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When she found Geralt of Rivia, Ciri thought she would finally have answers. That he would tell her why Nilfgaard had attacked Cintra, and what it had to do with her. Why the things that happened around her kept happening.
Instead, all she had were more questions.
“Who is Yennefer?”
She heard his soft intake of breath. His hands tightened on her shoulders, not enough to hurt, but enough for her to feel his urgency. “How do you know that name?”
“I dreamed it. You were calling for her.” His shout echoed echoed in her mind, smoke rising around him. “There was a battlefield.”
“Did you see her?”
Ciri shook her head. “Only you.” How she had known it was him, she didn’t know, but when she woke she knew it in her bones, just as she knew she would find him if she walked into the woods.
He looked over her head, toward the smoke that rose in the distance, barely visible through the trees. His grip on her shoulders loosened. He didn’t let go, though; Ciri was glad for that. She wanted to cling to him again, to let her exhaustion and relief overtake her, but she made herself stand straight.
“Who is she?” she asked.
“A sorceress.”
“A friend?”
He grunted, a sound that was not quite negative or affirmative. It seemed to be all the answer he was inclined to give. He turned back toward the merchant’s house and began walking, slowly. Ciri followed. He was limping.
“What happened to your leg?”
“Ghouls. A pack of them.”
She peered at the bandage knotted above his knee. “Is it true their bite can kill?”
“Hmm.”
“But you survived.” She looked up at him. He was tall, taller than Eist or Mousesack had been, or maybe it just seemed that way.
“Hmm,” he agreed.
“How?”
He stopped walking and looked down at her. He had let go of her shoulder when they started walking, and Ciri, wanting the security of his touch, grabbed his hand as she walked beside him. His fingers curled around her small hand, automatic and protective. “I can clear most poisons from my body, with the help of certain potions.” He glanced again toward the house. “The merchant, Yurga, brought me here. I saved him from the ghouls, and he saved me.”
She followed his gaze. “The woman who lives here helped me,” she murmured, remembering with a shudder waking up in the field, surrounded by blood and bodies and flattened grass. “Zola. That’s how I came here.”
They looked at each other for a long moment. Finally Geralt snorted and started walking again. “Destiny,” he muttered, and shook his head.
“What happens now?” Ciri asked.
“Now, we prevail upon these kind people’s hospitality for a little while longer.” He glanced down at her. “We’re neither of us in any condition to ride. It should be safe for us to stay here for a few days.”
“And then?”
He didn’t answer.
***
Back at the house, Zola enfolded Ciri in a hug and looked at Geralt with tears in her eyes. Ciri let herself be held for a few moments, comforted by her softness, before she pulled back and smiled at her. “It’s all right,” she said, feeling strange to be in the position of offering reassurance. “Geralt is my--” She broke off, unsure of the correct word. “He’s who I was searching for.” She looked at him. “He’ll protect me.”
“She’ll be safe with me,” Geralt said, and Ciri swallowed hard. She had already seen so many people die trying to protect her. This will be different, she told herself. He’s a Witcher.
Zola framed Ciri’s face between her hands and looked over her head at Geralt, blinking away tears. “Must you take her away?”
“It’s not safe for us to stay. For you or for the girl.”
“We can stay for a few days, though,” Ciri said, putting on a bright smile. Zola smiled back. “Right?” she looked up at Geralt.
“If you don’t mind,” Geralt said. He glanced from Zola to her husband. “We need a few days’ rest. My leg--”
“As long as you need,” the merchant said. He clapped Geralt on the shoulder. “You saved my life, Witcher. I’ll be glad to repay you with more than an ale.”
***
Weeks of running and terror had left Ciri exhausted, but when night fell she found herself lying awake, her thoughts moving too quickly to let her settle. She’d spent most of the day drifting around the farmhouse, relief vying with trepidation. She had found the Geralt of Rivia, or he’d found her. Her destiny. What now? The question swirled in her mind, not letting her sleep.
She’d spent the morning after she and Geralt returned to the house baking bread with Zola. The warm scent of yeast and the smooth ball of dough in her hands soothed her. She had never baked bread before, and doubted she would again, not like this--in this warm kitchen with a woman who might have been her mother in another life, guiding her with hands that were strong and rough from work rather than battle.
