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Chapter Text

Eskel wasn’t overly concerned when a small squadron of the King’s guards came barrelling towards him on the eastern road to Oxenfurt. He’d been moving too quickly to bother entering any of the little villages and small towns scattered along the Pontar, and thus had no reason to fear he'd been accused of some crime. He hadn’t taken a single contract, or even stopped to check the noticeboards, in weeks now.

In all honesty, Eskel expected the squadron of redcoat guards would simply pass him by on the way to harass some other unsuspecting traveller. Even when the ranking officer slowed and signalled his men to stop, Eskel hadn’t worried. He'd sighed internally at the delay, but reined Scorpion in and waited patiently for the officer to either bark out an accusation, or demand what business a Witcher might have on the King’s road.

But the group of guards said nothing to him. Instead, they had a brief whispered conversation among themselves, unaware that Eskel could hear every word.

“Well, I don’t want to have to lay hands on a Witcher! What if he curses us?”

“Don’t you know nothing? Witchers can’t do that sort of magic. They’s too thick for more'n simple spells!”

“Aye, like beasts they are, my nan always said. But they’re good at killing monsters, long as they don’t turn on whatever poor soul hired ‘em. And I reckon that one can do some violence. Big scarred bastard like that un's got to have a talent for killing.”

And on and on they went, arguing about whether or not they were supposed to arrest him first, or take him straight to Oxenfurt. Eskel stopped listening when it became clear the guards had no idea why they’d been sent to collect him in the first place. He stroked Scorpion’s mane, and let the big stallion nibble at the strip of grass along the roadside while the guards made up their minds.

Eventually they seemed to reach a group consensus, and the ranking officer turned his mount around to face Eskel. “Oi, the Crown has need of your services, Witcher,” he said. A bead of sweat dripped down his pudgy face. “You come along with us, hear? We’ll escort you to Oxenfurt. No need for any trouble.”

This order didn’t sit well with Eskel. But then what could he do? He wasn’t about to draw his steel on six of King Vizimir II’s liveried guardsmen. Not on a public roadway in broad daylight, anyway.

So he followed, hoping they weren’t ‘escorting’ him to his death.

To his relief, the guards didn’t bring him directly to the King’s gaol. Instead, they took Eskel to an official-looking building in Oxenfurt’s main square, and he spent the rest of the morning cooling his heels in the hallway outside some bureaucrat’s office. He had no idea what an Oxenfurt city official might want with him. Geralt was the one who had audiences with patriarchs, mayors, and kings. Eskel’s chosen Path twisted through swamps and poor herding villages, hardscrabble mining towns and haunted groves and stretches of remote wilderness in the far northwest. He hadn’t set foot in a southern city in decades.

This situation—being waylaid by the King’s Guard—was just one of many reasons why.

A clerk finally came to fetch Eskel (and his guards) just after the noon bell sounded. “His Grace will see you now,” the clerk said, before turning on his heel and leading the way into what might have been a reception hall or a kitchen or a torture chamber, for all Eskel knew.

Once again, he had no choice but to follow.

He was brought to what was unmistakably the private office of some highly-placed government official. ‘Office’ seemed a bit of a misnomer, actually: the room was more palatial than any home Eskel had ever set foot in. It featured a huge stone fireplace, delicate antique reception chairs, and a large, solid statesman’s desk. The entire surface of the desk was covered in tidy stacks of parchment scrolls and letters, as well as what looked like maps, books of accounting, and even a sextant.

The official who’d summoned Eskel turned out to be a handsome bald middle-aged man with a fastidiously groomed iron-grey beard that made him look much more like a mage than a Redanian court minister. When Eskel and his guards entered, the man didn’t spare them a single glance. He continued working his way through one of the many piles on his desk, profoundly disinterested in Eskel.

It was...very odd.

Witchers rarely inspired any sort of bland, impartial response in humans. Animal fear or raw hatred, yes. Disgust, certainly. Sometimes pity, though Eskel’s size and scars usually made people scream and flinch away, or stare at him in morbid curiosity.

But he’d never encountered this sort of casual dismissal before. It was unsettling.

And he could feel another presence in the room. He felt it even before his medallion began to vibrate under his shirt. It was a Source, one that cackled and hummed with chaos like a massive bonfire burning on a summer’s night. But there was no mage or a sorceress in the room. Only a snowy owl.

The bird was preening its feathers on its perch by the window. Much like the bureaucrat at the desk, it was steadfastedly ignoring Eskel and the two guards at his back.

Wasting no time, Eskel immediately conjured up the image of a thick bearskin rug and drew it up over his thoughts. It formed a cozy, comfortable buffer against any possible attempts to read his mind. The mage—if the Source in the room was indeed a mage, and not some illusion—they’d be able to gather nothing but surface thoughts. If they wanted to read Eskel’s mind, they’d need to either tear through his imaginary bearskin rug, or rip it away. In either case, Eskel would have enough warning to put more solid mental defenses in place.

The man at the desk continued shuffling through his papers. The larger of the guards who’d arrested Eskel cleared his throat

“Uh, we’ve brought you a Witcher, Sir. As requested.”

“No,” the bald man said in a clipped tone. “I requested a specific Witcher: Geralt of Rivia. You’ve brought me someone else entirely.”

The two guards looked at each other, and then at Eskel, who shrugged at them.

“Well,” said the bigger one, “We didn’t ask his name, Sir. He might be this Rivia fellow. Oi! Are you Geralt?” he shouted at Eskel.

When Eskel didn’t respond, the guard actually raised his fist, as if he planned to pummel the answer out of Eskel.

Eskel didn’t so much as blink, and merely stared down at the guard.

Vizimir’s man was quite tall for a human, heavyset and broad in the shoulder. But he was still a half-foot shorter than Eskel, and much more flabby around the middle. He scowled when Eskel didn’t flinch at his raised fist, but made no move to actually strike the Witcher. It was clear that the guard had no idea how to bully someone bigger than himself.

The official interrupted this sad demonstration of his guard’s instincts with another long-suffering sigh. “Geralt of Rivia is a tall, white-haired albino who wears black armor. Does any part of that describe the man you’ve brought to me?”

A second shorter guard took the initiative to step forward and peer quizzically at Eskel’s dark auburn hair, bronze skin, and striped red-and-brown leather gambeson.

“Uh, no,” the shorter man said slowly. “But this Witcher might know the other, eh?”

The official finally looked up and steepled his fingers. “Pray tell, do you expect every blacksmith to know one another? Are all cobblers well-acquainted? When you meet a farrier or a brewer or a tanner, do you assume they know every other tradesman in their field?”

“Uh, well, I don’t think—”

“And that is precisely the problem," the official sighed.

The guard didn’t quite seem to catch the insult. Not that the Redanian official cared. “Shocking as it is, I suppose you may have a point,” he acknowledged, finally turning to Eskel. “There are far fewer Witchers than blacksmiths and shoemakers these days. So,” he asked, meeting Eskel’s eyes. “Master Witcher, do you know Geralt of Rivia? The one they call the White Wolf? The Butcher of Blavikin?”

“No,” Eskel said, very calmly. “But I do know a good cobbler.”

The man sniffed and stared at Eskel. Eskel looked back at him steadily. He knew that his slow, steady heartbeat wouldn’t betray him, even if a human could hear it. As long as he kept his voice even and his answers short, he could bluff his way through this. Which he absolutely had to do, if he wanted to keep this sharp-eyed jackal off Geralt’s scent.

Whatever the Redanian government wanted with Geralt, it couldn’t be good. No one ordered the arrest of a Witcher just to talk about necrophages or negotiate a drowner contract.

And there was something menacing about the big bald man and his beady black eyes. He wasn’t subtle about giving Eskel the once-over; he examined Eskel from the pommel of his swords to the toes of his worn, dusty leather boots. Eskel didn’t much care for the way his eyes lingered on the silver chain around his neck.

He was suddenly glad Lambert had chivvied Eskel, Geralt, and the remaining Witchers of Kaer Morhen into tucking their silver medallions away whenever they walked the Path. Their twin swords and yellow eyes were more than enough to identify them as Witchers, Lambert had argued for years. What need was there to advertise their school? No one knew (or cared) about the difference between the School of the Wolf and the Bears or the Manticores. Not anymore. The only ones who still did were the Witchers themselves. Or their enemy.

Eskel seemed to withstand the scrutiny long enough to make the Redanian official relent, though Eskel knew he was only pausing to search for some other line of attack.

“Well, since my guards failed to follow a simple directive and bring me the Witcher I wanted, I’m afraid you’ll have to do. The Crown has need of your unique services. You will be paid handsomely for your trouble. What’s your name?”

“Eskel, m’lord,” he said.

“Eskel of…?”

“Of nowhere in particular.”

“Well, Master Eskel of Nowhere-in-Particular, I’m called Dijkstra,” he said, adding, “Special Advisor to His Majesty, King Vizimir II of Redania. Long may he rule.”

Eskel was careful to keep his face neutral. He’d heard of Sigismund Dijkstra; the man was certainly more than a mere ‘court advisor’. Dijkstra was the grand spymaster of Redania. By all accounts, Dijkstra was ruthlessly good at his job.

“The contract pays out a thousand crowns. It shouldn’t be much of a challenge. Not for a big tough fellow like yourself.”

“I don’t take contracts on humans,” Eskel said right away, because what other use might Redania’s spymaster have for a Witcher? It didn’t matter that most of the schools had forbidden their Witchers from accepting assassination contracts. The Cats and Vipers weren’t quite so circumspect, and they far outnumbered the few remaining Bears and Griffins, and Eskel’s own dwindling School of the Wolf.

“Oh, nonsense,” Dijkstra said with a wave of dismissal. “It’s not what you think. It’s just a simple curse. Surely you’ve seen the posting?”

He had, of course, even if he’d been avoiding most of the village noticeboards on his way across Redania. Government notices were impossible to ignore. The contract FOR A WITCHER offered a “substantial reward” for the “hasty removal of a ringbound curse.” It bore King Vizimir II’s seal, and the notice had been posted in pride of place at every crossroads and tavern inn and marketplace stall from Kerack to the Temerian border.

But Eskel had ignored the contract. He wasn’t looking for any jobs right now except for the relatively quick, low-paying ones: burning out nekker nests, hunting alghouls, eliminating packs of drowners. Curse contracts were the opposite. Curses required time, and research, and careful investigation to break. They paid well enough, but Eskel had far more pressing concerns than earning coin right now.

The breadcrumb trail Geralt had left across the Continent was fading. If Eskel paused for more than a few days to lift a curse, he’d lose Geralt’s scent entirely. He couldn’t afford any delay.

“Aye, I’ve seen the notices,” Eskel finally said, because Dijkstra was waiting for an answer. “But I’ve never heard of a ringbound curse.”

“No? Used to be quite common, as I understand it. Perhaps it was before your time. At any rate,” Dijkstra said, getting right down to business. “There’s a bit of a political quagmire unfolding here. A few months ago, we arrested a man who’d been smuggling elves out of Oxenfurt. He ought to have been convicted for treason and sentenced to hang, but then the winds shifted, as they say.”

Eskel wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean, but made an encouraging noise so Dijkstra would get on with it.

“Public sentiment shifted in the elves’ favour. All that business with the elven Queen’s dead baby, you know. It wasn’t long before some of the academic types in Oxenfurt started lobbying for us to release the blackguard!”

Whatever mask of congeniality and good humour Dijkstra had put on earlier was allowed to slip, for a moment, and Eskel was invited to see the King’s spymaster as a frustrated, impotent bureaucrat at the mercy of public opinion.

Eskel wasn’t fooled for a moment, but it was a convincing performance. Dijkstra was certainly skilled at his work.

“To muddy things further," Dijkstra continued, settling into his act, “the smuggler is a public figure! A famous troubadour who made his reputation defending the downtrodden in story and song. And he’s a Viscount to boot! It’s a fucking political nightmare. Not even King Vizimir can hang a member of the local gentry without raising a few eyebrows. So you understand my predicament?”

Eskel couldn’t dredge up a sympathetic noise this time. He could feel Geralt’s trail fading with each passing moment wasted listening to Dijkstra’s ramblings. If only the man would speak plainly! It was enough to push even Eskel’s vaunted patience to the breaking point.

“Why not just pardon the man?”

Dijkstra frowned at Eskel like the Witcher had just stepped in fresh cow shit. “The King can’t simply absolve a convicted smuggler and rabble-rouser! There’s the issue of justice to consider, after all, and a pardon won’t do. Killing him quietly would have been my preferred solution. However, someone suggested that I needed to get creative.”

Dijkstra said this with pointed sarcasm, though they were ostensibly alone in the room. Aside from the owl.

“I believe I’ve come up with the perfect solution. It’s quite inventive,” Dijkstra finished with a nasty smile. Eskel was dubious about the extent of the man’s ingenuity, but one thing was clear: Dijkstra dearly loved the sound of his own voice.

That had probably been Dijkstra’s plan all along: to push Eskel to the breaking point so he’d be willing to do whatever Dijkstra asked, if only it would allow him to be on his way.

“You said you weren’t familiar with ringbound curses,” Dijkstra said, slumping back down into the chair behind his desk. “What about Correctional Marriage?”

Eskel finally felt his own slow, steady heartbeat start to pick up. A cold trickle of sweat gathered at the small of his back. He swallowed carefully, and then grated out, “Used to be a popular punishment up north, in the hills of Caingorn.”

It was Dijkstra’s turn to offer an encouraging, “Hmm?”

Eskel bit the inside of his cheek. “When a young woman was convicted of a minor crime—prostitution, usually, or theft, public drunkenness—she’d be given a choice: serve a five- or ten-year sentence in a gaol, or agree to be married off to local man. If she agreed, she’d get a husband and jailor. He’d have someone to cook, clean his hut, work his fields, warm his bed. Whelp his bastards, too. Eventually.”

“You make it sound quite sordid, Master Eskel,” Dijkstra said, evidentially surprised that a Witcher would have such a negative opinion about institutional rape masquerading as marriage. “But yes, that’s the gist of it. I’m surprised you’re so familiar with the practice.”

Eskel couldn’t quite help himself: he glared at Dijkstra. Unfortunately, Dijkstra wasn’t as easily intimidated as the average village alderman.

He gave Eskel a flatly unimpressed look and said, “Your accent is quite distinctive, you know. At least to a trained ear. You’ve clearly gone to some effort to soften it, but it’s hard to mistake that lovely lilt. It’s so unique. I didn’t know the Witchers had taken children from the hillfolk of North Caingorn.”

There had once been a small glass case in the old library at Kaer Morhen. It contained several different exotic insect species, most of which were poisonous. The specimens had been pinned to pieces of felt and arranged inside the airtight case. As children, Eskel and Geralt had spent hours staring at each preserved bug under the glass, fascinated by the idea that something so small could be so deadly.

Eskel felt like one of those desiccated insects now, pierced through the thorax and pinned down by a much larger and much more ruthless creature.

“Seems your people were always rather insular.” Dijkstra continued. “I don’t just mean the Witchers. Importing convicts to marry must have been the only way to grow the numbers in those isolated little hillfolk villages.” He paused, tone tripping with false sympathy. “Though I doubt it made for very happy marriages.”

Pinned and exposed, Eskel didn’t dare struggle. He didn’t allow himself to react. It was just…no one had ever put it all together before. Geralt and Vesemir were the only people who knew about that part of his life Before. Before Kaer Morhen. Before blood and magic. Before the Witchers had come for him.

Before, when he’d been a small boy growing up on a very different mountain, in another place steeped in folklore, tradition, and tragedy.

He wasn’t sure if Geralt had put the pieces together. Oh, the Wolf knew some of it, but the story had dribbled out in bits and pieces over the decades they’d known each other. Eskel had dropped hints over dinners or during lulls in sword practice, whispered parts of the secret at night under the shelter of a shared blanket. However, Geralt didn’t remember half of what he’d said before that second Grassing. Or, if he’d ever realized what it all meant, he’d never said anything about it to Eskel.

Vesemir knew, of course. He’d seen it for himself. He’d visited the squalid little mountain shack Eskel had been raised in. He’d picked Eskel out of a gang of ragged barefoot children who’d roamed about gnawing on bits of white clay to soothe their empty, aching bellies.

Of course, Vesemir had met Eskel’s mother too. He’d seen how she was already worn thin as an overwashed sheet at the age of twenty-one, belly distended by yet another pregnancy that would never come to term.

The past is dead and buried, Eskel reminded himself. It didn’t matter what Dijkstra saw—or thought he saw—in Eskel. He’d left that other life on that other mountain almost a century ago, now.

“So you’re planning to marry your prisoner off, then?” Eskel summarized, eager to shift Djikstra away from the topic of Eskel's personal history.

“Yes. The practice of Correctional Marriage was quite different in Redania, you know,” Dijkstra said, rifling through the papers on his desk again. “They didn’t just offer up convict women to anyone who wanted a housekeeper and a broodmare. No, King Helmut—dear King Vizimi II’s great-grandfather—felt there ought to be a larger purpose behind such marriages: penitence, salvation, redemption. Furthermore, he wanted people to fear this particular punishment more than any other.”

Eskel felt even more like a bug trapped under glass. He couldn’t move, or run away. He had no choice but to watch the pin descend.

“The King worked out an arrangement with your Witcher schools. At least one member of your guild who wanted to take contracts in Redania were required to marry a convict who had committed a serious offense,” Djikstra said, seemingly delighted to fill Eskel in on this little-known part of his own guild’s history.

Eskel certainly hadn’t known Witchers had ever been drawn into this convict-marriage business. As far as he’d known, it had only been practiced among humans, and only then in the most isolated regions of the northern kingdoms. None of the older Witchers, not even Vesemir, had ever said a word about it.

“Old King Helmut was quite canny. He’d reasoned that Witchers were uniquely positioned for the task of marrying hardened criminals. They were all single men with a well-paying profession, after all, and so a Witcher could look after the convict’s material needs better than the average peasant farmer. And Witchers, of course, were much more physically capable of keeping a violent criminal in check. They’re also famously sterile, so there wasn’t any concern about a convict reproducing and adding to the surplus criminal population. If some of the female convicts, especially those slatterns convicted of prostitution or public indecency, were already pregnant or had young children? Well, that was no longer any sort of a liability. The Witcher would have a wife, plus one or two fresh recruits to take back to his school to train as little Witchers. A win-win scenario, as they say.”

Eskel didn’t shift or make any noise, but Dijkstra looked at him with that stepped-in-cow-shit frown again.

“I know what you’re thinking: the punishment must have resulted in unhappiness on both sides. Perhaps that was the case among your dear hillfolk tribes. Imagine how the Witchers must have felt about it, though! Imagine it for yourself: someone legally required to repair your armour, cook your meals, treat your wounds, and warm your bed. Surely that has some appeal to a big, virile man such as yourself?”

“No,” Eskel bit out. “I've no desire to keep some poor soul prisoner. And I'm not a rapist.” His rough scrape of a voice seemed to cow Dijkstra. It made Eskel feel less like a pinned insect, and much more like the apex predator he was.

But Dijkstra still had him pinned, all the same.

Eskel cleared his throat. “So I suppose this contract of yours will require me to marry your convict, and take him far away from here?”

Dijkstra smiled at him benevolently, like a father whose slow-learning child had finally grasped the concept of some basic task like tying a shoelace. “Well said, Eskel of Nowhere. You will be well compensated for your troubles. My court mage has even managed to track down two of the original Rings of Penitence they’d used in the old binding ritual.”

“Rings?” Eskel repeated, feeling again that cold sweat at the small of his back. He remembered it now: that lump of cold black metal on his mother’s bone-thin finger.

“Yes, yes. The ringbound curse is an essential component to Redania’s old Correctional Marriage ritual. Rest easy: the curse is carefully designed to harm only the prisoner. To ensure that the convict is kept in check and can’t just escape while you’re sleeping, you’ll both wear matching bespelled rings. If the convict tries to run away, or attempts to harm you, they’ll experience highly unpleasant physical sensations. The pain will continue to increase if they don’t behave and return to your side. Eventually, it will kill them, although I understand that rarely ever happened. Most of the Redanian convicts married to Witchers more often resulted in the convict being killed by a monster, I believe. Or died by their Witcher’s hand. I don’t think the ring itself was responsible for more than, oh, a few dozen deaths.”

If Eskel had been the sort of man to be even remotely tempted by Djikstra’s offer, this business about a curse alone would have dissuaded him. Stay by a Witcher’s side, or suffer and die? That was no choice, especially not when offered to a desperate person staring down a long prison sentence.

“I won’t do it,” Eskel said, firmly and plainly. “I refuse the contract.”

Dijkstra merely rolled his eyes. “Well, for the condemned man’s sake, I hope you’ll change your mind. At least talk it over with him.”

“ won’t marry someone against their will.” 

“Why? Are you worried he’ll be too frightened or bigoted to marry a Witcher? I assure you, that’s not the case. Our dear smuggling troubadour is already well-acquainted with your guild. Travelled with the White Wolf himself for many years, as I understand it.”

The hot anger that had been building up in Eskel’s chest was snuffed out like a candle. The prisoner knew Geralt? How? Before he could reason that out, someone knocked on the door.

“Ah, that’s him now,” Dijkstra muttered. He said in a louder voice, “Enter.”

Eskel froze. He’d heard Dijkstra call for the convict to be brought up, but he hadn’t imagined that he’d have to look the man in the eye. Now he’d have to watch the expression of horror and distaste on the prisoner’s face when Dijkstra laid out the sentencing options. And that look of devastation when Eskel ultimately refused and crushed the man’s last hope of survival.

He heard the scrape of bare feet against the cold stone floor in the hallway, the faint rattle of chains, and the overpowering stench of someone denied the basic dignity of soap and washwater, or even a dedicated space to relieve himself. The poor man smelled like he’d been left to sleep in his own shit and piss-soaked clothing for months.

Beneath all the foul odors of an unwashed body and human waste, Eskel smelled the unmistakable sickly-sweet scent of infection.

The prisoner had some sort of a festering wound that was just about to tip over into gangrene. Within days, if Eskel could trust his nose, and he was depressingly familiar with dangerous infections. Usually his own, or a fellow Witcher’s, but he could tell the variances in human and animal infections, too. This prisoner didn’t have long.

The prisoner shuffled to a stop on Eskel’s left, and Eskel dared one furtive glance at the man whose fate suddenly rested entirely in Eskel's own bloodstained hands.

The prisoner had a mop of shaggy, dark brown hair and a full, unkempt beard. His shirt and thin trousers (whatever he’d been wearing upon his arrest months ago, presumably) hung in tatters from his painfully thin frame.

Eskel wasn’t sure if they’d starved the man deliberately, or if he’d already been malnourished when he’d been placed in Deireadh prison. But the consequences of long-term deprivation—of food, of sunlight, of clean water and fresh clothing—were indelibly stamped on the man’s pale, pinched face.

The first three fingers on each hand were wrapped in filthy bandages. Evidently, the prisoner had been injured, or perhaps even tortured, while in Djikstra’s custody. What lay beneath those bandages was the source of that infection-smell. Eskel didn’t even need to rely on his enhanced sense of smell to tell that much. The man’s cheeks were flushed, and he was sweating in the chilly room. Eskel was surprised that he was still on his feet.

The prisoner lifted his head then, just enough to dart a quick glance at Eskel.

He had beautiful blue eyes. A rich azure colour, the same shade as the cold, clear lakes formed from the glaciers high up in the Blue Mountains. A colour to drown in, Eskel thought.

The fear and disappointment he’d expected to find settled over the man like a shroud. He’d registered the two swords, and probably understood that a Witcher had finally arrived to discuss the ringbound contract.

Eskel supposed the man’s disappointment at his arrival made sense. Likely the man had already made his peace with death. Pain and fever and long months in a sunless cell in the bowels of Deireadh would have pushed anyone to the breaking point. Add all that to the possibility of marrying a Witcher? It appeared that, despite Dijkstra’s reassurances, the prisoner believed that it would be better to hang than be bound to a Witcher.

Still, that didn’t fully explain the complicated battle of disappointment and relief Eskel had glimpsed on the man’s face before he’d dropped his head to stare down at his own pale bare feet.

“Ah, Master Pankratz! Very kind of you to join us,” Dijkstra said, as if the convict had come to join them for tea. “We’ve finally found a Witcher for you! Are you acquainted with Master Eskel here, Julian?”

There was a crackling tension underlying the question. Its significance escaped Eskel, but he felt chaos spreading out from the Source by the window like a thundercloud. The magic brushed up against Eskel’s cloaked mind, but the mental bearskin rug held firm and concealed all but Eskel’s surface thoughts. The chaos flowed smoothly over and around Eskel without bothering to lift and look under the figurative rug, satisfied by the truth: Eskel did not know the blue-eyed prisoner. Eskel knew he’d gotten lucky; his illusion might not have been strong enough to hide his reaction if he’d actually known the man.

His relief was short-lived, however, because Eskel felt it like a blow to the solar plexus when the chaos moved on and set its talons into the prisoner.

The man shuddered and made a soft keening sound of pain, as if he’d taken a physical punch to the gut, and he collapsed to his knees with a moan. He hunched over, as if he could stop the searing pain of mental invasion by making himself as small as possible.

It was agony to watch, but Eskel held himself rigidly in check. He didn’t understand why Dijkstra and the mage—if the owl was indeed a mage, or at least a Source—was torturing the poor man. But he couldn’t demand any answers here. Every instinct said that he needed to play this off as if he really were a cold, unfeeling Witcher. He forced himself to watch without reacting to the despicable act of mental invasion.

After a few endless, agonizing moments, the Chaos withdrew back across the room like a receding storm. The prisoner stayed doubled-over, shaking and making a valiant effort to catch his breath.

“Hmm. Seems you don’t know this Witcher after all,” Dijkstra said, apropos of nothing, though Eskel heard the faint beat of an owl’s near-silent wings. “Shame. At any rate,” Dijkstra continued cheerfully, “we’ve waited long enough for a Witcher to take on your contract, Julian. His Majesty grows weary of housing and feeding a worthless traitor. So either marry this Witcher, or hang on the morrow. It’s your choice”

Eskel didn’t bother to say that he’d already refused to marry the convict. It was clear that he had as little choice in this as the prisoner—as Julian—did.

Julian said nothing. He kept his eyes locked to the ground, a faint tremble running through his wasted frame. It had to be the lingering pain from that rough magic, surely, but he also seemed terribly resigned to whatever the Fates had in store for him: life by a Witcher’s side, or death. Even Eskel could admit that it probably amounted to the same thing.

“It’s a simple question, isn’t it?” Dijkstra asked rhetorically, diving back to his benevolent-father act with gusto. “Julian, you’re a poet: surely you know that where there’s life, there’s hope? So why choose the hangman’s noose when you can be on your way with another dashing Witcher?”

Julian looked up at Dijkstra again. This time, his blue eyes were blazing. His former meekness and mildness had evaporated like fog before the sun.

This prisoner was no timid mouse, Eskel realized. He was a fierce creature. And he certainly wasn’t afraid of a toad like Dijkstra. Something in the room had made him flinch and shy away, but it hadn’t been the Redanian spymaster, or even the Source of that terrible, powerful magic.

“What, does this beast make you nervous?” Dijkstra said in mock surprise, his oily black gaze shifting to trace over Eskel’s scars, the heavy bulk of his body. “We both know that you’ve bent over for at least one of these mutants already. This one can’t be all that different from your infamous White Wolf.”

For a split second, it looked like Julian was ready to launch himself over Djikstra’s desk and attempt to tear out the spymaster’s throat with his teeth. He raised his manacled wrists and flexed his bandaged fingers, as if testing out the motion of strangling Dijkstra. But the movement seemed to cause him more pain than even that brutal invasion of magic.

Julian slumped over again, though he started humming softly. Eskel thought it was just pained noise, at first. A moan building into a wail, but no. That was a melody.

Julian hummed faster and louder as he caught his breath and raised his head again. He kept going until he was staring up Dijkstra, looking at the spymaster as if he was a lump of cow shite on the young man’s boots.

And then Julian started singing. Loudly, joyfully, full-throated and unapologetic: the sound of a man with nothing to lose. He got to his feet, and virtually spit out the words right into Djikstra’s stony face:

“So lock me up and sock me up
And throw away the key.
Go fuck yourself, you fucking whoreson
'Cause you're through fuckin' with me!”

He took a step back, and bowed as deeply and as gracefully as any courtier.

Eskel wanted to clap for him, throw roses at his feet. He was…magnificent. There was no way he could allow this brave, beautiful, defiant man to hang. Even if Dijkstra was lying about the bard’s friendship with Geralt, Eskel couldn’t walk away now.

“I’ll marry him,” Eskel blurted out. Both Julian and Dijkstra stopped glaring at each other and turned to stare at Eskel in surprise. “But only if he’s willing. And I want to talk it over with him first.”

“Oh? What’s left to discuss?” Dijkstra scoffed. “Surely Julian here would prefer marriage over death?”

“I still need to hear that from him,” Eskel shrugged, barely glancing at Julian, who was staring at him with those wide blue eyes. “Even if he’s willing to marry a Witcher, it doesn’t mean he’s willing to marry me,” he added, brushing a hand over his scars.

Djikstra rolled his eyes. “As you wish. You have five minutes to settle it, and no more. I don’t have all day to indulge your pathetic excuse for a conscience, Witcher.”

As soon as Dijkstra and the guards left them alone in the room—with the owl for ‘company’—Julian slumped to his knees again.

He tipped backward as soon as he hit the floor, and Eskel caught him before he could crack his head open against the desk. He held Julian upright for a moment, his big hands wrapped securely around the prisoner’s thin shoulders. He couldn’t let go until he was sure Julian wouldn’t dash his brains out on the furniture or the stone floor.

“You’re all right,” Eskel murmured to him. “Just rest a moment.” He set Julian down gently, and settled back on his haunches to give the man some space. He didn’t want to be looming over the prisoner when Julian finally noticed the scars. His mutilated face was bad enough at a distance; up close, the visual was enough to make most humans turn green and flee.

“Thanks,” Julian huffed out, eyes still closed. He lay prone on the floor for a few breaths, likely waiting out a wave of nausea, and then twisted around to lean up against Dijkstra’s desk.

After a few more panting breaths, he finally opened those bright blue eyes to fix on Eskel’s face. Surprisingly, he didn't flinch, or try to avert his gaze, or stare at Eskel in frozen horror. Instead, something in his expression softened, and he looked at Eskel. Really looked at him, the way only Geralt and Vesemir and Lambert did. Like he was just another person.

Then Julian said, “Hmm. Dijkstra was right. You are rather dashing.”

Eskel blinked at him, utterly perplexed. He was prepared for any of the usual reactions: terror, fear, horror, even miserable pity. But not this charming irreverence. “Did you hit your head?” Eskel asked.

For some reason, that made Julian laugh. It was a beautiful, bright, buoyant sound, like a sparrow flitting around a closed room. It made Eskel smile too.

Eskel rose smoothly to his feet and sniffed around until he found a wine goblet that someone had abandoned on the mantle over the hearth. There was still some liquid left in it, and Eskel’s cursory sniff confirmed that the wine hadn’t turned or been laced with anything suspicious.

He crouched down again and offered the goblet to Julian, careful to leave a copious amount of distance between them so the lad wouldn’t feel hemmed-in by Eskel’s bulk.

Art by Ilisidi, https://www.tumblr.com/liaonyxrayne

“We haven’t got much time,” Eskel whispered, mindful of the owl in the corner of the room.

He focused on keeping the covered bearskin-surface of his mind smooth and unruffled while he worked underneath to weave a silencing spell. He could cast that spell  alongside Quen, and that would give them a bit of cover, at least. He still wasn’t sure what—or who—was inhabiting that owl. He also had to assume a few other listening spells and cantrips were secreted around the spymaster's office.

Once Eskel finished the silencing spell, he cast Quen to form the shield over both of them. The silencing spell would muffle all sound and conceal their movements, at least for a little while, and the Quen shield was invisible to anyone from the outside, including other magic users. But from within, Quen looked like a loosely-woven, shimmering cloak of transparent gold.

Julian gazed up in wonder at the golden barrier above their heads, his perfect pink mouth locked in an ‘O’ of surprise. “What—” he began to say, but Eskel cut him off.

“Careful. There’s a mage in the room with us. Or at least a powerful Source,” he whispered. “The shield will give us a few moments of privacy as long as we don’t move or speak too loudly.”

Julian seemed a bit taken aback, but eventually licked his lips, and nodded.

Eskel dug under his gambeson to fish out his medallion by the chain. The silver wolf’s head gleamed under the shimmering golden glow of Quen.

“We have a mutual acquaintance, I think,” Eskel said. He waited for Julian’s slow, careful nod of understanding before he tucked the medallion away again, safely out of sight.

“I swear on his life that I only want to help you,” Eskel vowed. “I will save you, Julian. But you need to agree to Dijkstra’s deal. The rest can be settled once you’re out of here and safely away from these people. But I swear, no harm will come to you while you’re in my charge.” He made no attempt to keep the emotion out of his voice. Julian had to trust him, or this would all fall apart.

Julian was staring at him, clearly struggling to process what was happening. Eskel wished he could give him more time to decide, but they had none to spare. He could hear Dijkstra arguing with the guards a few hallways over. Their tiny bubble of privacy would pop at any moment.

“Did…did he send you?” Julian’s voice trembled, as if everything hinged on this one question. “Our ‘mutual acquaintance’?”

“No,” Eskel said gently. Julian slumped like he’d taken another blow to the midsection, and that bright light of hope in his eyes died out. “I’ve been searching for him. And the Fates led me to you.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Julian’s words had a ring of dull, agonized repetition to them. As if he’d been screaming those words for months.

“That’s fine,” Eskel said quickly. He didn’t like that cold, dead tone Julian was using, or the way he was starting to withdraw. “Just—please agree to whatever they demand of you. Please.”

Eskel couldn’t trust his damaged lips or his scarred, frozen face to convey his sincerity. Instead, Eskel begged Julian to believe him with his eyes, his voice. “I won’t hurt you,” he promised again.

Julian shrugged, as if he didn’t care what might happen to him. He tried to rally, though. “What’s your name?”

“Eskel.”

“I’m Jaskier,” he said. “Not Julian, if you please. Unless I’ve done something to annoy you.”

Jaskier-not-Julian stuck out his hand to shake like they were introducing themselves at a tavern or a village market, rather than crouched against a spymaster’s desk to discuss a foolhardy marriage scheme.

“A pleasure,” Eskel said, quite sincerely. He reached out to shake Jaskier’s offered hand, but realized that he couldn’t risk squeezing those bandaged fingers. Instead, he pressed the tips of his fingers to the soft inside of Jaskier’s wrist, careful not to put any pressure on the bone.

It was just a light, glancing touch, although Eskel saw something move and sharpen behind Jaskier’s beautiful eyes. He didn’t dare to examine that, either. There was more than enough to worry about without fretting that he’d already managed to offend Jaskier in the midst of all this madness.

He dropped Quen with a flick of the wrist and stood, careful to catch Jaskier’s elbow instead of his hand to help him up.

Dijkstra’s footsteps sounded out in the hall, and Eskel had just enough time to replace the goblet on the mantle and return to where he’d been standing before the spymaster entered.

The owl in the corner hadn’t moved. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. It was one more thing he didn’t have time to worry about.

“What's the verdict?” Dijkstra asked. “Is it to be hanging, or a wedding?”

“I’ll marry the Witcher,” Jaskier said.

***

Chapter Text

Everything was happening almost too quickly for Jaskier to follow.

Time had run on so slowly for months. He’d been left alone, starved of light and life and company, discarded like a broken instrument whose usefulness had come to an end. Now light, and sound, and the stench of Jaskier's own filthy body were crowding his senses. He felt sick with all the sudden stimulation.

The funny thing was, Jaskier had been resigned to his fate. When they’d dragged him out of his cell in Deireadh prison and taken him up to Djikstra’s office, he’d been prepared to die. He might even have done so happily, after having snuck in such a marvellous final performance of Whoreson Prison Blues. But then…

Well. Then the Witcher had happened. He'd given Jaskier something to drink, and he'd flashed an exact replica of Geralt's medallion. He'd said he would "get you out of here" and "get you away from these people.". That promise had pierced through the cloud of fear and exhaustion and pain Jaskier had been living in for so many months.

The Witcher had even said I will save you. He'd said it just like Geralt might have, if Geralt had ever come for him. He'd said it with gravity and raw honesty, and enough conviction that even Jaskier was half-convinced Eskel actually meant what he said.

The trouble was, Jaskier couldn't trust those sorts of promises anymore. It would ultimately turn out to be another illusion, an elaborate trick of the Sorceress’ design. A cruel feint that Dijkstra had thought up, maybe. Dijkstra had been right about one thing: Jaskier was a poet. It was in his nature to cling to hope. He'd had a brief taste of it again, down on the floor with Eskel under that golden Quen sign.

But hope was no longer enough to sustain him. Hope, in fact, was a dangerous beast. He'd learned that lesson all too well.

Jaskier was having trouble staying on his feet. He felt dizzy and quite ill. This ringbinding, or marriage ceremony, or handfasting, or whatever the fuck they were doing right now, was taking too long.

Dijkstra had summoned a mage to officiate their 'wedding'. Not the Sorceress, thank the gods. He hadn't seen the terrifying woman with dark curly hair and red lips and haunting brown eyes in weeks. No, this was some lower court mage, a flunky whose job it was to drone on and on about The Power of Redemption and the Holy Fire that Lives Within Us All.

Jaskier had been to many handfastings as a performer and a guest. They were all the same: a bit of preaching, the recitation of a few insufferable homilies, and then the interminable vows. Jaskier's hands were throbbing too much to really pay attention to whatever the mage was asking him to repeat. The pain and the light and the sickness swirling in his gut felt more real than anything the court mage was saying. Jaskier only wanted to return to the cold, quiet dark of his cell. He swayed forward and almost collapsed to his knees again. The strange Witcher was just as fast as Geralt: he caught Jaskier's upper arm before he could tip forward, and then gently tugged him back until Jaskier had found his feet once more. He didn't let Jaskier go, however: he kept his hand locked around Jaskier's upper arm as if he knew Jaskier was ready to collapse. Perhaps he could stay on his feet. As long as he didn’t need to move, or speak, and Eskel just kept holding him...

Holding him up. Yes, Jaskier could do this. He just had to stay on his feet, and not puke on Eskel's boots.

The mage finally seemed to run out of trite statements about the Eternal Flame and the sacrament of marriage. He set his heavy officiant tome down with a thump and pulled out two truly hideous black metal rings.

Jaskier’s head was swimming and his hands hurt so badly he could barely see past the pain. But even he could tell that the thick black rings hadn’t been forged with any aesthetic goal in mind. Each ring was a flat, lifeless lump of metal, black as coal and irregularly shaped into a lopsided oval rather than a true circle. Even a pauper would be ashamed to offer his handfasted bride or groom a ring like that.

And he was meant to wear one of those hideous rings for the rest of his life? (“Death or a 25-year sentence, whichever comes first,” Dijkstra had cheerfully added during the sentencing portion of the marriage ceremony).

The flunky-mage was babbling again, holding each ring up to the candle burning on the altar and chanting. This was the curse bit, Jaskier supposed, but he was too exhausted and sick to pay much attention. He didn't dare look at the altar ringed with burning candles: it would make sick panic rise up in his chest. He kept his eyes locked to the floor, and focused on the incantation as a way to distract himself.

His Elder must not have been up to snuff, or perhaps the dialect was too obscure, because Jaskier couldn’t begin to make sense of the incantation:

Dwy galon, un dyhead,
Dwy dafod ond un iaith,
Dwy raff yn cydio’n ddolen,
Dau enaid ond un daith.

There was something in there about ropes and hearts and possibly tongues? His exhausted brain couldn’t untangle it.

“Take up your ring, Witcher,” the flunky-mage said in Common.

Jaskier tried to focus enough to watch, lightheaded and almost hypnotized by the ugliness of the rings. The giant Witcher picked up the larger of the two rings, and slipped it onto the fourth finger of his own left hand.

“And now, the Ring of the Convict,” the mage said, drawing a blue ring of cold fire around what was definitely Jaskier’s ring before the mage—ugh—kissed it. “You must learn to fear, and to obey,” the mage whispered over the ring. He handed it to Eskel.

Eskel held up the ring and turned to Jaskier. He glanced down uncertainly at the filthy bandages wrapped around Jaskier’s fingers. They both realized at the same time: the ring would never fit over the wads of bandages around his index, middle and ring finger. The thought of Eskel trying to jam that tight black ring of metal over one of his injured digits made Jaskier flinch away.

Eskel caught at his wrist gently. With slow, deliberate movements, he slipped the ring down over Jaskier’s uninjured left thumb. It was an unconventional choice, and Jaskier expected that the ring would slip off immediately. But with a twitch of the mage’s hand, Jaskier’s ring adjusted to a snug fit around his thumb.

“The rings cannot be removed until the sentence is at an end, or one of you expires. Convict,” the mage said sharply to Jaskier, “Should you remove the ring, death will follow immediately. Witcher," the mage said, turning to Eskel, "if you remove your ring, or the Convict’s ring, he shall die instantly.”

“No ring-removal. Got it,” Jaskier muttered. Even to his own ears, he sounded a little drunk. It was probably the fever that was making him feel so light-headed: he knew the burns had been left to fester for too long. He might have lived through the unending fucking nightmare of the last four months, and the whole miserable year before that, only to die right after getting married to a Witcher to secure his freedom.

The irony alone would turn Jaskier into one pissed-off wraith.

“You are now husband and, ah, wife," the court mage announced. "Convict, obey your husband in all things: he is your lord and master, your jailor and your saviour. Heed him, care for him, tend to his needs, and you will be redeemed and rewarded. Defy him, and burn for eternity in the light of the Holy Flame.”

“Terrific,” Jaskier said, and then giggled because, what a fucking bargain. He thought he saw Eskel’s lip twitch, but it was hard to tell. He was wearing a Very Serious Witcher face: the expression Jaskier was intimately familiar with, but the face was a stranger’s. 

It was that thought that finally made him break. Jaskier puked all over Eskel’s boots.

***

“I am so sorry,” Jaskier kept repeating, over and over, as they made their way through the labyrinthine government administration complex and out into the familiar streets of Oxenfurt.

“It’s fine,” Eskel grunted, sounding so much like Geralt that Jaskier was rocked again by that unfamiliar-familiar sense of dislocation.

He shook off any thought of his former friend, and focused instead on drawing in deep draughts of cold, clear air: his first free breath in five months.

'Free' was probably a relative term. Dijkstra wasn’t going to let him go so easily. Jaskier fully expected to find himself back in that freezing, stinking cell in Deireadh as soon as Dijkstra got what he wanted. Jaskier resolved to enjoy this small taste of freedom while he could.

Not that he had the time to idle around. He had to stumble unsteadily after Eskel, scraping his bare feet on the freezing cobblestones as he hurried to keep pace. Eskel glanced at him and, after a moment, shortened his strides. Jaskier tried not to feel so pathetically grateful.

“Where are we going?” was all Jaskier could think to ask. Eskel had seemed kind enough back under the shimmering golden shield in Dijkstra’s office, but now it was starting to sink in that Eskel was a complete stranger. A stranger Jaskier was supposed to call 'husband'. 

“I'll get us a room at the Loose Moose Inn.” Eskel didn’t seem very interested in looking at Jaskier. In fact, he kept glancing away to survey the quiet streets for any sign that they were being followed. Jaskier wanted to tell him not to bother—of course Dijkstra was watching—but Jaskier wasn’t sure what, or how much, he could safely say to Eskel. There was a not-insignificant chance that Dijkstra had hired Eskel himself, after all. The old spymaster could easily have tracked down another Witcher and paid him to pretend to be a friend of Geralt’s. Jaskier had been pathetically eager to believe Eskel. It had only taken a flash of a medallion. Dijkstra would just need to sit back and wait for Jaskier to voluntarily reveal everything that hadn’t already been tortured out of him months ago.

If Dijkstra and his Sorceress were trying to trick him, well, bravo to them. Eskel had been quite convincing. Moreover, his Witcher medallion had been a perfect replica of Geralt’s. Jaskier tried not to think too much about what that implied. If someone had the time to study Geralt's silver medallion and make an exact copy, that meant that Geralt was either already in custody--unlikely, given the way Dijkstra had been fishing for answers--or someone who knew far more about Witchers than Jaskier was working with the Redanians.

That was possible, but Jaskier had no idea if it was likely that one Witcher might betray another. Geralt had never explained what bonds, if any, lay between the men of his profession. He’d never mentioned any friends at all, but then Geralt hadn’t considered Jaskier to be one of those, either, despite having travelled together for seventeen years.

Not that he could bear thinking about that mess right now.

At any rate, given how poorly Geralt seemed to treat his ‘friends’, it seemed not only possible, but highly probable, that Geralt’s fellow Witchers might conspire against him with the Redanians.

Eskel kept them moving at a quick pace through the quiet evening streets, and it didn't take long to reach the Loose Moose Tavern. Jaskier almost teared up at the sight of the dilapidated old inn.

His very first public performance had been held right here, in the Moose’s downstairs taproom. That evening felt as remote as the stars. He’d just turned sixteen, a fresh-faced young student overflowing with false confidence and a lot of very sour ale. It had been a magical night: he’d rewritten a few mediocre ballads with rather raunchy lyrics, and the crowd had loved it. He’d known it then, standing on that narrow platform stage, clutching his old secondhand lute and bowing to raptuous applause, that this was his destiny. Jaskier knew he was going to be a travelling bard.

He’d left for Posada six days later, determined to travel across the entire Continent and learn how to ply his trade.

Coincidentally, Jaskier’s last performance had also been at the Loose Moose, too, as he'd played there the night he'd gotten himself arrested. It had been quite a good show, actually. His band had nailed all the tricky bits of “Her Sweet Kiss,” and he’d done a hell of a rendition of “Burn Butcher Burn" before that witch Yennefer of Vengerberg had shown up and everything had gone to hell.

If he’d known it was going to be his very last performance as a bard, Jaskier might have picked a different, less Geralt-centric setlist. But at least he’d gone out on a figurative (and literal) high note.

Eskel headed straight for the innkeeper, Nils, who'd gone pale and was staring in mute horror at Jaskier. From Nils’ perspective, Jaskier understood his concern. The last time Jaskier had been at the Loose Moose, he’d been fine. A little sad, perhaps, and quite drunk, but he’d been functioning. Then he’d vanished, only to return months later looking half-starved, filthy, and obviously injured in the company of an enormous and particularly formidable-looking Witcher.

Of course Jaskier’s old friend Nils would naturally be worried that Jaskier was being held against his will.

Nils might even attempt to get Jaskier away from Eskel, or at least demand to know why Jaskier had materialized in the Loose Moose looking like a kidnapping victim who’d been dragged through the sewers of Oxenfurt.

Nils’ attention shifted to Eskel, taking in the Witcher's intimidating height, broad shoulders, the twin swords on the back, and the deep scars on his fiercely scowling face.

After a few quick seconds of mental math, Nils apparently decided to keep any objections to himself. “Will you require a room, Master Witcher?” he asked politely.

Oh. Oh that was…that was unforgivable! Jaskier was certainly never going to perform here again.

Jaskier was half-expecting to hear a familiar grunt of refusal. Instead, Eskel said very politely, “Thank you, that’s very kind. A room and, if it's not too much trouble, where might we find a bath?”

Jaskier ignored Nils’ stuttered explanation on how to find the nearest public baths, and only tuned back in when Eskel took the key from Nils and turned to head for the stairs. Jaskier trailed after him and then finally remembered what he’d been trying to ask since the ringbinding ceremony.

“Eskel, how long have you known Geralt?”

“Wait a moment,” Eskel said, this time because he was fumbling to unlock the door to their room. The lock finally clicked and Jaskier, who’d been sagging against the door, almost fell into the room. Eskel caught him before he could hit the ground, just as he had in Djikstra’s office. However, this time Eskel’s touch was accompanied by a strange little electric jolt of static awareness, like Jaskier had just rubbed his feet across a floor rug and then touched metal.

The shock of the odd sensation made him flinch. Eskel immediately let him go and took a step back.

“Sorry,” Eskel said, rubbing at the scars on his face. “Didn’t mean to grab you.”

“It’s fine,” Jaskier muttered awkwardly. “I’m just...feeling a bit lightheaded, that’s all.”

“That’s understandable." Eskel's probably intended to give Jaskier a tentative smile, but the expression pulled at his scars and made his smile look more like a snarl. In fact, he looked a bit, well. Wolfish.

It was that sharp eyetooth, Jaskier decided. Whatever had caused the four deep scars that raked down the right side of Eskel's face had also taken out a small chunk of his upper lip. Unless he was frowning, or focused on keeping his mouth tense, the tender flesh pulled back to leave one sharp white canine exposed in a perpetual teeth-barring snarl. When Eskel tried to smile, both that tooth and its mate were fully exposed, and together the two long, sharp, slightly curved teeth looked much more like fangs than human teeth.

Between the scars that pulled his lips into a sneer, and those sharp canines, Eskel looked distinctly like a big predator baring its teeth.

Jaskier sighed at himself. If Eskel was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, there was nothing he could do about it tonight. He’d have to sort out the Witcher’s intentions tomorrow. Along with everything else.

The room boasted little in the way of furniture, but there was one enormous bed with a plush mattress that looked very inviting. Right now, his single best option was to lie down and close his eyes, and hope that Eskel was exactly who (and what) he claimed to be.

Jaskier sat down on the mattress with a low, almost unseemly groan of pleasure. Gods, this was heaven compared to the cold stone floor of his cell. He felt like he could lie down and sleep for the next thousand years. He knew he ought to wash first, or at least give himself a cursory once-over with a rag. He was absolutely filthy and reeked of shit, sweat, and a dozen other foul odours. However, he couldn’t use his hands. Even running a washcloth over his body would soak the bandages and leave his burned fingers waterlogged. That would only hasten the infection in his fingers, and threaten what little healthy tissue remained.

Thinking about the burns made Jaskier feel bleakly defeated. Sleep was the cure. He'd sleep, and worry about everything else tomorrow. He lay down on his back, and closed his eyes.

Eskel moved around the room, opening and closing the trunk at the foot of the bed, investigating the wardrobe, checking the lock on the windows. The familiar sounds were almost comforting. Geralt had done exactly the same thing every time they’d rented a room together.

“Um, Eskel?” he mumbled, already half-asleep. “Please, tell me. How long have you known Geralt?”

“A long time,” Eskel said. “We trained together.”

“That’s what the medallion means, right?” Jaskier said. “You’re both, ah, wolves?”

“School of the Wolf,” Eskel corrected. It sounded like there was more he wanted to say, but Jaskier was feeling so drowsy now, he wasn’t sure he’d even remember the conversation tomorrow. Well, at least he’d been right about the wolf thing.

“Try to get some sleep,” Eskel said softly. “I’ll get some food. Be back in an hour or so.”

Jaskier heard the squeak of the door, the dull thud of footsteps leaving, and then there was only sweet, painless oblivion.

***

“Jaskier, sit up for me, okay? Need you to drink this.”

The man's voice cut through Jaskier's deep, dreamless sleep, and Jaskier groaned. He'd barely closed his eyes, and now someone--one of Dijkstra's goons, most likely--was harassing him. Jaskier swatted at the man ineffectually and without opening his eyes. He hissed when one of his bandaged fingers grazed someone's beefy arm.

The whole world flashed white-hot, and then everything dimmed and narrowed down to the agonizing pain that seared up from his left hand to his elbow. Jaskier whimpered like an animal, instinctively hunching around his injured hands. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, trying desperately not to vomit. Again.

“Oh sweet fucking Melitele that hurts!” he groaned, once the pain receded enough to let him speak. The sharp, stabbing wave of pain slowly ebbed into a dull, steady, slightly more bearable throb.

He opened his eyes, slowly letting reality filter back in and settle over his fuzzy-headedness awareness until he could make sense of his surroundings again.

Right. He was in a room at the Loose Moose tavern, not the black void of his cell underneath Oxenfurt. He'd married a Witcher, and the man himself was frowning down at Jaskier like he was a puzzle Eskel dearly wanted to solve. Jaskier knew that puzzled frown. It had been one of Geralt’s habitual expressions, especially during the early years of their acquaintance.

Aside from sharing a profession, and some distinctly similar facial expressions, Eskel and Geralt looked a bit alike too, Jaskier realized. Eskel’s amber eyes were darker than Geralt’s bright citrine irises. His were hooded and almond-shaped, too, instead of round. However, Eskel did have the same vertical pupils, and a similar nose and high cheekbones. His skin was a deep, rich bronze, and he had dark brown hair with a reddish undertone, instead of Geralt’s infamous bright silver-white hair. Nevertheless, there was a pronounced physical similarity between Eskel and Geralt, aside from their different colouring. Eskel was slightly taller than Geralt, and broader, but had that same muscular build and swordsman's grace and economy of movement.

The resemblance was deeper than the physical similarities. There was something about the quiet, cautious way Eskel held himself that matched Geralt’s eternal wariness. The two men moved in such a markedly similar way, and it took Jaskier a moment to place exactly why. Geralt had been very careful around Jaskier during the first few months of their friendship. He'd forever been hunching down or crouching, always trying not to loom over Jaskier. Geralt had been trying, in his own awkward, endearing way, not to startle Jaskier, or overwhelm him with his size and strength.

Eskel was moving in exactly that same way now.

He was waiting, Jaskier realized. Just like Geralt had waited, all those years ago. Eskel expected Jaskier to flinch away, to shudder in revulsion. It had taken Geralt almost the entire first year they'd travelled together to relax and accept that Jaskier wasn’t afraid of him.

The thought of having to train yet another Witcher was exhausting. Oh, Jaskier knew he'd eventually be able to convince Eskel that he wasn't afraid of him, either. And he wasn't, Jaskier realized in surprise. Scarring aside, Eskel was quite handsome. He was dark-haired and strong-jawed, with a dimple in his chin and a broad, slightly lopsided nose that gave him a bit of a rakish air. His warm honey-amber eyes were Eskel’s best feature, Jaskier decided. He looked...kind. 

And dashing, just as Jaskier had said.

Still, every time Jaskier met Eskel's gaze, he expected to see some of Geralt there. The difference was taking some getting used to.

“Jaskier?” Eskel took a seat on the creaky chair by the bedside and began an almost comical effort to scrunch down and make himself seem smaller. The man was roughly the size of a barn. It was a hopeless cause, but it made Jaskier smile.

“Can I take a look at your fingers?” Eskel asked him, examining the dirty bandages wrapped around each of Jaskier's fingers.

Jaskier hesitated. He hated unwrapping his fingers. It was a long, agonizing process, and without fresh water or other supplies, it was impossible to remove the wrappings without also pulling off layers of damaged skin and usually whatever scabs had tried to form over the burns. And of course, the infected burns were a horrible sight. Jaskier couldn’t look at his exposed fingers without crying.

“I…I think I’d rather do that tomorrow,” Jaskier said, trying to keep his voice steady.

Eskel nodded and said in a carefully neutral tone, “Of course.”

Jaskier knew it was foolish to delay treating his hands. At this point, even with swift intervention and the attention of a very skilled healer, Jaskier would be lucky to keep his fingers at all, much less use them. He'd realized a month ago that he was probably never going to be able to play the lute again. Or any other instrument that required even a modicum of dexterity.

“Can you try to drink this?” Eskel said, holding up a bowl that smelled strongly of salt and tallow.

Jaskier looked at the bowl and bit his lip. He was still clutching his hands to his chest, keeping them up out of the way so they wouldn’t get accidentally bumped or touched or injured. He couldn’t bear to reach out and take the bowl. Not if it set off another searing-hot flare of agony.

“I really do just want to sleep,” Jaskier mumbled. He didn’t mean to sound petulant or ungrateful, but he couldn’t make himself touch anything. And he didn’t want to drink Eskel’s weird salty broth, or do anything except lie on this comfortable bed and not move his hands.

“It’s okay,” Eskel said after a long beat of silence. “I understand.”

That drew an inelegant snort out of Jaskier, and Eskel raised his eyebrow.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier chuckled. “But that’s a ridiculous statement! ‘I understand’,” he repeated in poor mimicry of Eskel’s deep, rusty scrape of a voice, which also (unfortunately) reminded him of Geralt. “You're incapable of understanding. If you were injured like this—which you wouldn’t be of course—you'd be much braver about it. You’d just…get on with it. Do whatever needs to be done. You’d drink your foul potions, and sew up your own gaping wounds, and you’d just…you’d go on, wouldn’t you? You're a Witcher. You’d never be weak, or afraid, and you'd would never cry—”

And that, of course, opened the floodgates.

Jaskier felt his lower lip tremble, and then he burst into big, pitiful, humiliating sobs that made his throat hurt and his eyes ache. He felt hot tears roll down his cheeks and into his filthy, matted beard and then down to seep into the creases in his neck. He was so disgusting. And weak. And useless.

His first night of freedom in months, and he spent it sobbing and clutching his injured hands, breaking down over the idea of touching a godsdamn soup bowl.

The thought just made Jaskier sob harder. He only stopped long enough to draw in great hiccupping breaths of air. He couldn't breathe, but he couldn't stop crying, either. He didn’t know how to stop.

It occurred to Jaskier, after a long stretch of what could only be described as ‘high-pitched sobbing,’ that someone was singing. He stopped crying, at least temporarily, just so he could listen.

It was Eskel. He was a little hesitant about it, and slightly out-of-tune, but with such a deep bass voice that hardly mattered. The song rumbled up out of Eskel like it was coming up from the depths of the earth itself. It was a low, comforting hum that finally resolved into audible lyrics.

Jaskier thought at first that Eskel was singing in another language, but no: only the accent was strange. The words sounded unfamiliar because of a strange northern lilt, but he could understand Eskel’s song well enough when he focused.

De ole hen she cackled,
Callin’ to de sun,
Sunny days, sunny ways,
Bright the mornin’ is.

But den de ole hen, she cackled,
‘Chicks! Chicks!’
Run! Run!’
Clouds be comin’ in.

It was a cradle song, he realized. A song meant for comforting a small child. That ought to have offended him, perhaps, but it didn’t feel like Eskel was confirming Jaskier’s weakness, or trying to make fun of him. He was merely offering comfort. Simple, honest comfort, in the midst of what felt like a very long, very dark night.

Jaskier’s tears dried and he relaxed his arms slowly, lowering his hands out of the tight protective curl against his chest until they lay flush against his sides again. He didn't dare try to move his fingers, but even the bone-deep throbbing felt better now that he wasn’t so tensed up. He sniffled and tried to rub his runny nose against his dirty sleeve.

He heard the squeak of the chair, and tried not to flinch too badly when Eskel wiped at his nose with a scratchy linen handkerchief.

“Better now?” Eskel asked. There was a line of little red embroidered roses on the hem of Eskel's handkerchief, which seemed so oddly out of place for a Witcher that it distracted Jaskier from feeling awkward.

“A little,” Jaskier sniffed. “I’m so sorry. I—”

“Don’t apologize,” Eskel said. “Everyone has a breaking point, Jaskier. Everyone. Witchers, humans, doesn’t matter. When it hurts, it hurts. Sometimes crying is the only thing that helps.”

“I suppose.” He had to bite down on his first response, What does a Witcher know about crying? Saying that felt too mean-spirited, especially in light of Eskel’s surprising kindness. He was still slightly stunned that Eskel had sung to him, wiped his nose. Brought him food.

“Did you really make me soup?” Jaskier sniffled.

“Just a broth,” Eskel corrected gently, as if the distinction made any of this even slightly less surreal.

At least Jaskier could see what Eskel wanted him to drink. The bowl held a small portion of a dark brown liquid. “It’ll help with the fever and the pain. Might help you sleep a little, too.”

“Thanks.” Jaskier tried to wiggle up into enough of an incline where he could hopefully drink the broth without spilling and scalding himself. He still couldn’t make himself reach out for the bowl, though.

After a moment of indecision, he finally asked, “Can you… can you hold it for me, please?”

Eskel sat forward in the chair and held out the bowl. Jaskier set his lips on the rim, and Eskel gently tilted it until a little of the hot liquid splashed against Jaskier’s tongue.

It tasted like beef fat and salt, with just a hint of something bitter and medicinal added in. Likely willowbark, or celandine: Geralt’s favourite ingredients for healing. Jaskier could only hope Eskel knew enough about human medicine to have omitted the drowner brains and necrophage plasma.

Jaskier drank the whole bowl in slow, careful sips.

“I haven’t been able to eat on my own,” he confessed, once the bowl was empty. “Over the last few weeks, I haven’t even been able to hold a fork. Or…or even take a piss,” he admitted, cheeks burning. “I don't know if you intend to travel, but I might slow you down. Just at first, I mean,” he added quickly, feeling his heartbeat kick up. Because what if Eskel left him? What if the ringbound curse was everything the mage at the ceremony had claimed? Jaskier could die in agony, or have a seizure and slip into a coma. What would he do then?

“Hey, shhh, don’t worry about that,” he heard Eskel say. The rumble of his voice cut through Jaskier’s panic, at least a little. Enough so he could focus on the Witcher's next words.

“You just need a little time to heal up, Jaskier,” Eskel told him. “We’ll stay here for at least a few days. You'll get your strength back, and we'll find a healer to look at your hands. You'll be okay.”

Jaskier frowned and licked his lips. “Can you afford that? I mean, I don’t have any money. Everything I had was seized by the Crown.”

Not that he’d had much to begin with. Oh, he’d usually made a fairly decent living during the winters, working as a music tutor or teaching the odd college class at the college when he wasn’t off gallivanting with Geralt. Some of his sheet music and books of poetry had sold well, and he’d always been able to busk when he needed a spare bit of coin on the road. Travelling with Geralt hadn't been all that expensive to begin with, and Jaskier had eventually managed to squirrel away enough to buy his own little townhouse in Oxenfurt. Something for my retirement, he'd often thought.

The townhouse had been situated close to the college on the other side of Guildenstern Bridge. There’d been an apple tree in the courtyard, and a bower of rose vines over the door. He’d spent his last winter away from Geralt fixing it up, painting and sanding the floors and putting up curtains, buying furniture. It hadn’t been anything close to the luxurious trappings he’d known growing up as a Viscount’s son, but he’d loved every inch of that little stone house. It had been the only real home he’d ever had.

He'd been so eager to show his little house to Geralt. He’d planned to do it after Caingorn, once they’d completed their regular seasonal loop back through Oxenfurt before Geralt headed east for the winter. Before Jaskier had left to join Geralt that spring on the dragon hunt, he’d written out a little message and tacked it to the door of the room he’d set aside for the Witcher. It had been less prosaic than his usual compositions, but then again he’d written it for Geralt, who’d never had any patience for flowery phrases:

“When you can’t go north, or you need a rest from the Path, come here instead. You’ll always have a home with me.”

It was all gone, now. Whatever future he’d imagined, whatever home he’d intended to make, had died on that mountaintop in Caingorn.

It had taken him months to travel all the way back to Oxenfurt on his own. The house had been just as he’d left it, swept clean and waiting for him to make his grand gesture to Geralt.

He’d torn that note off the door and burned it. He'd been tempted to burn the whole house to the ground, actually. Instead, Jaskier had gotten very drunk, thrown a few wild parties, and sold the house to buy a ship he could use to ferry elven refugees to Xintria. Someone ought to have a chance at a happy ending, he’d thought.

“Anyway,” Jaskier said to Eskel, “Please don’t beggar yourself on my account.”

Eskel was watching him. Jaskier couldn’t read his expressions well enough to know what he was thinking, so he waited for the Witcher to speak.

“I can afford it,” Eskel said. “Dijkstra paid a thousand crowns for your ‘contract’. It's your money, as far as I’m concerned,” he added quickly, gesturing to his saddlebag. "You can have every last copper.”

What a strange Witcher Eskel was turning out to be.

“There’s a good market here,” Eskel continued before Jaskier could refuse. “We’ll get you a coin purse tomorrow, plus some warm clothing. That mage tried to convince me you didn’t even own a pair of shoes when they arrested you, the godsdamned liar—and a bedroll, and other things, besides. We’ll spend a little time and some of King Vizimir’s coin to get you healed up and kitted out properly before we set out on the Path.”

“That sounds—” Jaskier ran through a few options before finally landing on “Good. Thank you, Eskel.”

“Least I can do,” Eskel shrugged. "I'm happy to help you, Jaskier. Truly."

Jaskier couldn’t imagine why a Witcher would be happy to be saddled with an injured human who couldn’t even eat by himself. But he’d take it.

Weak as he was, fragile as he was, Jaskier was starting to realize he’d take any help Eskel would offer.

***

Chapter Text

Jaskier was feeling a little better when he woke late the next morning. The sun was already streaming in through the west-facing window, which meant it was well after tenth bell.

The room was empty. Jaskier had some vague memory of Eskel kneeling by the fire to meditate. He'd fallen asleep almost immediately after they’d had their brief conversation, worn out from pain and that awful crying jag. Part of Jaskier couldn’t believe he’d broken down like that in front of a virtual stranger, or that Eskel had been so kind about it. Gods, Eskel had sung to him.

You cannot let your guard down just because someone was nice to you, he reminded himself. He had to focus on figuring out Eskel’s intentions. There was still a chance Eskel was in league with Dijkstra and the Sorceress, after all. Eskel could even be working for Nilfgaard, or one of the other nebulous factions who were determined to hunt Geralt down.

Jaskier still hadn’t figured out who’d sent the fire mage after him: he only knew the mage hadn’t been working for the Redanians. No, Dijkstra had merely admired the mage’s handiwork, and ordered his minions to keep using the same agonizing approach to extract information from Jaskier. Information he’d never had to begin with.

Jaskier heard a light tread in the hall outside, and then a soft knock before Eskel cracked the door open.

Seeing Jaskier was awake, the Witcher stepped inside with what Jaskier was learning to recognize as a smile. Eskel’s snarling mouth was still twisted up into a grimace, but his warm amber eyes were crinkled at the edges, and both sharp canines were exposed.

Perhaps Jaskier ought to start assuming that, no matter how fearsome Eskel looked, he was probably feeling the opposite of whatever showed on his angry-looking face.

Eskel was carrying a little sack of something that smelled warm and yeasty and made Jaskier’s empty belly grumble.

“Um. Good morning,” Jaskier said, wincing a little at his own awkwardness. “Is that breakfast?”

“Breakfast,” Eskel confirmed. He opened the sack and removed the items inside, laying the bounty out on the bedside table: fresh buttered buns and a little pot of jam. Jaskier’s belly gurgled as Eskel revealed each item. He started to reach for a bun, only to immediately draw back when he remembered the state of his fingers.

In the bright sunlight, the bandages looked even more ragged and filthy. He’d managed to strike a bargain with one of the guards last month, exchanging his silver cloak pin for healing salve and fresh bandages. But that was the extent of the medical supplies he'd had to work with. Jaskier had been forced to re-use the same wrappings ever since, by carefully easing the bindings off, applying the rapidly-dwindling salve, and then re-wrapping his fingers with the ‘clean’ sides of the bandage. He hadn’t been able to manage even that much in weeks. Just thinking about the process made his stomach turn.

His appetite forgotten, Jaskier looked away from the breakfast buns and pulled his knees to his chest, gently resting his throbbing hands on his kneecaps. His damaged fingers were just waking up. In few more minutes, the pain would harmonize into a chorus of pulsing agony that would last all day.

“Not hungry?” Eskel asked, and Jaskier shook his head. “Do you need to pass water?”

Jaskier stared at Eskel for a moment before he remembered his mortifying confession from last night. He blushed, nodding, and Eskel crouched down to reach for something under the bed.

A chamber pot. Fantastic.

“How have you been, uh…?”

Fuck, this was going to be so humiliating. “It’s difficult,” Jaskier admitted. “I, err, only have my thumbs and pinky to work with. It’s why I reek of urine, I’m afraid.”

“And when you need to shit?”

Gods. Was it possible to die of embarrassment? “I’m afraid that’s not any easier.”

He’d thought he’d been managing all right in the bleak isolation of his prison cell. It hadn't mattered how badly he’d smelled down in the dungeons, or how filthy and feral he'd become. His captors certainly hadn’t cared beyond making a few off-colour jokes about the “soiled songbird.” Without the use of his hands, not to mention fresh linens, clean water, or anything to wipe with, it had been impossible for Jaskier to maintain even basic personal hygiene anyway. So Jaskier had simply given up and resigned himself to living in filth. Truthfully, he’d been waiting for death.

Or, more accurately, waiting to lead Geralt to his death, followed rapidly by his own. Smelling of shit had hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things.

But now that he wasn’t locked up in a dungeon or strung up on a torture rack, Jaskier was quite thoroughly ashamed of his own filth.

“I really am dreadfully sorry,” he mumbled.

“We’ll sort it out,” Eskel said, more gently than Jaskier probably deserved. “Piss first?”

“Please,” he said. The situation there was becoming rather pressing.

Jaskier went to sit up, but Eskel put a hand on his shoulder. The touch still felt strange. An odd crackle of energy—not painful, just unfamiliar—seemed to run straight down from Eskel’s fingertips, passing through the layer of Jaskier’s shirt and into his skin like static electricity.

It had to be the spell.

He checked Eskel's expression to see if the Witcher had felt anything, but Eskel’s face remained impassive.

“Jaskier, I won’t think less of you for this, I promise,” Eskel said, apparently concluding that Jaskier had frozen and gone silent out of embarrassment. Jaskier could only see the glint of one sharp canine now.

“I’m not sure how you could think less of me,” Jaskier muttered. He was frowning down at the flies of his trousers, and missed the brief expression of sorrow that flashed across Eskel’s face.

Eskel set to work on getting Jaskier’s trews unlaced. He’d made such a hash of lacing himself back up yesterday when Dijkstra’s men had come to collect him that Jaskier probably wouldn’t have been able to get his trousers undone at all without Eskel’s help. The thought didn’t make him feel like less of a burden.

With each accidental brush of Eskel’s fingers, Jaskier felt that strange little crackle of energy again. The sensation of the maybe-spell wasn't uncomfortable. The little sparks tickled, but quickly eased into a spreading warmth that was almost pleasant. Given where Eskel was touching him, however, it was making Jaskier’s skin feel just a bit too tight.

“So,” Jaskier said, desperate for a distraction. He seized on the one subject they had in common: “When did you meet Geralt?”

“A long time ago.” Eskel answered slowly, as if he hadn’t really had to think about it before. “I suppose Geralt was about five or six, I think. I was seven.”

“But didn’t you train as Witchers together?” Jaskier asked, wrinkling his forehead. “That’s what the medallion means, right? Same school, and all that?”

Eskel paused and looked up at Jaskier. “We did. Geralt had already been living at the school for a few years before I arrived.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said, feeling a bit lost. “I didn’t realize you were both so young.”

“You must have heard the stories. Witchers stealing babies, forcing people to give up their young?”

“Did that actually happen? Geralt made it sound like it was only a vicious rumour.”

Eskel shrugged. “There were more Witcher schools back then, and they all had their own way of doing things. But no, as far as I know, no one ever had to resort to stealing babies. The Continent’s always had more than enough orphanages and foundling homes, and plenty of families with too many mouths to feed and not much to go around.”

Jaskier bit his lip, but his damnable curiosity made him ask, “So you and Geralt were both orphans?”

“No,” Eskel said quietly. “No, our families gave us away. Geralt’s mother abandoned him when he was two years old. Left him on the roadside near the school. Vesemir, the man who raised us, found him and brought him in.”

Fucking hell. Geralt had never said anything about that. Not once in almost twenty years.

Eskel finally finished picking apart the knotted mess of Jaskier’s laces. He tugged Jaskier’s trousers down low enough on his hips to get his cock free. Eskel’s touch was carefully clinical as he handled Jaskier’s flaccid cock, letting it flop over the edge of the chamber pot.

Jaskier shivered at the touch of the cold porcelain. He used his thumb to hold his cock steady as his bladder finally released and drained. The sense of relief was almost painful, and he had to choke back a small, slightly inappropriate sigh.

“I was a Child Surprise," Eskel said, picking up the thread of their conversation. "Vesemir had cleared out a coven of foglets near my village, but the people there were poor and had no coin to pay. So Vesemir called Law of Surprise. He didn't return until I was much older, though. Usually Surprise boys were brought back as soon as they’re weaned. But Vesemir let me stay a lot longer with my mother. He said he thought it might help.”

“Help?” Jaskier repeated, not able to fathom what Eskel meant.

Eskel shrugged. "Prospective Witchers were taught from early childhood that our Path was destined to be a lonely one. We were all orphans, in one way or another, and we knew we’d never be able to sire children or have families ourselves. The men who raised us--men who were taught the same harsh lesson as children--believed that they were doing us a kindness by preparing us for a lifetime of rejection and isolation. But that caused a lot of damage, over the years. Vesemir hoped that allowing some of the boys to spend more time with their human families might help.”

Jaskier stared at Eskel, the embarrassment of being helped to pass water completely forgotten. What in the seven hells? What did Eskel mean by 'damage'? 

Instead of explaining, Eskel plucked a clean washcloth from a stack by the washbasin on the bedside table and blotted away any stray drops before tucking Jaskier’s cock back into his trousers. The whole thing hadn’t been that humiliating. The conversation had helped, heartbreaking as it had been, and how matter-of-fact Eskel had been about the whole process.

“Did it help?” Jaskier prompted, refusing to get sidetracked. “Staying with your family a little longer?”

Eskel cleaned his hands, and then set to lacing Jaskier back into his trousers. “Not sure if I’m the best judge of that, to be honest. But I think so. Knowing that I was loved once, knowing that I hadn’t just been abandoned, probably helped me a lot. Geralt never had that opportunity ”

Jaskier was desperately curious to know what that meant, but Eskel sighed, clearly eager to change the subject.

“Sorry to blather on. I’m sure Geralt told you about his mother already.”

And therein lay the rub. Eskel had just told him more in ten minutes than Jaskier had learned in almost twenty years at Geralt’s side. He’d had no idea that Geralt had been raised in an environment like that, and not from such a young age.

Certain things made a lot more sense, now.

