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It wasn't the worst, or even the weirdest, thing he'd ever done for Ciri's sake, but that didn't mean that Geralt had thought it was anything like a good idea.
"It'll be fine," Ciri had insisted. "I'll send you somewhere near him but out of sight, and you'll be able to signal me to bring you back whenever you need me to. You can just... see if he's all right."
"And what," Geralt had said, already knowing he was going to give in because Ciri hadn't been sleeping well lately, and the teasing-pleading look in her eyes didn't entirely cover the anxiety, "Am I supposed to do if he isn't?"
"You'll think of something," Ciri had said, with a smile that wasn't as mischievous as she probably wanted it to be, but that wrung his heart with the memory of a younger troublemaker. "You always do."
So he'd said yes, like he always did, and now he had no one but himself to blame for the fact that he was crouching in the dimmest corner of a vast, brightly-lit space somewhere in the Nilfgaardian palace. It was all tiled in blue and gold and lit by both lamps and towering windows, and in the center of the otherwise empty room, Emhyr var Emreis was swimming laps in a glittering, jeweled pool of perfectly clear water.
It was so clear that Geralt had been in no doubt, even before his eyes had fully adjusted to the stunning brightness, that Emhyr was taking his morning swim naked. When Emhyr touched the nearest edge and turned back, Geralt saw that his back was stippled with scars, from the nape of his neck all the way to his tailbone, like--
Well. Exactly like the distribution of a hedgehog's quills, yes.
Emhyr moved strongly and steadily through the water, and Geralt's helplessly fixed stare took in the contours of his body--quite sturdy, for a human of his age who wasn't a laborer or active soldier. He was tempted to conclude that his mission was done; he could see Emhyr, and Emhyr was very clearly all right enough to be having a nice peaceful swim in his grandiose palace.
He'd scarcely formed the thought when Emhyr, once again approaching the nearest edge of the pool, faltered in his rhythmic motions. For a few seconds he simply drifted forward under his accumulated momentum, and then his whole body gave an odd uneven jerk, one foot kicking up high enough to break the surface of the water.
Well, fuck. Geralt knew well enough what an apoplectic stroke, or its aftermath, looked like; it could happen even to witchers who lived long enough to be felled by something so quiet. Was this what had been haunting Ciri's dreams? Was this why she'd been so insistent that he go today, now, more than a year after Geralt saw Emhyr for what he'd been pretty sure would be the last time?
Geralt lurched up from his half-hidden place in the corner, and directly into an absolutely blinding combination of sun and gilded reflections. He froze, waiting for his vision to clear, and over his suddenly-racing heart he thought he heard splashes--fuck, fuck--
"Ah," Emhyr said drily, his voice very calm and clear and entirely unaffected by apoplexy, "Of course. I feel I ought to have known, somehow."
Geralt blinked rapidly, shaking his head a little and stepping to one side, out of the awful concentration of light.
Emhyr stood a couple of strides from the edge of the pool--still half a dozen yards from Geralt, because this place was built for giants. Water was streaming off him, and he stood with his hands at his sides, head tilted slightly, scrutinizing Geralt much as he had the first time Geralt saw him again, back in Temeria.
Geralt felt a dizzy impulse to bow the way Mererid had insisted on teaching him, but he genuinely couldn't remember which hand went where, now, and getting it wrong would make it more of a joke on himself than this already was.
He should probably say something, though. Just as soon as he thought of anything at all to say.
Emhyr took a couple of slow steps forward, making the water on his skin sparkle in the brilliant light. Geralt glanced down Emhyr's body--looking to see how he placed his feet, to be really sure that he was moving normally--but that meant seeing all of his body, which was... nicer to look at than Geralt would have imagined, if he'd ever particularly imagined Emhyr having a body under his majestically imperial clothing.
When Geralt jerked his gaze back up to Emhyr's eyes, it was to find himself being given the same kind of all-over attention. Emhyr's mouth was curled in the faintest hint of a smirk by the time he met Geralt's eyes, belying his words. "I believe I told you the last time we spoke that I didn't wish to see you again."