The sound of Geralt’s voice drew her to the stable while the dough rose. She leaned against the door and watched him, speaking in low tones to his horse while he felt along her legs and checked her feet. His gear hung neatly over the nearby railing. He was still wearing the same torn, dirty clothes he had been in the woods that morning, but his saddle and weapons and armor were all shining.
“You’ll be glad of a few days’ rest, too, won’t you?” He murmured, straightening. The horse bumped him in the chest with her head, hard enough to make him lose his balance and catch himself on his bad leg.
“Ow. Fuck.” He scowled at her. “Don’t give me that innocent look, Roach.”
The horse whickered, and the Witcher let out an annoyed huff, but a smile touched his face. “All right, all right.” He reached in his pocket and fed her something from his palm. “I know, I need rest, too.” He patted her nose affectionately.
“Why’s she called Roach?” Ciri asked.
He glanced in her direction. He didn’t look surprised to see her, even though she’d been standing silently in the shadows. “It’s her name.”
“Yes, but why?” She came further into the barn and sat on an overturned bucket. “Why not Cinnamon or Chestnut or . . .?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Chocolate?” he suggested. “Or perhaps Brownie.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a smile tug at his lips.
She crossed her arms. “I think you’re making fun of me.”
“Hmm.” He picked up a brush from the railing and ran it over the horse’s flank. “You can name your own horse, Princess. Mine’s called Roach.”
“Hmph.”
“Here.” He tossed her an apple. “Make friends with her. You’ll be traveling together soon.” To Roach he said, sternly, “Be nice.”
The mare’s velvet lips were warm on Ciri’s palm as she accepted the apple, and Ciri patted her nose. “Where will we go?” she asked Geralt.
He turned and looked out the open stable door. “North,” he said at last. Ciri waited, but he didn’t say anything more.
The rest of the day passed slowly. It was disorienting, after so many days of running and hiding and jumping at every sound. She felt aimless, uncertain what to do or how. Even warm and full from the evening meal and comfortable in bed, she couldn’t quiet her mind. She lay in the darkness, her eyes gritty and her chest tight. What happens now?
She didn’t know how long she had been lying there, trying to sleep, when Geralt stepped softly into the small room. “Still awake, Princess?”
She peered at him in the darkness. All she could make out of him was a dark shape and a gleam of pale hair, but somehow she suspected he could see her much better by the glow of the banked fire. “I can’t sleep.”
“Hmm.” He sat down on the pallet by the hearth she had helped Zola prepare earlier. They’d made a second in her and Yurga’s room, for the boy whose bed she now occupied. She listened to his movements, the rustle of fabric as he arranged blankets, the dull thud of boots being set aside.
She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. “Geralt?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you know my parents well?”
The dark shape by the fire stilled. “I only met them the one time.”
“But you saved my father’s life.”
“Hm,” he agreed.
“Why?”
He didn’t answer right away. He took the poker from its rack and stirred the coals, sat back and stared at the red glow. “I know what it is to be thought a monster.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know your father was cursed,” he said, only half questioning.
She nodded. “It was broken when my grandmother blessed their marriage.”
“Hm.” He sounded dryly amused. “Is that what Calanthe told you?”
It was strange to hear her grandmother referred to so casually, without so much as a “Queen” in front of her name, and beneath, that hint of disdain. It made her belly clench, but it piqued her curiosity even more. “You were there,” she surmised. “At the betrothal feast.”
“Hm.”
“What happened?”
“If I tell you, will you stop asking questions until the morning?”
A wave of heat rolled over her, and she looked down at her knees. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I just want to know . . .” She trailed off. “I never even heard your name until . . .” Tears pricked her eyes, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.
He let out a breath. “It’s all right, Princess.” His voice was gentle. He got to his feet with a grunt, lit a taper from the banked coals and used it to light the candles on the mantle.
She squinted in the light. “I just want to know . . .” Ciri began again, not sure how to finish. Everything. “I just want to know what happened.”
The mattress shifted under her as he sat on the foot of the bed. Sometime before supper he’d bathed and changed into a clean black shirt and trousers, and the scent of soap and clean hay drifted from him. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you might not like it.” He rested his back against the footboard and straightened his injured leg. “Or me.”