Eskel grabbed two of the fresh buns and tore them up into very small chunks, and spread jam over each bite-sized piece. Jaskier’s mouth watered. He tipped forward and made a chirping noise like a little bird. He was delighted when Eskel laughed and popped a jam-slathered piece into his mouth.

The tart raspberry jam and soft bread melted on his tongue, and Jaskier closed his eyes to savour the taste. “Oh fuck me, that’s delicious. You get that from Nan’s?”

“No, this came from a place on the corner off Scholar's Square, beside the auction house?”

“Hmm,” Jaskier said, still lost in the explosion of flavours across his tongue. He’d been subsisting on watery gruel and dry black husks of bread for four months straight. This decadent breakfast of buns and jam was possibly the finest meal he’d ever eaten.

“How are you feeling?" Eskel asked, once it was clear that the buns weren't going to come back up. "Think you’d be up to a visit to the baths, once your stomach has some time to settle?”

“My dear man, are you implying that I stink?”

Eskel’s amber eyes were like sun-warmed honey now, all crinkled up at the corners with mirth, with both canines on full display. “Oh, yes. Definitely. You reek.”

“Not for long,” Jaskier vowed. He opened his mouth in a silent, demanding ‘O’, and Eskel smiled and shook his head, popping another piece of warm bread and sweet jam into his mouth.

Jaskier let his eyes flutter shut again as he chewed. He wanted to stretch out the sweetness of the moment like taffy, still half-convinced that this was all just a dream.

Soon enough, he’d wake to find himself back in his cell under Oxenfurt, mired in his own piss and shit and black miasma of misery as he waited to die. Or, worse, waiting for Geralt to appear in some ill-advised rescue attempt, only to be caught up in Dijkstra’s snare.

However, when Jaskier looked up and met Eskel’s steady gaze, he remembered that this was no dream. It might very well turn into a nightmare, but for now he felt it was all right to simply enjoy the moment, and let the future unfold as it would.

***

Eskel still wasn’t entirely know what to make of Jaskier. He’d reeked of acrid fear last night, but a little rest and some food seemed to have worked wonders. Eskel had already caught a few more glimpses of the fearless version of Jaskier, the fierce creature who’d stared down the king’s spymaster down and then skipped off to marry a Witcher.

The bard’s bravery was unprecedented, at least in terms of Eskel’s limited experience with humans. He hadn’t so much as flinched at Eskel’s size or his scars, and he’d accepted Eskel’s help with the most intimate of tasks without any apparent unease. Seven hells, he’d even let Eskel hand-feed him bread and jam without so much as a whiff of fear! No human had let Eskel get that close in decades. Not without coin changing hands first, at least.

He still had no idea how the strange, funny little man had fallen into Geralt’s orbit. Eskel was tempted to ask how they’d met, and what Jaskier had made of his stern, silent, brooding brother, but he wasn’t about to interrogate Jaskier about it when the man couldn’t even tie his own breeches. He resolved to wait until Jaskier was cleaned up and had found a little equilibrium before asking him about Geralt.

First and most importantly, Jaskier needed a bath.

As soon as they’d finished with breakfast, Eskel ushered Jaskier out of the inn, and they set out for the bathing tents set up near the river north of the city.

For once, Eskel wasn’t the main focus of attention on the busy city streets. His dirty, bedraggled companion drew the majority of hostile glares or open curiosity during the short walk to the bathing tents, although Jaskier hardly seemed to notice. He seemed much more interested in basking in the early summer sunshine and watching the clouds scudding across the blue sky above.

After four near-collisions in the marketplace, Eskel took Jaskier’s elbow to help guide him carefully around a stack of wooden crates. Jaskier jolted a little at Eskel’s touch, evidently not expecting the contact. Eskel was ready to stutter out an apology, but he fell silent when Jaskier smiled up at him in wordless thanks.

That was shocking enough in itself–-no one smiled at Eskel, not like that–-but he was gobsmacked when Jaskier took Eskel’s arm and said, “Lead on, dear Witcher!” before closing his eyes to better drink in the day’s warm sunshine.

Eskel had absolutely no idea what to do. He’d never walked arm-in-arm with someone before. All his focus seemed to have narrowed down to the curve of his elbow where Jaskier had draped his arm over Eskel’s. He felt his face heat.

The little songbird was an odd one indeed.

Before he could make Jaskier feel self-conscious (Eskel was sure he was awkward enough for the both of them, anyway) he walked on, making sure to keep to a slower pace for Jaskier’s sake. He felt like he’d accidentally stumbled into an engraving from one of the old chivalric romances he and Geralt had devoured as boys: A Knight with His Lady Fair or Sweethearts of Avalon. None of the heroic knights in those tales looked like Eskel, though, and Jaskier might not appreciate being compared to a fair maiden. Still, the image stayed with Eskel until they’d reached the bathing tents.

The head laundress was a stout woman with a weathered face. She took one look at Eskel’s vertical pupils and announced, “No bath for you here, Bright-Eyes. We’re only allowed to take humans. That’s what the sign says.”

There was indeed a sign staked near the entrance that said NO DOGS, ELVES, OR OTHER UNNATURAL CREATURES. Eskel was about to explain that only Jaskier required a bath, but he snapped his mouth shut when Jaskier squeezed his arm.

“Excuse me, Madam, but you’re mistaken. My dear friend here is entirely human, I assure you.”

The proprietress folded her arms under her bosom and frowned at Jaskier. “Witchers ain’t human.”

“That’s actually a matter of some debate,” Jaskier mused. “I might agree if you were to deny my friend a service because Witchers are ‘unnatural’--they are genetically enhanced, after all–-but ‘not human’? That’s a bit of a stretch.”

Eskel was shocked when, instead of loudly ordering them both out of her establishment at once, the proprietress grinned at Jaskier. She was missing at least two teeth, and her face had the perpetually chapped, reddened discolouration of someone who worked outdoors all day scrubbing sheets and hanging laundry.

“I do love a good existential debate,” she said, practically rubbing her rough-skinned hands together. Eskel blinked at her, and then recalled that yes, Oxenfurt was the consummate college town. Even the city’s laundresses and scullery maids, it seemed, appreciated a bit of spirited academic discourse.

“Let’s define our terms then, shall we?” Jaskier said eagerly. “How would you define ‘human’, for the purposes of our argument?”

“A member of the human species,” the laundress said. “With human characteristics: regular ears, normal eyes, no odd bits. No extra limbs.”

“I hope you’ll concede that my companion has the right number of limbs,” Jaskier said. He and the woman turned together to study Eskel’s face and body.

Eskel held very still, though his scars itched terribly; he wanted nothing more than to let his hair fall forward to hide his face. Better yet, he’d like to hop onto Scorpion and ride far away from the laundress and her bigoted policy. Even Jaskier’s scrutiny felt oddly invasive, though he knew it was kindly meant.

“Aye, that he does,” the laundress eventually decided. Her gap-toothed smile shifted into something more appreciative. “He's a big strappin’ lad, and well-formed at that. Shame about the scars. But plenty of soldiers and fighting men carry worse, I suppose.”

“I quite agree,” Jaskier said, startling Eskel enough to make him cast a wild-eyed glance at Jaskier, who only winked at him. “And while his eyes are a little odd,” Jaskier continued, “plenty of human babies are also born with eyes of unusual shapes or colours. It seems rather cruel to exclude my friend here from the entire human species just because his eyes are a shade too bright and his pupils aren’t the right shape.”

Eskel almost snorted at that. He knew his bright orange eyes, and their vertical pupils, were deeply unsettling to humans. But the woman seemed at least somewhat convinced by this point.

“My nephew was born with one blue eye, and one milk white," she said. "Still a lovely lad.”

Jaskier nodded, doing his best not to look smug or prematurely victorious over this concession. “So on what other grounds might you deny my friend the sobriquet of ‘human’, then?”

“Well, a human is a member of the human species, born to two humans what mated and produced a child.”

“Ah, taxonomy! A far more scientific approach,” Jaskier chirpped, which seemed to please the laundress. He turned to Eskel. “Master Eskel, both of your parents were indeed human, yes?”

Eskel nodded. “My mother was from Barefield, and my da from a little village north of Harbinger’s Fang. Only humans live in that part of Caingorn.”

The laundress gave him a skeptical look. “Dragons too, or so I’ve heard.”

“Well he’s clearly not a dragon,” Jaskier said with a laugh that bubbled up like water on the boil. He used the inside of his wrist to pat Eskel’s shoulder. Eskel could feel the heat of his skin through the fabric. “As our dear Witcher here has certified that he was indeed born from human parents, and as you’ve conceded he’s the same as any other man, aside from his lovely amber eyes...then I’d say your own logic would dictate that he’s human enough to satisfy your master’s policy.”

“I suppose,” the laundress allowed. “If you’ll vouch for him, I’ll agree that he’s human enough to bathe here.”

Eskel wasn’t sure how to react to all of this: not only had Jaskier very smoothly pointed out the idiocy inherent in the policy itself, but he’d done it in Eskel’s defense. Not even Witchers themselves tried to argue that they were human. It was…well, it was unprecedented, at least in Eskel’s experience. He felt like he’d stumbled through a portal into some bizarre topsy-turvy realm, where bigots changed their minds, and human men like Jaskier defended creatures like him.

“I can’t ask my girls to attend to ye, so you’ll have to see to yourself, Master Witcher.”

“I’ll still need an attendant,” Jaskier said, holding up his bandaged hands. “Perhaps someone who might give me a decent haircut as well?”

The woman gave Jaskier’s filthy skin, soiled clothing, and long matted hair a quick once-over. “You can have both my girls, far as I care, as long as neither of ’em is forced to touch the Witcher.”

“Deal,” Jaskier said with a wink. “Eskel, if you’d be so kind?”

He skipped over to read the sign listing the bathhouse’s services, leaving Eskel to count out a small handful of coppers into the woman’s lye-roughened palm.

The sight of good coin seemed to soften the proprietress’ disposition further, and she led them over to one of the larger bathing tents without any further objections.

Eskel hesitated at the tent’s entrance flap. There were two wooden bathtubs set out side-by-side in the small tent, and he realized he ought to have objected to the bathing idea a little more strenuously. Fates knew, Eskel certainly wasn’t going to remove his clothing in front of Jaskier.

Jaskier cleared his throat loudly. As soon as Eskel looked at him, Jaskier adopted the snooty posture of a lordling and lifted his arms up in an obvious demand for Eskel to remove his shirt. Eskel smiled at Jaskier’s hyperbolic acting and went to help.

He considered how to thread Jaskier’s shirt up and over his injured hands and the thick wads of ragged bandages. The tattered, filthy shirt was destined for the ragbin anyway, so Eskel ripped each sleeve along the seam and tore the already-shredded fabric off Jaskier’s arms. He looked at Jaskier in apology, realizing that perhaps he should have asked before quite literally tearing off the man's shirt, but Jaskier just gave him a little, Do what you gotta do shrug and a hesitant smile.

Eskel was more careful with Jaskier’s trews: he’d brought one of his own shirts for Jaskier to wear once he’d bathed, but even Eskel’s tightest pair of breeches wouldn’t fit Jaskier’s starved-skinny frame, and the man needed something to wear to the market later, if only temporarily.

He unlaced Jaskier’s trousers easily, and managed to work the material off Jaskier’s sharp hipbones and down his long legs without touching any of his bare skin. Even a glancing, inadvertent touch from a Witcher was abhorrent to most people, and Eskel’s Chaos-laded touch usually felt like a slap to a human’s sensitive skin.

Most people, anyway. Jaskier had taken his arm on the street earlier, and he braced his elbow against Eskel’s shoulder to steady himself as he stepped out of his breeches without any apparent hesitation or discomfort.

Before Eskel could make sense of it, Jaskier padded over to peruse a small shelf with a few bars of soap and vials of hair-oil. He kept his bandaged hands clutched tightly to his chest, perhaps as an extra reminder that he couldn’t touch or pick anything up. Instead, he bent down to sniff delicately at each bar and vial.

Now that Jaskier was naked, Eskel could see how the months of starvation and illness had lain waste to his tall, lanky frame. He was probably a well-muscled man under normal conditions, at least by human standards, but any extra flesh he might normally carry had melted away in the bowels of Deireadh prison. Judging by the bruises on his body—including whatever had injured his hands—he’d not only been starved, but physically abused as well. Underneath all the dirt, his pale, thin body was mottled with bruises and cuts. As he turned to peruse the soaps, Eskel saw that his back and thin flanks bore the telltale welts from a strapping.

Jaskier had been tortured.

He’d suspected as much. However, seeing the proof writ large on Jaskier’s frail body cut Eskel to the quick. He focused on drawing in deep, steadying breaths. Right now, Jaskier needed his help, not his outrage.

Even as he groped for control, he tried and failed to understand why anyone, even a sadistic bastard like Dijkstra, thought it had been necessary to torture Jaskier. Wasn’t death–-or the Correctional Marriage sentence, which amounted to the same thing–-punishment enough? Why torture a man who’d already been condemned to live out the rest of his short, miserable life at a Witcher’s side, dodging monsters and tending camp whenever he wasn’t being raped by his mutant ‘husband’? How did Jaskier's crime–-Smuggling elves, Dijkstra had said–-even begin to justify so much suffering?

Eskel felt sick. His rage turned into self-disgust when he considered the role he’d played in the injustices levied against Jaskier. He stood to benefit from Jaskier's suffering. As Djikstra had pointed out, their ‘marriage’ meant he’d have companionship on the Path, someone to share the long, cold, lonely days with. Someone to talk with, someone to keep him from going mad from the isolation and the mind-numbing monotony. Someone to provide a buffer against the unending tide of human hatred and scorn.

Did it matter that he’d tried to refuse Dijkstra’s offer? He'd agreed to save Jaskier’s life, but by the very nature of their 'marriage,' he was keeping Jaskier prisoner.

Like father, like son.

Gods, what had he done?

“Eskel?” Jaskier was saying. He must have repeated himself a few times, if his worried tone was any indication.

Eskel tried to paint on a more neutral expression. He couldn’t begin to dredge up a smile after seeing the ruin of Jaskier’s poor bruised, starved body, but at least he was able to keep any trace of anger off his face when he met Jaskier’s bright blue eyes.

“The baths are ready. I think you’ll probably want to be naked for this bit?” Jaskier’s teasing smile faded. “Eskel, is something wrong?”

He was still clutching his bandaged hands to his chest. Eskel itched to soak those filthy bandages off so he could finally see how bad the infection was and, hopefully, start the healing process. He could do that instead of bathing, and he seized upon the excuse. There wasn’t even the remotest chance he’d remove his own shirt or his trousers here. Not in front of two human bathing attendants, and certainly not in front of Jaskier.

“You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll work on your hands while you soak off the rest of the grime.”

Jaskier looked like he was going to argue. He must have decided to save his energy for the ordeal ahead, however, because he merely jabbed his bandaged finger at the bar of soap he’d picked out for himself and went over to one of the waiting bathtubs.

“Would you mind?” he asked. Eskel realized he couldn’t quite climb over the side of the tub and get into the bath by himself without the risk of bumping his bandaged hands.

Eskel scratched at the scar over his lip. He didn’t mind helping Jaskier—far from it—and putting him in the bath would hardly be as intimate a task as helping him urinate. But he’d have to touch a fair bit more of Jaskier’s bare skin to get the job done. He still worried that his Chaos-laden touch would disturb Jaskier, and the man was dealing with enough discomfort.

There wasn’t exactly a reasonable alternative, however.

“C’mon, Big Man,” Jaskier said, waving his bandaged hands. “I’m not as heavy as I look.”

“You look like you weigh as much as a 12-year-old girl.”

“Rude,” Jaskier muttered.

Eskel stepped forward, considering the best approach, and rolled up his sleeves. He ignored the spike of self-consciousness that came from exposing his hairy, heavily scarred forearms, and bent to sweep Jaskier off his feet.

Eskel didn’t dare look at Jaskier’s face, keeping an eye out for any sign of discomfort. He had to press his arm against the scattered bruises on Jaskier’s back to lift him, and he was worried about jostling Jaskier’s hands. But Jaskier didn’t seem to show any sign of distress. There was no change in his—admittedly pungent—scent that might indicate he was in pain, either. In fact, he seemed downright comfortable about being carried by a much larger man. He slipped his arm around Eskel’s neck easily and relaxed, even going so far as to lounge back in Eskel’s arms.

It felt very strange to hold Jaskier like this. The sensation of so much skin contact was overwhelming, and Eskel suddenly felt stripped raw, like his nerve endings were on fire. Everywhere his bare skin touched Jaskier’s felt searingly hot, almost to the point of pain. For just a moment Eskel was afraid he was going to drop Jaskier. He hurried to lower Jaskier into the bath so he could scurry away and break down in private.

Gods, what was the matter with him?

Jaskier, thankfully, seemed completely unaffected. He didn’t even seem to notice Eskel’s sudden tension. His human-fast heartbeat hadn’t sped up with fear or discomfort, either. In fact, Jaskier’s pulse had slowed down, and he'd seemed perfectly at ease in a Witcher's arms. He did, however, let out a perfectly indecent moan once Eskel finally lowered him down into the bathwater.

Eskel stepped back and the two young bathmaids closed in. They set to work scrubbing Jaskier clean and untangling that disastrous beard. Within a minute, Jaskier had them both giggling and exchanging flirtatious banter, but Eskel tuned out most of it. He needed time to recover.

That had been overwhelming. To put it mildly. He knew it had been a while since he’d touched anyone, but–

He frowned down at his boots. A while? He did some quick math in his head–when was the last time he’d been in eastern Poviss?–and suddenly realized what had just happened.

That was the most Eskel had touched anyone's bare skin in the last...5 years? 10? No wonder he was feeling a little overstimulated.

Eskel went over to dig through the satchel he’d brought along. He needed to collect the items required to clean and rebandage Jaskier’s hands, but mostly he just needed to take a moment to recover. He'd felt like this once before, right after the Trial of the Grasses. The world had suddenly seemed too bright and too loud to his new Witcher senses, and right now his head was spinning.

If— Melitele help him—if this was the result of just a few moments of skin-to-skin contact, what might happen when he had to bathe Jaskier himself? Giggling, buxom bathing attendants weren't usually a feature of the Path, and he’d be responsible for helping Jaskier bathe and eat until they found someone to break the ringbound curse.

He couldn't let himself become overwhelmed like that again. It would be mortifying if Jaskier knew. It would also probably frighten the poor man out of his wits. No human would ever welcome a Witcher’s touch, he reminded himself. Not even the strumpets who took coin for it could hide their fear or revulsion for long, which was exactly why Eskel hadn’t so much as set foot in a brothel in the last half-century.

Wait. Dijkstra had implied that Jaskier had been intimate with Geralt, hadn’t he? We both know that you’ve bent over for at least one of these mutants already. Jaskier hadn’t denied the accusation; he’d merely called Dijkstra a fucking whoreson in rhyming verse.

It wasn’t any of Eskel’s business, of course. So what if Jaskier and the Wolf had been lovers once? It didn’t change anything, really; it only meant that Jaskier might have some idea where Geralt had gone. If Jaskier could help him piece together Geralt’s movements in the last two years, that was all that mattered.

Eskel decided to put all these troubling questions aside for now. He laid out the medical supplies he’d brought: disinfectant, gauze and fresh bandages, tools for debriding, a human-friendly potion to dull any pain, and a salve he’d made earlier that morning. He'd been able to source the ingredients from a particular copse of trees just across the river, and he planned to make more over the next few days.

The flirtatious conversation between Jaskier and the bathmaids had morphed into a debate over Redanian literary traditions by the time Eskel was composed enough to return.

“It’s not that I dislike Adaldi. His sonnets are divine,” the blonde bath attendant was saying to her colleague and an attentive-looking Jaskier. “But if you want to sink into a longer epic, he’s a poor option. Adaldi ever quite mastered the form.”

“I quite agree, my dear,” Jaskier said. “I had to arrange a performance of Adaldi’s Apollonius cycle for a dinner at court, and it was quite the challenge to—Eskel? Are you all right?”

Eskel was staring. He knew he was staring. It was just—

“Your—your beard.”

The women had cut Jaskier’s hair, and given him a shave. Without that tangle of matted hair, skin finally free of grime and the lingering odors of Deireadh's cells, Jaskier looked like a completely different person. The exhausted, feverish, defeated prisoner had vanished. The man who’d replaced him was…

He was pretty.

That was the best word Eskel’s beleaguered brain could come up with.

Jaskier was pretty, with his perfect cupids-bow lips, rosy cheeks, luminous blue eyes, and dimpled chin. Jaskier-the-Prisoner had been a hunted, half-feral-looking creature. Jaskier-the-Bard was the opposite: cultivated, civilized, and as lovely as a storybook prince.

The shave alone had stripped decades off Jaskier’s face. Instead of a man weighted down by pain and sorrow, Jaskier looked almost like a boy again, a fresh-faced youth setting out on a quest for adventure and romance. There was a charming softness to his face, a warmth and a kindness that had been concealed by that impenetrable beard. Even his hair looked brighter now that it had been washed free of grease and dirt. It turned out to be a shade of rich chestnut instead of dark burnt coffee. One of the women had even trimmed it back to a short, sideswept fringe that only served to heighten Jaskier's youthful good looks.

Jaskier looked prim and proper (a fucking Viscount, Dijkstra had said) and impossibly young.

“Eskel? Do you…do you not like it?” Jaskier sounded oddly nervous.

Eskel realized that not only was he staring, but he was also looming, having moved closer to catalogue the massive changes in Jaskier’s appearance wrought by a simple bath and a haircut.

He took a careful step back and tried to school his face into something slightly less frightening. “You look...different,” Eskel finally said, aware that he’d been silent several beats too long. “You look good, Jaskier.”

This paltry praise made Jaskier break into a wide, sunny smile that seemed to light up the whole tent. “Why, thank you!” He preened as he sank back into the tub, with his elbows braced carefully on the edges to keep his hands clear of the waterline.

The water which, Eskel realized, was almost black with filth.

“Could you change the bathwater, please?” Eskel asked the women. “We’ll also need a basin or a bucket, if it’s not too much trouble.”

One of the bathing attendants nodded and fished around in the dirty water to find the plug. Eskel felt his face heat when Jaskier spread his knees wider. He gave Eskel an absolutely filthy wink as the woman groped around near his—

There was a pop and a gurgle, and the foul water started to drain out of the tub and soak into the grass.

“Shall we fill your tub too, Master Witcher?” the woman asked.

Eskel shook his head. “Not right now, thank you.” There was no chance Eskel was going to bathe in front of Jaskier now. He’d felt inadequate and unbearably shy about undressing in front of Jaskier when the man had looked like a bedraggled convict. Now that Jaskier had transformed into a young prince from a fairy tale, Eskel was even less inclined to expose his scarred, mutated, lumbering bulk of a body.

He was caught-off guard when he risked another glance and finally noticed how hairy Jaskier was. The man had a fine pelt of chest hair that rivalled Eskel’s own, but even that similarity only underscored how differently they’d been made. Jaskier’s thick body hair was such a stark, fascinating contrast to his slim, youthful physique and boyish face. And the pelt on his chest looked thick and soft and inviting, almost begging for the worshipful caress of a lover.

Eskel’s chest hair was just as thick and—he hoped—as soft. Nothing else about his body was appealing. His dark chest hair was only useful because it hid a few of his largest, deepest scars. Unfortunately, it also framed rather than disguise his thick, muscled belly, which only made him look more bestial.

Jaskier was still reclining in the empty tub, apparently content to doze until the women returned with hot water. Eskel wasn’t exactly eager to start work on his hands, but as his nose kept reminding him, they were working against the ticking clock of infection, and he was determined to at least allow Jaskier keep his fingers.

He pumped a basin full of fresh cold water and filled up a waterskin for good measure, mixing in a little of the powered analgesic and sedative mixture that Lambert insisted was safe for humans (at least in small quantities). Eskel brought both items over to Jaskier. He was leaning over the edge of the tub, studying the items Eskel had set out. Eskel was glad he’d thought to cover the debriding tools with a clean piece of linen.

“This is going to hurt a lot, isn’t it?” Jaskier said quietly.

“A little hurt now will save a lot of pain later,” Eskel told him. Jaskier squinted up at him.

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Something our old sword-master Vesemir used to say,” Eskel admitted. “Geralt probably uses it too.”

He held up the waterskin and, when Jaskier nodded, pulled out the cork and tipped the neck to Jaskier’s lips. He drank deeply. Eskel made a note to get in the habit of offering him water more often, because Jaskier seemed reluctant to ask for help.

Eskel paused to let Jaskier’s stomach settle and give the sedative-pain reliever combination a few minutes to take effect. It would dull the pain and make Jaskier forget at least some of what was about to happen.

“Have some bread and cheese, too,” Eskel offered, mindful that Jaskier needed to get in the habit of eating small meals again. He was a little worried that Jaskier might need to vomit, later. The smells lingering under the bandages weren’t pleasant, and this would be painful. However, Jaskier needed the nourishment badly enough to risk it.

“Do you want me to talk you through what’s happening as we go?” he asked Jaskier. “Or would you rather not know?”

Jaskier reclined back in the tub and chewed thoughtfully on the lump of soft cheese Eskel handed him. He seemed unselfconscious about his own nudity. Eskel had already seen everything, but he kept his gaze fixed above Jaskier’s sternum. He refused to ogle the poor man, even inadvertently.

“Walk me through it?”

“First we’ll get the bandages off so we can see what we’re dealing with,” Eskel said, offering Jaskier another bite of cheese. “That part might hurt, but we’ll go slow, and I’ll do my best to soak the bandages off first.”

“It’s still going to take a lot of skin with it,” Jaskier predicted with a grim frown.

“You’re right. It probably will. But I can block out the pain. And the memory, if you want.”

Jaskier tilted his head. “You going to Axii me, Witcher?”

A small smile played at the corners of his mouth, and Eskel didn’t think he sounded angry or accusatory, but he was still surprised. It made sense that Jaskier would be familiar with Witcher signs, if he’d travelled with Geralt. Still, Eskel couldn’t quite shake off the uneasiness he felt about discussing such secrets with a human.

“Axii, yes. If you’ll allow it,” he said tentatively. “And I know another spell to speed healing and dull pain.”

“Really?” Jaskier asked, fascinated. He drew up his knees and leaned forward like a child eager for a bedtime story. “I didn’t know Witchers could do any spells beyond the Signs.”

Eskel hesitated. Jaskier had already extended him an incredible amount of trust, most of it resting on nothing but blind faith and a medallion, along with a tenuous claim of friendship with Geralt. He was only risking himself if he shared these secrets, Eskel reminded himself. He merely wanted to be honest with Jaskier. As honest as he could be, anyway.

He waited until the girls returned with fresh hot water for the tub. Jaskier stood up—Eskel immediately averted his eyes—and hopped between one foot and the other as the girls poured steaming water into the tub. It was still fairly tepid but probably felt scalding against Jaskier’s feverish skin. He slowly sank down into the tub again.

Once the girls had left to go collect more water, Eskel tried to offer an explanation. “I had some extra training. I spent a year at Ban Ard.”

“Oh? That’s interesting,” Jaskier said. “I didn’t know Ban Ard accepted Witchers,”

Eskel cleared his throat. “They don’t. They made an exception. I had a conduit moment when I turned 15,” he explained, skipping over the parts of the story that might lead to some very awkward questions from Jaskier. “I’d already been through three of the Trials by then, including the ones that permanently changed my physiology. I was already too much of a mutant to ever ascend as a mage. But the school’s Grandmaster wanted to see if I could be taught to harness my chaos. I refused to go, at first, but eventually, I went.”

It was amazing, Eskel realized, how easy it was to simply hop over the most important and painful parts of one's past. Just like skipping over a broken rung on a ladder.

“So did you?” Jaskier prompted, barely aware that Eskel had started unwinding the bandages on his right hand. “Learn to harness your chaos, I mean?”

“Yes and no,” Eskel said, aware he was equivocating but unsure how to describe his single year of non-Witcher education. “It was a hard transition. I’d never been away from the school before; I missed my brothers terribly. Ban Ard seemed so strange, and everyone there was afraid of me, at least at first. I was also woefully behind everyone else. Most of the other boys had been studying at the college their whole lives, and I felt like a fumbling child next to them. In fact, they had to put me in classes with some of the younger boys because I was starting from scratch.”

Eskel smiled. “I was roughly this size even back then, albeit a little slimmer,” he added ruefully. “They put me in a classroom with a bunch of seven-year-olds who were just learning how to levitate rocks and cast basic cantrips. It was humiliating, at the time,” he said with a laugh, which coaxed a soft smile from Jaskier.

“Eventually I found my feet, though. After a year I knew I’d never have anything close to an ascended sorcerer's power, but I did learn how to exercise finer control over my signs, how to make them much more powerful while expending less energy. That pleased the instructors back at Kaer Morhen. I even taught a few classes there, after I earned my medallion. It helped the others learn to use and refine their signs, which made both the mages and Witchers happy.”

“What about the other spells? What could you do?” Jaskier’s interest in Eskel—not in his scars, or his physical prowess, but in the magic he’d learned—was strangely gratifying. Not to mention, being the focus of such a beautiful man’s attention made Eskel feel oddly warm inside.

He gave himself leave to enjoy it, while he could.

“Oh, less than a mage, but more than the average hedge-witch." He demured a little, worried it might sound like he were boasting if he delved into the full list of spells he’d mastered. He’d never dared to bring it up with other Witchers. Most of his brothers, quite understandably, hated mages. Few of them had any use for magic at all, aside from the signs required for their work.

Ironically, Lambert was one of the few exceptions, but that was only because he had such an intense interest in brewing, alchemy and potion-making, and anything else that had a chance of compromising a Witcher’s keen senses enough to get epically fucked-up, in Lambert’s words. In fact, Lambert was a bit of a savant when it came to advanced chemistry. He’d taught Eskel as much as any one of Ban Ard’s lauded potion-masters, and they’d collaborated on ideas to improve several of the Wolf School potion recipes.

“I studied with a Druid for a while on Ard Skellig, too. That’s how I learned all of this,” Eskel said, gesturing to the roles of bandages and debriding instruments. “I helped with the heavy lifting in his clinic, and in exchange Mousesack taught me druidic magic and spellcasting. Druid magic is more like the magic used by Witchers, and I caught on to it faster than what I studied at Ban Ard.”

“So what’s your most advanced spell?” Jaskier asked. Eskel had finally peeled off the thick wad of outer bandages on his right-hand fingers. Now came the tricky part; he’d have to start soaking and gently working the strips of cotton free from the sticky wounds.

“I should probably lie and say it’s a combat spell,” he said. “Like an ablative barrier or a lightning bolt. Something a Witcher would find useful in battle.”

He used a wad of cloth to wet the bandages clinging to Jaskier’s fingers. “I can summon a spectral companion that can distract any nearby enemies. That one’s mostly useful for giving me an edge in combat, or to scare off any bandits foolish enough to think a single Witcher might be an easy target.”

“What form does the spectre take?” Jaskier said. They both winced together as the first layer of bandage suddenly sluiced free. Eskel took a cautious sniff. Whatever salve Jaskier had been using for dressing, it had done a decent job of keeping infection at bay, but it hadn’t done much to speed the healing process, unfortunately.

“You’re going to think I’m horribly unimaginative,” Eskel predicted, picking up their conversation as he worked another layer of bandage free. “The spectre’s a wolf.”

“Oh, of course it’s a wolf!” Jaskier teased, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Heaven forbid you ever use…what, a panther? A turtle?”

“What good would a turtle be?”

“It would confuse people?” Jaskier speculated, and Eskel was willing to concede that point. “Also, turtles are a bit scary-looking, don’t you think? I’d certainly be afraid of a spectral turtle.”

Another layer pulled free, enough to expose one final layer of pink-soaked bandage. There was an old dressing underneath: the source, Eskel suspected, of the worst of the stench that wasn’t active infection. Once that had been removed, he’d finally be able to tell exactly how much necrotic tissue needed to be scraped away. He planned to take it slow, probably finish the job over several sessions depending on Jaskier’s pain tolerance. He didn’t want to exhaust the man. That would only set him back further in his recovery, and they were already in a race against time.

“So what is your favourite non-combat spell?” Jaskier prompted as Eskel gently soaked the last layer of bandaging free.

“I learned an incantation that lets me talk to animals.”

“Truly?” Jaskier said, the gruesome task completely forgotten, just as Eskel had hoped. “All animals? Or just certain species?”

“Mammals and birds, mostly,” Eskel admitted. He was quite proud of the spell; not many mages or sorceresses bothered with any form of animal communication, but he felt it was almost as useful as talking to humans.

“It’s probably more along the lines of empathic communication than actual talking,” he mused, “but I can read their thoughts and emotions, and project mine to them. It’s harder with smaller creatures, particularly prey animals like rabbits. But when it comes to domesticated animals bred for human companionship, like dogs and horses, it’s almost like talking to a person.”

Eskel usually had better conversations with Scorpion than most humans, but it felt a bit impolite to say so.

Jaskier looked as if he knew Eskel was thinking it anyway. “So what do you talk about with dogs and horses?”

“Oh, lots of things,” Eskel shrugged. “Dogs love to talk about cooking and food preparation, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. I once had an extensive debate with a border collie about the best way to cure venison. She insisted that I ought to try burying it in a specific type of dirt.”

“Did you?”

“I did,” Eskel said, using his hand as a bit of a screen so Jaskier didn’t have to watch the last bit of dressing pull free. Most of the tissue that came with it was dead, thankfully, and Jaskier didn’t seem to feel it sluice off, but the process of getting the rest of the bandaging off would be painful. They still had a long way to go.

“And?”

“And I had to go and tell her that it just tasted like dirt and rotten meat.”

“Ugh,” Jaskier wrinkled his nose in disgust.

Now that the old bandages were gone, Eskel took a long moment to examine Jaskier’s fingers. Jaskier hadn’t explained what had caused the injuries, but the cause was obvious to anyone who’d ever treated a burn, which Eskel had done his fair share of in the druid's clinic.

Someone had held Jaskier’s fingers to an open flame, one by one. They’d done it many times, over several months. Some of the burns were scarcely over a week old, at most.

So, they’d beaten Jaskier, and burned him over and over again, and left him to try to heal himself alone in some dark cell. Either Jaskier had been doing something far worse than helping elven refugees get to Nilfgaardian-controlled Cintra, or he had information Dijkstra wanted badly enough to torture a man for months. Enough to concoct this whole elaborate ruse involving Correctional Marriage to a Witcher.

It wasn’t difficult to put the pieces together. Not when the common denominator was Geralt.

Eskel remembered the look of sheer relief and crushing disappointment in Jaskier’s eyes when he’d looked up to find Eskel standing in Dijkstra’s office. Jaskier had been hoping—and dreading—that Geralt would come for him.

But why in Melitele’s name would the head of Redanian intelligence be interested in Geralt?

“Jaskier, I need to know what happened,” Eskel said, all traces of former levity gone. “If you trust me, please tell me. Why did Dijkstra do this to you?”

***

Chapter Text

Jaskier bit his lip and tried not to stare at his ruined hand. He hadn’t realized just how awful the untreated burns would look in broad daylight. With both hands injured, it had been almost impossible to change his own bandages. The few times he’d managed it, he’d always done it—very poorly—in the dim light of his underground cell. The darkness had been a blessing, even if it prolonged his misery. He'd still wept over the ruin of his fingers, but if he’d seen them like this…

The skin on his index, middle and ring fingers and most of his palm was a bright, mottled red colour dotted with white patches of dead skin and yellowed bits of exposed muscle and tendons. He’d expected blood—the bandages had been soaked in those first horrible days after Reince’s initial interrogation—but his injuries were wet with a slurry of water, salve, and puss. It was a disgusting mess, and Jaskier couldn’t look at it for more than a few seconds without feeling ill.

He decided to keep his eyes fixed on Eskel’s face instead, and watched him quietly as the Witcher examined the burns.

While the scars and the nerve damage to his face made Eskel’s expressions tough to interpret, Jaskier’s general rule of ‘assume he feels the opposite of whatever you think you see on his face’ had held true, for the most part. It was hard to watch his face so closely because Eskel always looked so angry, when in reality he seemed fairly calm and laid-back, if a bit serious. Anyone who didn’t take the time to get to know Eskel would probably assume he was about to fly into a murderous rage. That might be useful when it came to intimidating bandits (absent a spectral turtle) but Jaskier could only imagine how difficult the Path must be for Eskel. Any attempt he made to smile, or tell a lighthearted joke, would probably send people scurrying away in fear for their lives.

That scene had played out with Geralt many, many times, especially in those early years, even though Geralt could usually dredge up a genuinely friendly smile when it suited him. Jaskier had even seen him be downright charming. But Eskel's scarred face meant he couldn't even approach strangers in a non-threatening way. 

No wonder the poor man’s most involved conversations, by his own admission, were with dogs and horses.

Right now, Eskel’s face was locked into that perpetual snarl, but his eyes were filled with grief and empathy. He looked angry, too, on Jaskier’s behalf, which was unexpectedly sweet, but also pointless. Jaskier had given up on rage. Too many terrible things had happened to him, and nothing was more exhausting than anger. He simply didn’t have the energy to hate anyone right now, even if they deserved it.

“Why did Dijkstra do this to you?” Eskel asked, finally breaking through Jaskier’s morose introspection.

The Witcher's hands were warm, and strong, and unbearably gentle as they cradled Jaskier’s injured fingers. Jaskier wished, suddenly, that he’d met Eskel under very different circumstances.

“He wants Geralt,” Jaskier said slowly. “Everyone does: King Foltest, Queen Maeve, and probably all the rest of the Northern monarchs. The Nilfgaardians want him most of all, though.”

“But…why?” Eskel asked. His deep bass voice dipped down a half-octave in confusion. “Geralt’s just a simple Witcher.”

Eske’s soft ‘why’ lay at the heart of everything. Dijkstra had never managed to put everything together. If Jaskier explained it all to Eskel, and Eskel was in fact secretly working for the Redanians, Jaskier would be handing over the final piece Dijkstra needed. The one that would finally explain Geralt’s value to Nilfgaard.

Once the spymaster knew who the White Flame was really looking for, nothing would stop Dijkstra from trying to get there first.

Jaskier licked his lips and thought, fuck it.

He was so tired of being alone in the eye of this particular storm. He needed to trust someone. Unfortunately, the only person Jaskier trusted on this whole godsdamned Continent wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

That meant Eskel was his last and only hope.

All Jaskier could do was pray his instincts were right, and that Eskel was exactly what he seemed: a truly good and decent man. A man who said things like, I will save you, and then went ahead and did it. And kept on doing it.

Maybe they could help keep each other safe and alive until the storm passed, and Fate’s restless eye moved on to someone else.

“They all want Geralt,” Jaskier said slowly, “because Nilfgaard wants Geralt. No one knows why, not even Dijkstra. But the White Flame wants Princess Cirilla, the Lion Cub of Cintra.”

“What’s that got to do with Geralt?”

“She’s his Child Surprise.”

“His…what?”

For the first time since he’d met Eskel, Jaskier saw him truly shaken.

Thus far, Eskel seemed to have approached everything—the ringbound curse, the Correctional Marriage to a convicted smuggler, Jaskier’s emotional meltdown, helping him piss, even the agonizing wound debridement—with soothing equanimity. He’d been upset (mostly on Jaskier’s behalf, as unfathomable as that was) and saddened by some of it, but overall Eskel had just been as steady and reliable as an old plow horse in the spring. A constant source of quiet, steady strength that Jaskier was already starting to depend on.

But at the mention of Geralt's Child Surprise, that equanimity had suddenly vanished. Eskel had gone pale under his summer tan. His amber eyes were dark with anger, betrayal, and a welling sadness that Jaskier had no idea how to cap off. Looking at Eskel right now was like looking at his own open wounds.

Jaskier could only lower his head to give Eskel some privacy while he worked through whatever emotion was clawing him to pieces on the inside. He waited until he was sure Eskel would hear his answer.

Eventually, Eskel picked up one of the debriding instruments—a very clean, very sharp pair of scissors—and started to clean up the wound on his index finger. Jaskier couldn’t watch what he was doing, so he focused on Eskel’s face again.

“Geralt’s Child Surprise,” Jaskier repeated. “Princess Cirilla, granddaughter of Queen Calanthe.” Eskel’s mouth was twisted up, but his hands were warm and perfectly steady. “Everyone wants Geralt because Nilfgaard has figured out—I think—that Geralt, at least, is connected to her.”

“And why does Nilfgaard want her?” Eskel asked calmly. Just like a seasoned plow horse, he was already finding his footing again.

“I have a theory,” Jaskier said, “but it’s just a theory. And—I cannot stress this enough—I have a wildly overactive imagination. But I think that the Emperor of Nilfgaard  wants Ciri because he thinks she’d be a very valuable weapon.”

“Why does he think that?”

“Because he heard about, or perhaps even attended, Queen Calanthe’s betrothal feast for her daughter Pavetta fourteen years ago. Pavetta had some kind of unharnessed Chaos capable of levelling the entire hall—the entire castle, possibly the city—with just her voice. Calanthe tried to murder the man Pavetta wanted to marry when he crashed the banquet. Pavetta strenuously objected, and Geralt got caught in the middle of all of it. He saved the man’s life, and the man—”

“Insisted on paying him,” Eskel interrupted. “And the Wolf called the Law of Surprise.”

For the first time, the expression on Eskel’s face actually seemed to be a genuinely furious glare. He was scratching at his scars again; the skin there was dry and sore-looking. “You’d think someone who’d lived as long as he and I have would have some godsdamned sense. What a complete. Fucking. Idiot.”

Eskel said this with a surprising amount of venom. There must be a story there, because Eskel didn’t seem like the overly judgemental sort. Unfortunately, Eskel managed to arrow in on the one point Jaskier had hoped to sail right over.

“What was Geralt doing at a royal betrothal feast?”

“Ah.” Jaskier paused, licking his lips. “Well, that part was my fault. I was supposed to perform at the feast. It was the first high-profile gig of my fledgling career, you see. But I was extremely popular among the ladies of the Cintran court. Several of the husbands and fathers in attendance wanted me dead, and Geralt agreed to come as my bodyguard.”

“Hmmm,” Eskel hummed. Did all Witchers make that noise instinctively? Or was it something they studied and practiced, like swordsmanship and masculine brooding?

“You…you might even say that it was all my fault,” Jaskier muttered, wincing a little as Eskel scraped away at a bit of dead skin attached to some very much alive nerve endings.

Eskel looked up at him. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s true.” Jaskier looked away before Eskel could see the suspicious shine of moisture in his eyes. “I begged Geralt to come to that banquet with me. Now he’s being hunted throughout the North because of it. He’s in danger.”

“He’s a Witcher, Jaskier,” Eskel pointed out gently. “He’s always in danger. That’s just a part of our Path. Geralt isn’t in trouble now because you brought him to some dinner fourteen years ago. He’s in trouble because he called for the Law of Surprise, and then he tried to cheat the Fates by abandoning his destined Child. There are consequences for doing that.” Eskel scratched at his cheek again. “Which Geralt knows. Better than most."

It was sweet of Eskel to try to reassure him, but Jaskier had spent months in a dark cell thinking about what he’d set in motion all those years ago. When Geralt had flung that accusation at him before on the mountain in Caingorn, it had felt like a dagger to the heart. He’d instinctively tried to dodge any responsibility. But later, in his cell, he’d dreamed about it over and over again until the truth was etched on his heart and soul. Just like that look of wrath and hatred on Geralt’s face in Caingorn.

That had been the first and only time in seventeen years of friendship that Jaskeri’d ever been truly afraid of the Witcher. He would never forget it.

Jaskier lasted to the count of 100 before he remembered that there were one or two other bits of information that he ought to share with Eskel, now that he’d apparently decided to go all-in on the mutual trust thing.

“Everyone is trying to find Geralt’s winter home,” Jaskier told him. “That’s why the first mage tortured me, and why Dijkstra continued the job. ‘No reason to let a good burn go to waste’,” he quoted.

If Jaskier’s statement about Geralt’s Child Surprise earlier had stopped Eskel in his tracks, this was the equivalent of throwing a bomb in his path.

Eskel’s head whipped up and the debriding scissors clattered into the basin. He set his huge, heavy hand on Jaskier’s shoulder. “What did you tell him?”

Both the tone of Eskel’s voice and the weight of his hand on his shoulder were unmistakably threatening. And yet, something about Eskel’s touch made Jaskier feel reassured, not frightened. There was no earthly reason for it. Sure, Jaskier had always been a distinctly tactile person, and yes, he’d been almost entirely deprived of touch for months, except when they brought him out to whip him or burn him or ask him a thousand variations of the same question, Where is Geralt of Rivia?.

But he’d never melted at such a simple touch before. Strangely, it didn’t feel like a weakness. He didn’t hate himself for the impulse or feel ashamed at his inability to be independent.

He simply needed to share this burden. Not because he couldn’t handle the weight of it anymore, but because he knew, instinctively, that Eskel would help him carry it.

Jaskier cleared his throat. He only had to explain this once, he told himself.

“I swear to you, Eskel. I didn’t tell them anything. No one: not Dijkstra, not the fire mage, no one. They never believed me, but I truly didn’t know anything. I still have no idea where Geralt’s winter home is, or where he spends the season. We’d meet up in Hagge in the spring, and go our separate way in the fall. Geralt was always heading north, and that’s as much as I ever knew. Geralt could have gone anywhere in Kaedwen, or even of the Kestrel Gap. Any information I had about where he wintered was useless. Worse than useless.”

Jaskier recognized the confusion and skepticism on Eskel’s face with a sinking heart. Eskel didn’t believe him any more than the fire mage had. Or Dijkstra, or the Sorceress. He tried not to let the sting of acute disappointment show.

“You travelled with Geralt every year? Since that banquet in Cintra? So...fourteen years?”

"Closer to seventeen years, actually," Jaskier corrected softly, which made Eskel frown in confusion.

“And Geralt never told you anything about his family? Or what he was doing for half the year?” His expression darkened when Jaskier shook his head again. “And you never asked?”

Jaskier licked his lips, searching for a way to explain. “Of course I asked! All the time, in a thousand different ways. But Geralt would only grunt! Or change the subject, or say…say it was better not to know.” He nodded at the terrible burns on his exposed right hand. “He was right about that bit, at least.”

He had to stop for a moment and wait until he was sure his voice wouldn’t fail him. But how to put it into words? Eskel had helped him because he thought Jaskier was Geralt's friend, after all. But in revealing how little he’d actually known Geralt, Jaskier had just made it clear that he had only a tangential claim to Geralt's friendship. Eskel would be well within his rights to walk out now and leave Jaskier here with literally all his wounds exposed. That might kill Jaskier, and not just because of his injuries, or because of the ringbound curse.

He’d lost his best friend in the world two years ago. Jaskier had never even attempted to replace Geralt, because how could anyone ever come close? While Jaskier knew it was a cruel, awful thing to do to someone as kind and warm-hearted as Eskel, he couldn’t help but map some of his very complicated feelings for Geralt onto this strange Witcher he was already so intimately entangled with.

It was almost too much to bear. Part of Jaskier almost hoped Eskel would walk away. He could sense the eye of Destiny swinging around again, searching for a target. He just needed a bit more time, that was all. Time to lick his wounds, time to get a little stronger.

Just stay with me for a little longer, he silently begged Eskel. Please. Please don’t go. Not yet.

***

Eskel finished the rest of the debridement in silence. He stopped only long enough to offer Jaskier more of the drugged water. He had to get through the cleaning and rebandaging process quickly, and he didn’t dare let his concentration slip. Despite Eskel’s best efforts, though, every so often a leaden bubble of fear more intense than anything he’d known since the Sacking would rise up inside of him, freezing his insides and filling his lungs with dread. He kept having to force that bubble of fear back down, resorting to techniques he'd learned in his childhood training, but hadn't had to use in...decades, now.

He couldn’t let himself get distracted. If he scraped away too much nonviable tissue, or nicked a tendon, Jaskier would lose the ability to use his fingers. Eskel couldn’t let that happen. Saving Jaskier’s hands was, quite literally, the least he could do.

If Jaskier was telling the truth—and Eskel was certain he was—Jaskier had already suffered more than anyone else, save perhaps the Witchers themselves, for keeping their secrets. Jaskier certainly deserved far better than the hand the Fates had dealt him. Even though everything inside Eskel was screaming to go and some way to contact Kaer Morhen, to warn them, to find out if his brothers had been slaughtered and the keep levelled to a smoking ruin again…he simply couldn’t.

He could not leave Jaskier alone with his hands unwrapped and spotted with dead tissue. Not with a black ring on his thumb that would kill Jaskier the moment Eskel left him behind.

It was an impossible position to be in. So Eskel, as always, simply put his shoulder to the grindstone and got it done.

He only paused once to call for one of the bathing attendants. He had to ask the girl if there was a mage nearby who was unaffiliated with the Redanian Crown. Someone he could trust who could send a long-distance encoded spell. The girl wasn’t much help—there were mages in Oxenfurt, of course, but they all worked for the city, the kingdom, or for the college itself. The nearest freelance mage was in Rinde, according to the girl.

Her answer seemed to set Jaskier off on some kind of emotional spiral that Eskel didn’t dare ask about.

The water in Jaskier’s bath had gone cold, and he was starting to shiver just before Eskel finished. Eskel took a bit of precious time to heat the water back up to a comfortable temperature using Ignii. It wasn’t exactly a difficult spell, and Geralt had probably performed it countless times in front of Jaskier, but Jaskier still somehow managed to look impressed.

In spite of all the fear and tension of the long afternoon, Eskel could admit that yes, it felt damned good to be looked at like that by Jaskier. He respected the man even more than when he’d assumed Jaskier was just some idealistic freedom-fighter who’d risked his life to get some elves out of Redania. Now that he knew Jaskier had also sacrificed everything, from his own physical well-being, to his godsdamned fingers, to his very life, to protect Geralt?

Eskel hadn't thought a human would do something like that for anyone but a blood relative, and certainly not for a Witcher. He wouldn’t have thought them capable of it before he met Jaskier.

Eskel was in awe of him. Geralt’s little songbird had somehow kept the last few members of Eskel’s little family safe. And he’d suffered for it. Keeping the Witchers’ secrets had come at a tremendous personal cost, and Eskel—and Geralt, and all the others—owed the man a debt none of them would ever be able to repay.

He was thoroughly pinned in place, now, just as much as any of those insects in the glass case at Kaer Morhen. Captivated, in every sense of the word. Unable and unwilling to part from Jaskier.

Fates help him, Eskel couldn’t even find it within himself to regret the ways in which he and Jaskier had become entangled.

***

The Oxenfurt market hadn’t changed significantly over the decades: the stalls were much the same, offering fresh produce and textiles along with a wide assortment of goods meant to appeal to the city’s academic population: books, quills, ink, parchment paper, all in varying degrees of price and quality.

Jaskier trotted along happily at Eskel’s side. Eskel reminded himself to keep his pace slow and steady to make sure Jaskier could keep up without tiring himself out. Now that the wound debridement was finished and his hands were slathered in Eskel’s salve and rebandaged, Jaskier's blistered fingers should start to heal.

Prices in Oxenfurt were higher than in the smaller market towns. As always, the merchants grossly overcharged Eskel. At least, they tried to do so, until Jaskier began stepping in to do the bargaining. It was a bit like watching a dried-out flower perk up after a rainstorm: Jaskier shed his hangdog expression and instead drew on an air of confidence with each marketplace vendor, often unleashing a rather snide, scathing tone on the ones who blatantly tried to fleece Eskel. He didn’t try to hide his relief: Jaskier was coming alive again, and it was a glorious thing to witness.

They stopped first at a cobbler’s to get Jaskier fitted for a pair of new boots, and Eskel purchased a soft pair of slippers for Jaskier to wear about town while they waited for the cobbler to finish his new boots. Next stop was at an herbalist’s, to buy more ingredients for willowbark tea and a few other human-friendly potion ingredients. Eskel also found a few items he needed to send a spelled message to Kaer Morhen: feathers, ink, high-quality vellum parchment, a length of red ribbon, wolfsbane, mandrake root, and a spring of ribleaf.

Jaskier was in desperate need of new clothing. He’d redressed in his filthy breeches after his bath, with one of Eskel’s spare shirt billowing from his starved frame like the sails on a fully-rigged man o’war.

The tailor presented an unexpected challenge. Eskel remembered Geralt complaining about “flamboyant bards” a time or two, and he fully expected Jaskier to be drawn to the more expensive eye-catching fabrics that wouldn’t hold up on the Path: silks, wild damask prints, impractical linens and thinner cottons and expensive wools.

However, while Jaskier eyed the brighter bolts, he didn’t stop to consider the fine fabrics. Instead, he went straight to the tailor’s discount table and started gathering a small armful of very practical, very dull items: woollen breeches, homespun stockings, and a pair of linen trousers for the summer months; a few light cotton shirts, and several unadorned wool tunics. Every article of clothing was dyed in dun-grey, green, brown or charcoal, without any embroidery or even contrasting braid to draw the eye. Everything was remarkably ugly, even to Eskel’s limited fashion sense.

The purchase decisions troubled him. He didn’t know Jaskier well, but Eskel knew he’d been noble-born. In combination with his bardic profession, those half-remembered grumblings of Geralt’s, and what Eskel had seen of Jaskier’s jovial approach to life, he’d assumed Jaskier would be drawn to the finer, brighter fabrics. He wasn’t sure if this sudden fondness for cheap, ugly clothing and dull travelling clothes was the symptom of some black mood, or if Jaskier was just trying to be practical. Either way, it troubled Eskel enough to lead him over to the higher-quality bolts of cloth.

“What about a doublet or two? We have enough to buy a few brighter things, if you like,” he suggested.

Jaskier just frowned and shook his head.

“I won’t be performing at court anytime soon. And we’re trying not to draw attention to ourselves, right?”

What Jaskier said was true, but it still gave Eskel an uneasy feeling.

They returned to the market square to pick out a few more necessary travel items for Jaskier: a travel satchel and a coinpurse, a dagger and a belt to hang everything on; a waterskin, several pairs of clean smallclothes and cloth to make more, and extra material for bandages and more first-aid supplies.

They ended the day back at the inn. Eskel sorted through the new items and supplies while Jaskier changed into his new dun-coloured breeches and a green shirt that fit him much better than Eskel’s enormous spare.

Jaskier still seemed reluctant to ask Eskel for help. He tried to go through the painstaking process of dressing without the use of his hands by himself, but after the third time he heard Jaskier hiss in pain, Eskel finally abandoned his effort to organize their travelling gear. He watched from a polite distance as Jaskier struggled to pull his new pair of breeches up over his too-slim hips.

“Can I help?” Eskel asked, but Jaskier only shook his head and waved him away. Eskel didn’t want to force his assistance on the bard, but it was painful to watch Jaskier try to grip the material with only his thumbs and pinkies. He’d lost most of the strength in his hands, and every jerky movement seemed to send a flare of pain up through his hands. Jaskier was feverish and sweating by the time he’d managed to get his pants on over his hips.

Eskel gave up watching and retreated downstairs to fetch their evening meal and some extra hot water for willowbark tea.

“You don’t want to eat downstairs?” Jaskier asked when he saw Eskel come in bearing the tray.

“I have some work to do here,” Eskel said, mindful of the spell he’d have to prepare tonight. Getting a message through the wards at Kaer Morhen wouldn’t be difficult. Bloodwards had been set up ages ago to allow only trusted Witchers to contact Vesemir. However, sending a message required a blood sample, and he had to conjure a raven to convey it, which was a bit tricky given the distance the bespelled bird would have to cover between Oxenfurt and the Blue Mountains. Eskel was also reluctant to do any of it while Jaskier was awake. He trusted Jaskier, especially after seeing for himself how much Jaskier had sacrificed to protect Geralt and his secrets. But Eskel rarely performed any magic aside from his Witcher signs in front of others, and he felt oddly shy about conjuring in front of an audience.

Luckily, after all the pain and excitement of the day, Jaskier seemed to be ready for a nap. He flopped down onto the bed and gave a wide yawn. He smiled a little sheepishly at Eskel, and then sniffed the air and his belly grumbled.

“What’s on the menu tonight?”

“Stew and fresh bread,” Eskel said, taking a seat next to the bed. “I think it should be easy enough on your stomach, but we’ll stick to small portions, all right?”

Jaskier nodded and looked at Eskel eagerly, and Eskel couldn’t help but smile. His lip twinged a little—the scars on his face felt dry and tight—but it seemed worth it to see Jaskier’s answering grin.

He helped the bard eat. The process went much more smoothly than it had during breakfast, and by the end of it Jaskier was yawning again and patting his full belly. He leaned back against the pillows and dozed while Eskel rooted through the market purchases. 

Eskel found the strips of rawhide he’d purchased from a tanner’s booth, and began to punch holes in the thick material with an awl, making a mental note to himself to find a buckle and snaps that would fit with the design he had in mind.

Jaskier slept through most of the afternoon. Eskel shook him awake just after sunset to feed him more willowbark tea, and to help him use the privy and clean his teeth. Jaskier was still sleepy-eyed and complacent from his nap, and let Eskel tend to his needs without complaint. However, every time Eskel guided him to sit or turn, or put a hand on his chin to tilt his head at the right angle, Jaskier’s eyes would drift closed for a moment and he’d draw in a deep breath.

“Everything all right?” Eskel asked after the fourth time it happened.

Jaskier opened his eyes and sat up straighter, as if he’d been drifting off to sleep and suddenly forced to recall his surroundings. He didn’t seem tired, exactly, just relaxed and oddly content under Eskel’s hands.

“Of course,” Jaskier said, but his cheeks were flushed pink, likely from fever. “I just…you’re good at this. Helping,” he finished awkwardly, with another blush. Eskel chuckled.

“I told you, I worked with a druid in Skellege for a bit? Did the heavy lifting in his clinic in exchange for some lessons. You’re not the first person I’ve helped use the chamberpot,” he said, and added, “you’ve been an excellent patient so far.”

Jaskier blushed again, clearly pleased, before his expression fell. “I am sorry about all of this,” he mumbled. “It’s a lot to ask. And you’re probably eager to get back out on the Path. Monsters to kill, etc., etc.”

“I’m more interested in finding Geralt,” Eskel admitted. He helped Jaskier shimmy out of his new breeches. “But that can wait a few days until you’re well enough to travel.”

It was a bit of a white lie: Eskel had no idea if he’d be able to pick up Geralt’s trail again, much less locate the man being hunted by Nilfgaard and all of the Northern kingdoms. Still, he wasn’t going to make Jaskier feel guilty over needing a few days to recover from being imprisoned and tortured.

“And once I’m back on my feet? What then?”

“We’ll head to Kaedwin. If Geralt did find his Child Surprise and he’s being hunted, he’ll have headed north.”

“You think he’s going to the, uh. The place where he usually winters?”

Jaskier was dancing around it, and Eskel sighed, knowing that he’d have to tell the bard all about Kaer Morhen eventually. They’d be sharing the Path for the foreseeable future, and Jaskier had a right to know where they were going.

“Yes,” Eskel said quietly. “There are a few other places we can check along our route north, but there aren’t many other places safe enough for Geralt to bring a child. He’ll head for our winter keep. It’s called Kaer Morhen. A bit of a ruin now, unfortunately, but it’s well-hidden in a valley in the Blue Mountains. Geralt and Princess Cirllia will be safe enough there.”

“The Blue Mountains?” Jaskier said, brows furrowed. “That’s a very long journey north.”

“We might not need to travel there,” Eskel promised. He tapped at the black ring on Jaskier’s thumb. “And we should test the limits of the enchantment on these rings, figure out how far apart we can get before triggering the spell.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Jaskier swallowed, and Eskel squeezed his shoulder.

“We’ll go slowly. If you start to feel any pain, we’ll stop right away. I just don’t want to get separated without knowing how far, or how long, it’s safe to be apart.”

“I suspect you’ll come to rue the day you accepted this contract. If you haven’t already,” Jaskier said with a bright smile that concealed something softer and more vulnerable. “You’ll be sick of me long before we reach Kaedwin, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Eskel said. “You’ll probably be sick of me first.” He’d stood to tidy up the dinner tray and remnants of the bitter willowbark tea, and so missed the sadness that flittered across Jaskier’s face.

“Think you can sleep more?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Jaskier said, clearly trying to rally. He slid down and went to grab the blankets, only to wince and draw his hands back down to his sides. “Could you…”

“Of course,” Eskel said, drawing the blankets up over Jaskier’s chest. He even reached out to plump up Jaskier’s pillow, and realized halfway through that it required leaning over Jaskier, bringing their faces close enough that his breath fanned the soft fringe of hair framing Jaskier’s face.

He didn’t dare try to look Jaskier in the eye, not wanting to witness any hint of fear or revulsion on Jaskier’s face. Jaskier still didn’t seem overly troubled by the scars, but following him around the market was different than being only inches away from Eskel’s scarred, mutilated face.

“Sleep well,” he muttered, and went to sit on the low stool in front of the hearth.

“Aren’t you going to…” Jaskier mumbled, jerking his chin at the empty pillow at his side. Eskel shook his head.

“You need the rest. I’m fine to bed down by the hearth.” Or he’d meditate through the night, as he’d done yesterday. He could go several days in a row without sleep before he felt any ill effects. Jaskier needed as much space and privacy as possible. There’d be precious little of either, once they set out on the Path.

“Goodnight, Jaskier,” he said

Jaskier mumbled a “g’night” in reply, and soon slipped off to sleep.

Eskel watched his face melt into soft relaxation. He was genuinely worried that Jaskier would quickly tire of his company. Eskel hadn’t spent more than a few days around a single person in decades, aside from the winters he’d passed with his brothers. He had no idea if he’d make for a good travelling companion. Time would tell, he supposed.

He picked up the strips of rawhide and worked until he heard Jaskier’s breathing deepen and even out, and his heartbeat slow.

Once he was sure Jaskier was deeply asleep, Eskel set aside the rawhide and began making the preparations for his messenger spell. It might take until early dawn, but he’d be able to get word to his family, and hopefully find out if anyone had heard from Geralt. The Wolf ought to have made it back to the keep already, if he’d been travelling north with the princess the whole time Eskel had been tracking his original trail west to Cintra.

In any case, Vesemir would send a reply as soon as he received Eskel’s message. There could be good news waiting by the time he and Jaskier reached Rinde.

He could only hope.

***

Jaskier woke up earlier than he had the previous day, but not early enough. Eskel was already gone.

He managed to get up and (mostly) dressed by himself, although he couldn’t tie his breeches so left them loose over his hips. It hurt to let his hands dangle at his sides. His blistered palms and fingers started throbbing almost immediately, so Jaskier kept his arms crossed over his chest, trying to keep from bumping into anything and jostling his sore, swollen fingers.

The debriding hadn’t been pleasant, but Eskel’s salve (not to mention all the food and extra rest) already seemed to be working wonders. For the first time since he’d been locked away in the gaol under Oxenfurt, Jaskier felt the faint fluttering of hope in his breast.

It was all thanks to Eskel.

He still hadn’t quite decided what to make of the Witcher. Eskel was kind, attentive and thoughtful, and he hadn’t uttered a word of complaint while treating Jaskier’s wounds, feeding him, or even helping him use the privy. In fact, Eskel had been far more compassionate and caring than Jaskier had any right to expect from a good friend, much less a near-total stranger.

It felt disloyal to consider it, but even before their falling out, he suspected that Geralt would have dropped him off with a healer, or sent him back to his family in Lettenhove if Jaskier had ever proven to be this useless on the Path.

Jaskier wouldn’t have blamed Geralt. Witchers were solitary, self-sufficient men who preferred to travel alone. Geralt had told him so very bluntly during their first few years together, though he seemed less insistent on the point once he realized Jaskier wasn’t going to get bored and go on his merry way.

He couldn’t afford to become complacent. Eskel quite literally held Jaskier’s life in his big scarred hands.

Geralt had set out clear expectations for Jaskier as a travel companion on the Path, and Jaskier should probably assume Eskel would expect the same:

“You have to be able to keep up with me, Jaskier,” Geralt had said. “I can’t slow down for you. If you can’t match whatever pace I set and fall behind, if you slow me down or get injured, that’s it. We’re done. You’ll see to your own needs, pay for your own supplies. I don’t have any coin to spare. And no whining. If you choose this life, you don’t get to complain about it.”

Jaskier resolved to make himself a pleasant travelling companion for Eskel, but without his hands, he knew he wouldn’t be able to pull his weight on the Path. Geralt had been blunt about how substandard Jaskier’s efforts were whenever he tried to help with making camp or cooking or mending Geralt’s armour.

Geralt had taught him much about surviving in the wilds, and eventually they’d found a rhythm together, but it had taken years for Geralt to find him even remotely satisfactory as a travelling companion. Though according to what Geralt had said to him on the mountain, Jaskier had never been up to snuff.

Perhaps there was some other way he could make himself useful to Eskel? Everyone needed something, after all. He tried very hard not to consider that the only thing Geralt had ultimately wanted was to be free of Jaskier’s company.

The stomach-churning anxiety this inspired made Jaskier’s thoughts turn in endless circles. He still hadn’t hit on any solutions before Eskel knocked on the door.

“Um, come in,” Jaskier said, painfully aware that Eskel had paid for the room, the food he’d been eating, the very clothes on his back. He didn’t need to knock.

Eskel came in bearing a breakfast tray, and Jaskier stared at him for a moment. The ends of his dark hair were damp. He’d been to the baths—without Jaskier, this time—and shaved, and the effect was quite startling. Not that Eskel looked like a completely different person, but without the dark stubble, and with his hair combed back, he looked…softer, somehow. Younger, less brutish and brooding. In the sunlit room, his amber eyes were the colour of warm honey, and when his gaze alighted on Jaskier, Jaskier felt something flutter in his chest. Something that made him shiver in pleasure.

He jerked his gaze away from Eskel’s face and said, “Ah, breakfast!” with far too much enthusiasm.

Nevertheless, Eskel seemed pleased by Jaskier’s appetite. He blushed again—Jaskier had no idea Witchers could blush—and laid out the tray of fresh eggs, sausage, and some sort of thick, crumbly biscuit. There was also, alas, another mug of that horribly bitter willowbark tea. The concoction had eased his fever and the stiffness in his hands overnight, so Jaskier couldn't grumble about it too much, but that stuff really was repellant.

Eskel sat on the chair while Jaskier perched on the edge of the bed, and they went through the now-familiar motions of hand-feeding. Jaskier opened and chewed and swallowed in what was starting to feel a bit more natural, or at least not like a deeply mortifying process of being fed like a child. Focusing on Eskel helped. It was also a good opportunity to study the minute shifts in the Witcher’s expression as he shovelled small forkfuls of eggs and sausages into Jaskier’s mouth.

A small furrow had formed between Eskel’s heavy brows and he squinted in concentration like a schoolboy struggling with a difficult maths problem. His tongue crept out from the hole in his lip in an unexpected flash of soft, pink wetness.

Jaskier felt his face heat and that flutter again, lower in his belly this time.

Perhaps this was not the best time to study Eskel so intently.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Jaskier asked, more to distract himself than out of any real curiosity.

“Thought I might introduce you to my horse,” Eskel said in his deep rumbly voice, which did absolutely nothing to stop the slow spread of warmth in Jaskier’s belly. “We could go back to the market, too, if you need anything else—”

“Your horse?” Jaskier repeated, before his brain caught up with the second part of that sentence. “And Eskel, please, I don’t need more clothes. You shouldn’t spend any more money on my behalf! I’m not sure how I’ll ever repay you as it is!”

“I told you before,” Eskel said gently, setting down the fork, “The payout on the contract is your money. You don’t owe me anything, Jaskier,” he said, suddenly very serious. “I’m the one who owes you a debt. You kept my brother’s secrets, and protected my family. You suffered greatly for it. You’re still suffering for it,” he added, tapping gently at the black ring on Jaskier’s thumb. “I’m the one who owes you an impossible debt. One I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay.”

“But I don’t see it that way,” Jaskier said, his voice growing thick with emotion. “You saved me from a distinctly unpleasant death, Eskel. You bound yourself to me, for at least the foreseeable future, just to save my life. I think that makes us equal.”

“Then no more talk of debts. Agreed?”

Jaskier could only nod, and tell himself very sternly not to cry.

***

Once they were finished with breakfast, Eskel herded them downstairs and they walked over to the stable near the bridge leading out of Oxenfurt.

Jaskier was content to wait in the yard while Eskel fetched his mount from the stall. The early summer breeze was pleasant and, with the sun beating down overhead and the familiar sounds of Oxenfurt forming a comforting background hum, Jaskier closed his eyes and allowed himself to enjoy being outdoors again, and the sensation of sunlight on his face.

When Jaskier looked up, he found himself staring up at one of the largest horses he’d ever seen.

The beast was an enormous black stallion who stood at least two or three hands higher than any other courser Jaskier had ever seen. Geralt’s mounts—every Roach that Jaskier could remember, anyway—had been small, steady mares bred for speed and agility on the battlefield. It was hard to picture this huge, muscular stallion nimbly weaving his way through a clutch of bandits or outrunning a wyvern. It looked like one of the huge drafthorses used for hauling cargo at a brewery, not a fearless mount who’d carry a Witcher into battle.

But then Eskel was broader, heavier, and more muscular than Geralt. It made a certain kind of sense, a big mount for a big man, but even so, the huge destrier seemed a bit, well, overpowered. He appeared to be calm enough, however, and friendlier than Geralt’s most recent Roach. Jaskier held his bandaged hand out, palm flat, so the horse could scent him.

“This is Scorpion,” Eskel said. He seemed oddly nervous, like he was introducing Jaskier to a beloved family member. He set a piece of dried apple in Jaskier’s palm. “Here, it’s his favourite.”

Jaskier offered it up to the horse and smiled when the stallion delicately lipped up the piece of dried fruit and swallowed it in a single bite.

“He’s a Zerakkanian warhorse,” the Witcher said proudly. One of Scorpion’s coal-black ears twitched back at the sound of his master’s voice, and Jaskier took a cautious step back as the big horse swung his head around to look at Eskel.

Eskel gave Scorpion a fond, indulgent smile and stroked the horse’s velvety muzzle before nudging him back around to face Jaskier. “Think you’ll be able to ride him?”

“Ride him?” Jaskier stared up at the massive horse, who looked just as skeptical as Jaskier. “Why?”

“We’ll be headed out on the Path, eventually,” Eskel said, absently stroking Scorpion’s neck. “You can’t walk all the way to Kaedwin.”

“I’ve done it before,” Jaskier shot back, ignoring the spark of confusion in Eskel’s eyes. “And…I’ve never been a good seat.”

Eskel tilted his head. “Geralt didn’t teach you?”

“No?” Jaskier was feeling supremely confused. “Why on earth would Geralt teach me?”

“He was a riding instructor,” Eskel said, and Jaskier stared at him. “One of the best, actually.”

“What? Who…who did he teach?”

“The children,” Eskel said quietly, and then cleared his throat, adding, “The young Witcher recruits, I mean. At the school. He was good with them.”

“Oh. I…I didn’t know Geralt was a teacher.” He couldn’t even fathom it. The idea of Geralt giving riding lessons to small children made his brain hurt, just a little. He’d never seen Geralt interact with a child: mothers and fathers were quick to send their children scurrying off the second they caught sight of a Witcher, especially the infamous White Wolf.

Honestly, Jaskier wasn’t sure what sort of teacher Geralt might make. Whenever he’d tried to teach Jaskier something, especially in those early years on the Path together, he’d often growled and snapped and made it very clear that Jaskier was a hopeless case.

Perhaps it was only Jaskier who’d pushed Geralt’s patience past the breaking point.

Eskel was still giving him a strange look, and Jaskier groped for a change of subject. Riding. Right. He eyed the vast distance between the ground and Scorpion’s back.

“I’m going to need a ladder to get up there. Or maybe a grappling hook.”

Eskel chuckled at him. “Here,” he said, kneeling. He held out the stirrup so Jaskier could thread his foot through the metal loop, and then patted his bent knee for Jaskier to use as an impromptu mounting block. Jaskier put his wrist on Eskel’s shoulder to steady himself.

“I’ll boost you up onto your belly,” Eskel told him, “Careful not to use your hands. Don’t try to grab the pommel or throw your leg over; I’ll come around and help you sit up.”

Jaskier nodded and swallowed.

As soon as he touched Eskel, he felt that odd pulse of awareness flicker up through the layers of skin and cloth between them. Like a flint struck against steel, it flared bright. Almost blinding. The strange sensation faded as Eskel half-boosted/half-tossed Jaskier up into the saddle.

He ended up belly-down and slumped halfway over Scorpion’s back. Scorpion nickered in confusion at the uneven weight and took a small step to the side, but quieted as soon as Eskel made a soothing hmmm sound and stroked his neck. Eskel went around to Scorpion’s other side and kept Jaskier steady while he eeled around enough to get a leg over, and then helped push him up until Jaskier was finally sitting in the saddle.

It was one of the most inelegant and graceless attempts to mount a horse that Jaskier had ever been a part of, but at least he’d made it into the saddle.

The next challenge was perhaps even more daunting. He wouldn’t be able to hold the reins or grab for the pommel to help balance himself. It was a very, very long way to the ground from up here. If he fell, he’d break a few bones at least, possibly even his neck.

Eskel stepped back to study his posture. “Shift your hips forward a bit,” he recommended. “Remember to keep your knees relaxed, heels down. How do you feel?”

Jaskier swallowed. He was sweating through his new tunic. “Like I’m about to die.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Eskel said firmly, squeezing Jaskier’s knee. He felt the warmth of the man’s touch all the way up through his leg. “Scorpion’s a good mount, and he knows you’re injured. He’ll take care of you. Shall we try a walk?”

“If we must,” Jaskier grumbled. “Please, put in a good word for me?”

Scorpion moved as soon as Eskel took a step. Even though he’d braced himself, Jaskier jerked and clenched his teeth so he wouldn’t let out an undignified shriek. He tried to remember the fundamentals drilled into him by a series of impatient riding instructors: Grip with the thighs, but don’t squeeze! Don’t slouch! Tilt your pelvis!

He was a shaking, exhausted, sweaty mess after a single loop around the stableyard.