That was very true. The last time Geralt saw Emhyr he'd told him Ciri was dead--that she'd died without ever speaking of Emhyr, that her body would never be found.
That had, in fact, been one of Geralt's arguments against coming here; Ciri needed to go right on being officially dead, as far as Nilfgaard was concerned, and Geralt was not a particularly good liar. He'd pulled it off once, still fresh off repeated episodes of being almost sure Ciri was dead, but a year of meeting up here and there on the Path to talk shop with a bright-eyed and brilliantly alive Ciri left him in a very different frame of mind.
Ciri, of course, had said, You're not going to sit down for a chat with him, you're just going to see.
They weren't sitting down, that much was true.
"Shouldn't have pretended to be drowning, then," Geralt said, falling back on feeling mildly irritated that he'd fallen for it. "Wouldn't have seen me at all."
"Mm," Emhyr said, still not sounding particularly like he was about to call some guards to haul Geralt off to be killed. "I suppose I did leave you a loophole as far as approaching me unseen, didn't I. Somehow I had not imagined that you would be interested in doing so."
"Wasn't my idea," Geralt said, because that much was both true and believable, and then he kept going. "A certain person in the North had gotten some intelligence--wanted to know if they should be bracing for things to be blowing up in Nilfgaard."
Emhyr raised his eyebrows. "Interesting."
It wasn't supposed to be interesting, but obviously it was--he'd just implied he was here on behalf of one of the governments of the surviving northern kingdoms. Fuck.
"You may assure your--client?--that all is well in Nilfgaard. Morvran Voorhis is well established as my heir, and unlike myself he faces no serious opposition. Nilfgaard's stability is assured."
Geralt frowned, studying Emhyr more intently--that sounded all right, but...
Emhyr's heart had slowed down entirely, to a steady, calm human pace. He wasn't frightened. He ought to be frightened.
Geralt shifted one shoulder, making his swords resettle on his back, just to remind himself that he was carrying them--that he presented a picture that ought to seem properly formidable to a naked human alone in a room with him. Even this room.
"You seem... calm about this," Geralt observed cautiously.
Emhyr snorted a little, and made a brief dismissive gesture. "If you were here to kill me I definitely would not have seen you before you'd done it. You don't wish me dead personally, and you're not the person anyone who did want me killed would send. And if you were still making up your mind, groveling wouldn't move you."
That was all true, it was just a lot more calculated than humans usually were about their own actual lives. It was... downright witcherly, that cool assessment of the odds and evident indifference to the possibility of chances going against him. Royalty usually valued themselves higher than that.
Ciri had been onto something, and it was nothing as simple as an apoplexy.
Geralt definitely had no idea what to do about it--or if there was anything to be done about it. Even aside from recent events in the North, Emhyr's was a dangerous profession, and in ways far harder to predict than for a witcher. Emhyr bore the scars to prove that, and had since he was thirteen years old.
"Yeah," Geralt said vaguely, "but do you want to... put some clothes on?"
Emhyr was openly smirking now, and spread his hands a little, bouncing on his heels in a way that made Geralt's gaze dart downward involuntarily. "Am I distracting you, witcher?"
There was no good answer to that question, and Geralt didn't want to think about what the true one might be.
"If so, that is also surely to my benefit," Emhyr went on musingly. "And you are known to have broad-minded tastes, and to be quite predictably sentimental, so..."
Geralt turned on his heel, prepared to let Emhyr win if he could escape this conversation before it went further in directions he definitely would not be able to tell Ciri about when he got back.
He reached for the token she'd given him, but stopped short of touching it when Emhyr said, in a very different tone, "Witcher."
Geralt kept still, and didn't look back. There was a reason Emhyr had spoken when his back was turned.
"Did she tell you why she wanted you to do this today?"
