Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jaskier slows, surprised, and stops whistling. There's a woman there, at the bend of the road. She's quite on her own, apparently, but that hasn't stopped her from setting a whole picnic spread out in the shade of a truly magnificent sycamore tree. She's extraordinarily beautiful, and she looks maybe very much too young for him to be noticing just how extraordinary, with the fall sunshine and the ribbons of the tree falling in green garlands at her back. But then, the shade puddles up behind her unnaturally, too. Jaskier would have known from that alone that she is certainly not what she looks, and almost certainly not so young, either. He's known enough of a witcher's business to know old, strange magic when he smells it. At least if he's paying attention.

By luck, or perhaps only because Geralt's finally managed to beat it into him to be wary at an unfamiliar crossroads, this time he actually is paying attention.

"You sing beautifully," the woman says. Her voice rings as low and sweet as a bell's, and—like he’s the one who’s been struck—Jaskier stops completely. "Were you looking for something, all alone out here?"

"My lady," he says, and doesn't move.

She looks back at him, almost gravely, and then raises the silver-gilt flagon in her hand. "Won't you join me, bard? At least for a little while."

"For... a drink?" he asks, very carefully, and without accepting. "I'm just passing by. Not looking for anyone. Or, you said, any... thing?"

"Hmm. You might sing me a song, as well, while you're passing. Come, sit with me. The road is lonely, and this stretch is lonelier than most. Perhaps you've noticed?" The tilt of her head is solicitous, maybe flirtatious, and although it's autumn, the sun on the back of Jaskier's neck is still strong enough to be hot. He's thirsty.

All alone is suddenly much more of a problem.

Her fine fingers on the neck of the flagon are adorned with a single ring: a solitary celandine flower, worked in silver and set in a silver band. The wine she offers is a rich, heart's-blood red he can nearly taste. He takes a slow breath, and a single step—both towards her, and down the road to his room at the tavern just the next village over. By his own bad luck, they're in the same direction. It's a few miles yet, to the tavern where he'll meet up with Geralt. Anyway, Geralt is probably still out on the hunt. Busy. He won't be looking for Jaskier yet, or missing him. She does nothing to move to meet Jaskier, just waits, and watches him come.

It's very difficult, Jaskier discovers, to blink and stop watching her in return.

The other difficulty, of course, is that he knows perfectly well what a silver celandine flower might mean. In the language of the flowers, it's long life and healing, purity and fidelity: a wedding band. In all of the lore of the fae-folk he has ever read, it's the symbol of royal blood, and a contract bound.

She is waiting, he thinks, for an answer. Unsmiling. The question—perhaps the invitation—is obvious. She waits as patiently as if his answer is, too. When she shifts, leisurely, on her bed of thistle, the whole, luscious, dreamy curve of her breast is exposed.

This, also, is difficult to look away from. His throat scratches when he swallows.

"You are—you have ravished my heart. Truly. To look upon your beauty is a gift. But I'm afraid I," he swallows again, parched; he is afraid, and he knows better than to lie, but he manages at least to tear his gaze back to her face. "I should decline the rest, I think."

"No?" Her eyes are amazing, as brilliant as opals. Breathtaking. And as hard as any cut slate. Jaskier bows.

The rest of what his body is doing is not his fault and anyway, she'd meant to do it.

"Fair lady, I cannot. There's someone I—well, there's someone waiting for me, anyway. Not that they'd mind, or in fact notice at all, in the ordinary course of things, but. Eventually, maybe. I think that I could not say yes, this time, and still go back to him and find him waiting. Am I wrong?"

"No." And then: "Him?" She laughs suddenly, dazzlingly, a dawning silver thing that takes his breath and blazes in him, too, and blinds him until she is only an echo. Then nothing at all but the feeling in his chest. The only thing left of her whole banquet spread is a little box, fashioned in myrtle wood.

"Holy shit," Jaskier says, and sits down with a crunch in the prickly verge. He wishes, fervently, that he'd thought to bring some wine of his own. Instead, he has to settle for taking the steadiest breaths he can until the trembling stops.