Jaskier was shocked at how much of his muscle mass had wasted away in that dark, cramped cell under the city streets. It might take weeks, if not months, for him to safely sit a horse by himself, especially if he had to grip with his thighs instead of relying on his hands to keep balanced. He couldn’t walk alongside the horse, either, unless Eskel was willing to spend years travelling to Kaedwin.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier finally gasped. “I can’t do it.” The true futility of their plan was sinking in. If he couldn’t ride or walk, he couldn’t go with Eskel. And Eskel couldn’t hang around Oxenfurt forever. Sooner or later, he’d need to leave to look for Geralt.

Which meant Eskel was going to have to leave Jaskier behind.

“It’s okay,” Eskel said gently. “You’ll get your strength back. It won’t be this hard forever.”

He sounded so warmly encouraging that Jaskier wanted to weep. But he didn’t believe it anymore than Eskel probably did.

“We can’t afford to wait around here that long,” Jaskier pointed out, mentally amending it to, You can’t afford to wait here. Because if Eskel had any hope of catching up to Geralt, he couldn’t do it with Jaskier. And if what the mage at the ceremony said was true, the ringbound spell would kill Jaskier within a few days of being parted from Eskel.

“What if I rode pillion behind you?” Eskel suggested quietly, as if uncertain how Jaskier would react to the idea. “I could take the reins, hold you up. Help you keep your seat.”

Jaskier tilted his head to the side, considering. It was a good suggestion, actually, and Jaskier had no qualms about sharing a saddle with Eskel, especially if it meant he wouldn’t be left behind. It might not be all that comfortable, though. Eskel was a big man, and they’d have to ride pressed very close together in the saddle. But Jaskier was certainly game.

There was an odd note of anxiety in Eskel’s rusty voice, though, as if he were reluctant to share a saddle with someone. Perhaps he had an aversion to touch? Or felt overstimulated by it? That might make sense—Geralt had often complained about Jaskier’s tendency to hug or pat his shoulder or curl up next to him whenever they had to share a bed at an inn. He’d eventually confessed that too much touch was overwhelming, and Jaskier had slowly learned how to tell when Geralt was reaching a breaking point. Perhaps Eskel was the same? Maybe touch-aversion was just another Witcher quirk, like an oversensitivity to light or certain smells, or a propensity for brooding?

However, Eskel had been the one to suggest it, and Jaskier trusted the man to know his own limits.

He slipped his feet out of the stirrups so Eskel could use it to mount, and scooted forward as much as he could in the saddle.

Eskel wrapped one large, blunt-fingered hand around the pommel, and Jaskier felt the world slide abruptly to the left as Eskel vaulted up into the saddle. For such a big man, he moved with the same fluid grace as Geralt had always displayed.

Eskel settled into place with his hips snugged up tight to Jaskier’s, his broad chest a warm, muscular wall behind Jaskier’s back. Riding doubled-up like this was a bit more intimate than he’d expected.

Jaskier tried to scrunch forward as much as he could, but that strange zinging pulse of connection was coursing through him again, getting stronger every time he made contact with Eskel’s chest. It vibrated up through his body like a struck lute string. The bespelled ring must be causing it, but Jaskier couldn’t fathom why, or what purpose it might serve. There was no pain or discomfort from the contact, but it was a uniquely strange feeling. The closest sensation Jaskier could think of was perhaps the rumbling vibration of a cat’s contented purr, but without any sound.

The sensation grew more intense when Eskel wrapped his arms around Jaskier’s sides so he could grab hold of the reins.

Eskel clicked his tongue and Scorpion lurched into a slow walk. The first step jolted Jaskier forward into the pommel--he said a silent prayer for his bollucks--and then back into the V of Eskel’s lap. The Witcher’s thighs and forearms were tense as steel cables, like Eskel was holding himself rigidly and trying not to touch Jaskier any more than was absolutely necessary. It was a lost cause: even with Jaskier’s thin and wasted condition, Eskel was still a big, tall, densely-muscled man. There just wasn’t much room to comfortably create space between them in a shared saddle.

Jaskier drew in a deep breath and forced himself to relax back against Eskel until they were pressed back-to-chest. He’d expected the thrumming/vibrating sensation to increase to the point of pain with such close contact, but instead it eased significantly when Jaskier sank back against Eskel’s chest before fading to a distant, comforting rumble.

Once the vibration faded into something less overt, Jaskier had nothing to distract himself from the hard press of Eskel’s body.

Eskel had left his heavily lined and studded gambeson back at the inn, and was wearing just a grey linen shirt. With only a few thin layers of linen between them, Jaskier could suddenly tell exactly how densely muscled Eskel really was. His huge thighs felt like slabs of solid oak pressed up against Jaskier’s wasted legs, and his chest was one rippling wall of muscle, aside from Eskel’s little paunch of a belly that felt almost sinfully good pressed up into the arch of Jaskier’s aching lower back. He found himself sinking into Eskel’s warmth, enjoying the odd (and oddly welcoming) sense of security he felt in the Witcher’s arms.

They took a few turns around the stableyard. The familiar motions of riding seemed to help Eskel relax; he splayed his knees wider and curled his arm around Jaskier’s waist. The position still felt incredibly intimate, but no longer as fraught with tension. Jaskier found that, once they’d both relaxed a little, sharing a saddle with Eskel was almost…comfortable.

“Okay to take a short ride?” Eskel asked. His breath was a puff of hot air against Jaskier’s ear, and he felt the rumble of the question against his back.

Jaskier shivered and nodded, not quite trusting his voice.

Eskel guided them through the bustling morning streets and out to the main bridge that connected the island city of Oxenfurt to the mainland. The cooler morning air would soon turn hot and humid, but for now, it was just chilly enough to make Jaskier appreciate Eskel’s body heat.

He smelled good, too, thanks to the bath he’d taken that morning, with only a faint trace of fresh sweat and the ever-present odour of horse to distract from Eskel’s strongly masculine scent of sandalwood and cedar. Jaskier found it all terribly distracting.

“How is it?” Eskel asked after they’d cleared the Oxenfurt gate and crossed the bridge. “Comfortable?”

“Very much so,” Jaskier said. He couldn’t turn his head without his cheek grazing Eskel’s lips, which didn’t seem compatible with a firmly platonic ride through the Oxenfurt countryside. So Jaskier kept facing forward.

His hands were throbbing dully; it seemed to help when he gently rested his wrists on Eskel’s arm. He’d gotten used to the contented cat’s-purr sensation he felt whenever he touched Eskel. Jaskier could admit to himself that it was very pleasant to be held like this by a big strong man, supported and cradled in the v of Eskel’s lap.

He felt…safe, he decided. Protected. Even oddly cherished, though he knew it was just wishful thinking on his part. Before long, Eskel would realize that Jaskier was too annoying, too needy, too much to travel with. He'd grate on Eskel's nerves. Resentment would settle in, and shortly after that, Jaskier would find himself dumped by the side of the road--or the top of a very tall mountain--and he'd be alone once more.

If this feeling of being cared for was going to be stripped away eventually, what was the harm in letting himself enjoy it now? Jaskier could simply let himself soak up Eskel's kindness without worrying about the inevitable loss.

Flowers didn't worry about the encroaching chill of winter, after all: they basked in the sun while it lasted.

He could do that too. He could.

***

Chapter Text

In the small pack of remaining Wolf Witchers, Eskel was often described (by Vesemir, at least) as the ‘responsible one.’ He was the one who planned ahead, who tried to prepare for every outcome, who carefully mapped out his seasonal route weeks in advance, and who avoided extra trouble and complications like the plague.

Geralt and Lambert were the risk-takers, charging headlong into situations Eskel would normally scout out in advance. He’d always thought his caution was sensible. After all, Eskel didn’t have Geralt’s additional mutations—extra strength, speed, faster reflexes, higher endurance—to fall back on if a fight went south. Eskel didn’t share Lambert’s sense of reckless abandon, either. He’d never been one to throw caution to the wind and dive deep into unfamiliar waters.

Offering to share a saddle with Jaskier hadn’t been a calculated risk. It certainly hadn't been sensible. Just a few moments of being pressed lap-to-thigh to Jaskier made Eskel feel like he was on fire, every nerve ending tingling with awareness of exactly how close Jaskier was.

It was a heady combination of touch and sensation: warm body in his lap and filling his arms, the pleasantly clean scent of Jaskier’s soft hair as it brushing against Eskel’s scarred cheek. He felt hypersensitive to so much contact, especially after going so long without. It was impossible not to notice how supple and inviting Jaskier’s skinny hips and backside felt, especially when pressed so tightly against Eskel’s thighs and stirring cock.

At least his codpiece was working in his favour. Not even one of Eskel’s erections could distend the hard shell of the protective cup. It was a relief to know he wouldn’t make Jaskier uncomfortable. Not in that way, at least.

Jaskier was holding himself stiffly upright in the saddle in a futile attempt to maintain at least a little bit of distance between them. Eskel understood the impulse—he was the last person anyone would ever want to share a saddle with, probably—but Jaskier would only wear himself out and end up with sore muscles if he tried to pretend like they weren’t riding together pressed nip-to-nave.

Eskel shored up his flagging courage and slid his arm around Jaskier’s distressingly thin waist. He hugged Jaskier back against him, trying to communicate in the gentlest way he knew that Jaskier could lean on him.

It seemed to work. Once Eskel released some of the tension he'd been holding, Jaskier relaxed back against his chest. And as Jaskier adjusted to Scorpion’s rolling gait, he even tentatively curled his freshly-bandaged hands around Eskel’s forearm to keep his hands braced and protected against any accidental contact. His uninjured thumbs were curled around the inside of Eskel’s wrist, right against his pulse-point. It felt so oddly intimate, even more so than the tight press of their bodies.

Eskel’s heart was pounding, both from arousal and the anxious novelty of being so close to another person. He hadn’t felt so hopelessly awkward in decades.

He cast around for something, anything, to use as a distraction, and landed on a topic that had been occupying his thought for a while now.

“Uh, Jaskier?” Eskel was practically speaking right into Jaskier’s ear. “Did something happen between you and Geralt?”

All of Jaskier’s tentative relaxation evaporated. He went board-stiff again in Eskel’s arms, and while Eskel’s instincts were clamouring to let it go! He doesn’t want to talk about Geralt! he also knew that Jaskier wasn’t just grieving the loss of his freedom and his injuries. Something else was weighing on his spirit, and Eskel suspected that it had something to do with that look of relief-sorrow-disappointment that had flashed across Jaskier’s face back in Dijkstra’s office when he’d realized that the Witcher who’d come for him wasn’t the White Wolf.

It seemed clear enough that Jaskier had expected Geralt would try to save him. The fact that Geralt hadn’t was mighty troubling. He might not have known Jaskier was in prison, but that seemed unlikely, given Jaskier’s notoriety and apparently well-known connection to Geralt, and the contract posts that had been plastered across Redania. The other two possibilities, that Geralt might not have been able to mount a rescue, or that he hadn’t been willing, were equally troubling.

“I’ve been searching for him,” Eskel said, deciding that Jaskier might be willing to talk about Geralt if he started the conversation. “He didn’t come home the winter before last, or send word as to why. A few of the other Witchers had heard some strange stories about Geralt, too: that he’d gone on a dragon hunt, taken up with a sorceress, that powerful people were looking for him…none of it made any sense. I was worried.”

“Maybe you just don’t know him as well as you think you do,” Jaskier muttered.

“That’s certainly possible.” Painful as it was, Eskel had to acknowledge Jaskier’s point, even if it made his heart ache to think of Geralt as a virtual stranger. But they hadn’t walked the same Path in decades. He couldn’t even guess what had been going through his brother’s head regarding the Cintran princess, or why he’d evidently held a loyal, devoted friend at arm’s length despite travelling with him for many years.

Jaskier sighed. “We argued. Two summers ago, in Caingorn. We went on that damned dragon hunt. Geralt had a spectacular falling-out with his sorceress, and–”

“Sorceress?”

Jaskier let out a small, bitter laugh. “He didn’t tell you about Yennefer?”

Eskel shook his head. There’d been a rumour circulating a few winters ago, about Geralt having taken up with a violet-eyed witch, but he’d thought that it was just some random bit of gossip Lambert had picked up somewhere on the Path. Lambert and Coën had used it to rile Geralt up few times over dinner, that was all: the Wolf had never even acknowledged if it was true or not.

“Yennefer of Vengerberg,” Jaskier said, and then launched into one of the strangest stories Eskel had ever heard in his long life. It began with Geralt seeking a djinn to cure his insomnia, which somehow led to Geralt inadvertently cursing and nearly killing Jaskier. There was also an  empathetic elf, a magical orgy, and some business that resulted in a ten-year ban from Rinde. All of which concluded with Geralt inexplicably bedding a sorceress of Aretuza.

Eskel might have accused Jaskier of making the whole thing up, but the scent of Jaskier’s pain and horror when he recounted the djinn’s curse were proof enough.

“Anyway, that Chireadan fellow and I hit it off, and we exchanged letters for a long while afterward. He’s the one who helped me get the whole Sandpiper network going, actually,” Jaskier finished.

“Huh,” Eskel said, eager to find out more about Jaskier’s elf-smuggling endeavours, too. But in the meantime, he wanted to know what, exactly, had caused a rift between Jaskier and Geralt, if a literal death-curse hadn’t done it.

Jaskier drew in a deep breath. “At any rate, Geralt was upset over quarreling with Yennefer, and I…well, I suggested we could go away somewhere. A little seaside holiday. I thought a break from the Path might do him some good. Apparently my suggestion was…ill-timed.”

Jaskier fell quiet, clearly working himself up to talking about whatever had happened next. Eskel squeezed Jaskier's waist in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture.

“Geralt made it quite clear that he had never enjoyed my company, and that I was an annoyance to him. A burden. He accused me of bringing a number of disasters upon him: the Cintran Princess, the djinn, whatever had happened between him and that sorceress… At any rate, after nearly 18 years of travelling together, Geralt decided that he could no longer tolerate my presence. So we parted ways.”

The words were pouring out of Jaskier like puss from a lanced wound. He’d been waiting to tell this story for a while, Eskel realized: that  well of hurt and disappointment within him went deep. His shoulders, those sharp, thin points of bone and muscle, were heaving, and he smelled of strong salt and bitter distress. But he seemed reluctant to let the tears fall.

Eskel ached for him. It had been a long damn time since he’d tried to comfort anyone, but he wanted to try. For Jaskier.

Eskel drew Scorpion to a halt and draped the reins over the saddle horn. He wrapped his other arm around Jaskier and hugged him tightly. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “Let it out. You’ll feel better.”

It seemed like Jaskier had only been waiting for permission to let himself cry.

He sobbed a few times—unsurprisingly, the bard was a loud crier—and Eskel hummed the same song he’d sung to Jaskier that first night, the old hillfolk melody his mother had once sung to him. Jaskier’s sobs grew quieter and his breath evened out, and eventually the storm of tears passed.

Jaskier sighed deeply and rubbed at his cheeks with his bandaged palms. Eskel dug around in his saddlebag for a spare handkerchief—they made for excellent field dressings—and held it out in a silent offer. Jaskier nodded, and Eskel blotted at his cheeks as best he could, and even helped Jaskier to blow his nose. Eskel balled up the handkerchief and stuck back in the saddlebag for washing.

“Ugh, I’m sorry, I’m so disgusting,” Jaskier said, voice still thick with tears. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Eskel said, because it was true. He slid his arms around Jaskier again, letting himself sniff at Jaskier’s neck, just a little. He was relieved to find that the slaty scent of sadness was fading. “And you’re not 'disgusting'. You’ve been through hell. And it sounds like you've been carrying all that around for a long time.”

Jaskier sniffed again. “The worst part is that Geralt was right: I am annoying, and a burden. People have always found me to be incredibly draining. My own parents could barely stand me. And I knew I tested Geralt’s patience,” Jaskier said softly, “but I also thought that I made his life a little easier. A little less lonely. But it turned out that he never needed me in the first place: he was just tolerating me.”

“I'm sure that's not true,” Eskel said gently, instinctively convinced of the truth. He was heartsick and horrified at his brother’s behaviour. It was all too familiar, part of an old pattern that he’d hoped Geralt had outgrown long ago. Instead, it seemed as if it was only even more deeply entrenched. And none of it had anything to do with Jaskier. 

“Jaskier,” he sighed, “I don’t know exactly what Geralt was thinking. It sounds like he was frustrated and, as you said, angry about something else. But I can assure you: you were never a burden to him. He wouldn’t have travelled with you for so long if he didn’t like your company.”

“Then why did he--?”

“Because that’s what he was trained to do.” Eskel sighed. “Witchers are taught to go for straight for the weakest spot. Strike fast and true, and do it without hesitation. Or mercy. That’s how a Witcher kills.”

He clicked his tongue to get Scorpion moving again. “I don’t know why he wanted to hurt you. I doubt even Geralt himself knows. But I know how he fights. He only said those things because it was the most efficient way to cut ties, not because he believed it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Eskel discovered too late that he had no idea how to explain it to Jaskier. At least, not without betraying Geralt’s confidence. He settled on the limited truth he could share.

“He did the same thing to me,” Eskel said. “A couple of times, actually,” he huffed, aiming for something between irony and bitterness. “Felt like he’d ripped my heart out both times. Geralt is—”

A hard man to love, he wanted to say. Instead he continued with, “Geralt’s a hard person to be friends with.” It seemed safer. “We Witchers have few enough friends as it is. Geralt’s always made it his business to push people away before they can hurt him, and because he’s Geralt, he tends to overdo it. Wolf never learned how to pull his punches.”

They rode on in silence for a while, each lost in their own thoughts. Eventually Eskel looped them back on the road to Oxenfurt.

“Did he ever tell you he was sorry?” Jaskier asked. “When he pushed you away before?”

Eskel had to think about it, because the question didn’t have a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. He’d forgiven Geralt so long ago, he couldn’t remember if there’d been any actual words involved. Just seeing him ride through the gates of Kaer Morhen at the end of each season had always seemed like enough of an apology. Perhaps he should have forced Geralt to use his words instead.

“We never talked about it.” Eskel admitted. “I don’t think we had the words for it.”

“Well,” Jaskier said after a beat, “I shan't hold my breath either.” He sniffed, and then seemed to steady himself.

Eskel remembered he ought to relax his arms a little: he didn’t need to keep hugging Jaskier quite so tightly, now that the storm of emotion seemed to have passed. Still, he felt oddly reluctant to let go.

“Does this change anything about our, ah, arrangement?” Jaskier asked. Eskel didn’t like the nervous edge of uncertainty in his question. “You got me out of prison—you married me—because you thought I was Geralt’s friend. I’d understand if you no longer felt…obligated.”

Eskel found that he’d involuntarily tightened his arm around Jaskier again, clutching him close like he was afraid the question itself would tear Jaskier away. He breathed out slowly, refusing to blurt out his first response—hurt, angry denial—that instinctively rose up. Jaskier didn’t need his emotion. He needed calm, steady resolve, and consistent reassurance. Those were the things Eskel was good at giving. The only things Eskel had to offer to anyone, really.

“It doesn’t change anything. Not for me," Eskel said. "You were still willing to give your life to protect Geralt and the rest of my family even though he’d been cruel to you. I think that means you are still his friend. Mine too, I hope,” he added softly.

“Oh,” Jaskier said. “I’d be honoured to be your friend, Eskel. Truly.”

Friends. He wasn't sure if that was exactly what he wanted from Jaskier, but then Eskel had no right to ask for anything more.

Friends was a lot, he reminded himself. Considering what they were facing together—the ringbound curse, Dijkstra’s spies, a trek across half the Continent—friends would have to be enough.

Anything more meant that Eskel would be taking advantage of Jaskier. Jaskier couldn’t exactly say no to him, after all. He couldn’t just walk away, thanks to the spell, and even if he could, Jaskier wouldn’t get very far with two injured hands.

He was dependent on Eskel for everything, and Eskel wasn’t enough of a blackguard to take advantage of that.

Friends, he told himself very sternly. And nothing more.

***

Art by FlightsFancy, Link to DeviantArt Gallery

***

They spent a few more days at the Loose Moose in Oxenfurt, and Eskel’s strange new life with Jaskier fell into a steady routine.

Eskel might have expected to chafe at sharing such close quarters. Their rented room was hardly large or luxurious, even by Eskel’s standards, and the Loose Moose was located smack dab in the middle of one of the largest cities on the Continent. Eskel had always taken the northernmost hunting routes, the ones that had taken him far from the horrible smells and claustrophobic confines of large human settlements. In the wilderness, Eskel didn’t have to face any stares or cruel remarks, or feel overwhelmed by crowds or the smells of a city.

He ought to have been crawling out of his skin by the end of their week-long stay in Oxenfurt.

Instead, he felt inexplicably content. His days were divided up into caring for Jaskier, sourcing ingredients for poultices and healing tinctures, and stocking up on everything they might need for the Path ahead. Mainly that meant gathering two things: clean bandages, and huge amounts of the healing salve required to dress Jaskier’s burns.

The salve itself was easy enough to prepare in small quantities on the Path. However, Eskel had been drilled from childhood on the life-saving importance of proper preparation. He made a large batch of the salve every morning, storing it in small, sturdy amphoras and glass vials that were light enough to keep in a special lined satchel usually reserved for his extra potions and oils.

Bandages were expensive and a bit more difficult to come by, especially on the Path. Eskel traded some of his rarer herbs and monster parts with a local hedgewitch, and the old woman was kind enough to help him wash and bleach and boil and roll endless yards of linen at her hut in Acorn Bay.

Even the less-pleasant parts of Eskel’s day—assisting Jaskier in the privy, changing his bandages, washing him and going through the painstaking process of wound debridement—were messy and sometimes a little disgusting, but nothing that would offend a Witcher’s sensibilities. Besides, it quickly became apparent to Eskel that he could never regret any of the time he spent with Jaskier.

The man had a sharp wit, a biting sense of humour, and could converse happily on a huge variety of topics, from poetry and music to alchemy and animal husbandry. Jaskier had also travelled across most of the Continent at Geralt’s side, and so anytime Eskel mentioned a half-forgotten elven ruin or an obscure mountain village, Jaskier seemed to know it, or was at least familiar enough with it to be eager to learn more.

After an afternoon spent discussing Toussantini vineyards, dwarven metalworking methods and the strange folklore of the Skellige Isles, Eskel realized that he’d probably exchanged more words with Jaskier in five days than he’d spoken aloud in eighty-odd winters with his brothers. Much as he loved his small family, very few Witchers were interested in the Continent’s geography and history beyond what they needed to know to lift a curse or complete a contract.

It shocked Eskel to discover just how hungry he’d been for conversation. There was a lot he’d longed to share about the sights and experiences he'd amassed during his long, lonely years of travel. Some afternoons the stories poured out of him like water out of a burst dam. Just as often, Eskel was content to simply float along and listen to Jaskier.

By week’s end, Eskel felt they were about as prepared as they’d ever be to strike out on the Path. Jaskier had shed his fever and the accompanying exhaustion. The burns on his fingers were slowly starting to heal, finally starting to scab over thanks to the salve and the healing spells Eskel applied. Jaskier had many months and years of recovery ahead of him, but on their last night in Oxenfurt, Eskel finally confirmed that was no longer any doubt: Jaskier would keep all of his fingers.

Jaskier had given him a wide, watery smile over the pile of stained bandages and debriding tools heaped on the table between them. Eskel’s lips pulled against his scars as he smiled back widely, just as elated as Jaskier.

His smile only dimmed when he noticed Jaskier’s gaze drop to Eskel’s deformed lips and the red, irritated scars that twisted down his face like bloody vines.

“Have you ever—” Jaskier said, eyes darting over the knots of scar tissue where the four long gouges converged and diverged.

(Eskel had already started to twist away when Deidre’s barbed weapon had struck his face. The movement caused the four flayed ends to rake down from where it had first hit his temple, and sent the four hooked ends scraping across the corner of his eye, shredding through his cheek. One hook had taken out a big chunk of his upper lip; the rest had sliced his mouth open right down to the gumline. The flesh had fallen open like pages in a book to expose his teeth and gums. It was weeks before they knew if he’d never be able to speak or eat normally. And the wounds never seemed to heal; the stitches kept breaking and tearing free whenever he woke up screaming. Eventually, they’d found a way to tie his jaw shut at night. By the time the wounds had finally closed, Eskel would have welcomed death).

“Have you tried that salve on your scars?” Jaskier finally said. Eskel was almost certain that wasn’t really what he’d been about to ask. “Seems to have done wonders for my burns.”

Eskel automatically turned the scarred side of his face away from Jaskier. It was a stupid, futile gesture. What did he think he was hiding? They were almost always in the same room, now, usually just a few inches apart as he helped Jaskier eat, wipe his mouth, or tie his pants closed. Jaskier had been staring directly at those long gouges in Eskel’s face for nearly a week now, and it was hardly surprising that he’d noticed how red and raw the scars were. In cold climates, especially during the winters at Kaer Morhen, the scars would crack open again and bleed every time he moved his face.

“It doesn’t help,” Eskel said, trying to keep a neutral tone while he packed away the debriding tools. “Nothing does. They were never supposed to heal.”

“What?” Jaskier blinked at him. “The scars weren’t supposed to heal? What in Melitele’s name does that mean?

Eskel gathered up the bloody bandages to burn, later, in the open cookfire in the tavern’s yard.

“It was part of a curse,” he said. “At least, that’s Vesemir’s theory. Either a curse, or perhaps the weapon that did this was enchanted, or coated in a bespelled oil or a potion.” He waived at his right cheek. “This looks like it happened only a few years ago, doesn’t it?”

Jaskier nodded. The wounds weren’t exactly fresh-looking, but they didn’t have the flat, shiny consistency of older scars.

“And when did it--?”

“1225,” Eskel said. “Almost forty years ago. Anything that doesn’t kill a Witcher outright will always heal. Eventually. But this never did. That’s why it…” he swallowed. “Why it still looks so awful. My body’s always fighting it. Salves don’t work, poultices, tinctures, potions, healing crystals…I’ve tried almost everything. The only thing that works worth a damn is a glamour, and that’s just—”

“Temporary?”

Eskel smiled sadly. “Cosmetic.”

“I’m sorry, Eskel," Jaskier said. His bright blue eyes were full of sympathetic sorrow. "I truly didn’t mean to pry.”

Eskel paused in his tidying. Jaskier was looking away from him now, staring into the fire.

“I don’t mind talking about it,” Eskel said, trying to lighten the mood. “Everyone always asks me about it sooner or later. Usually they want to know what happened. What kind of monster did it.”

Jaskier finally turned to look at him. As always, Jaskier didn’t stare at his ruined lips or the tight knot of scar tissue on his cheek. Instead, Jaskier was looking at Eskel. Like he was a person, instead of a scar.

“You’re the first person to ever ask me about healing,” Eskel said softly. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said. “That’s…well, I’m sorry for that, then. You deserve better. Simple compassion is the bare minimum we can offer each other.”

His bright blue eyes looked very dark in the firelight, almost cobalt or smoke-grey. There was a fierce fire of conviction in his eyes, too, as if he were daring Eskel to try to argue the point.

Jaskier might think simple compassion was a low bar to clear, but he’d travelled with Geralt for years, hadn’t he? He must have seen enough to realize that compassion was rarer than a golden dragon in a Witcher’s life.

It was getting late. They were leaving for Rinde in the morning and should turn in soon. However, there was something Eskel wanted to give Jaskier first.

“Just a moment,” Eskel said, hastening downstairs to burn the bandages and finish the rest of the cleanup. He was back up to the room in a flash, relieved to see that Jaskier was still sitting and staring at the fire. He was clutching his freshly-wrapped hands to his chest, though, which meant Jaskier was hurting.

Eskel calculated how long it’d been since Jaskier's last dose of willowbark tea, and decided it wouldn’t hurt to take another dose before lights out. He seemed to be having some trouble sleeping, now that his body was healing. Jaskier had said it was because his hands were throbbing. The willowbark would help with that, in spite of how Jaskier grumbled about the bitter taste.

Eskel hoped that the gift he’d made for Jaskier would help, too. Well, ‘gift’ was an overstatement. This was just something for the Path, something practical meant to ease Jaskier’s journey. He hoped.

He picked through the pile of their bags until he found the fabric-wrapped package he’d set aside early that morning. The soft jangle of metal-on-metal was barely audible even to his Witcher-hearing.

Gods, Eskel hoped that he was doing this right. He didn’t have a lot of experience with gift-giving, even highly practical not gifts. (Perhaps it was best to leave the precise interpretation up to Jaskier?)

He set the package down on Jaskier’s lap and stepped back quickly so as not to crowd the smaller man. He couldn’t quite help himself, though, and took a small, discreet whiff of Jaskier’s clean-smelling hair. Green apples and a hint of honey. Delicious.

“Um, here,” he said, fumbling a little. “This is for you. For the Path.”

Jaskier looked up at him, perplexed, but Eskel cut him off before he could insist (again) that Eskel shouldn’t be wasting any more coin on Jaskier, and that he had absolutely everything he needed, etcetera, etcetera.

“Just open it. Please?”

Jaskier finally turned his focus back to the fabric-wrapped package. Eskel hadn’t used any twine. He’d folded up the not-gift gently in one of their softest spare blankets. It took a moment, but Jaskier was able to part the material without hurting his fingers.

The contraption inside looked a bit like a pair of leather suspenders, with matching leather cups. Eskel had used black leather and silver findings for the nail-heads and snap covers. He’d taken care to ensure each of the silver buckles he’d bought at the marketplace were a good match, and polished everything to a gleam. The whole harness looked fairly well-crafted. A little stylish, too, at least in his opinion. If he’d made something like it for himself, or even one of his brothers, Eskel probably would have used dull rawhide and mismatched findings. But Jaskier was a bard: something a little flashier suited him, Eskel thought.

“What…what is it?” Jaskier asked. He was stroking the leather harness with his unbandaged thumb, the one with the cursed ring. He seemed to be trying to divine the harness’ purpose from touch alone. It probably looked a bit like one of Scorpion’s bridles to him, only much more eye-catching than any tack used on a Witcher’s horse.

“Stand up and I’ll show you.”

Jaskier got to his feet still clutching the leather harness. When Eskel moved to take the straps, Jaskier clutched at them reflexively before blushing and handing the gift back to Eskel.

Eskel draped the longest, thickest strap over Jaskier’s shoulders and very gently slipped the shorter pieces over his arms, and then picked up the two big lined leather cups.

Understanding broke over Jaskier’s face and his eyes widened. “Will this—?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Eskel said, hoping he’d judged it right.

The right-hand cup fit snugly over Jaskier’s bandaged hand; fortunately, he'd guessed the size correctly and it didn’t seem to be too tight, and the hole cut out for Jaskier’s thumb looked to be positioned comfortably. The left cup was a little looser, but all in all, Eskel's eyeballed measurements hadn’t been too bad. The leather mittens would do a fine job protecting Jaskier’s hands.

“This goes around your wrist,” he said, picking up one of the short, lined pieces of leather that was clipped into the harness. “May I?”

Jaskier held out his right hand without any hesitation, and Eskel tried not to smile as he buckled the leather cuff around his wrist, careful to ensure that the strap wasn’t too tight. He hoped Jaskier wouldn’t lose any more weight, but if it happened, he could poke out new holes for the buckle’s tongue.

“This is just meant to help support the weight of your arm,” Eskel explained. He gently guided Jaskier’s arm back, and showed Jaskier how to work the stiff leather cup covering his hands into the small bits of leather webbing that hung from the strap circling each arm. He’d wanted Jaskier to be able to shift position as often as he needed, both to ensure he was comfortable, and to encourage him to rest his hands in different positions.

Jaskier waited for Eskel to buckle the other cuff over his left wrist, and then experimentally crossed his arms and worked his left leather-clad hand into the loose webbing under his right armpit.

It looked…well, it looked awkward, a bit like a leather straitjacket, but Jaskier’s damaged hands were protected and held safely up and out of the way, comfortably supported by the harness. Eskel hoped it would make a long day in the saddle much more comfortable. Jaskier could always let his arms swing free when he wanted; the harness was there to give him some support, and a little relief from holding his hands clutched to his chest all day.

“I’ve thought of some exercises, too,” Eskel told Jaskier. “Stretches for your hands so that you don’t lose any circulation or mobility. It should help keep your fingers limber. Once the blisters have closed, doing the stretches will help keep the scar tissue from getting too tight.”

He said all of this in a relative rush, wanting to make it clear to Jaskier that he was going to heal up just fine now that the danger of infection and amputation was now a remote possibility instead of an all-to-real certainty.

“Eskel, I don’t know what to say.” Jaskier’s blue eyes were suspiciously wet. “You made this?”

Eskel blushed and nodded. He ducked his head and let his hair fall forward to cover his scarred cheek, but Jaskier waited until Eskel looked back up at him.

“This is the kindest, most thoughtful thing anyone’s ever done for me,” Jaskier said, firmly and sincerely. “Aside from marrying me to get me out of prison,” he added with a soft smile. “I wish it weren’t necessary, and that you hadn’t spent more time and money on me, but…I’m very grateful that you have.”

Jaskier punctuated this little speech by pressing a soft, very gentle kiss to the scarred corner of Eskel’s mouth, just to the right of the missing bit of flesh where his lip curled back into a misshapen and distended line.

The extra care Jaskier had taken wasn’t really necessary—Eskel didn’t have much feeling there—but he still felt a hot wave of awareness move through his whole body at the soft puff of Jaskier’s breath against his damaged cheek. He trembled. No one had ever kissed him there. 

“Thank you, dear heart,” Jaskier murmured, pulling back. He was looking at Eskel again, meeting his slit-pupil gaze without any fear or flinching. And by the gods, he smelled so good: honey and green apples and the warm, clean scent of his skin.

Eskel drew back very carefully until Jaskier was a less-tempting distance away. Then he unclipped and undid the harness so that Jaskier could slip his hands free of the lined leather cups and cuffs.

“I’m glad it fits,” Eskel said. His voice was oddly breathless. He didn’t say anything when Jaskier brushed away a tear. Not that he would have minded if Jaskier cried again. It was for the right reasons, this time, less a desperate emotional storm and more a gentle release.

“C’mon, little lark, time to turn in,” he said. “Long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Jaskier only squeezed Eskel’s hand with his thumb. They both pretended not to see any tears fall.

Once Jaskier was settled in bed, Eskel knelt to meditate.

Eventually the bard’s breathing evened out, and when Eskel was sure Jaskier was asleep, he slipped out the window, and swung himself up onto the roof of the inn.

The night was warm and the sky above was full of stars. Eskel faced northeast, towards Kaedwin and the Blue Mountains, and closed his eyes, muttering the summoning spell he’d learned from the druid Mousesack years ago.

It might have been a little too early to expect a reply from Kaer Morhen. He’d sent a raven the day Jaskier had warned him that people were searching for Geralt’s winter home, and had calculated at least a two days’ travel time for the bird, a few days for Vesemir to respond, and another day or two for the flight back across the Continent. This evening was the earliest he could expect a reply, and he was pleasantly surprised when, less than a quarter-hour later, he heard the oddly muffled flap of a raven’s wings.

The spectral raven landed on the rooftop peak and squawked at Eskel in greeting. It glowed with an eerie green light. Its black feathers were dotted with the small white streaks that, when connected with magic, formed constellations. Eskel made the shape of the Horn of Plenty—it hovered directly above Kaer Morhen—and the bird opened its mouth.

A slightly disembodied and scratchy voice echoed up from inside the raven. “Message refused,” it said. “Delivery blocked by blood-ward barrier spell. You are not on the approved list of senders.”

Eskel frowned at the raven. “What the hell does that mean?”

The raven caw’d at him, and then said, “Please try your message again,” before disappearing in a small puff of green-black smoke.

That was...odd. Eskel had worried that someone might have tracked Geralt back to Kaer Morhen. Images of the keep half-destroyed, grounds strewn with the burned bodies of his brothers had haunted his dreams for days. But it appeared that the barrier spells and wards of protection around Kaer Morhen were still in place and holding fast against any enemy incursion.

The wards had been cast and constructed based on blood samples from every Witcher who had permission to visit Kaer Morhen: all of the Wolf Witchers, plus several Bears and a Griffin. The blood wards would block messages from everyone else. The wards were changed when a Witcher had been reported missing, or when Vesemir received word that he’d died on the Path.

Eskel’s message should have gotten through unless, for some unfathomable reason, his medallion was hanging from the Tree of the Dead in Kaer Morhen’s great hall.

But his wolf’s-head pendant was tucked safely inside his striped gambeson, as always.

Something was wrong.

He conjured another raven, this time directing it to one of the drop points the Witchers used at a collapsed barn outside the little village of Blaidd Gwyn. Vesemir and his brothers would check for a message there whenever they did a supply run or went by on their way up the mountain for the winter. Someone would eventually send a reply.

Unless everyone is dead, he amended, because he couldn’t afford to ignore that possibility. It was reassuring that the bloodwards were still in place, but Kaer Morhen had been sacked before. Even the wards couldn’t conceal the keep from a magic user who knew the way. Nilfgaard employed a very powerful sorceress, apparently, and so did Dijkstra, if that owl really had been a mage’s work. Transforming into an animal form was supposed to be impossible. So was fire magic, and Jaskier had said a mage working for some unknown party had used fire to torture him too.

These were strange days, indeed.

Eskel was starting to feel like he was standing on a sandbar staring down into deep waters. He felt and saw things moving down in the depths, but couldn’t make out the shape of whatever monsters were lurking there. He and Jaskier would be stepping off that sandbar tomorrow, striking out into those strange depths without any fixed point of reference. Kaer Morhen could very well be a smouldering ruin. Geralt and the rest of his family might be dead.

If that were the case, Eskel might very well let himself slip under the waves too. Drowning would be a kinder fate than living alone in this world, with nothing but the Path and a lonely unmarked grave waiting for him at the end of it.

But what about Jaskier? The bard certainly needed Eskel to keep swimming, or at least keep treading water until he found a way to break the curse. Eskel couldn’t let Jaskier face any of those full-fathom monsters alone. The bard had already given too much, sacrificed too much; he’d earned the right to float free of all this madness.

Unfortunately, the very nature of the ringbound curse meant they had to paddle on together, at least for a little while longer.

When the time came, he’d find the strength to let go of Jaskier.

Somehow.

***

Chapter Text

They left Oxenfurt just after dawn, slipping out of the city through the less-travelled eastern gate in the middle of a clutch of field hands and day labourers heading out for a long, hot day in the hayfields outside Oxenfurt.

There hadn't been much point in trying to hide their departure from Dijkstra and his spies. A huge Witcher and a thin, haunted-looking nobleman riding double on what looked like a draft horse would garner far too much attention, and Dijkstra would have assigned at least one agent to follow them out of the city. They'd likely be tracked all the way to the Kaedwini border.

Eskel intended to stick to the main roads and cities, let their tail get comfortable, and hopefully spot (and eliminate) them long before he and Jaskier turned north towards the Blue Mountains, if it came to that.

He kept a sharp eye out for anyone shadowing them as they made their way east along the Pontar towards Rinde. Jaskier was uncharacteristically quiet, but they'd passed through Foam before Eskel realized that it was because he'd fallen asleep.

That made something twist in Eskel's chest. He'd never imagined that anyone would feel safe enough to sleep in his arms. Jaskier probably hadn't slept so well the night before. But exhaustion could only explain so much. Jaskier trusted him. And not just with the mundane and embarrassing tasks related to caring for his body. He trusted Eskel enough to doze in his arms.

Even Geralt had never—

Eskel skirted that thought carefully. He'd only find pain and regret if he went down that road, and he had more than enough worry to deal with. Primarily, if they'd find any answers in Rinde.

He considered the black ring on his left hand. He'd barely noticed it in Oxenfurt, but then the bespelled rings were only supposed to affect Jaskier. Eskel had thought about testing the range of the ring, but he'd never been any further away from Jaskier than those trips to the healer's hut in Acorn Bay. He wasn't eager to experiment with the ring's power, but now that they were out of the city, it might be a good time to test the range of the spell.

The rings were both undeniably powerful; he could feel his own ring vibrating against the Chaos in his blood and bones when he concentrated on it. The vibration was always stronger when he was close to Jaskier, especially when they rode double like this. The combined power of their rings was just enough to make his medallion tremble faintly, which seemed to indicate that the curse was at least always partly activated.

They'd find a mage to help them in Rinde. If that didn't work, he'd take Jaskier all the way to Ban Ard. He doubted they'd be able to make it all the way east to the mages' college before winter descended, which meant Kaer Morhen would be inaccessible until the passes reopened in the spring. The raven's mysterious message about the blood wards made Eskel want to fly home as fast as he could, but he'd have to start reconciling himself to the prospect of not knowing his brothers' fates for a while longer. Especially if no one was left alive to check the drop point outside Blaidd Gwyn.

That dimmed his spirits a little.

The sun climbed higher and the day grew hotter as Scorpion trudged along, and by lunchtime Eskel had sweated through his gambeson. It didn't help that Jaskier was blasting out heat like a small forge—he hoped that didn't signal another fever—and Eskel felt uncomfortably sticky despite having bathed the previous day. He almost laughed at himself. Seven days at a modestly-priced inn in Oxenfurt had made him soft. He'd already grown accustomed to daily baths, fresh water, and a comfortable pallet by the hearth.

There were few such luxuries on the Path. Eskel spent half the year bathing in cold rivers and streams and sleeping on the ground. It hit him suddenly that the last week in Oxenfurt was the longest stretch of relative comfort he'd known outside his winters at Kaer Morhen. Little wonder he'd become so addicted so quickly, though Eskel could admit to himself that it might have had as much to do with Jaskier and his company than the creature comforts they'd enjoyed.

Jaskier stirred in his arms and Eskel finally drew Scorpion to a halt in a clearing well away from the road. By the time Jaskier finished blinking awake against the bright sunshine, Eskel had dismounted and staked out a picket line for Scorpion where the stallion could easily reach several patches of fresh grass.

"Lunchtime break," Eskel explained. He reached up to help Jaskier climb down off of Scorpion. It was hard to ignore how sensuously good it felt when Jaskier's body slid down against his own, or how his hands almost spanned Jaskier's thin waist. The bard wasn't a small man, as tall and broad-shouldered as Geralt and just a few inches shorter than Eskel. But he was still recovering. His thinness, the shadows under his bright eyes, and those ever-present bandages made him seem smaller and more vulnerable. Still, Eskel couldn't imagine why Geralt had abandoned this blue-eyed waif in the heart of the dangerous Dragon Mountains. He'd probably been sturdier at full health during his travels with Geralt, but Jaskier could have easily been killed trying to navigate his way down from that mountain in Caingorn.

What the fuck had Geralt been thinking?

"Um, Eskel?" Jaskier said. He looked a little alarmed, and Eskel realized his disfigured face must look more darkly furious than usual. He tried to school his expression into something a little less vicious-looking. "I need to piss."

"No problem," Eskel said, forcing his face back into his customary neutral scowl while he assisted Jaskier. He took the opportunity to relieve himself, too, and then went rummaging through their packs for their luncheon meal. Eskel laid out cheese, meat, and bread. They left Scorpion to graze and ventured a little closer to the river. The Pontar was deep and cold here, and moving fast. The cold, clear water looked damn inviting.

"Think I might take a dip when we finish," Eskel said tentatively. Jaskier smiled at him around a mouthful of cheese, bread, and sausage.

"That sounds lovely," he said, once he'd swallowed. "It is an awfully warm day. I think I can manage to keep the bandages dry if I stick to the shallows there," he said, pointing at a small pool formed by a bend at the other side of the river.

Eskel hesitated. He didn't want to deny Jaskier a chance to cool off, but he also didn't want to strip naked around the bard. It was probably a bit silly to feel so self-conscious around Jaskier, considering that he'd already seen Jaskier in the altogether numerous times. But Eskel had been careful never to bathe in Oxenfurt at the same time as Jaskier, or even change his clothing when Jaskier was awake. He'd never dared to remove his shirt around the other man.

It was silly. Childish, even. But Eskel didn't want to have to see that inevitable look of disgust flash over Jaskier's handsome face before the bard managed to hide his disgust.

Even as a young man, Eskel had always been considered rather ugly and ill-favoured amongst other Witchers. Age, injuries, and the horrible scars on his face certainly hadn’t improved his looks. Once, on a very hot summer day after the Sacking, when none of them dared venture very far from Kaer Morhen, Eskel and some of the younger Wolves had gone swimming together. He and Lambert had gotten into an argument about a potion distillation method. Lamb had lashed out with a mean jibe about how Eskel had "the body of a gorilla, and a mind to match."

It wasn't so much the joke that had hurt his feelings. Lambert was a certified asshole, and he said things like that all the time. No, it was the way that the others—Gwen and Gardis, Reamus, and young Leo—had all burst out laughing at the idea. Even Geralt had chuckled.

For years afterward, anytime Eskel took off his shirt when working in the fields or during a sparring match, someone inevitably made a vaguely gorilla-like grunt, or thumped their chest, or made some snide comment about how Eskel should start his own School of the Ape.

Eskel had tried to laugh it off with the others. But he'd never really forgotten the comparison. Mostly because Lambert had been right: even compared to the rest of the younger Witchers—and all of them were long dead now, except for Geralt and Lambert—Eskel had always been thicker, broader, more heavily muscled. He'd only gotten bigger with time, until it seemed like every part of him, from his biceps to his thick belly to his cock was a comically exaggerated version of a normal man. Eskel was well-aware that he looked like a gorilla (or the illustrations he'd seen, anyway). The damage to his face had just solidified it: he was an ugly beast built for violence.

It was why whores always turned him away at brothels, why his (embarrassingly few) sexual partners had never wanted to make love in daylight, or light any candles. The two glaring exceptions—Geralt, and a particularly kind and courteous incubi—had been the only ones who'd never shied away from him. Everyone else started to stink of fear and horror when Eskel removed his shirt or took off his trousers.

He couldn't bear to watch Jaskier's horrified reaction to his body. But the rings would keep them together for the foreseeable future. Eventually he'd slip up, or get injured, or forget to check if Jaskier was asleep before he started to change his clothing. Perhaps it was better to get it over with now? He'd only have to suffer the humiliation once, Eskel told himself. After that, Jaskier would know to turn away, to keep his eyes averted. Besides, Jaskier was a kind man. He wouldn't go out of his way to make Eskel feel ashamed or embarrassed about his bestial body.

Eskel mulled it over as he helped Jaskier strip out of his sweat-soaked clothing. He turned away to arrange Jaskier's shirt and plain breeches over a few bushes to air them out a bit. When he turned, Jaskier was attempting to pick at the lacing for his smalls with his four working fingers. They both knew it was a futile effort, but Jaskier always wanted to try anyway, eager for the moment he could remove his trews independently. Eskel could hardly blame him.

"Let me?"

Jaskier looked at him for a moment, then withdrew his bandaged hands.

Eskel made quick work of the lacing and pushed Jaskier's smalls off his hips and over the very slight swell of his buttocks. It was impossible not to steal a quick glance, and Eskel was struck once again by Jaskier's masculine beauty. He looked exactly like a handsome prince from an illustration in a storybook.

His bruises had healed, he'd gained a little weight back, and after spending most afternoons out riding with Eskel, his skin had lost that deathly white pallor from the underground cell. He was starting to look healthy again, blue eyes bright with the promise of fun and adventure, cheeks rosey-pink from the hot afternoon sunshine. There was no denying it: Jaskier was beautiful, in every way that Eskel was not.

Jaskier waded out into the river, balancing carefully on the muddy bottom of the Pontar, and turned to back to beckon towards Eskel with one bandaged hand.

"Come on, get in!" he called out. "The water is fucking freezing. It's glorious!"

Eskel sighed and gritted his teeth. He'd lost his nerve.

He turned his back to the bard, offering some flimsy excuse about packing up the remains of their lunch. He kept an ear out for any large splashes—Jaskier seemed steady on his feet, but the Pontar's waters were swift this time of year—and settled for pulling off his gambeson and removing his boots so he could sink his toes into the cool mud along the shoreline.

In deference to the heat, Eskel started to roll up his shirtsleeves, but stopped when he realized that meant exposing his hairy forearms and the latticework of veins and scars that covered them.

A rotfiend had taken out a big chunk of the muscle tissue above his elbow his first year on the Path, and it had left an odd, misshapen divot in the remaining flesh. Most of the scars on his arms and legs were from the teeth or claws of the creatures he hunted. His belly and chest had taken the lion's share of countless wounds from cockatrice acid and the bladed weapons of men. Eskel had lost count of how many times he'd been run through, peppered with crossbow bolts and arrows, or slashed at with swords and daggers. And as for his back...

His entire body was one large roadmap of violence. He couldn't even recall where or how he'd received most of his scars, now. Just the thought of removing his shirt and stepping into the water to stand next to Jaskier filled him with dread. He'd been right to stay clothed. It felt like a perversion of nature to allow his scarred, monstrous body anywhere near Jaskier.

The spiralling thoughts seemed to leach the day of its heat and colour. Misery deadening his senses. He plopped down on the sandy riverbank and stared sightlessly into the swirling waters.

He sometimes slipped into this dark headspace. Decades alone on the Path meant he'd spent far too much time mired in his own thoughts. Somewhere along the way, he'd lost the trick of slipping free before getting stuck in the muck, and it seemed to be getting harder, lately, to pull back by himself.

"Eskel?"

He looked up to find Jaskier standing waist-deep in the water nearby. A worried frown crinkled the skin between his eyebrows, and Eskel was caught off-guard by the sudden urge to smooth the worried line out with a kiss.

Gods, was he losing his mind?

"Are you all right?" Jaskier asked. Eskel couldn't help tracing the rivulets of water streaming down the thin planes of his stomach and hips. He jerked his gaze back to Jaskier's face, but Jaskier seemed focused on balancing as he waded out of the river.

"You can have your turn now, if you want to cool off," Jaskier told him. He plucked his discarded shirt off the bush and blotted a little of the water up off his skin, and then threw himself down on a sunny patch of grass to dry the rest of the way. Eskel carefully averted his eyes again. A small part of him noted that Jaskier was using his hands a bit more, a little less afraid now of bumping or jarring his fingers. He was healing.

He waited a moment, but Jaskier just stretched out with a little sigh and folded his hands over his concave belly. He shut his eyes firmly.

"I won't peek," he promised. "Please don't make yourself uncomfortable on my account, Eskel."

Eskel shifted uneasily. Part of him wanted to deny that anything was wrong. Another part of him wanted to curl up and die of embarrassment.

He considered trying to talk to Jaskier, but what could he say? I know I’m ugly and damaged? or Something like me shouldn't be allowed within a hundred yards of someone like you? It all sounded so…pathetic.

"You don't make me uncomfortable," he finally said. It was partly true: he felt perfectly comfortable around Jaskier most of the time. "I just…I have a lot of scars," he said, fumbling around for an explanation.

"Geralt did too," Jaskier said without opening his eyes. "It never bothered me."

He huffed out a laugh. "I have a hell of a lot more scars than Geralt."

Jaskier briefly cracked an eye open. Even though Eskel didn't let himself react, Jaskier immediately closed his eyes again and settled back into his relaxed sprawl. "Tell me about that," Jaskier said, "While you undress and get in the river. I won't look. I promise."

Eskel wasn't entirely sure he ought to take the risk, but the day really was blisteringly hot, and the water looked so inviting. Slowly, he started to strip. He never looked away from Jaskier's face, but Jaskier was true to his word. He kept his eyes firmly shut the whole time.

"So, tell me. Why do you have more scars? Are you just less careful than the great White Wolf?"

Eskel snorted as he peeled himself out of his breeches. "Hardly. Geralt always takes the stupidest godsdamned risks. But he has the speed and the strength to make up for it. And if he does get hurt, he can handle more potions and heals up faster. For a Witcher, Geralt's practically unmarked."

Eskel finished stripping and waded nude out into the river. Jaskier had been right: the freezing water felt glorious against his overheated skin.

When he looked back over at Jaskier, he saw that the bard hadn't moved, and it looked like he'd keep his word. He wasn't the sort to sneak an illicit peek, anyway. And even the most aggressive voyeur would probably lose interest once they saw how malformed and ugly Eskel was.

"What makes Geralt so special, anyway?" Jaskier finally asked. "There must be other Witchers like him."

"No," Eskel said, "there aren't."

He crouched down until the waterline was level with his chin. The cold currents rushed around him, swirling over his belly and between his legs like a lover's caress. Eskel tried not to shiver.

"Geralt's the only one of us who survived an extra Trial. I don't really know how many other boys the Mages experimented with. Hundreds, probably. Geralt was the only survivor."

He realized what he'd said a moment too late. When he finally looked up, he saw that Jaskier had broken his word: he was staring back at Eskel. All the colour drained out of his face. He looked ill.

"Geralt never said a word to you about the Trials, did he." No point in phrasing it like a question.

"No," Jaskier admitted.

"Fuck," Eskel grunted, and dove down into the water.

***

Jaskier stared at the spot in the river where Eskel had ducked down. He counted to thirty, then sixty. Ninety. One hundred and twenty.

He knew that Witchers (or Geralt, at least) could hold their breath for close to twenty minutes. Jaskier knew that, but the knowledge was just enough to keep him from panicking until the ten-minute mark had passed. The waiting, however, made him anxious, and he couldn’t help fidgeting with his bandages while he looked for Eskel in the dark swirling waters of the Pontar.

In the stillness, Jaskier heard an endless reverberatation of what Eskel had told him. Hundreds of boys–-of experiments--and Geralt was the sole survivor? Geralt was special, apparently, because Geralt had lived. But what did that mean? Why were the Witchers, or the mages at least, experimenting on Geralt and other boys? By now, Jaskier thought he'd heard almost every horrible story and accusation about Witchers that the Continent could dredge up, and he'd had no idea anything so nefarious as experimentation had been happening at the Witcher schools.

But then, he hadn't known that Witchers started training as children, either. Not until Eskel had explained it. There were probably many more horrible details he knew nothing about.

Oh, of course he'd known Geralt was a mutant. Eskel too, for that matter. Yet he often forgot what that meant, because both Witchers were so endearingly human in their own ways, ike Geralt's aversion to portals, or his secret desire to pet a cat, or Eskel's inexplicable sweetness and shyness. It was so easy to forget they'd been shaped into Witchers by spells and alchemy and painful mutations. Despite what he'd argued at the bathhouse in Oxenfurt, Geralt's citrine eyes and Eskel's sharp teeth meant that they were no longer—categorically, at least—human.

But Jaskier still had no idea how those changes had come about. Or what his friends had endured beforehand.

At 12 minutes and 59 seconds, Eskel finally popped back up out of the water. He'd drifted downstream and fetched up in the shallows on the far side of the river. This boosted him much farther out of the water than he'd probably intended, and Jaskier didn't have time to avert his eyes before Eskel burst above the water's surface.

For a brief moment, the time it took for Eskel to sputter and wipe the water out of his eyes, Jaskier saw enough to understand why Eskel didn't like being looked at. And a lot more besides.

I have a lot of scars, Eskel had said. What a ludicrous understatement.

Eskel's chest, arms and legs were festooned with so many scars and scrapes, cuts and gouges, bitemarks and claw marks, and what looked like acid burns, that Jaskier couldn't even begin to catalogue half of what he saw.

Eskel bathing nude in the river. Art by FlightsFancy, on DeviantArt

Jaskier often thought of himself as the sort of fellow who could find beauty in anything. That was the role of the poet, he'd always believed: to see divine grace in the banal, to find something overlooked and unloved by others and make it shine forever in story and song.

It had never seemed like much of a challenge to see the beauty in Geralt. He was probably the most attractive man on the Continent, at least as far as Jaskier was concerned. How could anyone look at those lips, that chin, those cheekbones, and come away with a declaration of 'monster' on their lips? Geralt was almost sinfully handsome, and over the years Jaskier had seen more than enough strangers react to the White Wolf, and so he knew he was far from the only person who'd salivated after the White Wolf.

Eskel was Geralt's match in almost every respect—surpassed him, in some ways—but the scars on his body made it abundantly clear that Eskel had faced far worse creatures than wraiths and monsters. The worst marks on Eskel's back certainly hadn't been left by monsters, or beasts, or even the blades of men. He'd been flogged, repeatedly. When Eskel turned, Jaskier saw that his muscled back was layered in so much scar tissue that it was hard to count how many times he'd endured the lash.

At least two of the whippings seemed to have been delivered with such force that they'd cut right through muscle tissue, creating two deep furrows that lay perpendicular to Eskel's spine, each about the width of Jaskier's thumb. Whoever had lashed Eskel had superhuman strength, if the depth of those strike marks were any indication.

Which meant that Eskel had probably been whipped by Witchers. Many times.

It made Jaskier sick to his stomach to think about.

Scarring aside, Eskel was undeniably a beautiful man, with a powerful body densely packed with muscle. He was so perfectly formed, in fact, that his body resembled a sculpture of one of the old gods Jaskier had seen back in his university days. The little statue had been an idealization of the male body, one that humans had brought with them from their forgotten pre-Conjunction homeland. Jaskier had stared at that sculpture for hours in the library, tracing the perfect lines of the man's form, the way the figure’s muscles seemed to ripple and flex with every breath.

He'd never seen anything close to the perfection of that statue until Eskel emerged from the Pontar like a water nymph, water sluicing through his thick, dark body hair and dripping off the end of his…

"Sweet Melitele," Jaskier muttered. There might be something to those mutation rumours after all, because Eskel's cock by far the largest Jaskier had ever seen. And he was flaccid, and standing in freezing water. Good gods.

What Eskel might look like fully erect sent Jaskier's mind spinning off into the stratosphere for a moment.

His brain really only had time to register scars and muscles and—somewhat predictably—cock before he remembered to slam his eyes shut.

It was too late, of course: Eskel had caught him in the act of breaking his promise. He listened to the splashing sounds as Eskel exited the water, and counted to sixty before Jaskier finally said, "All clear?"

"All clear," Eskel said quietly. He didn't sound angry, at least. Still, Jaskier blushed guiltily at being caught peeking.

When he finally opened his eyes, he had to bite back an internal sigh of disappointment. Eskel had pulled on his breeches and shirt, both of which stuck to his wet skin. The thin linen had turned almost translucent where it stretched wetly over Eskel’s big pectorals. It seemed almost more enticing than actual nudity might have been.

Jaskier couldn't help but glance down at Eskel's codpiece, which was now firmly affixed and tied to his trousers. Those tiny red bows would haunt Jaskier until the end of time, now that he knew exactly what sort of great serpent lay beneath.

Not for the first time, Jaskier reflected that yes, he might be in some very serious trouble here. Eskel was indecently hot, sweetly shy, and so determinedly good and thoughtful and kind. If they'd met under any other circumstances…

But they hadn't. A fact Jaskier needed to keep foremost in his mind. Flirting with Eskel, lusting after him, and eying him up like a meal Jaskier was suddenly desperate to savour would make things awkward, and they would be living and travelling together in close quarters for the foreseeable future. Jaskier could not let himself get carried away.

Ironically, being married to the man meant Eskel was even more inaccessible than he might otherwise be.

Jaskier looked down, focused on shoving his feet into his boots and pulling on what clothing he could manage with his bandaged hands.

Fuck. Eskel was going to have to tie his trews closed.

For the millionth time, Jaskier cursed the mage who'd burned him, even as a tiny shiver of anticipation ran down his spine. Because it wasn't exactly the worst thing, being doted on by such an attractive man. Jaskier just had to keep some perspective on the whole thing. So what if Eskel had a beautiful soul, the body of a god, and the biggest cock Jaskier had ever seen outside his filthiest dreams? 

Perspective. Right. He could do this. 

He focused on taking in deep breaths, but he still startled a little when Eskel approached to finish lacing him into his smalls and trousers. 

Looking at Eskel's face seemed too intimate, suddenly, and so Jaskier stared at his hands instead. It was a mistake, because now he had to watch Eskel's huge blunt-fingered hands deftly lacing up his breeches. It was no great leap from there to imagining Eskel's hands on his skin, or slipping into his braes to tug his cock free. His hands would feel so, so good on Jaskier's skin. He was always so shockingly gentle for such a big hulking man, and—

Jaskier bit his lip. He couldn't bear this. 

He stepped back the instant Eskel had tied off the final lace. "We should probably get going, huh? Unless you don't want to make it to Rinde before the end of Lammas. Not that I'd blame you, if you wanted to linger: Rinde always puts on a great Lammas festival. And oh, that's a fun word, isn't it? Lammas. Lam-mus. Delightful." 

He babbled away until they reached Scorpion. Jaskier had already resigned himself to spending the rest of the day cradled between Eskel's thighs, and it occurred to him that the steady press of Eskel's codpiece against his tailbone would probably feel a lot less benign now that he had gotten such a good look at the anatomy underneath.

Just as they'd practiced every afternoon they'd spent in Oxenfurt, Eskel helped Jaskier up onto Scorpion's back and vaulted up behind him, collected the reins, and then in what had become Jaskier's favourite part of their little mounting ritual, slipped his arms around Jaskier's waist and tugged him close. It always felt like a hug, and Jaskier wasn't too proud to savour the simple contact. 

Today, however, he could only think of Eskel pulling him back and down onto that massive cock, spearing him open in one flashpaper burn of sensation, and then fucking up into him with the rhythm of Scorpion's cantering steps.

It was enough to make his brain melt. He certainly wasn't capable of speech, but Eskel seemed to mistake his silence for something else.

"I still can't believe Geralt never said anything to you about the Trials."

"Pardon?" Jaskier asked, slow to recall their earlier conversation. Right. The hundreds of dead boys, and Geralt the only one left at the end. 

"Well, you know Geralt," Jaskier said with an awkward laugh. "Mysterious as the Great Basilisk of Zerrikania. But…no, he never explained much of anything. Why talk, when a grunt will do?"

That made Eskel chuckle, and Jaskier sank back into the sound as it reverberated up his back, along with that now-familiar purring sensation of the spell. “So tell me: what were these Trials?”

"The Trials are what turned us into Witchers." Eskel said. "There were three 'official' ones: the Trial of the Grasses, the Trial of the Forrest Eyes, and the Trial of Dreams. There's a final one, too, the Trial of the Mountain, but that one is more of a final test where new Witchers earn their medallion and prove themselves ready for the Path. All the Trials are dangerous," Eskel added, "but the Grasses always claimed the most lives." 

Eskel was holding him even closer, now, almost clinging to him. Jaskier rested his bandaged hand on Eskel’s arm. Moving slowly and hesitantly, he slipped his thumb under Eskel's cuff so he could stroke at Eskel's bare wrist. It seemed to help. Eskel relaxed at the contact, and sighed. 

"The Grasses were the most terrifying trial. We all knew beforehand that only a few of us would survive, and that it didn't matter how big or strong or fast you were. There was never any way to predict who would live, and who'd end up on the funeral pyres."

Jaskier swore softly. Pyres plural, and those trainees had been children. He couldn’t even imagine.

"It always happened in the fall. The Mages would march us down to the laboratory and strap us to something halfway between a bedframe and a torture-rack. Then they'd pump us full of potions and decoctions. It felt they were running ice right into our veins first, and then it burned like fire. Afterward, they'd leave us alone in the dark to freeze, and burn, and scream. About a week later, there would be seven, or ten, or twelve dead boys, and two or three new Witcher adepts."

Jaskier felt sick again. It was hard to imagine anything worse than the horrors Eskel described. He wondered if the scars on Eskel's back had something to do with this 'Trial'.

"How old were you?"

"Twelve," he said. "Geralt was eleven. We went through it together the first time, with ten other boys from our year." He swallowed hard. "He and I were the only ones who survived."

Jaskier tightened his hold on Eskel's wrist. Jaskier couldn't twist around to truly look at Eskel, not without risking a tumble out of the saddle, but he was able to crane around enough to look at him.

Eskel's eyes were bone-dry, and he was staring off into the distance. Jaskier knew without asking that, right now, Eskel was chained to a table in that basement laboratory. Perhaps some part of him would always be.

Eskel gave him a thin, pale-lipped smile. "They put Geralt through it again five years later. He's the only Witcher who ever went through it twice and lived. The great White Wolf," he said, shaking his head. "I suppose that's exactly what the mages wanted, in the end."

There was a deep, welling sorrow to Eskel's voice that Jaskier was almost afraid to ask about. But maybe this conversation was like piercing a festering sore. Jaskier twisted back around and lanced the wound.

"You’ve never talked about this before, have you?” Jaskier guessed. He felt Eskel shake his head behind him. “Not even with Geralt?”

Eskel laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “Geralt least of all.”

They rode on in silence for a moment, until Eskel resumed the story. “We weren’t human anymore, after the Grasses. The mutations changed our bodies: sealed up our tear ducts, strengthened our bones, made us bigger and faster and much, much harder to kill. It remade us. But it stripped things away, too: memories, emotions. Took a few months for us to even remember how to smile."

He sighed. “The second time was so much worse for Geralt. That Trial bleached his skin and turned his hair white. All of his teeth fell out, too, and grew back as fangs. He actually had to pay a farrier to file them down so he'd look somewhat human. It was awful. It…it took everything from him. Everything.”

To Jaskier’s surprise, Eskel dropped the reins and looped his arms around Jaskier’s waist to draw him closer. 

It was a hug, Jaskier realized. Eskel was hugging him. He even tucked his face into Jaskier’s neck, as if he was trying to block out the world. A long, lingering shudder ran up through the big man’s chest, and then another. Eskel was crying. But he’d said they’d sealed his tear ducts in the Trials, and stripped away his ability to cry. That awful trial had denied Eskel (and Geralt, and all the other boys they hadn’t managed to kill outright) so much as the simple relief of tears. 

Jaskier hoped that everyone involved in the making of Witchers had died a long, slow, painful death.

Jaskier hugged Eskel back—his arms, anyway, which was about all he could reach—and waited until those awful, shuddering, tearless sobs subsided. 

“Sorry,” Eskel said when it was over. His voice was just a little rougher than normal. He went to pull away, but Jaskier only squeezed him harder, and refused to let him go. 

“Thank you for telling me,” Jaskier said, feeling almost as rung-out as if he’d been the one not-crying. “It explains some things. About Geralt. And...about you too, maybe."

Eskel leaned forward to gather up the reins, and Jaskier knocked his wrist gently to ensure he had Eskel’s full attention.

“What happened to you and to Geralt was horrible, Eskel. An inexcusable, indefensible violation. And I am so, so sorry. Because you were probably fed a lot of lies and rationalizations about why it was necessary, how it was done for a higher purpose, and blah blah blah. But none of you should have been hurt like that. Not even to save people from monsters.”

Eskel swallowed hard. “Thank you,” he said, simply and sincerely. “Thank you for saying that.” 

“Of course,” Jaskier said, patting him gently with his bandaged fingers. “Words are my specialty, after all.”

That made Eskel smile, and he clicked at Scorpion to start walking again. A much more companionable silence settled over them. Three-quarters of an hour passed before Eskel spoke again.

“I should have guessed that Geralt didn’t tell you anything. You’ve written, what, a dozen different ballads about the White Wolf? All epic tales of Geralt’s larger-than-life heroics? None of them mentioned the Trials. Not even the extra one Geralt went through. I should have realized it was odd thing to omit, considering.”

Jaskier sucked in a breath. 

Eskel had heard the ballads. 

Eskel knew Jaskier’s work. 

And he was talking about it.

Jaskier knew that he had a bit of an ego problem. (Or, had had an ego problem, but that was before he’d spent five months in the dungeon under Oxenfurt living in his own shit). He was self-aware enough to know that his ego was both more inflated and yet much more fragile than the average person's. Everyone needed a pat on the back now and then. But Jaskier craved praise and encouragement. He sucked it up like a vampire feasting on lifeblood.

Right now it felt like he’d been starving for years. 

Yes, the songs he’d written about Geralt were all incredibly popular. Toss a Coin had been sung in every tavern on the Continent for over a decade, and most people still knew it by heart, along with a few others from his repertoire. Or they knew the choruses, at least. Her Sweet Kiss had become popular at weddings, which Jaskier privately thought was a bit gauche. 

And yes, he’d attained fame and (limited) financial success from his ballads about the White Wolf. Plenty of humans had praised his songs. 

(Valdo Marx had once said Jaskier’s Wolven Storm ballads were “frothy little bubbles of pure whimsy, aimless and meandering but ultimately delightful to the ear,” which Jaskier had decided to take as a compliment, but was also forced to discount, because Valdo Marx was not a human, but a demon spawned in the darkest pits of hell).

However, Jaskier had spent almost twenty years of his life writing songs about Witchers. And in all that time, he’d never had so much as a whisper of feedback from an actual Witcher, aside from whatever grunt Geralt managed to summon up that could not categorically be described as a negative sound. 

It seemed rather a long time to wait for a Witcher to come along who was willing to discuss his work. 

“That’s a good note,” Jaskier managed to say, once he regained the power of speech. “Might be worth dusting off a few of the old classics. Never hurts to add some new material. Unless…” he frowned. “Unless it’s too much of a risk? I don’t want to expose your guild’s secrets.”

Eskel snorted. “No, it should be safe to write about the Trials. All of the schools are gone.They can’t make any more of us. Anyone who could is long dead.”

“Good,” Jaskier said, with perhaps a touch too much venom. But judging by Eskel’s little chuckle, he hadn’t caused any offence. “I’d never do anything to betray your confidence, you know.”

“I know,” Eskel said gently, patting him on the arm. “You’ve already done a lot for us Witchers. Before that ‘Toss a Coin’ song of yours started circulating around the North, I couldn’t find a smith or a tanner willing to trade with me anywhere south of Caingorn. Your songs changed that. Those ballads softened up people’s opinions about Witchers, made us seem…well, heroic, in some ways. I didn’t think anything short of a second Conjunction could do that.”

He paused for a moment, “I mean, it didn’t change everywhere overnight, of course,” he added, “However, it did get better, thanks to you. My brother Lambert is probably only alive today because of your songs. The mayor of some little town in Velen was going to hang him for killing his son—the asshole had beaten a local strumpet half to death, and Lambert stepped in before he could finish the job. Lambert said the house madame and some of the other girls broke into one of your songs in protest at the trial. It stirred up the crowd enough that the mayor ordered Lambert’s release. He owes you his life, in a way, and he’s not the only Witcher who probably does.” 

“Oh,” Jaskier said, deeply touched. He had to blink back the sting of tears. “I…I didn’t know my songs had made that much of a difference. Geralt certainly didn’t think so.”

“Geralt doesn’t have an ear for music,” Eskel said. When Jaskier made a skeptical sound at that, Eskel put a hand on his wrist. “You—you know he has trouble with his hearing, right?”

“What?” Jaskier snorted. “That’s ludicrous! I’ve seen him hunt and kill a snake because Geralt—and I’m quoting him, here—could 'hear the snake in its burrow' underground. From twenty paces away. His hearing is perfect. He just never liked any of my songs.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Eskel said slowly. He seemed determined to defend Geralt, but not out of any automatic sense of loyalty. Instead, he seemed to want to clarify a misconception, though Jaskier didn’t see how there was any room for him to misinterpret Geralt’s cold, dismissive attitude towards his music.

“That second Grassing made all of Geralt’s senses far more acute than the rest of us,” Eskel explained. “Every Witcher can hear the snakes and mice and other underground creatures in their dens, Jaskier. We spend years learning how to narrow in on the smallest sound. If I concentrate, I can hear a pin drop in the middle of a crowded marketplace. However, if I’m trying to listen to a conversation in that marketplace at the same time? Or tracking someone by the scent of their perfume? It’s overwhelming, not to mention exhausting, to process and filter all that input.

"Listening to someone sing and play an instrument is the same, unfortunately. I can’t concentrate on all the different sounds, and it’s impossible to comprehend the lyrics. Everything just gets scrambled together, sometimes enough to make me feel like a puppet whose strings have been cut. And Geralt—”

“Is much more sensitive than the rest of you,” Jaskier finished. He felt like an absolute dunce. 

He’d seen Geralt wince whenever he broke into song, seen him snap or flinch away or cover his head with a pillow when he practiced a song at night in a shared room at an inn. Geralt was usually ready with some excuse, often saying he was going hunting-–for food, if not for a monster-–whenever Jaskier stopped to play at a tavern. He’d stopped taking it personally years ago, though it had always hurt to know that Geralt hated his music. 

Instead, perhaps he’d been simply exhausted, and overwhelmed by Jaskier’s constant playing?

“Why didn’t he ever say anything?” Jaskier asked, horrified. So many instances rose up in his memories, years and years of Geralt turning away or grunting or complaining about insomnia. Little wonder he’d had trouble sleeping, if Jaskier had been triggering a sensory overload by plucking at his lute all day as they travelled. 

“I probably wouldn’t have, either,” Eskel admitted. “We all hate calling attention to the fact that we’re enhanced. I know Geralt tries to put on a good show of being gruff and aloof, but he was probably worried you’d think less of him for it. Plus, even Geralt would have understood how important music and singing are to a professional bard. It’s not as if he could ask you to stop and sacrifice your livelihood, after all. He was probably willing to endure it, if it meant you’d keep travelling with him.”

Jaskier had no idea what to say to that. He knew that Geralt would sacrifice his own comfort for others. He’d seen him do it often enough through the years, always taking the bedroll furthest from the fire, eating smaller portions when food was scarce, giving up a too-small bed to sleep or meditate on the floor. It seemed strange now that Geralt would have made such a huge sacrifice for Jaskier, but…it wasn’t strange at all, was it?

The hateful words Geralt had spit at Jaskier on the top of that mountain were never far from his mind. But now, aware that he’d been inflicting what amounted to a never-ending sensory overload on Geralt for years… It didn’t excuse what Geralt had said, but it did make Jaskier understand why Geralt’s frustrations had eventually reached a boiling point. What else had Geralt shoved down or bottled up just to seem ‘normal’ around Jaskier? 

He wasn’t ready to forgive Geralt. But learning a bit more about him from Eskel was helping, at least a little. Jaskier knew he’d been lugging around a lot of anger and grief ever since the dragon hunt. Talking to Eskel about it was already making him feel a lot lighter.

Perhaps, in time, he could start to set down some of what he’d been struggling to carry.  

