panes. The fire place was the room's main light source although more candles helped wrapping the immediate area around it in a bubble of warm light - the emperor on his couch was its centre; his foot apparently didn't need do be propped up anymore.

"Geralt," Emhyr greeted him without looking up from the piece of parchment he was reading, but he held out his hand, lazily pointing into a corner of the room. "Pour us some wine."

Geralt had turned towards the table with the decanter before his general contrariness could have kept him from obeying promptly. Emhyr had such a cocksure way of giving orders, it was basically mind control. Geralt was annoyed with himself and huffed, but poured two glasses of - he scented its fragrance - the Côte-de-Blessure.

"I am used to expressing my wishes as orders." Emhyr's velvet voice carried, even though he'd said it quietly and almost apologetic. "I am ordering you to not take offense of that."

Geralt snorted involuntarily and took their wine glasses over to the fireplace. His armchair was placed at a more normal distance from the couch today. Geralt handed Emhyr his wine and sat down. "What's the reason for the invitation?"

Emhyr smirked into his wine glass. "Do I need one?"

Geralt huffed. "I'll just assume you're buttering me up for something then."

Emhyr's laughter was low, melodious and with a genuine warmth that was infuriating, yet had a mischivous edge as if Geralt had just said something unwittingly amusing.

"I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative tonight," he pronounced, "and that is why I sent for you." He leant back, drank from his wine and watched Geralt with intent. Geralt looked back with his best expressionless face. A smile flashed over Emhyrs face so quickly Geralt might have missed it had he blinked, then he turned it towards the fireplace, presenting his half-profile to Geralt's captivated stare.

Emhyr, as he was sitting on his damask-covered settee, looked different to what Geralt had seen him look before; not quite so stern - much less gloomy. There was still the hint of a smug smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled. His eyes were rather spectacular. As if to spite the warm amber they resembled, they usually looked harder and colder than steel - but not without a certain change in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at least, of that feeling.

He had been looking two minutes at the fire, and Geralt had been looking the same length of time at him, when, turning suddenly, he caught Geralt's gaze fastened on his physiognomy.

"Well?" Emhyr raised one eyebrow. "Is what you see to your liking?"

Geralt blinked. "What?"

"I can move closer to the fire for a better look." Emhyr got up to lean elegantly on the mantelpiece. He was wearing his carmine velvet robe open over an embroidered black shirt - delicate golden tendrils meandered from both sides of the open collar, met somewhere at the solar plexus and ran downwards from there, entwined, until they vanished under Emhyr's belt. He crossed his ankles, cocked his hip and mimed a questioning expression.

Geralt forced his eyes back up to his face. Emhyr's eyes glinted - with amusement and maybe with wine. Geralt wondered if he'd already had some before he had arrived and thought it very probable.

"You've sent for me to flatter you?" Geralt found his footing again.

Emhyr's smugness intensified. "Oh, would it be flattering if you told me what you just saw? How interesting."

Geralt couldn't help it and laughed. Emhyr looked like he'd just won a prize.

"You are right, if I was looking for flattery I could have my pick from any of the courtiers out there." Emhyr waved a dismissive hand into the general direction of the door. "I desired your company because you are different."

Geralt grinned. "Yeah I'm not like all the other girls - good: you've noticed." He accompanied it with a swiping gesture, drawing focus at his own body. "I stopped using that line about fifty years ago."

Emhyr snorted but had followed the path of the hand and lingered at the open shirt collar. "Why?"

"Bit offensive," Geralt explained. "Says 'I'm a misogynist but I'll make an exception for you'."

Emhyr hummed. "I have never used it on a woman though." He looked directly into Geralt's eyes at that.

The door suddenly opened - Geralt had been too wrapped up in Emhyr's words and his own accompanying thoughts to have noticed anyone's approach. A woman decked out in an elegant dress of black velvet embroidered with what probably were real emeralds rushed in and Geralt only realised on the second heartbeat that it was Ciri.

Her hair, twisted into one long braid falling over one shoulder, was also adorned with emeralds, and she interrupted their dumbfounded staring with a laugh and playfully exaggerated annoyance:

"What - we are supposed to host a formal dinner and you're not even dressed yet? What are you doing here with Geralt?" She looked pleased about the latter though. "Why are you two staring at me like I've grown a second head?"

Emhyr cleared his throat. "Forgive me. For a second I thought you were your mother. In this formal attire, with your hair in a braid and storming in like this - you look just like her." He sounded neither pleased nor sentimental about it, but almost derisive.

"You look amazing - like a princess," Geralt cut in to distract her from her father's odd reaction; and because it was true. She looked every bit the princess she had been born to be and now had decided to become.

Ciri beamed at Geralt and managed to curtsy ironically.

"You do not bow to anyone," Emhyr reminded her rather gruffly. He was back to his gloomy old form and Geralt had to force himself not to start a fight about his tone.

He got up and carefully hugged Ciri, as to not ruffle anything that needed to stay unruffled. "G'night then. Enjoy your festive dinner." Ciri rolled her eyes at him but grinned.

He slipped from the room only with a last glance at Emhyr, who looked cold and strangely lost, but was also immediately accosted by a bustling Mererid who humbly tried to shoo him to getting dressed.

Geralt was glad he could just leave. He reminded himself how leaving was always an option for him but noticed how much he really didn't want to leave anymore.

He sighed and went into the direction of the kitchens to find some dinner for himself.

Pavetta

Emhyr did, the very next day, somewhat elaborate on his odd reaction.

It was in the forenoon, when he chanced to find Geralt and Ciri on the training grounds. He had watched them from afar, giving off the impression that he was waiting, until Geralt jogged over. He then started to talk, without preamble, and Ciri, guessing she'd have to do without Geralt for a while, started demolishing a target mannequin.

"Cirilla is not answerable for either her mother’s faults or mine: I have a regard for her, apart from her being my only heir. She applies herself and is doing incredibly well, especially taking into account her upbringing." He blinked at Geralt's narrowed eyes. "I did not mean this derogatively. Her upbringing - your efforts - I am aware it saved her life multiple times. But it did not prepare her for this." He nodded at the palace walls.

Geralt huffed. "Her mother's faults? So the great story of Pavetta and Duny and love conquering all didn't last, I guess."

Emhyr snorted. "It was never real." He glanced at Geralt's face and sighed as if Geralt had emoted disapproval - or anything, actually.

"I needed Pavetta. My Child Surprise. She specifically was my only hope to get out of the curse. I had to win her over regardless of what that entailed." He stood rigid, hands folded behind his back, and watched Ciri shred the dummy. "In the beginning that was not terribly hard. She liked poems and stories, I had read a lot before..." He paused and his jaw muscles twitched. "We did share that penchant for literature. She was very young - as much as that did not appeal to me, it helped me because she was eager to be impressed."

He huffed because now Geralt's face did show disapproval. "Yes I acted like the average lecher but what I desired was my life back. I never mistreated her and I did nothing against her explicit wishes. That would have been counter productive. And I am not a monster. I was not a monster back then, even though I looked the part."

"You made her love you but you despised her," Geralt suggested.

"She did not love me, I was her puppy. But I did not despise her." Emhyr's eyes flashed. "Not then. She was just some young girl under the influence of a very opinionated mother. But I saw right from the beginning that I had to conceal from her who I really was. She had internalised her mother's bigotry and never even questioned those believes. Nilfgaard was the enemy. Not only by the current ruler's actions but because we were all dirty half-elves. Yes, I know!" He chuckled without humour. "The irony of her own elven heritage. Well, it was no rational hatred or she should have been exulted to help me bring the Usurper's regime to its knees. Down with the old Nilfgaard! The serendipitous continuation of our fairy tale, her monster was a prince and she would have ruled herself, at the side of her oh so beloved husband. I thought this would convince her eventually. I was a fool."

Geralt was watching Emhyr carefully. "So you did kill her?" he finally asked conversationally.