Geralt pressed his toes hard into the floor and kept his hands relaxed, and absolutely did not shiver with the chill that went down his spine. There was barely a question in Emhyr's words, and no question at all that he knew precisely what Geralt had needed to keep from him.
"I wonder if she even knows," Emhyr murmured. "I understand in your line of work it is easy to lose track of the days, and she may not remember the date in any case."
Geralt stared hard at the wall in front of him, rifling through his own memories of significant dates at this time of year. He nearly had it before Emhyr went on.
"It was twenty-three years ago today that you and I met," Emhyr said quietly. "Pavetta's birthday, and our wedding, and the day I learned I was to be a father--and that you would take my child from me someday."
Geralt felt as if he were made of ice, as frozen as he'd been in the crushing moment of realization when he knew exactly what he'd asked Duny for.
"Calanthe never held another public celebration of Pavetta's birthday, though she celebrated the anniversary of her wedding to Eist. The rest of it was something we made much of in private--Pavetta and I, with our daughter, when she was young. I doubt she would remember it, even if she were yet alive to remember anything."
Geralt closed his eyes. Emhyr definitely knew. But his words didn't sound like a threat, or a taunt. They sounded like...
Geralt had to look; he turned back just far enough to see. Emhyr had his hands clasped behind him now, still not hiding. He was still looking steadily at Geralt.
"I did understand what you told me, when last we spoke," he said. "She is lost to me forever, and I realize that that has not changed. But you do not look at me the way you would if she were lost forever to you."
There was no triumph in his expression at having figured it out, or at having made Geralt confirm it. He looked tired, and damp, and like he felt the weight of the last twenty-three years at least as heavily as Geralt did. His hair, sleek with water when he'd first left the pool, was starting to dry; there was evidence of errant curls at his hairline where he must normally scrape them carefully back. Curls and scars, those little hints of the man he'd been, twenty-three years ago, when Geralt had saved his life--and in so doing, left him free to do everything Emhyr had done since.
Geralt nodded, just a fraction of a movement that felt like as wild a leap as he'd ever taken.
Emhyr nodded back, and said, "I believe I will not regret it, if I should happen to see you again. I shall endeavor to be sure you do not, either, if the occasion arises."
And that might be an invitation and might be an assurance, but it was definitely a dismissal, which was all Geralt needed. He reached into his pocket and touched the crystal amulet there, and was jerked nearly off his feet as Ciri moved him across half the continent, back to where he'd woken up that morning.
He stumbled and she caught him, tugging him into a hug without saying a word; Geralt wrapped his arms around her and squeezed fiercely, feeling Ciri's strength and solidity and presence, which he would never take for granted.
"He knows," Geralt breathed, and Ciri twitched a little but didn't give any sign of real alarm. "Did you..."
"Well, I suspect he keeps tabs on witchers," Ciri said, muffled into Geralt's shoulder. "So it seemed likely I couldn't actually hide from him forever without trying a lot harder than I'd like. What did he say?"
"He said..." Geralt struggled to think of what to tell her first, of the things Emhyr said, some of which Geralt had no intention of telling her at all. "He said the reason you've been thinking of him is that it's Pavetta's birthday, today."
"Oh," Ciri said, and that sounded like surprise, like a hit that had knocked most of the wind out of her. She clung harder. "That's... that's when you..."
"Yeah," Geralt said. "Today makes twenty-three years of surprises, you and me."
"Twenty-three years of you being my dad," Ciri corrected firmly, and Geralt didn't argue with her, and didn't think about the man he'd left standing alone in that vast echoing lonely palace, who'd traded his daughter for his life all those years ago.
"Twenty-three years," he echoed again, still holding on tight. "We oughta celebrate, huh?"
"Ooh," Ciri said stepping back, breaking his grip but taking his hand in the same motion. She beamed up at him with a smile that was real for the first time in days, lighting her whole face brighter than gold could ever shine. "Come on, there's this bakery that makes these cakes--"
Geralt couldn't help smiling back, even as he braced himself to go wherever Ciri would take him next.