***

After a long, hot afternoon, the sun finally slipped low enough for Eskel to call a halt for the day and search for a suitable campsite. He helped Jaskier to dismount and set up Scorpion’s picket line, and then went to collect firewood. 

Eskel was only gone for fifteen minutes before he was back with an armload of green wood.  Instead of working through the rest of his setting-up-camp checklist, he stopped for a moment and stared.

Jaskier had set up their bedrolls. He’d even gathered some leaves and dead grasses to provide a natural cushion under their pallets. Now he was picking gingerly through their ration sack. Jaskier gave a funny little “A-HA!” cry of triumph when he located some dried lentils and an ampule of herbs and seasoning. 

“Think you could trap us a few rabbits?” Jaskier’s question nudged Eskel out of his slack-jawed astonishment. “They were a bit stingy with breakfast this morning. I swear, I could eat anything with a face right now.”

He gave Eskel a watery little smile, and Eskel had to fight off the impulse to hug him. The bard was being brave, he realized. Putting on a smile and a show, a pantomime entitled Look How Useful I Can Be. 

It was easy to imagine Jaskier setting up camp for Geralt. He seemed accustomed to preparing everything so that, when his brother returned with a brace of rabbits to add to the stew pot, he could settle down and enjoy a night of hearty food and good conversation in the welcoming circle of the fire Jaskier had built.

And Geralt had thrown it all away, the absolute fucking idiot.

“Thanks for helping to set things up,” Eskel said, dropping the load of firewood near a promising spot for a firepit. “I couldn’t have done a better job myself.”

It had been the right thing to say. The shy smile on Jaskier’s face was proof enough of that. The effort had clearly depleted what little remained of Jaskier’s fragile reserve, but he’d needed to contribute something, and to get some reassurance that he’d done it correctly.

The bard might have crumbled completely, Eskel suspected, if he’d said, ‘oh, you shouldn’t have!’ Or much worse, scolded Jaskier for overextending himself, or risking damage to his fingers. 

Jaskier seemed to expect such criticism, and Eskel didn’t have to make any wild leaps in logic as to why. It was so easy to imagine Geralt lumbering around, grunting and glaring and acting like all Jaskier’s care and thoughtfulness and willingness to help was some kind of an imposition. 

But it wasn’t. Far from it. 

Eskel lit the fire with a short blast of Ignii. Once it was bright enough for a human’s eyes, he returned Jaskier’s small, pleased smile with one of his own crooked grins. He knew that firelight did awful things to the scarring on his face. It made him look like some snarling gargoyle testing out a human expression. But he couldn’t leave any room for Jaskier to doubt how much his efforts were appreciated. 

Eskel stood still for a moment, until the last shadow of doubt vanished from the bard’s eyes. Then he went over to his saddlebag to rummage around for a few rabbit snares. 

By sundown, they had a bubbling stew pot, a roaring fire, and all the amenities of a temporary camp on the Path. Even better, Eskel had someone to talk to. He hadn't shared a fire with anyone in years, and he'd forgotten how much he'd missed it.

Once upon a time, when there’d been more Witchers on the Path and they weren’t spread quite so thin, he’d been able to meet up with Geralt and Lambert and his other brothers during hunting season. Mostly they’d sat around the fire and told jokes, or played games, or got roaring drunk together. Seeing his brothers had always restored Eskel’s spirits. It had made the long, lonely seasons on the Path much more bearable.

And then their numbers had dwindled. His brothers had found other companions. Lambert had met his mysterious companion. Geralt had (apparently) found both a bard and a sorceress, and finally seemed ready to claim his Child Surprise. Now his brothers kept to their separate hunting routes, and they only reunited in the winters at Kaer Morhen. 

Strange, to think about the twists and turns of Destiny, and how lonely it was to always be the one left behind. 

For now, at least, Eskel had a someone to share his fire, and he couldn’t help but feel warm and content as he ate rabbit stew and listened to Jaskier debate the merits of professional music criticism. If Jaskier’s gaze felt oddly weighted, or if Eskel found himself suddenly transfixed by the perfect cupid’s bow shape of Jaskier’s mouth, neither of them acknowledged it.

And if the pulse of their black rings was just slightly stronger, both men were far too distracted by good company and good fortune to realize it.

***

Chapter Text

They reached the small village of Windley around lunchtime a few days later. They’d already covered a fair distance, and Eskel decided that they’d earned a break for a decent meal. There was a good bakery in Windley, if he recalled correctly. Jaskier might appreciate an alternative to the dried meat and stale hardtack.

He dismounted and turned to help Jaskier slide down off Scorpion, but the bard was staring down at him with an odd look.

“Why are we stopping?”

“Just thought you might like some fresh bread.” Eskel scratched at his scars. “And Scorpion could use a rest after carrying two riders.”

“I’m not tired, you know,” Jaskier insisted. “I can keep going.”

Eskel frowned. Jaskier had said something exactly like that almost once a day since they’d set out together: I’m fine or I don’t need to rest or let’s keep going. Eskel didn’t quite know what to make of it. He knew Jaskier needed rest. While Eskel had never travelled with a human, not even a healthy man could match a Witcher’s normal travel speed, and Jaskier was still recovering from his ordeal. Eskel remembered that humans needed far more sleep, for one, and tired much faster. Eskel had planned their route with that in mind even before they’d left Oxenfurt.

Jaskier’s insistence on pushing himself didn’t make a lot of sense. Surely Jaskier knew that Eskel wouldn’t abandon him? Even if he couldn’t keep to his normal pace, Eskel wouldn’t even consider leaving Jaskier behind. Especially not with the ringbound curse in place.

“If we’re stopping because you want to stop, some fresh bread does sound lovely,” Jaskier admitted. He held out his arms so Eskel could help him down. “I can go buy the bread. Are you going to check the noticeboard?”

Eskel shrugged. He couldn’t exactly spare the time to take on a contract right now, not if they wanted to make it all the way to Kaer Morhen before winter. But saying as much might only make Jaskier feel more determined to prove he wasn’t slowing Eskel down.

The best course of action was to just go have a look at the damned noticeboard, so that’s what Eskel did.

For such a small place, there seemed to be a lot of activity in Windley: there were stacks of notices pinned to the board. Eskel’s heart sank when he realized that at least half were seeking information about people who’d gone missing.

Each notice mentioned a child or a lover or a parent who’d gone missing while down by the creek or near the swamp or in the bog. Which meant that a water-hag must have moved into the neighbourhood. A ferociously hungry and intelligent one at that, given the sheer number of dead and missing townsfolk.

“Find anything interesting?” Jaskier asked, materializing almost at Eskel’s elbow. He was carrying a sack full of fragrant baked goods, and held it out to Eskel as an apparent peace offering. Eskel picked out a cinnamon bun quite happily, surprised by how willing Jaskier seemed to be to just…let things go. The bard certainly didn’t seem to hold a grudge or nurse any negative feelings for very long.

After dealing with Lambert and Geralt for so long, it was exceptionally refreshing.

“I’m going to have to speak with the alderman,” Eskel said between bites. “More than twenty people have gone missing from this village alone, and there are likely others from the surrounding farms and townships. Women and children, mostly. It looks like something out in the marshland has been targeting the locals.”

“Sounds like a water-hag.”

Eskel stopped chewing in surprise. “How did you—”

“Hard not to learn a thing or two about monsters when you follow a Witcher around for almost 20 years,” Jaskier said with a smile. Eskel had to concede the point. “Come, I’ll go see the alderman with you. Geralt always got a much better rate of pay when he let me do the negotiating for him. You just have to stand in the corner and brood, all right?”

“Uh, all right,” Eskel said slowly, not entirely sure about this. Granted, some local leaders were happy to pay the contract fee in full just to get rid of him and the monster plaguing their community in one fell swoop. But more often than not, they’d try to bargain him down, or pay less than half of what the original notice stipulated. If they deigned to pay at all. The low or nonexistent payouts, plus the higher rates at inns and the special “Witcher’s tax” on local goods and services usually meant Eskel was barely scraping by at the best of times. Jaskier’s ‘contract’ payout was enough to keep the both of them clothed and fed until they reached Kaedwin, but Jaskier was the only one who had claim to that coin. Eskel would eventually have to pick up a job or two, and this seemed as good a time as any.

It turned out Jaskier was a fine negotiator. Just as he'd already demonstrated in the marketplace back in Oxenfurt, Jaskier bargained the alderman to a full payout for the contract on the swamp creature, plus two meals and a night at the tavern just up the road.

Eskel didn’t like the prospect of leaving Jaskier alone, but there was no earthly reason why it should take him more than a single night to dispatch a water-hag. The swamp was close by, and Eskel would never be more than a half-league’s distance away. They’d been further apart than that in Oxenfurt. Eskel was confident the minor distance souldn’t trigger the spell.

He made sure Jaskier had enough money for a bath and food the next day, and left him at their room at the inn with all of their extra coin and gear aside from what he’d need for the hunt. He took a few potions, his silver sword, and a sack for the hag's head.

“I should be back well before dawn,” Eskel said as he fiddled with the buckles on his spiked pauldrons. “The marsh isn’t far from here, so if you need help, just ask the innkeeper to send a rider. He can whistle for me at the forest’s edge, and I’ll hear it. I—”

“Darling, stop mother-henning,” Jaskier said, shooing him off. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself!” He fluttered his bandaged hands at Eskel, which seemed to somewhat undercut his point, but Jaskier ignored Eskel’s sardonic look with an eye-roll. “Just loosen up my laces so I can use the chamberpot, and I’ll be safe as houses. Truly.”

Eskel still felt oddly reluctant about leaving. Perhaps he was being overly cautious. Jaskier had survived many years on the road with Geralt, after all, and his brother was far less cautious than Eskel. It was just…the bard was still so thin and pale. He’d only just started to recover from the awful infection in his hands, and he still seemed so fragile.

“You be careful, all right?” Jaskier said, perhaps thinking along the same lines. “Don’t take any foolish risks. And watch out for her tongue, yeah?”

“Of course.” That tip had been drummed into him constantly by various teachers and trainers between the ages of 6 and 16. “And if you start to feel anything from the curse…”

“I know, I know,” Jaskier griped. “I’ll send a rider.”

***

Jaskier ordered a bath for himself as soon as Eskel left. He tried to wash as well as he could with two bandaged hands, but eventually he gave it up as a lost cause and simply soaked for a time, ate a few more of their fresh buns, and decided to set the room in order before turning in.

He felt oddly anxious as he puttered about. As if his skin had shrunk down a few sizes in the bath. Perhaps he ought to have offered to go with Eskel? Not that he’d be of much help in a fight against a water-hag. He’d certainly never been of any help to Geralt. And now Jaskier was even more useless, with his injured hands and weakened constitution. He knew he’d only be a burden and a liability. He just wished there was something more he could do to help, other than keep out of the way.

Moreover, it felt strangely unsettling being away from Eskel. They’d been in each other’s constant company for weeks now, and Jaskier had grown quite fond of the big Witcher. Eskel was kind, thoughtful, and genuinely sweet. He was gentle, too, and always so endlessly patient whenever he had to treat Jaskier’s wounds or help him eat or bathe. He coddled Jaskier a bit too much, perhaps, but after being unceremoniously dumped at the side of the road by his previous companion, it felt so nice to be looked after.

Gods, he was being maudlin. If he didn’t find something to focus on, he’d progress to feeling downright depressed, and that simply wouldn’t do. He just needed to keep busy.

Jaskier made sure to lay out fresh bandages and a clean set of the catgut sutures he’d bought from the cunning woman in Acorn Bay. He also dug out the salve Eskel had made to treat his burns. It might come in handy if Eskel had been injured on the hunt, he reasoned, as long as Eskel would agree to use it on himself. Geralt always seemed to think everything except near-fatal wounds (and those too, sometimes) could be cured by a dose of Swallow and some shut-eye. Hopefully, Eskel would prove to be either more sensible (or at least less self-hating) than his brother-in-arms.

Once everything was arranged, Jaskier stepped back for a moment to check his work. The room was tidy, and Eskel could use the bathwater already in the tub to wash later. All of the post-hunt/first-aid supplies Eksel might need were neatly laid out within arms reach, and if he required anything more extensive, it would probably have to come from a healer or a hedgewitch.

Finally satisfied with the room, Jaskier ordered a cold plate of meats and cheeses and a mug of ale from downstairs. He set it aside when the tavern wench brought it up, however, as he realized he wasn’t all that hungry. And that was fine: he could always eat dinner with Eskel later.

Now there was nothing left to do but wait.

And wait.

And wait.

***

Jaskier woke up with blinding headache and a familiar sharp, stinging, burning sensation in his left hand. What the fuck had happened? He’d been sound asleep! Had he smacked his finger against the bedpost in the night, and opened one of the blisters again?

Jaskier was almost afraid to open his eyes and look. Seeing the bandages stained pink or red again would feel like a major setback, especially after so many days of steady healing. He decided it might be best to forget about his hands and try to get back to sleep. The stinging pain in his left hand wouldn’t relent, however. Instead, it intensified to the point where Jaskier simply couldn’t ignore it anymore. He moaned and rolled over, and opened his eyes.

Bright sunlight was streaming in through the open shutters. He hadn’t thought to close them last night, positive that Eskel would wake him whenever he—

Wait. Where was Eskel?

He sat up and scrubbed at his face with the heels of his hands, and blinked at the empty room. Everything was just as Jaskier had left it. There was no trail of muddy bootprints leading from the door, no armor or twin swords lying discarded anywhere. There was no sign that Eskel had ever even set foot in the room at all, in fact, aside from the worn saddlebags piled up in the corner.

The burning pain in his left hand hadn’t receded yet. Jaskier finally glanced down to see if he’d bled through the bandages. However, now that he was focused on it, he was surprised to find that the burning sensation wasn’t coming from one of his bandaged fingers. His thumb seemed to be the source of the pain. But that didn’t make sense. The fire-fucker mage and Djikstra’s minions had burned the index, middle and ring fingers on both hands. No one had bothered with his thumbs or pinkie fingers. Small mercy there, as it meant he could still grip things gently, but…

But the pain was coming from his left thumb. He knew that digit was free of burns. However, his body seemed to think otherwise: it felt like a fresh blister was opening up just under his ugly black ring.

Oh fuck. The ring. The curse.

Eskel had left him early yesterday afternoon, and judging by the slanting sunlight in the window, it was late morning now. So, less than a full day of separation. How could that possibly be enough time to trigger the curse? It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours yet!

He hated magic. He hated, hated, HATED mages and magic-users even more. Once upon a time he’d thought Yennefer of Vengerberg was the most horrible sorceress he’d ever met (though he’d warmed to her after that marvellous-though-futile rescue attempt in Oxenfurt) but then he’d met the fire-fucker, and Djikstra’s terrifying sorceress with the red lips. The horrible mages Eskel had described, the old men who administered the Trials by filling little boys full of potions only for most of them to die screaming, would have convinced him that all magic-users were monsters if he hadn’t already decided that for himself.

Except for Eskel, he thought, remembering his Witcher’s powerful signs, and how his strange Chaos had felt like a purr against his skin. Geralt, too, with his Aard and Ignii.

All right, Jaskier decided, Witcher-magic was fine. All other magic users were arseholes.

He tried to get up but found that his muscles were cramping too much to stand. He was sweating and shaking too, and he doubted he could even make it as far as the chamber-pot. He’d have to eventually, he knew: the warning rumble of his stomach predicted a few truly awful hours awaited him if he couldn’t appease the spell.

Where was Eskel?

Jaskier slumped to his side and curled up, trying to will away the pain, or muffle it with scraps of songs or poetry, chord progressions, tuning exercises, the ascension dates of every Northern king, anything he could think of to distract from the pain. The burning of the black ring and the cramping spasms running through his muscles and liquifying his bowels were twin sensations of agony. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, but it didn’t seem to help much.

An hour or more passed in wave after wave of pain.

Eventually, his agony seemed to plateau, and Jaskier regained enough control to remember that he really should alert someone in the tavern downstairs. Send a rider, he remembered. At least then somebody would be looking for Eskel. It was apparent by now that something was very wrong. Eskel should have been back long ago. If he hadn’t been killed outright by the water-hag, ghoul, or whatever other foul creature he’d run into, he could be alive but hurt, or trapped somewhere! Fuck, why hadn’t Jaskier thought of it earlier?

He slithered out of the bed and landed on his knees with a hard thunk that rattled all the way up through his sore, cramping body. Jaskier knelt there for a moment, gasping, and then began to crawl towards the door.

Moving helped, oddly. It felt like there was an invisible thread pulling him along like a child’s toy, dragging him forward inch by inch. That tugging sensation kept up even when he reached the door and struggled to boost himself up enough to turn the knob.

A sudden tremor made him knock his burned fingers on the metal latch. Jaskier inhaled sharply, cursing all the gods and goddesses and especially the godsdamned mages. But he managed to unlatch the door and yell for the innkeeper.

Jaskier lay sprawled in the doorway for a time, focusing on breathing and swallowing down the bile rising up his throat. He heard the pounding of feet on the stairs—he’d tried to yell, but it had probably come out as more of a scream—and when he looked up, he saw two scullery maids had responded to his cry, along with a burly young hostler and the innkeeper.

“What’s—” the innkeeper started, but Jaskier cut him off with a sharp wave of his bandaged hand.

“Someone has to go find the Witcher,” he said through gritted teeth. “Please. I’m dying. It’s poison, and he’s got the antidote,” Jaskier said, thinking quickly. He couldn’t just say I’m cursed because the average human villager would either tie him up to a stake or toss him in the river if he admitted he’d dared to bring black magic into a public establishment.

“The Witcher’s down the road in the swamp, looking for those missing villagers. Should have been back by now but—ah, gods!” he yelled as another spasm hit. The waves were hitting harder now. Soon, he might start having seizures, given how quickly he’d gone from feeling a bit poorly to outright agony, kill me now. The curse could finish him in a matter of hours.

“Young Johann here will go,” the innkeeper said, crouching down beside Jaskier. The young hostler—Johann, presumably—ran off right away. The innkeeper and the two chambermaids stayed to help Jaskier back to bed.

He lay on his back, sweating and panting like a bellows. That odd tug he’d felt earlier was stronger now, trying to draw him back to the door. Back towards Eskel. If the spellbound curse was working, that had to mean Eskel wasn’t dead, right? After all, he was still alive, and he thought the curse was supposed to trigger his death if anything happened to Eskel.

The cramping in his muscles eased again, and Jaskier prepared for a fresh wave of escalating agony. Instead, the pain seemed to ebb as the minutes ticked by. The thread of Chaos that was trying to tug him to the door was insistent as ever. That invisible string was firmly tied around his sternum, now, right in the centre of his chest. Every so often he’d feel a tug or a pull, just like a fish jerking on the end of the line. A big, giant, Witcher-shaped fish, he hoped.

After a few moments of further agony, Jaskier felt more confident. The pain was definitely receding without any more waves of agony, and that tugged-thread sensation was lessening. It had to mean that Eskel was on his way back. Jaskier was too weak to move, however. It took him another forty minutes and a commotion in the yard outside to give Jaskier enough strength to hoist himself up and stumble over to the window.

The young hostler was helping Eskel down off Scorpion. The Witcher was limping and his red leather gambeson was streaked with blood. He also seemed to be favouring his side, but Jaskier couldn’t see any visible injuries aside from what was likely a sprained or broken ankle.

One of the chambermaids who’d come to his aid earlier shrieked and fainted. The rest of the quickly-assembled crowd of onlookers shrank away as Eskel made his limping way through the yard.

It wasn’t until he was closer that Jaskier finally understood why everyone was suddenly so terrified of Eskel.

The Witcher’s face was winter-pale beneath the red-streaked scars, but his eyes and blood vessels had turned black from a potion overdose. He’d probably taken too much Kiss. Jaskier had seen Geralt in a similar state countless times. The potion staunched bleeding and helped to speed coagulation, but Kiss had to be taken in enormous quantities to stop a near-fatal wound from bleeding out. Jaskier had seen Geralt overdose on Kiss multiple times, and according to Eskel, Geralt was able to tolerate it in far greater amounts.

Eskel must have miscalculated, if he’d taken enough of the potion to overdose and turn his eyes and blood vessels black. But he was up and walking under his own strength, which was a good sign: it meant the Kiss had done its job. The toxicity was likely starting to wear off, then. Eskel would still likely need a dose of White Honey to clear the potion’s effects, and a bit of time to rest and recover.

Jaskier went over to their saddlebags and dug around for a vial of White Honey and an extra dose of Swallow, just in case. He’d found the vials by the time Eskel had finished his slow, stumbling way up the stairs and down the hall to their room.

As soon as Eskel entered, Jaskier went over to help him reach the chair, as it looked like Eskel was very close to collapsing. As soon as Jaskier touched Eskel, his own pain and that awful cramping vanished. Apparently, all he needed to do was touch Eskel for the curse to release its grip.

“What happened?” Jaskier said softly. He brushed a few lank strands of hair back from Eskel’s sweaty, black-veined face. Eskel kept his eyes averted and his eyes squeezed shut. He was breathing hard and trembling a little, and kept clutching his side tightly. He must have taken a slash to the ribs or the stomach, then, especially given the amount of blood coating his gambeson.

“Two water-hags,” Eskel gasped out. “They controlled forty, maybe fifty drowners between ’em.”

Jaskier used his teeth to tug out the cork of one of the potion vials and passed it over to Eskel. He accepted the potion with an uncertain look.

“It’s fine. It’s White Honey,” Jaskier said, well aware that Eskel, like Geralt, didn’t label any of the potions in his saddlebags. According to Geralt, Witchers were trained to identify their potions from smell and sight alone. A Witcher couldn’t always depend on being able to see well enough to read a label, Geralt had pointed out, especially if they’d lost a lot of blood or been blinded by acid. Jaskier had abruptly cut off Geralt’s explanation at that point, not wanting to delve any further into the horrifying details of that particular chain of reasoning.

Still, he’d paid attention, and learned how to identify all of Geralt’s potions by smell, colour, viscosity, and every other means (aside from taste). It had come in handy more than once over the years he’d spent cleaning and tending to Geralt’s injuries.

(He had, on one memorable occasion, confused White Honey and White Raffard’s Decoction, but thankfully he’d gotten some extra Swallow into Geralt before that did any major harm. Afterward, Jaskier had convinced to periodically drill him on potion identification).

Eskel finally downed the White Honey with a grimace. It worked like a charm, and after only a few moments Eskel’s veins and eyes went back to their normal colour. His irises were honeyed amber again, instead of inky black voids.

“Here’s Swallow, too, when you’re able,” Jaskier said. He handed Eskel the second potion, but left it corked. It would take a few minutes for the White Honey to neutralize all of the toxic Kiss in Eskel’s body.

Eskel stared down at the bright green vial for a moment, and then shook his head and leaned back in the chair. He drew in a deep breath and started trying to remove his shirt and blood-soaked gambeson.

“Let me do that!” Jaskier said quickly. “Will you need stitches?”

“Sewed myself up once already,” Eskel grunted, “But I tore the stitches when the other hag showed up,” He seemed to be having trouble speaking. Jaskier wasn’t sure if it was from the potion overdose, or the injury, or both. “Never saw two hags,” he huffed, “working together like that.”

“Strange indeed,” Jaskier murmured. He was able to balance a shallow bowl of water in his palms, enough to sluice water over Eskel’s blood-caked shirt so that it no longer stuck to his wounds. Eskel gently peeled the material away until Jaskier could see the wound underneath. There were three big slashes in Eskel’s side, obviously clawmarks from the first water-hag. Two of the slashes were ragged and still bleeding sluggishly from where Eskel’s hastily-set stitches had torn. The Kiss had done its job and stopped Eskel from bleeding out, but the ragged bits of flesh needed to be cleaned up and sewn back together.

Jaskier automatically went to start removing Eskel’s leather armor, but quickly realized he had no hope of undoing the straps and buckles on Eskel’s spiked pauldrons or his stiff wool gambeson. With his hands bandaged, Jaskier was effectively useless. He wouldn’t be able to clean Eskel’s wounds, and he didn’t have anything close to the dexterity needed to set new stitches. He still couldn’t even lace up his own trews, for the gods' sake.

“I’ll go fetch a healer,” Jaskier mumbled. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and then stumbled forward as he was gripped by a spell of light-headedness.

“Jaskier?” Eskel’s voice was suddenly sharp and free from his earlier wooziness. “Are you all right?”

Jaskier shook his head, attempting to clear it. Eskel touched his wrist, and Jaskier immediately felt steadier, perhaps thanks to that little spark of connection. It seemed like Eskel’s Chaos, or the magic of the spellbond, or a combination of the two, had a strong restorative effect.

He swayed toward Eskel as the last of the pain receded. “I’m sorry, it’s the curse, I think,” he said. “It hit me pretty hard this morning.”

“What happened?”

Jaskier waived the question away. His experience hardly mattered when Eskel had come so terribly close to dying. The Witcher had lost a lot of blood, and the slashes over his ribs needed tending. Jaskier was fine. He was practically right as rain already.

“I’ll tell you later,” Jaskier promised. “I’m fine,” he insisted in response to Eskel’s concerned and slightly mulish look. “It was the curse. I just had some cramping, and a bit of a headache. It got worse until you started heading back here. I’m perfectly fine now.”

“I wasn’t that far away.” Eskel frowned. “No more than two leagues at the most.”

“I suspect it was the length of time you were gone, not the distance,” Jaskier said. He went to go fetch the innkeeper.

Jaskier didn’t need to go very far: the man was hovering out in the hallway looking anxious.

“Already sent for the healer,” the innkeeper said, giving Jaskier a careful once-over. “Did the Witcher give you that antidote you needed?”

“Uh, yes, thankfully,” Jaskier said, a bit too exhausted by the day’s ordeal to truly sell the lie. “He's a marvel.”

“And he’s not—he’s not abusing you, is he?” the innkeeper asked, glancing down at Jaskier’s bandaged hands.

He couldn’t fault the man for making assumptions. It was kind of him to ask, given that Nils, the owner of the Loose Moose in Oxenfurt—a man Jaskier had known for more than twenty years!—hadn’t so much as batted an eye when he’d suspected the very same thing.

“Of course, not,” Jaskier said with a wide smile. “He’s been taking very good care of me. I’ve just been through a bit of a rough spell. Too much drinking and fisstech, you know,” he said, slipping easily into the character of a down-on-his-luck nobleman, a feckless member of the upper classes who’d fallen into a pattern of overindulgence and hired a Witcher to get him safely home. It wasn’t all that far from the truth, after all. Though of course, Jaskier had no home to go back to.

“I’m glad you’re on the mend,” the innkeeper said. “Johann will bring up the healer when she arrives. You look after yourself and the Witcher. Johann said he killed a whole pile of monsters in the swamp. The ones that were takin’ folk. The alderman'll have the Witcher’s coin whenever he can collect it. Room’s yours until then. You can both eat for free too,” he added.

Jaskier could only nod his thanks, a bit overwhelmed by the man’s generosity.

***

The healer was skilled at her trade. When Eskel tried to warn her about the grisly gashes on his side, she calmly explained that she’d once been a battlefield medic and that sewing him up was nothing new. Eskel let her work, staring at the ceiling and focusing on his breathing as she packed the wound with a poultice and declared him “well on the road to healing.” She quite happily accepted several amphoras full of healing salve as payment for her work.

Eskel couldn’t help but notice the way Jaskier hovered at the healer’s side while the woman worked. He was always there to fetch what was needed without being asked, but he was pale and a little unsteady on his feet. Eskel wondered again what exactly Jaskier had endured while Eskel was trying to haul himself out of the swamp.

He should have been far more careful about the curse. He’d known the rings were bespelled to keep them together, but he thought the curse would be triggered by distance. He hadn’t realized—hadn’t checked— to see if the curse was time-dependent as well. Eskel should never have left him alone in the first place, and Jaskier had paid the price for Eskel’s oversight. The knowledge pained him far more than his injuries.

By the time the healer finished, Jaskier looked absolutely done-in. His blue eyes were startlingly bright against the deep bruises under his eyes. Between his pinched expression and the exhausted slump to his shoulders, he’d clearly suffered far more than he’d admitted. Guilt and regret sat heavily in Eskel’s gut, but he had no idea how to make it up to Jaskier.

According to the healer and the feedback from his own battered body, Eskel knew he’d recover quickly. He’d lost a lot of blood, and his ankle was badly sprained, but thanks to the Kiss, White Honey and Swallow, and the healer’s skill with a needle and catgut, his wounds would be closed over by morning. He’d probably be back on his feet by suppertime tomorrow, albeit a little sore.

Jaskier helped Eskel up from the chair and maneuvered him over to the bed, where he collapsed with a soft grunt. His eyes were heavy; his body’s accelerating healing was already sapping what little energy he had left. But he forced himself to stay awake to check on Jaskier.

“Is the curse still causing you any pain?”

“No,” Jaskier said firmly. “The pain faded as soon as you touched me.” He touched his wrist where Eskel had gripped Jaskier earlier after he’d gone faint and lightheaded.

“Hmm,” Eskel grunted, and reached out. Jaskier smiled a little and moved over to the bed, and let Eskel touch his wrist again. As soon as he made contact with Jaskier’s bare skin, the bard’s eyes fluttered shut and he let out a deep sigh of relief.

“That helps,” he murmured. “I’m not in any pain, but when you touch me, it feels…warm, somehow. A little tingly.”

“That’s my Chaos,” Eskel said. “Usually only elves and other magic-users can feel it.”

Jaskier nodded. “Well, there’s some Fae blood in my family line.” He looked at Eskel uneasily. “Not for several generations, now, but—”

“I’m not bothered by Fae ancestry, Jaskier. Half the humans on the Continent have elven blood, or can trace their ancestry back to dwarves, giants, pixies, elves, or the Fae.”

“My parents certainly wanted to keep it a secret,” Jaskier admitted. “It was never something I could discuss in mixed company. That bloodline keeps all of us Pancratzes young and pretty, and we live significantly longer than normal humans. Yet it’s still considered a source of shame,” Jaskier muttered. “But this feeling…it’s more than just a reaction to your Chaos. It almost feels like the spell wants you to, ah. Touch me,” he finished with a charming blush.

Eskel scratched at the scars on his face, thinking. “Well, that makes sense. Binding curses are powerful, but they require a lot of energy, too, which is why I think the ringbound curse needs a Witcher to draw from. We have more natural Chaos than a human: it’s how we form Signs and cast cantrips. The curse is probably structured a bit like a hangman’s noose: the further away you get from the spell’s energy source—me—the more it tightens. The closer we are, the more the spell can relax. Binding spells are incredibly lazy: it’s why they can only compel two people to be together physically, not emotionally. And since it’s much easier for the spell to simply reinforce ‘good’ behaviour than it is to exert itself and cause you pain, it makes sense the spell would reward you for touching me.”

“So this, how it makes me feel,” Jaskier said, pressing his wrist more firmly against Eskel’s fingertips, “This is what you mean by ‘reward’?”

Eskel shrugged. He honestly didn’t know that much about binding spells, other than the obvious limitations and the massive amounts of energy they likely required. However, if Eskel thought that if he was asked to create a spell to keep one person forcibly connected to another, that’s exactly how he would have designed it: relief and pleasure as a carrot, pain as the stick.

“Your fingers have been healing faster since we started riding together,” he pointed out. “I thought it was my Chaos and the healing salve, but I think it’s the spell at work, too, rewarding you for staying close to me.”

“So it’s making me feel better and helping me heal just because I’m sitting in front of you on a horse for nine or ten hours a day?”

“I think so.” Eskel smiled at him. “And…I think it rewards both of us, at least a little,” he added, compelled by basic honesty to admit what he’d been suspecting for a while. “I’ve certainly been in a better mood lately. I thought I was just enjoying the company. Your company, that is,” he added awkwardly.

“So it ‘rewards’ us both, but it only causes me pain,” Jaskier summarized. Something seemed to occur to him then, and that lovely pink flush spread over his cheeks again. “Do you think it rewards any physical contact at all? Or just certain kinds of physical contact?”

Eskel had been wondering that himself. He shifted over into a more comfortable position on the bed, suddenly thankful that the healer had left his trousers on. He had to think this through logically. He couldn’t let his traitorous heart—or cock—answer for him.

“Well, given that the spellbond is supposed to simulate a marriage…” he trailed off, hoping his conclusion didn’t sound as selfish and self-serving as he feared. “It would probably reward more, ah, intimate contact. Skin-to-skin.,” he added quickly, worried Jaskier might assume he meant something else.

Thankfully, it didn’t seem to occur to Jaskier that Eskel might try to manipulate him into bed. And that was heartening. It meant that Jaskier trusted him, at least to some degree.

“Like when you touched my wrist,” Jaskier said. “It felt…good, I suppose. Better than when I lean up against you when we ride. Although that feels splendid too,” he added. Eskel had to look away so Jaskier wouldn’t see his scarred face twist up in a smile of relief.

Thinking of the scars on his face (not to mention the more extensive scars on his body) he glanced down uneasily at his torso. The healer had helped him change into one of his largest spare shirts. Jaskier had already seen his scarred chest—and more—while she was setting the stitches, and he’d certainly gotten an eyeful of the rest of Eskel at the river the other day. Jaskier hadn’t seemed too disgusted by Eskel’s body either time. If Jaskier didn’t mind touching Eskel skin-to-skin, it seemed like a good time to test the spell’s restorative effects. They could both use whatever extra help the spell could provide.

It seemed like a perfect opportunity to test out the potential benefits of the ringbound curse, now that the way it punished Jaskier had been so thoroughly demonstrated.

Eskel hesitated. He couldn’t quite make himself look at Jaskier as he made the suggestion. “Could you take your shirt off? And come lie down with me?” He patted the space next to him on the bed. “You can close the shutters, if it helps.”

Jaskier had already started to tug off his shirt. “Helps? Helps what?”

“It’ll make it a little darker in here,” Eskel said. The dimmer it was in the room, the easier it might be for Jaskier to deal with the horrors of Eskel’s body.

“If you like,” Jaskier said with a shrug, apparently not caring much about it either way. He slipped out of his loose shirt, and Eskel felt his heart start to beat faster.

Jaskier truly was a beautiful man, with those broad shoulders and miles of creamy unmarred skin and that lovely thick chest hair. He ached to touch him, and it had nothing to do with testing magical theories.

Eskel waited until Jaskier had closed the shutters before removing his own shirt. Half his torso was wrapped in bandages and they were both still wearing their breeches, but the prospect of touching Jaskier’s bare chest was making him feel a bit light-headed.

Jaskier lay down carefully beside Eskel, obviously worried about jostling his injuries. He shifted close, then rolled onto his side with his back facing Eskel. “I assume I’ll be the little spoon?” he asked cheekily.

Eskel laughed and wrapped his arms around Jaskier, drawing him in close until they were pressed back-to-chest. As soon as they touched, Eskel let out a contented sigh. Gods, Jaskier felt so good, like he’d been made to fit in Eskel’s arms. Having his warm body pressed up against him, fragrant with whatever soap Jaskier had used to bathe with earlier, made Eskel feel like he was sinking into his own wonderfully hot bath. He sighed again and cuddled Jaskier closer.

He didn’t quite feel Jaskier’s touch as the ‘spark’ Jaskier had described. To Eskel, it felt more like a banked ember or a warm stone had been wrapped up in a soft cloth and pressed up against the coldest parts of his body. The longer Jaskier touched him, the more Eskel felt those parts of himself start to warm up. He was no poet—that was Jaskier’s domain—but holding Jaskier like this felt like coming back to life after a very long, dark winter, easing a frozen ache Eskel had learned to live with a lifetime ago. Feeling that unconscious ache melt away was one of the most soothing physical experiences he’d had in years.

Jaskier seemed to be feeling something similar. He let out a blissful sigh and attempted to wiggle closer to Eskel, even though they were already touching from chest to hips. Eskel hesitated, and then tangled their legs together and repositioned his arms. He looped one arm around Jaskier’s narrow waist, the other around his ribs, and spread one broad palm over Jaskier’s chest for good measure. His hand rested right over the spot where he could feel Jaskier’s human-fast heartbeat.

He made sure to keep his hold loose and relaxed, not wanting to make Jaskier feel trapped. But he couldn’t quite stop himself from nuzzling against the nape of Jaskier’s neck where the scent of soap and sweat and Jaskier’s unique honey-chamomile smell was strongest. Jaskier fit so nicely in his arms. He flushed and grinned at the way Jaskier sank back against his chest. As if he trusted Eskel to hold him close and keep him safe.

“Feels good,” Jaskier mumbled. His voice was already thick with sleep. “Feels…really good.”

“Yeah,” Eskel agreed with a sigh. He closed his eyes, and the world faded to the fragrant warmth of Jaskier’s body, and the rapid, steady beat of his husband’s heart.

***

Chapter Text

Jaskier felt groggy and disoriented when he woke up the next morning. He blinked up at the cracked ceiling, wondering why it was so dark in the bedroom, and why he felt so…so good. He recalled closing the shutters last night, but he must have fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep immediately afterward, because he remembered little else.

Aside from the grogginess that usually resulted from a good deep sleep, he felt completely refreshed. The little aches and pains that had dogged him since prison seemed to have melted away in the night, and even his hands didn’t hurt as much as usual. His whole body felt lighter, somehow, like he’d been holding a breath for years and had finally managed to exhale.

It took another muzzy-headed moment for Jaskier to remember exactly why he felt so good: he’d fallen asleep in Eskel’s arms. His very naked arms, because they’d both stripped down to their breeches last night.

Eskel must have flopped onto his back at some point and dragged Jaskier along with him, as he’d ended up draped over Eskel’s chest with his head pillowed on one bare, furry pectoral. Eskel’s unnaturally slow heart was thumping away like a metronome right under Jaskier’s ear, and the sound was surprisingly soothing. So was the soft rumble of his breathing. Jaskier was almost lulled back to sleep by the peaceful, rhythmic sounds. He’d never shared a bed with Eskel before, however, and he wanted to savour the novelty of the experience.

In the dim light, Jaskier could barely make out the burns and scars and deep, rough gouges carved into Eskel’s flesh by men and monsters both. The early-morning darkness softened those reminders of pain and violence, and Jaskier thought that Eskel looked exactly like a big cuddly bear sleeping through a long winter’s hibernation.

Jaskier smiled at the image. There was something remarkedly bear-like about Eskel, he supposed, given the delicious bulk of his body and that dark pelt of hair on his chest and belly. Jaskier himself was all skin-and-bones right now, but even at his heaviest, he'd never have anything close to Eskel's muscle mass. He found he liked the contrast between them very much. It felt almost sinfully good to be cuddled close like this, cushioned by Eskel's warm body that was soft in all the right ways.

We fit together, Jaskier thought. Before he could stop and dwell on that extremely dangerous thought, he wondered: had Eskel ever fit with anyone else? Some village widow, perhaps, or a lonely spinster? Seven hells, even Geralt had managed to find a lover on the Path: surely some lucky woman must have looked past the scars and the swords and the yellow eyes, and seen Eskel as the kind, sweet, endearing man that he was? He couldn’t have been alone for eighty years. Could he?

It was a horrendously sad question. And Jaskier feared that he already knew the answer. He couldn’t help but reach out and rest his hand lightly on Eskel’s hip, as if that meagre bit of contact could offer any sort of bulwark against the flooding horror of spending nearly a century alone.

Eskel made a contented little noise and pressed his hip up against Jaskier’s hand, like he was starved for contact even while asleep. It only made Jaskier’s heart ache for him even more.

Jaskier wanted to reach out and collect the small drop of saliva gathered at the corner of Eskel’s mouth. His lips looked so soft, and it was easy to imagine kissing him. Jaskier had done it once already, but that had been just a friendly peck to the corner of Eskel’s mouth back in Oxenfurt. Now, pressed up against the man, confronted with his (truly ridiculous) muscles and the warm cedar scent of his skin, it was difficult to remember why he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about how appealing Eskel was, why this--any of this--was a very bad idea.

He squirmed a little, trying to create a little distance between his hips and Eskel’s. Eskel stirred and made a grumbling noise of disapproval. He settled his hand on the curve of Jaskier’s spine, and Jaskier froze. Eskel’s hand felt like a brand against Jaskier’s bare skin. For just a moment, Jaskier thought that if he checked in the mirror, he’d find a blister on his skin in an exactly outline of Eskel’s palm.

Eskel dozed on, completely insensate, and Jaskier could only burn in shame and hot arousal as his cock hardened. He squeezed his eyes shut, but that didn’t help. He could still see Eskel’s sleeping face in his mind’s eye, mouth slack with sleep, lips parted—

Stop, Jaskier told himself sternly. He’s done enough for you. He’s done everything for you. Don’t do this.

Hadn’t he learned one godsdamned thing from his experiences with Geralt?

He wasn’t some spinster or village widow. He couldn’t start building fantasies about romance with yet another Witcher. He would not. He had to start looking after himself. He couldn’t keep lusting after men who would never--could never--want him.

No, once Jaskier was healthy and free from the cursed bandages, he’d find some big brute of a man, a blacksmith or a bricklayer or a dockhand, and let them fuck him until he forgot his own name.

He couldn’t afford to lose his only friend. He knew exactly what Eskel would say if he let any hint of his...hisinconvenient attraction slip through, and Jaskier could only live through that sort of humiliating rejection once in his life, thank you very much.

It just wasn't worth the risk.

***

Eskel woke up alone. That in itself wasn't unusual--he hadn’t shared a bed with anyone in decades--but something felt off. Something...someone was missing. 

Right. Jaskier. The previous night came back to him slowly, and he felt almost a little scandalized that he'd dared to sleep next to Jaskier without wearing a shirt. Thankfully the room’s shutters were still closed, so Jaskier couldn’t have seen that much of his battered, scarred body.

Other than the vague sense of loss that persisted even after he was fully awake, Eskel felt surprisingly good. The injury to his side didn’t hurt all that much, and so he tried an experimental twist, careful not to pull too much against the healer's carefully-set stitches. But he felt fine.

Eskel rose and stretched again, frowning. After a serious injury like the slashes meted out by the water-hags, not to mention a near-fatal potion overdose, he shouldn't be able to haul himself out of bed yet. Instead, he felt fine. Just oddly unsettled about waking up alone.

He pulled on a shirt and threw the shutters open to let bright sunshine and fresh air into the room. He got to work cutting off the layers of bandages that the healer had wrapped around his chest. The wound to his side had closed over during the night, and Eskel used a small pair of scissors from his medical kit to cut out the neat row of stitches before they could interfere with the fresh-formed scabs. He slathered a bit of the healing salve over the wound for good measure. It looked like the wound wouldn’t even leave a scar.

His sprained ankle seemed to have healed overnight, too. He tested this with a few experimental lunges. His ankle held up just fine, and overall he seemed fit enough to travel and wield a sword.

The spell had obviously worked just as he and Jaskier had theorized. Even Eskel’s accelerated healing wouldn’t have made such rapid recovery possible without overdosing on Swallow. His ease of motion, clear-headedness, and healed injuries all had to be a result of the spell. Or, more accurately, the result of sleeping pressed skin-to-skin with Jaskier all night.

Eskel sat down on the edge of the bed and examined the thick black ring on his left hand. It still felt cold to the touch, nothing more than a black, lifeless hunk of metal. Yet it bound Jaskier to him. It dealt out punishments—and rewards—to keep them together. A magical object with that kind of power ought to glow or thrum with Chaos, yet Eskel’s medallion barely twitched until he wrapped his hand around it. When the metal ring on his finger connected with the medallion, he felt that familiar vibration that warned of magic, but only faintly. Whoever had bespelled the ring must have been a master mage with skills far beyond Eskel’s. He barely understood how the damned curse worked.

Jaskier’s old bathwater from the previous evening was still in the wooden tub, and Eskel cast Ignii to reheat it. He shucked off his trousers and smalls, and climbed into the steaming water with a groan. While his injuries from the fight with the water-hags had healed over, the rest of his assorted aches and pains--old scars, broken bones that hadn’t been reset properly, muscles and tendons torn over and over again--would be soothed by a good long soak.

Eskel scrubbed the mud and grime from yesterday’s disastrous hunt off his skin. He tipped his head back against the rim of the tub and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths of the hot steam. He could pick out Jaskier’s voice amidst ten or twelve other patrons in the tavern downstairs. Jaskier was speaking to the innkeeper, and Eskel didn’t attempt to eavesdrop. Jaskier didn’t sound like he was in any danger, and so Eskel let himself relax and drift in the hot bath.

He must have drifted a little longer than he’d intended, because Eskel next woke up to the scrape of a key in the iron lock and the door creaking open.

Eskel had just enough time to snatch up the wet washcloth and drape it over his scarred chest before Jaskier entered. The room was too small to have a screened-off area for the bath. There was nothing to prevent Jaskier from seeing everything as soon as he stepped into the room. The cloudy water hid most of Eskel’s lower body, thankfully, but the damned washcloth was laughably small and did little to conceal Eskel’s big hairy chest and belly or thick, scarred shoulders from Jaskier’s view.

“Oh good, you’re up!” Jaskier said, blue eyes very bright in the sunlit room. He immediately averted his gaze and fixed his eyes on the opposite wall to give Eskel the pretense of privacy. Eskel silently thanked him for the consideration.

Jaskier was carrying a breakfast tray with a bowl of oatmeal, a small clay jar of honey and a tumbler full of frothy milk. Goat’s milk, according to Eskel’s keen sense of smell. His mouth watered, but he didn’t dare reach for the tray in case the movement dislodged the washcloth.

“How are you feeling? Did you sleep well? Injuries healing up all right?” Jaskier seemed determined not to acknowledge the awkwardness of the tableau. He set the breakfast tray down on top of the chest at the end of the bed, and then deliberately turned his back to Eskel.

Eskel picked at the corner of the washcloth. He should climb out of the tub and get dressed while Jaskier’s back was turned, but it felt ridiculous to be acting like some blushing virgin. Jaskier had already seen (almost) everything at the river, and they’d slept together shirtless last night. If they wanted to keep taking advantage of the spell, they’d probably need to sleep skin-to-skin like that every night. It wasn’t practical or realistic to find a pitch-black place to camp at night, or to keep bathing separately on the Path. It was probably best just to get this over with, Eskel thought, even as he quaked inside at the thought of exposing so much of his body.

Steeling himself, Eskel peeled the wet washcloth away from his chest, and sat up a little in the tub. The water sloshed around his hips, covering him up to his navel. He folded his hands together across his lap. It seemed like a suitable compromise: there was no reason to inflict the sight of his grotesquely large genitals on Jaskier. The scars on his face and upper body were bad enough.

“Uh, Jaskier, you can turn around,” Eskel said, keeping his gaze fixed on his hands. “I’m sorry I flinched like that. I didn’t hear you coming up the stairs.”

He heard the rustle of fabric as Jaskier moved, but he couldn’t quite make himself look at Jaskier’s face. He didn’t want to see the man’s inevitable expression of disgust as he took in the ruin of Eskel’s body, or his hulking muscles or thick body hair. There was no getting around it: he was an ugly sonofabitch, even for a mutant Witcher. Eskel couldn’t bear to watch Jaskier try to conceal his horrified reaction behind a falsely bright smile. Imagining it was bad enough.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier said softly. “I should have knocked.” He heard the faint scrape and clink of earthenware and Jaskier’s footsteps. “Would you like some oatmeal? It’s still warm, and I’ve mixed in some honey. It’s quite good.”

“Uh, yes. Thanks,” Eskel said gruffly, still not daring to raise his head. The bowl of oatmeal entered his peripheral vision and Eskel took it, grateful for the distraction. He ate mechanically and listened to the sounds of Jaskier padding around the room, tidying up the bandages Eskel had cut off and picking up the rest of the detritus from the night before.

“I should have thanked you earlier,” Eskel said between bites. “For yesterday. For sending Johann and getting those potions ready, and sending for the healer. No one’s ever—” His voice gave out, and so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Um. No one’s looked out for me like that before.” he admitted haltingly. “I've gotten fairly good at patching myself up, but after those stitches tore, and I had to take that second dose of Kiss—”

“My dear, it was the least I could do!” Jaskier cut him off quickly, as if he couldn’t bear to listen to Eskel stumble through another second of his embarrassing little speech. “You should never have had to sew up your own wounds, or go through such awful things alone.”

“A Witcher’s Path is meant to be walked alone,” Eskel said with a shrug, hearing different voices--Vesemir, and Varin, and Remus, and even old Master Rennes--reverberate down through the words. As if he hadn’t fought tooth and nail against that very fate, once upon a time.

“It shouldn’t be," Jaskier said pointedly. "Besides, you have me now! I helped Geralt for years, you know; he certainly didn’t have to stitch himself up. In fact, I forbid Geralt from even touching a needle after I found that idiot sewing his own stomach closed after a fight with a katikan. Why are all of you Witchers so damned stubborn about doing everything alone?”

Eskel was still stuck on Jaskier’s quietly-worded vow, You have me now. He didn’t have time to consider his answer, just blurted out the first response that came to mind.

“Witchers have to manage on their own. Never had much of a choice about that, Jask.”

He heard Jaskier step closer to the tub, and jerked his head up in surprise when Jaskier knelt on the floor beside the tub. They were almost at eye-level now, with Jaskier just a bit taller on his knees. Eskel was surprised when Jaskier didn’t flinch at the sight of his scarred face and the mangled skin of his bare chest in the morning light. But he seemed determined to hold Eskel’s gaze. Jaskier’s blue eyes were burning with the light of some deeply-held inner conviction.

“Well, you're not alone anymore,” Jaskier told him, speaking clearly and with no room for ambiguity. “And for the record, no one is ‘meant’ to be alone: not humans, or Witchers, or elves, or any other thinking creature. We all need someone. And you are certainly not alone anymore, Eskel. You’re my friend,” Jaskier said, licking his lips before charging ahead.

“I owe you my life, and we’re bound together. We're married,” he added, “at least for now. So I’m certainly not going anywhere. Which means that you don’t have to sew your own wounds, or ride out a potion overdose by yourself, or walk the Path without someone there beside you. And I may be poor company, especially right now,” Jaskier said, looking down at his fingers with a huff of pained laughter. “But you are not alone. Please don’t think that you are.”

Eskel stared up at Jaskier, snarling lips locked in a little ‘O’ of surprise, and felt his heart knock against his chest so loudly that even a human like Jaskier ought to be able to hear it.

You are not alone. He’d waited a whole human lifetime to hear those words. Several lifetimes, in fact. He’d dreamed of it, of the promise of it. Hell, just the thought of having someone there by his side to laugh with, and talk to and even argue with, someone to lie down with at night had been a dream that had kept him going through a lot of cold, dark, lonely years. It had sustained him for so damned long, even if he’d eventually convinced himself to abandon it.

And now…now he had it, he realized. Or some twisted form of it, which was appropriate for a Witcher. He and Jaskier were spellbound together. While neither of them truly had a choice in this (Jaskier least of all) Eskel couldn’t deny the truth of those words. He wasn’t alone anymore.

He blinked and leaned back in the tub, abandoning his protective hunched-over posture. He needed to have some faith in Jaskier, and trusting him with this—with his scars, his ugliness, his loneliness—felt like a necessary first step.

Geralt had trusted Jaskier. If the Wolf could trust this strange, reckless, beautiful human, sleep next to him, walk the Path with him, then why couldn’t Eskel? He didn’t need to be afraid of being ridiculed or laughed at. He already knew that Jaskier wouldn’t hurt him in that way. He just had to have a little faith, a little trust, and accept what Jaskier was offering: friendship, and a companion for the Path.

And he realized that he could offer the same in return. Whatever his clumsy care and poor company was worth (which wasn’t much) he'd offer it to Jaskier.

He forced himself to meet Jaskier’s eyes. “I believe you,” he said. “And I’m honoured. Having you here, having your friendship…it means much more than you know,” Eskel finished, feeling his cheeks heat. “I’ve been alone for a very long time. And I’m sorry if I—” He paused, weighing his next words carefully. “I’m sorry if I’m a bit rusty, when it comes to friendship. Or…trusting people, I suppose.” he added as an afterthought. “I’m used to being the one other people lean on. It’s not that easy to accept help.”

Jaskier grinned at him. It was like the sun coming out, and Eskel returned that bright, beautiful smile with his own scarred, twisted grin.

“Well, I am relying on you for quite a lot.” Jaskier admitted. The levity in his voice kept the statement from sounding bitter. “But you can lean on me too, you know? I’m more resilient than I look.”

“I know you are,” Eskel said, and they smiled at each other for a few moments like a couple of fools. He was surprised how light and happy he felt. Like he was filled up with the bubbles in a glass of sparkling wine.

Jaskier seemed to be feeling just as joyous and buoyant. He bounced to his feet and held out the cup of goat’s milk in exchange for Eskel’s empty bowl.

Eskel gulped the milk down, and then rested both arms along the rim of the tub and leaned back. He still felt a bit nervous about exposing so much of his body. He’d bathed alone for years even at Kaer Morhen, forsaking his brothers’ company in favour of keeping his scars to himself. But Jaskier’s presence no longer felt like a threat he had to guard against.

He could trust Jaskier with this, with his scars and his ugliness. And perhaps a bit more.

He pulled the washcloth off his chest and let it float and then sink to the bottom of the tub.

“My mother was a Correctional Bride,” he said. “She wasn’t spellbound to my father--they didn't do that, in Caingorn--but I remember her black ring. It looked just like this,” he said, tapping the black ring on his left hand. “I didn’t realize what it meant. And when Djikstra offered me your ‘contract’ I refused, but I couldn’t walk away once I knew you were Geralt’s friend.”

“Former friend,” Jaskier corrected with slightly too much spite. “And I’m sorry, about your mother. You would have been well within your rights to walk away when Djikstra proposed it.”

Eskel shook his head. “I couldn’t leave you there. And this Correctional Marriage, the curse—it’s worse for you. You deserve a far better companion than me, Jaskier. But at least we know there’s some benefit to the spell now, if it helps you heal faster. And,” he sighed, “and it’s not forever, you know. I’ll find a mage to help us in Rinde, or elsewhere. I won’t stop looking until you’re free of this curse.”

He looked up at Jaskier. The bard was being uncharacteristically silent. He was standing over by the trunk, one bandaged hand cradled gently in the other. Eskel couldn’t fully interpret the expression on Jaskier’s face, but he didn’t look sad, exactly: just contemplative, his brow furrowed up in concentration.

“What if it can’t be broken? What if you’re stuck with me?” Jaskier tried to smile as he asked the question, but Eskel could see the uncertainty lingering underneath.

“We’ll figure that out too,” Eskel said, closing his eyes again. He didn’t want to dwell on that possibility. Being spellbound to a Witcher would ultimately be a death sentence for Jaskier. The curse had already punished him for Eskel’s carelessness. The Path was far too dangerous and unpredictable for Jaskier to always remain at his side. He couldn’t take Jaskier on a hunt for a griffin or a werewolf. Those beasts would sniff Jaskier out in a heartbeat.

And there was still the matter of whatever mystery awaited them at Kaer Morhen. If he took Jaskier up to the keep, he might be walking them both into a trap. They were likely being followed by Djikstra’s spies, and Eskel couldn’t lead Geralt’s enemies right to the Wolf’s door. But he had to find out why his envoy raven was rejected by the blood-wards around Kaer Morhen. There were so many unanswered questions, so many potential threats and possible dangers. Staying with Eskel would only put Jaskier at risk.

But they were bound by the spell. He couldn’t risk leaving Jaskier behind again, not for a contract, and not even to make sure his loved ones at Kaer Morhen were safe. Either they’d find a way to break the spell, or Jaskier would have to come with him.

Whatever happened, he would protect Jaskier. As the bard had pointed out, neither of them would have to face the future alone.

He only wished that selfish thought didn’t bring him quite so much comfort.

***

Jaskier was almost sorry to leave the inn at Windley behind that afternoon. Eskel was eager to push on to Rinde, and Jaskier couldn’t think of any real reason to linger once Eskel had collected the coin on the water hag contract from the alderman and they’d finished their free lunch.

Eskel helped him climb into Scorpion’s saddle as usual. After so many days of travelling together, Jaskier had almost figured out how to make his hands-free mounting method look…well, not graceful. It would never be graceful. But at least now it looked like the Witcher was actually just helping him climb up instead of tossing Jaskier over the stallion’s back like a sack of potatoes.

As usual, Eskel gracefully swung up behind Jaskier and shifted their hips together as he reached for the reins. But instead of clicking at Scorpion to set off at a trot as he had every other day, Eskel paused for a moment, and put one hand on Jaskier’s shoulder.

“Would it be all right if we touched? Skin-to-skin? I think it might help encourage your hands to heal,” he said, all but whispering the words into Jaskier’s ear.

“What did you have in mind?” Jaskier murmured back. Scorpion shifted, obviously eager to be off, and Jaskier grabbed for Eskel’s wrist to help steady himself.

“I’ll just ruck our shirts up between us. No one passing us on the road should be able to tell. Not unless they’re looking closely.”

Jaskier didn’t dare to try and twist around to look at Eskel’s face, but he suspected it would be as flaming-red as his own. He’d done a lot of different things on horseback, including getting a handjob from a whore on one memorable winter’s journey home from Oxenfurt. Compared to that, Eskel’s suggestion was completely innocent. But it still made his heart beat faster. The thought of riding with his bare back pressed to Eskel’s bare belly…well. It sounded dangerous.

And not just because they might be caught out in a compromising position on the road.

Still, he’d asked Eskel to trust him, and assured him that they were bound together until they found a way to break the spell. He needed to do more than offer pretty words. He had to show Eskel that he trusted him, too.

Jaskier gave him a shaky nod, and said, “Uh, yes, all right. Whatever you think is best.”

“Thank you,” Eskel murmured. His breath was a puff of hot air on the back of Jaskier’s neck. He shivered despite the afternoon heat.

Eskel tugged Jaskier’s shirt free of his breeches, and rustled around to tug his shirt free from his breeches. He helped Jaskier to loop his hands through the bracing harness, and spread those massive thighs even wider as he nestled closer to Jaskier’s backside.

Jaskier thought he was prepared, but he still startled at the incredible heat of Eskel’s bare skin where he met Jaskier’s own exposed back. Eskel’s soft-yet-muscular belly fit perfectly into the curve of Jaskier’s spine, and as always he felt that hot spark of connection at Eskel’s touch. He eased back against the Witcher’s broad chest, and closed his eyes as Eskel clicked at Scorpion and sent them off at a trot out of Windley.

It was easy, then, to lapse into the silence of the road, with Eskel so warm and solid at his back. They were both quiet, each lost in their own thoughts, but Jaskier finally broke the silence. “I’m sorry if this is awkward for you.”

Eskel made a little grunt of inquiry, and Jaskier realized too late that this was probably going to make Eskel feel awkward. Jaskier cringed inwardly. He was forever blurting out the wrong thing. At least he was consistent?

“You know. Doing…this,” Jaskier said, wiggling back where they were pressed, bared-back-to-belly. “Riding like this with a man. Sleeping with a man.”

“Why would I find any of that awkward?” Eskel asked, deep voice perfectly level. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve close quarters with another man.”

Jaskier’s eyes went wide. Surely Eskel wasn’t implying what it sounded like he was implying.

Eskel continued, obviously reading into Jaskier’s surprised silence. “I told you a little about how I was raised. I grew up surrounded by a hundred other boys. Whenever it was cold, or whenever there weren’t enough beds or blankets to go around—which was usually the case,” he added, “we trainees would just pair off and bunk down together.”

“But that’s a little different from our current situation,” Jaskier felt compelled to point out. “You and I aren’t schoolmates. We’re married, for Miletele’s sake! And considering how your order feels about men sleeping with other men, I would have thought you’d be at least a little uncomfortable with the situation.”

“Jaskier.” Eskel’s voice had changed. “What are you talking about? My order...you mean Witchers?”

“Well, yes! I know how Witchers feel about men sleeping with other men. In a carnal sense, that is," Jaskier clarified. "Obviously bed-sharing is fine, as long as you’re a hypothermic twelve-year-old.”

Eskel shifted behind him, furry muscular belly dragging across the skin of Jaskier’s lower back. It was unfairly distracting.

“Who told you that? Geralt?”

“Of course Geralt—who else? He told me that Witchers considered that to be a punishable offence.”

“Fuck, Wolf…” he heard Eskel mutter. “Why would Geralt tell you that? You said he never explained anything about Witchers, aside from which potions can kill us. He never told you anything about our training, or how we’re made, or where we spend our winters...so why would he have told you that?”

Jaskier’s mood soured further. “Because I wouldn't stop trying to seduce him," he said in a clipped tone. "I met Geralt when I was seventeen, you know. And if you’re not aware, human boys are absolutely unbearable at that age. I certainly was." He sighed, anger draining away until all he felt was shame at the way he'd behaved. "I was committed to tasting all of life’s pleasures, back then. Regardless of who might get hurt. I was also at the peak of my arrogance and my sense of entitlement. I certainly made poor Geralt’s life miserable, at least for those first few years we spent together.”

A small, vicious part of him thought, Good. Because Geralt had—perhaps inadvertently—made the last two years of Jaskier’s life a living hell. Fair was fair.

The wiser, more adult part of Jaskier just felt horribly sad about the whole seventeen-year span of their friendship. Even the nicer parts, those years of comradery, fun, and adventure in the middle, had been tainted by the way Geralt had ended it.

Jaskier drew a deep breath. He had to say this next bit out loud, and he needed Eskel to understand.

“I’ve always been a shameless flirt. And I was vain as a peacock back then. I couldn’t believe that anyone could possibly be resistant to my charms, much less a grumpy, lonely old Witcher. I wanted to make a meal out of poor Geralt,” he admitted. “So I did my cursed best. I tried everything: bathing him, massaging him, catching him naked. Letting him catch me naked. I conspired to make sure he'd walk in on me having sex with men, women, both at the same time…whatever I thought would work. I tried jealousy, I tried shamelessly offering myself. One time, I even pretended to be so drunk that I didn’t know what I was saying, or what he was saying—”

He broke off because he was still truly ashamed of that, and how horrified and guilt-stricken Geralt had looked the next morning. “But he didn’t want me. I ought to have just left it at that.”

He imagined it for a moment with a dull throb of pain. “But I kept trying because it had become a bit of a sore point, for me. And in my pride and my childish arrogance, I thought that Geralt needed it. He seemed so lonesome, sometimes. I thought I could fix it. Fix him.”

Eskel was silent behind him, clearly hanging off every word. Not for the first time, Jaskier wondered if Eskel and Geralt’s long friendship might be a bit more complicated than he’d assumed.

Jaskier shook the thought off to finish his story. “Eventually Geralt must have realized that I would never stop: I would have kept pestering him about it forever. So he suggested that we visit a brothel together in Houtborg.”

Jaskier had been elated, at the time. He’d believed that Geralt might be finally warming to his advances. Perhaps, he’d thought, the Witcher might want to share a girl together. Whores never wanted much to do with Geralt unless he paid extra, but they’d often give Jaskier a substantial discount. He’d already been working on some ridiculous ‘cost-saving’ suggestion that would finally let him see Geralt naked, and hopefully thrusting into a lover. But as soon as they set foot in the brothel, Jaskier had realized his mistake.

“Geralt was so icy and reserved. Even moreso than usual, I mean. I thought he was angry about being stared at. The house madame wasn’t exactly welcoming to Witchers. I was about to negotiate a room and the price of a girl for the two of us, but Geralt was looking at the male strumpets. It was one of those sort of places, you know. And I thought, finally. But that wasn’t what Geralt wanted either.”

Jaskier sighed, remembering the hot, cringing embarrassment that had washed over him as he realized what was really driving Geralt’s icy anger that night.

“He said that for Witchers, men ‘like that’, men who let other men have them, weren’t men at all. That his Witcher order believed it was a weakness, or a perversion. Geralt said his own guild wouldn’t tolerate a man who let himself get fucked in the arse. So if that was what I wanted, either for myself or for him, we could travel together no longer.”

Eskel’s arms were still looped around Jaskier as they rode. He didn’t tense up or shift away, but he also didn’t respond. And when Jaskier finally twisted as much as he could to look at his face, Eskel appeared to be a thousand miles away. Jaskier cleared his throat.

“Anyway,” Jaskier said, uneasy with Eskel’s vacant non-reaction, “Geralt’s ultimatum worked. I wasn’t willing to give him up. Not even for sex. I loved travelling with him too much. And to be fair, he never said anything about it when I went off with another man, as long as I didn’t ‘flaunt it’ or talk about it with him. To his credit, Geralt never tried to make me feel ashamed about it, and he never said anything cruel. But he’d made it clear how he felt about the matter. I wasn’t really a man, in his eyes. But then,” Jaskier sighed, “That probably didn’t matter. I wasn’t a Witcher, either."

He was keenly aware of Eskel’s presence at his back, and the long, uncomfortable silence that spread between them. He couldn’t decide if Eskel was trying hard not to react, or if he was simply shocked to hear Jaskier speak about his desires so plainly. But if they were going to continue to be so physically intimate, he had to know if Eskel shared Geralt’s opinions on men like Jaskier. He’d weathered Geralt’s unspoken contempt because the Witcher had never forced the issue. But he wasn’t sure he could travel with Eskel—be bonded to Eskel—if he knew Eskel hated or pitied him for his sexual preferences.

“Was any of that true?” Jaskier finally asked, after Eskel had been silent for far too long. “Is that how all of you Witchers truly feel about men…like that? Men like me?”

Eskel drew Scorpion to a halt and swung off the saddle in that effortlessly graceful dismount Jaskier would never stop admiring.

He turned and offered his hand to Jaskier. Jaskier was going to refuse—they’d only just started out from Windley—but he needed Eskel to answer his question. He finally let Eskel take his arm and slid to the ground with his usual sack-of-potatoes grace. “Please tell me. Is it true?”

Eskel sighed and went over to sit on a nearby fallen log. He folded his arms across his chest, looking strangely hollowed-out and almost depleted by the weight of the question. “It…used to be. A long time ago. Hasn’t been that way for decades, though, and certainly not since all the schools fell.”

He was looking off into the forest, but Jaskier doubted that Eskel could see a single tree. He was lost somewhere in the past.

“It's true that our School of the Wolf used to disapprove of men being intimate with other men. Not...not the act itself, though. The Wolf School school leadership knew they’d face a mutiny if they tried to stamp that out. At any given point, there were more than a hundred teenage boys in that castle all going through puberty at the same time, with not a single girl or woman in sight. Of course we were all buggering each other silly.” Eskel’s grating chuckle was missing his usual warmth.

"And the adult Witchers spent seven or eight months every year getting turned away, spit on, or chased out of every brothel on the Continent. The only time any of them could expect a friendly touch was during the winter when they were safe and with their own kind. If we couldn’t turn to our brothers for some relief, every single Witcher would have gone stark-raving mad from loneliness after less than a decade on the Path. So no,” Eskel finished, “Sex with another man wasn’t forbidden by the Wolf School.”

“But something was,” Jaskier concluded with an uneasy feeling. 

“We weren’t allowed to be particular about it, I suppose you'd say.” Eskel spoke slowly, as if he were trying to untangle the truth for himself. “We couldn’t show any ‘favouritism’. It was fine to fool around with another Adept in the dorms, or down in the baths, or for a grown Witcher to pick out a boy in the dining hall. But no one was supposed to get attached.”

Jaskier frowned. He had no earthly idea what that was supposed to mean. Or why Eskel sounded so sad and worn-down by it. Jaskier shuffled his feet awkwardly in the dirt. “Why not?”

“I told you. 'A Witcher’s Path is meant to be walked alone',” Eskel said, evidentially quoting someone. Perhaps a lot of someones. “They didn’t want any of us falling in love. I suppose they were probably worried that it might distract us from the Path. Or create rifts of loyalty within the school. Of course, some of the men fell in love anyway,” Eskel said, voice a little softer. “Though not as often as you might expect. And they managed to convince at least a few—like Geralt—that being alone was simply a Witcher’s fate.”

“So Geralt believed them.” It was a relief, in some way, to know that Geralt hadn’t outright lied to him.

“I don’t know," Eskel said, and he sounded sorry about it. "He probably did. Does. He’s always put far more store in our order’s traditions than Lambert or I. Even Vesemir is less dogmatic, and he’s the one who had to feed us that bullshit for years back when we were his students. But then Geralt always wanted to be a Witcher. It was the only thing he’s ever truly let himself want, you know? And for Geralt, getting the one thing you want means that you don’t get anything else. Ever.”

Jaskier blinked at Eskel in the bright summer sun. That certainly did explain a lot.

“But now all of the schools are gone. And most Witchers are, too,” Eskel sighed. “The last of us—the ones who’ve survived—are just a bunch of tired old ghosts who show up to haunt that ruin of a castle every winter. Maybe Geralt thinks we should abide by the former rules and traditions because we have nothing left.”

Jaskier felt a wave of sorrow wash through him. He'd had no idea there were so few Witchers left in the world.

“But you don’t believe that?” He had to know the truth. 

Eskel scoffed. “Of course not! I don’t… why should it matter if we fall in love? Much less who we fuck? We don’t even call ourselves men, Jaskier! We’re Witchers. So how can anyone from our order say someone isn’t ‘a real man’ when we deny that we’re men at all? Backwards logic and stupidity like that led to the downfall of the schools and the collapse of the whole godsdamned Witcher order.”

He was breathing hard, and Jaskier thought that Eskel had never looked more beautiful than when he was spitting mad at the stupidities and prejudices of the world.

“Anyway,” Eskel huffed, visibly calming down and finding his normal easy equilibrium. “I like men. Very much. And I don’t think it makes me less-than, or more-than, or whatever else Geralt and the bastards who made us might think. I certainly don’t believe that it makes you anything less than what you are, Jaskier: an incredibly brave and loyal person. You sacrificed yourself—your very life—to help the elves, and to protect Geralt. You’re a godsdamn marvel of a human being. That’s who you are. The very best of your kind.”

Eskel turned and gathered him into a hug. Jaskier thought he felt the soft brush of Eskel’s misshapen lips ghost across his temple.

“That’s really how you see me?” he asked, voice choked up, heart pounding. “Not as some degenerate?”

“Of course not,” Eskel murmured. “And I’d be a hypocrite if I said otherwise, being a not-degenerate myself. You're a good person, Jask. A good man. I’m honoured to know you.”

“But…I’m a bard,” Jaskier argued with a laugh, even as he sank into Eskel’s embrace. “I’m silly, vain and selfish. I’m a fairly horrible person most of the time, to be honest. I was truly horrible to Geralt.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion, of course,” Eskel told him. “I certainly don’t claim to know you as well as you know yourself. But maybe the truth’s somewhere halfway between your Jaskier, and my Jaskier?”

He flushed at that softly-worded, ‘my Jaskier.’ Don’t, he told himself sternly. You cannot walk this path again.

“You make it sound like I’m just a jumble of both good and bad parts,” Jaskier said, trying to make a joke out of it.

Eskel was looking at him with a soft, unspeakably gentle expression in his warm amber eyes. “Well yeah, Jaskier. That’s...that's being human, isn't it? None of us are all good, or all bad. We’re always both. Although some of us manage to drift toward the extreme end. I’m fairly sure Djikstra is a piece of shit all the way through, for example.”

“Oh, absolutely he is,” Jaskier huffed against Eskel’s shoulder. He wanted to stay like this forever, wrapped up in Eskel’s arms.

All too soon, Eskel’s practical nature seemed to reassert itself. “We should probably press on,” Eskel said, releasing Jaskier from his embrace. “Long way to travel yet, if we want to reach Rinde before week’s end.”

Jaskier nodded and let Eskel toss him up on Scorpion again. It seemed like they both had a lot to think about.

***

Chapter Text

As he and Eskel inched their way towards Rinde over the next week, Jaskier was forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: he was healing. 

On the surface, this was a good thing. A true testament to the miraculous resiliency of the human body (or to the magical power of the ringbound curse). His strength was starting to return in leaps and bounds, and his hands no longer caused him quite so much agony. A long day of riding didn’t leave him feeling like he’d gone several rounds with a shaelmarr anymore, and he’d even (almost) reached the point where he could piss on his own again. A tremendous victory!

However, there was a significant downside to getting better. 

Namely, as Jaskier’s body recovered, the more troublesome parts of his anatomy were stirring back to life. He'd had some trouble maintaining a cockstand even before he'd gone to prison, although he suspected it had more to do with all the late nights, the drinking, the fisstech, and the fact that he kept trying to fuck people who didn’t give a fuck about him. Once he’d landed in Djikstra’s dungeon, sex had been the furthest thing from his mind.

Now, the reverse was true.

In the span of just a few short days, Jaskier had gone from a few errant thoughts like, an orgasm would feel lovely right about now to gods, it’s been a long time since I’ve gotten off to if I can’t come in the next few days, I am going to explode. He hadn’t felt anything close to this sort of anxious despair since he’d been 12 years old, just before he’d discovered the wonders of masturbation. 

Given his current situation, that sort of self-relief was well out of his reach. Jaskier was probably hornier now at any other point in his life, and was completely unable to do anything about it. 

And Eskel was making the whole miserable situation exponentially worse.

He’d been fighting his attraction to Eskel for weeks now. The last thing he wanted to do was create unnecessary friction in their friendship. They’d been getting on so well, why complicate things? Besides, Jaskier had already placed far too many burdens on Eskel’s (incredibly broad) shoulders. Jaskier didn’t need to toss his own messy sexual needs onto the load.

Jaskier had resisted for his own sake, too. He was well-aware he didn’t have the emotional resources to cope with another unrequited crush on another big handsome Witcher. It had all but killed him once. He knew he wouldn’t survive that sort of pain a second time.

The trouble was, the curse was making it damned difficult for Jaskier to keep his distance from Eskel. They’d been living in each other’s pockets nonstop, sharing every intimate activity from sleeping to eating to shitting in the woods, all thanks to Jaskier’s still-useless hands. In the days after Windley, Eskel had introduced a whole slate of mandatory touch-related activities to ‘take advantage’ of the curse’s restorative powers: riding with their shirts rucked up, cuddling together around the campfire at night, and of course they’d started sharing a bedroll, too.

They even bathed together now, gods help him.  