Emhyr laughed out loud. It was a bellowing laughter, not the warm burbling from the depth of his chest he'd indulged in yesterday, but still a true laughter and he wiped some moisture from his eye. "No, I really, really did not kill her, witcher." He shook his head.

"Cirilla seems to be everything her mother - was not. But physically she resembles her in many ways and it got the better of me yesterday. I shall try to keep my countenance in check in the future." He nodded a farewell, not waiting for Geralt's response, and strode back into the palace.

Midnight Oil

The following days Emhyr spent so much time with Geralt he didn't quite know how to explain it - fortunately no-one asked.

More than once he saw him in the corridors and before he could avert his eyes Emhyr's direct gaze pinned him for a heartbeat.

One afternoon Geralt found himself summoned for a glass of wine again, the other he found a note ordering him to the emperor's study where he quietly watched the last few minutes of Emhyr discussing taxes and then spent the next hour losing against him at chess.

One day right after lunch Geralt got summoned to the stables and became an accomplice to another one of Emhyr's little escapes. This time no beast attacked and it was one of the best afternoons Geralt had had in some time.

The other day Geralt sat in the library reading - or trying to read - and the emperor, accompanied by his two obligatory Impera, swept in with a book from his personal collection (Rembert Dodoens' legendary Herbarum Historiae about Nilfgaardian plants and their alchemical properties), leant against the table so close Geralt had to look straight up in order to talk to Emhyr's face and not his pelvis, and swept out again seconds later, leaving Geralt with the tome and the urge to stare into thin air. Air faintly smelling of warm musky oak moss and orange zest and traces Geralt hadn't identified yet and were probably part of Emhyr himself.

That night Geralt lay in bed and tried to consolidate his newfound appreciation of Emhyr with the well known facts of both his character and his actions in the past.

He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description - Geralt knew that this new friendliness towards himself was balanced by unjust severity to many others - and there had been that time when he wanted Geralt dead. Not even mentioning the wars, no, he wasn't going to think of the bloated cadavers on the battlefields, mass graves, raided villages, starving orphans, the sadistic pigs who'd hunted Ciri and how very dead Cahir, Milva and Angoulême were. Not going there.

So. Emhyr. Emhyr who smelled like bitter-sweet bark and barked with laughter at Geralt's sarcasm. Emhyr was also moody; unaccountably so; one moment he would smirk and jest - he had a wicked sense of humour and seemed to delight in making Geralt laugh, too - next moment his eyes clouded over and he grew cold and aloof again.

It didn't need one century of life lessons learned to know to be careful around people's more jovial antics. Geralt had never been wooed before - if this was truely what was happening - and he was suspicious. Emhyr was just as likely playing some angle and Geralt would survive his games better the less he let himself be affected by the bastard’s charme. Or maybe Emhyr was just capricious and would drop his friendly attitude at a whim.

Geralt remembered the rapid mood swing the first evening. By now he gathered that Emhyr had been thinking of Pavetta when Geralt mentioned the Child Surprise; but it baffled him how a wife who'd been dead for years could still affect the man's temper like that. No matter how little affection had existed between the two of them, she was dead and gone now.

Geralt lay still with a start. Someone was outside his door. Someone so quiet a mere human would not have been able to hear them, and that made it a threat.

He could see everything in his bed chamber as clear as in broad daylight and the door was latched and bolted as every night. The door knob turned soundlessly, stopped, and then slowly turned back.

Geralt took a mental note to pour salt water into the lock in the morning, to make it squeaky, and silently slipped from his bed while drawing his steel sword in one fluent move.

The person outside the door had apparently noticed that he was awake though, because now there was the grating sound of fingernails scratching the door's wooden panels and then a low, voiceless laughter, all hissing, snearing derision, cut through the silence of the night.

Geralt was as fast as a witcher could be but by the time he'd unlocked and opened his door the corridor outside was empty.

He padded to the gallery and the staircase and listened into the vast space of the nightly palace, but the palace was never completely quiet. Too many people were about, someone was always on their way to somewhere else and some guards and servants were on their night shifts.

He stalked back into the dark corridor leading to his own room and further away to the imperial chambers. Emhyr and Ciri would have guards at their doors, he mused. That's when he smelled the smoke.

He ran through the - unguarded - partition doors into the imperial wing's main hallway. It lay in absolute darkness, all sconces had been extinguished. Geralt stretched his pupils open as wide as he could. There were no guards to see anywhere.

Geralt didn't know what rooms lay behind the numerous closed doors - he'd only been in that one parlour so far and knew that Ciri had the whole appartment on the floor above - but he could follow the smell of smoke. He chose a door. It wasn't locked. The room was brighter, as it had a window - another sitting-room. There was a door at its back, slightly ajar. The smoke came from there, wafting lazily through the gap.

In an instant Geralt was at the door and kicked it open. Fortunately it wasn't an inferno yet blasting into his face, but the fire was steadily working at it.

It was a bedroom dominated by a gigantic four-poster bed with heavy drapings, and those were burning. The thick brokades and velvets hadn't gone up all in a flash but tongues of flame were licking at them everywhere. The whole bed was on fire and in the midst of blaze and vapour, sheets around him kindling, Emhyr lay stretched motionless, unconscious.

"Fuck!" Geralt blasted a good part of the fire with aard but he had to be careful not to hit Emhyr with it, too, or fan the flames towards him. He grabbed him through the flames, hoisted him out of bed and pulled him into the other room where the air was cleaner. The hems of Emhyr's heavy pyjamas were smoldering.

"Shit!" Geralt ran back into the bedroom, extinguished the fire with two blows of aard, sending bed parts hurling through the room, and: yes, there was the wash basin, brimful of water! He carried it over to Emhyr and completely drenched him.

There was a long chain of Nilfgaardian expletives and then some extended coughing. Geralt sighed with relief and left Emhyr to fully regain his senses while he opened the windows in the sitting room and - after carefully checking that the fire was indeed extinguished - in the completely destroyed bedroom.

"What happened? Is there a flood?" Emhyr wheezed.

"No, but there has been a fire." Geralt took his hand. It was rather dark and Emhyr probably didn't know where he was. "Can you get up? You've got some kind of sofa over by the window, maybe you can sit there. I'll try to find dry clothes for you in a second."

Emhyr let himself be led to the low ottoman and sank down on it. "Where is everyone? Where are the guards?" He had another coughing fit.

Geralt lit up a candelabra and carried it over to Emhyr's couch. "That's an excellent question. There were no guards on the whole floor."

Emhyr looked at him and gasped. Geralt frowned. "What is it?"

"You are badly burned." Emhyr stared at Geralt's bare torso.

"Yeah probably, definitely feels like it." Geralt snorted. "I'll be fine. I was in bed, too, when I heard someone try to get into my room. Then I smelled the smoke and found you on a pyre of your own bedding."

Emhyr shivered and Geralt hurried to find him something dry to wear. The bedroom lay in shambles but a sturdy armoire had resisted the aard attack and Geralt brought Emhyr a new set of pyjamas, a robe and a heavy blanket. "There you are. I'm going to find some of your guards - fuck, Ciri! I need to check on her."

Emhyr's face looked like white marble in the flickering candle light. "Do not rouse a general alert. When you find a guard, tell them to notify de Rideaux. And -" A spark of humour passed over his rigid face. "Better take the robe for yourself."

Geralt snorted. "What's wrong with my braies?"

"They are singed. Otherwise absolutely nothing. They are very handsome." Emhyr had managed to keep his face almost completely straight saying that.

Geralt allowed himself to think about everything after he'd donned the robe, looked for Ciri who was fast asleep, told the guards in front of her rooms to wake de Rideaux and send him over to the emperor's chambers, come back to Emhyr who was freshly dressed and surrounded by Mererid, gone back to his own room, locked his door, kicked back a swallow and laid back in his own bed.