Once the nerves have gone and the hot flush and cold sweat have both passed, the carved box is, unfortunately for Jaskier, still there. A thirsting kind of curiosity surrounds it. Then again, that might just be his nature. It does look a bit magical, to be sure, and the provenance is definitely suspect, but it doesn't exactly feel dangerous. At times like these, Jaskier really begins to understand the appeal of a giant talisman that would just tell him whether this was safe or not. In fact, he'd love to know whether he is safe or not. Can the fae turn invisible? The trade-off of having to wear a fuckoff-huge, tacky pendant might be worth it.

Although, he's pretty sure she's gone. He can't feel the way she'd watched him, anymore, anyway. It's a tremendous relief, not to have those silvery eyes on him, but it's also— He's entirely certain he'll never see anything as beautiful, ever again. He might be fine with that.

She's gone, and she's left this behind. He just won't touch the thing. He didn't drink with the fairy, he didn't fuck with the fairy, and he isn't about to touch some... fairy curse box. It is an obviously terrible idea.

When someone fumbles their way into his room at the liminal hour just after moonset and just before dawn, Geralt thinks about bothering to sit up. He decides against it. He barely bothers to open his eyes. It's Jaskier, of course, drunk and disordered. It takes him three tries to get the door open, and then he just stands there. Geralt sighs. Dawn's not the worst time to wake up, except he'd come back from hunting what feels like barely five minutes ago to find Jaskier out for the night, he'd thought, and he'd been looking forward to not having to hear about the bard's hangover or his exploits until mid-morning at least. Geralt thinks about closing his eyes again and just rolling over. It might have worked if he'd been quicker about it, but Jaskier is looking right at him now, so he already knows Geralt's awake. Also, he's not drunk. Or not only drunk. The fine threads of some kind of encorcellment, there but also not, are tangled around him in the doorway.

Jaskier sways, and the gossamer threads sway with him. His eyes are bright and glassy. Dilated impossibly. His lips are red like he's been biting them. Or more like someone else has been. He doesn't look distressed, or smell it. He smells like—like he's probably had a very nice time, and probably at the expense of the whole contents of their shared coin purse. Geralt doesn't take that part of the investigation any further.

"Geralt," he breathes. "Hi."

"Who," Geralt says, as patiently as he can, "did you fuck?"

"No one. She was—um. That's the funny part. Geralt. I don't think she did fuck me. But I still feel kind of... fucked?" The bard is listing to one side very delicately, focused on something a bit to the left of Geralt's ear. Geralt rolls his eyes. If Jaskier falls over, he refuses to make himself responsible for picking him back up.

"Yeah, bet she didn't. Did she give you anything?"

"Oh. Yes, she... she laughed at me." His expression is wonderstruck. That smile.

"To drink, idiot. Or eat. Did she put something in your ale." It'll serve him right, if he's gone and hit on some pretty herbalist smart enough to drug him and rob him blind, just for inflicting himself on Geralt in this kind of condition. He would've bet on it being some enterprising whore, except for those gossamer threads—magic, but a natural magic, no sorceress's channelled chaos. And a sorceress probably would've also dumped him in the middle of some desert somewhere, after. So. Lucky for Jaskier, unlucky for Geralt. Which is about how these things usually go.

Jaskier blinks at him very, very slowly. "No, I. She offered, but. I know better." He blinks again, a little faster, a little hitch in the inhale like somewhere under there, he's suddenly remembering something worrying. Geralt sits up. "I think I know better. Geralt. I can't remember, but I don't think—I think I didn't? Drink?"

"Jaskier, who exactly did you try to fuck?"

"No," Jaskier shakes his head, too vehemently, so it lolls like a turnip on a straw. "No, she tried to fuck me. Right there by the road, in all the thistles. I think. Or maybe she didn't, and she just wanted me to sing her a song? I said no. Even though, she was really, really—but I knew better. I know I knew better. And she laughed at me, but she let me go."

Shit.

"But, hang on," Jaskier says, suddenly frowning drunkenly, "why are you asking me about the fairy? I came back to tell you about her box."

There's nothing in the box, really. Well, not nothing. It's as light as if there's nothing there at all when Jaskier picks it up, but it isn't actually empty. There's something in the box, but it's not a treasure, or a curse. It's a bone—a human jawbone, so weathered and grey that Jaskier thinks it might turn to dust under his fingertips, although he's as gentle as he can be when he lifts it out of the silk it nestles in to puzzle out what on earth it is.