The trouble was, all of the physical contact was working. Jaskier had already made such swift and undeniable progress in his recovery that he knew there was no point trying to argue with Eskel's Great Touch Plan of 1264. Aside from the healing benefits, the ringbound curse seemed to have another (pleasant) side effect: he'd started to pick up on some of Eskel’s base emotions.

It wasn't anything earth-shattering, really, and it was nothing like Yennefer’s power to read minds. But since that awful day in Windely when he'd started to feel Eskel's presence getting closer, Jaskier had started to feel little hints of what the Witcher was feeling. Strong emotions seemed to register along the bond between them, and when Eskel was feeling exceptionally tired, or excited, or hungry, Jaskier had started to feel those things too.

He'd thought he was finally losing the last tattered shreds of his sanity the first time it happened during the night they camped after departing from Windley. He’d been eating an apple at the time, absently watching Eskel brush out Scorpion at the end of a long day. They hadn't had dinner yet, but Jaskier wasn't particularly hungry. The apple should have been enough to tide him over. Still, he'd felt the odd ache of an empty belly, and he wondered briefly if he'd suddenly fallen ill. Then he heard the rumble of Eskel's stomach. Jaskier had fetched some bread and water from their pack for Eskel, and Eskel had downed it all quickly. That hungry feeling had dissipated almost immediately.

Something similar happened again the next day, when Eskel had left Jaskier for a moment to water Scorpion down at the river. Amusement had bubbled up within him out of nowhere. Jaskier had found himself grinning at absolutely nothing, and even started chuckling like a madman despite being alone in an empty forest. 

When Eskel returned with Scorpion, he'd told Jaskier that the flickering shadow of a tiny minnow swimming in the river had frightened Scorpion. The enormous stallion had shrieked and drawn back like a delicate noblewoman reacting to a mouse skittering across the floor. Jaskier had laughed watching Eskel act this out, and the same tenor of amusement seemed to double and reverberate along the bond between them.

Feeling emotions and surface sensations that weren't his own was a distinctly strange sensation, but it didn't really bother Jaskier. Eskel was a remarkably steady, even-tempered soul, after all. He didn't seem to experience any of the intense moods or wild emotional swings Jaskier himself was prone to. If anything, Eskel's general even-keeled contentment helped Jaskier to feel a bit more balanced.

Between the limited emotional levelling and the rapid healing, the ringbound curse seemed to be working out in Jaskier's favour. However, as was generally true of all curses, the spell had a significant drawback. 

Which, of course, circled right back to Eskel.

Each morning, Eskel would wake early, get breakfast going, and then help Jaskier shuck his breeches so they could wade out together into the chilly morning waters of the Pontar to wash.

Which meant that each and every morning, Jaskier had to resist the urge to stare at Eskel’s massive thighs. Or his rippling muscles. Or that soft, gorgeous pelt of hair which covered his scarred chest and arrowed down over his delightfully thick, muscular belly. 

And that cock. Sweet Melitele’s tits.

Keeping his eyes averted when they bathed together felt like a challenge handed down by the gods themselves, and Jaskier was certainly no wood-carved saint. How could he possibly stop himself from stealing the occasional peek at the monster appendage bobbing up between Eskel’s legs as they bathed? Even flaccid, in cold water, the man’s dick was larger than most of the hard cocks Jaskier had taken. How could he not look?

No, Jaskier simply had to face reality: he was doomed. 

He couldn’t even retreat to the safety of sleep. His dreams had quickly become nothing more than a litany of filthy images of himself and Eskel doing the sorts of things that would have made a strumpet in the Passiflora blush: Eskel watching from a chair, whispering instructions and encouragement while Jaskier spread himself open with his fingers. Sinking to his knees before Eskel was even hard, just so Jaskier could take his soft cock into his mouth and feel it stiffen up between his lips. Stammering and blushing and begging as Eskel filled his hole, inch by agonizing inch. And, most torturous of all, sliding down over Eskel’s huge cock and riding the big Witcher until they both climaxed together and collapsed in sweaty, blissed-out exhaustion. 

None of these fantasies were remotely helpful. They weren’t even useful jerk-off material, because he couldn't touch himself. They only made Jaskier feel ashamed and increasingly desperate for some sort of relief.

Each day was more agonizing than the last. He woke up every morning feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by illicit dreams of Eskel and his ridiculous cock, only to be forced into his covert-peeking ritual while he did his best to avoid making any eye contact with Eskel as the Witcher bathed him in the river. 

And then he had to spend all day in the saddle, practically riding in Eskel’s lap, surrounded by the man’s warmth and scent and the hot press of his bare lower body against Jaskier’s arse. It was the sweetest torment, and the absolutely filthy promise of Eskel’s hard codpiece as it rocked against Jaskier’s tailbone for hours each day just felt…mean.

He tried to take matters into his own hands, so to speak. Of course he did. Yesterday, when Eskel was off hunting for dinner, Jaskier had gotten so desperate that he’d gathered up several linen shirts into a tight a bundle (which, admittedly, wasn’t very tight, because he couldn’t use his godsdamn fingers). He spent several frustrating minutes sweating inside his bedroll while he tried to surreptitiously hump the pile for some relief. 

All he got was a lot of chafing for his efforts. There were also some worried looks and questions from Eskel later that evening, too. (“Do you feel alright? You’re awfully flushed. Do you think you have a fever?” and “Why do you look so tired?” and “Were you in too much pain to sleep last night?”)

Eskel’s unflagging kindness and genuine concern were also a bit of a problem, honestly. Because why did the man have to be so godsdamned sweet? Even if he hadn’t seemingly been built by the gods as a manifestation of Jaskier’s every inordinate desire (and most of the ordinant ones, too) Eskel’s kindness and his gentle, affectionate nature would have won Jaskier over. 

Perhaps he’d been doomed to fall for Eskel from the start. 

For his part, Eskel seemed entirely unaffected by Jaskier. Small wonder there. Jaskier went around with giant mitten-bandages on both hands, and he couldn’t so much as wash his face or clean his teeth or (until recently) take a piss by himself. He was always sloppily put-together because he couldn’t stand still enough to let Eskel dress him properly in the morning. He was so worried about scandalizing Eskel with his incessant, unrelenting hard-on that he was willing to go about with misbuttoned trousers and a shirt that lay on his shoulders with all the style of a potato sack.

Hadn’t he already endured enough humiliation and frustrated longing for a single lifetime? Nearly twenty years of it with Geralt, and at least then he’d been able to jerk off over his wildly inappropriate fantasies. Why had Destiny chosen to add insult to injury like this, marrying him to a man he could never have, but couldn’t wanting?

The situation reached a boiling point for Jaskier just before they were due to arrive in Rinde. Coincidentally, it was one week to the day Eskel had instituted their program of skin-on-skin contact. Jaskier had resorted to walking alongside Scorpion most of the morning, ostensibly to ‘work on his cardio’ but mainly so he could avoid Eskel’s arms and the inevitable hours-long erection that would follow. 

He started to flag early that afternoon, and Eskel had pulled him up on Scorpion before Jaskier could lodge a single protest. 

That might have been what did it. That casual display of incredible strength, and Eskel’s quiet care and concern (and, fine, Jaskier could admit it: Eskel’s wordless dominance) as he lifted Jaskier up and planted him down firmly in his lap before Jaskier could utter so much as a peep in protest. 

After another agonizing afternoon spent riding in Eskel’s lap (which wasn’t at all the kind of riding he wanted to do!) Eskel finally brought Scorpion to a stop where they could set up camp and lay out a fire. 

More accurately, Eskel had set up the camp. Jaskier had unrolled their bedrolls and gingerly gathered a few small sticks of firewood together for kindling. Mostly he tried to keep out of the way, and not drool too openly whenever Eskel bent or squatted or lifted something heavy. 

Once their evening campsite was established, Eskel announced he was going to hunt their dinner and vanished into the forest. 

Jaskier didn’t waste a moment of his brief window of privacy. He flopped down onto his bedroll and wiggled out of his trousers enough to bare his cock so he could try once more to grind down into the bedroll hard enough to come. Once again, success eluded him. 

The sad lump of the bedroll provided enough friction for him to feel it, sure, but not enough to actually come or even come close to coming. He needed more leverage. He couldn’t brace himself on his hands without jostling his fingers, however, so Jaskier could only prop himself up on his bent elbows and slowly thrust his hips into the soft pad. All the mild friction accomplished was a bare hint of relief with no hope of orgasm, and brought Jaskier one step closer to madness.

He collapsed in a defeated heap. His smalls were wet with precome, his balls ached almost as much as his hands, and he was a miserable, pathetic excuse for a human being. He couldn’t even muster up the energy to have a good cry about it. All he could do was lie still and let out a few heaving, tearless sobs of frustration.

Of course, that was when Eskel returned to camp. 

Eskel threw down the brace of rabbits he’d caught and knelt by Jaskier’s side, scarred face twisted up in a complex mix of fear, worry and pity. Seeing such a miserable, worried expression on Eskel’s face pushed Jaskier from ‘silent-angry-denial’ crying to ‘free-flowing-snot and tearful-sobbing-mess’ crying.

Eskel ran a hand down Jaskier’s back, hesitantly at first, and then in long, comforting strokes, up and down the still-too-obvious bumps in Jaskier’s spine. Eskel’s touch (or the spell, or both) served to settle Jaskier, like always. The dispirited rage and frustration whirling through him went quiet, and his world narrowed down to the motion of Eskel’s hand, the size of his palm, and strength and gentleness of his fingers.

Eventually, Eskel’s simple efforts to soothe him worked. Jaskier’s sobs slowed and finally faded into small, hiccupping sighs.

He flopped onto his back and stared up at Eskel. The Witcher started to withdraw his hand but Jaskier made a small noise of protest and captured Eskel’s big hand between his two bandaged palms. He tugged firmly, until Eskel understood and put his hand over Jaskier’s pounding heart. He started stroking Jaskier’s chest with his thumb then, back and forth across Jaskier’s sternum, until Jaskier felt like he could breathe and maybe even speak without risking another crying jag.

“I’m sorry.” Jaskier’s voice was hoarse and rough from all the crying. His throat ached, too, along with his head, and his hands, and just about everything else. “I didn’t mean to break down like that. Again.”

“Can you talk to me about it?” Eskel asked.

Jaskier sighed and looked up at the darkening sky. “It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous.” 

“That’s not true,” Eskel insisted, brushing the back of his hand across Jaskier’s cheek. “You’re angry and sad. And you have more than enough reason to feel that way, Jaskier.” 

The compassion in Eskel’s voice almost made him burst into tears all over again. “That’s not quite what I—” he sighed. “All right, yes, I’m angry. And sad,” he muttered, realizing for the first time that, yes, of course he was. ‘Sad’ was an improvement, actually. ‘Sad’ didn’t touch how depressed he’d in prison. Since Caingorn, and the dragon hunt. Angry and sad was probably a vast improvement over how he’d felt at any other point in the last two miserable years. 

But that didn’t make him feel any better now.

“I’m just…” he sighed, too exhausted and sick with self-pity to stop himself. “I’m horny. I’m so fucking horny. It’s all I can think about. And I can’t...”

“Can’t?”

“Can’t touch myself," Jaskier said with a blush. "Can’t come.” Jaskier knew he’d be embarrassed about this later, especially the way his voice hitched up in a little sob right at the end of that sentence. He just didn’t have the energy to lie about why he was so upset. 

“If I could just fucking jerk off and have a little relief, it would be fine. But I can’t! All I can do is fixate on how much I want—I want—”

He stumbled again, scrambling for a way to explain himself. He was not going to burden Eskel with his stubborn desires and dirty fantasies. “I want to touch, and kiss, and come,” he settled on, managing by some miracle of self-preservation not to specify who he wanted to do those things with. “But I can’t even touch myself, and I—”

“Jaskier, shhhh, hey, shhhh,” Eskel rumbled. He gathered Jaskier up into a careful hug, gentle as always so as not to bump or jostle Jaskier’s hands. 

It did feel a bit like being picked up by a very large, very gentle bear. There was something intrinsically comforting about being held by a much bigger, stronger man, and Jaskier was astonished by all the soft feelings it evoked in him. He’d never been held like this, or even imagined it. But he had to admit, at least to himself, that he secretly loved it. 

Something about the combination of Eskel’s strength and tenderness made Jaskier want to roll over and show his throat. And break out into howling sobs. And cuddle closer. And drift off to sleep. And lick Eskel’s throat. All at the same time.

One of Eskel’s enormous hands was cupped around Jaskier’s head, pressing him into the side of Eskel’s neck as if he was somehow encouraging Jaskier’s idle fantasy. More likely, he was trying to help Jaskier find a little bit of privacy in the dark, secret space. Eskel had started to mumble inaudible words of comfort, and even rocking a little, back and forth, in an irregular, stuttering rhythm. 

It occurred to him that Eskel probably had no fucking clue what he was doing. 

Just like before, when Eskel had sung that strange northern hillfolk lullaby to Jaskier, he seemed to be acting on instinct. He must have been drawing on some century-old memory of how someone—his mother, most likely—had once comforted Eskel himself, before he’d been claimed by the Witchers.  

It occurred to Jaskier then that there was a good chance that no one had held Eskel close, or hummed to him, or stroked his hair since he’d been that little boy in his convict-bride mother’s arms. It made Jaskier both unbearably sad, and also sort of quietly amazed that Eskel knew enough to try to comfort anyone else in the first place. 

He was aware, once again, of his pounding head and throbbing hands, and the specific ache in his throat that always accompanied a crying jag. “I’m okay,” Jaskier muttered into Eskel’s throat. He patted his hand. “I’ll be okay. Just…just need to sleep. Probably.”

Maybe he’d managed to cry out all his sexual frustrations? Processing all this emotion was exhausting. He was probably going to fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

But the press of Eskel’s hard body and the comforting scent of sandalwood and cedar were already sending little waves of awareness into his hindbrain. The part of Jaskier’s mind reserved for sex—a sizeable portion of his vast mental real estate—was already clamouring awake again, sounding the horny-alarm: there is a warm body nearby and it’s Eskel’s warm body and oooh, you’re sitting in Eskel’s lap and wouldn’t it feel so good to just—

Jaskier ruthlessly squashed the thought. He could not do this. Not to himself, not again, and certainly not to Eskel, who was his friend, who had shown him nothing but kindness.

“Jaskier.” Eskel still hadn’t let him go, despite Jaskier’s assurances that he was ‘fine’. “Please. I want to help you.”

“You already have. I promise,” Jaskier said. And he meant it, right to the very depths of his poet’s full-fathom soul. “You’ve done far too much for me as it is.”  

“No,” Eskel muttered. He couldn’t twist around to check, but he could picture Eskel’s scarred lip twisted up into his familiar scowl-frown. “No, I mean, I want to help you, Jaskier. With this.”

Jaskier went very still, even as his mind raced. Eskel couldn’t mean—

He pushed against Eskel’s shoulder. At first it was about as effective as trying to dislodge a boulder, but eventually Eskel loosened his hold enough so Jaskier could pull away and look at him. 

In the flickering firelight, Eskel’s eyes were shadowed with all sorts of emotions that Witchers weren’t supposed to be able to feel: fear, sorrow, worry. There was hope there too, for some reason. Hope that Jaskier would just let him help. 

Jaskier truly had no idea what to say or do. Where could he even start?

“Eskel,” he said, with a breathless little laugh of disbelief. “Just to be absolutely clear, when you say you want to help—”

“I can…” The tip of his pink tongue poked out of the notch in his lip. “Uh, with my hand? Or my mouth? If you want?” 

Jaskier closed his eyes, praying for strength. “Darling, please. Please do not offer to do that. You already do everything for me: you bathe me, and feed me, and dress me. You wipe my godsdamn arse! I’m not going to let you service me too.”

“Well, what if I wanted to?” Eskel asked, stubbornly. “What if I’d like to?” 

Jaskier scowled. “Just because you said you like men, that doesn’t mean you have to—”

“Hey,” Eskel said in a sharp tone he’d never used with Jaskier before. “I know I don’t ‘have to’ do anything. But…it’s been a while for me, too,” he admitted in a softer voice. “A very long time. And I miss it.” 

There was a faultline in Eskel’s deep voice that quaked with misery, or suppressed longing, or a combination of the two. “I’d like to help you out. If you’d be willing. If you’d let me.” He looked suddenly self-conscious. “You don’t have to look at me, you know. I could...under a blanket? Or when it’s dark enough—”

“Eskel,” Jaskier cut him off in horror. “Eskel, my darling, please don’t ever offer yourself to someone who refuses to look at you.” He felt sickened by the implication, because Eskel would only offer that if someone else had made that request before.

“I…I think you’re very handsome, actually,” Jaskier admitted, his heart breaking for this poor, sweet man. “It would be an absolute pleasure to have you in my bed. In whatever capacity you desire,” he added. “I’d insist on returning the favour, too, if I can,” he said. “Though I’m a bit more, er, limited than I normally am when it comes to bedsport,” he added, wiggling his bandaged fingers.

This made Eskel grin his lopsided scowl-grin. One sharp white canine gleamed in the moonlight. “I’d like that,” he said, quietly and sincerely. “But let’s get you sorted out first.” He squeezed Jaskier’s sides in a funny little half-hug before gently setting him off to the side so Eskel could stand.

“Let’s get you dressed. We should eat first, and talk it over a bit.” Eskel didn’t look worried, precisely, but something was making him hesitate. “Been a long day for you.”

“If I can come tonight, I’ll sleep like a babe,” Jaskier predicted, too wound-up by the possibility of sex–-sex with Eskel!--to bother with anything except frank honesty. He didn’t want to wait for dinner, but then he realized that, yes, he was feeling hungry, and a bit light-headed. Crying always took it out of him. 

“Need any help with the stew?”

***

Eskel made quick work of dinner. He dumped fresh water, a handful of seasoning, and some soft potatoes into his old blackened cookpot, and put Jaskier in charge of stirring it together over the fire while Eskel skinned and cleaned the rabbits. 

He was shaken by the audacity of his own offer. Not to mention Jaskier’s shockingly easy acceptance of it. He’d known Jaskier had been struggling with something over the last week. Lust and frustrated desire had practically been pouring off him for days now, since that night at the inn in Windley. But he hadn’t even dreamed that Jaskier would ever accept his help, even if he’d managed to screw up the courage to make the offer. 

The little lark was full of surprises.

Eskel finished with the rabbits and dumped the hunks of meat into the stewpot, and then added a few extra logs to stoke the fire hotter. He didn’t dare show it, but he was just as eager as Jaskier to move ahead to the evening’s metaphorical (and perhaps literal) climax. But he’d make sure Jaskier was well-fed and watered, first. He needed to check the dressings on his fingers, too. They’d have to do another debridement session soon. 

The reminder put a bit of a damper on his excitement, but then Eskel caught the dreamy, faraway look on Jaskier’s face, and his plump red-bitten lips, and Eskel had to take a deep breath and force himself to settle down. 

He had to talk a few things over with Jaskier first. The last thing he wanted to do was overstep, or do something that would frighten Jaskier. That meant he had to make sure Jaskier knew about some of the unintentional side-effects of a Witcher’s mutations. It appeared that Geralt hadn’t explained one godsdamn thing to the bard, and even (inadvertently) misled him on a few salient facts. Even though he’d travelled with Geralt for years, he doubted Jaskier had picked up on every one of Geralt’s unspoken words. Hell, Eskel knew the Wolf better than anyone, and even he had no idea what the hell Geralt was thinking half the time.

Eskel rifled through their saddlebags and pulled out their little mismatched cookware-slash-dinnerware set. It still felt like a strange indulgence to have more than one bowl and single fork tucked away in his saddlebags. Having a whole second set seemed almost scandalous. (Secretly, he loved it, though Eskel knew he could never admit such a thing to any of his brothers).  

The small tasks helped calm his nerves, and it wasn’t long before the stew boiled up from a ‘still-cooking’ smell to a savoury ‘let’s-eat’ smell. Eskel went to load up their bowls, and looked up to find Jaskier smiling at him fondly over the campfire.

“You know, you look exactly like a wolf when you do that,” Jaskier said with a twinkly little laugh that warmed Eskel all the way through. Eskel flashed a distinctly wolfish teeth-baring smile, and sat down beside Jaskier to feed the bard his supper.

He shared alternating bites with Jaskier, carefully spooning up the broth and little chunks of meat and veggies and holding it out for Jaskier to blow on it before swallowing. Depending on what they got up to later tonight, Eskel didn’t want to risk a burned tongue. And wasn’t that a thought? 

“So,” Jaskier began, with obvious faux-casualness. “What do you like? I mean, what would you like to do? Or not do?”

Eskel blushed and ducked his head, suddenly self-conscious. He hadn’t had to talk about sex in, what, three-quarters of a century? Not since he’d earned his medallion, anyway. Before that, back when he’d been a horny teenager fooling around with the other boys in his year, there’d been lots of talk about sex. Most of it had been boasting, or crude jokes, or wild speculation about what sex would be like with a human woman. Every so often, Eskel had managed to have an actual, honest conversation about what felt good and what didn’t. But even that talk had dried up once he’d become a Witcher. 

Sex on the Path was something that just happened without the need for words. The few times Eskel had run across someone who was as lonely, or bored, or desperate as himself over the years, a significant glance or a quick nod was all it took. And it had been a damned long time since he’d been with anyone to do even that much.

He certainly couldn’t pretend to be very experienced when it came to sex. But Eskel knew what he wanted, at least. 

“I’d like to kiss you, if that’s all right,” he said bluntly. 

Jaskier’s bright blue eyes had gone wide and hungry like an indecisive customer surveying a counter full of delicious baked goods. “That sounds lovely,” Jaskier decided. “And…what about you? Could I kiss you? Or…or use my mouth on you?”

Eskel’s thoughts ground to a dead halt. He was suddenly transfixed by the image of Jaskier’s soft lips stretched wide around his cock. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about it, of course: fantasies about Jaskier had been on his mind from that day at the bathhouse in Oxenfurt, when he’d picked Jaskier up and carried him over to the tub. All that skin contact had driven him a little wild even then. For days afterward, every time Eskel closed his eyes, he could still feel the lingering warmth of Jaskier’s skin and the faint impression of his body. Those ten seconds of contact had haunted him ever since.

If a moment of brief contact had fueled his dreams and fantasies for weeks, what might happen if Jaskier took him into his mouth? Or…elsewhere?

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he ruthlessly suppressed it. There was no point in fantasizing about such things. Even if Jaskier seemed willing now, he could change his mind when confronted with the reality of Eskel’s monstrous body, just like other people had in the past. That was the way of things. Eskel refused to feel disappointed about something that probably wouldn’t even happen in the first place.

“I’d…rather just focus on you tonight,” Eskel bit out, hoping Jaskier wouldn’t press.

“Oh,” Jaskier said. “Are you sure? I don’t mind—”

“I…I miss it. And I haven’t been with a man in a very long time,” he admitted. He hoped he didn’t sound inexperienced, or pathetic, or both, but he probably did. No help for it. “It’s hard to find someone on the Path willing to take me on. The ones who do it for coin just want to get it over with as fast as possible.”

Eskel paused, wondering how to explain the other group. “And the ones who do it for free…they expect me to get a little rough with them. I don’t usually get a chance to do anything except fuck, and I miss it,” he stumbled to a stop, feeling his face flush. 

Jaskier looked more than a little scandalized. Eskel took the opportunity to offer him another spoonful of the stew. Jaskier opened his mouth, chewed and swallowed without seeming to notice, distracted by all the images Eskel’s words hinted at.

“Do you like that?” Jaskier said, swallowing around his stew. “Uh, getting a little 'rough'?”

Eskel shrugged again, feeling his face heat. He scratched at his scars. “I like it if the person I’m with likes it,” he allowed. Which was true for a lot of things, he supposed. “I’m pretty easy to please, Jaskier.”

“I’m starting to get that impression.” 

Eskel’s sharp eyes picked out the way Jaskier’s eyes had dilated despite the bright firelight. He could hardly mistake the heady scent of lust that rolled off Jaskier in waves. That musky, smoky scent was familiar now after travelling together, but this was the first time Eskel was convinced that Jaskier’s lust-scent was for him. (Or, at least for whatever physical pleasure Eskel could offer, instead of just general sexual desire).

But he couldn’t let himself get distracted. He had a purpose, here, Eskel reminded himself. He couldn’t go any further without trying to warn Jaskier about a few biological peculiarities. 

“I’m a little different from a human man, obviously. As a Witcher, I mean,” he added, sighing internally at himself. He was getting this all wrong. “We Witchers are all, ah, bigger, than the average man." He didn't feel like he needed to say more, he and Jaskier had been bathing nude together for a week, now, so he must have some idea what Eskel meant by 'bigger'. "Our sex drive is higher, too, and we don’t usually go soft between rounds. When we come…it’s a lot,” he added, his face heating again. “It can be a bit of a shock, to humans. I just wanted you to know.”

“Oh fuck me,” Jaskier groaned, staring at Eskel like he was some wonderful prize he’d won at the fairgrounds. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were boasting. But you’re not, are you?”

Eskel shook his head. He’d been afraid it might come off like that, but he wasn’t proud of his mutations. It was part of his biology, like slit-pupil eyes and sturdier bones and a slower heartbeat. But most of the humans he’d been with—and even a few of the elves and dwarves—had found the evidence of his otherness deeply upsetting. Even his fellow Witchers had sometimes expressed disgust over their own large cocks and higher sex drives. They felt it was just more evidence that Witchers really were creatures contrary to nature, immoral and filthy degenerates born of the blackest and most foul-smelling Hell.

Almost fifty years later, and he could still quote every line from that fucking Monstrum pamphlet by heart.

“Darling, you and I are going to have a lot of fun together,” Jaskier predicted, breaking into his morbid thoughts. He was smiling at Eskel, so wide and beautiful that Eskel couldn’t help but set aside his fears, at least for the time being. “Would it be all right if I kissed you now?”

Eskel felt his steady, slow old Witcher’s heart melt, just a little, at the sweet sincerity of Jaskier’s offer. “Of course,” he said, expecting a shy, careful peck on the lips.

Instead, Jaskier fairly launched himself at Eskel. He brought their mouths together in a wet kiss that made Eskel feel lightheaded, and he had to grab the bard’s shoulders in an effort to keep himself oriented. Nothing seemed to exist, suddenly, except for Jaskier’s soft, hot mouth and wet lips, and the how he kissed Eskel with such a soul-deep hunger. When Jaskier licked insistently at the seal of Eskel’s lips, he immediately opened his mouth to let him sweep his hot, wet tongue inside. 

It didn’t…it didn’t feel like Jaskier was having to force himself to do this. He’d offered to kiss Eskel, even, but Eskel had never dreamed of this: not this demanding, greedy, all-consuming kiss. He felt rocked by Jaskier’s hunger, his need. In the space of five heartbeats, Eskel was fully erect and straining against the hard shell of his codpiece.

Jaskier carefully wrapped his arms around Eskel’s neck, making sure to keep his hands well out of the way, and then settled back down in Eskel’s lap to kiss him deeply once more. Eskel groaned again as their tongues met and twined together. He hadn’t expected this, either. He certainly hadn’t expected Jaskier to taste so sweet, like honey and camomile. Even the lingering bitterness of the willowbark tea couldn’t eclipse his sweet natural taste, and Eskel chased it, swirling his tongue against Jaskier’s, skimming over his teeth, lapping into his mouth. 

One thing was certain: Jaskier dearly loved to kiss. He met Jaskier’s hunger with his own desperate appetite, one just as eager to savour the other. When Eskel pulled back to draw in a much-needed breath, Jaskier blinked at him, smiled, and then dipped forward to lick at the tattered remains of Eskel’s maimed upper lip

Eskel froze. No one had kissed him there since the scarring. No one had really kissed him much at all. Even the people who’d wanted to lie with him after it happened, the ones who wanted him because they were aroused by his ugliness and deformity, had always avoided touching his mutilated lips. 

But not Jaskier. No, as always, the bard was an exception. Thank the gods for it. 

“Is that okay?” Jaskier mumbled, licking at the scarred tissue again. “Does that hurt?”

Eskel shook his head, too overwhelmed for speech. Jaskier smiled softly at him for a moment before licking over the ragged flap of skin, which made Eskel shudder again, and again. It didn’t hurt, but the severed nerves there were unpredictably sensitive. Jaskier’s lips and tongue were hot, and soft, and so damned silky, and he almost felt like he could come from just this.

It surprised him when he felt Jaskier’s tongue catch at his exposed eyetooth. The tooth was a fang, really. Both his human canines had fallen out and regrown as sharp fangs after he’d been Grassed, like every other Witcher (except poor Geralt, who’d lost all his teeth to fangs). It was apparently much sharper than Jaskier had expected. He made a curious little sound, withdrew, and licked at his eyetooth again. Eskel squeezed at Jaskier's narrow waist, trying to encourage him to move on. He didn’t want Jaskier to dwell on his monstrous attributes, even if he seemed to find them interesting instead of off-putting.

The bard relented and went back to licking at Eskel’s scarred lip again, nibbling at the tissue so delicately that Eskel barely registered anything other than the blunt edge of Jaskier’s own (very normal, very human) teeth. It surprised him when Jaskier actually sucked the scarred-over notch of his lip into his own mouth. But by the gods, it felt good to have that bit of flesh teased and toyed with. 

He was hot and panting when Jaskier finally released his lip and pulled back to look at Eskel’s face. Whatever he found there made Jaskier’s slightly tentative smile shift into a sultry, self-satisfied grin. “You like that, huh?”

“I did,” Eskel readily admitted. “You certainly know what you’re doing,” he added, darting forward to nip playfully at Jaskier’s ear, just to hear the bard laugh.

“I’m a student of the liberal arts, remember?” Jaskier said, with a positively wicked look on his face. “They don’t let you graduate unless you meet the ‘kissing and loveplay’ requirement.” 

He ground down experimentally on Eskel’s lap, over the hard shell of his codpiece. Just the pressure was enough to make Eskel groan. He’d already resolved to keep himself under wraps, so to speak. He wasn’t going to take out his cock, because he didn’t want this to end before they’d even gotten started. But he couldn’t help but thrust up once or twice into Jaskier’s soft, yielding body. 

Jaskier squirmed around on his lap and moaned, sucking on his tongue again. He finally pulled back just enough to nibble at Eskel’s lip again. 

“You said something about helping me to get off?” Jaskier finally said, cocking one eyebrow in challenge. 

Eskel wasn’t exactly surprised to discover that Jaskier was a bit of a bossy little thing when it came to bedsport. Moreover, he was absolutely certain that he hadn’t imagined the breathlessly hopeful tone in Jaskier’s voice when he’d asked if Eskel liked it a little rough. 

But that was something they could revisit another time (if there was another time, and he prayed to the Fates that there would be). The idea made Eskel’s straining cock grow impossibly harder.

“Let me up for a moment?” Eskel huffed, lifting Jaskier up off his lap enough to slide off the log they’d been sitting on to dine. Jaskier came right back down on his lap again as soon as Eskel sat back down on the ground. He kept kissing him deeply and grinding down over his codpiece with a sinuous roll of his hips that made Eskel feel just a little dizzy and breathless.

“Hush now. Just…just let me take care of you,” Eskel murmured into Jaskier’s ear, gently stroking his back while Jaskier nipped and sucked at his throat. He felt a shudder run up Jaskier’s spine and through his broad, skinny shoulders. When he spoke, Jaskier’s words escaped in a hot puff of air against his throat. 

“What do you—”

“Could you turn around?” Eskel asked, considering the logistics involved. “Lean back against my chest?” 

He helped Jaskier stay balanced while he flipped around and sat down in Eskel’s lap again, this time facing the fire. He reclined back against Eskel’s chest like they were riding together on Scorpion. Eskel hooked his chin over Jaskier’s shoulder and looped an arm around his waist. His heart did a funny little flip when Jaskier gripped his scarred forearm, as if trying to keep him close. He was even more delighted when Jaskier relaxed back against Eskel’s chest in a loose splay of limbs. His cheeky grin made Eskel chuckle a little, even as he willed his hands not to shake.

He worked Jaskier’s shirt loose and rucked up the material enough to expose Jaskier’s delightfully furry chest and—gods—his pretty pink nipples, which stood out like bright beacons against all of Jaskier’s soft, thick chest hair. Eskel couldn’t resist exploring: he stroked over Jaskier’s sunken belly and skimmed over his still-too-prominent ribs, which made Jaskier twitch and giggle a little. 

His laughter melted into a deep, guttural groan when Eskel cupped his left pec and gently squeezed. The light pressure was enough to make Jaskier moan and push his chest out further into Eskel’s eager hands. Gods, he was so responsive! He acted as if Eskel’s every touch set him on fire. He knew that likely had more to do with Jaskier’s extended period of celibacy than anything Eskel was doing, but he couldn’t help feeling a tiny little burst of pride. Then Eskel resolved not to question his good fortune any further. He focused on Jaskier.

Eskel licked his thumb and forefinger, and set to work rolling and pinching Jaskier’s sensitive nipples. And just as he’d hoped, it drove Jaskier wild. He wriggled under Eskel’s hands as he tried to simultaneously thrust forward and rear back. For a moment Jaskier let go of Eskel’s arm, but remembered just in time that he couldn’t use his hands to grab at Eskel’s fingers. 

“Fuck, Eskel, please! Harder! You can pinch them harder,” he begged, and Eskel was happy to oblige, squeezing Jaskier’s perfect pink nipples until he let out a sharp, keening noise and jerked in Eskel’s arms, huffing out, “Okay, stop stop stop, or you’ll make me come!”

“I thought that was the idea,” Eskel chuckled. Jaskier gently knocked his temple lightly against Eskel’s in admonishment. 

“Gods, don’t tease me,” he huffed, in what sounded more like a salacious offer than a request.  He flopped back against Eskel’s chest, gasping for breath as if he’d just run to Oxenfurt and back. 

Eskel gave Jaskier a moment to collect himself. He used the short pause to run his hands up and down over every inch of Jaskier he could reach. He stroked Jaskier’s soft sides and hard belly, and stopped every few sweeps to pinch and pluck at Jaskier’s nipples again, just to feel him jerk and tremble in his arms.

“I’m going to get your cock out now, sweetheart,” Eskel informed him, smiling at Jaskier’s frantic nod of assent. “You tell me if there’s something you don’t like.” 

He set to work on the laces of Jaskier’s breeches, and it took only a moment to work the ties loose enough to slip Jaskier’s trousers and smalls down and push them off his slim hips. Then Jaskier was bare in the firelight, and Eskel felt like a starving man who’d just been presented with a magnificent feast.

“Oh sweetheart,” he said, finally touching Jaskier’s cock for the first time in a non-clinical context. His manhood was a beauty, long and lanky like Jaskier himself, not too wide but beautifully-shaped with a thick pink mushroom head and just a bit of extra skin at the tip. Eskel immediately pulled the foreskin back further to expose more of that pretty pink head, fascinated by a dollop of precome that glistened in the firelight like a perfect white pearl. He swept his rough, calloused thumb over Jaskier’s frenulum, and Jaskier shuddered and sucked in a breath. After a few more loving strokes, he brought his palm up to Jaskier’s face. 

“Lick it, love,” he ordered, and Jaskier immediately obliged, lapping at Eskel’s hand until his palm was appropriately wet. Eskel wrapped his hand around Jaskier’s cock again and started to stroke him in earnest. 

Eskel wasn’t entirely sure where these orders and endearments were coming come from, but the way they rolled off his tongue felt perfectly natural. Even better was the way each rumbled ‘sweetheart’ and ‘love’ made Jaskier shudder and moan and sink down a little more in his arms, seemingly content and willing to trust Eskel to make him feel good.

Fuck. He’d never had someone’s unabashed trust before, except maybe those first few years when he and Geralt were discovering what their young bodies were really made for, and how good it felt to make other people feel good. 

He’d lost so much time since then. Decades. How had he gone so long without holding anyone? He couldn’t even remember when, or why, he’d given up trying to find someone who might let him get this close. 

But now Jaskier was in his arms, the night air thick with his hot scent and echoed moans. He was willing to put his trust in Eskel. He believed that Eskel would bring him pleasure, not pain or fear. Best of all, Jaskier trusted Eskel to give him exactly what he needed.

It was so much more than he’d let expect in his cold, grim, lonely life. Walking into Dijkstra’s office had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. 

He felt a sharp sting of guilt at the suffering Jaskier had endured before spinning into Eskel’s lonely orbit. But he was going to make it his life’s mission to try and balance the scales. Every day they spent together, he’d make sure Jaskier felt cherished and safe and taken care of. It was, as he’d said once before, the least he could do. The very least Jaskier deserved.

“Okay, sweetheart, going to make you come now,” Eskel said, wrapping his arm around Jaskier’s shoulders while the other stripped his cock. He could feel the trembling tension in Jaskier’s body, and the way pleasure could tip so easily into exhausted frustration, given his still-recovering condition. He worked his hand over Jaskier’s velvetly skin, relishing the feeling of the blood-hot cock in his palm even as he fantasized about pleasuring Jaskier like this again soon. Maybe…maybe tomorrow? Maybe even every night? He could imagine it, having Jaskier stretched up against him like this again, panting against his throat, and straining against his hands, begging him to—

“Please, Eskel, please, let me come, I want to come, please,” Jaskier was chanting, and Eskel momentarily stuttered in the rhythmic motion of his hand. 

“You…you want me to tell you when you can come?”

“Oh yes,” Jaskier moaned, eyes squeezed shut, his beautiful face streaked with dried tears. His lips were slick and shiny and swollen from all the kissing they’d done. “Could you? Please? Eskel. Please.”

“Come then, sweetheart,” Eskel whispered into his ear. “You can come. Come for me.”

As soon as the order was given, Jaskier came with a helpless little cry. It was far from the brazen moan or deep wail Eskel expected, given how loud Jaskier had been in all other aspects. But what he lacked in noise he made up for in spend. He spilled again, and again, almost as much as a Witcher, spurting out long ropes of come that painted the rocks and dirt around their campfire. Some of his spend even hit the large stones at the base of the fire itself, where it sizzled on the hot stone and then evaporated in the heat of the fire. Eskel imagined Jaskier’s pleasure wafting up to burn like a star against the night sky.

With a last, low, desperate moan, Jaskier jerked through the last of his orgasm and sank back against Eskel’s chest. He seemed too exhausted and pleasure-drunk to care about how hot and sweaty they were, or what a mess he’d made of Eskel’s hand. The insides of Jaskier’s thighs were slick with spend and his own sweat, and like that drop of precome hovering at the tip of Jaskier’s penis, Eskel was captivated by the way the mess covering him glistened in the firelight as he shifted his legs.

“Jaskier,” was all he could say. All he could think. He cupped the Jaskier’s concave belly with his clean hand, and brushed his thumb back and forth in smooth, comforting strokes just above his navel as he waited for Jaskier's heartbeat to slow. Eventually, Jaskier stopped trembling, and his breathing and heart rate settled. In the warm, languid aftermath of release, Jaskier even seemed to slip into a light doze. His body went lax and trusting in Eskel’s arms.

Eskel brushed a kiss to Jaskier’s bare shoulder, and hugged him close. It was a warm summer night, but Jaskier usually ran a bit cold. In a few moments, Eskel would force himself to move. He’d get up and find a cloth to wipe the spend from Jaskier’s thighs, and get him tucked up warm and safe in their shared bedroll. Then Eskel would bank the fire, check on Scorpion, and then he’d undress and lie down to sleep next to someone who was becoming dearer to him with every passing day.

But for now, Eskel sat and stared into the fire, and let himself savour this moment. 

He knew that a Witcher’s Path was not fated to end in love or happiness. But for whatever reason, his Path had brought him to Jaskier, and given him a glimpse of something more. He only wanted to linger as long as he could, and look his fill. 

Eventually he’d be forced to press on, to go back to that miserable slog of loneliness and despair. But he’d have this one bright memory, at least. This night with Jaskier.

He’d treasure it for the rest of his days. No matter what the future might hold. 

Chapter Text

When Jaskier woke the next morning, Eskel was asleep and curled up against him like a nesting spoon. His chest was a warm, solid wall pressed along Jaskier’s back, and he’d draped one arm carefully across Jaskier’s ribs. The other was bent and resting under Jaskier’s head to act as a pillow. Eskel’s huge hand was spread open over Jaskier’s chest, as if he needed to feel Jaskier’s heartbeat even in sleep.

They’d been sharing a bedroll for a while now, to soak up the benefits of the spell. But it felt different this morning. Everything felt different after the revelations of the night before. When Jaskier had accepted Eskel’s shocking offer to ‘help,’ he’d expected something more perfunctory. A friendly handjob, perhaps. Done with Eskel’s customary care and practical ease, of course, but devoid of any erotic energy.

He’d never been so delighted to be proven wrong.

Jaskier felt his face heat as images from the night before flashed through his mind: Eskel playing with his tits, Eskel whispering filth in his ear, his own shameless writhing. Gods, he’d even begged Eskel to order him to come.

The memory of Eskel’s casual dominance made Jaskier’s cock stir again. He’d never expected that from the mild-mannered Witcher. Or the way his touch had seared Jaskier down to the marrow, and with those huge, strong hands pinching his nipples and stroking his cock… The only thing he regretted was that he’d fallen asleep before he could try to return the favour.

He might yet have a chance to rectify that. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, and they were still curled up together and (mostly) naked, aside from his smalls and Eskel’s breeches. With any luck, Eskel might be willing to pick up where they’d left off last night. Jaskier might not be able to pleasure Eskel the way he wanted. He certainly couldn’t touch him as much as he wanted, not without the use of his hands. But he could certainly try to suck him, or offer Eskel the use of his thighs. They’d just need a bit of oil.

The thought made Jaskier’s cock ache. He sighed, wishing for roughly the thousandth time that he could take himself in hand. He wasn’t nearly as desperate as he’d been for relief last night, thanks to his very accommodating Witcher. But gods, now that he’d had a taste of Eskel as a lover, all he wanted to do was gorge himself.

Hopefully, Eskel would want to feast on him as well.

Jaskier wiggled his arse back against Eskel’s hips, just to investigate the possibility, and was delighted to discover the Witcher was also stirring to meet the dawn. A gratifying development, especially because—Jaskier rolled his hips back again—even at half-mast, Eskel’s substantial cock felt absolutely wonderful slotted up against his backside. He hadn’t taken a man in months, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to feel Eskel’s bare cock against his skin without any barriers between them.

He ground his hips back against Eskel’s growing erection. The illicit fantasies he’d tried so hard to forget all came flooding at once and Jaskier almost moaned, overwhelmed by visions of riding Eskel or sucking him off.

“Morning, Lark,” Eskel said. At the sound of the low rumbling words, Jaskier froze.

Fuck. He’d been rubbing his arse over Eskel’s shaft like a damned animal. If Eskel wasn’t interested in continuing whatever haphazard arrangement they’d negotiated last night, what Jaskier was doing right now was not merely rude. It was a violation.

This time, Jaskier might actually deserve a Witcher’s swift punch to his solar plexus.

Eskel politely shifted back to create some distance between his groin and Jaskier’s backside. “Did you sleep well?”

“I did,” Jaskier said tightly. He was still holding himself rigidly in check, almost trembling with the temptation to rut back against Eskel’s cock again. “I…I was hoping…”

“Yes?”

“Do you think we might, ah, continue where we left off?” Jaskier bit his lip. “Only if you want to, of course,” he added. His voice had gone a bit squeaky.

Eskel sighed, and Jaskier felt his heart sink. “Jaskier, are you sure that’s what you want? You don’t have a lot of better options right now…”

“What do you mean, ‘better options’?" he demanded, rolling over so he could look Eskel in the eye. "Surely you must know that you’re not just some…some refuge of last resort. Last night was wonderful! You were wonderful!”

When Eskel refused to meet his eyes, Jaskier felt his heart sink a little further. “Dear heart, please. Talk to me?” Jaskier gently cupped Eskel's scarred cheek, hating the way the Witcher seemed to be avoiding his gaze. “If you didn’t like it, or if I did something wrong—”

He waited until Eskel finally looked at him. His honey-amber eyes were dark and troubled. He feared Eskel would push him away, but instead Eskel let his eyes flutter shut and he leaned into the touch, pressing his scarred cheek more firmly into Jaskier’s palm.

“No, I liked it,” Eskel said softly. “Of course I liked it. You so damned responsive, and eager, and...and trusting…”

Jaskier felt his face heat, and his belly pooled with warmth at Eskel’s compliments. “So what’s the problem, then? If we both enjoyed it? I’m just as eager to see what drives you wild.”

There was a pained look on Eskel’s face, and Jaskier concentrated on the spellbond. He could feel the turbulence of Eskel’s emotions: regret, sorrow, longing. The strongest feeling seemed to be an aching sense of loss, as if Eskel were already preparing himself for rejection. But that didn’t make any sense. Jaskier had no intention of letting him go. He wanted more of Eskel, not less!

“Jaskier, just look at me,” he said softly. “I’m…I don’t deserve your touch. I know what I look like. What I am. I’m…I’m an abomination. I’m glad I could bring you pleasure, but…”

Jaskier made a stricken nose, and pressed his thumb against the notch in Eskel’s lips. He couldn't bear to listen to another word of Eskel's self-loathing.

“No!” Jaskier growled, “No! I will not allow you to say such terrible things about yourself! You are not an ‘abomination’: you’re the furthest thing from it!” He felt incandescent with rage. None of it was directed at Eskel, of course, but at the blind idiots, the true monsters of the world, who'd been so cruel to this sweet, gentle man.

“How can you not know how beautiful you are? This body,” he said, giving Eskel’s meaty shoulder a little shove with the palm of his hand, “is a work of art. You are so strong and thick and gorgeous that I was driven to the point of madness, lusting after you. There is nothing I want more in this godsforsaken world than to worship every inch of you. Even if your body wasn’t the epitome of masculine perfection—”

Eskel gave an incredulous huff of protest, but Jaskier sailed right over him, “Yes, perfection, and I will fight anyone who dares say otherwise. But Eskel, you are also the kindness, sweetest, most thoughtful person I’ve ever met! Honestly, I’d want to fuck you even if you looked like a rock troll, which you do not. The very idea that you think you’re ‘unworthy’ makes me want to thrash someone. But I’d much rather spend the time showing you exactly how lovely I think you are,” he said, pressing a soft kiss at the corner of Eskel’s scarred mouth, “and how much I want you.”

He was breathing hard when he finished this little speech. Instead of giving Eskel time to work up a denial, Jaskier hooked his thumb over one of Eskel’s wrists and dragged his hand down to cover Jaskier’s bulging own erection.

“There, you see?” he hissed, “Can you feel how much I want you? Bodies don’t lie, Eskel. Mine certainly thinks that you are a sight to behold.”

Under other circumstances, the wide-eyed shock and the disbelief on Eskel’s face might have been comical. But Jaskier simply waited, glaring at Eskel and daring him to contradict the truth that was written all over Jaskier’s face and form. He wanted Eskel. Desperately. And Jaskier would be damned if he’d let Eskel’s insecurities stand in the way of giving him some much-needed pleasure and reassurance.

Eskel blinked and licked his lips. He twitched against Jaskier’s light grip and Jaskier begrudgingly released him, half-expecting Eskel to leap up and flee the campsite. Instead, Eskel shocked Jaskier by slipping his hand inside the waistband of Jaskier’s smalls.

He sucked in a breath when Eskel wrapped his huge, hot hand around his hard shaft, and gave his cock one long, torturously slow stroke. If Jaskier hadn’t been lying down, his knees would have given out. He instinctively rolled over and pressed himself back along the long, hard line of Eskel’s body.

“You do seem eager,” Eskel admitted quietly, with another slow stroke that sent hot, molten pleasure spreading up through Jaskier’s body. “I’m sorry. I just…I need to be sure that you want this.”

“Well, I do, you big dummy,” Jaskier grunted. His breath caught when Eskel twisted his wrist on the next upstroke. Eskel’s other arm snaked around his waist and Jaskier ground his hips back, feeling once again the seemingly-enormous outline of Eskel’s cock pressed up against him.

Eskel chuckled and nipped at his ear, and Jaskier felt his indignant anger fade, and that light, bubbly feeling from last night well up inside him again. For just a moment the feeling eclipsed even the sinful pleasure Eskel was starting to wring out of his cock. The mix of relief and joy was pulsing so strongly through their spellbond that it was almost tangible, like a drop of honey on the tongue.

Jaskier wasn’t even sure who it was coming from. Is that my happiness? he wondered, Or yours?

He had to set the question aside. He still had no idea if Eskel could feel anything through the spellbond, other than the simple, rewarding pleasure of skin-to-skin contact Eskel had mentioned back in Windley. There was no way to know how Eskel would react if he knew Jaskier could sense what he was feeling through their bond. The very idea would have sent Geralt running for the hills.

Jaskier thrust into Eskel’s incredibly skilled hands, and twisted around to capture Eskel’s lips in a wet, messy twining of tongues. He broke the kiss after a few very satisfying moments, pulling back with a little lick of apology. The Witcher looked flushed and aroused and sweetly, almost shyly happy.

Jaskier kissed him again on the side of his chin before nibbling at his earlobe. That seemed to be a bit of a hot-spot for Eskel. He twitched and gasped under Jaskier’s gentle lips, and Jaskier ruthlessly sucked at the little bit of flesh, marvelling at the way Eskel’s huge body trembled.

“Let me suck you?” Jaskier whispered. “Let me show you how much I want you?”

Jaskier gave Eskel’s soft earlobe a wet little lick, and the Witcher shivered against him.

“Please,” Eskel said, in a very small voice, as if he was revealing some deep, dark secret. “I want—gods, Jaskier,” he sighed, hugging him tightly. “I want whatever you want to give me.”

“All right,” Jaskier said. That was probably the best he could expect from Eskel right now: he'd just have to work on getting Eskel to express his desires in, ideally, rich and graphic detail later on. “What I want right now is to give you a truly masterful hands-free suckjob. If you’d be so kind as to remove your pants?”

Eskel shuffled back to give himself some space to unlace his own breeches. Jaskier twisted around so he could admire the breadth of Eskel’s chest and shoulders (always an excellent show, perhaps the very best on the Continent) and watch Eskel’s huge pectorals shift as he worked the laces loose. He marvelled again that such a stunning man was not only oblivious to his own appeal, but was somehow under the impression he was actually repellant. Jaskier was going to make it his personal mission to show Eskel exactly how lovely he was.

Eskel finished with the laces quickly and helped Jaskier shove his own smalls down. Jaskier lost himself in Eskel's kiss again, but eventually recovered enough presence of mind to remember that he had a mission, here. Jaskier pulled back and tapped his ugly black ring against Eskel’s collarbone.

“Don’t distract me, Witcher,” he muttered, and Eskel gave him a perfectly innocent Who, me? look.

Jaskier rolled his eyes and shimmied down Eskel’s lush body, licking and dropping kisses as he went. He might not have the use of his hands, at least for now, but Jaskier was determined to try and touch as much of Eskel as he could, in any way he could.

Now this was a feast for the senses. Eskel was all bronze skin and thick, soft dark hair and hard muscles sheathed in a layer of healthy fat. Jaskier paused at his small, dark nipples, licking and sucking experimentally. Eskel obviously liked the wet heat of Jaskier’s mouth, but didn’t seem as sensitive there as Jaskier. Few men were, he supposed. Jaskier moved on, licking and kissing his way down over Eskel’s furry stomach.

It turned out Eskel was rather sensitive in the soft creases of his thighs: when Jaskier licked him there, he felt Eskel jerk and thrust up into his mouth. Encouraged, Jaskier teased the soft skin with his teeth. Eskel’s little grunt of pleasure turned into a deep moan that made Jaskier’s cock twitch. He filed that information away for later. This was more of a reconnaissance mission, after all. A little scouting party prior to a true voyage of discovery. He was going to spend much, much more time figuring out how to drive his Witcher wild. He was also damned well going to teach Eskel to see how beautiful he was.

Now for the main event, Jaskier thought. Finally, he'd get his first real up-close look at Eskel’s cock.

Jaskier was a little surprised at just how obsessed he’d become. He wasn’t usually all that fussed about the size of a man’s cock. It was more about the use and careful application of the tool than the size of the tool itself, after all. Jaskier had certainly been with his fair share of huge, well-endowed men who’d been gifted with blacksmith’s hammers and treated them as such, pounding away without any finesse. Likewise, he’d been fucked by smaller men who’d wielded their tiny tack hammers with so much skill and precision, Jaskier had never felt any appreciable lack. He had high hopes that Eskel would turn out to be the rare male specimen who was both extremely well-equipped, and a masterful craftsman.

He certainly has the tool for it, was Jaskier's only thought as he finally came face-to-face with Eskel’s huge cock.

“How in Melitele’s name do you cram all of this under that codpiece every day?” he asked, mouth agape.

Eskel’s cock had to be nearly as long and thick as a hand-axe handle. It was proportional to Eskel himself, he supposed, though such a huge appendage might not have been out of place on a stallion. It would be quite a stretch to fit his lips around such a girthy cock, and taking much beyond the first few inches into his mouth would be a challenge. He had no earthly idea how he’d ever take that cock in his arse. But by the gods, Jaskier was looking forward to trying.

“I warned you,” Eskel said. Jaskier glanced up at his face. Eskel was lying stiffly on his back, staring up at the brightening sky. His cheeks were flushed a deep, embarrassed red. It made his scars look almost white in contrast. He kept flexing and clenching his fists at his sides, and Jaskier realized he was probably struggling not to push Jaskier away so he could cover himself up, but he wouldn't move Jaskier like that without asking. Jaskier felt an unbearable wave of tenderness wash over him for the Witcher.

“Eskel,” Jaskier reached out with both hands to press Eskel’s huge penis between his palms, careful to put only the lightest of pressure on his shaft. “You, my dear, are a work of art. Truly. Not to sound slutty or boastful, but I am a bit of a connoisseur when it comes to the male body. And you, my darling Witcher, have nothing to apologize for. You’re absolutely breathtaking. Mouth-watering. Just as I suspected you'd be.”

He felt Eskel’s huge cock twitch between his hands at this declaration. Jaskier tried to hide the quirk of a smile, not wanting Eskel to think he was being mocked. But he ought to have guessed. It made sense that Eskel would respond to a bit of praise, just as Jaskier himself loved a bit of rough handling and then lots of cuddles afterward. Everyone had their preferences. He was determined to give Eskel exactly what Eskel wanted.

Eskel finally took a breath and relaxed a little. He unclenched his fingers and gave Jaskier a quick, furtive glance, apparently trying to gauge his sincerity.

Jaskier let every bit of his astonished pleasure show on his face. Eskel was something truly special. In this and in so many other ways.

“My darling Witcher,” Jaskier said, leaning forward while keeping his eyes on Eskel’s face. He stopped when his mouth was level with the pretty pink tip of Eskel’s cock. “I’ll tell you now, I am absolutely thrilled at your, err, impressive endowment. You might present a bit of a challenge, but I promise you: I will find nothing but pleasure in the attempt. I want you, Eskel. Please don’t mistake my awestruck wonder for a lack of enthusiasm.”

Jaskier looked away, giving Eskel a moment to absorb his words without having to school his expression for Jaskier’s benefit. He turned his attention back to Eskel’s gorgeous prick, parting his lips and letting his hot breath gust over the head of Eskel’s cock. He darted forward to give the head a little kitten-lick, and moaned softly at the rich, salty, musky flavour of Eskel’s skin.

Of course the man would taste as divine as he looked. Gods. This Witcher was going to be the death of him.

Jaskier spent a bit of time simply licking and tasting and exploring before he endeavoured to try and take Eskel into his mouth. He ran his thumbs around and over the hard tip, massaging the frenulum and tracing the sensitive ridged head with his tongue.  He also tried using his palms—and the rough drag of the linen bandages—to rub up the shaft while he licked and nipped at the sensitive head. 

Eskel was quiet at first, but finally began to shift and groan when he realized Jaskier wasn’t just humouring him. He twitched and sighed when Jaskier used his tongue, and seemed to like the drag of the bandages. But when Jaskier used his teeth to nibble at the glans, Eskel swore and jolted in surprise, shuddering. Jaskier hid his grin by burying his face down by Eskel’s balls. He experimented there on, licking and sucking at his furry testicles, lifting first one and then the other with his tongue before drawing them into his mouth and sucking gently on the sensitive sac.

“Fuck, Jaskier, that’s…”

“You like that?”

“Very much,” he huffed, his heavy sigh stretching into a moan when Jaskier nipped at the soft loose skin around his balls. He’d never cause Eskel any actual pain—unless he asked for it, of course—but he could tell Eskel liked the contrast between the soft, worshipful movements of his lips and tongue, and those hard, sharp nips from his teeth.

Eskel was quiet, predictably restrained and self-controlled, and largely kept his hands to himself, though he did jerk and moan a few times against Jaskier’s roving mouth. Jaskier resolved to try that much harder to coax a reaction out of his Witcher. He wanted to learn exactly what would make Eskel fall apart and let loose.

Satisfied with his initial scouting efforts, Jaskier felt comfortable enough with Eskel’s dimensions to attempt to take him into his mouth. He went slowly, wetting his lips to help ease the way. It was a bit of a stretch even at the head, but Jaskier knew how to relax his jaw and use his other tools—tongue, teeth, and the limited mobility of his hands—to keep ramping up Eskel’s pleasure as he finally worked about half of the man's cock into his mouth.

He bobbed his head and worked up some suction against the head, which resulted in a full-throated, “gods!” from Eskel as his hips came up. Jaskier gradually increased both the force of the suction and the speed of his movements, grinning against him when Eskel responded in kind. The light, hesitant thrusts of Eskel’s hips became slightly more confident. He began to groan in earnest now, shuddering and shifting as Jaskier varied his tempo and alternated between sucking Eskel down as deeply as he could, and lifting off to lick at his cockhead and nibble along the shaft.

It was clear by now that Eskel was obviously reluctant—fearful, even—of thrusting up into Jaskier’s mouth. Jaskier could certainly understand why: Eskel’s previous partners might have reacted badly at any hint of invasion from such a huge cock, especially if they were inexperienced or fearful of being with a Witcher to begin with. Even a seasoned man of Jaskier’s ilk, who'd enjoyed many a thorough throat-fucking, wasn’t fully prepared to take Eskel’s massive length and girth on the first try. He’d get there eventually, of course, but Jaskier fully intended to take his time and do this right.

He threw his arm over Eskel’s hips and used his weight to prevent the Witcher from thrusting up more than a few inches. Not that he’d be any match against Eskel’s prodigious strength. He knew very well that the Witcher could easily toss Jaskier aside with a flick of the wrist, pin him, and shove his entire massive cock down his throat before Jaskier could put up even a token resistance.

Liquid heat pooled in his belly at the thought of being held down by Eskel and 'forced' to take his cock. Something to explore later, possibly.

Jaskier developed a comfortable rhythm and lost himself to the almost meditative peace of sucking cock. Gods, he’d missed this during his long confinement. He did truly love being on his knees for a man, holding him in his mouth and bringing him off. He'd lost a little of his love for this act after a series of dull, unimaginative encounters with men he’d picked up in taverns or propositioned while working his way south from the mountain in Caingorn. He’d been drunk or high on fisstech most of the time, and all too often Jaskier had often woken with a stiff jaw and a sore throat and absolutely no clue if he’d even enjoyed himself the previous night.

This felt distinctly different. It seemed to matter so much more, with Eskel. He also felt Eskel’s pleasure reflected back at him through the magic of their bond. Jaskier felt every single one of Eskel’s shivering moans and gasps of shocked delight. It resulted in an odd doubling of sensation in this act of giving—and receiving—pleasure, though he never mistook Eskel’s reactions for his own.

The volume of Eskel’s soft grunts and groans and moans increased as Jaskier continued to lavish attention on Eskel’s cock. Eventually, Eskel seemed to relax and give himself permission to simply enjoy himself. He took Jaskier’s head in those huge hands and gently directed him, guiding him to turn this way or that, increase or decrease pressure. Not long after, Eskel had started to sweat and swear, and soon after that, he was all but bucking up into Jaskier’s mouth.

“I’m going to—” he hissed, and then said urgently, “Lark, where should I…?”

Jaskier popped off enough to mutter, “My mouth, use my mouth!” and Eskel obliged. He held Jaskier’s head in place and applyed steady, gentle pressure while he rocked his hips up once, twice. Finally, he spilled in Jaskier’s mouth.

His Witcher had not, it turned out, been exaggerating the volume of his spend. If anything, Eskel had probably understated it.

Jaskier obediently held his mouth open and swallowed load after load as Eskel pumped into his mouth with a long, low groan. His senses were flooded with the familiar sharp, salty, slightly bitter taste of come, but this wasn't anything like Jaskier's other encounters. He felt blissfully grounded in the moment, locked into the sensation of Eskel’s big hands gripping his face, that impossibly huge, hot shaft in his mouth, and the explosive echo of Eskel’s orgasm rocketing up through the bond.

Jaskier let his eyes flutter shut and he released his own groan when Eskel pushed up just a little further into his mouth, and spilled down his throat in one last, long pulse.

Fuck. This man was absolutely going to ruin him for anyone else.

Jaskier finally drew off and threw himself down on the bedroll beside Eskel, gasping and wiping at his mouth. Despite his best intentions to swallow every last drop, some of Eskel’s come had dribbled down his chin, and Jaskier had closed his eyes to focus on gathering up what he could with his tongue when he heard Eskel say a quiet, heartfelt “Fuck.”

He opened his eyes to find Eskel staring at him with awestruck wonder.

“What?” Jaskier mumbled, wiping at his chin with the back of his bandaged hand. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been quite so obvious about lapping up Eskel’s copious spend? "I happen to like how you taste." 

Eskel captured his lips in a hard, breathless kiss, sweeping his tongue into Jaskier’s mouth and swirling it around to seek out the taste of himself. Jaskier felt both extremely turned-on and wildly relieved.

He should have known Eskel wouldn’t shy away from the more primal aspects of sex, or judge Jaskier from luxuriating in the same.

“Jask,” Eskel huffed when he’d finished plundering Jaskier’s mouth. “That was—” He trailed off and collapsed back on the bedroll. His amber eyes were glazing over with the aftershocks of pleasure and the creeping lassitude of orgasm.

“Come, darling man, use your words,” Jaskier goaded with a grin. He dug his elbow into Eskel’s side, which drew the most endearing giggle out of the huge man. Jaskier felt the bond pulse again with warm, uncomplicated affection, and he basked in the gentle glow of Eskel's happiness.

“I’ve never…” Eskel drew in a breath and tried again. “No one’s ever done anything like that before. To me,” he amended.

“What, worshiped you and your gigantic cock in exactly the way you deserve?”

“Uh, no,” Eskel said softly.

Jaskier pretended to blow on his fingernails, buffing them against his nonexistent lapel. “Well,” he wiggled his eyebrow at Eskel, "You don't have to say it. I know. I’m very, very good.”

“You are,” Eskel agreed, in a tone of sincere wonder. His mouth twitched at Jaskier’s antics, but he seemed determined not to let the importance of what he was saying slip away in the face of Jaskier’s irreverence. “Even the people who’ve been eager to try it—and there haven’t been many of those—gave up after a few minutes.”

“Lazybones,” Jaskier scoffed, and then sobered in the face of Eskel’s raw vulnerability. He cupped his scarred cheek very gently. “You know that isn’t your fault, right? You are exceptionally well-endowed, but that isn’t a crime. Far from it. I hope some of your long-term lovers, at least, made more of an effort.”

Eskel was avoiding his gaze, and a horrible possibility occurred to him. “Eskel. Have you never…?”

“I’m not a virgin,” Eskel said, perhaps a bit too quickly. He didn’t seem offended, but was clearly not eager to have this discussion. “I might not have your extensive experience—”

“Which I choose to take as a compliment,” Jaskier said warningly, a hint of frost creeping into his tone.

“As you should,” Eskel nodded firmly, which somewhat eased Jaskier's fear that Eskel might think he was some sort of trollop. Well, he was, in point of fact, but Jaskier refused to apologize for that. And he couldn't possibly share a bed with someone who thought less of him for it.

"I just haven’t been with that many people, that's all. If that wasn't blindingly obvious."

"Not to me," Jaskier said quickly. "You certainly seemed to know what you were doing last night. But at any rate," Jaskier added, because he felt it needed to be said, "I wouldn't give a fig if you'd ploughed every field from here to Dol Blathana. Or if you prefer to, err, till your own soil. People put entirely too much emphasis on how little or how much one—"

"Harvests?"

Jaskier nodded gravely, but could only hold the serious expression for a moment before he burst out laughing. "I'm sorry. That was an abysmal metaphor right from the start."

"Yes, yes it was," Eskel chuckled. "But even the Continent's greatest poet can have an off day."

"Hmmph," Jaskier harumphed. The morning air was cool, and the grey metallic sky above promised rain, so it seemed like a good idea to linger under the canvas shelter of their tent as long as possible. Eskel seemed no more eager to break camp than Jaskier. As soon as the Witcher flopped onto his back, Jaskier slotted himself along Eskel's side and poked at his side until Eskel draped an arm around him, and started to card his fingers through Jaskier’s hair.

If Jaskier had been a cat, he would have begun purring.

Eskel’s heartbeat was slowing again, one pulse for every three beats of Jaskier’s. Jaskier had become quite addicted to the sound, even though it had only been a week since they’d started sharing a bedroll. Listening to Eskel’s heartbeat seemed to soothe something deep within him. He could easily imagine falling asleep to the sound every night. For as long as the Witcher tolerated his presence, anyway. He certainly couldn’t expect that to last forever.

"So, why haven’t you?” Jaskier asked after a few minutes of peaceful silence ticked by.

“Why haven’t I taken a lover?” 

Jaskier nodded. He’d been wondering about that for a while now. Unlike certain other Witchers of Jaskier's acquaintance, Eskel seemed to genuinely like being with someone, especially someone who needed him. He seemed to be one of those rare souls who needed to give more than he needed to take. Having reaped the benefits of Eskel’s kind nature himself, Jaskier knew exactly how much the man had to give. Eskel just wasn’t built to be alone.  

Eskel seemed to be giving Jaskier's question some thought. That was another thing Jaskier appreciated about him. Geralt had swatted Jaskier’s questions away like they were annoying flies. Maybe they had been. He'd pestered Geralt with unwanted come-ons and innuendos for years, halfheartedly attempting to seduce him even after Geralt made it clear he wasn’t interested. Geralt might have felt as if he had to be vigilant against any of Jaskier’s attempts to broach the topic, even if by that point in their friendship, his motivations had been entirely platonic.

“I suppose it wasn’t meant to be,” Eskel said softly. “I’ve never crossed paths with someone who’d put up with this,” he said, waving at the scars on his face, at his slit-pupil amber eyes and scarred, battered body. “Let alone all of the rest,” he added, waving to encompass their little campsite. Jaskier understood what he meant: me, and my Witcher’s life.

It was a lot to ask of a lover, Jaskier supposed. Travelling with Geralt certainly had its downsides: endless and sometimes gruelling travel, constant danger, gruesome injuries, and the isolation of sharing a life with someone hated and feared by the general public. And of course, when contracts didn’t pan out and coin ran short, when food was scarce and comfort nonexistent, all of those day-to-day difficulties of the Path were magnified.

Jaskier thought he'd handled it all with aplomb when he'd travelled with Geralt. Oh, of course he’d complained endlessly, and the hard travel had been a challenge, but seeing Geralt injured—sometimes to the point of death—was by far the worst. However, between his busking and Geralt’s ability to hunt and willingness to do menial labour if contracts were in short supply, they’d never gone hungry. That alone was far better than most peasant families could expect.

“Oh, for the right sort of person it’s not that bad,” Jaskier said, thinking aloud. “I quite liked travelling with Geralt. There was always something new to see and do, I had plenty of fresh material for my songs. If we ever ran into a spot of trouble, or some idiot villagers wanted our heads, we’d merely pack up and move on to the next town. On to the next adventure! Many people dream of that kind of freedom.”

He could tell Eskel was listening carefully to every word. Surely Eskel didn’t think that, just because the majority of humans were narrow-minded nincompoops, no one else could see the appeal of a life full of travel and adventure?

“If you want to know the truth, the monsters, and the danger, and dealing bigoted idiots wasn't the worst part,” Jaskier said quietly.

Eskel shifted under him. He stretched to tuck the blankets around Jaskier a little more firmly. “What was?”

“Saying goodbye,” he said after a beat. He had nothing to hide from Eskel, but he wasn’t eager to delve into his feelings for Geralt. It seemed insensitive, at the very least, considering he’d just finished sucking Eskel off.

Eskel rubbed his arm and dropped a kiss on his forehead. Jaskier blinked at the easy offer of wordless comfort. He kissed the nearest bit of Eskel he could reach: his shoulder.

“Still,” Jaskier mused, “wasn't there someone special? You’ve been alive for over a hundred years! I cannot believe that you haven’t fallen in love at least once.”

Jaskier wasn’t self-deluded enough to pretend he was asking out of idle curiosity. He wanted to know. Even if Eskel couldn’t feel his tension through the spellbond, surely he could hear the way Jaskier’s heart was hammering in his chest, or smell how Jaskier was suddenly sweating as he waited for a response?

“I have,” Eskel finally said after pausing for what felt like an eternity. “Of course I have. But it was as I said: it wasn’t meant to be.”

Jaskier wasn’t sure how to interpret that. “So you believe in destiny?”

Eskel laughed, and there was something dark and bitter about it, something so far outside the boundaries of Eskel’s dry sense of humor and practical optimism that Jaskier heard it as a loud dissonance in the thrumming harmony of their bond.

“It’s…it’s all right if you don’t,” Jaskier said. “Geralt hated destiny too.”

“Oh, I believe in the Fates,” Eskel said, voice rich with an irony that Jaskier didn’t understand.

Jaskier opened his mouth, ready to ask Eskel more, but instead he settled on, “I’ve heard you say that before: the Fates instead of destiny. Why?”

“My mother, I suppose,” Eskel said, rubbing his thumb in little circles on Jaskier’s bare shoulder. “The northern hillfolk don’t see destiny in the same way as you southerners,” and here Jaskier smiled at being referred to as a ‘southener’. He’d lived his entire life in the Northern Kingdoms.

“In the hills of Caingorn, people worship Destiny as a goddess, not just a force of nature. Or, more accurately, there are three goddeses: the Trieskla. There’s the Spinner, she who spins the threads of fate; the Weaver, who binds the threads together; and the Allotter, who measures and cuts our thread when our time is at an end. The Trieskla have little shrines and hillside temples all over Caingorn.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about this!” Jaskier exclaimed. “I read about it at Oxenfurt! My professor argued that it was heresy to worship destiny as a goddess. Given some of the things I’ve seen since then, though, I believe Fate has more power than Melitele or Aesculapius or Eponia.”

“I think so too,” Eskel said. “The Fates are powerful. I didn’t always believe, but…”

He was scratching at his scars again. Jaskier frowned and caught at his fingers; they came away bloody in the weak sunlight. “I’ll get you some salve for that,” Jaskier said, bracing himself against the chilly air as he left the snug warmth of their bedroll and padded over to their bag of medical supplies.

He pulled out an amphora full of the salve Eskel had made and brought it over. The Witcher sat up to take the bottle, but Jaskier pulled back and used his teeth to break the wax seal.

“Let me,” he said, kneeling on their pallet. Eskel was watching him closely, a strange expression on his face. Jaskier used his thumb—the one with the ring on it—to scoop out a little of the salve. He applied the salve gently, spreading it into the dry, cracked scars. The deep gouges in Eskel’s face still caused him pain, Jaskier knew. The tight, dry scar tissue was prone to cracking and bleeding, especially in colder weather. He'd seen Eskel wincing sometimes as the clusters of injured nerves misfired, going from numbness to red-hot agony without warning. Eskel had never told him the story—and Jaskier had never asked—but whatever had caused those scars still seemed determined to hurt Eskel, even decades later.

“Wait,” Jaskier said, thinking over their conversation about the Fates. “The three goddesses your mother worshipped. You said they’re called the Trieskla?”

“Um. Yes?” Eskel said. He was starting to blush faintly at Jaskier’s sly, knowing grin.

“Eskel, were you… Did your mother name you after the Fates?”

Eskel sighed. “Yes. But you cannot tell any of my brothers. Especially not Lambert. Geralt might take it as a godsdamned personal offence, but Lambert would never let me live it down.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Jaskier said brightly. He didn’t bother to point out it was vanishingly unlikely he’d ever meet any of Eskel’s other ‘brothers’. Or see Geralt again.

“I’m just surprised, that’s all. A Witcher named after the Fates. That’s a bit on-the-nose, don’t you think?”

At Eskel’s questioning look, he added, “I mean, you were a Witcher’s Child Surprise: fated to be fated. C’mon, it’s at least a little funny!”

“You’re sort of annoying after you get laid,” Eskel said. The warmth in his tone—and the way he knocked his shoulder gently against Jaskier’s—took any sting out of his words.

Jaskier blushed and muttered, “Well, technically, I got laid last night. You’re the one who came this morning.”

“Details,” Eskel said breezily. The sound of their laughter drifted up over the camp like white smoke.

***

Chapter Text

They reached Rinde later that afternoon. Jaskier hadn’t exactly been looking forward to seeing the town again. He’d given Rinde a wide berth since that awful business with the djinn, and time hadn’t been any kinder to Rinde than it had been to Jaskier himself.

The once-prosperous market town had become quite shabby and run-down. Everything from the buildings to the people to the animals showed signs of poverty and neglect. Most of the homes and shops he and Eskel passed on the way into town were shuttered and abandoned.

The few buildings that weren’t boarded up were badly in need of new thatching and a fresh coat of plaster. All of the gardens and window boxes were filled with the dead husks of brown, wilted flowers and the withered tops of seasonal vegetables. Only the Inn of Rinde and a few of the shops closer to the eastern road leading out of Redania appeared to see any trade at all.

Jaskier was just glad their route through the town didn’t take them anywhere close to where the old Mayor’s house had once stood. It had likely been rebuilt since the djinn—and Yennefer’s unbridled Chaos—had sent the whole building crumbling down. Even if an entirely new manor home had been constructed over the old foundation, Jaskier didn’t care to see it. He still felt a tickle in his throat whenever he thought about the djinn and Geralt’s thrice-damned wishes.