"What the fuck," was his conclusion. Then he fell asleep.

Secrets

The next morning Geralt and Ciri agreed to skip their training so Geralt could try to find out what and who had happened in the night. They'd both become proficient at sparring each other by now, merely maintaining their form with their workouts. Geralt could consider himself a specialist at fighting an adversary who used portals - very useful since no-one but Ciri fought like that. She was furious she'd slept through the nightly attack and all but sent him off to investigate.

Emhyr was apparently doing emperor things in his office and wasn't to be disturbed, but Mererid explained where the Viscount de Rideaux could be found before Geralt had even asked; his tone conveyed a certain benevolence that hadn't been there before. Geralt added to his mental list of questions "Why put the spy master in charge of the incident and not, for example, the general commanding the Impera Brigade".

Something about Emhyr's reaction last night had been off - Geralt would have expected more outrage at the gall to harm him in such an unprofessional manner, more worry that it was part of a new coup or even revolution, more astonishment that it was happening at all - anything. Geralt had contemplated explaining this with the acute aggravation of being half-suffocated and drenched, but Emhyr hadn't been dazed, just oddly incurious.

Unlike Emhyr, Geralt had lots of questions regarding last night. The perpetrator's behaviour at his own bedroom door, the scratching and laughing, had been as unusual for an assassin as the fact that they must have loomed over the sleeping emperor and instead of cutting his throat had just set fire to the furniture.

This did not completely rule out the possibility of an attempted coup though - perhaps the conspirators had hired an enthusiastic amateur with a quirky personality.

The imperial intelligence office was in a souterrain part of the building as the palace had been partially hewn out of the white stone it was built from. The rooms further back would be entirely inside the slowly rising rocky range and those windowless chambers surely served a completely innocuous purpose.

Geralt had to wait because - according to the haughty officer, clerk or spy manning the front desk - his Lordship was currently engaged otherwise.

After a few minutes a pale-faced Impera exited from one of the doors, saluted the officer/clerk/spy at the desk and strode off as fast as possible while still maintaining a dignified appearance.

Behind him a wiry man with a very ornamental beard and in clothes so elegantly unassuming they must have cost more than a high quality sword had silently materialised in the open doorway.

"You." de Rideaux said with derision, leaning against his door frame.

"Yeah, me," Geralt said with a carefully neutral expression. "The person who saved your emperor's life last night. No need to thank me. Helping people is what I do."

De Rideaux narrowed his eyes and huffed without humour. "His Majesty is your emperor as well. You would do well to remember that."

Geralt hummed noncommittally. "I thought you might be interested to know what I saw."

De Rideaux frowned and hesitated for a moment. "Indeed. We would have sent for your statement. If you're that keen on being questioned: be my guest." He waved Geralt into the elegantly furnished room that seemed to be his study and firmly closed the door behind them. Then he sat behind his desk, carefully laid out a fresh parchment and lifted his quill. "So?"

Geralt looked around. "Do you always take notes by yourself?" He sat down in the visitors' chair. "Thought you'd have clerks or secretaries for that. Witnessing the interrogations."

De Rideaux managed to look more bored than before. "Flu season. You were saying? How did you get aware of the intruder?"

Geralt told de Rideaux everything as it had happened. He had no reason to hold anything back. De Rideaux took a few notes and never interrupted, neither to clarify nor to doubt anything Geralt said.

"There were no guards on the whole floor," Geralt repeated after he'd finished his recollection. "There's usually at least four of them. Did they say why they left?"

De Rideaux put his quill away and answered in a tone discouraging further questions: "They have vanished. Paid off by the assassin, obviously."

Geralt frowned. "I could look into-"

"No thank you." De Rideaux all but yawned. "We've been watching a certain group for some time now and we're sure this was their assassin. We're currently reviewing how the heightened activity had escaped our agents' attention, but rest assured that the culprits will be identified and punished."

Geralt blinked and frowned.

"That will be all." De Rideaux looked at him expectantly. "You may leave now."

Geralt decided to play along with the charade for now and nodded. He chose not to say more than "good-bye" because he knew he couldn't lie through his teeth as well as his interlocutor.

Geralt tried to talk to Emhyr but couldn't get hold of him. He'd become as avoidant as he had seemed omnipresent the days before. It stung because Geralt realised that he actually missed him now. The bastard. But he'd either been dropped from his Majesty's grace or Emhyr didn't want to answer the questions he knew Geralt would have.

Conjecture

Very early the next day - it was still well before dawn - Geralt scared a servant by yanking the door open and threatening them with a sword when they'd quietly slipped a message through the threshold gap.

It turned out to be a very official looking invitation to a banquet in three days' time and a note that he had an appointment with a tailor in the afternoon.

"Why do you hate me?" he greeted Ciri at breakfast, showing her the invitation card. "Is it because I didn't let you take on that basilisk by yourself when you were eleven?"

"I was twelve and this invitation wasn't my idea. My father wants you present." Ciri sipped from her tea without batting an eye. "The banquet has been in preparation since I arrived in Nilfgaard. The fact you've been included last minute must be due to Emhyr's new appreciation for your virile charms."

"I - what?" Geralt concentrated on not blushing. Of course Ciri would have noticed. "Last time I checked I didn't even have charms. Ask anyone, they'll agree. And if I had them I wouldn't flaunt them at your father of all people."

Ciri grinned. "I was insinuating that it was just him but I'm beginning to think you're reciprocating."

Geralt rubbed his face. "That's ridiculous. Last time I checked I also was no woman. Why would you think there was anything… untoward going on."

Ciri's grin threatened to reach her ears. "Because it's Emhyr. You've travelled the North during the wars and have never heard the gossip and defaming songs? Everyone knows about his proclivity for men. He's never even tried to keep it a secret."

Geralt stared. "Well it's defaming songs, they do that with everyone. You don't want to know what they sang about, uh…"

"My grandmother?" Ciri snorted. "Yeah I can guess. Her name made it too easy. But lots of it was true. Her head count most likely was larger than Emhyr's. Don't look at me like that, I'm not twelve anymore and was much younger when she started to give me sage advice about sexual conquests."

Geralt groaned. "I should have gotten you out of there when you were six. I'm sorry. I thought it wasn't right to take you from your home."

"I know." Ciri patted his hand. "You know I don't hate you, right?" She smiled. "I've even forgiven you the basilisk."

Geralt huffed. "Good talk, thanks."

Ciri smiled mischievously. "And you have my blessing if you want to get it on with-"

"You'll give me an apoplectic stroke one day." Geralt tried not to grin but failed.

"How about we change the subject and you tell me what de Rideaux said about the assassination attempt. Too late to start sparring now anyway." Ciri poured herself another cup of tea.

Geralt sighed. "Nothing about that whole affair adds up. I think de Rideaux is lying. He had no interest in my report and seems to keep a lid on the investigation. And he claimed the guards had been paid off - it would be very difficult to approach four different people and successfully bribe them without one of them telling on the scheme. Especially if they had to upend their lives and disappear afterwards. And they were Impera Brigade; those people are well paid and so ridiculously indoctrinated it's embarrassing hearing them talk sometimes, 'my life belongs to the emperor', really."

Ciri chuckled. "Good to know. I find that quite reassuring actually. So what's your theory what happened?"

"Magic." Geralt said it in the same tone he usually said 'fuck'. "Whoever it was was faster than me, managed to get in and out again without detection and got rid of four well trained guards without any sign of struggle."

He drained his glass of orange juice and frowned. "They were also very unprofessional and overly dramatic."

Ciri snorted. "No points for style then. But seriously - wouldn't your medallion have alerted you in that case?"

"Not necessarily." Geralt grimaced. "It doesn't detect some creature innate magic, doesn't identify vampires, for example - or your portals; because your magic is in your blood. It might have been an unhinged vampire with an agenda - for all we know it might have been another Godling who just thought all of this was very funny, but I don't think it was a mundane human assassin."