The funny thing about it is—it's carved. All along it's sides and teeth are tiny etchings, letters maybe, from some forgotten tongue, and—

When it catches the light, it sings.

It sings only for Jaskier. Or maybe. Maybe, Jaskier thinks with a slow-rising wonder, like the rise of its song under his skin, like the heartbeat Jaskier has always had—maybe it sings for anyone, and only Jaskier understands.

And he does understand.

He opens his eyes a long time later, and sees stars. A whole glory of them; a wonder of them. It takes Jaskier a long, liquid stretch of time to realize that that's because the stars are actually there. It's nighttime. It's nighttime, and the moon like its own silver spell is out, and Geralt will wonder where he's gone. Or he won't. But it doesn't matter either way, because Jaskier is going to tell him.

He's going to tell Geralt everything, and Geralt is going to be amazed.

"Her box." His inclination is almost to laugh. He's had enough of Jaskier's bawdy stories rambled at him to know that even in his cups—especially in his cups—Jaskier isn't afraid to go the extra mile for a pun. He's also better at holding his liquor than any bard, so unfortunately, Geralt even remembers most of them. But— Geralt's on his feet, now, close enough to get a better look, and Jaskier doesn't smell of liquor at all, or of anything else except the sinus-tickle of that strong, wild magic, heady and deceptively sweet. And an arousal gone cool but not cold, which is—

"No," Jaskier shakes his head again, as emphatically as if he wasn't the one who brought boxes up in the first place. He sways in towards Geralt, trustingly. Shit. This time, Geralt does catch him, and Jaskier lets himself be caught with a flutter for just a second before he pulls himself back upright. "Stop distracting me, with your— The box didn't matter, it was the—oh. Geralt. I meant to say, first thing. It was the song. In the box, it. It taught me the most amazing song. Shall I sing it for you?"

"Absolutely not." That still-barely-warm desire was what he'd smelled on Jaskier first, before the magic. It's what confused the issue. But it's the magic he can't afford to ignore. Jaskier didn't quite manage to dislodge him, so Geralt shakes him very gently. He bobbles. "Jaskier. Listen to me. What did you let some fairy bitch do to you?"

Jaskier blinks. "It's a song like a—like a tower. No. No, like a pomegranate, Geralt. Have you ever had a pomegranate? You crack it open and it's all. Mm. All blood and jewels." That wide-eyed, wonderstruck look is even worse from a foot away than it was from across the room. "If I let you go back to bed, can I sing it for you in the morning?"

The perceptible tendrils of whatever the spell is are fading, slowly, from where Geralt has his hands on Jaskier. Well, that's probably a coincidence—they're fading from the centre of mass outward, as these things do, and Geralt is gripping his sides. It's a good sign, at least for now. The steady, calm beat of Jaskier's heart when Geralt listens for it is a better one.

"You're hopeless," he says, instead of the rest of it. He's not getting an answer in this state. And he doesn't need answers, really. It's a simple thing, to undo a fairy's spell. Only two ways to do it, if the fairy won't release it on their own: you can either kill the target of the spell, or kill the fairy.

"Hmm," Jaskier hums, beatifically. "Yeah, probably." And then he tips himself over into the middle of Geralt's bed and goes solidly to sleep, still humming to himself.

Come morning, Jaskier seems to have rethought his positive attitude. He lets Geralt roll him out of bed, but barely, which is reassuringly normal except that Geralt refuses to allow himself to be reassured. On the road, Jaskier dawdles along with the hang-dog air of a pup dragged by the scruff of his neck. Nevertheless, he's giving a good impression—or more likely it's the real thing—of someone who's forgotten the worst of last night's indignities. Meanwhile, the only other bed was Jaskier's. Even if he might have slept, that left Geralt with the choice between lying down in Jaskier's used linens or lying down with Jaskier, magicked to the gills and snoring like a cave troll on top of it. Geralt hasn't closed his eyes for another second. He would be jealous of Jaskier's oblivion, if it weren't the details of his own likely doom that Jaskier's forgotten.

"Can I ask where we're going, so early in the morning?" Jaskier's grumbling has begun to take on a plaintive tone, now that they're on the move. "I could have done with another few hours' sleep and, honestly, some breakfast."