At least the local inn was in better condition than the rest of Rinde. Jaskier secured a room while Eskel went to settle Scorpion with the hostler. He’d realized long ago that it was much easier to negotiate a room and a meal before the innkeeper caught sight of his Witcher traveling companion. By then, coin had already changed hands, and it was usually too late for the innkeeper to try and throw them out.

Well, mostly. It worked about half of the time.

“Hello my good lady,” Jaskier said once the proprietress finished pouring a rather nice-looking ale for a customer. “Might I inquire after a room?”

“Shan’t stop you from inquiring,” she sniffed, looking just as gray and dour as everyone else in Rinde. Jaskier was starting to suspect that some poor sheep had drowned in the communal well. Everyone in Rinde looked like they were dealing with a terrible bout of dysentery.

“I’ll need two meals and a room—small with a single bed is fine, though of course a larger one would be welcome,” Jaskier said. He made sure to tuck his bandaged hands under the counter out of sight.

Despite his care, the innkeeper continued to look at him with a hard, suspicious expression. Jaskier couldn’t begin to guess why. Aside from the bandages, Jaskier looked like any ordinary traveler. He was dressed in layers of dull, warm, practical homespun, just like everyone else had been wearing on the road east to Rinde. The three-day-old scruff on his cheeks was perfectly acceptable for a man on the move, and of course Eskel had helped him dress so he was properly laced and buttoned. (Jaskier would have left at least a few of the fasteners on his doublet unbuttoned, enough to offer a daring glimpse of his chemise. Despite those fetching fingerless gloves, Eskel didn’t seem to have any instinct for sartorial suggestiveness, more’s the pity. And Jaskier had been a bit too distracted by recent events to think of it).

Jaskier still looked far too thin, although he’d managed to put on a little weight in the last few weeks, and his skin had finally lost the deathly pale, sallow complexion that had lingered after the dungeon. He didn’t look like a traveling bard anymore, of course, but neither did he resemble a smuggler or a convicted felon. Yet the woman was eying him anyway.

“I can also pay in advance,” Jaskier added tentatively.

This seemed to be the magic phrase. The innkeeper finally dredged up something resembling a smile, and opened her ledger. “Just yourself, then?”

“Myself and my traveling companion.” This innkeeper seemed like the type who’d put up a fuss and charge them extra if she knew Eskel was a Witcher.

“Fine, fine,” the lady nodded, scratching two ticks into her book. “It’s ten crowns a night for the room, plus another three for two meals. Stew comes with ale. You’re welcome to sit in the tavern after you dine, long as you pay for more drink.” She paused to count out the thirteen crowns Jaskier handed over for the room and the two meals. “We’ve a bard performing here tonight, plus some tumblers and a minstrel or two.”

“Oh?” Jaskier said, managing not to show that the innkeeper’s words sawed through his heart like a dull blade. He should be thrilled at the prospect of hearing some live music. He hadn’t heard so much as a pennywhistle since they’d left Oxenfurt. There hadn’t been any music on offer during his incarceration, obviously (aside from the songs he’d composed for himself and the mice in his cell). In point of fact, Jaskier had never quite gone so long without playing, or hearing someone play, since he’d started lute lessons as a small child.

“Well, that sounds lovely,” Jaskier said, “My companion and I will keep that in mind.”

The woman was looking at him warily again, but handed him a brass room key and pointed to the open archway leading out of the common room. “Up the hall, last door on the left.”

Jaskier felt an odd tightness in his chest. Instead of scoping out their room, he went back out to help Eskel with their saddlebags.

“All well?” Eskel asked. Of course he already had both saddlebags slung over his shoulders, plus his armor and Witcher gear and potion-pouches, and even the blanket from Scorpion’s tack. Jaskier gingerly plucked their two light bedrolls out of Eskel’s arms and cast a tentative look over his shoulder towards the inn.

“We have a room and dinner,” he said brightly, adding, “and the proprietress mentioned there’d be some entertainment in the tavern tonight. Musicians, a tumbler, and a bard.”

“Oh?” Eskel was looking at him oddly. He shifted the items he was carrying enough to free up a hand, and touched Jaskier’s shoulder. His honey-amber eyes were dark with concern. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine! Couldn’t be better!” Jaskier trilled, and then forced himself to speak in a more normal tone. So what if he was sweating through his tunic? The day was rather warm. “You needn’t worry.”

In the face of this (admittedly) paltry assurance, Eskel seemed to grow even more concerned. He took Jaskier’s hand. His blunt, scarred fingers were warm even through the layers of Jaskier’s bandages, and his thumb felt hot as a brand against Jaskier’s bare wrist.

He calmed a little at Eskel’s touch, though his heart still felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been fidgeting with the bandages: the wraps on his left hand were almost completely unraveled.

What in the world was the matter with him? Was it the spell? Jaskier had no reason to feel anxious or afraid: Eskel was right here, and he hadn’t said anything about leaving Jaskier alone to find a contract or go on a hunt. No, there was every reason to think tonight would be a calm, pleasant evening of hot food and cold ale and music, followed by (he hoped) another night of delirious pleasure in Eskel’s arms.

So why was nausea creeping up his throat? And why did it feel like he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs?

“Let’s go up to the room,” Eskel suggested. He cupped his hand around the back of Jaskier’s neck, deliberately touching Jaskier’s bare skin because he knew it would calm him. It helped: that little zing of their connection was present as always, and Jaskier let Eskel’s warm, steady presence begin to soothe him. The feelings he’d come to associate with Eskel—safety, security, comfort—were flowing through their bond, and Jaskier’s rapid pulse started to slow and even out.

The spellbond connection had to be a was one-way channel, Jaskier realized. If Eskel was feeling any of Jaskier’s generalized anxiety, he wasn’t showing it. And while he didn’t know Eskel well, per se, he felt he ought to know if Eskel was feeling sad or anxious. He was so rarely out-of-sorts, it would be obvious if Eskel were being bombarded by Jaskier’s wild feelings, wouldn’t it?

He pondered the question as they made their way to their new room.

Their new digs were much nicer than the rooms they’d had in Oxenfurt and Windley. The bed sat well up off the floor and there were a few pieces of mismatched furniture, including a full-sized table and two chairs for dining, and best of all: a private tub for bathing. One of the larger tubs, too: it was big enough for even Eskel to fully stretch out in, if he so wished.

Eskel must have noticed Jaskier’s instant fixation on the tub, because he said, “I’ll haul up some water once we’re settled.” The sweet man didn’t even hint that Jaskier was clearly the one who needed settling.

“That would be lovely.” Jaskier went over to bounce on the bed, testing it out. The mattress crackled with fresh straw and he didn’t see any hint of any fleas or lice. So far, this inn was proving to be one of the nicer establishments he’d ever stayed at. Still, the feeling that there was something odd about the town of Rinde and its people persisted.

Satisfied that the bed would hold up to any rigorious activities he and Eskel might want to get up to, Jaskier went to check the view. The window wasn’t glassed, of course, but the shutters were open, so he had a good prospect of the sleepy little market town. It was apparent even now that the streets were unusually quiet. It felt like Rinde was mired in the cold, dark months of midwinter, like everyone in the town was at home huddled in front of a fire instead of out working in the fields or carousing at the end of a long workday like they ought to be at the height of summer.

He supposed it was possible that everyone in Rinde was off having a giant orgy again, but surely if that were the case, the few people they’d passed on the way into town would have looked a bit cheerier, wouldn’t they?

Eskel deposited his burdens on the bed, and dropped their saddlebags in the corner with a loud THUMP. The unexpected noise made Jaskier jump and whirl around.

“Sorry,” Eskel said, looking a little sheepish. He bent and pulled out some fresh clothing for both of them, and handed a waterskin to Jaskier.

“I can ask around about any local mages or druids in the tavern after dinner,” Eskel said. “We should be able to find someone.”

“Right,” Jaskier said. He tried to dredge up some enthusiasm about breaking the curse. That was why they’d come to Rinde, after all: free themselves of the spellbond, and then…well. Then they’d go their separate ways, he supposed. The very last thing he wanted to think about was what might happen after the curse was broken. 

“I’ll go fetch the water,” Eskel said. “Will you be all right while I’m gone?”

“I’ll be fine,” Jaskier said, hoping to convince Eskel, if not himself.

Eskel looked as if he wanted to say something more, and turned to the door. Jaskier was already contemplating closing the shutters and crawling to hide away in the bedcovers when Eskel turned, marched over to him, and swept Jaskier up in a deep kiss.

It still felt so strange and new, to have Eskel’s mouth pressed to his. That funny little nub of scar tissue tickled Jaskier’s lip and he suppressed the urge to shiver, not wanting to break the kiss for anything. He sighed and relaxed into Eskel’s hold; the Witcher supported his weight without any apparent strain, and Jaskier softened his lips so Eskel could slip his tongue inside. They kissed for a while, idly testing out what might inspire a little hum or a shudder of pleasure from the other. By the time they finally broke apart, Jaskier’s lips were hot and swollen.

A tight curl of anticipation was already coiling up low in his belly. He chased the warmth of Eskel’s mouth again, capturing his lips and keeping his arms locked around his Witcher’s neck even as Eskel pulled back to search Jaskier’s face.

“What was that for?”

“You just looked like you could use a hug,” Eskel said.

“I’m fine,” Jaskier said. “I just…I don’t care for Rinde.”

After a beat or two of careful contemplation, Eskel said, “I can understand why.” Jaskier had already told him the story about the djinn and Yennefer, of course, but it was sweet of Eskel to put the pieces together without asking Jaskier to delve into the whole mess once more.

It made Jaskier smile in relief, and Eskel gave his snarl-grimace of a smile in return.

“We’ll have a nice bath, and then dinner. I promise we won’t stay in Rinde any longer than necessary.”

“Thank you,” Jaskier said, and boosted himself up to kiss Eskel’s scarred cheek. “Go pump water and lift heavy things. I’ll be right here,” he said, settling back down on the bed with a salacious wink that made Eskel laugh on his way out the door.

***

Worry tailed after Eskel like a stubborn raincloud all the way out into the stableyard.

He wasn’t exactly sure what was bothering Jaskier, but he was convinced it had nothing—and everything—to do with what had happened to Jaskier previously in the town of Rinde.

Moreover, Eskel's medallion had been vibrating ever since they’d peeled off the main road to enter the town. It had been too minor to mention to Jaskier—hells, the bespelled rings they both wore were enough to trigger the medallion, if he focused on it—but Eskel couldn’t deny that there was something very strange about the town. Some kind of malevolent force was at work here. The sooner they found a mage, concluded their business, and got out of Rinde, the better.

Eskel worked quickly to fill three buckets and started hauling them to the room upstairs. It surprised him when the lad overseeing the stables came over to help ferry the buckets up. He seemed oddly accepting of Eskel’s scars and gold eyes, and barely glanced at the two swords he wore.

Perhaps it was simply a case of one nonhuman recognizing another. The boy’s cap was hardly enough to conceal his pointed ears, unnaturally bright eyes, or twisted left foot.

Given that the boy didn’t seem afraid of him, Eskel decided to find out a little more about what was going on in Rinde. “How do you like working here?” he asked the boy, doing his best to sound social.

The lad shrugged. “It’s all right. My Da’s a bit nervous about me working at a stable on the main road, but we need the crowns. Times’ve been hard since Nilfgaard took Cintra. Everyone’s afraid.”

“Have you and your Da run into any, ah, trouble?” Eskel asked, flicking his eyes pointedly to the boy’s covered ears.

The lad looked unsettled for just a moment, but seemed to accept that Eskel meant no harm.

“S’not so bad here,” he said with a sigh. “Mayor’s been kind to the elves, mostly. Even told the King’s men to go pound sand when they tried to arrest some folk hereabouts. Course, that was afore the mage come. That sorcerer’s got no love for me and mine.”

“Oh?” Eskel said evenly. At least now he knew for certain that a mage was operating out of Rinde. If he wasn’t too closely aligned with the Mayor (or certain other governing authorities) even better. He might consider answering some of Eskel’s questions about the spellbound and the cursed rings.

“Aye, he’s out in the old west tor, near the spring,” the boy said, already guessing a Witcher wouldn’t be asking about a mage unless he intended to pay them a visit. “Y’oughn’t waste your time w'the likes of him though, Master Witcher. He’s not likely to talk to ye. Witchers ain’t quite as bad as elves, in some folks’ eyes, but they ain’t that much better. Men like our mage hate the both of us.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Eskel said, and he was. The lad didn’t deserve to be hated or spit on because of his heritage. There was a lot of ugly history between humans and the elves that extended back over a thousand years, dating right back to the Conjunction itself, but the Elves had been on the losing side more often than not. They’d been run out of their ancestral lands and either forced to farm the piss-poor land east of the Mahakams, or fend for themselves in the desolate wilds of the north. Those who’d been forced east to Kaedwin and Aedirn had fared a little better, but now that the old pogroms were being revived in Redania and Temeria, it wouldn’t be long until the anti-elven hysteria reached the hinterlands. Humans would be lighting the pyres in Rivia and Dol Balthana before the decade was out, Eskel predicted glumly. If it took that long.

“I hope you and your Da will be safe,” Eskel told the boy. “Will you go to X’intria, if Rinde turns inhospitable?”

“Nah,” the boy said. “My Da’s human. Not many places to go that’ll take us both.”

Eskel grimaced. That too was something he could sympathize with. “Thanks for your help hauling the water, lad. Best get back to your stable.” He dug out two extra crowns and a few coppers for the boy, who accepted the money with a smile and scampered off. At least Scorpion would be well cared-for tonight.

Eskel hauled the rest of the buckets up the stairs and into the room. Jaskier was dozing—or pretending to doze—on the bed. Eskel worked quietly to fill the tub, heating the water with a quick blast of Ignii to bring it up to a suitable temperature. Jaskier stirred, and Eskel went to help him undress.

“You’re using your hands more,” he pointed out, eager to return to the teasing rapport they’d had in the campsite that morning.

Jaskier, apparently just as eager to get back on an even footing, gave him a cheeky look that made Eskel’s cheeks flush. Yes, he remembered exactly how Jaskier had used his hands this morning.

“Fingers aren’t as stiff,” Jaskier said. “And the pain’s better too.”

“I’m glad,” Eskel said, peeling Jaskier out of his tunic and chemise. “Now that the wounds have closed, you can start those exercises I mentioned. It’ll keep your fingers limber and stop the scar tissue from getting too tight.”

“Do you think—” Jaskier began, watching Eskel’s fingers make quick work of the laces on his breeches instead of looking him in the eye. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to play again?”

Jaskier’s softly-worded question tore at Eskel’s heart.

The bard hadn’t spoken much about his music since they’d left Oxenfurt. In fact, Eskel didn’t even know for sure what instruments he played. He’d heard Jaskier sing only once, during that glorious performance in Dijkstra’s office, but Jaskier hadn’t so much as hummed a single tune the whole time they’d known each other. He hadn’t mentioned buying any sheet music or writing implements, much less an instrument. Eskel would have gotten Jaskier whatever he wanted in a heartbeat, of course. But he didn’t want to make some clumsy offer to buy a flute or a drum for Jaskier. Ripping open a wound that had only just begun to heal would only make the scarring worse.

“I hope so,” Eskel said, trying to offer hope while remaining realistic.

He’d never tried to treat burns quite like Jaskier’s before, but he’d learned enough at old Ermion’s clinic back on Skellige to know that burns were some of the toughest injuries to treat. It was almost impossible to predict how—or if—someone would heal. Even the awful scars on his own face weren’t nearly as debilitating as Jaskier’s injuries. It had still taken Eskel almost a decade years to be able to eat, drink, or speak normally again after he’d been injured.

He knew Jaskier would recover. But to what degree, or how long it might take, Eskel simply couldn’t say.

“What instruments do you play?” he asked, careful to phrase the question in the present tense.

“Oh, a few,” Jaskier said non-committedly. “Strings, mostly: the lute, lyre, dulcimer, harp, mandolin and the viola. All sorts of flutes and the flageolet, too. And tabor pipes. I’ve tried to learn the Skelligan bladder pipe, but it’s almost impossible to practice that one without someone coming along to dump a bucket of nightsoil over your head.”

Eskel laughed, quietly amazed at the sheer number of instruments Jaskier had just rattled off. He wasn’t even sure what a flageolet was. Or a dulcimer, for that matter.

He stripped off Jaskier’s breeches, trying and mostly succeeding not to stare at him too lasciviously (just lasciviously enough, if Jaskier’s hot look of appreciation meant anything). He helped Jaskier climb into the tub, surprised when Jaskier caught at his wrist and tugged.

“Join me?” Jaskier said with a sultry grin. He shifted forward to make room in the tub behind him.

Eskel didn’t really consider refusing. He certainly wanted to bathe with Jaskier—wanted nothing more, in point of fact. Being pressed up against Jaskier’s nude body in the tub sounded like heaven. It was just so hard to overcome that instinctive urge to hide himself away. He’d gotten better about undressing around Jaskier over the last week, but it still felt wrong, somehow, to bare his big, scarred body to anyone. Much less a man as lovely and enthralling as Jaskier.

Eskel knew he was still reeling from the sudden shift in their dynamic. He’d barely accepted the fact that Jaskier was willing to let Eskel touch him, to bring him pleasure. That had been overwhelming enough, and then…then this morning.

He still couldn’t believe that Jaskier thought Eskel was beautiful. He’d used words like gorgeous and a work of art to describe Eskel’s scarred, misshapen body. Jaskier had said, There is nothing I want more in this godsforsaken world than to worship every inch of you, and then he’d gone and done it. He’d used that quicksilver tongue and beautiful mouth to bring Eskel the kind of pleasure he hadn’t known since…

Since Geralt, actually. Several lifetimes ago.

He needed some time alone to think. To decide if he could (or should) believe Jaskier. Eskel knew Jaskier wouldn’t outright lie to him, but it still seemed so farfetched, bordering on offensive, to think that a handsome young human like Jaskier could want him.

If only he didn’t want so damn badly to believe it.

Bodies don’t lie, as Jaskier had put it. He’d spoken the truth. Even if Eskel could ignore Jaskier’s sly, lingering looks and sweet blushes, or the fervent way he kissed Eskel, he couldn’t disregard the honeyed scent of Jaskier’s arousal. It was impossible to fool a Witcher’s nose, especially when he was so used to smelling acrid fear or the burning-shite smell of raw hatred.

He'd taken too long to decide if he was going to join Jaskier in the tub. Jaskier was staring up at him with a worried frown wrinkling the skin between his eyebrows. As Eskel watched, Jaskier’s bright blue eyes grew dark with sadness and self-reproach, and Eskel felt Jaskier’s pain like a lance to the heart.

By the gods, what was he doing? Was he really going to risk wounding Jaskier just to spare himself a bit of pain? If Jaskier said that he wanted Eskel, as impossible as that seemed, he’d just have to trust that Jaskier knew his own mind.

Hoping it wasn’t too late, Eskel stripped out of his clothing and slid in behind Jaskier, immediately wrapping his arms around him and drawing Jaskier back to cradle him against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Eskel whispered into Jaskier’s soft cloud of dark hair. The tension in Jaskier’s shoulders had eased as soon as they’d touched, but Eskel didn’t want him to worry. “I’m just not used to this. Any of this,” he admitted, squeezing Jaskier in a brief hug. “I’m just trying to catch up to you.”

“I can wait,” Jaskier said with a watery-sounding laugh, and Eskel could smell the faintest hint of salt. Fuck, Jaskier had been on the brink of tears. He’d almost made Jaskier cry.

He hugged Jaskier close, and kissed the side of his neck. He could feel Jaskier’s human-quick heartbeat fluttering against his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, mumbling it against Jaskier’s neck. “I’m…afraid, I think.”

“Me too,” Jaskier admitted, without any hesitation. “Look at us, a couple of scaredy-cats.” He tilted his head to the side to give Eskel better access to his warm, slightly damp neck. “What are you afraid of?”

Eskel took a deep breath and sucked a kiss into Jaskier's neck, giving himself time to put it into words. But he didn’t have to think: he knew exactly what to say.

“I’m afraid that you don’t really want me.” His heart was pounding louder than Jaskier’s. “I’m having a hard time believing that you do. I’m trying, though.”

Jaskier nodded, as if this childish insecurity made sense.

Anyone else—Vesemir, certainly, and probably even Geralt—would have told him a Witcher ought to face the hard facts of the situation. Longing for what the Fates had already denied every Witcher-claimed child was pointless.

No one will ever want you. That was one lesson they’d all had to learn, over and over again. As if the Grasses had inscribed the words from Monstrum: A Portrayal of Witchers onto their very bones: “A Witcher is a made thing, not a born thing. It will never be loved or wanted. Only tolerated, as all necessary evils are, until it is no longer of use.”

Eskel had never consciously believed those poisoned words, but they’d always seemed to hold a grain of truth regardless.

Now Jaskier knew, but he hadn’t drawn away, or lectured Eskel on knowing his place. Instead, he tilted his head, and brushed his lips against Eskel’s shoulder.

“I want you,” Jaskier said, plainly and simply. Like it was easy. “Guess I’ll just have to keep showing you, until you believe me.”

“That would be—” he started, and this time he did have to stop for a breath. “Please. Please do.”

“Okay.” He could hear the smile in Jaskier’s voice, and the easy promise made Eskel squeeze him again, and kiss his temple. “What are you afraid of?”

Jaskier didn’t reply right away. He jogged his knee in the water; it made a sloshing sound in the tub that accentuated the heavy silence. “That I’m too much," he finally said. "Too loud, too annoying. That you’ll finally get sick of me, and leave me behind.”

Eskel drew a breath, ready to deny the possibility, to reassure Jaskier, but he felt Jaskier squeeze his wrist. “I know. Right now you think it's impossible. I think it's inevitable, because...because it's happened before, with everyone else,” Jaskier said. “But I’m trying.”

Eskel nodded. Something hard and hot lodged itself in his chest, like a lump of burning coal. He swallowed. He could never pull off Jaskier’s irreverent manner, and when he spoke, he was aware that he sounded more serious than when he’d said his wedding vows to Jaskier.

“I'll stay with you, then. Until you believe that I’m not going anywhere.”

They floated in the hot water for a while. He could hear people moving around downstairs. A wagon rumbled by on the road outside, and it began to rain again.

“This is nice,” Jaskier finally said, evidently deciding a change of subject was in order. “I don’t mind travelling and sleeping rough. But wouldn’t it be lovely to always have a hot bath like this at the end of the day?”

“Only if you were there to share it,” Eskel said quietly, aware even as he said it that such a thing wasn’t possible, in the long run. But it was a nice dream.

Jaskier hummmm’d at him and nestled closer.

“There are hot springs at Kaer Morhen,” Eskel said, partly in an effort to distract them both, and partly because this was a rare opportunity for him to speak about his home. “The whole keep was built over the springs. There’re about twenty or thirty different pools, I think. Some of them are boiling hot: too hot for a Witcher, even, but most of them are a perfect temperature for bathing. We were only allowed to use the biggest, coldest pools in the lowest cavern when I was a trainee. Not that I blame the adults for wanting to bathe in peace without hundreds of young adepts splashing around, mind. But after a cold, wet, rainy day running the walls or doing sword drills for hours out in the yard, every one of us would have sold our souls for a hot soak.”

“I assume you and Geralt tried to sneak in and use the warmer pools?”

“At least once a month. We only got caught about half the time.,” Eskel chuckled, wondering when he’d come to feel nostalgic about his bizarre childhood. “Is it all right if I wash your hair?”

“Oh yes,” Jaskier said, twisting to look at Eskel as if he were certifiably insane. “Darling, please: you always have permission to wash my hair.”

Eskel straightened up and guided Jaskier to lean back so he could wet his hair. Once he’d poured enough water over Jaskier’s head to make him look like a damp otter, he tugged Jaskier up to lean back against his chest once more. Eskel lathered up his hair and began to work the soap through Jaskier's soft chestnut waves.

“So aside from illicit use of the hot springs, what other antics did you and Geralt get up to?” Jaskier asked. Eskel glanced down at his face, but Jaskier’s bright blue eyes were closed, his features relaxed and difficult to read.

Eskel frowned at a particularly stubborn knot in Jaskier’s fringe. “Oh, the usual pranks young boys might get up to: stupid dares, filching sweets from the kitchen, playing tricks on our instructors. Geralt and I both took our training a bit too seriously, so we didn’t always muck about. But when we did, we worked as a team. We never fought, even as children. We kept each other safe.”

Right up until the end of their training, anyway. But Eskel didn’t want to think about that.

He trailed his hand down over the gentle curves of Jaskier’s body. He was gaining weight and filling out a bit, but he was still skin-and-bones thin. The idea of getting Jaskier up to Kaer Morhen and spending the whole winter keeping him warm and fed and safe was growing more appealing by the minute.

“Hmmm?” Jaskier said, sounding a little sleepy. “Water’s getting cold.”

“A moment.” Eskel stuck his fingers in the water and drew the sign for Ignii. In a few seconds, the bathwater was steaming once more.

“Oh that’s nice.” Jaskier said, slumping back against him. “Didn’t know you could heat the water while you were in the tub like that.”

“Geralt didn’t show off when you stayed at an inn together?”

Jaskier sobered a little. “To my everlasting regret, I didn’t get a chance to bathe with Geralt. I washed him, sometimes. When he’d let me. But we never shared a tub.”

Eskel wasn’t at all the jealous sort, but he did feel something flare up at the image of Jaskier relaxing like this against Geralt’s pale chest, with the Wolf washing his hair and drawing out those little sighs and moans of pleasure. He wasn’t even sure which of them he’d envy more.

Fuck. He’d made his peace with his feelings for Geralt decades ago. Why was everything getting dredged up to the surface now?

“Want to get out?” he said, trying to distract himself. “If you’re hungry, we can go down for dinner. It’s late enough.”

“No,” Jaskier said, tilting his head back against Eskel’s chest so he could look at him. Or the bottom of his chin, anyway. “I’m not all that hungry for dinner. We ought to take advantage of our comfortable surroundings while we can, I think.”

Jaskier rolled, otter-like, until he was facing Eskel. He draped his thighs over Eskel’s, and pulled himself up until he was spread out over Eskel, stomach-to-stomach and chest-to-chest. By the time Jaskier began to kiss him and grind in his lap, Eskel forgot all about his good intentions about making sure they had something to eat. He’d been hard since Jaskier had announced he ‘wasn’t hungry for dinner’. When Jaskier rutted up against him, he groaned at the slick glide of Jaskier’s hot hard cock against his own.

Eskel took the hint and gathered them both up in his hands. He used a bit of lathered soap to ease the slide of their flesh, and all too soon, he and Jaskier were grunting and gasping almost in tandem. He felt his climax build as Jaskier reared up to kiss him. Their tongues tangled together as Eskel worked his fist to speed them closer to the edge. He shot first, Jaskier a moment behind.

They sank down together, into the hot water and the mindless oblivion of a shared climax.

Eskel was the first to recover. He nudged Jaskier, who only mumbled something and turned away. Eskel shrugged and stood up, taking Jaskier with him. Jaskier shrieked as his wet body met the chilly air: he clung to Eskel and wrapped his skinny legs around Eskel’s hips as Eskel staggered over to the bed. He dumped Jaskier down onto the mattress, not caring if it made the sheets damp, and tossed the coverlet over him. He pinched Jaskier’s wrists together, holding his hands well away from his body and rubbed him down thoroughly even as the bard giggled and complained that Eskel was tickling him 'unfairly'. Once Eskel was satisfied that Jaskier was dry enough, he tucked the blankets around Jaskier and kissed his flushed, swollen lips.

“Going to go down and get us some food,” he said, and Jaskier made a little ‘mmmmph’ noise of acknowledgement before his eyes drifted closed. Eskel smiled at him fondly, and went to pull on some clean clothing. He could hear instruments tuning up downstairs. Jaskier had mentioned a bard was supposed to perform. For a moment, Eskel wondered if he ought to try and convince Jaskier to get up and come down with him.

Better let him nap, Eskel thought. He needs the rest.

He closed the door softly behind him.

***

There wasn’t much of a crowd downstairs. Half the tables were empty, and Eskel was surprised to find that the rest were mainly occupied by non-humans: one table of haflings, two more full of dwarves, and another was occupied by a handful of elves doing their best to look innocuous under the baleful eye of the few humans scattered among the remaining tables.

Eskel bellied up to put in his dinner order, and bought another ale after the proprietress gave him a pointed glare.

“You want to stay and listen, you best keep drinking,” she said. Eskel turned and tilted his head. Did he want to listen? The bard onstage was working his way through an old ballad about Radovid I, accompanied by a shrill, off-key lutist and a bored-looking harp player.

What Eskel had told Jaskier earlier was true: he wasn’t much of a music aficionado. Nor was he any judge of musical talent. Oh, Eskel could sit and listen to someone sing or play an instrument for a bit longer than most of his brothers (all of whom tolerated it better than Geralt) but he rarely bothered. Even listening to a good performer usually wasn’t worth the feeling of overstimulation that followed, and the bard warbling his way through 'Radovid, O Radovid' certainly didn’t justify it.

The bard was a thin, dark-haired man with dark skin, curly black hair and an overgrown goatee. He was dressed in a well-tailored and clearly expensive silk doublet that had seen better days, as it was looking a bit threadbare and stained. The bard was handsome enough, but something about his haughty expression and the pinched quality to his face suggested he wasn’t a terribly happy person. He didn’t appear to be any more thrilled to be onstage than his backing musicians, and he kept shooting dirty looks at the table of elves near the back, all of whom were quietly drinking and minding their own business. Yet the bard acted as if they were being as raucous and disrespectful as the dwarves, who were playing a very loud game of Gwent and didn’t seem to know—or care—that there was someone onstage attempting to deliver a thoroughly mediocre musical performance.

The whole scene made Eskel that much more eager to eat quickly so he could slide naked under the covers with Jaskier once more.

As Eskel waited for his dinner, he watched the bard try to sing louder over the Gwent-playing dwarves, all of whom only became more boisterous in response. They all began to shout louder over the ‘singing,’ which inspired the bard to sing louder. This game of musical chicken continued for a few minutes, and unsurprisingly it was the bard who broke first. He came to an abrupt stop and made a sharp gesture with his hand to silence his musicians. The lutenist was slow to notice and broke off after few more off-key notes and a final discordant twang that made Eskel wince.

“Excuse me!” the bard called to the table of dwarves. “If you’d be so kind as to quiet down. I am trying to sing the praises of His Majesty King Radovid I up here!”

“Aye, we know what you’re trying to do, mate,” one of the dwarves yelled back. “But ye ain’t succeeding. So we’ve all decided it’s best to ignore you. Savvy?”

The other dwarves and the table of halflings clapped and cheered in response. Very little united the nonhuman races of the Continent, but shaming bad musical performances was one of the few things that everyone rallied around. Even Witchers weren’t immune. (Eskel had already decided to go find a quiet seat in a dark corner and watch the drama unfold).

To his slight consternation, the table in the darkest corner was already occupied. The man in his preferred seat wore a long, dark cloak that obscured his build. The cloak’s hood was draw up, casting his face in shadows.

Eskel resigned himself to the second-darkest table. He resolved to keep an eye on the stranger: they had yet to identify Dijkstra’s tail, and the mysterious man seemed a good candidate. His cloak was strategically draped to disguise the line of a longsword on his hip, and Eskel assumed that he was likely carrying several daggers as well. Being well-armed didn’t automatically mean someone was dangerous—Eskel himself always had at least three blades strapped to his person, plus the one in his boot—but something about the hooded figure struck Eskel as ‘suspicious.’ So now he had two interesting things to occupy himself while he ate his dinner: a potential spy, and a rather pitiful excuse for a bard who had no idea how to handle a heckler.

“You are being extremely rude and disrespectful!” the bard shouted at the dwarf. His shrill, high-pitched voice was already on its way to a full-blown shriek. The faint whistle of a perforated septum didn’t help, either. Apparently the bard was a fisstech addict, too.

Eskel wolfed down his watery stew as the bard first pleaded for silence, and then demanded it. The dwarves ignored him until the bard stamped his foot and uttered a rather ill-advised, “Well, if you don’t care for a ballad about good King Radovid, what would suit you?”

The dwarf who'd spoken earlier leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard. “Why don’t ye try playing something entertaining?” he suggested with a smirk. “No one wants to listen to royalist propaganda when they’re tryin’ to get soused. Play somethin’ lively, like a real bard!”

“I am entirely open to suggestions,” the bard sniffed, examining at his fingernails.

“How about somethin’ by Jaskier, the Witcher’s Bard?” The suggestion had come from one of the elves.

“Aye, that’s the stuff!” the lead dwarf exclaimed. “Play one of Jaskier’s tunes!”

The bard, for some reason, seemed to take great offense at the suggestion. His jaw tensed, and he scoffed loudly, “I don’t care to play that populist drivel. But even if I did, I wouldn’t dare sully the instruments of these good men by asking them to play music penned by a traitor and a convicted criminal.”

“Ah who cares, he’s a damned good songwriter!" the dwarf argued. "'Least he doesn’t try to pass off dusty old ballads as ‘entertainment’,” he shot back. Eskel had to shove a spoonful of stew into his mouth to hide his grin.

“Ugh, fine. Fine!” The bard relented with a dramatic flap of his hands. “I’ll play the man’s latest insult to good taste. Will that please you, Master Dwarf?”

The dwarf shouted back something in the affirmative, though it was accompanied by a rude gesture that suggested he probably wouldn’t be appeased by a single song. The bard was too busy rattling off instructions to his suddenly alarmed-looking lutenist. The harp player also looked a bit like a nekker caught off-guard and far from its nest. From their reactions, Eskel guessed that the song was a bit more musically complex than the bard had implied.

While the bard dithered around with his backing musicians, Eskel finished off the stew and leaned back to enjoy his ale. He was eager to hear one of Jaskier’s songs, even if was performed by this jackass. He’d heard ‘Toss a Coin’ already, of course, as well as a handful of other songs. But he hadn’t known Jaskier then, and could only half-recall the melodies and a few of the lyrics. (Except for ‘Toss a Coin’ – every single Witcher of Kaer Morhen knew the words by heart, if only because they tortured poor Geralt with it every winter).

The bard finally retook the stage, and waited for the dwarves to pause their card game. Other side conversations died down, and the bard finally began to sing. The first few lines of the song were performed acapella, which made it easier for Eskel to comprehend the lyrics. He registered the biting sarcasm and bitterness of the first few lines, and how they papered over a thoroughly broken heart.

The song was so very Jaskier, down to the irreverent references to 'your swords and your stupid hair,' that it was easy for Eskel to imagine his pretty husband striding across the stage and belting out a plaintive, 'Did you ever even care?' while a much more professionally-arranged backing band built to the devastating chorus:

“After everything we did, we saw
You turned your back on me
What for d'you yearn?
Watch that butcher burn.”

Eskel felt his whole body go cold. That line was a knife to the heart, and the stabbing pain continued through to the final verse of the song, a soaring choral repetition of, “Burn, butcher, burn!” that faded into a sotto-voiced “Watch me burn all the memories of you.”

The bard’s hamfisted delivery of the song was all wrong, of course, and his vocal embellishments were totally unnecessary (and bordering on embarrassing). Under other circumstances, Eskel would have laughed when the unpleasant little man froze in an ‘angry-fist-to-the-sky’ pose as the last strains of the music faded away.

But all Eskel could hear was the howling of the wind on a lonely, deserted mountaintop in Caingorn. For a moment the noise faded into the whistling sound of a whip and the echoing crack of the lash against flesh, followed shortly by the sound of Eskel’s own heart shattering like glass.

The audience’s lukewarm applause seemed to have energized the bard. He beamed at the sparse crowd, and then something at the far end of the common room attracted his attention. His smirking grin grew wider.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what a coincidence! Here he is, fresh off a prison sentence for smuggling and treason: the author of Burn Butcher Burn himself, Jaskier the Bard!”

The smatter of applause died off into confused murmuring. Then the elves and a few of the dwarves broke out into excited whispers. Eskel stirred enough to turn around. Jaskier stood in the entryway, backlit by yellow lantern-light.

His face had gone white as a sheet, and he was sweating profusely. Eskel could smell the sour stench of fear wafting off him all the way across the room. Jaskier was staring up at the goatee’d bard on the stage like he’d seen a ghost. Then his panicked gaze flicked away, only to land on Eskel.

Jaskier weaved through the tavern towards him like a man in a daze. Eskel could feel the weight of the whole audience’s attention on them both as Jaskier picked his way slowly towards Eskel. Eskel waited until the last moment to stand. He’d anticipated the surge of shocked whispers as the audience took in his scarred face and yellow eyes. There were a few whispered variants of That’s a Witcher! before the noises of the crowd faded and Jaskier drew near.

Eskel realized only now, when it was already too late, how the rest of the world dimmed and faded away when Jaskier was around. Noises and scents that usually overwhelmed him no longer seemed to even register. He had eyes only for Jaskier, and so it took him a moment to register what he was saying through the high-pitched ringing that seemed to reverberate in his ears after the song had ended.

That godsdamned song. It was a lover’s ballad, and obviously penned in the wake of heartbreak and grief.

Jaskier was still in love with Geralt.

He should have realized. All the pieces were there, but he’d thought it just been some boyhood crush that had withered under Geralt’s rejection. Jaskier had said that his feelings for Geralt died out after the brothel, hadn’t he? He’d given up hope after Geralt’s bizarre gambit about the Witcher Order’s supposed disapproval of ‘love between men’ had run its course.

And yet, the anguish in that song, the heartbreak…

Jaskier had never stopped loving Geralt. It hadn’t been some youthful fixation: Jaskier had been in love with the Wolf for seventeen years. He’d followed Geralt to the ends of the earth, treated his wounds, built up his campfires, bathed him and talked to him and loved him in whatever narrow way Geralt had allowed.

And then Jaskier had been punted away like a flea-ridden dog. That’s what the song had been about. Jaskier had told him, but Eskel—like always—had only heard what he wanted to hear. That Jaskier had gotten over his youthful fixation and moved on. That he’d been hurt by Geralt’s rejection, not destroyed by it.

And yet, the song indicated otherwise. That song was about heartbreak, and hatred. Jaskier had called Geralt a butcher. Gods knew, Geralt deserved it for the way he’d treated Jaskier, but Jaskier hadn’t been there after Blavikin. He hadn’t been the one to finally find Geralt, after a year of fruitless searching, at that ice-encrusted hunter’s cabin in the wilds of western Kovir.

He hadn’t seen how emaciated Geralt had been, or wrapped up his cold, white toes gone black with frostbite. Jaskier hadn’t been the one to search desperately for a heartbeat, praying he wasn’t too late oh gods too late. He hadn’t had to fight for Geralt’s life, to yank him back from the very brink of death, to build a fire and curl naked around his skeletal frame, and listen to heartbroken whispers about a princess of the black sun and how badly Geralt had failed her.

Butcher. If Jaskier only knew the truth.

He’d known enough, apparently, to use it in the song. That line had been meant for Geralt to hear. Jaskier had wanted those words to wound him, to pierce his soul the instant the White Wolf entered a tavern or sat down to lunch at some inn. A poisoned barb that would pierce Geralt any time a bard happened to be playing a catchy new song by the famous Jaskier.

If Geralt had heard it, he might have gone straight back to that cabin in western Kovir and finished the job Eskel had interrupted.

“Eskel, please. I can explain.”

Jaskier was staring at him, blue eyes wide and terrified. Eskel couldn’t look at him: he kept seeing Geralt’s face in some no-name town, hunted and exhausted with a traumatized princess in tow, overhearing Burn Butcher Burn! and crumbling under the weight of a half-century of guilt and heartbreak.

“Don’t,” Eskel said, in a voice as icy and unforgiving as that abandoned cabin in Kovir where he’d found Geralt doing his godsdamned best to kill himself. “Just…don’t.”

He was up and out the door before Jaskier could utter another word.

***

Jaskier felt numb. He watched Eskel cut through the crowd and head out the door in a half-dozen strides, propelled by an anger Jaskier had never seen before in his shy, gentle Witcher. He felt the hurt, helpless rage tearing through their bond, the vitriol almost tangible, like a sharp slap to the face.

Or a punch to the gut.

He wrapped his arms around his middle and sagged, fighting against tears. What the fuck had happened? They’d been rolling around in the bath upstairs an hour ago, laughing and kissing each other. Now Eskel had stormed off, and Jaskier felt like his whole body had just turned into a solid block of ice.

Jaskier stumbled his way over to a table and sank down into a chair, still reeling from the abrupt shift. Even if he hadn’t felt that rage through the spellbond, one look at Eskel’s face and that snarled, Don’t would have made it clear: Eskel was finished with him. Whatever had been building between them, the warmth and affection, had been snuffed out in a single moment.

All because of that godsdamned song.

Jaskier shivered and stared into the middle distance, ignoring the curious murmurs of the tavern crowd. Someone approached his table, even spoke to him, but Jaskier just ignored them. They weren’t Eskel, so what did it matter?

He finally blinked and looked up when whoever-it-was touched his shoulder. It was a mistake. Of course he recognized the curly-haired, goateed bard who’d just thoroughly butchered Burn Butcher Burn.

Jaskier groaned and put his head in his bandaged hands. “Hello, Valdo.”

“Julian, such a pleasure to see you again!” said Valdo Marx, troubadour of Cedaris and general all-around prick. “I ought to thank you for the dramatics just now. Certainly quite the cherry on top of a smashing performance, if I do say so myself.”

“You would,” Jaskier muttered, but Valdo breezed on by, as he always did, as if Jaskier hadn’t even spoken. He dropped into the empty chair next to Jaskier and snapped his fingers at the proprietress behind the bar.

“A bottle of wine, please, my good woman!” he called out. The general taproom din was building up now that the musical performance was over, but Jaskier registered it only as an annoying background hum, a meaningless buzz of noise against the sound of his heart shattering all over again.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Valdo said, because he was a stupid git who’d never learned to read a fucking room, “but that was a Witcher, yes? Although not your famous White Wolf. Such a pity; I’ve been dying to meet your monstrous muse. Still, that creature was certainly an interesting-looking specimen,” Valdo said, miming the four deep grooves of Eskel’s scars on his own smooth, unmarred cheek.

“Can you please just finish your set—or whatever that was supposed to be—and leave me alone?” Jaskier squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Oh come now, a bottle or two of wine will fix you right up,” Valdo said, already pouring out a generous glass for Jaskier. “Drink with me. And as you’re not using that talented mouth for anything else right now…”

“I’m on a sabbatical from performing,” Jaskier bit out.

“Oh yes, I’d heard,” Valdo nodded. He held his wineglass up to the light, scrutinizing the reddish-pink liquid. “Twenty-five years to life in the Oxenfurt gaol, wasn’t it? Or, weren’t they just going to hang you?”

Jaskier was feeling a headache coming on. He hoped it wasn’t the curse already kicking in to punish him for upsetting Eskel.

He groped for the glass of wine Valdo had poured and downed it in a single gulp. “Please don’t pretend like you actually give a shit about me, Valdo. You’re just looking for gossip.”

“Perhaps,” Valdo said with a shrug. Apparently the wine had passed muster enough for Valdo to take a slow, testing sip from his glass.

“It pains me to see you in such a state, Julian. You were always so well-favoured by everyone at the Academy. Didn’t old Professor Cumberland predict that you would secure a court appointment before you turned twenty? And look at you now: forty-odd years old, a convicted criminal, and still trailing around after Witchers like a puppy begging for scraps. What a tragic waste of talent.”

Jaskier would normally have returned Valdo’s salvo with a biting comment of his own—why was the great Valdo Marx reduced to playing in some third-rate taproom in Rinde, huh? Clearly his brilliant career was also on the decline!

But at the moment, Jaskier was too defeated to bother. What was the point of defending himself to a cretin like Marx? He was absolutely right: Jaskier was pathetic.

He just wanted to sleep. But if he went back up to the room, he had a feeling Eskel would be there, waiting ‘to talk’. He was going to announce that he’d had enough. That he was leaving Jaskier, and that he wouldn’t be coming back.

“It was only a song,” Jaskier muttered into his cup of wine. “I wrote it for myself, really. Came pouring out of me like blood from a wound. I didn’t expect it to be a hit.” He threw back another glass of wine, and motioned for Valdo to refill his glass.

“Heartbreak sells,” Valdo said. It was the second time Marx had been right in the twenty-odd years Jaskier had known him. It was downright unnerving.

He glanced up at Valdo, who (as always) looked he’d just happened to swallow a lemon the moment Jaskier had appeared.

“And what would you know about heartbreak?” Jaskier said, with something approaching a fraction of his usual cutting edge. “The only thing you’ve ever truly loved—aside from a snort of fresh fisstech—is yourself.”

“Well, I know something about disappointing my loved ones. Especially my father,” Valdo said. “You seem to know something about that too, if I recall.”

He refilled Jaskier’s glass for the third or fourth time. Jaskier immediately resolved to give up counting. Getting thoroughly soused seemed to be a good idea, especially since Marx had just brought up his father. Fucking hell.

“But I’ve learned how to avoid getting attached,” Valdo continued smoothly. “That’s your problem, Julian: you’ve always felt things so deeply. Makes you hang on too tight, and you end up crushing the life out of people. That’s what happened to your Witcher, wasn’t it?”

“Which one?” Jaskier couldn’t choke down his bitter laugh. “I suppose you’re right.” A troubling development. He’d never heard Valdo Marx say anything sensible before, and now three times in a single conversation? Madness.

They both sipped quietly at their (surprisingly good) wine. The silence was oddly companionable, considering their history. Jaskier finally sighed and squinted at Valdo. A burden shared was a burden halved, and all that.

“You know, I thought I was finally getting it right. Eskel—the big strapping fellow—is wonderful. We’re married, even. But I think I just managed to fuck it up anyway, without trying.”

“Then it’s not you: it’s destiny,” Valdo said, finally emptying his own cup. “Wait, did you say married?”

***

Eskel walked aimlessly for a while, turning down one random moonlit country road and then another. He wished it was still raining: cold wind and muddy roads would suit his mood far better than the pleasant warmth of a summer’s eve.

His anger had burned itself out almost as soon as he’d left the inn. One look at Jaskier’s pale, guilty face had been enough to strip away the hot anger he'd felt on Geralt's behalf. Now, only icy fear was left, fear of what might happen—might have already happened—if Geralt heard that song alone and unprepared.

Just as troubling was the undeniable evidence of Jaskier’s true feelings for Geralt. No one wrote a song like that about someone they thought of as a mere friend. Jaskier had been carrying a torch for Geralt since his late teens, and it went far beyond the sort of misguided puppy-love Jaskier had described.

Eskel wished he could get drunk like a normal man. Hell, even having a good cry would have offered some kind of release. Instead, his only option was to stomp around the countryside and brood over all the things he could never have.

Eventually he came to a crossroads, aware that he ought to loop back and return to the inn. He’d left so abruptly, and he’d been gone for over an hour now. Jaskier would be worried.

Eskel set out on the road back to town, but caught a glimpse of an old stone tower just above the treeline.

This must be the mage’s tor, the one the elven stable boy had described. It was far too late to stop by and ask about the ringbound curse, of course, but Eskel thought it might be worth doing a bit of reconnaissance. The boy’s warning about the mage not being particularly friendly to non-humans wasn’t something Eskel could ignore, especially not when Jaskier’s safety was tied to his own well-being.

He left the road and took a narrow deer path through the forest towards the tower, moving soundlessly, his footfalls cushioned by a soft carpet of moss. The forest was oddly quiet: the songbirds were asleep in their nests by now, but bats, owls and other birds-of-prey should be out hunting for their breakfast. Yet the woods were silent.

That had to be a result of the mage’s presence. Animals tended to be skittish around strong magic.

Eskel curled his fingers around his medallion, trying to sense cantrips or other wards the mage might have placed to fend off any intruders. If he were powerful enough, the mage might even sense Eskel coming from inside the tower. He recited a short spell of concealment and drew on a layer of mental protection, just to be safe: he didn’t want an unknown party reading his thoughts.

When he finally reached the old stone tower, Eskel extended his senses—both magical and mutagenic—to see if he could feel the mage’s presence. The old tor looked deserted, but that could be an illusion. He crept around the base, careful not to touch the stone wall or step too close to the tower’s foundations. When he finally reached the door, he saw that it was recently replaced, and locked and warded against intruders.

Eskel stood back to see if he could spy any lights shining from the windows on this side of the tower, and almost stepped on a cat.

The feline had been sleeping in the shadow of an old oak tree. Eskel should have smelled her, but he’d been too focused on sensing the mage’s Chaos. The moment Eskel stepped close, the cat jolted upright and let out a warning yowl. She hissed and arched her back, tail puffed up like a Zerrikanian spike-plant.

He muttered the incantation he’d memorized long ago, charging it with his own abundant Chaos.

Apologies, Missus, Eskel projected at her, hoping she’d be willing to converse with him. Cats were always tricky: unlike dogs and horses, they didn’t like being approached by strange humans, and cats usually hated Witchers on sight. Sometimes being faultlessly polite and deferential worked, but more often they refused to engage with him at all.

Forgive my clumsiness, Eskel said to the cat. Your lovely black coat concealed you. That must be quite an advantage for a hunter.

I suppose, she sniffed. Her posture relaxed incrementally as she stared up at Eskel, though she continued to bare her fangs. It’s a disadvantage in the daylight, but the night is mine.

He squinted at the cat, aware of an odd buzz of static that always seemed to accompany a conversation with a feline. It usually gave him a headache, but this wouldn’t be a long talk. He had to get back to Jaskier.

Do you know the wizard who calls this tower home?

I do, she said, slit-pupil green eyes gleaming in the dark. It was eerily like talking to a fellow Witcher.

Is he trustworthy?

He’d never heard a cat laugh, but that seemed to be the sound she was projecting at him. Of course not. No humans are ‘trustworthy’. Chaos Thieves least of all.

Right, chaos-thief must mean ‘magic user’. Her description wasn’t inaccurate. He’d heard of unscrupulous mages who stole the Chaos from animals to work complex spells, sometimes draining the poor creatures to the brink of death. Or past it.

If I ask for his help, Eskel projected, what price might he name in return?

The little black cat looked up at him. She seemed to be wondering if he was some lost human-kitten who’d bumped his head.

Too high, Not-Cat, she said. The Chaos Theif in the tower is cruel and black-hearted. He sets traps in the woods, tortures songbirds, fouls the spring with blood and rotting offal. I go hungry. He is far worse than most Not-Cats. You should not trust him.

The feline’s warning seemed clear enough, but she pushed it to Eskel with images of vicious-looking steel traps, small birds flopping about with broken wings. The mage appeared to be a sadist, the sort of man who enjoyed the suffering of smaller, defenseless creatures.

Do you know the Not-Cat’s human name? Eskel asked. He’d met many mages, both Ascended and not. Chances were Eskel knew him, if only by reputation.

The Chaos-Theif calls himself ‘Stregobor,’ said the cat.

Eskel thanked her, and took off at a run back towards Rinde.

***

Chapter Text

“I still can’t believe you’re married to a Witcher,” Valdo said, for possibly the third time. Jaskier had just spent the half-hour explaining everything to Valdo: his work as the Sandpiper, getting arrested for treason, Eskel’s timely arrival at the prison, and their ringbound marriage. Yet Valdo seemed oddly fixated on Jaskier’s marital status.

“What’s wrong with that?” Jaskier said, nodding when Valdo offered to refill his wineglass. If Valdo was the one paying, Jaskier was happy to drink his fill. “Y'have something against Witchers?”

“Who doesn’t?” Valdo asked with a condescending snort. Jaskier had hated that particular snort since their second-year astronomy class. “Witchers are like a cross between nightsoil men and those boys who make a living hunting for rats down by the docks in Cidaris. Useful if you have a monster problem, perhaps, but Witchers are just so dreadfully common. Do you even know what sort of family your beloved husband comes from?”

Jaskier couldn’t help but make a condescending snort of his own. “Gods, Valdo, you think I’d give a toss about Eskel’s lineage? He quite literally saved my life by marrying me. Asking if his family name pops up in Brown’s Peerage of the Continent wasn’t exactly a priority.”

“I suppose,” Valdo tipped his cup in acknowledgement. “You weren’t very likely to make a suitable noble match to begin with. I’d bet Pris that you’d end up married to some poor prostitute or a tavern wench ages ago. Priscilla thought you’d end up with another musician, at least.”

“Aww Pris,” Jaskier said with a fond smile. “That’s quite sweet of her. She’s always been such a dear and loyal friend. I must admit that the idea of marrying a fellow musician is a bit—”

“Horrifying?”

“I was going to say ghastly,” Jaskier said with a shudder, “but then, I’ve erred before when it comes to matters of the heart. I suppose anything’s possible.”

“And what about this Eskel, then? You looked quite crushed when he left. I take it that this isn’t just a marriage of convenience?”

Jaskier stared down into his cup, which seemed to have magically refilled itself again. “I don’t think it is,” he admitted slowly. “Not on my part, anyway. Eskel is just so kind, you know? And patient. Thoughtful. Generous to a fault. All qualities one must have in abundance if they plan to tolerate my company longer than an evening or two.”

“You ought to be kinder to yourself,” Valdo said, which shocked Jaskier so much he almost dropped his cup. “You really aren’t that intolerable, Julian. I know we haven’t always had the warmest of friendships—”

“Valdo, you plagiarized my work! Then you accused me of stealing from you, and they almost expelled me from Oxenfurt for it!”

Valdo shrugged. “Water under the bridge,” he said with a little wave that made Jaskier (briefly) consider going to fish another djinn out of the River Rinde. “It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

“Only because Professor Dougal realized you were hopeless at the diminished seventh, and couldn’t maintain a barred E-flat major on the lute if your life depended on it!”

“Yes, well, thankfully Professor Dougal was there to champion your cause,” Valdo muttered. “But back to the topic at hand: you were gushing about your new husband’s ability to tolerate you, I believe. Which seems rather a low bar to clear.”

A fair point. Jaskier mentally added another tick to his ‘Valdo is correct, the universe must be collapsing’ theory.

“But it sounds like he has a few other positive qualities, I suppose.”

“Oh, more than ‘a few’,” Jaskier continued loyally. He was feeling a bit tipsy, yes, but he was aware it wasn’t just the wine loosening his tongue. It was nice to talk to someone, especially about Eskel.

“I know he looks rather fierce,” Jaskier said with a besotted little smile, “but that’s just his resting Witcher face. He’s actually very sweet, and not just to me! Eskel’s genuinely nice to everyone. Even when people treat him poorly, just because he’s a Witcher who happens to have a scar or two. I think he’s quite handsome, actually.”

Another thought occurred to him, and Jaskier—lulled by wine and the familiar pattern of gossiping with Valdo—spoke before he could second-guess himself. “Also, unlike certain other Witchers, Eskel never pretends to be cold, or scary, or uncaring, or heartless. He’s just…himself. Always. A kind and decent person. You have no idea how much that means to me, after—well. It means a lot.”

“Apparently,” Valdo muttered, giving Jaskier an oddly appraising look. “You know, in the past, whenever you weren’t gushing about your big, burly Witcher—the other one, I suppose—you’d be writing odes to your paramour-of-the-week’s gorgeous tits or their marble-cast ass or their glorious eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk so much about a man’s personality before.”

Another point to Valdo, Jaskier thought grimly. Yes, he might have been a bit shallow regarding his previous paramours. Or perhaps—far more likely—he’d never spent enough time with a bedmate to learn more than a few bare facts about them. That they were willing and able (and happy!) to spend a few pleasant hours with him was usually all Jaskier needed (or cared) to know. Perhaps he’d been blinded by his feelings for Geralt? That made sense, at least to his wine-soaked brain. Geralt was a bit like the moon passing in front of the sun, casting everyone and everything else in his shadow. Compared to Geralt, other people seemed like dim, unfocused shapes, bodies to briefly cling to, or caress, but only there as a temporary panacea to loneliness and his sexual appetites. Everyone else had only been a pale shadow of what—who—Jaskier had truly wanted.

Until that awful day on the mountain, when the eclipse had ended and bright, unflinching sunlight had illuminated the truth: Geralt had been the illusion, the fantasy Jaskier had constructed over all those years together. He’d projected his friendship and love onto a man who’d barely been able to tolerate his presence.

Gods, this was why Jaskier didn’t like to drink anymore: it made him so fucking morose.

“Actually, you’re right,” Jaskier said, taking another big gulp of wine, “I haven’t said a word about Eskel’s physical qualities, which are…substantial. Granted, we’ve only just recently ‘consummated’ the marriage, so to speak. But gods, Valdo, his cock. I ought to have mentioned it earlier, which was a gross oversight on my part because it is simply impossible to overlook! It’s—”

Jaskier sketched out a rough distance between his hands that inspired a rather scandalized and slightly envious look from Valdo.

“Say no more,” Valdo interrupted, looking a little shaken. He also took a big gulp of wine. “I’m very glad to hear your Witcher has some delightful qualities, in addition to a few more, err, monstrous attributes that happily manifest in a way you find appealing.”

“Oh for Miletele’s sake, nothing about Eskel is ‘monstrous’!” Jaskier put his wine glass down with a dull ‘thump’ so he could gesticulate more effectively with both bandaged hands. “He happens to be extremely well-endowed, yes. And I do find that appealing. But neither of those facts are ‘monstrous’, despite what some wrinkled old Hierarch of the Eternal Fire might claim.”

“Jaskier, you know I don’t put any stock in that lunatic’s ramblings,” Valdo countered. “Given that you and I have similar preferences, it would be rather hypocritical of me, at the very least.”

“Oh? And when has a little hypocrisy ever bothered you?”

“That’s not fair,” Valdo said, but he only sounded tired now, and more than a little drunk himself.

Valdo was getting old, Jaskier realized. Yes, they were roughly the same age, but Jaskier still looked decades younger. There was silver threading through in Valdo’s dark curls, and tired lines at the corners of his eyes after years of squinting down at music tablature in candlelit ballrooms. He probably needed reading glasses now, though of course Valdo would be far too vain to ever use them.

“Look, I’m delighted that your new husband is a nice person with a big cock who makes you happy. You deserve to be happy, Julian.”

Jaskier frowned at Valdo—or the Valdo-shaped outline in front of him. He tried to calculate how many cups of wine he’d had as he prompted, “But?”Because there was always a ‘but’ with Valdo Marx.

“But,” Valdo added, “I am a little concerned. The unique circumstances of your marriage mean you’re very dependent on this Witcher. In more ways than one.”

“Such as?” Jaskier said, somehow keeping his tone light despite the mixture of fear and anger he could feel boiling up within.

“Well, your injuries mean you have to rely on him for everything, for one. You’re naturally more disposed to like someone who is literally dressing and feeding you every day. You’d also have a strong reason to make sure he likes you, because without him you’d be all but helpless. You’ve always had a tendency to be a bit of a people-pleaser, and—forgive me for saying so—you’re a bit of a chameleon. You change yourself to suit your audience.

“I’m guilty of it too,” Valdo said wryly. “All us performers do it, to a certain extent. But you have some very compelling reasons to make sure he likes you, even if you have to suppress aspects of your personality to suit him. So how could you know if he even likes you, much less loves you, if he’s never seen the ‘real’ you?”

Jaskier went silent for a solid ten seconds, and simply blinked at Valdo, stunned. Eventually,  Jaskier couldn’t help but laugh.

“Valdo, Eskel has been bathing me, wiping soup off my chin, and literally helping me take a shit every day for the last month. I assure you, he’s seen more than enough of the ‘real’ me. And I haven’t exactly been at my best over the last few months. I was so weak and so ill that I wasn’t even capable of thinking about sex for the first weeks of our marriage, let alone planning out how I’d seduce Eskel.”

“Fair enough,” Valdo said, although he didn’t look as if he actually believed Jaskier. “And the spell?”

“What about it?” Jaskier might have sounded a bit more defensive than he should, but his feelings about the spell were a bit…complicated. He wasn’t eager to dig into it with anyone, least of all Valdo Marx.

“Look, you told me yourself: the ringbound curse is a powerful binding spell. It keeps you near him. It rewards you for touching Eskel. It punishes you for being apart. What’s to say that your feelings for Eskel aren’t either the direct product of the spell, or the inevitable consequence of being magically tied to someone and compelled to share their bed?”

“It’s not—” Jaskier closed his eyes, and spoke through clenched teeth. “You’re misconstruing it. Binding spells, even powerful ones, can’t compel you to have feelings for someone. Binding spells can only influence actions.”

“According to whom?”

“Eskel,” Jaskier said. His head was swimming now, and he felt suddenly nauseous from all the wine. “He’s had a lot of experience with all sorts of curses. Curses and curse-breaking are practically a Witcher’s bread-and-butter, and Eskel had a year of formal instruction at Ban Ard on top of whatever they teach in Witcher school,” Jaskier added, unsure now of who exactly he was trying to convince.

He drew in a deep breath. “And before you say it, no. Eskel wouldn’t lie to me about any of this. Why would he?”

Valdo sighed and looked at Jaskier like he was a very small, naive child. “Oh Jaskier. Surely you could see why some lonely old Witcher might like to have some handsome, biddable boy around? That was the entire appeal of these sorts of marriages back under the old law. It puts you—and only you—in an inherently vulnerable position. If he was cruel to you, or abusive, you couldn’t just leave, could you? Because the spell would kill you if you tried to run. You’d quite literally die without him! Even if the spell isn’t actively making you think you care for him, can't you see the danger you’re in?”

Jaskier felt a sharp, dizzying pain shoot up through his hands, and realized it was because he was clenching his fists. He forced himself to relax and shake out his fingers.

Oblivious to Jaskier’s seething anger, Valdo carried on.

“Listen, you clearly think very highly of this Witcher—deserved or not—but you cannot afford to overlook the fact that he could be taking advantage of you. He might have far more nefarious plans lined up! What if he were to take you back and share you with all his fellow Witchers? Or sell you? Even if he’s not planning to exploit you, he still has far too much power over you. I say this as a friend who cares about you,” Valdo said, groping for his arm.

As ridiculous as Valdo’s ‘theory’ was—most of which Jaskier had already mulled over and discounted—he heard the ring of sincerity in what Valdo was saying. Valdo certainly believed it, and no wonder. He’d only ever heard horror stories about Witchers stealing children and extorting vulnerable, superstitious peasants for money. Valdo had never met Eskel; he’d never even met Geralt, and it was blindingly obvious (or so Jaskier thought) that both men were genuinely good people who only ever tried to help others. Both Geralt and Eskel had a far keener moral sense and distaste for exploitation and injustice than the average person, a quality Jaskier suspected most Witchers probably shared. Besides, Jaskier already knew that Eskel wasn’t motivated by whatever selfish intentions Valdo was fretting about.

Jaskier had seen and heard it for himself, all those weeks ago in Djikstra’s office. He’d heard the spymaster offer Eskel an impossible choice between two evils: refusing to wed Jaskier would have been the same as killing him outright, but saving him through the ringbound marriage meant Eskel would be trapping Jaskier under the power of a death curse. There’d been no clean, moral option in Djikstra’s offer that day: Eskel had simply chosen the lesser of two evils. He’d saved Jaskier, and it felt like Eskel was still saving him: from losing his hands, from starvation, pain, loneliness and heartbreak, and (recently) from sexual frustration. All of it had come at a price—moral, and literal—to Eskel himself, but he’d only ever expressed regret at how unfair everything was to Jaskier.

Jaskier still had a few doubts, but none of them were about Eskel or the man’s intentions. He just wasn’t sure if what he was starting to feel for Eskel was some complicated mix of lust, affection, and gratitude, or something much deeper. But Valdo’s question felt like a violation of the bond forming between them. It felt like Valdo was, yet again, trying to manipulate Jaskier’s self-doubt to his own purposes. He just didn’t understand why.

“Valdo, I appreciate your concern,” he said slowly, keeping a careful lid on his own simmering anger. “But the only thing stopping Eskel from walking away—or turning me into his personal sex slave, or loaning me out to his ‘Witcher friends’, or whatever else you think he’s capable of—is his conscience. His sense of duty. And his genuine care for me, which I trust far more than your supposed ‘interest’ in my situation. Why the fuck are you asking me all of this?” Jaskier bit out. “You’re trying to make me doubt myself, or him. But why?”

Valdo had gone pale under his stupid goatee, and he looked for a moment like he wanted to throttle Jaskier, or throw up, or a combination of the two. Jaskier remembered that look from the academic tribunal 20 years ago, when Professor Dougal had handed Valdo a lute and asked him to play the song he claimed Jaskier had ‘stolen’ from him. When Valdo had said he was too nervous to play without the sheet music, the professor had asked him just to demonstrate the third verse, the one with the notoriously difficult barred E-Major chord.

He'd flubbed it, of course. Jaskier had gone after him, and had run through the entire song without sheet music, even embellishing it in certain places. And of course he’d nailed the E-Major.

They hadn’t spoken for almost a decade after that tribunal. Jaskier had—very gradually—learned to tolerate Valdo, at least for Pris’ sake, but then he’d lay down in a nekkar’s nest for Priscilla. In the intervening years, he'd never forgotten that Valdo was still a snake, a liar, and a cheat.

“I’m—I was only trying to express my concern about this preposterous marriage,” Valdo said, clearly desperate to salvage this situation. Jaskier ran back through their conversation in his head, wondering where he’d slipped up, what he’d missed.

“Why are you here, Valdo?” he asked. He was still a little drunk, but now he was exhausted too, and ashamed for letting Valdo fucking Marx lull him into a false sense of security again.

“I’m your friend!” Valdo insisted, even as he was scanning the room for the closest exit. He almost looked afraid, as if he thought Jaskier would try to fight him. At half his normal weight, and with two bandaged hands, Jaskier wasn’t going to win any physical fight. However…

“Tell you what,” Jaskier said, struck by a sudden inspiration. “Let’s set this aside. I don’t want to argue with you, Valdo. I’m sure you meant well. And you don’t know Eskel. If you did, you’d know he’s not interested in ‘taking advantage’ of anyone, least of all a pain-in-the-arse bard like me.”

This prompted a smile, however false, from Valdo Marx. He’d started to relax by increments with each word Jaskier had spoken, and by the time Jaskier made his self-deprecating joke, Valdo was back to looking smugly superior, confident (if slightly apprehensive) that he’d ultimately emerge victorious over Jaskier.

To further convince Valdo that Jaskier was backing down, setting this aside, being the Bigger Person, Jaskier threw back another huge swallow of wine (and, very carefully, spit all of it back into his cup). He continued to chat with Valdo for another few moments, aware that it was getting late and that the inn would be closing soon. The proprietress looked a bit miffed that her night’s contracted entertainer had fucked off to drink with some invalid, but she hadn’t yet threatened to throw Jaskier out, which was something.

He was casting about for an excuse that might set his plan in motion when Destiny—in the form of a good friend—stepped in.

Jaskier had noticed the tall, black-clad man sitting at the corner table. He’d chosen his seat at the table with the deepest shadows quite deliberately, and Jaskier had immediately picked him out as some sort of outlaw, ranger, or resident highwayman. He couldn’t make out the man’s face, of course; he’d pulled up his hood to cast his face in shadows. But Jaskier thought there was something familiar about the line of the man’s shoulders, the way he held himself.

He only realized why when the man stood up and approached their table.

“Master Jaskier?” he said, and Jaskier worked hard not to let his elation or sense of relief show on his face.

“Ah, yes, that’s me,” Jaskier said, affecting a slightly nervous, reserved posture. “Is there some problem?”

“No, no, I only wanted to say hello!” said the man in the cape. “I’m an enormous fan of your work.”

“Thank you, that’s very kind,” Jaskier said, dialing up the wattage of his smile, and relaxing back into his chair like a celebrity—the most famous bard on the Continent—greeting an enthusiastic fan. “Always happy to meet a music lover. Especially one with such excellent taste. Do you want me to sign something?”

“Ah, I’m more a fan of your other work,” the man said, and pulled back his hood to expose his golden hair, bright blue eyes, and pointed ears. “The Sandpiper has helped so many of my people. You’re a hero!”

Jaskier let the rest of his visible tension drain away, and he smiled even more brightly up at the tall elf, who didn’t allow his mouth to so much as twitch, though Jaskier could see how hard Chireadan was trying not to laugh and draw Jaskier up into a hug.

It’s a good thing they’d had so much practice with subterfuge during their time collaborating together as spies, rebels and smugglers. Valdo Marx was arrogant and stupid, but he was also terribly observant. Luckily, he didn’t seem suspicious at the interaction between Jaskier and his ‘fan’, just jealous at the attention Jaskier was receiving.

“That’s kind of you to say, but I’m not a hero,” Jaskier said, pitching his voice a little louder. The table of Elves in the corner had been staring at them since Chireadan had pulled down his hood and invoked the name of the Sandpiper.

“The elves have faced enormous persecution and hardship; trying to help some of them get to safety was the decent thing to do,” Jaskier said, and now his voice was audible over the dying side conversations in the room. Even the dwarves had halted in their endless game of Gwent to listen in.

Chireadan seemed eager to help Jaskier capture the room’s attention, which was perfect.

“Actually, I was just about to ask my friend here to accompany me in a tribute to the elves. A song about their courage and determination in the face of human injustice. If the room would allow it?”

The elves at the table, who had been quiet and restrained all evening, began to chatter excitedly amongst themselves, and the two bravest amongst them gave Jaskier a cheer of approval, along with the dwarves, who were much more vocal in their agreement.

“Let’s have some fuckin’ MUSIC, finally!” one of the dwarfs, the heckler from earlier, shouted from the table in front of the raised dais that served as the taproom’s stage.

“Valdo, surely you’ll agree to accompany me in a simple tribute to our elven brothers?”

“I—” Valdo looked positively nauseous at the very idea. Given his earlier comments about the elves, and his opinion about Jaskier’s own supposed ‘treason’, he didn’t seem at all eager to voice any public support for the elven cause. But there were only a few humans lingering in the Inn of Rinde. Aside from the barmaid and the proprietress, the two humans left in the tavern were all at least three sheets to the wind, or actively passed out. Valdo would have no help from the human quarter if he angered the elves or the dwarves.

“Brilliant!” Jaskier said, taking Valdo’s sputtering as assent. He stood, stretched a little and ran through a few quiet vocal exercises to warm up his voice. He hadn’t done much singing—hadn’t wanted to, really—in the last few months, but right now he was truly inspired. He had a plan and a means to embarrass Valdo and regain the upper hand.

And Chireadan, bless him, had helped engineer the perfect opportunity.

“Ah, perfect, you have your lute,” Jaskier said. Valdo clutched at his instrument like it was a lifeline. “It’s quite a simple song, really. Just standard 12-bar progression, with a key change for the chorus,” Jaskier rattled off to Valdo’s dazed expression.

Apparently, the royal court troubadour of Cidaris wasn’t used to playing live, without sheet music and just a few hints as to where to start. Jaskier and indeed almost any traveling bard, wouldn’t have had a problem, having been constantly thrown into impromptu performances with other musicians for years. But Valdo had never been very good at improvised play to begin with.

In fact, he’d never been a very good musician, in any respect.

Jaskier was more eager than ever to rub that simple fact into Valdo’s face—stupid goatee and all. “Start with an Elder folk riff in B. Just watch me for the changes,” Jaskier said, stepping up onto the stage, “and try to keep up.”

Valdo trailed in his wake like a dead man, assuming a lutenist’s standard starting posture—thumb-under, Jaskier noted, like a true Academy-trained drone. The grip was perfect for playing the polished chamber music of the late 10th-century, but little else. Including Elder folk riffs.

Jaskier momentarily mourned his lost ability to play—he'd been ambidextrous with his instruments, and could play the lute with both thumb-under (for the dreaded ‘modern’ chamber music taught at Oxenfurt) and thumb-over, perfect for all the bright folk tunes, ballads, and lively tavern torch songs that he’d mastered after spending nearly twenty years on the road.

Valdo, with his stuffy academic technique and at a loss without sheet music or tabulature, was doomed to play Jaskier’s chosen song like a second-year lutist blundering their way through their first complex chord progression.

This would be a rather delicious dish of revenge.

“One, two, three, four,” Jaskier counted off slowly, and launched into the beautiful old elven ballad Ar Lan y Môr:

Ar lan y môr mae rhosys cochion
Ar lan y môr mae lilis gwynion
Ar lan y môr mae 'nghariad inne
Yn cysgu'r nos a chodi'r bore.*

He ignored Valdo’s fumbling attempts to keep time, and sang over the jittering discord of his clumsy fretwork. Jaskier could have played the song in his sleep, of course. A small, mean part of him was happy to have once again engineered a humiliating public performance for Valdo Marx.

He set that mean little satisfaction aside to let the music and the power of the song pay tribute to everything the elves had endured since humans had arrived on their shores.

The elves in the far table stood up, and began to edge closer to the stage. Jaskier sang to them, and to Chireadan, who looked a bit puzzled about what was motivating Jaskier but happy to play along. He watched as Chireadan’s puzzlement melted away into bittersweet joy as the pretty song celebrating the lost land of the elves drifted out over the Rindean taproom.

Ar Lan y Môr was a sad, sweet song, an ode to a lost homeland, and Jaskier lent the slightly-reduced power of his full tenor to the soaring notes. He was capable of singing the song a capella (indeed, it would have been a better performance without Marx’s inept playing) but at the halfway mark, he felt he’d made his point: Marx was all but useless as a lutenist, and he wasn’t all that much better as a singer. Even barely warmed up, and after nearly six months of silent isolation and poor conditions, Jaskier was able to hit each note cleanly and compellingly. He’d always been a better performer than Marx—it was part of why they’d been at odds with each other back in school, even before Marx had schemed to get him expelled—but after years playing in the crucible of public taprooms, bars and regional festivals, Jaskier was far beyond Marx’s meager abilities now.

This was his element. How had he forgotten how much music meant to him?

The eclipse again, moving shadows, blocking the sun. It hadn’t been Geralt’s fault, precisely, but he’d lost his muse and his ability to write anything except bitter break-up songs and prison blues up on King Nedemar’s mountain. Singing to a tiny crowd of elves, dwarves and his greatest rival, Jaskier felt that small part of himself click back into place.