“Pretty ballads hide bastard truths,” she quoted. He raised his eyebrows, a surprised chuckle escaping him. She flushed and looked down at her hands. “Eist used to say that.”
“He wasn’t wrong. And Jaskier did write a song about that night. Quite a popular one, if I recall.”
“But it’s all fairy tale blah blah blah. And anyway, you’re not in it.”
“Hm. Yes, we had quite the argument about that,” he muttered. “He finally saw sense.”
“You know the bard?” It surprised her, that he might know someone like a bard, and well enough to argue with him about one of his songs. She had trouble imagining him doing anything other than riding through dark forests alone and battling monsters.
“Hm. He’s the one who dragged me to that cursed feast in the first place.”
“How come?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Noblewomen like Jaskier. Their husbands don’t. He wanted to avoid a knife in the back.”
“Why--? Oh.” She wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”
He chuckled.
“So you were there protecting your friend, and . . .?”
“Your grandmother thought it would be amusing to use me to rile up your mother’s noble suitors.”
Ciri laughed. “That sounds like Grandmother.”
“Hm. And she saw my presence as an opportunity. To eliminate certain annoyances, she put it.”
Ciri frowned.
“Your father,” he said after a moment.
He waited for her to absorb his meaning, his expression kind but unflinching. “Grandmother . . . wanted you to kill my father?”
“I told you you wouldn’t like the truth.”
Ciri shook her head. “She wouldn’t.” But of course, Calanthe would. She liked to get her way, and she had done much worse. She slaughtered my family, Dara had said. Or her soldiers had. Same thing.
“Then what happened?” she asked faintly. She didn’t interrupt as he told her of the battle, her grandmother’s betrayal, her mother’s power. Some of it was in the song. Most of it wasn’t.
She was silent for a long time after he’d finished, staring past him into the candle flames, imagining that long-ago night. “Why did you choose the law of surprise for payment?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.” She looked at him, surprised, and he shrugged. “It was the first thing that came to mind. I would as soon have left without any payment, but your father insisted. I didn’t think anything would come of it. Except . . .” He spread his hands. “Pavetta was pregnant.”
“With me.” Ciri’s voice was small, smaller than she wanted. She swallowed around the tightness in her throat. She didn’t remember her mother, or her father, knew them only from paintings and stories.
“Hm.”
“And you . . . didn’t want a child.”
He sighed. “It’s more complicated than that, Ciri. My world--the life of a witcher--it’s no place for a child.”
“You could have stayed in Cintra. Claimed a place at court.”
He smiled wryly. “That is no place for a witcher.”
She tried to imagine him at court, dressed in silks among the courtiers and their squabbles, and couldn’t help giggling. “I suppose not.”
“I came back when I learned Nilfgaard was marching on Cintra.” He grimaced. “Your grandmother threw me in the dungeon for my trouble.”
Ciri drew in a sharp breath. “You were there?”
“Hm. I escaped during the attack. I tried to find you, but . . .” he trailed off.
Their paths had so nearly crossed then. She reached under the blanket and fingered Calanthe’s sash. Why had she prevented him from taking her? She could have been safe, all this time--or if not safe, then . . . at least, not alone.
“I searched for you.” He looked away. “I had given up, when I met Yurga.”
She sat back. “Destiny,” she murmured, her fingers still tracing the embroidery on the velvet.
“Perhaps.”
“What happens now?”
He made a complicated gesture with one hand. “Now, it’s time to sleep.” The words settled over her like a blanket, making her limbs feel heavy and her eyelids droop.
“But--”
“You can ask more questions tomorrow.” He got to his feet. “Sleep well, Princess,” he said. And, just before she surrendered to exhaustion, she thought she heard him say, “I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner. Forgive me.”
But she couldn’t be certain it wasn’t a dream.
***
Geralt woke before dawn, sleep falling away in shreds of half-remembered dreams and the echo of Renfri’s voice. The girl in the woods will be with you always. She is your destiny.