"So de Rideaux is covering for a republican vampire?" Ciri squinted. "That doesn't add up."

"Yes, that's what I said." Geralt sighed.

Distraction

The tailor - aep Huch - and his assistant descended upon Geralt in the resolute but touchingly kind way good sheep shearers wrangled sheep.

Aep Huch was doing the measuring, pulling Geralt into several poses without tickling or poking him, announcing numbers like a bingo host, which were promptly scribbled down by his assistant.

Geralt decided to at least try to address the possibility of getting those clothes cut in a way he'd still be able to move without strangling himself, and earned serious tuts of sympathy from both of them when he showed them the doublet he'd been given at Vizima.

"This is clearly too tightly cut for the gentleman's measurements," the tailor acknowledged. "I can adjust it for you, but only after the festivities. We are completely booked at the moment, of course."

Geralt sighed in relief. If he really had to attend a formal function with societal rules and customs he wasn't familiar with, at least he'd be able to breathe.

"Can you actually make a whole new suit within three days then?" Hope died last. Without the clothes it wouldn't be his fault if he didn't - couldn't - show up.

Aep Huch smirked wryly. "The gentleman's suit is of the highest priority. His imperial Majesty insisted."

Geralt gave up and slouched slightly, just to be patiently straightened out again by the tailor's economical hands.

"Can I ask you to make it sorta subtle and innocuous? Maybe a fabric that blends in with the walls?" This earned chuckles from both of them.

"Don't worry, the Viscount var Gwyn will be the centre of attention, as usual," aep Huch assured him. "If you aren't part of his entourage, they will purposefully ignore you and everyone will follow their example."

"But - I've heard the gentleman is her Highness' extended relation," the assistant remarked casually.

"138!" the tailor said sternly, and the chastised assistant took it down. "I must apologise. We do not gossip in our profession." Aep Huch nodded, satisfied with his subordinate's reaction. "42."

"No, but it's kinda true," Geralt dangled his bait. "I helped raise her when, uh, after her grandmother's death and ah Em- her father left her in my care later on." That stretched the truth to its limits and Geralt thought he should ask Emhyr for the official lie so he wouldn't contradict it. If Emhyr ever felt like socialising again.

"Oh!" The tailor's assistant clearly appreciated the it's-not-gossip-if-it's-first-hand. "I knew that was it. Some people say you're his Majesty's-"

"97!!!" aep Huch interrupted quickly. "No, 98."

His assistant wrote it down. "That would have been a blow to the face of var Gwyn's ambitions," he mumbled. He'd apparently decided to risk his boss' ire because Geralt was clearly paying attention to the definitely-not-gossip.

"He's Emhyr's boyfriend?!" Geralt tried to appear only moderately interested and failed spectacularly. Both the tailor and his assistant looked at him with pity in their eyes.

"274," aep Huch muttered sympathetically. "The viscount used to be a favourite of his Majesty's and has tried to re-establish his status ever since his Majesty has returned from the North," he explained. "And 16."

He nodded at Geralt. "We will deliver the ensemble as soon as it's finished in case we'll have to implement some finalising alterations."

Aep Huch, his measuring tape and his assistant vanished discreetly and left Geralt to meditate over the new piece of information and the inner turmoil it had caused.

He decided it would be best to forget about Emhyr entirely. This wasn't his world, this wasn't his turf. As capable he was as a witcher, as lost he'd always felt at court. No matter how much his brothers teased him about always rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty, every time he'd been involved with royalty had been a royal pain in the arse.

He tried to forgive himself for misinterpreting Emhyr's conduct as anything but an amicable peace offering. Having half of Nilfgaard's society including Ciri arrive at the same mistaken conclusion didn't make it better. But he'd cut his losses now, force himself to accept the truth and at least maintain the last shreds of dignity he could still cling to.

He'd attend that banquet as Ciri's poor relation, slip out as soon as possible, pack his stuff and leave for the Path.

Jolene

In the remaining days before the festivities Geralt found out that the Viscount var Gwyn was the most dashing man anyone had ever laid eyes on, with skin as golden as barley fields at the height of summer, voluptuous waves of chestnut hair and a stature so elegant everything he did looked like a pose in some great piece of art. He had been a doe eyed beauty right into his 30s and had now, in his 40s, crinkles in all the right places and, as the group of maids Geralt had asked had put it, a little salt-and-pepper in his hair.

He was an accomplished swordsman and duellist with many an opportunity to apply his skills as he liked to take people's words in bad faith and then demanded satisfaction for the perceived slights. Piet had told Geralt that and added that this was rather normal behaviour for lots of nobles, though.

Var Gwyn drew everyone's eyes when he danced or rode his fiery steed (Morvran had told Geralt in detail about the horse), he dressed as dapper as the gentlemen on the sleeves of certain books, was a talented singer of traditional ballads, could accompany himself on the lute, played chess, could paint and

The dummy Geralt had been hitting went up in flames.

Ciri cleared her throat. "Maybe let's stop for today. It's going to be a long night, better preserve some energy. Are you alright?"

Geralt took a deep breath. "Hmhm. Fine. That dummy looked shifty."

"Yeah it had it coming." Ciri patted Geralt's shoulder and kicked the burning mannequin through a small portal into oblivion.

The palace had become increasingly dense with nobles for the last two days. Those who didn't live in town nor kept a townhouse, nor stayed with extended family or friends, were given accommodation at the palace and had started to amuse themselves the second they arrived. It reminded Geralt of weekends at the Chameleon when the matinée patrons shared refreshments with the bleary eyed survivors of the previous night. But in a continuum.

Geralt didn't feel like going back into that beehive of intoxicated fops and instead went further out the premises, pulled himself up the awning of a side entrance and swang onto a protruding canopy. From here he had a good view of the palace grounds and parks. He'd treated this perch as his personal balcony for weeks. And from here he caught his first glance of what must have been the illustrious viscount, according to everyone's descriptions.

Four equestrians galloped up the hill from the palace parks, two of them were Impera Brigade in armour, one was Emhyr in riding garb much more exclusive than what he wore for his escape tours, and at his side rode a dashing-looking cavalier. He wore an open doublet over a half open ruffled shirt which must have been silk, because it moved in the breeze as a cloud of cream floated through coffee.

The cavalcade quickly turned the angle of the palace towards the stables and Geralt lost sight of them. The last thing he saw was Emhyr laughing one of his quick, acerbic laughs.

Geralt buried his face in his hands and groaned quietly.

Revelries and Revelations

Five hours later Geralt entered Emhyr's ballroom with a dread he'd last felt when confronted with the Wild Hunt. The enormously spacious venue was steadily filling with people. Geralt had decided to appear early so he could find a strategically convenient spot to hide.

As much as he would have preferred to not attract attention, he drew glances - and lots of second glances and then secret follow-up glances: the suit aep Huch had made for him was striking.

Shirt, doublet and trousers were black and had no decorations, embroideries, ornamental folds or puffs at all. The doublet had a severe looking banded collar, lined Geralt's broad torso crisply and made him look dangerous. The fabric was what George - the tailor's assistant who had a name after all - had called matelassé, which meant it was all black but had a large floral relief pattern that only showed at specific angles by creating subtle shadows even darker than the very black cloth itself. The trousers were thick, tight breeches stuffed into Geralt's own knee-high black boots that had been polished but still looked very much like boots you wore while killing things. Although he wasn't low-profile like he'd wished for, at least no-one seemed to dare talking to him.

He chose a little corner next to one of the large windows, took a glass of sparkling wine from a tray, kept himself from touching his hair which he'd tied up in a ponytail with a black velvet ribbon, and waited for this to be over.

The ballroom was huge with enormous crystal chandeliers suspended from the high, arched ceiling. The white stone walls were decorated with chiselled false pillars and vines and crystal sconces, and the floor was bone white, too.