"Hunting," Geralt says. He plans to enjoy it.

"Ah." Jaskier pauses delicately. He stops looking fussy, but the new expression isn't exactly an improvement. "Kind of you to bring me along. I'm assuming that's for directional purposes and not actually so you can use me as bait. Unfortunately, I literally could not tell you where to look, even under pain of death. And also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the important thing to remember about fairies—among, I suppose, several important things—is not to go looking for them."

"That's only if they haven't fucking found you already."

"Right, but—I thought I'd explained this part, although from the way you're glaring at those poor bushes like you'll slaughter them if they even hint at an enchantment, maybe it didn't come out as clearly as I thought it did last night, and I'll admit my memories aren't the clearest, here—I was a little the worse for wear—but she did, in fact, let me go again. Which was nice of her. Her interest was flattering, on the whole, and I do think I managed to let her down fairly delicately."

"Worse for—" Geralt growls. He won't be dragged into it. "You were completely fucked. That's not letting you go. That's enchanting you. It's exactly how they get their claws in you, and send you about your way, until— You came back spouting nonsense about songs and pomegranates and swearing you didn't take anything. Like you'd even fucking remember what the bargain was."

"No, honestly, that's more or less how—"

"Excuse me," comes a voice, from a man who was not there before. "You have something, I believe, that belongs to me by the hand of my lady queen." He stands, simply dressed, empty handed, and as tall as an elm in the crossroads. His only ornament is a single silver ring.

"Eep," Jaskier says.

"Jaskier." Geralt whirls on him. The treacherous fucking idiot, he'd lied. And Geralt—hadn't noticed. And he's put his own body between Jaskier and this stranger full of strange magic—this fae, he knows one when he meets one, though he'd thought never to meet one again. And that's all it takes. They'll both die here. Or, worse, they'll die elsewhere.

But: "I have nothing of your lady's," Jaskier says, like the second half of some fatal spell. And he steps around Geralt, to look the fae right in the face. Straight and tall, almost as tall as Geralt when he wants to be, and as close as he is when he passes, Geralt can feel that he's shaking. But he doesn't look like he's shaking. He looks like someone who, for once, knows exactly the right thing to say. "Nor anything of yours. I drank nothing with her, took nothing of hers, and gained nothing from her hand. In fact, I gained nothing at all last night except by fair exchange. Though—you should probably know, I'm pretty sure she offered."

Oh, fuck.

The fairy's stern face twists into an expression like hate. "You think I am here on an errand of jealousy? Some petty mortal squabble? Little human, you don't know what you've taken from me."

"I think," Jaskier says, and takes one more step forward, still steadily, although Geralt can hear how his heart pounds and see the sour sweat begin to prick up on the back of his neck, "that you wear each other's rings. And that what you say I've taken, was something your lady left behind. If it was something of yours to begin with, I can only say that she treated it without the care it deserved. Is she often so forgetful, your wife?"

Oh, fuck.

"Jaskier," Geralt grits, as the fucking fairy king takes one long step of his own that closes much more distance than it should. He scrambles, fast, reaching to grab Jaskier by the back of the collar, prepared to drag him into a run if the little idiot won't run for himself. Geralt’s fingertips brush the back of Jaskier’s neck, purchaseless, for an instant.

The flash of magic comes faster. Before he can find his grip. It's something far more elemental than a portal, but like a portal has sprung open under their feet, Geralt and Jaskier and the fairy are gone from the road just the same.

And then they aren't gone, but they're somewhere else entirely. Even in the dark of the vast hall they've arrived in, Geralt can tell that the scale isn't right. It's much too large for any cavern Geralt's ever seen, and Jaskier is much, much too far ahead. Out of reach. On a great, rock-hewn dais even farther in front of him than that sits the only light in the place: a woman, silvery-fair and even younger than Jaskier was when he'd first trailed, yammering, after Geralt. Her husband stands at her shoulder, now. He's still looking at Jaskier with the remains of that hatred etched on his face. The woman is looking at Jaskier, too, with the air of someone greeting an unexpected visitor.