The girl from the woods lay curled up under the heavy quilt on the bed, her blonde head just visible above the blanket. Princess, child-surprise. His destiny. Geralt lay on his pallet and listened to the slow, even cadence of her breathing. His leg ached dully. Around them, the farmhouse lay still and quiet. For the first time in a long time, Geralt felt something like peace.
It hurt his pride to admit it, but of course, Borch had been right. That itch he couldn’t scratch, the whirlwind in his chest that refused to settle, had dissipated the moment he saw the girl running toward him in the forest, and it was as if something had locked into place when she threw her arms around him, something he hadn’t even realized was out of joint.
This was what he had been made for. Protect this child. See her safely to adulthood, to her full power. She sighed and turned over in her sleep. Geralt closed his eyes, feeling again the fierce sense of protectiveness, of rightness, that had risen up in him when he saw her that morning and she ran to him without fear.
Not, he thought wryly, that this newfound sense of purpose was doing anything for his sleep. With it came a whole new turbulence. He didn’t know the first thing about looking after a child--or anyone, really, other than himself, and occasionally Jaskier. Ordinarily he had no need to make plans, to think beyond the next bend in the road, the next town, the next monster. He simply rode wherever the wind blew, took jobs where he could get them, spent his coin when he had it, and generally tried not to get too tangled up in anyone else’s affairs.
Jaskier was fond of pointing out to him just how spectacularly bad he was at that last. Geralt knew he wasn’t wrong. Renfri, Jaskier, Yen—it would be better to move through the world alone, easier, kinder, but they drew him in and he couldn’t make himself let them go. Vesimir would call him twelve kinds of fool, and he had, more than once. A witcher did his job, he got paid, and he moved on. He didn’t get involved. He didn’t get attached.
And now Ciri. Scared, alone— He could have prevented that, perhaps. Perhaps. Then again, he had trouble imagining a scenario that didn’t end with Calanthe’s blame and rejection and fear. He remembered how Pavetta had looked at him that night, as if he were a monster who would steal her child from her very womb. Any course of action, once he had uttered those words, would have only ended in disaster. He had just chosen this particular one.
People linked by destiny will always find each other, he had told the girl, as Visenna had told him. He had fought destiny, spit in its face, turned his back--and yet here he was. Destiny? Or simply chance, and his own choices, and the sense of responsibility for a promise unfulfilled that had dogged his steps these last dozen years?
Perhaps that was all just another name for destiny.
But destiny was only a beginning. It had brought them to the road, Geralt and Ciri. The Witcher and the princess. It was up to them to walk it.
What happens now? the girl kept asking, and Geralt had no answer for her.
***
Zola was in the kitchen when Geralt came inside after tending to Roach, stirring a pot set over the hearth fire Geralt had stoked before he went outside. The air was warm and steamy, and smelled sweetly of porridge.
“Good morning.” She looked curiously at his bag and the handful of plants he had gathered in the forest. “You’re up and about early.”
“Hm,” Geralt agreed. He gestured toward the table. “May I?”
“Of course.”
He felt her watching him as he sat and unpacked his kit and laid his things out neatly on the table with the plants he had gathered. “I don’t suppose I could trouble you for the use of a mortar and pestle, and some hot water?” He glanced up. “I need to replenish my medicines.”
“Of course,” she said again, retrieving the stone mortar and pestle from its shelf and filled a bowl with water from the kettle. He caught her shrewd look at the plants he had collected, several of which weren’t medicinal at all, but she kept her silence. A short time later she placed a bowl of hot porridge and a mug of dark tea at his elbow, and joined him at the table.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and set his work aside to eat. He propped his leg up on the empty chair beside him. The morning’s exercise had loosened his stiffening muscles, but the wound still ached. He’d be favoring the leg for some time yet, though he thought he’d be fit to travel in another day, maybe two. He’d leave sooner, but he couldn’t risk being weakened, not with Ciri to protect.
“She’d have a good home here,” Zola said.
Startled, Geralt looked up. She avoided his eyes, gazing into her tea instead. “It’s a good life. Simple, but good. We’d give her a good home.”
Her words twisted painfully in his gut. He looked away. “I know,” he said softly.
