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Yennefer of Vengerburg doesn’t have a soulmark, she has a scar. When she was born, tiny and deformed, the only part of her that didn’t make her mother cry was the tiny sprig of ox-eye daisies on the baby’s shoulder. Flowers are a good mark to have; they indicate a kind heart. For all the ways that the child’s life would be cruel, at least her soulmate wouldn’t be. But Yennefer has never seen her mark. She has never known of the promises written into her skin. Her father burned it off before she was old enough to know it was special, and her soulmate is just another casualty to lay at the feet of men. She doesn’t think about her soulmark much. She wonders, absently, when she sees the little bird on Geralt’s hip, but knows that there is nothing in the hummingbird that means anything to her.
And then she’s in Sodden Hill, fighting for someone else for a change, bleeding and exhausted and terrified. There’s no thought for soulmates as she grips Sabrina’s shoulder. Yen notices the feel of magic shattering, of the clinging darkness and whispering dread that clung to Sabrina’s skin lifting until there’s only organized spindles of power threading through her aura once again.
She doesn’t think about the flash of power and the steadiness sliding into her bones, because Yen’s always been able to feel more of the magic in the world around her than anyone she knows. To her, Sabrina is only the girl who might’ve been a friend, in a world where power wasn’t everything and teachers cared more about their students than strength, but Sabrina does. She’s lying on the ground, ankle likely broken and abdomen in excruciating pain and she feels the completion of the soul bond as a flash of Yen’s power. Yen’s magic is pure light, the feeling of her entire body glowing, and a sense of everything around her. For an instant, Sabrina can feel the way power curls in the air and she’s blinded to the noise and the sight of carnage around her. And then the bond settles, and Sabrina’s chaos is once again in the spreading threads she takes such care to organize and spin so that it cannot overwhelm her.
Sabrina was born to power. She knows how to work the chaos that she is able to access thanks to some quirk of fate just as well as she knows how to work the minds of court gossips and lordlings who think to use her. She’s always known that she would be someone to be feared, and the pretty little daisies on her shoulder would never change that. A lady, or a court sorceress, wherever life could have taken her, she couldn’t afford to let the world see her bound to a fainting daisy. But, she muses as she starts to wind just enough chaos into her organs to hold and heal the worst of her injuries, these daisies are wild, and free, aren’t they? Sabrina might not be able to afford a soulmate who’s a fainting daisy, but a wildflower, who can grow in terrible conditions and stubbornly root itself into the most barren of places? A woman like that, with kindness in her heart that can’t be rooted out while Sabrina’s soulmark stays unshriveled, is worth chasing, even if it should take lifetimes to win her over.