"Oh! Little bard!" She doesn't smile, quite, although her gorgeous mouth slants up almost in delight. "You look well. And…” The set of her mouth slides into something not nearly so delighted. “And your friend, as well. How interesting to have an extra guest. He doesn't look quite as promising as you." She doesn’t acknowledge her husband whatsoever. Jaskier, far from looking well, has gone ashy grey under his sweat sheen.

If Geralt wasn't so furious, if Jaskier wasn't between him and the danger, he'd bristle at that. He holds very still, instead. It's better to wait and see the full shape of where Jaskier's landed them. Elsewhere, indeed. The fairy king holds himself contained and wrathful, but his eyes trace the terrible amount of space between Geralt, and Jaskier, and this woman who could freeze them all to stone with a blink. The king could kill them with a blink, too, more than likely. He's certainly thinking the same thing as Geralt: Jaskier has stepped out far past Geralt's ability to protect him. He looks from all that empty space straight down at Geralt, freezing cold, just for an instant.

"My lady. Lovely to see you." Just ahead, Jaskier's still clinging to his sangfroid although the effort is really showing, now, and probably not only to Geralt. "I'd love to catch up, naturally, but I'm afraid that there seems to be a misunderstanding. With your husband. Perhaps you'd be gracious enough to, ah. Clear that up."

The rest of the light goes out of her expression, leaving only the bedrock underneath. "I'm curious," she says instead of an answer, and cocks her head like a very alert, very dangerous bird. "Did he believe you when you said you'd refused me?"

"I think," Jaskier has to stop. Like his mouth’s gone dry. At this point, Geralt isn't sure whether he's simply praying that Jaskier won't faint, or if he's praying in absolute desperation that Jaskier will and therefore stop talking before any of them can find out what ill-considered thoughts he has. "I think, if you were to ask him, it's more of a case of what I did with the box after I'd refused you. And what was in it, and where it went. And to be honest, it's a bit of a difficult position because I'd also like to know, and what I didn't know was that it was missing property at the time, which was something of an omission on your part—"

Geralt makes a choked sound, meant as a warning, which is how he realizes that he is frozen. He cannot move. Shit, shit, fuck—he thrashes desperately, and only manages maybe an inch of teetering momentum. Worse still: Jaskier sees, and goes from grey to absolutely bone-white.

"I don't have it," Jaskier yelps, words nearly colliding with each other. "Whatever you’re doing to him, I don't have it—I don't have anything—I didn't know it wasn't yours, or I wouldn't have touched it; I thought—" he gasps, almost, and very nearly manages to stop it. He does get in one rough breath, and drops to his knees. "I left it behind. I thought I was only being an idiot; I didn't know it was stolen."

Fuck, Geralt thinks. This time with bare finality. And he'd thought they were going to die before. Geralt wrenches to move, and this time it's the king who catches it. His mouth thins even further. The sensation of cold iron—fairy iron—closes hard around Geralt's wrists, racking his arms behind his back. It hurts, even for Geralt it hurts, and the king watches Jaskier quail further.

“Stolen?” The fairy queen doesn’t shift in her seat, and her attention doesn’t waver. “Little bard.”

"I—" Jaskier starts, but his voice cracks out from under him and it's clear he's finally run out of words. Much too late.

Geralt struggles harder.

“You would take a gift, given freely, and name it theft?” she asks, deceptively softly. The question hangs as still and implacable as any glacier—and as likely to crumble stone.

“My lady,” Jaskier tries. Knelt in the dirt at her feet, he holds his hands in front of him, empty and shaking: a plea.

“It was a gift given first to me,” snarls the fairy king, with a fury that cannot be held any longer. Geralt can see how Jaskier quivers when he swings his head up to stare at the king instead, fast and scared. “It was your troth to me by your own hand. Mine. Mine to keep, or to give as I choose.”

“It is a gift which gives of itself,” the queen says. When she turns to face her king for the first time with her own hatred naked on her face, they are suddenly very alike—two silver coin profiles, cut to oppose. He stands over her, ten feet tall, or a hundred feet, or the size of any other jealous man. “And it has been too long squandered. My husband is covetous. He forgets.”

“You forget yourself,” her husband grits. “My lady.”