“You saved my husband’s life,” she went on, talking fast, as though she wanted to get the words out before she lost her nerve. “But surely there’s something else--some other way to repay--”
Another painful twist. He shook his head, raising his hand to forestall her. “No. You misunderstand. It isn’t a question of payment. Yurga saved my life in return. There is no debt between us.”
She looked at him then, frowning. “But--the law of surprise?”
Geralt sighed. He pushed his bowl of porridge away, no longer hungry. “Ciri was bound to me by the law of surprise before she was born.”
Zola was silent for a long moment. At last she said, “Destiny.”
Destiny, or his own foolishness and pride, or simple chance. “Yes.”
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Geralt pulled the leaves from a hawthorn branch and set about grinding them into a paste.
“I always wanted a daughter,” she said at last. “When I saw her, alone in the market, I thought destiny had finally answered. I hoped. But . . .” She trailed off. “She was attacked.”
Geralt looked up sharply. Her face was distant, haunted.
“She ran from me. I found her, surrounded by bodies. Like an explosion flattened everything around her, and she at the center of it.” She shuddered.
Geralt closed his eyes. He would have spared them both that. “I won’t allow anyone to hurt her.” Never again.
“You can protect her.”
It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway. “Yes.”
“Where will you go?”
Geralt didn’t answer. He had come to a decision, while he gathered herbs in the forest that morning. He had been riding to Kaer Morhen before he’d encountered Yurga; it was the safest place for Ciri. The safest place he knew on the Continent.
After a moment Zola said, “No. It’s better that I don’t know.” She gathered their bowls and cups and set them beside the basin.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be.” Her voice trembled, but she met his eyes squarely. “Just keep her safe.”
“I will.”
***
Geralt’s bed by the fire was empty when Ciri came awake, and for a terrible moment she thought she was alone in the house, that the Witcher and the merchant family had vanished, or been a dream. Her throat constricted, and her breath came in short gasps, but before she gave over to panic entirely the deep rumble of Geralt’s voice reached her ears. Zola answered, both of their words indistinct, their low voices drifting from the kitchen.
Ciri fell back against her pillows, trembling, and waited for her breath to slow. You’re safe, she told herself. You found him. Everything’s going to be all right now.
Geralt was seated at one end of the large kitchen table, an array of herbs, powders, and small bottles and wax seals spread out before him. Zola was stirring something over the fire.
“Good morning, Princess,” he greeted her. “Did you sleep well?”
Ciri nodded. “Yes, thank you.” The first true deep sleep she’d had since Cintra was attacked, she realized. Now that her sudden panic had faded, she became aware that she was hungry, and rested, for the first time in weeks. She sat down at the table. “Did you?”
He shrugged.
She glanced down at his leg, propped on a chair beside him. “Does your wound trouble you?”
He glanced at her, his odd yellow eyes unreadable, then back at the powders he was mixing in a mortar and pestle. “A little. It’s better than it was yesterday.”
“You heal uncommon fast,” Zola said. She placed a bowl of steaming porridge and a mug of strong black tea in front of Ciri. “Eat, girl, before it gets cold.” She set a second mug of tea in front of Geralt. “Yurga told me how badly off you were, just a few days ago.”
Geralt shrugged. “I’m a witcher,” he said, as though that explained it. Ciri supposed it did. One thing the stories she’d heard about witchers agreed on was that they were very hard to kill.
She picked up a pretty stalk of flowers from the table and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger while she ate, admiring the dark purple color. “What are all these for?” she asked.
“Different things.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s a helpful answer.”
She thought she saw a smile tug at his lips. He glanced up. “Monkshood. It goes in a potion that helps me see in the dark.”
Zola eyed the plant in Ciri’s hand. “That’s poison,” she said. Alarmed, Ciri put it down quickly and wiped her hand on her skirt.
“Only if you eat it,” Geralt told her. Something about the way he said “you” made it clear that it didn’t apply to him.
Ciri picked up one of the sealed potion bottles and held it up to the light. The liquid inside was dark and faintly red in the light from the window. She took another bite of porridge. It was good, sweetened with honey and doused in cream. “Would it work for me?” she asked.
“No,” Geralt said, so sharply she started. He snatched the vial from her hand and set it on the table, out of her reach.
