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‘Don’t touch that!’ Yennefer snapped, milliseconds too late.
Jaskier’s fingertips grazed across the smooth surface of the glass pendant. He tried to pull back at Yennefer’s shout, but he wasn’t quick enough. His skin tingled and a flash of light left him blinking spots from his eyes.
‘Oh, now you’ve done it,’ Yennefer sighed.
‘Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Am I going to die? Please tell me I’m not dying. Yen, remember that Geralt will be very sad if I die and you love him very much. My life is worth saving! If not for my own sake then -’
‘Jaskier. You’re not dying,’ Yen interrupted, ‘Although if you don’t cease your infernal babbling, you may well be spending some time as an amphibian, just so that I can have some peace.’
Jaskier puffed up like an indignant frog. ‘Well, that’s just… just… probably fair actually,’ Jaskier said, deflating a bit. ‘If I’m not dying, then what did I do?’
‘Wasted a week of work and a couple of awfully rare components,’ Yen replied with a raised eyebrow.
‘Are you sure I’m not going to die?’
‘Fortunately for you, the components are only rare if you’re not sleeping with a Witcher. And the work isn’t difficult, it just needs time to set the magic at each stage. The last stage, incidentally, requires it to hang in the light of the noon sun, which is what it has just finished doing.’
‘Ah. So, what is it? Apart from very pretty?’
It was pretty. It was made of glass and looked a little like a snowflake. Six large diamond shapes formed the back, with six smaller ones slightly offset in front. For all the dramatic lighting when he had picked it up, it looked like nothing more than a glass ornament hanging from a silver chain now.
‘It’s a divinatory tool,’ Yennefer explained.
‘I can see the future?’ Jaskier asked, suddenly thinking of all the marvellous uses he could put it to.
‘No. And stop interrupting. It’s a tool that measures compatibility. The general idea is that it should light when you’re in the presence of the person your soul is most compatible with.’
Jaskier waited a moment to make sure she had stopped speaking.
‘So, you’re telling me that this little magical glass thing will tell me who my soulmate is?’ he asked, sounding a little strangled even to his own ears.
‘If you’re going to go with layman’s terms,’ Yennefer drawled, ‘then yes. That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’
‘Huh.’
Jaskier turned it over and over in his hand. It didn’t look like anything special. He slipped the chain over his head and left the ornament dangling on the outside of his doublet. Geralt would be back soon and of course it would light up for him. Geralt was the other half of his soul, utterly wonderful and perfect and everything he’d ever needed or wanted. Except… what if he wasn’t?
He was proud of how well he knew himself. Introspection was a necessary part of being a bard and knowing the best and worst parts of yourself was a good way to avoid any nasty surprises further down the line. And, well, Jaskier knew himself well enough to know that he wasn’t exactly the type to settle. He somehow couldn’t imagine being content to live his whole life with one single person, regardless of the opinion of a piece of enchanted glass.
It wasn’t like Geralt was solely destined for him or any such bullshit like that either. He had a perfectly lovely thing going on with Yennefer. They might say they were ‘just sleeping together’, but Jaskier had eyes and he knew how to use them. Ever since they’d managed to break the bond forged by the Djinn, they’d settled into something much closer to love than just fucking. Jaskier was a bard. He knew these things.
He distracted himself from any more maudlin thoughts by wandering out to the stable and feeding pieces of apple to Roach.
‘Even if it doesn’t light up, that doesn’t mean we don’t have something real, does it, girl?’ he whispered, stroking her nose as she crunched. ‘I don’t know what I’m more worried about, honestly,’ he continued. Roach stood placidly, letting him lean against her reassuringly warm bulk. ‘I don’t know whether I want it to light up or not. Either way feels like a disaster right now. I feel like I’m going to lose him no matter what.’
Roach whickered and nudged at his pocket, hoping for more apples. If Jaskier’s laugh was a little watery, well Roach wouldn’t tell anyone. He stayed out with her for a while longer, stroking her and feeding her occasional treats. Once he felt a little steadier, he made his way back inside and began to make preparations for dinner.
He had chopped a large number of onions, potatoes and parsnips and had just started on the carrots, when the back door opened and the heavy tread of Geralt’s boots stomped into the kitchen. Jaskier carefully set the knife down in front of him and turned to look at Geralt.