When he opened his eyes, Eskel was there, leaning against the entryway looking enraptured. He’d never heard Jaskier sing before.

Jaskier had never seen Eskel winded before. He was flushed and sweating, as if he’d just run several miles at top speed, and Jaskier wondered exactly how far he’d gone. As Jaskier sang, the tension seemed to drain out of Eskel, his breathing quieted, and by the end of the song he looked transfixed, as if Jaskier and the song he sang were the only things worth noticing in the room.

Jaskier finished off the song, and accepted the warm applause of the small crowd with a little bow. He graciously waved at Valdo, who was clearly seething and so tense Jaskier was worried he’d snap the neck of his lute. But that was Valdo’s problem, and he was done thinking or worrying about Valdo Marx.

He hopped off the stage, feeling the familiar mix of adrenaline and the endorphins that always flooded his system after a performance. It was better than alcohol or fisstech, better even than most of the sex he’d ever had (aside from what he’d been doing lately, with Eskel, which had somehow surpassed even post-performance euphoria).

Jaskier was immediately surrounded by the elves, all of whom thanked him and asked for a second song, but Jaskier only had eyes for Eskel. For a while there, he’d been sure Eskel never wanted to see him again. The relief he’d felt at seeing auburn hair and familiar broad shoulders peeking over the tallest of the elves made him feel a bit weak-kneed.

“Ah, thank you very much, I just need to go speak to my husband, and then we’ll see if I have another one in me,” Jaskier said as he darted through the crowd towards Eskel.

He wasn’t sure what sort of reception to expect, given the crushing look of disappointment, anger and despair on Eskel’s face before the Witcher had fled from the inn. He certainly didn’t expect Eskel to throw his arms around him and draw him into a long hug.

“I’m sorry, Lark,” Eskel murmured against his temple. “I shouldn’t have left like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier said. His voice was a bit muffled against Eskel’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about that stupid song. I didn’t think they’d be playing it anywhere. I would have warned you if—”

“It’s all right, gods, you don’t have to apologize,” Eskel told him, finally drawing back enough to look at Jaskier’s face. “You’re all right? The spell didn’t—”

“You weren’t gone that long,” Jaskier said with a tentative smile. In the warm light of the taproom, with his bronze skin flushed and amber eyes glowing with unmistakable relief and affection, Eskel looked magnificent, like some temple painting of a god rendered in rich ochre and dark charcoal. Jaskier wanted to kiss him—Eskel didn’t seem likely to object, given how his eyes kept dropping to Jaskier’s lips—so that’s exactly what Jaskier did.

The little bright tingle of the spell and/or Eskel’s Chaos buzzed up through him, and he almost sighed at the relief of kissing Eskel. Had he really almost lost him? Because of fucking Burn Butcher Burn?

He redoubled his effort to kiss the breath out of Eskel, relishing in the way his Witcher’s arms tightened around him. I’m not going anywhere, Eskel had said. Jaskier was going to hold him to that promise from now on.

Eskel’s amber gaze flicked over at something over Jaskier’s shoulder, and Jaskier already knew what to expect. Valdo. Of course he wouldn’t have the maturity or good sense to accept defeat gracefully. Of course he’d want to make another scene.

Just as expected, Valdo was there when Jaskier finally broke off from kissing Eskel. Valdo looked like he wanted to break his lute over Jaskier’s head.

Before he could make a move to do so, Eskel stepped in between them, intercepting Marx as effectively as an oak door.

“Excuse me,” Valdo said, glaring up at Eskel as if the Witcher wasn’t at least a head taller and several stones heavier than Marx. “I’d like to say goodbye to my friend, if you’ll allow.”

Jaskier had never seen Eskel try to look intimidating. Just as he’d told Valdo earlier, Eskel was exceedingly careful around Jaskier and most other humans. He was forever hunching down and twisting his face away to make himself seem smaller, to hide his scars and his slit-pupil eyes. Given that the man was roughly the size of a barn door, his efforts had never been terribly effective, but Jaskier still thought it was sweet when he tried, especially around children.

Now, however, Eskel had drawn himself up to his full height, squared his shoulders, and crossed his arms over his massive chest. The posture served to highlight the astonishing width of his shoulders, his heavily muscled arms and deep barrel chest.

Eskel now looked exactly like the skilled, tireless, and deadly monster-fighter he truly was.

Even more astonishing was that, for the first time that Jaskier could recall, Eskel deliberately angled the scarred side of his face towards the light. With his old scars and unnaturally bright Witcher’s eyes on full display, Eskel suddenly projected an almost palpable aura of menace. Even Jaskier felt a shiver of unease, a sort of hindbrain response that recognized threat and danger. Everyone in the room seemed to feel it. The elves and dwarves all fell silent, and Jaskier’s skin prickled from being watched by a dozen pairs of eyes.

Valdo seemed to be the only one in the entire room, aside from Jaskier, who wasn’t suddenly and viscerally terrified of Eskel.

He glared up at the huge man and said in a haughty tone, “Julian, would you call off your attack dog, and say goodbye to me like a civilized person?”

Jaskier tried to step around Eskel’s huge frame, but Eskel merely shifted his weight to block Jaskier’s path. Jaskier felt a sharp pulse of contempt through the spellbond, which was clearly directed at Valdo. For whatever reason, Eskel had abandoned his friendly, easygoing nature, and decided to hate Valdo Marx on sight.

“Eskel? It’s okay,” Jaskier said, placing a bandaged hand on Eskel's shoulder. Better to face this now than risk causing a scene that could get them all thrown out of the inn.

He poked Eskel’s side, which was about as effective as tapping a brick wall. “Valdo’s an old acquaintance of mine, from Oxenfurt. He’s not a threat.” Jaskier was lying, of course. Valdo was a threat, just not a very credible one.

Eskel continued to glare at Valdo until even Marx started to look uneasy. Satisfied, Eskel turned to Jaskier. “If you’re sure,” Eskel murmured, and stepped aside.

Valdo didn’t seem ruffled by Eskel’s show of intimidation, exactly, but he made no attempt to hug Jaskier goodbye, thank the gods. He did touch Jaskier’s arm and leaned in to kiss him on one cheek and then the other in the style of Cidarian nobility. Even that brief contact made Jaskier’s skin crawl. Jaskier took an unconscious step back towards Eskel and the safety he represented.

“Julian, it was so very good to see you,” Valdo said, voice falsely bright. “And it was lovely to finally perform together again after all these years,” he added. Jaskier almost guffawed at the outrageous statement. They’d last ‘performed together’ at the Oxenfurt tribunal, when Valdo had maliciously jeopardized Jaskier’s whole future and reputation.

“I’m sorry we won’t have more time to catch up,” Valdo continued, “but I absolutely must be back in Cidaris by the first of Lammas.” There was a cold, contemptuous look on his face.

Ah, there you are, at last, Jaskier thought.

“I was hoping to talk a bit more about this farce of a marriage you’ve entered into, as I still have some concerns. However,” Valdo said, before Jaskier could open his mouth. “You do seem resolved to tie your fate to this brute. So I suppose that nothing more needs to be said.”

Valdo flicked a single glance up at Eskel, and sniffed in derision. “Master Witcher, I wish I had more time, as I do not believe your intentions towards my dear friend Jaskier are entirely honorable, but I really must be on my way.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Eskel rumbled. He didn’t sound any more ‘sorry’ than Valdo about the bard’s speedy departure. “I might have hoped a ‘dear friend’ of my husband’s would have waited to meet me before judging my intentions.”

Valdo’s eyes widened, evidently surprised to find that a big hulking Witcher was capable of speech. Then his eyes narrowed, and Valdo seemed fixated by something on Eskel’s neck.

Jaskier followed his eyeline, he saw Valdo had picked out a lover’s bite Jaskier had sucked into Eskel’s neck earlier that evening. The bruise was almost invisible on Eskel’s dark skin, but now Jaskier wondered how he could possibly have missed it. The sight of his mark on Eskel made him feel almost proud, and now he was dying to examine his own neck (along with certain other areas) in the looking-glass upstairs. Eskel would have left more than a few similar lovebites on Jaskier. The thought made Jaskier feel a little lightheaded.

“Well, Valdo, it’s been nice catching up, but they must need you back in Cidaris,” Jaskier said brightly. “Mustn’t deprive King Ethain of your company a moment longer!”

“Well I’ll take my leave, then,” Valdo said haughtily. He looked almost wounded by the mention of King Ethain; things must not be going smoothly at the royal court. “Jaskier, please think about what we talked about. And you, Master Witcher, are responsible for my friend. You must take him somewhere safe, at least for the winter. If anything happens to Jaskier, I’ll hold you responsible.”

Eskel looked a bit surprised, if only to Jaskier’s keen eyes, but he nodded and said pleasantly, “Have a good trip.”

With one final glare, Valdo flounced out of the Inn of Rinde, and Jaskier finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“Should I even ask?” Eskel said dryly.

Jaskier let a slightly hysterical giggle slip out. He was still a little drunk, he realized, or maybe it was just the relief of getting Marx away from Eskel before he could start spouting half-baked theories about the spellbond again. Jaskier sagged against Eskel’s shoulder, wishing they could be wrapped up naked together in the nice comfy bed upstairs.

“I’ll tell you later.” He yawned, jaw almost cracking. “And you? Is everything all right?”

“We’ll be leaving first thing in the morning,” Eskel said. Jaskier knew intuitively that Eskel would be packed up and halfway down the road with Scorpion already, if it weren’t for Jaskier. “The mage here has a history with Geralt. He won’t be any help in breaking the curse, and I don’t want to linger.”

“Ah,” Jaskier said, refusing to acknowledge the way this news sent a little wisp of relief curling up through him. He wanted to break the curse, of course he did. Just…not right now.

Not tonight, at least.

“Well, there is an actual friend here that I would love you to meet,” Jaskier said, seizing Eskel by one overdeveloped arm. Eskel let Jaskier tug him across the taproom to the shadowed table in the corner where Chireadan was waiting. The Elf stood up politely, and greeted Eskel with a short bow.

“You must be the Witcher who saved my dear friend from the hangman!” Chireadan chirped brightly. Jaskier watched in amusement as Eskel blushed and began to stammer out a denial. The Witcher was so unused to praise of any kind, and yet so deserving of it! He had saved Jaskier’s life!

“I only helped him get away from Djikstra’s dungeon. I’m Eskel,” he said, holding out one huge hand. Chireadan looked absolutely enchanted. He’d liked Geralt a lot too, if Jaskier recalled. Chireadan seemed to like everyone, Witchers included, and he was almost as bad as Jaskier at instinctively and immediately falling in love with exactly the wrong person. Chireadan had loved Yennefer, by the gods. Yennefer. And that was after she’d hypnotized the entire town of Rinde.

“Chireadan here helped me put together most of my Sandpiper network,” Jaskier whispered, low enough so that only Eskel and Chireadan could hear him. “He coordinated with the elves in Nilfgaard and X’ntria to raise funds and secure safehouses, and of course he helped get refugees out of Redania until I was arrested. He was supposed to be safe on the south side of the Yaruga right now,” Jaskier said, a bit louder. “What are you doing here, Chireadan?”

Chireadan didn’t look even remotely chastised. He continued to beam away at Eskel for a few more moments before turning to wink—very badly—at Jaskier.

“I came as soon as I heard you’d been released from gaol in Oxenfurt. Some of our old contacts told me you’d been sighted along the eastern road, and I thought to intercept you here in Rinde and make sure you were all right. And to complete one of destiny’s strange loops, of course.”

“Loops?” Eskel muttered, and Chireadan’s smile only grew.

“Of course! Destiny works in circles, don’t you see? Big circles, small ones, circles that overlap and intersect with others. Our fate sends us spinning out in different directions, sometimes to live wholly different lives for a time, but inevitably we’re drawn back in, back to the circles and the links we’ve made with others. No matter how far we travel, how far away we feel from where we started, sooner or later we always find ourselves looping right back to where we started from.”

“Huh,” Eskel said, and Jaskier could tell that the idea appealed to his fated-to-be-fated Witcher. Chireadan was right, of course; Jaskier had more than a few of his own strange life-loops to reflect upon. Even this business with Valdo Marx had been a loop. One which was closed forever, he hoped.

“Your friend there, the, er, ‘musician’,” Chireadan said to Jaskier. “Did I hear right? He’s from Cidaris?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Jaskier said, wondering why in all the Spheres Chireadan was asking about Valdo.

“I thought so. His accent was quite grating,” Chireadan said, seemingly unaware or uncaring that his own Nilfgaardian accent was considered ‘grating’ to most Northerners, although their dislike of the Nilfgaardian tongue was largely political, and not based on any inherently negative qualities  of the elf’s accent. “You know he was probably spying for Nilfgaard, yes?”

“What?” Jaskier squawked incredulously. “Valdo Marx is not a spy, much less for Nilfgaard! Cidaris finally secured an alliance with Temeria after Nilfgaard invaded. King Ethain wouldn’t jeopardize the truce with King Foltest; he’d never tolerate a spy in his court!”

“These are strange times,” Chireadan said. He really was a dear friend, but sometimes Jaskier wished he wasn’t always so damned opaque. “I suspect your friend was fishing for information about your Witcher here,” he said, turning once again to smile at Eskel. “Congratulations on your nuptials, by the way. Jaskier is a very lucky man.”

It was a little tough to tell in the candlelight, but Jaskier was positive Eskel was blushing.

“I’m the lucky one,” Eskel said softly, and Jaskier tried very, very hard not to let his heart run wild over that little admission.

“Well, you did save dear Jaskier. I was overjoyed when I heard his Witcher had finally come to his rescue!”

Oh no. The warm, happy, shyly pleased light drained from Eskel’s eyes. “I think you mean Geralt. That’s who everyone expected to show up. Djikstra’s men brought me in by mistake.”

“Destiny doesn’t make mistakes like that,” Chireadan said decisively, though even the cheerful elf sounded a bit subdued. “As I said: strange loops. And Jaskier was very lucky a Witcher was in the area at all. There are, what, a dozen of your guild left across all the Continent? Jaskier was due to hang if one didn’t appear to marry him quickly. It’s very good that you did.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Eskel said, a little warmth creeping back into his voice, and Jaskier caught his eyes. He wasn’t sure exactly what had shifted between Eskel hearing Jaskier’s epic ballad and his sudden reappearance at the inn, but evidentially Eskel wasn’t angry with him anymore. That was a tremendous relief, but Jaskier still needed to know what had happened.

“Ah, listen, it sounds like we’ll need to leave here early tomorrow,” Jaskier said, “and it’s been a very long day. Will you travel with us for a while? You’re probably headed south and we’ll be going east, but—”

Chireadan smiled. “I can travel with you for a few days, if you’ll have me,” he said with a nod. “I do not wish to impose on a pair of newlyweds.”

“Well we’re not—” Eskel started to correct him, but Jaskier stilled his words by grabbing Eskel’s hand.

“You might have to pretend to be a very deep sleeper between sunset and sunrise, that’s all,” Jaskier informed him with a cheeky grin. Chireadan smiled at him in return.

“Ah, so that’s the way of it,” the elf said, almost to himself. “In that case, I’ll let you retire for the evening, and I will make sure to take a room on the opposite side of the inn.”

“That’s probably a very wise decision,” Eskel said. He made a very un-Witcher-like sound, something dangerously close to a shriek, when Jaskier pinched him on the thigh.

***

Later, after they’d both had a chance to change and wash, Jaskier and Eskel lay together in bed curled towards each other, and Eskel listened as Jaskier filled in him in about the conversation with Valdo Marx.

“He actually believed that?” Eskel repeated, incredulous. “That I’d bring you to Kaer Morhen to ‘share you’ with the other Witchers?”

“He must have been trying to scare me. If he was spying for the White Flame and trying to get information about Geralt, he probably hoped I’d tell him where we were going—where Kaer Morhen is—if I were frightened enough. Unfortunately Valdo is too stupid to realize the inherent flaw in your nefarious plan to marry me and sacrifice my virtue to your fellow evil Witchers.”

“What’s that?” Eskel said, already smiling despite his best effort to look affronted by such a bizarre accusation.

“Well, Valdo never considered that I wouldn't have any real objection to being used like the village hitching-post by a collection of big strapping Witchers. If the rest look anything like you and Geralt, I’d probably volunteer—”

“Oh, gods, please stop,” Eskel begged Jaskier. He was pretending to smother himself with his pillow. “The image of you and Lambert—” Eskel shuddered dramatically, gagging, “Or Vesemir…

All right. That one actually did horrify Eskel.

He lifted the pillow off his face, only to cup Jaskier's cheek and trace his thumb along Jaskier’s soft, plump lower lip. It was very dark in the room, but he could still easily make out Jaskier’s face with his enhanced vision. His own face would be cast entirely in shadow to Jaskier’s human eyes, and Eskel felt a bit guilty at having such an advantage.

“What he said about the curse, though. Have you thought about it?” Jaskier said. Eskel felt Jaskier’s lower lip moving as he spoke, lips brushing against the pad of his thumb soft as flower petals. “What’s been happening between us—” he said, waving his hand through the scant space between their bodies, “Could it be the spell?”

“No,” Eskel said simply. “Magic doesn’t work like that. It’s as you told Marx, even the most powerful binding curse can’t compel someone to feel, only to act. The spell wants our obedience; it doesn’t care about our hearts.”

“I’m surprised you’re so confident about that,” Jaskier said. Eskel felt him form the words under his thumb again. “A lot of this hocus-pocus stuff is beyond our mortal ken.”

“Maybe,” Eskel admitted, “but I’ve known a lot of mages, druids, sorceresses. So have you, I gather. Were any of them particularly feeling people?”

Jaskier snorted, an inelegant sound that made Eskel smile too. “Guess not,” Jaskier agreed. “Although I have hope for Yennefer. She was eerily human last time I saw her.”

“Might have caught her on an off-day,” Eskel muttered, just to make Jaskier laugh. He wasn’t likely to meet Geralt’s beautiful, terrifying sorceress, and he hoped he never would. That way he could continue to nurse that faint little flame of belief that had lived inside him for almost a century. That a tiny corner of Geralt’s heart still, somehow, belonged solely to him. He had a feeling that one meeting with the violet-eyed Yennefer of Vengerberg would finally snuff out that little self-delusion for good.

He loved me first, he thought. Did that even matter, anymore? Had it ever mattered?

“Eskel, about what happened—” Jaskier said, and Eskel felt a pang of guilt at how his thoughts had wandered to Geralt, again, when Jaskier was the one curled up with him in the dark.

“You mean the song?” Eskel asked. The trepidation in Jaskier’s voice made his heart ache. “It just caught me by surprise. I’m sorry for storming out like that. I knew Geralt had hurt your feelings, but I didn’t think you’d call him ‘Butcher’. He must have told you something about Blaviken, right?”

Jaskier sighed, and put his own hand over Eskel’s.

“I asked a few times. He never told me what happened, but I knew it just wasn’t possible for Geralt—Geralt, of all people!—to murder a town full of innocents. He regretted whatever happened there, but I knew it couldn’t be anything close to what people believe.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Eskel sighed. “I’ll tell you about it sometime, or at least tell you what he told me. And I know he hurt you, Lark. I am going to have words with him about that, plus a lot of other things, whenever I see that stupid bastard again. But what happened in Blaviken was bad. It stoked peoples’ anger towards Witchers higher than it had been since the Sacking. For a while there, we were convinced it would kick off another pogrom. One of our brothers was killed by a mob in Crinfrid, and Lambert got run out of a few places down in Velen. He barely escaped with his life. Geralt blamed himself, of course, for everything. It’s been years but…I just hope he’s not alone when he hears that song the first time.”

Jaskier shifted uneasily. He looked horribly guilty. “I just wanted to hurt him. I didn’t think it actually would. He’d have to care for it to hurt.”

“He’s not unfeeling,” Eskel sighed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the boy he’d loved, and the man he’d become. “I know it’s easy to think that, because—”

“No, of course I know Geralt has feelings,” Jaskier said quickly. “I just meant he’d have to care about me for the song to hurt him. He obviously didn’t, so I was sure he’d just listen to it, grunt, and move on.”

Well they’d come to the crux of it now, hadn’t they? Eskel had to ask, because he knew he was already falling—fast and hard—for Jaskier. And love was like gravity. It had a momentum all its own. Jaskier’s answer wouldn’t change anything for Eskel, but he had to know, if only out of some misguided belief that the fall might hurt less if he knew exactly where and how hard the landing might be.

“Do you still love him, Jask?”

He heard Jaskier’s short, sharp intake of breath, and Eskel rolled over to take his hand. “I’m not—I’m not asking you to hurt you, or shame you. It caught me off-guard when I heard that song. I hadn’t realized how much he still meant to you. You don’t need to tell me, but…I hope you know, for yourself.”

Eskel smelled salt then, fresh tears, and gathered Jaskier up into his arms. He held him as he cried, and thought about all the strange, messy loops between himself, Jaskier and Geralt. The machinations of fate, the will of gravity.

The impossible patterns of love.

***

Chapter Text

Jaskier felt oddly refreshed when he woke the next morning. Despite the emotional turmoil of the previous evening, he felt oddly calm. It might have been the simple release of tears, or a night spent in Eskel’s arms, but it felt like he’d finally let go of something that had been weighing on him for a long time. The emotional release left Jaskier’s mind feeling like the calm, glassy surface of an undisturbed pond. Inevitably some small stone would be tossed in to break the stillness, for the time being, Jaskier was content to yawn and let Eskel help him wash, eat, and dress for the day. His passivity seemed to greatly amuse Eskel.

“I was wrong about you being a morning bird, wasn’t I?” he chuckled as he carefully fed Jaskier’s bandaged hand through the sleeve of a light wool tunic. “You’re not a lark: you’re more of a nightingale.”

Jaskier squinted up at him, smiling more in response to Eskel’s warm chuckle and the humour he could feel flowing through their bond than out of real comprehension. Eskel smiled at him again, and kissed him on the forehead. Jaskier mmmph’d happily at him, and let his eyes drift closed again.

He had no idea when, but Eskel’s rare laughter and lopsided, half-paralyzed grimace of a smile had become very dear to him. It hadn’t escaped Jaskier’s notice that the man was smiling more often now, and without that pained shadow of self-consciousness. The thought warmed him as they made their way out of the shuttered, silent inn and out into the cool morning air.

Eskel left Jaskier propped up and dozing against the stable door while he went to saddle Scorpion. Chiredean came to join them before Eskel had finished. The elf looked bright-eyed and chipper despite the early hour, but he’d known Jaskier long enough not to expect a more coherent response than a sleepy nod at this early hour. Chireadan went to go to retrieve his own mount, a small, steady-looking bay mare.

Jaskier was barely aware of the few murmurs of conversation between Eskel and Chiredean as they finished with the horses’ tack. He had no doubt they’d get along; Chireadean liked everyone he met unless given a very strong reason not to, and Jaskier suspected that Eskel would befriend a tree stump if it looked lonely enough. That both men were so undiscerning and overly willing to extend their friendship might not be much of a compliment to Jaskier, but at this point in his life, he felt profoundly grateful to have two such kind, steadfast friends.

Chiredean mounted his bay mare and watched with wide-eyed interest as Eskel helped Jaskier clamber up on Scorpion using their awkward no-hands mounting approach. He did look slightly scandalized when Eskel swung up behind Jaskier and rucked up their shirts, then pressed his exposed belly to Jaskier’s bare spine.

“’S the curse,” Jaskier mumbled, blinking with heavily-lidded eyes. “Rewards skin contact.” He melted back against Eskel with a happy moan, and closed his eyes again as Eskel wrapped his arms around Jaskier and took up the reins. “Explain it to him? Please?” Jaskier muttered, smiling when Eskel kissed his temple.

“Of course. You just sleep,” Eskel said. Jaskier drifted off with the rumble of Eskel’s deep baritone against his back, the explanation of the ringbound curse easing him down into sleep.

***

Jaskier finally roused himself out of his dozy stupor closer to noon. Eskel and Chireadan were speaking quietly, sketching out their travel plans. It sounded like Eskel had decided that they’d cross the Pontar into Temeria, and then go east through Whitebridge and Flotsam to skirt the Mahakam foothills.

“Might find a mage in Hagge,” Eskel mused, “Or Vergen, if old Cuttlesworth is still around.”

“Oh, no, Cuttlesworth’s gone, I’m afraid,” Jaskier heard Chireadean said. “Went back to Ban Ard once Nilfgaard took Cintra. Why not try at the Temple of Melitele? Surely they’d be willing to help. Mother Nennekke has never turned away a Witcher, and she knows more about magic and curses than most mages.”

Eskel sighed, and Jaskier felt uneasiness and something like guilt flash up through the bond. It was enough to rouse him out of his doze; he blinked sleepily and turned around to peer at Eskel, who rubbed Jaskier’s arm in reassurance.

“I don’t want to put Nenneke in that position,” Eskel said, but there was an odd note in his voice that made Jaskier wonder if he were omitting something. “If we’re being tracked and head to the Temple, someone else might remember that the Sisters of Melitele have a unique relationship with my guild. I don’t want to put them in any danger.”

“You’ll have trouble finding a mage outside of the kingdom capitals,” Chireadan predicted. “After the slaughter at Sodden, most of the mages retreated back to their schools and their courts to regroup. Only the mages who live beyond the purview of Aretuza and the Brotherhood are still operating in the smaller towns.”

“Perfect,” Eskel said. “An outcast mage might be more willing to defy Radovid’s law and try to help us break the curse, especially if the coin is right.”

Jaskier frowned. Eskel had said they had enough coin to make it to Kaedwin, but how much might a mage demand to break the ringbound curse?

“Could we afford that?” Jaskier asked. Chireadan guided his mount closer.

“Ah, so you are awake! I expected the Sandpiper would sleep the day away, like always!”

Jaskier yawned widely at Chireadan, who only chuckled. “The Sandpiper happened to work best under the cover of darkness,” Jaskier explained. “Besides which, smuggling and scheming tend to be nocturnal activities. Which conveniently happened to overlap with my preferred sleep schedule."

He let his head loll back against Eskel’s shoulder. “I was quite good at it, you know. The smuggling business. I had a talent for subterfuge and sneaking people into places they shouldn’t be. Not to mention the lies, the deception, the double-dealing. If I weren’t a bard, I might have flourished as a pirate.”

“Or a spy,” Eskel amended, but a faint smile was tugging at the undamaged corner of his mouth, so Jaskier knew he didn’t intend that as an insult to Jaskier’s character. “Actually, I think you’d probably flourish at a great many things. You’re a brilliant, well-educated man, after all: you could accomplish anything you set your mind to.”

Jaskier felt his heart swell and his cheeks burn. Eskel and his damn compliments. No one said things like that to Jaskier. Most people believed he was only a pretty, feckless little songbird. That was part of why he’d been successful as the Sandpiper: no one ever really considered him capable of doing anything serious, and so no one had suspected he might be involved in the refugee network.

It didn’t surprise Jaskier that Eskel would see him more clearly than most.

“That’s an interesting point,” Chireadan said, smiling softly at the way Jaskier was staring at Eskel in starry-eyed wonder, and how Eskel was trying not to look at his husband for fear of blushing too much. “It will take some time for your hands to heal. Now that you’re ‘retired’ from your work as the Sandpiper, and you cannot perform, what will you do?”

“Darling, I’ve only just gotten out of that dungeon,” Jaskier said, careful to keep his tone light. “My future career plans can wait.” He said this easily enough, but thinking about the future still inspired a black void and a rush of anxiety whenever it crossed his mind. He had missed performing. That ‘duet’ with Valdo had reawakened his love of music, but Jaskier couldn’t expect to entertain tavern crowds or win festival purses with his voice alone. A bard without an instrument or some other form of accompaniment would soon find himself begging for scraps at the side of the road.

“As you say,” Chireadan said, obviously sensing he’d put a foot wrong.

Jaskier felt guilt and regret pulse through their bond—surely Eskel didn’t blame himself for Jaskier’s current situation? If anyone was at fault, it was fucking Djikstra and that fire mage. Eskel was merely a bystander, caught in the blast radius of the implosion of Jaskier’s life.

“And you, Master Eskel?” Chireadan tried. “If you were to retire from your Witcher’s work?”

“Oh, Witchers don’t retire,” Jaskier answered for him, almost automatically. He’d been over the topic with Geralt too many times to count.

“Geralt tell you that?” Eskel said. He was making an effort to sound neutral, but the topic of their mutual acquaintance was a touchier subject than usual. Jaskier hadn’t been able to answer Eskel’s question the night before: he honestly had no idea how he felt about the man now.

“Ah, yes, he did,” Jaskier admitted. “Was that not true?”

Eskel shrugged. He seemed to sense Jaskier’s unease, and freed up a hand to slip his fingers under the hem of Jaskier’s tunic to stroke a little at his bare belly. It made Jaskier feel instantly calmer. “I suppose it is. ‘No Witcher ever died in his bed’ is a popular axiom. But Lambert told us a few years ago about a Cat Witcher who’d left the Path. He’d married a human woman, and works as a merchant or a trader of some sort in Novigrad.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said. It wasn’t surprising to learn that at least one Witcher had left the Path, but he was a little shocked to hear Eskel say it so casually, as if it didn’t completely upend the notion that Witchers were fated to their lonely lives of pain, violence, and death.

They’d have to speak more about it, because Jaskier had no idea what sort of life Eskel might envision for himself away from the Path. He told himself he was only curious for Eskel’s sake, but the possibilities made his heart beat a little faster nonetheless.

Eventually they stopped to water the horses and have a late lunch. Eskel left to hunt some fresh game for their meal, and Jaskier braced himself to answer a barrage of questions now that he and Chireadan were alone. As always, the elf surprised him.

“Seems you’ve had an eventful summer, my friend,” he said, coming to sit with Jaskier under the shade of a broad oak tree. He didn’t launch into an interrogation, nor did he repeat any of Valdo Marx’s insulting insinuations about the curse and Eskel’s motivations. Instead, he handed Jaskier a water flask, and watched with interest as Jaskier squeezed the skein gently with the heels of his palms and used his teeth to pull the cork stopper out.

“That’s putting it mildly.” Jaskier had to gently cup the waterskien between his palms and duck his head to drink. “Eskel filled you in on everything?”

“For the most part,” Chiredean said. “He seems very kind. And he seems to care for you a great deal.”

“That’s just how Eskel is.” Jaskier shrugged, trying to play it cool, though a spark of warmth ignited in his chest at Chireadan’s observation. “He cares. He’s a caring person.”

“He cares about you. Specifically,” Chireadan amended. “And he makes you happy. That’s a fortuitous combination to have in a husband.”

“I suppose so,” Jaskier said. “He is awfully nice to me. I guess I’m not used to that.”

Before he could get too morose, he thumped his head back against the tree. “Gods, you should have heard me gushing about Eskel to Valdo! I can’t believe I fell for that, ‘oh, we’re old friends, you can talk to me!’ bit. At least I didn’t let anything slip to that scoundrel. If he really was spying for Nilfgaard, the most Valdo learned is that my new Witcher husband is quite sweet to me, and very well-endowed.”

Chireadan chuckled. “The White Flame will be thrilled to hear it, I’m sure. But it does sound like every major player in the North is looking for Geralt of Rivia. I thought the Redanians had held you so long because they wanted details about the Sandpiper network. But they wanted to know about your Witcher friend instead?”

“Oh, Djikstra didn’t care about the Sandpiper,” Jaskier said, feeling some of his earlier exhaustion start to creep back over him. “That was just politics, really, and complicated for the Redanians. We hadn’t actually committed any crime, and if my father had wanted to challenge the sentence, Djikstra knew the ‘treason’ charge would never have stood up under real legal scrutiny. The elves we helped weren’t convicted criminals, after all, or even enemies of Redania: they were just ordinary people.”

In the end, the Sandpiper’s ‘crimes’ hadn’t amounted to much. Getting a few boatloads of elves to Xin’tria hadn’t even been the premise of his conviction. Djikstra had held him on charges of bringing back Cintran ale to sell on the black market, and that was small potatoes considering the scale of piracy and profiteering the war had inspired. Jaskier’s arrest had been a farce, really, but at least his capture had left the rest of the Sandpiper’s network intact and unencumbered. Chireadan could go on saving Elves from the brutal machinery of Radovid’s genocidal campaign for a while without meeting much resistance.

“Anyway, turned out Geralt was the real prize. Djikstra only knew he was wanted by Nilfgaard, thought he could torture the information out of me,” he said, wiggling his hands. “And when that didn’t work—because I truly have no idea where Geralt is—he laid that trap with the marriage contract. Only Eskel showed up instead of Geralt. So Djikstra decided to release me and see if we’d lead him to Geralt.”

“A strange gamble,” Chireadan admitted, “but I suppose his strategy might work if they’re able to track you and Eskel far enough. Is that why you’re heading East?”

Jaskier nodded. “Eskel’s looking for a mage to break the curse. He’s hoping whoever Djikstra might have sent to watch us will screw up and reveal themselves.”

“And you’re sure Marx wasn’t working for Djikstra and the Redanians?”

The thought of Valdo Marx as a spy might have made Jaskier laugh, under other circumstances, but it didn’t seem particularly funny at the moment. “No, your theory that he’s spying for Nilfgaard makes more sense, especially if he’s fallen out of favour with his king. Someone else must be watching us.”

Chireadan took back the water flask and drank his fill before popping the cap back on. “Three sets of eyes are better than two. I can’t travel with you long—I do need to get back to the network—but we might have an easier time picking out a tail once you cross the Pontar and head into Temaria. Djikstra may have a long reach, but he can’t have eyes everywhere.”

“Uh, well, Dijkstra’s sorceress can turn into an owl, maybe,” Jaskier added, and couldn’t help but laugh at the confounded expression on Chireadan’s face. “I know. It’s ridiculous! My life is ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not,” Chireadan said, with that soft, fond expression he seemed to reserve only for Jaskier and his fellow elves. “You’ve been through some awful things over the last few years. If you’ve found a safe harbour with your Witcher, then I’m glad.”

Jaskier winced. He only wished it was that simple. “It’s only temporary,” he said. “Eskel will find a way to break the spell, and we’ll go our separate ways.”

Chireadan made a noncommittal noise at that, and Jaskier carefully didn’t ask what he meant.

“I suppose, if your mind is made up,” Chireadan said, “you might as well enjoy his company until the spell is broken, hmm?”

***

By the time Eskel called a halt to make camp that evening, Chireadan proved ready to insert himself into their ordinary evening routine. The elf helped Jaskier roll out the bedrolls and gather firewood while Eskel settled the horses and hauled water from the creek. By the time Eskel was finished making a stew from the brace of rabbits he’d caught earlier that afternoon, Jaskier and Chireadan had gathered enough firewood for a proper bonfire instead of a simple cookout. When Eskel lit the heap of dry wood with a flash of Ignii, he noticed Jaskier and Chireadan were wearing matching grins of impish delight.

Wish Lambert was here, he thought idly. There was nothing Lambert loved more than huge fires and explosions.

There’d been no response to any of the messages Eskel had sent ahead to the drop point at Blaidd Gwyn. No response didn’t mean anything, he repeatedly told himself. Vesemir usually only checked the old barn for messages during his infrequent trips into the village for supplies. He might not bother to check for messages at all until closer to Saovine, when the other Witchers who usually wintered at the keep would decide whether or not they wanted to risk the journey into the Blue Mountains. Eskel twas trying to be patient. He’d hear something from Vesemir before the end of Velen, or he wouldn’t. Fretting about the deafening silence from Kaer Morhen wouldn’t help anyone right now.

He put on a brave face and distracted himself with dinner, and the other principle evening chore: caring for Jaskier’s burns. It helped to distract him, and Eskel felt some of his anxiety melt away as he went through the steps of cutting away the old bandages, slathering Jaskier’s healing fingers in the salve, and carefully rewrapping the bard’s fingers in fresh linens. It had become a streamlined routine in the weeks since they’d left Oxenfurt, and Eskel worked quickly as Jaskier and Chireadan chatted. He tuned out most of their conversation, and barely noticed that they’d both fallen silent by the time he finished tying off the last bandage.

“You’re quite good at that,” Chireadan pointed out, sounding impressed. Eskel felt his face heat. He squeezed Jaskier’s palms to signal he was finished, and smiled when Jaskier clamped his bandaged fingers and thumb together at Eskel, miming a lobster’s claws.

“Had lots of practice, unfortunately,” Eskel muttered. He never quite knew what to do with a compliment, especially when it came from a near-stranger.

“Chiredean was a healer,” Jaskier explained. “He means it.”

Eskel ‘hmmmed’ at that, wondering how Jaskier had sensed his own self-doubt. The bard was remarkably perceptive. Or perhaps Eskel was just that transparent? Either way, he was surprised how strangely pleasant it was to be so well-known by someone who wasn’t Geralt or Vesemir. Even Lambert wouldn’t have noticed how uncertain he felt in the face of Chireadan’s praise.

Now that the rebandaging was done, Eskel found himself at a bit of a loss as to his next task. On an ordinary night, Eskel would have unlaced his shirt, stripped off Jaskier’s, and tugged Jaskier into his lap so the bard could lounge back against his bare chest while they chatted and watched the fire. It was how they’d spent most of their nights since discovering the skin-reward component of the curse. Of course, recently they’d introduced an entirely different activity into their nightly routine. One which Eskel would sorely miss, at least until they parted ways with Chireadan. He’d already resigned himself to celibacy—he’d gone decades without sex, after all! A few nights or a week would hardly signify.

He guessed that Jaskier would want to sit around the fire swapping stories with his friend. It’s what Eskel would have wanted to do, if he’d run into Geralt or Coen or Lambert on the Path. But before Eskel could offer to break out his stashed bottle of Everluce, or come up with an excuse to wander off into the woods and let them speak privately, Chireadan stood up and declared that he was off to hunt mandrake root.

“Mandrake is very useful for medicinal tinctures,” Chireadan said. His blandly handsome face was smooth and guileless as a child’s in the flickering firelight. “Unfortunately, they can only be collected by the light of the moon. I suspect it will take me several hours at least to gather enough.”

“I could go,” Eskel offered. “I can see in the dark. It would be faster.”

“Oh no,” Chiredean said, a little too quickly. Even though he’d helped run a large smuggling network, the elf didn’t seem all that adept at lying. “Stay with Jaskier, and enjoy the fire. Please don’t wait up for me. I expect you’ll want to, ah, retire early,” the elf finished.

He cast a pointed look at Jaskier, and then met Eskel’s eyes. Then he winked. Badly. In fact, Eskel thought it looked like more of a slow blink.

Eskel felt his face grow hot. Was it that obvious he wanted to be alone with Jaskier?

“Ah, it’s really not necessary for you to—” Eskel started to object. Before he could complete that sentence, however, Chireadan turned and melted away into the shadowed woods.

“Will he be all right?”

Jaskier snorted. “He’s an elf. He’s far more comfortable in the woods than any human. Might even be a better woodsman than a Witcher.”

“There are elf Witchers, you know,” Eskel said.

“I didn’t know that, actually!” Jaskier said, though he seemed more interested in watching Eskel rearrange their sleeping pallets. “That’s fascinating!”

“Hmm,” Eskel said, trying to hide his smile.

As soon as he’d made a suitable nest and resumed his seat by the fire, Jaskier instantly straddled his lap. Eskel wrapped his arms around Jaskier’s narrow torso with a soft grunt of surprise as Jaskier leaned forward to kiss him while plucking ineffectually at Eskel’s shirt laces.

It was an excellent point. On such a warm summer evening, who needed a shirt? Eskel stripped out of his own, and then removed Jaskier’s in short order.

“Mmmmph,” Jaskier mumbled in approval, too busy kissing along Eskel’s freshly-bared neck and shoulder to bother with intelligible speech.

Eskel broke off with a hiss when Jaskier began to nibble at his earlobe. “You know, I didn’t mean to drive Chireadan off. You two probably want to catch up. He didn’t have to leave.”

“Oh, we spoke a fair bit this afternoon. And Chireadan told me that I ought to ‘enjoy’ your company,” Jaskier said with another sharp nip to his earlobe that stole Eskel’s breath. “And I intend to. Fully. Unless you have any objections?”

“None,” Eskel said, because he was not a stupid man. “How would you like to ‘indulge’?”

“You said you wanted to use your mouth,” Jaskier said, between soft bites. “On me.”

Yes, Eskel had said that. He’d dreamed about it, in fact. He just hadn’t expected Jaskier to remember, much less sound so eager for Eskel to—

“Please?” Jaskier said, in a soft, pleading voice, almost as if he were begging. Which was an insane premise, because it was something Eskel was desperate to do. Gods. Just the thought of Jaskier’s taste on his tongue…

He yanked off Jaskier’s breeches and smalls in one rough move, almost rending the fabric in half due to his haste. Only years of careful conditioning and experience of moderating his strength around humans saved Jaskier’s breeches. He settled down between Jaskier’s legs like a penitent kneeling in front of an altar to Melitele.

It certainly felt like he was in the grip of some higher power as he tipped forward to lick at the bead of moisture welling at the tip of Jaskier’s cock.

The unique, startlingly familiar-yet-unfamiliar burst of salty flavour on his tongue briefly drew him out of whatever fugue state he’d slipped into. He heard Jaskier swear, and then he felt him shudder and twist and jerk against his lips, and then Eskel was lost to anything that wasn’t Jaskier and that scent of sweat and musk and sex, and the blood-hot weight of Jaskier's cock on Eskel’s tongue.

He could have sucked and licked and swallowed for hours. Might have done, in fact—his sense of time was a little skewed—until he felt Jaskier go rigid under him. Jaskier was moaning something (Eskel’s hearing was about as compromised as his sense of time) and he was yanking at Eskel’s hair, but the pain didn’t register any more than the passage of time or whatever Jaskier was saying. It sounded like Eskel’s own name, so that was all right, he reasoned: nothing short of a ‘no’ would have convinced him to stop just then.

Gods, he wanted to live here, right here, forever, in the V of Jaskier’s thighs. Feeling Jaskier shiver and surge up and grow somehow harder in Eskel’s mouth might be the sexiest thing he’d experienced in his unnaturally long life.

Until he felt the first pulse of Jaskier’s orgasm, and then the thick, welling sweetness of cum flooding his mouth.

It surprised him. A man hadn’t come in his mouth in more than half a century, and somehow Eskel had forgotten how powerfully satisfying it could be. And how much he loved the taste. He swallowed eagerly, lapping at the head of Jaskier’s cock until he felt Jaskier shudder and draw back from overstimulation.

He pressed a final soft kiss to the shaft and sat up, feeling as good as if he’d come himself. Better, even.

Fuck, he’d missed that.

Jaskier was gasping like a fish drowning on dry land. He lay flat on his back, chest heaving and staring sightlessly up at the sky, with eyes that looked like twin pools of black in the firelight. He looked like he’d been hit over the head. When Eskel leaned over to ask Jaskier if he was all right, he wrapped one thin arm around Eskel’s neck and dragged him down for a long, messy kiss.

Chasing out the taste of himself, Eskel realized, which made him almost dizzyingly hard.

He hadn’t bothered to remove his own breeches. The unyielding press of his leather codpiece was uncomfortable, but not yet painful enough to justify pulling away from Jaskier’s mouth. He waited until the kiss turned into slow, lazy licks to reach down and adjust himself.

Jaskier went still, and pulled back to search Eskel’s face. Whatever he was thinking, it appeared to be serious indeed.

“Eskel,” Jaskier said, very gravely, “would you fuck me tonight?”

Eskel felt his brain, heart, and entire nervous system stutter to a halt. He had to grope desperately at his cock to prevent himself from coming in his breeches like a green Adept, and waited for a breath or two for his body to fall back under his conscious control.

“You sure? You want—that?”

Jaskier was still looking at him, those captivating blue eyes wide and serious in the firelight. “Darling, please trust me when I say there is nothing I want more in this world. Would you please do me the very great honour of spearing me open on your enormous cock?”

“Uh,” was all Eskel could say, because his brain had stuttered to a stop again. His heart must have kept pumping, though, because his cock somehow grew harder at Jaskier’s request.

The tight restriction of his codpiece was starting to become a dire issue. Being a fairly good strategist, Eskel decided to take a moment to free his poor imprisoned cock and give himself a moment to think. This wasn’t the sort of decision he could make lightly. So far, everything he’d done with Jaskier had been on the same level as what he’d done with the other boys in the dormitory back in his youth. But what Jaskier was asking for was…different. Because Jaskier was different. Eskel had to find some way to keep his head and protect his heart. Otherwise, he’d never be able to let Jasker go once the spell was broken.

Eskel bit back a sigh. He knew that was going to be difficult no matter what choice he made now. Perhaps it would be best to simply enjoy his time with Jaskier? At least he’d have some good memories to warm him during the long, cold, lonely years ahead.

His cock, at least, seemed to think this was a compelling argument. Eskel had to surrender to the painful pressure in his groin, and gasped with relief when he finally removed his codpiece. He was too distracted by the rush of cool evening air against his hot skin to notice Jaskier’s look of wide-eyed wonder.

“How should we—” he began, and broke off with a soft curse once he realized the true difficulty of the situation.

Jaskier’s hands.

He couldn’t mount the man from behind, because Jaskier couldn’t put any weight or pressure on his hands. Jaskier might have clutched a bundled-up blanket or a pillow, but even then Eskel wasn’t entirely sure Jaskier would remember not to use his hands, especially if Eskel miscalculated and—gods forbid—did something to startle him. They could always—

“Eskel? Are you still with me, love?” Eskel shook himself and dragged his attention back to Jaskier, who was looking at him with no little amount of concern. “Is everything all right?”

Eskel nodded automatically, unsure how he ought to present the problem. Jaskier was far more experienced in this than Eskel. He might know some secret trick or position that might work, if Eskel could explain it properly.

“Your hands,” was what he said, and then mentally cursed himself. Brilliant. “You can’t lean on them.” Was he blushing again?

“So?” Jaskier said, tilting his head. “I’d rather not be on hands-and-knees for this anyway. Not for the first time,” he amended.

Eskel wasn’t sure—the glow from the fire made it difficult to tell—but he thought that Jaskier might be blushing, too, though Eskel didn’t understand why. The bard was the most sexually uninhibited person Eskel had ever met. What did Jaskier have to blush about?

“How else can we—?”

“Eskel,you do know that two men aren’t restricted to fucking front-to-back like dogs, right? We do have other options.”

“I know,” Eskel snorted, a little stung by what Jaskier was implying. “I’m not…I have done this before. Lots of ways.”

There was absolutely no reason to tell Jaskier it had been decades since he’d done it any other way with a man. Eskel already felt perfectly inadequate as it was.

“So what’s the problem?” Jaskier said. He seemed to feel there was too much distance between them; he knee-walked closer, took Eskel’s arm, and dragged him down to sit down on the sleeping pallets. Jaskier then wasted no time in resuming his apparently-favourite position: curled up in Eskel’s lap, with his nose pressed against Eskel’s throat.

Eskel had to admit, touching Jaskier helped him feel calmer, and more grounded. As always.

He sighed. There wasn’t much point in prevaricating now, not even to preserve his dignity (such as it was).

“There’s no problem. I just haven’t done it any other way that often,” he admitted. “Not since this happened, anyway,” Eskel said, waving at the scars that twisted his mouth and half his face into an ugly snarl. “My previous partners didn’t particularly like fucking face-to-face, for obvious reasons.” Honesty compelled him to add, “Neither did I.”

He waited a beat, and then met Jaskier’s gaze. He didn’t think he’d find any judgement there, or disgust, and he hoped not to find any pity either. But he was surprised to see how sad Jaskier looked. He also wasn’t sure how to interpret the stubborn cast to his jaw, or the determination firming Jaskier’s mouth.

“Eskel,” Jaskier said, “My darling man. I don’t think it would scandalize you too much to learn that, contrary to our marital vows—however farcical they might be—I am not a monogamous person, by choice or by nature, and I'd never expect the same from my partner. I emphatically believe in your right to choose who you might lie with, and how, and when. Understand?”

“Yes?” Eskel said, at a complete loss as to where Jaskier was going with this.

“Good. As stated, I fully respect your sexual autonomy and your right to choose your sexual partners. Aside from this one small caveat.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Eskel asked, equal parts amused and intrigued.

“Just this one thing, dear heart,” Jaskier said, drawing in a deep breath. Then he projected, with all the power in his bardic college-trained lungs: “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO FUCK ANY MORE HORRIBLE PEOPLE!”

Eskel shook his head. That had hurt his sensitive ears, just a little. Jaskier didn’t look even remotely sorry.

“I will happily embroider that on your gambeson, your potions pouch, or Scorpion’s fucking saddle if it might help you remember. Gods above,” Jaskier cursed, and somehow hugged Eskel even tighter. “Did they actually say that? That they didn’t want to fuck you face-to-face?”

“A few of them,” Eskel admitted.

It had taken him a few years after the scarring to work up the courage to try and lie with anyone at all. Eventually he’d decided to go to a brothel, because a professional seemed more likely to be understanding and willing to fuck a mutilated Witcher. The woman he paid had been the first to request he mount her from behind. She hadn’t been cruel about it; in fact, she’d refused to explain at first, but something in Eskel forced him to press the issue until she blurted out why. He supposed, at the time, that he’d needed to hear her say it.

She’d been honest, at least.

Eskel realized a lifetime ago that longing and denial and wishful thinking only prolonged the healing process. Vesemir, and therefore Geralt, both believed in facing cold hard facts. They’d urged Eskel to do the same ever since that awful morning when he’d regained consciousness and been confronted the mangled remains of his face in the mirror.

Geralt and Vesemir had been the only ones who were able to look at him without wincing, afterward. Even Lambert had flinched away. So he’d listened, and done his best to follow their advice.

Jaskier had never flinched from him either, he realized. Not once.

“I was never handsome, you know.” Eskel squeezed his eyes shut. Why in the many splendid Spheres had he just blurted that out? What was the matter with him? “Even for a Witcher, I mean,” he hastened to add, as if he wasn’t humiliated enough. "Was always big and rough-looking. I was never any kind of a prize, even before this," he said, gesturing towards his scars. I should be used to it by now, was what he was trying to say. He'd always been perceived as a monster of one kind or another.

He opened his eyes when Jaskier touched his cheek. He was looking at Eskel, gaze flicking back and forth like a metronome between his ruined right side, and the still-unblemished left side of his face.

“I think you’re handsome, Eskel,” Jaskier said softly.

Eskel felt that ghostly burning sensation again. His nonexistent tear ducts trying to help him release emotions he wasn’t capable of expressing anymore.

What was he supposed to say to that? It wasn’t a lie, not if Jaskier believed it, but…

“You don’t have to believe me,” Jaskier said, and Eskel wondered if the bard had somehow developed a sorcerer’s ability to read minds. “I just want you to know that I think you’re handsome. Those awful people—and they were awful to treat you that way, you’re never going to convince me otherwise—had no earthly idea what to do with you. Which means they were stupid, as well as awful, and I don’t want you to think about them anymore,” Jaskier told him. Like it was a very simple, very easy thing to do.

Perhaps it was.

“Now, dearest,” Jaskier said, shifting slightly to straddle Eskel’s lap, “If I haven’t managed to fully ruin the mood, I’d still very much like you to fuck me. Face-to-face, if you please. I want to see you.”

“I look pretty stupid when I come,” Eskel grumbled, smiling despite himself.

“Oh, everyone does,” Jaskier assured him. “I meant that I want to see the look on your face when you enter me for the first time. If it’s anything less than enraptured awe I will feel personally insulted.”

Eskel couldn’t help it. He laughed.

***

A bit later, after a quick trip to the creek to ‘freshen up’ (necessary, according to Jaskier, and Eskel wasn’t about to second-guess the voice of experience), some quick reorganization of their sleeping pallets, and the retrieval of a certain vial of oil from one of their bags, Eskel found himself staring down at Jaskier’s face.

His beautifully blue eyes were dilated and blown black with anticipation. His cheeks were red from Eskel’s stubble, lips swollen and flushed from kissing. There were lovemarks on his neck, faint purple-brown bruises that would take a day or two to fade. He already looked thoroughly debauched, Eskel reflected with some satisfaction, and they’d barely gotten started.

Jaskier made a soft whimpering sound when Eskel pulled away—fractionally—to drizzle oil over his fingers.

“Jask, you still with me?”

“Present and accounted for, darling.”

“Just gonna open you up—”

Jaskier batted at his wrist. “I’ll be fine. Haven’t needed that since college, dear heart.”

Eskel raised an eyebrow. “As you’re so fond of pointing out, I’m a bit bigger than most lads. And I thought you’d like this part,” he said, reaching down to trace Jaskier’s rim with the tip of his finger.

It didn’t escape his notice how Jaskier sucked in a breath and opened his eyes, and then sighed and tilted his hips up slightly as Eskel traced the furled skin again. He was sure he’d guessed right: Jaskier would like this part.

“I like getting fucked,” Jaskier said, stubbornly. “And I like when it hurts.”

“I never want to hurt you,” Eskel muttered, dipping down to kiss him. At least that was one benefit of doing it face-to-face like this.

“You’re very sweet,” Jaskier said. He hissed as Eskel breeched him with a fingertip, but settled and then relaxed quickly. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give it a try, though? Some other time, of course.”

“Give what a try?” Eskel said, feeling a bead of sweat trickle down his cheek and work its itchy way across his collarbone. Jaskier, ever-helpful, ducked forward to lick up the bead of sweat, and then sucked on Eskel’s neck to make a few marks of his own.

“Hurting me,” Jaskier said, hissing again as Eskel slowly added another finger. “Or, 'getting rough'. I think we talked about it before.”

“Don’t remember,” Eskel said, using his clean hand to swipe at his forehead. The bonfire was still burning away, and he was finding this to be surprisingly sweaty work.

Enjoyable, though, he thought as he rotated his wrist, corkscrewing his first two digits deeper into the tight clench of Jaskier’s body. He was rewarded by Jaskier’s long, shuddering moan, which wouldn’t have been out of place in a whorehouse.

“Gods, the noises you make,” he whispered, half to himself, as he pushed in past the second knuckle on both fingers.

“Could we go at a slightly faster pace?” Jaskier said primly, like a man giving orders to his carriage driver. Eskel thought about shushing him, but reflected that if Jaskier was still able to construct complete sentences, he was probably right: Eskel could stand to go a bit faster.

He withdrew his hand, and then pushed back in with three fingers in a slow, steady bearing-down push that made Jaskier yelp and jerk and clutch at the empty air.

“You keep moving your hands,” Eskel pointed out, marvelling at how steady he sounded. Like he did this every day.

“So tie me up.”

“You’d like that,” Eskel chuckled, entirely unsurprised—and more than a little aroused—when Jaskier panted out a definitive ‘Yes!’

“That’s four fingers,” he announced.

“Terrific. I want more.”

“Oh, you’re not going to take my fist,” Eskel said, pointedly ignoring the way Jaskier’s cock jerked at that idea. “We’re almost done.” He paused to drop a kiss on each of Jaskier’s kneecaps. “Still all right?”

“Peachy,” Jaskier grunted. “You predicted that I’d enjoy this.”

“Aren’t you?” He rotated his wrist again, just to make Jaskier twitch and squirm and pulse around his fingers.

“I haven’t been fucked yet,” Jaskier stressed, as if Eskel had somehow missed that fact. “And even dear Chireadan won’t tromp around the woods all night. I swear to all the gods, Eskel! Even the stupid ones, like that horse-head/goat monstrosity they worship in Velen! If you don’t fuck me soon–”

“Shhh, love, it’s all right,” Eskel murmured, pressing in once more, this time with all four fingers and the tip of his thumb. It’d have to do unless he wanted to use his other hand, and that seemed a bit excessive. Still, the dimensions involved…

He might have to fashion some sort of toy out of wood or metal if Jaskier wanted to do this regularly. Something tapered, maybe.

“Would you... Just fuck me... Already,” Jaskier huffed, and Eskel finally relented. He’d only been with three human men—and one incubus, who he probably shouldn’t include given the vast biological differences involved—and despite Jaskier’s complaints, he still felt like he’d rushed through the preparation a bit. He’d done as thorough a job as Jaskier's patience would allow. Hopefully that would count for something.

He stroked himself with his oiled hand, and drizzled on a bit extra to be sure. He’d noticed that the oil smelled a little odd—perfumed with something expensive, knowing Jaskier—but it wasn’t until he’d actually spread the oil on his cock that he placed the scent: roses. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to smell the flowers again without thinking of Jaskier.

Jaskier himself was doing his very best to look both sultry and slightly disapproving at the delay.

“You do want to fuck me, yes?”

“Yes, of course I do,” Eskel scoffed, using the pretext of guiding the tip of his cock to Jaskier’s hole to hide how his hands were trembling with anticipation and barely-controlled lust. He was eager, but had already realized he shouldn’t appear too eager. Jaskier liked being pouty and bossy and demanding, and (Eskel theorized) he also liked being told ‘No,’ and that he needed to wait until Eskel was ready. They’d have some more fun with that, Eskel hoped, if only he could keep it together long enough to fuck the daylights out of Jaskier and earn the privilege of being invited back to his bed again.

“Ready?” Jaskier said, momentarily dropping his put-upon tone to let the real question shine through.

“Yes,” Eskel said, deliberately not thinking about what the flickering firelight was doing to the scarred side of his face, or the brief grunt of pain Jaskier made as he breached him. Instead, he focused on the way Jaskier’s poor bandaged hands clenched around thin air, and the way his thighs trembled against Eskel’s sides as he pressed forward, into the hot, crushingly tight grip of his husband’s body.

He gasped and rocked forward slowly, catching himself at the last moment to hover inches from Jaskier’s face. Eskel went still, aware that he’d barely pushed through that first tight ring of muscle. Even so, Jaskier’s face bore an expression of astonished shock. He didn’t realize that Jaskier had stopped breathing until he felt the slight rise and fall of his chest start up again.

“Gods,” Jaskier gasped. “Is that…”

“Just the tip.”

“Gods,” Jaskier repeated, wide-eyed. He twitched against Eskel and scooted down to spread his hips a little wider. “Keep going.”

Eskel obliged him, rocking his hips forward ahead in small, shuffling increments that proved to be the very opposite of the hard, driving, relentless fuck Jaskier had demanded.

They’d get there. But by Jaskier’s own admission, he hadn’t taken a man in at least a few months, and there was no way in all the Spheres Eskel would rush this and risk hurting Jaskier. The tight heat of Jaskier’s body was its own sweet temptation, but the promise of his own pleasure hardly signified: Jaskier’s comfort and safety was his primary concern, always.

“Gods, you’re so—” Eskel whispered, at the same time Jaskier said, “You’re so fucking—” and they ended up talking over each other in the same tone of breathless, impatient awe.

Jaskier, naturally, broke the stalemate, and clenched around Eskel at the same time as he wiggled his hips and somehow, in spite of Eskel’s enhanced Witcher strength, managed to twist and twine his legs around Eskel’s waist, locking them together.

“Would you please stop fucking around, and fuck me?” Jaskier said, half-demand, half-plea. Eskel could feel an echo of the same desperate trembling he felt coursing through Jaskier’s slender frame. It was a crawling, desperate need for friction, and he felt it twist like a vine through his own aching compulsion to move, to fuck, to drive hard into Jaskier’s body until any boundary left between them was firmly and forever obliterated.

Still, he hesitated. He couldn’t seem to let go. He wasn’t sure if it was fear, or anxiety, or just some twisted form of sadomasochism, but he wanted to stretch out the moment as long as he could.

It was like drawing a breath, and then holding it for a moment before the inevitable dive. He was bracing for something, but what? The leap out into weightless nothing? The long, dark plunge? Or that moment when gravity released its hold, and pressure took over?

Eskel couldn’t say. But he felt it there, in the strange, frozen moment when he was locked up with Jaskier, unable to move forward, or pull back.

Then he met Jaskier’s eyes. That brilliant turquoise-blue was dilated to the thinnest slice of visible pigment, rimmed in black like the surface of the sun during an eclipse.

Eskel felt the world rotating on its axis, and far away, heard the grinding, shuddering groan of the Spheres as they began to turn and whirl and move into alignment. Something was shifting, out there in the cosmos, hidden from view but moving faster than light, powered with the white-hot brilliance of a star.

Something had ended. Something had begun.

The moment stretched and snapped, and Eskel remembered, Move.

He surged up and plunged forward and dove down, down, down into Jaskier, into the hot vice-like grip of his body. He gasped like a swimmer coming up for air, and felt Jaskier’s echoing inhale as they burst up through the surface together, then synchronized and plunged back down as one.

Eskel snapped his hips and felt the relentless rocking motion of Jaskier's body moving to meet his own. And he felt a familiar Chaos-tinged doubling of sensation again, splitting and merging with what he was feeling, and what Jaskier was feeling, until he’d forgotten there was any difference between them at all.

The magic bond between them unfurled like a sail, sending them skimming along across the surface of ecstasy before shooting back down and thrusting up to breach the surface again. Eskel felt like he was flying and drowning at the same time, and he could only clutch at Jaskier and keep the piston of his hips moving like some great tireless machine.

He heard the soft, concussive thud of their bodies, and felt Jaskier’s linen bandages scrape against his skin. Even in the grip of this soaring, drowning pleasure, Eskel realized it would be a bad thing if Jaskier knocked his hands too hard against the ground, or hit the log, or even Eskel himself. He groped sightlessly for Jaskier’s wrists and pinned them under one hand. He skimmed his palm over the softly-furred curve of Jasker’s chest, down his side, over the slight swell of his ass, and then down the long line of his calf to his knee.

Having hit his target, Eskel gripped Jaskier’s leg and lifted it just a fraction more, barely registering Jaskier’s soft grunt of approval.

He felt a snapping spark, a bit like the first time he’d successfully conjured Ignii, or when his Quen shield snapped into place. His vision whited out and he came with a lurching groan that sounded more like the death rattle of some massive beast than a noise of pleasure.

But gods, what pleasure! It was agony and ecstasy at once, the twinned vine, the snake eating its own tail, and he chased it with abortive thrusts of his hips until he’d wrung every ounce of pleasure out of their bodies.

Jaskier tensed and spasmed against Eskel like he’d been zapped by an irate mage. Eskel felt Jaskier’s release splatter and pool between them, and then he lost all control of his own limbs as a second searing orgasm washed up through the magic bond. He felt Jaskier’s orgasm like an echo of his own, refracted and multiplied. A looping sensation of feedback that went on and on as Eskel tumbled down onto Jaskier and the (only-slightly) forgiving pad of their musty bedrolls.

***

What the fuck, was Jaskier’s first bewildered thought when Eskel pushed into him. Not terribly elegant, but it was the best he could come up with: his brain felt like it had been sundered in half along with his body, right at the point where Eskel was penetrating him.

“Gods,” Jaskier gasped. “Is that…”

“Just the tip,” Eskel rumbled, and Jaskier’s brain shorted out like a fried megascope. He already felt incredibly full and stretched to the limit...and Eskel had barely breached him?

The Witcher may have had, Jaskier conceded, a minor point when he’d insisted on all that preparation.

When Eskel finally started to move, it was equal parts thrilling and frustrating: the slow, incremental pressure of his big body holding Jaskier down felt lovely, as did the sense of barely-leashed power Eskel held ruthlessly in check. That thought made Jaskier shiver as he went limp under Eskel, content to simply relax and enjoy himself as Eskel worked to split him apart. Jaskier thought he’d muttered something about fucking him already, but he couldn’t have anticipated exactly what that would mean.

He’d been fucked before, by a wide variety of men (and, on two occasions, by the Countess de Stael with the help of an ingenious magical artifact). But Jaskier had never been fucked like this before. By the time Eskel was fully sheathed within him, Jaskier was so full it felt like he was going to split apart. The press of their bare skin together was like a hot brand, and he damned his bandaged fingers again. He longed to be able to reach out and touch Eskel: to feel the powerful play of muscle and the hot glide as he bottomed out inside Jaskier, and then very slowly began to thrust.

Jaskier sagged and flapped his hands around. Gods, what he wouldn’t give to be able to touch Eskel’s bare skin! But then Eskel shifted and caught both of Jaskier’s wrists in one of his big, inhumanly strong hands.

“Don’t–” Eskel said in warning. It sounded like a snarl. That, combined with the bruising grip of Eskel’s fingers around his wrists, made something deep inside Jaskier flush and tremble. He wasn’t afraid, of course: not of Eskel. The warning was just a delicious thrill of potential danger, one that increased when Jaskier tried to shift and flex, and found that he couldn’t move.

He was thoroughly pinned. Trapped, and unable to so much as twitch against Eskel’s muscular bulk. He managed to lock his legs around Eskel’s waist, but all that did was spread him open even more, and make him more vulnerable to Eskel’s invasion.

Gods, there probably was something wrong with him, because Jaskier loved that feeling of helplessness, the unique sense of relief and quietude he found whenever he was held down and used by a larger, more powerful man. It eased that awful ache of anxiety that seemed to perpetually buzz away inside him. When the sex was particularly good, and his partner-of-the-moment gave him even a fraction of the pleasure Eskel was making him feel, Jaskier even believed that he was safe. Cared for. Protected. For just a few moments, anyway.

Before now, that feeling had always been brief, as fleeting as a hummingbird feeding on a flower. Jaskier knew that getting held down and fucked by a big strong man didn’t mean he was safe, or protected, or loved. Usually, it meant quite the opposite.

But this time. This time, it was different.

Now he was in Eskel’s arms. He was no longer some fawning bit of prey caught in a strange predator’s jaws, to be chewed up and spit out and sent on his way with a few new bruises and a hitch in his step.

No, this time, he was actually safe. Cared for. Known. Seen. He might be left sore (and deeply satisfied) when this was over, but he wouldn’t be left. He knew Eskel would stay. He knew Eskel would hold him, and sleep wrapped around him, and fuss over his bruises and give him that secretly happy, shy smile in the morning.

Jaskier felt that knowledge settle over him, and it made everything inside his head go beautifully quiet and still. His ever-present worries, his fears and anxieties, his bone-deep awareness of his own stupid inadequacies fell silent. Eskel had him now. Eskel would take care of him. Jaskier didn’t have to think quite so much. He could just be.

He floated there, for a long moment, just riding the wave of physical pleasure, being a body that didn’t have any other concerns except to feel good, and enjoy the hot slide of Eskel’s cock as he started to thrust inside Jaskier. He moved with a slow, dragging friction that sent delicious tendrils of heat curling up through his body like smoke. He moaned like a whore and clutched desperately at Eskel’s sides, scrambling for purchase, for more of the shivery-delicious dragging sensation. However, Eskel’s weight—gods, Jaskier loved that, loved every bit of his gentle giant of a man—meant that Jaskier could only surrender himself to the rapture, and hang on for dear life.

Eskel’s prolonged, torturously slow thrusts made Jaskier’s breath come short. His toes curled and his wrists burned in a delicious counterpoint to the pleasure rocketing through the rest of his body. He lapped and sucked at Eskel’s chest and collarbone–the only bit of skin he could reach–and bit him on a particularly good upstroke that left Jaskier seeing stars. The whole time Eskel moved with metronomic precision: his eyes were squeezed shut and it almost looked like he was praying, or meditating, but when Jaskier bit his neck, Eskel’s eyes flashed open and flared like a cat’s in the firelight.

Jaskier shivered again, both at the reminder of his lover’s undeniable more-than-human nature, and the fact that Jaskier knew he was safe with Eskel. Wholly and completely safe.

For the first time in his adult life, Jaskier was able to look at his lover’s face and see someone who was there for him. Who cared for him, who (even temporarily) wanted to keep him. Someone who–Jaskier could admit it–he wanted to be kept by.

That realization hit him at the same time as his orgasm. Eskel’s too, if the way the man went stiff, grunted, and then dropped like a stone was any indication.

Jaskier came with a long, shivering shout, a desperate animal howl of pleasure that matched Eskel’s deep, contented groan.

Reality returned with the knowledge that, lovely as it was to be held and be pinned down by Eskel, it wasn’t all that easy to breathe.

“Urk?” he managed, struggling with all his might to shift the muscled bulk of Eskel’s body. It was about as effective as a mouse prodding at an elephant.

Jaskier made some wheezing sound of distress—breathing was becoming a truly pressing issue, here—and that seemed to reach Eskel, at least enough to shift the heavy Witcher off onto his side. Suddenly, Jaskier could breathe again.

With the fresh rush of oxygen and chilly night air came the realization that Jaskier was, quite possibly, fucked. In fact, he was so far beyond fucked he’d somehow hit the outer stratosphere. Fucked was a tiny blip on the very margins of the space-time continuum, compared to where he was right now. Fucked was very much in a different dimension altogether.

Jaskier flopped over onto his belly—if he was beyond fucked, and his conscious mind was drifting out on the outer rim of fucked, he didn’t even want to think about the state of his actual arsehole, which had just borne the brunt of…whatever that had been. He couldn’t even call it sex. There had to be a word that captured the feeling. What did you call it when sex was so good it somehow transformed into a soul-rending, out-of-body, transcendental experience?

It still involved fucking, so Jaskier didn’t think it was fully appropriate to describe it in such starkly religious terms, but that was the best he could do in his poor, shattered, incredibly well-fucked state.

Gods. Every bit of his bone, muscle and sinew hurt—he’d asked Eskel for that, hadn’t he?—but at the same time, he felt weightless and drunk on pleasure and endorphins to the point where it felt like he was floating far above the plane where pain could even register. What was ‘hurt’ when he felt this good?

He shifted experimentally. Aside from the expected flare of pain from bruising and overtaxed muscles—and his poor abused arsehole—he wasn’t really hurt. Oh, later it might feel like he’d taken a tumble down a flight of stairs, but right now he was just mildly sore, and a bit strung out.

“Eskel?” he whispered, not really expecting a response. Jaskier himself was beyond exhausted, and all he’d done was lie back and enjoy. Poor Eskel had been the one to deliver that magnificent performance. Jaskier wouldn’t blame the man if he wanted to sleep for the next year, as long as he eventually roused himself for a reprise or two.

Jaskier wasn’t entirely sure he’d survive a second iteration of whatever that had been. But he was looking forward to it.

He—very carefully—stretched, testing out the sore spots again, making sure he’d been correct in his first-round assessment of ‘nothing broken, nothing torn’.

His wrists were badly bruised. The lurid purple-black marks (each in the exact size and shape of Eskel’s fingers) dotted his arms like a chiaroscuro landscape. The bruising didn’t hurt: it barely registered, in fact, especially compared to his arse. He was tempted to go wading out into the river to soak his poor bottom in the cold water, but the thought of trying to get to his feet and walk anywhere quickly squelched that idea.

It occurred to him that Chireadan would probably wander back eventually. Jaskier had little shame and absolutely no secrets from the Elf—Chireadan had seen him in worse states, and never quite so contentedly well-fucked—but Eskel might not appreciate being caught snoring away, naked as a jaybird and covered in Jaskier’s spunk. The very least he could do would be to get Eskel tidied up and sorted, especially after the man had only-somewhat-hyperbolically fucked the very soul out of him.

First, however, Jaskier needed to have a bit of a lie-down.

Once he’d closed his eyes—just for a moment or two—he’d be able to summon up enough energy to set things to rights.

***

Eskel stumbled towards consciousness like a drunk man weaving down a long, dark hall. However, once he was conscious and sensate again, the world around him refused to resolve itself into anything recognizable. Everything looked…black. Blue. Blue-black. There were birds trilling somewhere nearby, and he heard water, but it took an unusually long moment for him to remember where, and what, and even who he was.

‘Groggy’ didn’t even begin to describe how he felt.

Sunrise was still a few hours off, judging by the lack of a moon and the long blue shadows that marked the deepest part of the night. He could have been asleep for six hours or sixty—it felt like he’d dunked his whole head in a vat of Lambert’s Black Gull—but no, he was fairly sure he’d passed out only a few hours ago. It just felt like he’d been asleep for eons.

He’d never slept so deeply before out on the Path. It was dangerous for him to lose all awareness of his surroundings, and Eskel realized with a jolt that the entire Nilfgaardian army could have fought a pitched battle against the allied Northern Kingdoms right in the middle of their campsite, and Eskel wouldn’t have so much as twitched awake to see what all the fuss was about.

He'd probably feel well-rested and refreshed once the grogginess faded, but right now he felt like he’d been clubbed over the head and dragged off to some rock troll’s lair.

He shifted against protesting muscles to check on Jaskier, who was sprawled out over Eskel’s chest and snoring softly. It was hard to tell from such a close vantage point, but Jaskier looked fine. Like a man who’d been so well-fucked he’d fallen into a sleep-coma, Eskel hoped. Perhaps after going a round or two with an amorous vampire, given the dark love-bites scattered over Jaskier’s neck, chest, and shoulders.

Eskel didn’t have that many notches in his bedpost, but he’d slept with enough people to realize that what he’d felt and done with Jaskier was not…normal. He could practically taste the lingering aftermath of a magical storm, that faint-yet-unmistakable odour of petrichor: baked earth and fresh rain on hot stone, and a lingering hint of ozone in the air.

It had to be the result of the spellbond. However, nothing Eskel understood about the spell itself, or his own knowledge of binding magic, could explain what he’d felt tonight.

It was certainly something more than just great sex. Fantastic sex, Eskel amended immediately. The best he’d ever had, certainly. But there had been more to it than just two people enjoying an intense physical experience. It had felt like the twining and meeting of souls.

He’d felt connected to Jaskier in a way he’d never dreamed was possible, and it had nothing to do with their physical bodies. He didn’t have any other way to explain it.

Mother Nenneke might know. In fact, she was probably their best shot at figuring out the spellbound to begin with. But Elander (and the Temple of Melitele) was a full week-long journey to the south, and if he had any hope at all of reaching Kaer Morhen before winter set in, they couldn’t afford the delay. He had to keep pushing east, and hope to find a sorcerer who’d be able to break the spellbond. If not...well, there was always Ban Ard, but only as a last resort. If anyone could break the curse, they’d be at the mages’ college. It would take them the rest of the summer to reach the college, but from there Eskel could pay for a portal to take him right to the foothills of the Blue Mountains if it came to that.