Geralt contemplated that they'd probably used lime because bones themselves were rarely bone white, except if they got bleached by the sun - but not the insides, so ground up bones would still be beige. Lime would have made it more hygienic, too.

The people were dressed more colourful than Geralt had expected, as current Nilfgaardian fashion had a tendency towards black accented with gold. Almost all of the doublets looked like that indeed, with puffed sleeves and ruffs, but most of the dresses came in bright jewel colours and many of the young ladies were dressed in white; they were promenading the ballroom in several small groups, reminding Geralt, by the lightness and buoyancy of their movements, of flocks of white plumy birds.

It was a glittering, sparkling tumble of colours and a burbling warble of voices, accentuated with the occasional crystal clear laugh and clinking of wine glasses and the parts of the exchanges Geralt overheard ranged from painfully boring small-talk turning the most inane content into breathlessly intoned news, to the occasional gossip, purported under the disguise of sympathy, lined with barely concealed derision and cheerful spite.

"...oh pish posh, slander!"

"Silly little goose, she got herself knocked-up and killed it, would you believe it; no, she was hanged for it of course…"

"...no darling you look wonderful…"

"She's been a bit under the weather since the accident. Running someone over with your horse will do that to you. Oh well, now her husband has to find a new mistress."

"...very profitable indeed, wouldn't mind another war…"

"Of course he promised to marry her and then didn't. What did she expect, I say!"

A servant floated by with a tray of finger food. Geralt passed. He had a sudden vision of maggots squirming out of the pretty little cakes, reminiscent of the Trail of Treats.

The general chatter sometimes harmonised into a chorus of "ah" when a particularly high profile guest entered the room, such as Anarietta, who had arrived by portal and was probably going to leave that way again at some point in the night. Geralt avoided looking into her direction.

An equally well received entrance made var Gwyn - of course. The tailors had been right: the moment he and his entourage arrived all eyes were on him. He was wearing a very distinguished ensemble in black velvet with only slightly puffed sleeves. Cushy looking puffy trousers ended well above the knees, black hose showcasing well defined legs.

Geralt surreptitiously glanced at Anarietta and huffed. Maybe var Gwyn would end up beheaded before the banquet had started, for the offence of drawing attention away from her enlightened Ladyship.

Geralt's daydreaming got interrupted by Emhyr and Ciri's entrance. Emhyr wore something not unsimilar to Geralt's suit - Geralt was going to strangle aep Huch, not fatally, just a little - but with tasteful golden embroideries worthy of an emperor. Ciri was in a shiny bottle green dress, wearing her hair up in a braided bun.

Now there would be a speech, certainly - of course, there was the speech. Geralt found out that listening to a speech wasn't too bad when you enjoyed hearing the voice of the speaker. He could beat himself up for this later.

Emhyr formally introduced Ciri as crown princess, his heir apparent, future empress, and so on. Geralt thought of what he smelled like and tried to cheer himself up by the fact he'd never have to attend a function like this ever again after he'd left.

Emhyr and Ciri swept out of the room again immediately after the cheering, clapping and Glòir aen Ker'zaers had ebbed down and Geralt reluctantly abandoned his plan of making a run for it right now because he'd already been spotted by Mererid.

"The gentleman will follow me to the table," he explained.

Geralt groaned. "I've been here. I've been seen. Can't I just leave now?"

Mererid's face showed something like pity. "The gentleman will be seated at the head table next to her Imperial Highness."

Geralt stared at Mererid in silent anguish but his feet had already followed him out of the ballroom towards the banquet hall.

There was a short moment when Emhyr stood right before him and they stared into each other's eyes but it gave Geralt no insight into what was going on behind them. Ciri was seated to Emhyr's right and Geralt sat down next to her.

"You could have warned me," he whispered. His other seat neighbour was… Anarietta, but there was an arm's length of space between them because she sat at a right angle to him. They both seemed to agree that completely ignoring each other looked like the best option available.

"That way you didn't have to fret about it beforehand." Ciri gave him a hangdog smile. "This was the easiest solution for me to have a seat neighbour without starting rumours about my future husband."

Geralt sighed. "Next time just tell me." He'd turned his head to look at her and met Emhyr's eyes again. Then his gaze wandered further. Var Gwyn was seated to Emhyr's left. Of course. Geralt smiled politely, turned back to his plate and maintained that position for the rest of the evening.

What he wasn't able to do was avert his ears. Var Gwyn was bored and full of contempt for everything. He sneered at the waiting staff, managed to insult the quality of the shrimp by blaming the fishing industry and not his host, and went on a tangent about workers' innate incapability to do their jobs right. He padded his abrasive tirades by quoting poems, twisting their meaning around to suit his trite verbiage and sound sophisticated, and had a rhetoric going where he put Emhyr, together with himself, above the things he sneered at, but it was them against the rest of the embarrassingly sub par world.

At some point around the main course Geralt underwent some brutally honest introspection, accusing himself of unfairly being annoyed with that arsehole to an extent that by now var Gwyn wouldn't be able to do something as inoffensive as eat a cracker without raising Geralt's blood pressure. But then the viscount made another pointlessly derisive remark about the way the food was prepared and Geralt had to pinch himself in order to keep silent. He had an epiphany. Viscount var Gwyn was a mark beneath jealousy: he was too inferior to excite the feeling.

Geralt turned his head back to the left to look at him. Var Gwyn was laughing again, as if he'd said something very funny, and his pretty eyes sparkled in an imitation of wit. Emhyr was smiling pointedly - at Geralt.

Geralt was not quite in on the joke Emhyr was silently laughing at but something inside him that had been clenched for days relaxed - it felt like taking a dose of swallow after a hard fight.

The food was actually excellent.

The banquet went on deep into the night but Geralt had come to the conclusion that he'd survive. Wine and cheese were superb and Ciri told him things about the people she recognised. Interesting things, he noticed with pride. The snide remarks she had for some of them seemed to be deserved.

Finally Emhyr and Ciri announced they were going to retire, which meant that he could leave, too.

The corridors were unusually empty because all the nobles were still indulging in convivialities in the banquet hall.

Geralt was approaching the door to his room when a figure split from the shadows.

"How do you do?" Emhyr asked.

Geralt blinked. "I'm fine, thanks."

Emhyr nodded. "You were very quiet tonight," he said eventually.

Geralt took a deep breath. "Didn't want to insert myself where I don't belong."

Emhyr stepped closer. "No you don't belong among them. But you could belong. To me. Tell me: have I somehow been too subtle?"

Geralt inhaled with a hiss. "I thought you were playing some sort of mind game. And then… you seemed to have lost interest very quickly."

Emhyr laughed quietly. "Making you jealous to finally draw you out, yes. That was a mind game. Did it work, though? I cannot tell because whatever I do, you only seem to tolerate my advances, nothing more."

Geralt's breath hitched. For several heartbeats he was at a loss for words. "I can't stop thinking about you. I thought it was painfully obvious."

Emhyr closed the gap between them with one careful step and gingerly pushed Geralt against his bedroom door. His hot breath tickled his skin. "I did not know. And I'm not suffering the delusion I could pressure you into anything. My-"

The scream was raw and tore through the night.

Pyre

Geralt got his swords from his room within seconds and then headed for the stairs.

"The banquet hall?" Emhyr's expression was guarded.

"No. It came from somewhere above." Geralt stopped in his tracks. "You better go back to your guards and wait there."

Emhyr cursed and took the lead ascending the stairs.

"Or don't," Geralt muttered, following him. He'd been playing Gwent with Piet a lot and it didn't take him long to guess where Emhyr was headed.

Piet was sitting on the floor at the foot of the tower stairs, struggling to get out of his armour. He panted but tried to salute when he saw his emperor approach.

"At ease," Emhyr waved him off. "Where is she? What happened?"

Piet's gaze flicked from the emperor to Geralt and back. "Upstairs again. She must have incapacitated Corporal Gwaelogh, then came for me. Mistress Poole has a head wound but tried to pull her off me and she chased her back up into the tower."