She scowled, bristling. Was it her imagination, or had she seen his hand shake? “Why?” she demanded. “Because I’m a girl?”
He closed his eyes, his face softening. “No,” he said, more gently. “No, Ciri.” He picked up his mug of tea and sipped from it, and this time Ciri was certain: his hand did shake.
“Why, then?”
He looked as though he didn’t want to answer. Finally he said, “Because the potion will kill you unless you undergo the mutations to become a witcher. And most of the children who do don’t survive them.”
“Oh.” Ciri’s voice came out small.
He gulped his tea and let out a breath, then gave her a small, gentle smile. “Besides, you don’t need potions. You’ve power of your own.”
She scoffed and thunked her spoon on the side of the bowl. “The power of screaming,” she muttered.
“You forget, I heard your mother scream.”
“Was it like the song?”
“Hm.”
Ciri closed her eyes, hearing in her memory the frenetic strum of the lute that evoked the whirlwind her mother’s fear and anguish had called up in the great hall.
She opened her eyes to find Zola looking at her across the table with pity. She seemed to come to herself when Ciri opened her eyes, and with a murmur she left the kitchen, leaving them alone. Ciri watched Geralt, bent to the task of measuring powders into carefully folded waxed paper envelopes. “Before I came here, there were some men. They attacked me.” She swallowed hard. Her voice barely shook at all. “I knew one of them. I--we--used to be friends. Back in Cintra. I thought.” Silly, that that should be what made her eyes sting with tears, but she had liked Anton, had admired the older boy, wanted him to like her.
Geralt filled the last envelope and set the mortar aside. He looked at her, his golden eyes calm, intent. There was no pity in his face, but no scorn, either.
“Something . . . something happened. I don’t remember.” She shook her head and scrubbed impatiently at her eyes. “I killed them. All of them.” Her vision blurred again. “Even the horse. I didn’t mean to, but I was so scared--” She broke off, shuddering as she remembered their rough hands on her, fingers bruising her skin, the leer of the old man who hadn’t bothered to hide his intentions when he tugged at her clothes.
Geralt’s large hand closed over her shoulder and rested there for a moment, steady and reassuring. “You defended yourself, Ciri. You survived. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Something about his calm assurances broke the dam inside her. She reached for him, blindly, clutching at the hand on her shoulder. His hand didn’t move, but she heard the scrape of his chair, felt his warmth beside her. She turned her face into his shoulder, clinging to him.
He froze for a moment, and then his arm slid around her shoulders and he drew her closer. He patted her a few times, hesitantly.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. She felt the rumble of his voice against her cheek. “You’re safe now.”
That made her cry harder. His hand came to rest on her back and rubbed gentle circles while she sobbed into his neck. He felt warm and solid and safe, and she didn’t want to let go. When she finally pulled away, wiping her face with her sleeve, she noticed his awkward position, kneeling beside her chair, and the large wet patch on his shirt. She brushed at it ineffectually, embarrassed.“Sorry.” She sniffled again. Now that the storm had passed, she felt small and childish.
A smile quirked his lips. He squeezed her hand gently. “I’ve seen worse,” he said, and she didn’t know if he was referring to her crying or his shirt, but his smile was kind and she found she didn’t care.
“What happens now?” she asked.
He got to his feet with a grunt and rubbed his wounded leg, flexing and straightening it. “We rest here for a little longer. We’ve a long journey ahead of us.”
“Where are we going?”
“My home.”
“Where is that?”
Instead of answering, he took his seat again and bent to rummag in the bag beside it. “Here,” he said gruffly, drawing out a familiar pouch. “I thought you might want these.”
Ciri held it for a moment, her throat closing. She dumped out the knucklebones on the table in front of her.
She laughed with the boys in the square, determined to show them she could hold her own.
Anton shoved her roughly to the ground in the field, again and again.
The screaming chaos of that awful night, the smoke and bodies transforming the familiar walls of Cintra into terror.
“Princess?”
She blinked at him. “Where did you get these?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” He reached for them, but she got to them first, sweeping them into the pouch.
“They were in my room, in the castle.”
“I found them when I was searching for you. They seemed . . . important. I thought, when I found you, that you would want them.”