The first thing he noticed was that the Witcher was surprisingly clean for having been on a hunt. He was barely spattered with mud and didn’t seem to be wearing any blood at all. Jaskier smiled at the implication that he wasn’t injured for once. The second thing he noticed, as Geralt stepped around the table and came within arms reach, was a soft glow coming from his chest. Despite himself he looked down, knowing what he was going to see and dreading it anyway.
The pendant was glowing. It was filled with red fire, getting brighter and brighter, building up to a blinding flash and then dying back down. It left four of the diamonds, two large and two small, stained a deep ruby red. Jaskier blinked at it.
‘Yen?’ he called, keeping his voice steady through application of bardic training rather than any lack of emotion on his part.
‘For Chaos’ sake, can you not even chop the vegetables without getting into trouble?’ she shouted back.
Jaskier heard her heels clicking down the stairs.
‘Was that meant to do that?’ Geralt asked quietly, pointing at Jaskier’s new necklace.
‘Theoretically,’ Jaskier responded, a wry twist to his mouth.
As soon as Yennefer entered the kitchen, her eyes fell to his chest. When she saw the pendant she frowned.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘isn’t that interesting?’
‘Is he hurt?’ Geralt asked immediately.
‘No. What is it with you pair and assuming everything in here is dangerous?’
Jaskier immediately remembered the many and varied ways in which Yennefer’s work had in fact been dangerous to one or both of them in the past. Geralt caught his eye and he could see him running the same incidents through his mind.
‘Oh be quiet. Sometimes I do nice things as well. Like that,’ she said, pointing at Jaskier’s new necklace. ‘Not that it was meant for him.’
Yennefer explained what had happened that afternoon. Jaskier watched as Geralt’s body language grew more and more tense and his expression shut down. Fuck. That was never good. Jaskier kept his mouth shut, not wanting to make things worse before he even knew what Geralt was upset about.
‘Why’s only part of it lit?’ he asked, once Yennefer had finished talking.
‘Well that’s the interesting part. Jaskier. Come here,’ she ordered.
She lifted the pendant and tendrils of purple magic spiralled out to encase it. She examined it for a long moment, her eyes going distant as she tried to interpret the magic.
‘So, my original theory, that the pendant hadn’t finished charging when Jaskier lifted it, seems to be incorrect. It holds exactly the amount of magic I would expect an item of this type to hold,’ she explained.
‘So what does it mean?’ Geralt growled.
‘It means that Jaskier is equally compatible with at least one other person. Given the pattern of the magic, I’d suggest two other people. Also, since Jaskier decided to touch that one, I need the pinion feathers of an archgriffin and an unexploded rotfiend eye to make a new one. I have a month before I’m expected to deliver it, so the sooner the better please.’
With that, she swanned off back upstairs to do some sort of other ridiculous magic. Jaskier looked across the table at Geralt. Geralt looked back. Neither of them said anything. Suddenly, Geralt turned and stomped out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. Jaskier considered following, but decided that it would probably make things worse rather than better. Instead, he turned back to his vegetables and continued making dinner.
Later that evening, Geralt climbed quietly into bed next to Jaskier. No doubt he knew that Jaskier wasn’t asleep. Jaskier rolled over and looked at him in the darkness. He could make out the sheets of silvery white hair cascading over the pillow and a deep frown on his brow.
‘We don’t have to talk about it,’ he whispered, ‘but I do need you to listen to what I have to say. Regardless of who else I may or may not meet that I could potentially love, I love you. I love you in the here and now and I have no intention of stopping just because of a stupid piece of enchanted glass. If we could work out you and me and Yennefer in a way that’s satisfactory to all of us, then I have faith that we can work this out as well.’
Geralt didn’t reply, but his frown smoothed, and he reached out and laid his palm over Jaskier’s hip, burning a warm brand through his shift.
By the time the pendant became relevant again, Jaskier and Geralt had pretty much forgotten about it. Jaskier had offered to take it off, but Geralt had decided, after long thought, that he wasn’t willing to be selfish enough to keep Jaskier to himself if there were others out there equally suited to him. So Jaskier wore it. To begin with, he’d been perpetually aware of its weight, always waiting for it to shine brightly when he met someone new. Of course, there were hundreds upon thousands of people in just Lyria, where they’d spent the season hunting, to say nothing of the rest of the Continent. So he put it out of his mind and continued travelling with Geralt as he always had.