Geralt had started to look at his injuries. His neck looked like someone had tried to chew through but fortunately had missed the various vital parts in the throat.

"Stabbed me in the shoulder first. Through the joint gap," Piet informed Geralt. "Not bad, I'll live."

Another scream pierced the night. This one didn't sound like pain but white hot rage. It melted seamlessly into laughter, the same malicious laughter Geralt had heard on his first visit to the tower weeks ago.

"Geralt." Emhyr took a deep breath but didn't say anything else.

"Just tell me what's going on!" Geralt got up and held him by the shoulders, then tentatively slipped one hand up, caressing his neck. Touching Emhyr like this felt way too intimate yet, but also incredible.

Emhyr's eyes bored into Geralt's, desperate and imploring. "Pavetta. It is Pavetta. We have to subdue her before she gathers power again."

Geralt blinked. "What?"

"If she attacked her guards only by using her teeth and a knife it means she is still drained." Emhyr closed his eyes. "But if the sorceress - Mistress Poole - has been hurt, and Pavetta can produce power again, she will be able to form portals and wreak havoc wherever she chooses to go. As she did when she tried to burn me alive."

"Fuck!" Geralt turned away and ran to the stairs. "How - why? Mousesack said untrained sources went mad, is that what happened?"

Emhyr was right behind him. "No, she is as sane as ever. Only full of hate."

"And how is she not dead?" Geralt hurried up the winding stairs.

Emhyr was panting behind him but had kept up. "Everyone thought I had died, too, in that storm. No, she got knocked unconscious, the storm stopped, we were transported to Nilfgaard."

"Stay back!" They'd reached the door at the top of the stairs. "I can smell fire. Stay behind me," Geralt repeated and threw the door open.

On the floor of the hallway lay Grace Poole, unconscious or dead. Her head was bloody and her forearms were slashed, her dress soaked with blood.

A broad open doorway led into a corner room with large windows to the north and to the east. The pretty, yellow wallpapered sitting-room was almost unbearably hot, lazy flames licked at the curtains and upholstery and the first books on several floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were starting to catch fire. Next to some smashed furniture lay the limp body of an Impera guard.

In the middle of the room, exuding so much heat the air around her looked blurry, stood Pavetta, swaying.

Pavetta was recognisably Pavetta, if about 20 years older than when Geralt had last seen her, and with blood smeared all over her face. He could see why Emhyr had mistaken Ciri for her mother when she'd worn her hair in a braid, especially since Pavetta was indeed very much alive.

"Of course you would involve yourself again, witcher." She sounded sad and a little tired. "It doesn't have to be that way. Step aside. I'll let you live."

Geralt's jaw twitched. His tally for successfully talking people down from doing violent things was low and he knew it. "Why are you doing this? If Emhyr kept you here imprisoned but you can use portals now, why not just flee to start a new life?"

Pavetta laughed. It sounded pleasant and a little bit like Ciri. "Oh no. The legitimate queen of Cintra will not live the life of an escaped prisoner. After my little rat here is dead I'm going to take out the Nilfgaardian nobility; almost all of them are still at that banquet. Then I'll take back my throne and rule a united North." She snorted. "What do you think - are they going to call me the Witchqueen?"

The temperature rose and the windows burst from the heat. The fresh air fanned the flames around them into a more ambitious fire. Geralt extinguished a burning bookshelf with a quick bout of aard and tried to push Emhyr back and out of the room but he'd already shuffled sideways and out of Geralt's protection.

"What about Ciri?" Geralt pushed out, trying to keep Pavetta talking. He considered what would happen if he attacked Pavetta with aard - rather sooner than later he'd probably find out.

"Cirilla can join me or oppose me. She was going to sell herself out to him, she can-"

A chair flew at her. Emhyr had thrown it, and aimed well. It would have hit her but she zipped to the left with a portal.

Pavetta huffed."Really, dear husband? With a chair?"

"An old water bucket took you out last time. It was worth the try." Emhyr had to cough.

"I had no control over my powers back then on that ship," Pavetta explained conversationally. "I've had time to practise since. Dear old Grace likes her gin, and middle-age has her napping afterwards. I also found out that fire is much more efficient than storms."

"It was you who burned down several senators' townhouses last year." Emhyr hadn't phrased it as a question. "I must thank you, it had the senate worried enough they were much more accommodating than usual. The only people you managed to kill were some of their servants though."

Pavetta shrugged. "I was told that I am evil and so I agree to be evil. You made me do it." She zipped closer to Emhyr, who involuntarily backed off because the air around Pavetta was boiling.

"Yes, grovel, little pest. This is how you should have kept treating me." She moved her hand and a portal opened. The burning curtains of the closest window got sucked into the vortex and all flames in the vicinity hissed from the pull of the vacuum.

Emhyr got jerked forward towards the portal but managed to grip the side of a bookshelf and held on to it.

"Hop through, you can join your guards in the nothing between worlds." She zipped away because Geralt was attacking now, and she had to throw herself to the side immediately because he seemed to know where she would emerge.

The portal to the void she'd opened appeared to have no effect on herself, but Geralt was struggling with its pull. Pavetta dodged his sword twice more, barely, and then materialised directly at Emhyr's side. She'd momentarily stopped burning up the air or his skin would have blistered when she shielded herself with the mock-up of a passionate embrace.

Geralt had difficulties approaching them, as their struggle took place too close to the open vortex; neither could he throw his knife. Emhyr kept holding on to the shelf while the books from it kept flying into the portal. Pavetta was just clinging to him with a serene expression and Geralt could see by the glimmer in the air that she was turning up the heat again. Their fight looked like a dance first, then like a very passionate amorous tête-à-tête. Emhyr's doublet had started to smoulder.

Suddenly they were doing a pirouette, Pavetta had managed to pry Emhyr off the bookshelf and pushed him towards the vortex.

Geralt jumped, trying to intercept. He crashed into Pavetta and ignored it, ignored the pain that came with the blistering heat, just grabbed for Emhyr, trying to dig his heels into the unfortunately smooth floor boards and pushed Emhyr and himself back from the portal's gaping maw in one last, desperate leap back.

He stumbled backwards into Pavetta. There wasn't much force behind it as almost all his strength went into countering the suck of the vacuum, but his elbow hit something sensitive and she cried out, more in anger than pain, and whirled around.

There was an expression of innocent surprise in her face in that one, endless second she was in the air, that one second that feels like flying when you take a fall. It takes much longer when you fall from great height. And she fell. Through the window, into the night, from the palace's tower, down, down, to the white stone pavement below, where she met the same death her mother had known.

The portal closed with a wet slurping sound and then there was silence.

Questions

A shadow moved through the dark of the night. The silhouette slipped up the palace walls, swung over the railing of a balcony and lingered there, crouching, listening.

When Geralt was sure the room was empty, he opened the latch by wriggling his knife through the door slit and surveyed the bed chamber. Everything looked approximately as it had before the fire, just a very slight smell of cold smoke still hung in the walls and floor boards, only perceptible for a witcher's nose.

Geralt closed the heavy curtains in front of the balcony doors and slipped back outside, leaving the glass doors cracked open an inch ajar. He sat down on a white wrought iron garden chair, remembered he'd pocketed some chocolates earlier and ate them while he waited.

About an hour later the bedroom door opened and Geralt heard steps. He listened closely, directly at the gap of the glass door: one person rummaging around; then the faint scent of Emhyr hit his nose. Eventually the bed springs squeaked a little, then there was a little huff and the smell of wax and smoke - the candle had been extinguished.

Geralt carefully opened the balcony door and silently entered the room. He slipped out from behind the curtains without letting the weak moonlight leak through. The room was very dark but he could see well, of course.