“You forget who I am, to name me so,” she says. But she’s looking at Jaskier once again, her husband left discarded. The hatred is not gone. Jaskier stinks of his fear now, maybe the most Geralt has ever smelled on him. Geralt would scream if he could. He'd rend the fairy queen limb from limb in her own hall. He can't even whimper. “Tell me, little bard: do you know what I left there? That thing that was not my husband’s, in the box that he kept. Did you look?”

Jaskier whimpers.

Her eyes on him are as hard-edged as the light on some bright metal. He meets them anyhow, even shaking. Of course he looked.

He swallows hard, and manages: “A bone.” And he glances back at Geralt, just a flicker—the king watching both of them cold and furious all the while—and the shackles at Geralt’s wrists are abruptly so cold that they burn and blister. Geralt can’t so much as twitch to give him a sign. “A—it was only a bone. In the box. A jawbone, I think. Just an old bone, carved with the words of an old song. Nothing else.” He gulps. “I swear it.”

"Hmm.” She hums, throaty and considering, almost a musical note. Boulders shifting underneath it. “Just so. Carved with the words of many old songs, all set into the bone for safekeeping. And your own song, now, as well. All undying. Some older than others. Some given into the bone’s keeping so long ago now, they are all but forgotten on the tongues of men. And each song also itself a gift to be given—each one a free thing, never to be mastered. One of many such free things.” She stands at last, to stare straight down at them all. “My husband forgot me the very moment he called me his own. The bard will remind us.”

“I—wh—no,” Geralt can hear the words work in Jaskier’s throat. “No, I—” But thank all the gods, this time the fairy queen doesn’t care to wait for him to choke on it:

“Little bard, I ask you now a second time. Will you sing?”

“I—” Jaskier closes his eyes. He is trying, Geralt thinks, as hard as he can. He is trying not to look back at Geralt a third time. Like being turned suddenly upside down, Geralt remembers that he’d thought: a simple enough thing. Just kill the fairy. “If I do,” Jaskier says, in a shadow of his normal voice, with nothing at all to barter. “If I do, will you— Will you let him go. As an equal exchange. Will you let him go, if I sing it?”

Ah, hell. It’s the wrong play. The fairy king’s cold mouth twists, unreadably, although Geralt is sinkingly afraid that it might be the start of a smile. If Geralt is freed, it’s Jaskier left alone. And Jaskier, alone, will— It’s the wrong play, and three of them know it.

“That will depend on the worth of the song,” says the king, to Jaskier, who does not know it. “May it please my lady wife.” He says it like the bitterest joke imaginable. With her stood at his side as intractable as an icicle in the shape of a woman. But—A fairy’s word, even given in jest, is a bond. And if there is a song—and if Jaskier can sing it— A song like a pomegranate, he’d said last night. A song all blood and jewels. There are many jewels that have been worth more than a witcher’s life.

And Geralt, freed, will fight. That isn’t nothing.

"Right," Jaskier rasps, but he clears his throat. He must know how to sing through nerves. Never like this, but— He must. He glances one last time at Geralt anyhow, helpless, with his eyes white all the way around with terror. Every time he does it, it’s one time closer to being a fatal mistake for both of them. "Right. It's—I haven't practiced."

The fairy king does smile at that, cruel as a sheer drop. He doesn’t do a thing to Geralt this time. He doesn’t need to. Geralt might, in fact, fight Jaskier once he’s done with everyone else.

It doesn't matter. Jaskier will have to sing it anyway, sooner rather than later. The fae are not a race inclined to waiting, and Jaskier has at least enough self preservation to know it, when it counts. He squeezes his eyes shut again, tight, like a child with stage-fright. It could almost be funny, to see him like that—somewhere else, or if Geralt knew him less. Jaskier the bard. Jaskier takes a long, shaking breath. Geralt would help him, if he could. Every stuck-fast muscle screams at Geralt, help him. Fight.

Jaskier breathes in.

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth," it begins, and it’s barely more than Jaskier's scraping whisper. And it's—

It's a scrape that Geralt feels clean down to the bone. He is doubly frozen. And the song isn't Jaskier's, he'd have known that much even if he hadn't been told, but—Jaskier sings it like he was born with it inside him, now that it's begun. Slow, and growing, and gaining momentum fast.

"By night on my bed," his clear voice in the dark like the clearest, smallest spring rivulet that cuts a rift through the mountain anyhow, and Geralt is transfixed, "I sought him who my soul loveth. I sought him but I found him not."