They spent that season travelling south through Angren and into Toussaint and the top half of Nazair. They spent the winter there, tracking down contracts and rumours about vampires that never seemed to come to anything. When the weather began to turn warmer, they ventured back up the coast, through Cintra and Verden, then crossing to spend the summer fighting off sirens and drinking heavily on the Skelligan Isles. Autumn took them back to the mainland, via Cidaris, then east into Temeria.They made their way slowly towards Flotsam and crossed into Kaedwen just as the first frosts kissed the Continent. There, they ran into Ciri, coming north from Aedirn and heading in the same direction. She threw her arms around each of them in turn and insisted that they had to travel together.
‘You’re lucky you caught me at all, actually,’ she said as they sat around their campfire that evening. ‘I’m following up on one last contract, then I planned to portal the rest of the way. I promised I’d get there early this year, to help Vesemir organise the supplies.’
‘It’s cheating to just portal them up,’ Geralt grumbled.
‘You’re just grumpy because you know he’ll make you bring the livestock up the trail,’ Ciri laughed, leaning against his shoulder.
Geralt grumbled, but didn’t deny it. Jaskier sat quietly, basking in the contentment pouring from Geralt at having his child safe and close by again. He never said a word about it, but Jaskier knew he worried when she was out chasing down contracts and monsters on her own.
‘What’s this contract you’re on then?’ Geralt asked.
‘Well, I don’t rightly know. The notice wasn’t too clear and all the accounts were second hand. It was merchants that were attacked originally and they weren’t too keen on sticking around after. Listen to this!’ she said, pulling the notice from her pack.
With that the pair of them were embroiled in deep conversation, speculating on the odd characteristics of the monster in question. Jaskier tuned them out and tried to wrangle his latest composition under control. If he could just get the chord progression in the third verse to cooperate…
In the end, the contract only took them a couple of days to wrap up, since Ciri gleefully declared that she would ‘allow her old man to assist’. Between them, the creature wasn’t much of a bother at all. Since there were three of them and Roach, which was two more humans and one more horse than Ciri had expected, she decided to portal them to Kaer Morhen in stages and they spent a lovely week hopping from village to village across Kaedwen, finally landing in the courtyard at the feet of a rather amused Vesemir.
‘You lot are early,’ he said. ‘Good. Plenty of work to get done.’
The days passed quickly as they prepared the Keep for winter. Geralt was put in charge of repairing the walls, while Vesemir hunted. Ciri portalled up and down to the village, bringing in badly needed supplies. Jaskier was left in charge of the kitchen. He spent his days smoking and curing meats, baking bread and storing dried goods. It was hard work, but very satisfying. A week or so after they arrived, Vesemir did indeed send Geralt down the mountain with Ciri to collect the winter livestock and bring them back up the trail. He returned three days later with three goats, eight hens and one very grumpy dairy cow. He muttered several curses as he handed the whole lot over to Vesemir and stomped off to marinate in the warmth of the hot springs.
Once the first snows started, they contained themselves to the Keep as much as possible. The trail was treacherous enough in good weather. Traversing it with the addition of ice was utterly foolish and like as not to lead to death. Geralt and Vesemir fretted for a while about Lambert and Eskel not having arrived before the early snows. Ciri put their minds at ease by portalling down and leaving a message for them in the village. Three days later, a spell bird flew in during lunch. Unlike the corvids favoured by most sorceresses, this one was a swallow. When Ciri took the note from its beak, it dispersed back into smoke.
‘Uncle Eskel and Uncle Lambert are both in the village,’ she announced after she’d read it. ‘They got held up by a flock of wyverns. I’ll go down and get them when we’re finished eating.’
After lunch, they all dispersed. Ciri portalled down to the village, saying not to expect her back for a couple of hours. Geralt went to do something or other in the armoury (Jaskier didn’t ask) while Vesemir went to the library. Jaskier took his lute and went to sit on his very favourite balcony, the one near the top of a tower that had the most stunning views down the Morhen valley. He sat and played and tried not to think.
It was, of course, a futile endeavour. For the first time in over a year, his thoughts came back to the little glass pendant with its unlit diamonds. It hadn’t been relevant last year when they’d wintered elsewhere. The thing was, Jaskier was well aware that Geralt had a winter thing with the other wolves. It had never been a secret, especially once they’d grown close enough for Geralt to sometimes tell stories about his life in the Keep and the others of his school. It had been obvious from the way he spoke about them that he shared a special bond with Eskel and Lambert and Jaskier had never wanted to come between them. He knew the wolves probably wouldn’t ever use the word, but they very clearly loved each other.