Emhyr lay in bed on his side, knees drawn up to his chest, his hands were stuffed under his pillow. He looked irritable, probably thinking about things that hadn't quite gone his way, with his eyes closed, waiting for sleep.

Geralt smiled and sat down on the bed next to him.

"Who, what!" Emhyr jerked up, already drawing a knife he must have kept under the pillow.

Geralt caught his wrists and disarmed him carefully. "Hush, it's just me. Sorry."

Emhyr cursed but kept Geralt's hand clasped while sitting up in bed. There was more cursing before he'd calmed down. "What do you think you are doing, exactly?"

"Uh. Surprise you? And being sneaky, so no-one knows." Geralt put Emhyr's knife down on the bedside table.

Emhyr snorted and rubbed his face with the hand that wasn't holding Geralt's. "Are you concerned about my reputation or yours?" He made it sound flippant but looked wary.

Geralt took a deep breath. "I still don't know what you want. Wanted to play it safe. Rather err on the side of caution than-"

Emhyr interrupted him, laughing softly: "You just broke into my bedroom…"

"Yeah you were all unavailable again for two days." Geralt was grateful Emhyr couldn't see his face. He could suppress blushing but not the sheepish expression his face undoubtedly showed.

"I spent most of it in bed, being healed." Emhyr looked embarrassed. "You did not need to see me like that."

Geralt huffed. He'd carried Emhyr into safety and seen his burns. "Yes, your eyebrows are back, alright. I still don't fully get what's been happening," he added after a pause. "Why did you keep her a secret in the first place?"

Emhyr sighed but seemed not reluctant to talk. "Where to start. When we arrived in Nilfgaard I had many things to take care of, dethroning the Usurper. When Pavetta regained consciousness she tried to kill me again. De Rideaux put her in dimeritium cuffs and we didn't advertise my marriage." He snorted. "Which was fortunate because later I could just marry the girl the conspirators had presented to me as Cirilla. No-one knew I had already wed the actual crown princess of Cintra." He rubbed his face. "I expected that at any moment someone would step forward dramatically and shout 'You cannot marry this woman as you already have a wife!' but no. No-one knew except de Rideaux and the handful of Impera guards he had personally vetted."

"How did Mistress Poole manage to keep Pavetta drained? All by herself? She had to sleep at night." Geralt shifted his weight on the bed and Emhyr moved his legs so he could sit properly.

"Grace Poole, yes." Emhyr huffed. "We were lucky to find her. Her only talent as a sorceress is to drain power from others but she is not able to do anything with it. At Aretuza they debated whether to kill her as she poses some danger for sorceresses and mages. Lady Assire claimed she would take care of her and facilitated her move to Nilfgaard. She was locked away in that tower as much as Pavetta was. When she had to sleep, Pavetta was secured with dimeritium bonds."

Geralt hummed. "My medallion indicated the presence of magic in the tower but never when Pavetta used her powers. I'm guessing it sensed Mistress Poole draining her?"

"And I am guessing you mean when you played Gwent with my guards," Emhyr smirked. "Of course I knew. I thought it was less suspicious not to intervene."

"Why not just tell me though? And Ciri! She might have wanted to meet her mother, don't you think?" Geralt knew he was taking this slightly personal and tried to stay calm.

Emhyr groaned and buried his face in his hands. "I was debating myself on that, constantly. But you saw her. And I had her imprisoned. Not in a windowless dungeon, but nevertheless. My truce with Cirilla is still fragile. I wanted to wait. And with you-" He exhaled and stared at the dark silhouette sitting on his bed. "I was trying to seduce you. 'Oh and remember my wife, I keep her in a tower' did not sound good in my mind."

Geralt snorted and then took a deep breath. "So how is the seduction coming along?"

Emhyr's breath hitched. "I am not sure. You tell me." His tone was dry. "I have managed to get you into my bed but so far only for a debriefing."

Geralt shuffled closer. "I'm still in my briefs though, you'll have to put some more effort into this."

Emhyr laughed out loud. His eyes were trying to find Geralt's face in the dark. "I can't even see you." His hand slowly traced up Geralt's arm, pushing up his shirt sleeve while following the tendon with his thumb. "If I cannot see you, I might have to let my fingers roam."

Geralt shivered and leaned forward, bringing their faces so close together they almost touched.

Emhyr's voice was low and rough - not completely intentionally - and his lips grazed Geralt's cheek when he spoke: "When you come to my bed from now on, take the door."

Geralt had always regarded kissing as something soft, kinda nice, and mostly performative, and momentarily lost higher brain function from Emhyr's hard, demanding kiss.

"And take off your boots," Emhyr amended, slightly out of breath.

Geralt obeyed and Emhyr pulled him into his ridiculously large bed, rolling on top of him in one fluid move. "No that will not do. I want to see you."

Geralt laughed quietly, wriggled out from under him and stretched his arm towards the candle. "You're kinda fussy, did you know that?" He lit the candle with igni and slipped back into Emhyr's arms.

"I need to be able to see," Emhyr said against Geralt's neck, "if you are comfortable. I can follow clues; you have only ever been with women."

Geralt closed his eyes and sighed. "What gave me away?"

Emhyr chuckled. "Everything. Your cluelessness mostly." He started to unlace Geralt's shirt and smirked when Geralt drew a sharp breath. "The way you respond to this."

"Sorry." Geralt grimaced, wriggling out of his shirt. "I never thought the risk of being caught was worth the effort."

"Yes, the North and its cultural idiosyncrasies." Emhyr huffed without humour, pulled his nightshirt over his head and carelessly threw it into the room. Geralt, suddenly confronted with all of Emhyr's body, bucked up and bit back a moan. Emhyr smiled triumphantly. "I was not sure you really wanted this until right - now."

He lent down, still straddling Geralt, speaking against his neck again. "I am not teasing you. I have lived in the North for too long, for them I was a monster in any shape or form. Fortunately I was not raised there."

Geralt groaned, pressing his bare stomach against a very responsive Emhyr. There was less talking for a little while.

"Oh fuck," Geralt groaned eventually because Emhyr's hands had found their way into his trousers.

"That is the general concept, yes," Emhyr panted. "Ard Feainn, you are not small."

Geralt tried to concentrate on Emhyr's words. "Not larger than you are," he managed. "Same size I'd say."

Emhyr hummed and sucked on Geralt's neck until he screamed. "Yes, but I have not managed to fuck myself yet, regardless of how many people have wished for that. So I think I need more preparation."

"Wait," Geralt blinked while Emhyr did not wait with anything but slowly kissed down Geralt's stomach. "I thought-"

Emhyr looked at him sternly and paused with what he'd been doing. "You thought I would take your arse the first time I got my hands on you and would not want to get fucked myself?" He sighed. "I have not allowed myself the pleasure in a long time as it would have put me in a vulnerable position. But I do enjoy being taken."

"Isn't that what an official 'favourite' does?" Geralt pondered they might have wanted to discuss these things beforehand. "I thought you and var Gwyn-"

Emhyr snorted and made Geralt gasp again. "Yes. Fortunately he shuts up when you fuck him hard enough and he liked it that I always kept a knife on me, during. I have never trusted or turned my back on him though." Emhyr watched Geralt's face and smiled. "He is going to get a villa in Toussaint and a second title and a new horse and will officially be "dearest friend of the emperor" until he decides to join some scheme against me. It should keep him satisfied for a while though." He lifted an eyebrow at Geralt and kissed down his thigh.

Geralt then also shut up for a while. He'd thought this was familiar territory and then got overwhelmed because it was Emhyr's large hand on his thigh and the moans were Emhyr's rich baritone and something felt especially good and then even better and just when he realised what it was pleasure hit deep inside of him and he lost it completely, spending himself while shouting out Emhyr's name.

"Emhyr," he kept panting. "I, that. You."

Emhyr laughed breathlessly. "I half expected you to be skittish about it."