He hasn't got his lute, and he doesn't need it. It isn't his song, though he sings it.

Geralt struggles, redoubled, until everything is burning. The shackles sear with an incredible cold. He feels sticky wetness slide down the tips of his fingers and knows that his wrists are bloody, that he's managed to move at least that much, but the fairy iron holds him fast. It's a long song, and the singing of it lasts somehow even longer than that, and Geralt struggles all the while. But even so, at the end, it's all gone as still as the incense-filled cedar trees Jaskier sings of.

"Make haste, my beloved," Jaskier sings.

Make haste. Only, it's over, and Jaskier is silent and Geralt is trapped, and no one else moves either.

“That is an old song indeed,” says the fairy king, who could kill any mortal thing with a blink but who cannot lie. He stands with his jaw clenched, as angry now as when they’d begun. His words shatter a long silence. “One long dead and buried. As for the worth—”

“It is not dead,” says his queen, quellingly. “It remembers itself alive. Are you really so foolish?” She takes the king’s hand anyhow, as grave as a handfasting. There is no warmth at all in her, not even in reaching out, which might almost have been forgiveness if she’d looked at her husband for even a moment. But she is looking hard at Jaskier, still, and then she is gone, and then—like there was never a lesson to be learned at all—everything else is gone along with her.

And the room is a very ordinary one, all at once: their own very ordinary room above last night's very ordinary tavern, in fact. Jaskier is knelt before the heavy oak wash-stand and Geralt stands just behind him, so suddenly freed of his shackles that he almost falls down.

"Holy fuck," Jaskier croaks, to the porcelain ewer on the stand.

"Holy fuck," Jaskier says, much louder, and stands to whirl around and stare at Geralt. "That was—they just—" He runs to the window and throws the shutters open. Broad, ordinary daylight, and the everyday street down below. He stares for a minute, and Geralt stares too, and then he grins up at the sunshine, like he can't stop it, something else beautiful and completely mad welling up. The skin at his throat is as creamy-rich as toffee. He smells edible, no trace of fear now. Geralt could fool himself, so easily, into thinking he might walk two steps and take a bite. The song—

"What did you pay for it, Jaskier?" If he won't tell the fairy queen even with his own life in the balance, well, he'll still probably tell Geralt anyway.

But, "No," Jaskier says, still smiling. Still smiling, but at Geralt again, turned from the window like he's turned to smile at some amazing thing. "No, you don't understand. I didn't. I didn't understand. But I didn't ask for it, not at all, and I think—I don't think she was lying in the first place. I think it actually was a gift."

No—

“Well,” Jaskier says, like he’s being reasonable, “well, and also a frankly embarrassingly public marital spat, I suppose, but you have to give them credit for being incredibly terrifying about it.”

Geralt refuses to be distracted.

"There's no such thing as a gift. Not from them. There's always some price." He's lived long enough to know. He's lived long enough, seen enough madmen smile like that, brilliant only for a moment, and he knows. And yet. Somehow, there's Jaskier, whole and sound, clear and shining and so untouched by any shadow, and there's the autumn sun like honeymead, pooling in behind him. Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners. There's Jaskier, singing a song that sings through him and isn't his.

Jaskier shrugs, all fluid expression that Geralt can't read. "An exchange, then. Or—tell me what the curse is. So I can help you break it." Like it's saving someone else's life he's speaking of, someone else's eyes always with a laugh just at the corners—someone Geralt will save, and take the coin for, and walk away. Well, it's a question Geralt knows how to start in on answering, at least.

"The bone. An inscribed jawbone?" Geralt can work back from there. He can work it all the way back, and at the back of it there’ll just have to be something he can kill. "What did you do with it? Every enchantment has a focal point, and this one's pretty clear."

Only now Jaskier is tilting his head quizzically as though he's not sure Geralt isn't the one gone a little mad. "I left it. Of course I left it; you heard her: it isn't the sort of gift to be kept."

"You—" Maybe Geralt is mad. Maybe he's thinking of a different bard, one with a thieving, magpie heart and a satchel with all the pockets stuffed full of fine silk handkerchiefs as if they might ever be of any earthly good to anyone.