She gazed down at the pouch, squeezing it in her hands. The bones inside scraped together. “Eist taught me to play,” she said softly, remembering his smile, his laughter. She would never see him again.
Abruptly she looked up at the Witcher, who was looking at her warily. “Do you play?” she demanded.
Surprise flickered across his face, followed by a faint smile. “Not for a very long time.”
“Good.” She dumped them out on the table again. “That means I have a chance at beating you.”
***
It was still dark when Geralt woke her with a hand on her shoulder. “Princess. It’s time to go.”
She lay there for a few moments after he left the room. The fire in the hearth had burned down to coals and by their light she could only see the outlines of furniture and windows, the neat stack of blankets Geralt had left on the chair. The room, and the little farmhouse, had grown familiar and comforting in the few days she had been there.
Time to go.
She found Geralt in the stable, checking Roach’s tack and making sure their bags were secure behind the saddle.
This will be different, she thought, trying to still the rapid beating of her heart. I’m not alone anymore.
Yurga and Zola were both there, standing to one side, Zola’s eyes glinting in the lanternlight. She held out her arms when she saw Ciri. Ciri went to her, fighting back tears, and let herself be gathered close. “Thank you.” Her voice was muffled against Zola’s apron. She pulled back enough to look up at her. “For everything.”
Zola smiled down at her and thumbed away the tears from Ciri’s cheeks. “Destiny brought you to me.” She glanced at Geralt. “Just not for the reasons I thought.”
Ciri hugged her again, breathing in the scents of bread and kitchen smoke and sweet hay. She let herself imagine, just for a moment, that she could stay here. That this could be her life, baking bread and milking cows and whatever else people did on a farm. That Nilfgaard wouldn’t come for her, bringing death and terror to the people who had helped her.
She stepped back, sniffling. Time to go.
Zola caressed her cheek one last time. “Be brave, girl.”
Ciri nodded, afraid that her voice would tremble if she tried to speak.
“Ready, Princess?” Geralt asked.
She turned to him. “Yes.” Her voice was steady. She swallowed hard. He boosted her into the tall mare’s saddle and mounted behind her. Ciri didn’t look back as they rode out into the gray dawn.
***
Ciri dozed against him as the sun rose. Geralt cradled her between his arms and let her rest. She’d been woken by nightmares every night except for that first, when he’d used Axii to spell her to sleep. It was a mercy that she fell asleep again quickly. Geralt hoped it wouldn’t be worse, out on the road. Waking from nightmares in a cozy farmhouse was quite a different thing from waking in the woods, and their journey north would be neither easy nor comfortable.
For now, though, it was a fine day for riding, the air crisp and the sun warm on his face, and the road ahead empty. He shifted Ciri’s weight so she leaned against his other arm. She would need warmer clothes, before they got to the mountains. He thought he had enough coin to stretch for everything they would need. He planned to avoid inns as long as he could. Nilfgaard would be searching for Ciri. Likely for him, as well.
The sunlight glinted off her hair. He should cut it, or dye it, or both. His as well, for that matter. They were too recognizable. He would start gathering plants for dyes this evening, he decided. Ciri could help; she should learn to identify plants and their uses. He should start teaching her to fight, too. She needed more than uncontrolled magical power to defend herself.
Ciri woke near midday, and they stopped for a small meal and to let Roach rest. Zola had supplied them generously with bread and cheese and dried meats and fruits. Geralt ate sparingly while Roach cropped grass. He wanted to stretch their provisions as long as he could.
They rode on in silence for a time, Ciri watching the landscape pass with interest.
“Geralt?”
“Hm?”
“Where are we going?” She twisted around to look at him. “Your home, I mean. Where is it?”
“The Blue Mountains. Kaer Morhen, the Witchers’ Keep.”
“And then? What happens then?”
For a long time, he didn’t answer. Finally he admitted, “I don’t know.”
“Will I become a witcher?” Ciri asked.
Geralt looked down at her. She felt so fragile in his arms, just a child. But she had all of Calanthe’s steely strength behind her eyes; she had to, to survive what she had. Calanthe’s steel, Pavetta’s raw magic.
“No,” he said at last. “I think you’ll be much more.”