Geralt pulled him up and pressed their bodies together. He expected Emhyr to protest because it was rather messy with what was mostly Emhyr's fluids, and also because Geralt was used to being scolded for being clingy. Emhyr just buried his face in Geralt's chest and made himself comfortable, intertwining their legs.

Geralt sighed quietly with sudden contentment, extinguished the candle and fell asleep, deciding to scrutinise his former life choices at some later point.

Hallon

Geralt woke up surrounded by the scents of Emhyr and himself and blinked his eyes open.

He was able to function immediately after waking up - the mutations did that and they'd trained it into them at Kaer Morhen, of course by dishing out harsh punishments for those who took a second too long to rouse themselves.

But that had been a long time ago and in the absence of immediate danger he saw no reason not to cherish the quiet and warmth and feelings he'd rather not analyse right now.

His face seemed to be next to Emhyr's chest and their knees touched. He sampled more of Emhyr's scent, trying to memorise it in case this had been a one off thing after all.

"Who is Hallon?" Emhyr asked sleepily. Geralt should have detected that he'd been awake but he'd been distracted by his thoughts. Sloppy. 'A distracted witcher is dead meat'.

Geralt took a deep breath. "Did I talk in my sleep?"

"Yes." Emhyr shuffled a little away and looked at him. "You told him you loved him."

Geralt froze. He shut his eyes and let surprise and dread wash over himself. "I've never thought of it like that," he whispered. "It seems I'm smarter in my dreams."

Emhyr's heart rate was up. "Care to enlighten me?"

Geralt swallowed. "I'm sorry I upset you. He's been dead for over 80 years."

Emhyr's face had been carefully neutral but now it slowly relaxed into an expression of pained sympathy. "I must apologise. I thought - well it is obvious what I thought."

Geralt nodded. His throat bobbed. "I don't even remember that I dreamed of him."

"How old were you?" Emhyr's hand had been moving into Geralt's direction but refrained from touching him.

Geralt took it and held it in both of his own. "When he came to Kaer Morhen or when he died?" he mused slowly. "I don't remember exactly when we became friends. We were children. I was a year younger than him. Then we weren't exactly children anymore. But I never realised that - apparently. Well."

Emhyr drew Geralt close. "I am sorry. I'm guessing it would have been against the rules for you to-"

Geralt snorted. "Yeah. It was a taboo. Probably not a bad idea in general to disencourage abuse but that still happened too, of course."

He sighed. "Hallon liked to read and always started daydreaming during lessons. Missed what was being taught in lectures, got severely punished for it. At some point the teachers just loved to bully him for their enjoyment. It filled me with rage. He just calmly took it. I swore I'd make our teachers pay once I was strong enough. Well. They are all gone now."

Geralt saw Emhyr's raised eyebrows and laughed. "No, I didn't help with their demise. The school collapsed all by itself when the mages started to kill almost all children in their newly revised trials. Hallon - he might have survived a good old fashioned Trial of the Grasses but they'd started experimenting with the formulae and not many of his year made it."

Geralt sighed. He'd talked about the history of Kaer Morhen occasionally; that wasn't hard. But he'd never talked about Hallon even though he knew that Lambert, for example, had also lost his very close friend. Geralt had never talked about it, especially not with Lambert.

"We never - did anything forbidden. I only kissed him when he was dying. I sneaked into the room and slipped into his bed. He was so cold and tired. He knew he was dying. We said goodbye. I kissed him. We fell asleep. In the morning I still held him in my arms; but he was dead."

Emhyr didn't say anything, just nodded. Geralt listened to his steady heart beat and wondered what else he'd just never talked about for so long only his dreams remembered.

"Sorry." Geralt grimaced. "There's not even a story."

Emhyr hummed. "That is part of its sorrow."

Geralt stared at him until Emhyr kissed him. He was still all hard edges and purpose and his morning stubble and Geralt's short beard caused some exciting friction.

"When do you have to get up?" Geralt panted.

Emhyr laughed softly. "I think I have another recuperation day scheduled. Under different circumstances someone would show up eventually to make sure I am well but the way you shouted my name last night my guess is: no-one will dare to disturb us."

"Good." Geralt grinned and vanished under the blanket.

Epilogue

"So both of my parents were ruthless, power hungry, egotistic warmongers and I never got to see my mother even once. That's wonderful. I don't know why you think it upsets me."

Geralt opened his mouth to say something but Ciri interrupted him. "Don't start defending Emhyr now, you're not objective."

Geralt sighed and rubbed his face. "I'm not saying he isn't all those things. But that's no news. He says he was going to tell you - or re-introduce you to your mother - once your relationship with him was better."

"I know. He told me that too. We've talked. He said his part." Ciri was so angry Geralt surreptitiously checked if small objects on the breakfast table had started vibrating yet.

"Pavetta repeatedly tried to kill him, killed countless innocent people while doing so and would have ruled with mercurial cruelty. Most-"

"I know!" Ciri interrupted again. "I said: I know. And he locked her away from all human contact."

Geralt sighed. "I was going to say: Most people in his position would have executed her. Many people have been hanged for much less." He took a deep breath. "I would have killed her."

Ciri snorted. "No, you wouldn't."

Geralt nodded. "Ok, so I wouldn't have killed her, what would I have done with her? Maybe imprisoned her so she couldn't do more damage, if I had the means?"

"What the fuck, Geralt!" Ciri covered her face with both hands.

"You're wrong, cub." Geralt huffed. "I was trying to kill her. I might have if she hadn't fallen by accident. And I would have done it so you wouldn't have to. Butcher of Blaviken, remember? So actually three of your parents are ruthless murderers and well, Yen…"

"Leave me alone," Ciri mumbled into her palms.

"Yup." Geralt got up. Neither of them had actually eaten anything and he grabbed two bread rolls to take to his room.

"Geralt?" Ciri's face was a mess. She still insisted on wearing her kohl every day and had smudged it quite a bit. "If I had been able to talk to her she might have - changed her plans."

Geralt sat down again. "Perhaps, yes."

Ciri narrowed her eyes on him. "You're not telling me I'm naive?"

"No." Geralt sighed and poured himself a cup of tea. "You already know that it's naive to think it would definitely have played out like that. But it might have. We'll never know because things happened differently."

Ciri had started to disembowel a bread roll and proceeded to pulverise it. "I have done this before. Tried not to think back because what's been done is done. Tried to just forget. But in the end - what if it means there's nothing left to be remembered?"

Geralt took her hand. "It's Mistle again, too, hm? We can remember. We can have good memories and bad memories of the same person." He huffed. "We can have guilt. But we also still have our lives ahead of us." He squinted. "Fuck, that sounds smarmy, I'm sorry. But I mean it. Regret is part of life but what-ifs don't help."

Ciri took a deep breath and nodded. "When did you become so wise?" She gave him a lopsided grin.

"Pfff, about thirty, forty years ago, maybe? It's a work in progress though." His smile was a little sad. He let go of Ciri's hand and drank from his tea. "What is going to happen to Grace Poole now?"

"What?" Ciri blinked. "She's been healed and won't retain any damage."

"I know." Geralt hummed. "You can't let her leave though. Her talent can be used against you."

"Yes, she's going to stay at the palace and we'll have an eye on her." Ciri huffed. "She's done nothing wrong, there's no reason to punish her."

"Mhm, and still - you can't let her be free, let her go where she wants to go. Too much of a risk, right?" Geralt grinned obnoxiously.

Ciri stared at him, incredulous. "I need to go and wash my face." She shook her head and grinned. "You're actually a great match for Emhyr. Sly bastards, both of you."

"Yeah." Geralt smiled and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively until Ciri fled the room, laughing. "Praised be Melitele and the Great Sun."

*bows*
No, wait, I don't bow either.

I hope this whole project wasn't too confusing. I don't care much, actually, because I enjoyed writing it anyway :D

I chose a weirdly religious last sentence because Brontë ended with "Amen [...] Lord Jesus" so there you go.