It had only become clearer when Jaskier met them and saw how they interacted. How their friendly teasing edged in and out of flirting. How they curled up together in front of the fire, utterly comfortable with one another’s bodies. How they poked and prodded but never went for the weak spots. The problem was that as soon as he’d met them, Jaskier had understood exactly what Geralt saw in them. To begin with, it had been lust. Pure and simple lust. That wasn’t a problem. Jaskier was used to lusting after people he couldn’t have. It was when he found himself longing to cuddle into the puppy piles with them, or run his finger through their hair, or simply sit in the same room and play his lute while they read that he realised he had a problem.
He still couldn’t pinpoint when he had fallen for the other wolves, but at some point it had happened. Until now, he had been perfectly able, if not completely content, to ignore it. Now though, he was going to be forced to face it, one way or another. Either the pendant would light or it wouldn’t, but whichever it was, he would finally know.
He sat and played, watching the wild horses run through the meadows and graze. Soon they’d make their way down the mountain to their winter grounds, but for now they still ran through the lower slopes of the Morhen valley. Jaskier hummed a snatch of melody under his breath, something with a driving beat for the hooves but with a freedom of spirit soaring above. There was something in that. He turned it over and over in his head, occasionally strumming sections and adjusting them. He was torn from his musings by purple magic rending a hole in the sky over the courtyard and three figures tumbling out. For a brief moment, he considered staying where he was, but that was the coward’s way. He stood up and went downstairs, stopping only to leave his lute by his bed.
Lambert and Eskel were standing in the entrance hall in a tangle of limbs with Geralt. They appeared to either be hugging or trying to put each other in headlocks. Jaskier cleared his throat and they all looked up. Lambert was the first to disengage, bounding over like a puppy and knocking into Jaskier for a hug. He was closely followed by Eskel who was much more gentle when he wrapped his arms around both of them. Jaskier thought someone was ruffling his hair, but he was too distracted by the sudden bright glow from his chest to work out who. The light built and built until it dissipated in a bright flash. The two Witchers stepped back, giving it cautious looks. Lambert’s hand had dropped to the hilt of his dagger.
‘What’s that?’ he growled.
Jaskier looked down at it, feeling a little dizzy. Beside Geralt’s two red diamonds, where before there had been plain glass, were now two diamonds of brilliant sapphire and two of deep forest emerald. He supposed that answered that question then.
‘It’s… It’s a…’ for the first time in a very long time, Jaskier’s words failed him.
‘Jaskier, where did you get a Soulstone?’ Ciri asked, popping out of the main hall just in time to see everything. ‘Those are really rare.’
‘Yennefer,’ he replied, ‘Sort of… accidentally?’
‘Ooh, I bet she was mad! You touched it before it had attuned, didn’t you?’
‘I did indeed.’
‘Ok, that’s nice and all, but is anyone going to explain what the fuck one of those is and also why it was glowing and shit?’ Lambert asked.
‘It glows when you meet your soulmate,’ Ciri said, ‘or I suppose, soulmates.’
Lambert and Eskel turned to stare at Jaskier, then looked at Geralt, then back at Jaskier, like they weren’t sure where they were meant to look.
‘The red’s Geralt in case you were worried,’ Jaskier babbled, finding his voice again. ‘I already knew about him. And I was expecting another person. Well, Yen did say it was likely to be two people. But, well. Yes.’
‘Not really a surprise, is it?’ Geralt said, finally coming over to stand beside him. He gently touched his hand to the small of Jaskier’s back. Just enough to let him know he was there. That they were together. ‘You’ve been in love with them for years.’
‘You knew about that?’ Jaskier squawked.
Eskel chuckled and stepped forward.
‘We knew. We didn’t know if you wanted to do anything about it though. If you’re amenable though?’
He waited until Jaskier had nodded, looking and feeling slightly dazed, to reach out and crook one finger under his chin. He tilted Jaskier’s head back and leaned down to meet him, gently pressing their lips together. The kiss was chaste, but Jaskier still felt like he was burning with it. Fire licked through his veins, setting him ablaze from the inside. He stretched his hand out and Lambert caught it, crowding in behind Eskel.
‘We’ve been waiting for you to be ready,’ he rumbled, voice low and a little wrecked. ‘Been waiting for you, Buttercup.’
‘They want you just as much as I do,’ Geralt whispered, his soft breath making Jaskier shiver where it tickled across his ear.
‘They’ve got me,’ Jaskier whispered, trusting his weight to Geralt’s hand as he melted. ‘You’ve got me.’