"I left it where I found it." The smile is still there, gone curious and lopsided. "Perhaps you can't credit it. But even I have enough sense to know that not everything in the world is there to be owned. And especially not dusty old bones left behind by some mad fairy. That reeks of consequences. Which I really did think I was mostly avoiding. Geralt," Jaskier asks, very quietly and very seriously now, except for the tenacity of that tiny smile, "will you keep trying to save me this whole time, or are you planning, at some point, to listen to anything I've said?"

"They promise things," Geralt growls, undissuaded. "They promise you anything you want, riches, immortality, and if you think that's all you're getting, then—"

"No," Jaskier says. Suddenly firm. "I gave them my song, Geralt, not my name. Just a song, for the bone to keep. And the bone gave me a song in return. That's what's immortal. Only the song, and they all are, sort of. Or, the good ones are, anyway. I'm just— I'm still—" He pauses. "Oh."

Undying, the fairy queen said. To Jaskier. A fairy's word, her bond. And Jaskier, alone at a crossroads and nothing to barter. Jaskier, returned to Geralt, dripping strange magic. Jaskier saying, soft and wondering: she let me go.

"Oh," and Jaskier's across the room now, right there, touching distance. "Oh, no, Geralt, no such luck. I'm still me, no—no bargains like that. No fairy bullshit, I told you I know better and, fuck you for never believing me, I do. Gods know I've managed this long without getting eaten by some nightmare monster, and half the time it's no thanks to your poor efforts."

"I—" Geralt feels a bit like he's caught a knife to the gut he hadn't noticed yet.

"Spare me the remorse. Or—whatever that's about to be. Seems complicated. You're a negligent enough protector until you're really worried, and it took me most of a decade to even realize that much. Probably because you kept growling at me the whole time, if you want to know. It's not exactly the clear signal of friendship you apparently think it is."

"I," Geralt tries again, more measuredly, and is cut off anyway.

"Just like that, yes. Lovely demonstration. Definitely spare me the part where you pretend to care about my music. Since you’re going to ask anyway, I’ll tell you for free: the song wasn’t one of yours. Not even one of mine, really. Just an old folk tune. They sing it sometimes as a funeral hymn back home, though I've always thought of it as being about... beginnings, I suppose? I did a new setting of it while I was still at the university. Reworked the tune a bit, touched some rhymes up here and there, and—Well. You know the sort of thing. Really, there’s no need to glaze over at me, I’ve already admitted for you that you don’t give a shit.”

Except that Geralt very much does give a shit, if not about what Jaskier’s saying, then certainly about what he hasn’t said. Whatever Jaskier thinks he’s reading off of him, it isn’t boredom. It might be bewilderment. He’d expected— But Jaskier is still smiling, a hard-gold gleam to it now. He takes a tiny, unfaltering step forward, although he was already stood so close.

“I suppose you thought I’d say it was my whole immortal soul as a five-part harmony. Did you truly think I was singing about you, in there? All accidentally?" Jaskier hums a snatch of melody, an ironical bend in it, not nearly so otherworldly now that it's contained in this small room. "This is my beloved, and this is my friend."

Geralt wouldn't try a third time, even if his throat hadn't closed up of its own accord. Even if Jaskier wasn’t studying him as closely as if he thinks he might see to the bottom and find the remorse that he seems to believe is there.

"Darling," Jaskier says, an endearment that has never been between them, "it's a much older song than that." And he takes Geralt's wrist, raw and bloody as it is, in hard-callused fingers and hauls him in just as hard. Geralt doesn't brace; he couldn't possibly. "I'm near thirty-five and ordinary, and I'll be dead before you can blink. You ancient bastard. Do you honestly want to hear my song in a hundred years, sung by some stripling I'll never meet in a city that hasn't even been born yet, and regret it?"

He regrets it already. That's—the truth. Bare as the reckless light in Jaskier's eyes. That's all there is to it: a very, very simple thing. Just the bone of it, in fact.

"I will regret you," Geralt says, "anyhow."

"Yes," Jaskier agrees. And then he does laugh, light as a sparrow, not serious even for the second it would take to stay that way. "Fuck the fae, did I say that already? Yes, that's probably why they let us both go. Come here."

He's already there.