The thought of making that journey without Jaskier was unbearable, and so Eskel didn’t force himself to visualize how empty and bleak a future without Jaskier looked right now.

One step at a time, he told himself. The plan hadn’t changed: head east, find a mage, break the curse, and then race north as fast as he could. Then he’d see for himself if Kaer Morhen had fallen, if Geralt and the rest of his family still lived.

Only now, more than ever, he knew there was going to be some sort of reckoning at the end of all this madness. A cosmic balancing, because Eskel felt like he'd just found the missing piece of his soul.

And no power in the Spheres would ever let a Witcher have that. Have him.

Jaskier.

***

Chapter Text

The DAYS that followed were some of the happiest of Eskel’s life.

He woke up every morning with Jaskier draped over his chest, or snoring softly in his arms, limbs tangled together and deliciously sated from whatever they’d done the previous night. If there was no pressing reason to begin the day’s travel right away, Eskel would sometimes tug Jaskier just a little closer—truthfully, he could never get close enough—and doze off with his scarred cheek mashed up against Jaskier’s soft skin.

Just as often, however, Eskel stayed awake and used the first quiet moments of the day to watch Jaskier sleep, marvelling at the unfamiliar sensation of his own flooding happiness.

If anyone had asked Eskel if he were happy before this strange, magical summer began, Eskel would have said yes, he was happy. Content, at the very least. He knew he had all the right components for happiness: a good profession that gave him a profound sense of purpose (even if it was sometimes difficult and dangerous), with winters to rest and recuperate away from the world. He had a handful of loved ones, a few good friends, and overall, Eskel knew he had a lot to be grateful for. Seven hells, he’d survived, at the very least. Sometimes that alone felt like an enormous accomplishment.

Even so, Eskel was self-aware enough to know that words like ‘satisfied’ or ‘grateful’ or even ‘content’ didn’t mean the same thing as ‘happy’. The semantics hadn’t bothered him. He’d been happy enough with his life.

The problem, Eskel had realized, is that now he knew the difference between content and happy.

In the peace and quiet of early morning, with Jaskier safe and asleep in his arms, his human-slow heartbeat thudding away, Eskel let himself consider the ocean of difference between the grey, lonely country he’d lived in before, and this the vibrant, colourful isle of joy he’d discovered.

Without fail, Jaskier was the one to interrupt Eskel’s morning ruminations, though he never seemed to wake the same way twice. Sometimes he’d startle awake but still disoriented from a dream, and blink at Eskel with wide, uncomprehending blue eyes. Eskel quickly learned that it was pointless to try and have a conversation with Jaskier when he was in this half-asleep state. It was more effective to pull Jaskier back down under the covers and cuddle with him until he regained his senses.

Sometimes Jaskier’s body would wake up before his mind, and he’d greet the day in a purely physical way. Eskel would feel an insistent rocking motion against his hip, or the hot brand of Jaskier’s swollen cock against his thigh. Then it was just a matter of waiting until Jaskier’s mind caught up with his body, like someone lighting a candle in a dark window. Jaskier’s sleepy, aimless lust would instantly sharpen and fix on Eskel—or, more precisely, his mouth, or his cock—and then it would become a race to see who could make the other come first, or who’d be faster to grab the oil.

If the simple emotion of happiness was still a bit of an unfamiliar novelty, Eskel couldn’t begin to identify exactly what feeling rose up within him whenever he’d casually fuck into a still-sleepy Jaskier, and feel the body-warm drip of his own spend from the previous night drip out of Jaskier. Whatever it was called, it was an extremely filthy and splendid emotion. The Nilfgaardians would probably have a word for it.

After a few rounds of morning sex, and sometimes a desperately needed wash in the nearest stream, Chireadan would arrive back at their camp with a brace of rabbits or a few squirrels for breakfast. The elf had faultless timing.

It took almost a week for Eskel to finally work up the nerve to talk to Chireadan about his tendency to vanish and reappear at the most opportune moments. It promised to be an excruciatingly awkward conversation, but Eskel was determined to say something to Chireadan. He’d grown up surrounded by immature boys, nosy teachers, and crude older Witchers who approached public humiliation like a bloodsport. Eskel had never imagined anyone would be so willing to accommodate their companions’ need to fuck every night and not say a single thing about it in the morning.

He’d just started to stumble his way through this sentiment when Chireadan held up a hand.

“Please, don’t trouble yourself, Vatt'ghern,” Chireadan said, stirring their breakfast of bubbling porridge. “I understand that Witchers are near-insatiable lovers, and I know far more about Jaskier's proclivities than I'd like. Giving you privacy is easy enough, and I enjoy my quiet nights in the woods. Besides, it seems like something a friend would do,” Chireadan added.

“You’ve been a very good friend,” Eskel said to Chireadan. “To both me and Jaskier.”

Chireadan relaxed a little at hearing Eskel validate his tentative offer of friendship, even if he blushed a little.

“We certainly both appreciate your discretion,” Eskel added, which was what he’d meant to say this whole time. “I’m just sorry we’ve driven you away from camp for so many nights in a row. We can control ourselves,” Eskel promised, although he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. “It’s just…new. And intense. Perhaps because of the spell.”

“It’s also how Jaskier is,” Chireadan said with a shrug. “I stayed with him for a time in Oxenfurt when we were putting together the Sandpiper network. Jaskier entertained often, and his flat was quite small. He seems to have an extremely high sex drive, at least for a human. I’ve often speculated that his family lineage must include at least one species of sucubbi.”

“Fae, actually,” Eskel said, smiling, “though I wouldn’t discount a sucubbi or two were somewhere in the mix.”

Now that Chireadan had mentioned Jaskier’s time in Oxenfurt, Eskel felt the questions bubbling up. He was deeply curious about that period of Jaskier’s life. Jaskier had intimated that, after he’d parted ways with Geralt, he’d been on a self-destructive streak prior to his arrest. He’d never gone into much detail about it. Eskel had been through something similar himself (also due to Geralt, ironically) but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up to Jaskier. The last thing he wanted was to make Jaskier relive something painful.

Chireadan might be willing to point out the creaky spots where Eskel ought to tread lightly, and where he might find safe footing.

“Jaskier hasn’t talked much about that period in his life,” Eskel said, glancing over to where Jaskier was still snoring away in their bedroll. “Was he unhappy?

Chireadan frowned down at the porridge, and then slowly nodded. “To put it mildly. The sex was more about numbing himself, I think, than finding any real pleasure. Perhaps it just gave him something to do when he wasn’t working or getting high, or getting blind drunk. He was badly in need of distraction, in those days.”

“At least he used the time to build something good,” Eskel said, smiling fondly at Jaskier’s lumpy outline beneath the pile of fur and blankets near the fire.

“Indeed,” Chireadan said. “Most humans—most sentient creatures, I should say—lash out when they’re in pain. But Jaskier channelled his energies into saving people instead, even when he himself was in agony.”

“Was it—” Eskel hesitated, unsure if he ought to ask, if this was perhaps an invasion of Jaskier’s privacy, but he really didn’t know much about Jaskier’s past. “How bad was it?”

Chireadan sighed. “The man I met in Oxenfurt was almost unrecognisable from the friend I’d known for a decade. He was bitter. Closed-off. Drinking far too much, stumbling around, taking stupid risks…he was punishing himself. But not for something he’d done. Something he’d believed.”

“Sometimes a belief can be much harder to forgive yourself for,” Eskel muttered.

“Indeed,” Chireadan said. The elf evidently had a few regrets of his own. “And you know, he’s much happier now, despite his current predicament. Already he’s become much more like the Jaskier I used to know: the one who smiled easily, who laughed and loved with an open heart. That’s another reason why I wanted to give you two some privacy. You’re bringing him back.”

“Oh,” Eskel said, at a loss. He’d hoped he’d been helping Jaskier heal, at least from his physical injuries, but it seemed like Chireadan thought he was doing more than that. Eskel wasn’t sure: he didn’t have anything to compare it to. But he thought Jaskier was doing better. He’d seemed to be recovering faster, too: his burns had closed over, he was recovering some dexterity, and he’d been regaining more of the weight and muscle mass he’d lost in prison. Even his energy levels had improved, or at least his libido. The starving, sick, half-dead convict Eskel had met back in Oxenfurt certainly wouldn’t have been equal to several rounds of nightly sex with a Witcher.

It occurred to Eskel that he might have overlooked Jaskier’s emotional recovery, given his preoccupation with Jaskier’s physical health. Not that Eskel could take any credit for improving Jaskier’s health or lifting his spirits. Jaskier was the one doing all the hard work, after all: Eskel was just there to offer what comfort and support he could.

“This might not be my place to ask,” Chireadan said, “but I understand you’re good friends with Geralt of Rivia?”

“I am,” Eskel sighed, prodding at the fire. “He’s my oldest friend.”

“I’ve met him a few times,” Chireadan said in a neutral tone. “In Rinde, of course, and once or twice when he was travelling with Jaskier. I confess, I’ve never quite understood what certain people saw in the man. He’s good-looking, to be sure—by human standards, at least—but he always struck me as surly and impatient. I thought perhaps he didn’t care for elves.”

“No, he’s like that with everyone,” Eskel sighed, staring into their morning fire. He felt so exhausted, all of a sudden. “But then I'm starting to think that I don’t know him as well as I thought I did.”

Perhaps that wasn’t fair. Eskel knew he’d only heard Jaskier’s side of things, and Geralt might have good reasons for some of his words and deeds. But Geralt also been cruel to Jaskier, in ways Eskel had never thought possible. The Geralt that Eskel had known—the funny, charismatic boy he’d grown up with, and even the grim, silent man who’d replaced him—had always had such a loving heart, no matter how deeply buried. Geralt should have seen exactly what Eskel saw in Jaskier: someone who looked into the shadows, and drew whoever he found there out into the light.

Yet Geralt had somehow taken the gift of Jaskier’s light and warmth, the sunlight of his affection, and shoved it away, ground it under his heel, and salted the soil for good measure. He’d left Jaskier to wither away in darkness, however unintentionally, but to Eskel’s mind that somehow made Geralt’s treatment of Jaskier even worse.

Geralt knew exactly how it felt to be abandoned, and he’d gone and done the same thing to someone who loved him.

Occupation aside, Eskel wasn’t a violent man, and he loathed the prospect of hurting someone. But every time he thought about how Geralt had treated Jaskier, he felt blindly, even violently angry towards a man he’d loved for several lifetimes. Geralt had just been so goddamned careless with Jaskier. He’d taken a precious, beautiful thing, broken it, and then not even bothered to look at the scattered pieces before kicking Jaskier aside. Eskel couldn’t understand why.

When he next laid eyes on Geralt, he might want to hug him, but he’d probably punch him in the mouth.

***

Eskel was oddly quiet that evening. Jaskier had noticed he was a little glum after they broke camp in the morning, and during the afternoon’s travels his mood seemed to sour further. It reached a peak by the time they’d finished settling the horses, making camp, and eating supper.

He waited until Chireadan made his usual flimsy excuse to leave the campsite. (Truly, Chireadan was a wonderful friend, and once Jaskier was back on his feet, he was going to commission a statue in his likeness, called Chiradan: A Friend to Bards and Other Sexual Deviants.).

The instant Eskel took a seat by the fire, Jaskier whipped off his shirt and strode forward, bare chested and ready to take action. Either he’d cuddle aggressively with Eskel until they’d had enough skin contact to stop the emotional spiral he could sense gathering in Eskel, or they’d fuck, which would mean even more touching, and thus also stop the spiral. No matter what happened, they’d both end up feeling better, even if they didn’t end up talking specifically about whatever was bothering Eskel.

“You’re quiet tonight,” Jaskier pointed out, even as he nudged and elbowed and bullied his way into Eskel’s lap.

Eskel seemed reluctant to be drawn out of his brooding, but he dropped his arms, shifted his legs, and immediately ceded all territory to Jaskier until Jaskier was folded comfortably into Eskel’s lap. He also obligingly leaned back to tug off his shirt, and Jaskier got to sink into the man’s lovely warmth and bury his nose in his springy chest hair, and breathe in Eskel’s familiar scent of sandalwood and cedar. He gave a sigh of deep relief as the waves of comfort washed over them both. All worry and melancholy sadness seemed to vanish.

“Better?” Jaskier mumbled into Eskel’s neck.

Eskel nodded, and Jaskier felt the scrape of Eskel’s five o’clock shadow brush his forehead. He gave into the impulse to rub his own lightly-bearded cheek against Eskel’s in return. It felt like he was marking Eskel like a cat, so Jaskier decided to lean into it, purring and pretending to make lap-biscuits against the impressive swell of Eskel’s left pectoral just to make Eskel laugh.

“Are you okay?” Jaskier asked, after a few moments of simple contact. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He felt Eskel start to shake his head, and was caught a little off-guard when Eskel seemed to change his mind. He hugged him tightly, and landed a fierce kiss on his temple.

“I'm fine,” Eskel promised. “I talked to Chireadan this morning. Just meant to thank him for giving us so much privacy—he brought up Witcher sex drives, and yes, I’ll tell you all about it,” Eskel rushed to say, before Jaskier could even open his mouth. “Chireadan also mentioned staying with you in Oxenfurt. It sounded like you were pretty low then. Before your arrest.”

Eskel lifted one of Jaskier’s bandaged hands to his mouth and pressed soft, gentle kisses across the white linen. Jaskier understood what he meant: before all the torture and the suffering and the darkness. Before you lost your music and your fingers and your whole gods-damned life.

Except that had all sort of happened long before the fire mage decided to roast his fingers, hadn’t it? He’d lost everything—his friend, his muse, his life on the Path with Geralt. He’d even lost his past, because his entire adult life had suddenly been flipped and reshaped into something Jaskier didn’t recognize. What the fuck had those last seventeen years meant, if Geralt could just throw him away like that?

Ah. This might be the source of all that anger and sorrow he’d felt leaking in from Eskel’s side of the bond all afternoon.

It had never occurred to Jaskier that someone would be upset on his behalf. Even when Geralt had almost (accidentally) killed Jaskier with the djinn, Geralt hadn’t been angry at himself. Oh, he’d seemed to feel guilty, and remorseful, and he’d obviously been desperate to save Jaskier at the time. But once it was all over, and he’d finished fucking Yen in the ruins of the mayor’s house, Geralt hadn’t so much as mentioned the incident. He’d taken Jaskier’s forgiveness for granted, apparently, because Geralt had never even apologised for it. Not that it mattered; Jaskier had already forgiven him, because it had been a stupid, horrific accident, and they’d both been behaving badly. Geralt had saved him, in the end.

Jaskier had thought about the djinn a lot, after the mountain. In fact, he’d revisited almost every moment he’d spent with Geralt in the years of their friendship. He’d gotten drunk, done a bunch of fisstech, and then written out the whole chronology of their relationship, from that first meeting in Posada to King Neidemar’s mountain in Caingorn. The result had been thirty-odd pieces of parchment pinned up along the wall, with bits of red string weaving and drooping around the room to connect different dates and events, although Jaskier hadn’t been able to remember most of those connections in the morning.

In fact, he’d woken with a horrific hangover, and believed that he’d stumbled into the den of a lunatic.

Jaskier had blamed the liquor and the drugs, the insomnia, the aching sorrow he’d felt sinking deeper and deeper into his bones as each day passed with no word—not even a letter—from Geralt. He’d expected something: a heartfelt apology, a terrible poem, or at least some faint sign that Geralt had checked to make sure Jaskier hadn’t broken his neck or run afoul of some creature on that mountain. Despite every fucking scrap of evidence to the contrary, Jaskier had clung to the belief that Geralt had actually cared about him.

He’d dreamt of Geralt appearing at his door in Oxenfurt one day, with his perfect jaw and shining white hair and fancy black armour. In the fantasy, Geralt had come on bended knee to apologise, to hug him, to try to offer some assurance that Jaskier hadn’t actually wasted the best years of his life on someone who didn’t even like him.

He made some wounded sound and realised Eskel was rubbing his back in slow, sweeping passes while Jaskier tried very hard not to cry.

“Jask?” Eskel said. He was still rubbing Jaskier’s back, and Jaskier dragged himself away from the hurricane raging in his heart. Gods, he was so, so lucky that the emotional awareness of their bond only really went one way. It would be humiliating for Eskel to know exactly how miserable and self-pitying he was feeling.

“I’m okay,” he said, and cringed at the audible tears in his voice.

“It’s also okay if you’re not,” Eskel said gently.

He really was a very nice person, Jaskier thought. If Eskel had been the Witcher occupying the dark corner table at that ramshackle inn in Upper Posada seventeen years ago, they might even have had a chance at a real love story. One with a happy ending.

“Do you ever feel like your entire life might just be some cosmic joke?” Jaskier sniffed. “I mean, you probably don’t, you believe in the Fates, so maybe you think a person’s path is already laid out for them, with a reason behind everything that happens. But I sometimes feel like someone forgot to draft the blueprint for mine. It’s just…wrong. Meandering. Uneven. Goes nowhere. What looked like a pattern turns out to be nothing but random shapes.”

“I—what brought this on?” Eskel said, and there was so much honest compassion and concern in his voice that it almost made Jaskier tear up again. “I shouldn’t have mentioned Geralt. I know he hurt you.”

Jaskier couldn't lift his head to answer. He wanted to stay in that warm, dark, safe little space where his nose was mashed up against Eskel’s neck and he didn’t need to look Eskel in the eyes.

“No, that’s wasn’t it,” he sniffed. “I was just feeling sorry for myself. Which is idiotic,” he says, brightening his voice, “because I’m lying here with you, which is a perfectly lovely place to be. The views are breathtaking. And besides, how could anyone possibly be unhappy with your ridiculous anatomy wedged up against them?”

Eskel was looking at Jaskier’s face very carefully, clearly trying to decide if he should push for a better explanation. Blessedly, Eskel decided not to press. Instead, he gave Jaskier a soft, shy smile and said, “Most people would probably just find that uncomfortable.”

Jaskier tipped his head in inquiry, and Eskel’s bronze cheeks got a little rosier. “Being poked, I mean. By my ‘ridiculous anatomy’.”

“Oh darling, don’t make it sound as if I meant that as a criticism!” Jaskier rushed to say. He was starting to feel his sadness start to lift like the sun burning through a fogbank. Talking about Eskel’s cock always seemed to cheer him up.

“You know exactly how much I like your anatomy. ‘Ridiculous’ was a poor word choice. I ought to have said ‘stupendous’. Or ‘awe-inspiring’. In fact, you’ve impressed me enough to invest in a business. I’ll start by carving little fertility idols modelled on your impressive member. I think they’d be an enormous hit. I’d bet they’d sell like hotcakes in Velen.”

Unfortunately there were just too many layers of cloth between them, which Jaskier observed in despair. He knew they should have stripped out of their leggings when they’d taken off their shirts! To make matters worse, Eskel was wearing his stupid knee pads, and it took forever for him to take those off. The kneepads were almost as bad as the fiddly little bows on his codpiece.

Those fucking little red bows haunted Jaskier’s dreams.

“Darling, we’re both wearing far too many clothes,” Jaskier pointed out, trying hard not to feel too resentful about the kneepads. “Could you—?”

“As you wish,” Eskel said. Jaskier prepared to climb down from his lovely warm, muscular perch, but instead Eskel made him squawk like an indignant duck as he stood up. Jaskier wrapped his arms around Eskel’s waist and he walked them over to the little lean-to tent where their bedrolls were all set out.

He dumped Jaskier—gently—into the mound of blankets and furs, and then stood back to begin the process of unbuckling and unstrapping his (stupid, dumb, cursed) kneepads. Eskel caught Jaskier’s pouting glare.

“Jaskier, stop it,” he chuckled. “You look like you want to cut off my poleyns and throw them into the fire.”

“Oh, is that what they’re called?” Jaskier grumbled. “And yes. I do.”

He watched Eskel fumble with the buckles for a moment—they were at an awkward angle—and rolled his eyes. He knee-walked over to Eskel and reached for the metal buckle, but the clumsy wads of bandages made him miscalculate slightly. Instead of brushing the small brass buckle at the side of the poleyn, he knocked the tip of his forefinger into the hard, unyielding metal cup that protected Eskel’s kneecap. Eskel must have seen his wince, because he immediately stopped to check if Jaskier was all right.

“Fucking fuck that stings!” Jaskier said, shaking out his hand. The burn wounds had finally closed, true, but the skin at the tips of each finger was incredibly thin and fragile. He’d lost most of the protective cushion of healthy fat and muscle tissue to rounds of debridement: under the bandages, his poor fingers looked like skinny wooden sticks, with only a thin layer of fresh red-pink scar tissue left to cover the bone. Bumping the burns when they’d been open, infected wounds had been agony. But now, any sort of inadvertent blow seemed to radiate much deeper down into Jaskier’s nerves and bone.

“Stop using your hands,” Eskel growled. “If you can’t keep still—”

“Y-yes?” Jaskier asked breathlessly, a hopeful note of anticipation in his question. Something inside him quaked at the threat in Eskel’s voice, and the heavy press of that big, muscular body pinning Jaskier to the bedroll. Rather than feeling trapped, or claustrophobic, he only felt a delicious thrill of anticipation.

“Well, you’ll have to wear your harness,” Eskel said, after a slight pause. He looked a bit flushed.

“Oh, that won’t be very effective,” Jaskier said in a reasonable-sounding voice, despite the pounding of his heart. He arched his hips up as far as he could in the limited space Eskel was giving him, bringing their hard cocks together. Eskel gasped and then groaned.

“The harness is far too easy to wiggle out of. You designed it that way,” he whispered against the shell of Eskel’s ear. “Have to find something else to tie me up with.”

Eskel went still, and Jaskier gave him a moment to consider the idea. He wanted it—badly—but he also didn’t want to push Eskel too far. They hadn’t talked about this in any detail, and it wasn’t very fair of him to make demands without checking with Eskel first.

“Are you sure?” Eskel asked him. He was still hard. Jaskier didn’t think he’d imagined the little twitch of interest from Eskel’s cock when he’d said tie me up. That was a very promising sign, but it didn’t necessarily signal agreement.

Jaskier met Eskel’s eyes, which were glowing faintly in the dim light like a cat’s, and nodded. “I’m very sure, dear heart. But only if you’re willing.”

“I am,” Eskel said slowly. “But I can’t hurt you, Jask. Not really. Is that all right?”

“Oh of course!” Jaskier agreed quickly. “Whatever you’re comfortable with. Truly. I wouldn’t ask you for anything you aren’t willing to give.”

This seemed to offer enough reassurance. Some of the tension leaked out of Eskel’s body, and Jaskier smiled up at his Witcher, and pressed a kiss to the hinge of his jaw. “And it’s not really so much about pain—although sometimes it is," he amended quickly. "But it’s mostly about letting go. Not having to think. Being under someone else’s control.”

Eskel still looked a bit dubious, but seemed to accept this explanation at face-value, just as he had so many of Jaskier’s other quirks and eccentricities.

“Do you…do you think you’d like that? Controlling me? Taking charge?”

“I doubt anyone could ever truly control you." He somehow made that sound like a compliment, instead of a criticism. “But…yes I think so. I’d be willing to try, anyway. If it’s what you really wanted. I can’t promise to be any good at it, though,” he said, with a self-depreciating huff.

Jaskier cupped Eskel’s scarred cheek and waited until he met his eyes. Jaskier felt a little pulse of anxiety through the spellbond, but he didn’t think Eskel was only concerned about his performance. Something else was troubling him. Whether or not he’d actually talk about that with Jaskier, or just grit his teeth and force himself through it, was a different kettle of sirens altogether.

“You’re a skilled and attentive lover, Eskel: you’ll do just fine,” Jaskier said. Eskel flushed at the praise, but at least he didn’t pull away or deny it outright as he might have done a few weeks ago. “Is that what’s truly bothering you?”

“Maybe,” Eskel said. He put his hand over Jaskier’s, and sighed. “Or maybe I’m worried I’ll enjoy it. I’ve been asked to do this before, you know. By a few other people. They assumed that I’d enjoy inflicting pain because I was a big, rough-looking Witcher. And I don’t,” he said quickly, almost desperately.

Jaskier had to stroke his cheek and soothe him a little. “Of course you don’t, dearest. You’re the kindest, gentlest man I’ve ever known.”

“But then why—”

“I try not to think about it,” Jaskier admitted, because he owed Eskel his honesty. “I know it’s a…sensitive issue. Liking to be hurt, and liking to hurt are very different concepts, after all. I don’t really know how it feels to be on your end of things. But I also didn’t want to be associated with the narrow-minded fools who’ve made cruel assumptions about you, or demanded that you compromise yourself just to get them off. I’ve already taken advantage of you there, I fear.”

“You haven’t,” Eskl said quietly. “Not at all.”

Jaskier nodded, although he wondered if he would ever truly believe that. He’d most certainly benefited from Eskel’s kindness and generous spirit, and while he’d hoped he’d given Eskel something in return—companionship, at the very least, and some physical pleasure. But he knew that their relationship was a lopsided one. Seven hells, Eskel had saved his life: it would take him a thousand years to balance out that kind of cosmic debt.

“At any rate,” Jaskier continued, trying to set aside his guilt, “I’m asking you for this because I think you’ll enjoy it. Not because you’re some big unfeeling brute, or because I believe you'd take pleasure in someone else’s pain. I'm asking because you like taking care of people. You’re good at that, Eskel. Which makes me think you’ll be very good at this. And…because I trust you. Wholeheartedly.”

He had to stop and clear his throat. He hoped he sounded sincere, not saccharine. Judging from the soft light in Eskel’s eyes, he’d struck the mark. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never actually done this with someone I trust. It turns out I’m far too selfish to pass up the chance.”

“That’s...that's kind of you to say,” Eskel murmured, voice rough with emotion. “That you trust me. You know how much I—”

He stopped speaking abruptly. Jaskier hoped he was searching for the right words, but he had a feeling that Eskel was trying very hard not to say something. He felt a sharp spike of fear push up through the bond, on Eskel’s side. Whatever he’d been about to say, it didn’t seem particularly good, if it made Eskel feel that anxious.

Jaskier waited, hoping he’d continue. At least all those years with Geralt had cured him of his dreadful habit of rushing in to fill a silence, or bullying people into speaking when they’d rather keep silent.

Well, mostly.

Whatever inner battle Eskel was fighting, he seemed to find some resolution. He squared his shoulders. “I care for you, Jaskier,” he said.

Jaskier tried to find comfort in those words, and ignore the foolish disappointment welling up inside him. I care for you wasn’t quite what he’d wanted Eskel to say, he realised. And that was…stupid. What in the name of all the gods would he have expected Eskel to say?

Nothing about love, that was certain. Jaskier was already fighting hard to keep himself from walking down that idiotic garden path. He’d never want to drag Eskel along with him: the poor man was already spellbound and curse-tied to a useless crippled shell of a poet. He certainly didn’t need all the misery and difficult choices that love would inevitably bring into their already-complex relationship.

Jaskier realized too late that he had been staring blankly at Eskel for too long, and that he ought to reply in kind.

“I…I care for you too, Eskel” he rushed to say, somehow managing not to blurt out the sentiment like a complete ninny. He sounded sincere, at least, because he did care for Eskel. But he knew that a close examination of exactly how much he cared, or to what degree, would benefit no one.

“I’m glad,” Eskel said with a measured, slightly empty smile, as if Jaskier had just declared that he liked Scorpion, or Gwent, or those fucking poleyns. “Now, should we get started? Only if you’re still interested,” he hurried to say.

Seeing as Jaskier was naked under Eskel, with a tentative agreement in place that Eskel might truss him up like a summer goose and fuck him tonight, Jaskier had but one reasonable response: “Yes.”

***

“Slowly,” Eskel murmured, as much a reminder to himself as to Jaskier. “Slowly,” he repeated, with another incremental roll of his hips.

He’d settled on using a roll of the clean linen bandages to tie Jaskier’s wrists, because they still had an ample supply, and because Eskel adamantly refused to use rough hemp rope or twine on Jaskier’s delicate wrists. He’d wrapped the bandage around the stake of their little lean-to canvas shelter, and tied it off with a loose slipknot to make sure he could free Jaskier immediately if either of them called a halt. And for extra assurance, Eskel had placed his hunting knife within easy reach: he could cut through the thin linen strip in half a heartbeat, if required.

However, as far as Eskel could tell, this little experiment was going rather well.

Jaskier had grown flushed and almost nonverbal as soon as Eskel had wrapped the bandages around his wrists. He’d been panting by the time Eskel had tied the slipknot around the stake. Eskel had considered his work for a moment, and then leaned down to give Jaskier a long, lingering kiss. He’d coached the other man to lie down, and to stretch his arms up over his head once more. The moment Eskel had started binding his wrists together, he’d felt Jaskier’s cock jump against his hip. Jaskier had gasped and thrust up against him, cockhead dribbling copious amount of precum, and Eskel had felt a massive wave of desire crest and smash up against the rocks of his resolve.

He’d had to close his eyes so he could focus on tying the second simple knot. Otherwise he’d lean down and ravish the lovely man sweating and trembling beneath him.

“Shhh, you’re all right,” he muttered, though he wasn’t sure Jaskier could hear him. Eskel pushed Jaskier’s knees up, enough to expose his hole so he could dribble plenty of oil there. They’d fucked a dozen times in the last week, and twice that very morning, but Eskel wasn’t about to take any chances.

He wasn’t quite prepared for the picture Jaskier would make: like a gift wrapped up just for Eskel, a long, lean line of white limbs that glowed under the moonlight, with a lightly-furred chest, belly and turgid cock cast in flickering orange-red from the fire. Jaskier’s face was scrunched up in blissful anticipation, patiently waiting for Eskel to take him apart. Even if Eskel had only appreciated the picture Jaskier made, and nothing else, the vision of Jaskier tied up and waiting for Eskel to ravish him would have been enough to carry him through the rest of it.

However, Jaskier had been right: Eskel liked it. He liked having Jaskier safely bound underneath him. It meant he was firmly under Eskel’s control, protected from injuring his hands and from the wild distractions of his mind. It was obvious that being tied up helped narrow Jaskier’s focus: as soon as Eskel finished the last knot, he felt the quiet, still mental space Jaskier slipped into through their shared bond. Having his wrists tied and his body immobilised calmed him, and seemed to draw Jaskier down into his body.

Eskel could understand a little better, now, why Jaskier liked to play this role.

Eskel was certainly enjoying it much more than he’d expected. He liked running his calloused hands up and down Jaskier’s body, seeing him twist and shiver and make those little whispered pleas of, ‘More!’. He liked pinching his nipples and cupping his hands around his balls, and the way those things made Jaskier shudder and cry out for more. It was always ‘more’ with Jaskier: more touch, more sensation. Eskel was always happy to deliver.

He leaned down to trace the line of Jaskier’s sternum with his tongue, and continued down until he met Jaskier’s cock. Jaskier groaned and bucked up towards his mouth in a not-subtle hint, but Eskel continued moving and ignored Jaskier’s grunt of frustration. He licked at the crease of Jaskier’s thigh, and sucked at the tight, softly-furred sac of his balls before finally licking a hot stripe over Jaskier’s hole.

The effect was immediate and electric. Eskel was glad Jaskier’s hands were bound, because he would have hurt himself otherwise, flailing around like a wild thing as he sobbed and babbled nonsense as Eskel ate him out.

Eskel found he liked this, too, this act of worshipping Jaskier’s sweet little rosebud hole, and the way it made his husband jerk and scream. When he added a second finger, he felt Jaskier draw tight and actually tug against his bindings, as if he really was trying to pull free. Eskel lifted his head to check and make sure Jaskier was all right. They’d worked out a finger signal he could use, since Jaskier had warned that speech might become a bit difficult.

(Eskel hadn’t quite believed it was possible, but Jaskier had fallen quickly into garbled nonsense and pleas once he was tied up and pinned with Eskel’s weight straddling his thighs).

If he’d been having trouble speaking with Eskel’s tongue pushing at his rim, he went absolutely feral once Eskel lined up his cock and began pushing inside.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Jaskier yelped at the first hard press of Eskel’s cockhead. Eskel would normally have spent more time and oil preparing Jaskier, but Jaskier had insisted that this first time be quick, and rather rough.

So we can fuck, come, and enjoy the good stuff, Jaskier had said. Eskel thought this was the good stuff, but he was too much of a gentleman to contradict the man now speared open on his cock. He set a quick, jolting pace that would probably be a torture to them both.

“Oh fuck, Eskel! Talk to me, please!” Jaskier begged, between lewd moans every time Eskel had bottomed out inside his body.

“What--what do you want me to say?” Eskel asked, although he had a pretty good idea.

“Mmmm, just…that I’m good. That I feel good. For you. And…” he sucked in a deep breath,” “That I’m good for you. A good…a good boy.”

“Oh,” Eskle gasped, reaching down to squeeze the root of his own cock tightly. That had almost made him come.

Jaskier was nearly there himself, and they’d only just gotten started. Obviously this rougher pace brought them both right to the edge much faster than their normal rounds of slower, more gentle lovemaking.

“You do feel good for me, Jaskier,” Eskel said, once he was sure he wasn’t just going to pop off unexpectedly. “You're so good. A...a good boy,” he said, stumbling only a little. He was glad Chireadan wasn’t around to hear that.

He remembered the very first time he’d ever touched Jaskier like this, when Jaskier had asked him for permission to come. Perhaps they’d always been building up to this sort of play.

“Want you to come for me,” Eskel said, just as thrilled by Jaskier’s loud groan of pleasure as he was by the tight clasp of his body and the sensation of being buried inside Jaskier. He took firm hold of Jaskier's hips, fingers digging in to Jaskier's creamy skin hard enough to bruise, and rolled his hips up to fuck roughly up into Jaskier, setting a more ruthless, rapid-fire pace, with short fast strokes punctuated by Jaskier's soft cries of, "ah, ah, ah!"

Jaskier was twisting against his bonds as Eskel pounded away. But not in a way that made Eskel think he was trying to escape; it looked more to Eskel like Jaskier just wanted to know that the bonds were there, that he couldn't escape, even if he wanted to.

“You're so good,” Eskel huffed, still rolling his hips even as sweat beaded on his forehead and rolled down his back, and gathered on his belly. It  dripped down onto Jaskier, their sweat mixing and slicking his skin along with the copious amounts of precome Jaskier had been leaking ever since Eskel had tied him up and started to fuck him. "You're perfect. Perfect for me. I want you to come," he muttered, fucking jaskier even harder. "You're such a good boy."

The effect was immediate; as soon as he said those words, Eskel felt the hot splash of Jaskier's semen against his belly. It triggered his own orgasm and Eskel thrust again and again, fucking into Jaskier until he was sated and drained.

He collapsed on top of Jaskier, taking care not to make the man take the full brunt of his weight. But he didn’t want to pull away just yet. Right now, he only wanted to lie pressed skin-to-skin with Jaskier, with sweat cooling between their bodies, and feel that blissful sense of release.

This had to be the ‘good stuff’ Jaskier had been talking about.

“Gods,” Jaskier said finally, in a hushed and overwrought voice. “Gods.” He broke off to draw in a shuddering breath, and drew in another shaky exhale as Eskel began to untie him.

“You are unbelievably cruel, you know,” Jaskier mumbled dreamily, as if he were only half-aware of what he was saying.

Eskel felt his entire body go cold. Dread settled like a fisherman’s lead weight in his belly. “W-what? I’m so sorry, did I—”

“So cruel,” Jaskier repeated, still sounding like he was fighting for every breath. As soon as Eskel had freed his wrists, Jaskier slung one arm over his face to cover his eyes and block out the ambient firelight. “You’ve fucking ruined me, you know?”

“Oh,” Eskel said, a bit dumbly, not sure what to make of that. “But you’re…you’re okay? I didn’t hurt you?”

“Hurt me?” Jaskier said, as if he didn’t really understand the question. After a beat, he seemed to realise what he’d been saying, and shot straight up to fling his arms around Eskel and pepper his temple and his forehead and the line of his brow with kisses. He even kissed the twisted and gnarled skin where the scars began, which made Eskel twitch and then sag against him

“Oh darling, I’m so sorry! I wasn’t thinking! I was just overwhelmed. That was…gods. I think my soul actually left my body. I don’t—”

Eskel cupped Jaskier’s cheeks, tilting his face towards the fire. “You look concussed.”

“I feel like it! What was that? How did you know—”

Jaskier was babbling, and that was usually a strong indicator that he was fine. Still, Eskel didn’t want to take any chances, or risk further miscommunication.

He laid his striped gambeson over Jaskier’s shoulders and got up to fetch a waterskin and some dried fruit. Eskel’s gambeson looked ridiculously oversized on Jaskier’s skin-and-bones frame.

By the time Eskel returned, Jaskier seemed to have gathered himself. He’d flopped onto his back again, and had wrapped himself up in Eskel’s gambeson, with the wide furled collar pressed close to his mouth and nose.

He wanted my scent, for comfort, Eskel realized, and tried to ignore the way the romantic notion settled in to warm some forgotten corner of his heart.

“Here, love. Take a drink?” he murmured, kneeling back down to offer Jaskier the water flask. “Are you dizzy? Did you hit your head on the stake?”

“Of course not,” Jaskier scoffed, clearly too distracted to notice Eskel’s slip. He did accept the water flask once Eskel uncorked it for him, and drank deeply. “No, it’s just that I’ve had a lot of sex, from a significant cross-section of the Continent’s inhabitants: noblemen and peasants, whores and priests, slatterns and tavern wenches, all sorts of professional entertainers, not to mention nearly all of the sentient non-human races—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Eskel interrupted with a smile, “You’re very experienced.”

“But you, my darling Witcher, have just topped them all. Gods be good,” Jaskier sighed happily, flopping back down again.

“Do you want some dried fruit? Or nuts?” Eskel offered, otherwise at a total loss.

For some reason, Jaskier found this to be hysterically funny. The bard’s shoulders shook under Eskel’s own ridiculously oversized and (slightly) stinky gambeson. Much to his relief, there wasn’t any audible edge of hysteria to Jaskier’s laughter.

“So that was all right?” Eskel said, a bit anxiously. He hoped it had been what Jaskier had wanted, and that he hadn’t gone too far or been too rough, or done anything that had scared Jaskier. He didn’t think so, but…

“It was much more than ‘all right’,” Jaskier said, just as another little giggle slipped out. “That was—perfect. You were perfect.”

“Well I’ve had a little practice, you know,” Eskel said. “I’m not a total novice at this.” He was aware that he sounded slightly churlish, but Jaskier had scared him, earlier. He’d never forgive himself if he hurt Jaskier.

“So you have tied up a lover before?” Jaskier asked, suddenly curious. “I thought you said you’d only been asked.”

“No,” Eskel shrugged, realizing he’d just set off down a dangerous path. “I mean, I have done it before. But not recently. Just when I was younger.”

He didn’t really want to say more, and so Eskel spent time rearranging their sleeping pallet to move it a little further from the fire in deference to the summer heat.”

“When you say ‘a little’ practice—how many times?”

“I didn’t exactly keep count. Does the number matter?”

“Well, no,” Jaskier said, and then in a softer voice, “I was just curious. Was it with the same person?”

Eskel shrugged, praying that Jaskier would let it go. “Does it matter?” he repeated.

“I suppose not,” Jaskier admitted. Eskel gave a little mental sigh of relief when Jaskier abruptly asked, “Was it with Geralt?”

Oh. Gods, well, Eskel had walked right into that one. Jaskier hadn’t asked him that directly before, but part of Eskel had been expecting the question for weeks, now. He still wasn’t sure how he ought to answer. The truth was…complicated. Like so many things were, when it came to Geralt.

He’d hesitated too long, and with every moment that passed, he felt Jaskier close down further, and draw back from him. It was a horrible, visceral feeling, like he was watching Jaskier tumble off a cliff, unable to do anything but watch him fall away. He felt a tug of something through the magic bond between them: the faintest feeling of drawing back, closing down. It felt strangely like their bond was collapsing.

Eskel wasn’t going to let that happen. Even if it was the curse itself shattering, Eskel couldn’t let Jaskier go. Not like this.

He lay down beside Jaskier and curled around him, drawing him into his arms until every inch of his bare skin was in contact with Jaskier’s. It helped, a little: that crawling, crushing feeling of hopelessness stopped. He felt the chaos of the spell surge up between them again like a wave breaking against a dam.

“I’m sorry,” Eskel said, almost desperately. Fuck, how could he tell this story? How could he ever explain it? “Jask, please. I’m sorry. I’d tell you if I could, but— But it’s not my place to say.”

“What does that mean?” Jaskier asked. But Eskel couldn’t answer without answering, without telling him the whole sordid story start to finish. And he’d meant what he said: it wasn’t his story. It was Geralt’s.

He’d loved the man, in one way or another, for almost a hundred years. He couldn’t betray that history. Eskel was only certain of one thing: there was a reason Geralt had never told Jaskier. Instead he’d done the opposite, fed him some half-truth about the Wolf School not allowing men to fuck. Eskel was still puzzling that one out—why Geralt had said it, if he'd actually believed it himself—but he doubted any of Eskel's own doubts or half-baked theories would satisfy Jaskier.

Jaskier, who’d asked Eskel a simple question. But it was one Eskel couldn’t answer without revealing other, darker truths.

“I’m sorry, Jask.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Jaskier said, twisting around to look at Eskel. It was impossible for Eskel to duck away, to brush his hair forward, to hide from those wide blue eyes. “It’s none of my business. Geralt certainly has a right to his privacy. And even if you two fooled around as boys, that doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

It was a rhetorical question. Eskel knew Jaskier wasn’t fishing for an answer, but at least this was something he felt he could reply to honestly.

“No,” Eskel forced himself to say. “It doesn’t.”

I loved him first, he thought, almost desperately. He’d loved Geralt first. But first meant absolutely nothing, not in the course of a Witcher’s unnatural lifespan. Whatever had motivated Geralt to tell Jaskier ‘men like that aren’t men at all’, his meaning had been clear enough. It was a repudiation of everything Geralt had ever done with Eskel in their youth.

Clinging to those memories now, especially after all he’d experienced with Jaskier, seemed pathetic. And unfair.

“It’s just–” Eskel said, still fumbling around for some answer. “It’s not my story to tell.”

“That’s fine,” Jaskier said in a flat, lifeless tone. He rolled over, facing away from Eskel, and shrugged off Eskel's gambeson. His bare shoulders looked like a firm white wall in the moonlight: impenetrable, unbreachable. “Let’s just go to sleep, all right?”

“All right,” Eskel said quietly. He lay down on his back, and folded his hands to remind himself not to reach out to Jaskier, who clearly did not want Eskel to touch him. “As you wish.”

***

The next day was one of the most miserable of Jaskier’s life. Perhaps that was a touch dramatic and even demonstrably false, because he’d certainly had worse days after the mountain, and in the prison under Oxenfurt. But Jaskier certainly felt awful from the moment he woke up cold and alone in their shared bedroll.

He went through the slow, laborious process of dressing himself, and then had to go ask Chireadan for help with his laces. The elf pointedly didn’t ask where Eskel had gone, much to Jaskier’s relief. They shared a quiet breakfast of oatmeal, and then Jaskier watched Chireadan pack up the camp and kicked dirt over the remnants of their fire.

“Is everything all right?” Chireadan asked, once, and Jaskier could only shrug helplessly and tuck his damaged hands close to his sides.

Eskel returned to the camp in time to saddle Scorpion. He wasn’t wearing his armour, just trousers and a grey linen shirt, and had clearly been bathing in the river. His dark auburn hair was still dripping wet at the ends; it looked almost black in the bright morning sunshine. The shirt was wet in a few places on his broad chest and back. It made Jaskier want to scream, because of course Eskel would show up looking particularly delectable on a morning when things between them were so tense and uncertain.

The worst moment came when Eskel had finished fiddling with Scorpion’s tack. He hadn’t looked at Jaskier directly, and spoke without meeting his eyes. “Do you want to try riding by yourself? I can lead him.”

Jaskier felt his stomach clench and then turn over. Gods, this was bad. Eskel didn’t even want to share a saddle with him.

He thought he could already feel the spell start to simmer unhappily at the tension between them, and the lack of shared physical contact. Eskel hadn’t held him last night, or hugged or touched him at all this morning. Jaskier knew the spell wouldn’t cause him active pain unless Eskel left him behind for good. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t necessary for them to share a saddle all day, and indeed it wasn’t good for Scorpion to bear the weight of two riders all the time.

Still, this unprecedented distance hurt.

“All right,” Jaskier agreed quietly. Eskel nodded and helped him to mount, and then Jaskier was alone.

It felt like they were separated by miles now, instead of the short length of Scorpion’s lead.

Their small group set off at a plodding pace. Chireadan tried to start up a conversation with Jaskier, and then with Eskel, but the elf stopped trying once it became clear that neither of his travel companions was in a mood for conversation.

The day grew warm, then hotter still as the sun rose higher. Jaskier traced the line of Eskel’s shoulders and back and hips again and again, noting how the material under his arms and at the small of his back grew dark with sweat. He knew Eskel would smell divine right now: hot skin and the salt of his light sweat, as well as that familiar scent of cedar and sandalwood.

If this were an ordinary morning, he would have twisted around in the saddle so he could scent Eskel’s throat. It would have made the Witcher chuckle and blush in that adorable, disbelieving way, and give Jaskier one of those fond looks of confusion. As if Eskel couldn’t quite believe anyone would like his scent, or want to cuddle up close to him.

The withdrawal of that easygoing affection and camaraderie, the loss of Eskel’s spirit of generosity, hurt Jaskier far more than the spell or the touch-starvation he could feel bubbling up under his skin.

Eskel finally called a halt at noon, and Jaskier hoped that they’d find a way to put last night’s tension behind them. However, as soon as Eskel and Chireadan had staked the horses and built up a little cookfire, Eskel vanished off into the forest again with a muttered promise to, “Get something for lunch.”

Jaskier sat down and tried very hard not to sink into despair.

“What in the world is going on between you two?” Chireadan asked, as soon as Eskel was out of earshot.

“We had a fight,” Jaskier explained. “Err, sort of. I asked him a question he didn’t want to answer.”

“That’s very odd,” Chireadan said. “It seems like Eskel would do anything for you. He’d hand you the moon and the stars, if you asked.”

“Eskel would do that for anyone he considers a friend,” Jaskier said scrubbing at his face. He'd been trying and failing all morning not to think about Eskel and Geralt, or the nature of their ‘friendship’. But Eskel’s non-answer yesterday evening had been answer enough. They’d been lovers, once. Jaskier didn’t know when, or to what extent. But by refusing to answer his question, Eskel had all but confirmed it.

It’s not my story to tell. What utter bullshit.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Jaskier said. If he could convince Chireadan of that, maybe he could convince himself. “We’ll find a mage, break the curse, and he’ll finally be free of me.”

Chireadan cocked his head like an inquisitive cocker spaniel. “He’ll be free? My friend, your Witcher isn’t the one living under a death-curse. What of your own freedom?”

Jaskier squeezed his eyes shut.

He trusted Chireadan. The elf had been a good friend to him for years. He’d been Jaskier’s lifeline after he’d parted ways with Geralt. Chireadan had put up with Jaskier’s drinking and debauchery and self-loathing in Oxenfurt, and they’d built the Sandpiper network together. Even when Jaskier had been at his worst—and it had gotten very bad there, for a while—Chireadan had never coddled him.

The elf had always been kind, but he had a good sense of when Jaskier needed care and support, and when he needed honesty.

“I’m not sure that’s what I want,” he finally said, hoping Chireadan wouldn’t judge him too harshly. He chanced a peek at the elf’s face: Chireadan was staring at him intently, but he didn’t seem disgusted or fretful about the state of Jaskier’s sanity.

“You don’t want to break the curse?” he repeated, slowly.

“Of course I do!” Jaskier said, almost reflexively. “Of course I want to break the spell! No one actually wants to live under a death curse!”

Chireadan tilted his head, and blinked at Jaskier. “But you also want to stay with Eskel.”

“What I want doesn’t matter,” Jaskier muttered, getting to his feet with only a slight wobble, mindful not to bump his hands against anything. “It’s simple: Eskel and I are bound together by the spell. When the curse is broken, we won’t have any reason to stay together."

"But...you like him," Chireadan said.

Jaskier made a frustrated noise. "Of course I do! He’s wonderful. And we’ve been having some phenomenal sex. I just wish…”

He broke off with a sigh. “Godsdammit Chireadan, I just can’t afford to let myself get fixated again on another Witcher! I lost twenty years of my life to Geralt, and when he pushed me away, it destroyed me! You saw that for yourself.”

Chireadan agreed with that particular point. He’d been the one to go trawling the dockside taverns and whorehouses early each morning in search of Jaskier. The elf had usually found him either drunk, or still high on fisstech, and usually covered in lovebites, bruises, and dried spend from several different men. Chireadan had never judged Jaskier for his ‘indulgences’ but he had been extremely critical of Jaskier’s penchant for self-destruction.

When Jaskier had tried to explain that the best parts of himself had withered and died on that mountain, Chireadan had refused to listen. “Your journey has only just begun, my friend,” he’d told Jaskier back then.

Jaskier suspected that Chireadan was gearing up to say it again, to repeat another of his declarations about fate or ‘strange loops’. He raced to cut Chireadan off before the elf could utter a word about destiny.

“I have a plan, you know,” Jaskier said, only distantly aware that he was speaking too loudly, too quickly. “I’m going to take your advice, and enjoy our time together. I’ll lap up Eskel’s care and his affection and his fucking decency like the mangy cur I am, because I’m starving for it. But when the spell is broken, I’ll simply thank him and say goodbye. We can part ways as friends, on good terms.”

As long as I can pretend not to notice the sheer fucking relief on his face, Jaskier mentally added. “That’s the happy ending here, Chireadan. I know that this ‘marriage’ is temporary and finite. I just don’t want it to end any sooner than strictly necessary, all right?”

“So…why not tell him that?” Chireadan answered. “If you want to stay with him, say so! You can still break the curse, but there’s no reason you’d have to part ways.”

“There are lots of reasons, Chireadan,” Jaskier said, pinching his brow. This had gone much better when he was speaking to Valdo. Clearly, being drunk was the key.

“Even if he wanted me to stay with him—and that’s a big if, because while Eskel may be lonely, he will eventually tire of my company—then consider the logistics! I’m dead weight right now, and that’s not likely to change even when my burns heal. I can’t play, which means I can’t earn. I can’t ride a horse, or help make camp, or hunt, or treat his wounds, or do any of the other things that made me even remotely useful as a companion to Geralt. So I’m not going to ask. I’d never put Eskel in that position willingly. For now, the curse is dictating Eskel’s choices. Once it’s been broken, Eskel needs to be free to live his life.”

“You sound as if you’ve given this a great deal of thought,” Chireadan said, and Jaskier wanted to curse at the man.

Of course he’d thought about this! He’d thought of little else! He’d pondered the ethics of the situation to the point where even his old Philosophy and Rhetorics professor would have said ‘enough’.

Jaskier had to let Eskel break the curse, and he couldn’t let his own feelings on the matter influence Eskel’s decision. Because Chireadan had been right: Eskel would do almost anything for someone he cared about, including tie himself to a crippled convict for the rest of his life.

While Jaskier was an empty, selfish excuse for a human being, he wasn’t that cruel. He knew Eskel had to be free: free to seek his own destiny, his own happiness, his own love. Possibly with Geralt. Eskel had all but confirmed they’d been lovers, once. He might want to pursue that again. Jaskier, as always, would only be a burden. An impediment to someone else’s happiness.

And…gods, all right, he could admit it, at least in the privacy of his own head. He loved Eskel. He was in love with Eskel. If a day of tense feelings and a little physical distance caused him this much distress, Jaskier had no idea how he’d live the rest of his life without his kind, gentle Witcher.

But. First time as tragedy, second time as farce.

Somewhere, the gods were laughing.

***

They arrived in Flotsam that evening, and found rooms at the local inn. Chireadan was due to part ways with them in the morning, and Jaskier suggested they all share a final goodbye dinner in the inn’s common room. Eskel agreed, though part of him wanted to go out searching for a mage just to avoid further stilted conversation with Jaskier. Something had gone awry between them, and he didn’t know quite how to fix it.

Chireadan’s pending departure cast a further gloom over the evening. Eskel liked the elf very much, and he’d been a good friend to Jaskier. He regretted that Chireadan’s last day travelling with them had been filled with so much strange tension, but despite this regret, he spent most of their final dinner together brooding over the situation with Jaskier.

Eskel was staring down into his ale, only half-listening to the discussion about future plans for the Sandpiper network, when Jaskier cleared his throat and spoke up.

“I suppose we ought to retire. Chireadan needs to depart early tomorrow morning.”

Eskel frowned and nodded, and swallowed the rest of his ale. “You go on up. I have to ask if there’s a mage in town.” He rose and went over to speak to the tavern owner, ignoring the fleeting look of hurt that flashed over Jaskier’s face as he and Chireadan headed for the stairs leading up to the rooms they’d taken.

Fuck. He knew he had to apologize and make things right with Jaskier, but he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even sure he could apologize: he couldn’t betray Geralt’s confidence, but it also seemed like Jaskier required an explanation.

This whole situation was a bloody mess.

He sighed, and asked for another ale along with information about any local magic-users. But the proprietress could only confirm what Chireadan had already predicted: were no mages or pellers or cunning women in Flotsam. Eskel thanked her for the information and took a desultory sip from his ale.

“No luck, I take it?” Chireadan asked. The Elf had obviously lingered behind to speak to Eskel.

Eskel shook his head. “Seems you were right: there are no mages here. Closest might be in Hagge or Vergen, but there’s no guarantee. We might have to go all the way to Ban Ard.”

“I’m sorry,” Chireadan said, and Eskel nodded in acknowledgement before he took another long sip of his ale.

“Just out of curiosity, is the curse you wish to be free of? Or Jaskier himself?”

Eskel lowered his ale. He gave Chireadan a cautious look, but the elf’s face was as smooth and guileless as always. He took a moment to breathe, staring down into the foamy dregs of his tankard. “I want Jaskier to be free of this damned curse,” Eskel finally said. “Once it’s gone, he’ll be able to live his life. He’ll be free of me. It’s…better that way.”

“Why?”

Eskel went wide-eyed, and turned to look at Chireadan in astonishment. “Are you really asking me why it’s better for Jaskier not to live under a death-curse?”

“No, obviously not,” Chireadan said, leaning on the bar. “The curse itself is very dangerous. That is undeniable. But the spellbond as a whole? I’m not so sure. If it’s the will of Destiny…”

“What the hell does that mean?” Eskel said, surprised by the venom in his own voice. The other tavern patrons were starting to stare. In another few moments, the proprietress would likely come over and ask them to leave. No one wanted to be in the same room as an angry Witcher.

Chireadan tilted his head. “Jaskier told me that you’re a man of faith: you believe in the Fates. Surely it’s occurred to you that the spellbond is part of Destiny’s grand design? It brought the two of you together. It’s keeping you together. Is that truly a thread you wish to cut? Assuming you even can?”

“I—” Eskel sighed, closing his eyes. “I have to try. Jaskier’s bound to me. And that’s not a fate I’d wish on anyone.”

“Do you really hate yourself that much?”

Eskel set his tankard down very carefully. His hands were shaking. “Maybe. I’m not a good man,” he said.

“I don’t believe that’s true,” Chireadan said quickly. “And neither does Jaskier. Even if you’ve made mistakes—”

“Mistakes?” Eskel repeated, with a bitter laugh. “You have no idea what sort of mistakes I’ve made in my life. This wasn’t even the worst one,” he said, tapping at his scarred cheek and deformed lip. “I could show you my back. Jaskier’s the only one who’s ever been able to look at it without throwing up.”

“But a few scars—”

“These aren’t scars,” Eskel bit out. “These are my mistakes. And I got off lightly. Other people were hurt far worse.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I believe in the Fates. And you make a fair point: perhaps I shouldn’t meddle. Perhaps it’s pointless to even try. But I cannot hurt Jaskier, Chireadan. And if his fate is tied to mine, all he’ll ever know is pain.”

Eskel left Chireadan in the common room. The elf’s mouth was agape, a potentially good rebuttal on the tip of his tongue, but Eskel couldn’t listen to any further arguments tonight. He knew his dreams would be filled with blood, the crack of a whip. The snarling of two wolves.

He slipped into the upper-floor room he’d rented with Jaskier, and shut the door silently behind him. He leaned back against the rough wood, breathing hard. Jaskier hadn’t left any candles burning: he was already curled up in bed, and Eskel could make out the dim outline of his body. He could tell from Jaskier’s heartbeat that he was awake, but obviously willing to feign sleep.

Eskel pulled off his shirt and slipped out of his trousers, and went over to the washstand to wipe away the day’s dust and grime. It was enough of a reprieve: by the time he was finished washing, his hands had stopped shaking, though sleep would probably elude him for a while.

He paused as he approached the bed. Jaskier was turned away on his side and so Eskel couldn’t see his face, but he couldn’t miss the fact that Jaskier was bare under the thin blanket, and had curled up close to the wall, leaving plenty of room for Eskel in the bed.

Jaskier’s message seemed clear enough. Eskel lay down and gathered Jaskier up into his arms. Jaskier’s heartbeat sped up, and so Eskel brushed a soft kiss against the back of his neck.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, hugging Jaskier close. “I don’t—”

“Nothing to apologize for, dear heart,” Jaskier said. He put his arms over Eskel’s, and gave him a little reassuring squeeze. “Let’s put it behind us, yeah?”

“Please,” Eskel said, more than willing to agree. He nuzzled against Jaskier’s skin, nosing against the softness of his nape and the fall of his hair. He breathed in the comforting scent of chamomile and citrus, finding only sharp relief in Jaskier’s scent, and in the spellbond that connected them. He spread his hands over Jaskier’s chest, pressed close, and sighed.

He listened to Jaskier’s heartbeat slow and resume its normal, steady rhythm, and for the faint trace-scents of anxiety and sadness to dissipate.

“There’s no mage here. We’ll keep going east: might find someone in Hagge.”

Linen bandages scraped against his wrist, and Eskel moved his hand so he could wrap his fingers around Jaskier’s wrists.

“I wish I could touch you,” Jaskier said, instead of replying. “I’d like to feel your skin. Just once.”

“Bandages’ll be off before Yule,” Eskel said, kissing his shoulder, and then realized. They needed to break the curse long before then, if he had any hope of reaching Kaer Morhen before winter.

He cleared his throat. “I—”

“Let’s sleep,” Jaskier said, softly but firmly. “Worry about the rest tomorrow?”

“Right,” Eskel repeated. “Tomorrow.”

***

Chapter Text

Jaskier and Eskel said their goodbyes to Chireadan the next morning. Jaskier was sad, of course, but a night in Eskel’s arms—and the associated skin contact—had let the spell work its magic. Aside from his sorrow at parting from Chireadan, he was eager enough to resume their travelling. He wasn’t sure why Chireadan kept giving Eskel disappointed looks, but didn’t want to distract from bidding his friend goodbye. He was confident he could wrangle the truth about it out of Eskel. Eventually.

“Good luck with the network, my friend,” Jaskier said, careful to keep his fingers curled and protected as he gave Chireadan a gentle hug. “I’ll send word in the spring,” he promised. He was careful not to add, Once I’m on my own again, because he didn’t want Chireadan to bring up any further discussion of that topic.

“Goodbye,” Eskel said, with a genuine (though small) smile. He shook hands with Chireadan, who nodded and offered him an amiable pat on the shoulder.

“Goodbye,” Chireadan said. He looked back and forth between them, as if trying to decide what to say, but eventually he just sighed and said, “I hope you will both find what you’re looking for.”

Neither Jaskier nor Eskel asked Chireadan what that was supposed to mean.

They watched in silence as the elf turned south on the road to Ellander. Jaskier waited until the Chireadan and his bay mare were out of sight to speak, “So, east?”

“East,” Eskel agreed, and brought Scorpion around to ride towards the rising sun.

***

There was no mage in Hagge. Or Vergen. Or Ban Glean. As the summer wore on, and the nights grew colder, Eskel began to realize that finding a mage to help them break the curse might be more difficult than the breaking of the curse itself.

In the end, Eskel had to surrender to the inevitable: they would have to go all the way to Ban Ard to find help.

“Is it such bad thing?” Jaskier asked the night Eskel confirmed their path would lead them to the far East and the Mages’ college at the foot of the southern range of the Blue Mountains. “Why does going to Ban Ard trouble you so?”

Eskel considered the question as they ate dinner, and later, as they sat down to cuddle beside the fire before going to bed. The question was like a rock in his shoe: he’d find no relief until he knocked it free.

He was so distracted that he missed the moment when Jaskier twisted around in his lap—he thought the bard was just getting comfortable—and leaned forward to nip and suck a bruise into Eskel’s neck.

That certainly got his attention. He caught at Jaskier’s upper arms and met Jaskier’s impish smile with his sternest, most disapproving frown (which was probably modelled on one of Vesemir’s expressions, though Eskel would never admit it).

“And what do you think you’re doing?” he asked with a faux glower that made Jaskier’s eyes light up with glee.

“Distracting you,” Jaskier said breezily and went right back to sucking at Eskel’s neck like an amorous vampire.

“I thought you wanted an answer?”

“I did,” Jaskier mumbled against his throat, “but now I’m more interested in this.”

“And what, pray tell, is ‘this’?” Eskel asked with an aggrieved sigh, even he reached down to unlace Jaskier’s leggings, and then his own codpiece.

“Oh, whatever you desire,” Jaskier shrugged. He licked a long, hot stripe up Eskel’s neck that made him break out into goosebumps. “I could suck you. Or ride you. Or—”

As most of the blood in his body rushed south at the images Jaskier’s words conjured up, Eskel could only think of one thing he really wanted. Something he’d been meaning to revisit with Jaskier since that night in Flotsam.

“What if I strip you naked, tie you to that log, and fuck you until we both forget all about Ban Ard?” Eskel was quite pleased that he’d managed to make the question sound halfway natural, as if he were asking Jaskier’s opinion about nothing more consequential than the weather.

In reality, his heart was pounding and he was sweating, both from the promise of having Jaskier like that—bound, immobilized, and utterly under his control—and his own audacity at even suggesting it in the first place.

“Are…are you sure?” Jaskier asked, eyes twin dark pools in the firelight. Eskel could hear the way his heartbeat had picked up, and the heavy scent of arousal that was suddenly pouring off Jaskier like smoke from their campfire. He knew how much Jaskier wanted this, wanted to revisit this whole practice of bondage and submission, but neither of them had brought it up in the weeks since Flotsam. They’d made a mistake, before: something had gone wrong, and it had thrown off their easy equilibrium. They’d gotten it back—rather quickly, too—but Eskel hadn’t been keen to revisit the tense misery of the day that had followed the first time they’d tried something like this.

This time, however, he was determined to do better. For Jaskier’s sake, and because Eskel didn’t want to deny either of them something they’d both enjoyed.

“I’m sure,” he said. “If…if it’s something you’re still interested in.”

“Oh yes!” Jaskier said, too quickly, almost desperately. He swallowed hard and looped his arms around Eskel’s neck. “Yes,” he said in a more measured voice, “I’m…interested. In that.”

“It won’t be like last time,” Eskel said, aware that he meant it as both a statement, and a question. “When we…fought,” he said, which wasn’t exactly accurate, but made more sense than any other way he might describe it. “Do you know what you were feeling, afterward? When you asked about Geralt?”

Jaskier frowned, and wrinkled his nose. It was a patently adorable expression: Eskel didn’t want to get distracted, but he had to kiss him. The quick brush of Eskel’s lips seemed to settle Jaskier a little, at least.

“I loved it when you bound my wrists and held me down,” Jaskier recalled with a frown. “And when you fucked me like that, so fucking hard, and deep, and—” he broke off and sagged against Eskel, shuddering at the memory. “But afterward I felt sort of…sad, I suppose,” he said into Eskel’s neck. “I was overwhelmed.”

“You needed something from me,” Eskel said, playing a hunch. He’d given this a lot of thought in the weeks since. “But you didn’t know how to ask.”

“So I asked about you and Geralt instead,” Jaskier murmured, and Eskel nodded tentatively. He really didn’t want to invite any further conversation about Geralt. Not now, when Jaskier was here, in his arms, warm and alive and so godsdamned beautiful in the firelight.

Jaskier seemed to feel the same way. He shifted in Eskel’s lap again, facing Eskel now, knees splayed and chest-to-chest. They’d both gone soft, but Eskel relished having Jaskier in his lap like this, so close and easy to kiss.

Two months ago he would have flinched at being face-to-face with someone. Now, there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

“Jaskier, I’m here. And I’ll give you whatever you need. Touch, or reassurance,” he suggested, then brushed his lips over Jaskier’s. “A kiss,” he added, once he pulled away. “Any idea what you might want from me, when you’re feeling ‘overwhelmed’?”

“Um,” Jaskier said, ducking forward like he had before, but this time he didn’t suck on Eskel’s neck, or lick at his collarbone, or employ any of the other sensual tricks he relied on for distraction. Eskel thought it was progress.

“Before,” he said, haltingly, “when someone would tie me down and use me, I always wished they’d just…stay with me. Cuddle me, rub my back, something along those lines. But it was a stranger, usually, and I didn’t think to ask. It felt awful the next day, even if I’d enjoyed the sex. The night you tied me up, after, you—”

“I got up right away,” Eskel recalled, horrified by his own short-sightedness. “I untied you, and went to get you some water. I asked if you wanted nuts. But you—”

“I needed you to hold me, I think,” Jaskier said.

Eskel tightened his arms, and Jaskier clung just as tightly to him. “Am I really that stupid? How did I miss—?”

“You’re not stupid,” Eskel said right away, kissing his temple. “You just didn’t realize. I didn’t realize, either. You were rambling, I thought you hit your head. Then you asked about Geralt. I should have put it together.”

“Okay, maybe we’re both a little stupid.” Jaskier sounded almost in awe. “And of course, with the spellbond—”

“You need to be touched,” Eskel concluded. “Instead, we argued, and I left you alone all night, didn’t ride with you the next day.”

“You make it sound like you abandoned me,” Jaskier said, his voice rumbling against Eskel’s throat. “You didn’t. You were right there the whole time. I was the one who got angry. Who turned away. You thought I was mad at you, but I was just feeling overwhelmed.”

“I’m so sorry, Jaskier,” Eskel said. Jaskier kissed his scarred cheek.

“Don’t apologize, dear heart,” he said. “I’m just glad we figured it out. Gods. If we’d tried again…”

“It might have worked out differently,” Eskel said. “And now I know what to do.”

Jaskier looked at him, blue eyes wide and anxious. “You still want to try it?”

Eskel swallowed, nodded. “You do too,” he pointed out. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind. He’d always been able to hear the way Jaskier’s heartrate increased, and smell the way his arousal boiled up, whenever they’d spoken about this. Jaskier wasn’t exactly subtle when it came to expressing his desires. It was one of the things that Eskel liked most about him: Jaskier knew what he wanted. Still, as this entire incident had revealed, sex was still complicated for Jaskier. As it was for Eskel himself, and probably for everyone, in one way or another.

Jaskier smiled at him, and Eskel leaned forward to give him the sweetest, softest kiss he could muster up.

“What do you need?” Jaskier asked, after they exchanged a few more lazy kisses. “There must be something that would make it better for you.”

“Oh, it was plenty good for me already,” Eskel said, grinning when Jaskier nipped at his ear.

He sobered a little, considering his next words carefully. “I did like being rough with you,” Eskel said “It’s hard for me to admit that. I feel like a godsdamned monster just saying it out loud. But I still like it. And I know you like it. If we can make sure that it feels just as good afterward, as it does during, I’d like to try again, if you’re willing.”

“More than willing!” Jaskier said, flinging his arms around Eskel’s neck again. “In fact, now that you’ve suggested tying me to that log, and…wait, how did you put it?”

Eskel blushed and hid his face in Jaskier’s neck. “Uh, fuck you until we both forget about Ban Ard,” he supplied.

“Right,” Jaskier nodded. “That. I want that, please. Now.”

“Okay, okay,” Eskel said, standing up so abruptly that Jaskier squawked and clung to his neck. He carried him easily over to the aforementioned log, and by the time he set Jaskier down and began to arrange him the way Eskel wanted—face down, knees spread and slightly straddling the log—Jaskier was hard and flushed.

“I’ll go get some bandages, and put a blanket under you.”

“No, please,” Jaskier said, squeezed his eyes shut, blushing furiously. “I like…I like the abrasion. Of the bark.”

“It’ll scratch the hell out of you, Jask,” Eskel said, trying to sound reasonable. “You’ll be cut to shreds if I fuck you the way I want to fuck you while you’re tied naked to this thing.” He nudged the log with his foot. Even to his tough Witcher skin, the tree bark was incredibly rough.

“All right,” Jaskier huffed, sounding so pouty about it that Eskel had to give his ass a playful swat. Jaskier yelped, and then paused and wiggled his hips for more.

Eskel chuckled, but instead of spanking him, he reached out to caress Jaskier’s smooth backside. He’d gained more muscle in the last few weeks. Eskel had thought Jaskier had a truly delectable ass even half-starved and just a few weeks out of a Redainian dungeon. Right now, his backside was like a work of art, and Eskel couldn’t resist guiding Jaskier down so he could spread his cheeks and admire the delicate pink rosebud of his arsehole.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Eskel said, his deep, rough voice only slightly strained. “I’ll lay a blanket out under you and tie you up, but only after I eat your ass. You can squirm around as much as you like until then. Have all the abrasion you want.”

“Oh!” Jaskier said, sounding very much like a man who’d just had all the air punched out of his lungs. “That is a positively inspired proposition, darling.”

***

Eskel was, much to Jaskier’s delight, true to his word. He ate Jaskier out with abandon, and Jaskier was free to rub and rut up against the log as much as he liked. By the time Eskel was finished licking his arsehole (and working him open with one, two and then three of his big thick fingers) Jaskier was indeed abraided to his heart’s content.

The rough bark had felt divine against his flushed, oversensitive skin. And yes, Eskel may have had a very tiny point about injuring himself (he had given himself a number of raw-looking scrapes), but Jaskier was far, far past the point of acknowledging it. By the time Eskel returned with one of the thick bearskins from their bedroll, as well as several clean linen bandages and a familiar vial of oil, Jaskier was already floating on a hazy cloud of pleasure-pain.

Eskel’s hot hands felt wonderful on his skin, especially on his rubbed-raw chest and thighs. Jaskier heard Eskel cluck at him when he saw the state of his belly, but Jaskier could only shrug, smile, and follow Eskel’s directions to boost up enough so Eskel spread the bearskin out underneath him.

At that point, Jaskier realized that Eskel was the smartest, most wonderful man in all the seven spheres. The only thing that felt better than the rough bark against his raw, abused skin was the cool, soft fur Eskel had slipped underneath him.

“We’ll probably have to throw out this fur, after,” Jaskier said, a bit mournfully. He loved this bearskin right now. It was his favourite thing in the whole world. He wanted to roll around on it, always.

“I’ll hunt down a new one,” Eskel promised, which made Jaskier giggle. He closed his eyes and let himself drift on the sensations of pain and heat and the cool fur and the soft nighttime breeze on his bare arse and wet, eager hole.

“Not to rush you,” Jaskier mumbled into the fur, “but I really do need you to fuck me right now.”

“And I need you to be patient. Don’t act like a brat,” Eskel warned. He was busy securing Jaskier’s wrists to the log. Jaskier was able to be patient for a breath or two, and then kicked his heels. That brought his hips—and his hard, leaking cock—into contact with the soft fur. He hummed to himself, and decided that he was probably the second-smartest man in all the seven spheres as he began to drag his cock against the furs. It prickled, a little, when he went against the grain, which only encouraged him. By the time Eskel had finished with his wrists, Jaskier was shamelessly humping the fur-covered log, eyes squeezed shut and humming loudly.

“Hey, enough,” Eskel said, and landed a good hard slap over Jaskier’s ass for good measure. Jaskier gasped, jerked, and came.

“Nghh,” he moaned, shivering and thrusting through the slick, hot pool of his own come as he chased his release.

When he finally shuddered through the last of the surprising orgasm and became sensate of the world around him, Jaskier realized two facts:

1) Eskel was laughing at him and
2) He really liked rubbing off on the bearskin.

He saw no reason to stop, and kept thrusting his hips until his poor cock started to protest due to oversensitivity. He collapsed and clung limply to the log, barely aware that Eskel was shifting his limbs, spreading his legs and encouraging Jaskier to ‘boost up’ in a soft voice, and then tying his ankles to the short branches at the base of the log.

“Jask, you with me?”

“Sort of,” Jaskier said dreamily, too busy rubbing his cheek against the bearskin fur to annunciate clearly.

“Still want me to fuck you?”

“Darling, don’t ask stupid questions,” he mumbled. His eyes were drifting shut, and he was convinced that any moment now, he’d drift off and—

He felt the warning press of Eskel’s cock against his hole, and before he could shift, or brace himself, or do anything aside from simply register the sensation, Eskel breeched his entrance and fully sheathed himself in one smooth, agonizing glide.

“Oh my FUCK!” Jaskier yelled. He’d gone from half-asleep and drifting on a tide of pleasure to fully fucked and split open by Eskel’s cock. It felt roughly the same width as the fucking log he was straddling, and twice as long.

“Oh gods,” he moaned again, shuddering and gasping for air as his body tried desperately to adjust. And Eskel had prepped him already. Thoroughly. With THREE fucking fingers. “Fuck fuck fuckity fuck,” he swore again, trying to scramble up to his knees so he could move away from the fucking gargantuan cock that was splitting him open.

“Hush,” Eskel said, placing one big hand at the nape of Jaskier’s neck. He pressed down and Jaskier followed, as obedient as a hound following a beloved master’s orders. He lay flat on his belly, face pressed into the fur, and focused on Eskel’s voice.

“Breathe,” Eskel said, and Jaskier did. He tensed against his bonds—Eskel had, of course, done a very thorough and professional job of tying him up—and Jaskier discovered that he was not only tied to the log, but that Eskel had spread his thighs and positioned his legs in such a way as to completely prevent Jaskier from pulling away or squeezing his legs shut.

He was utterly, completely immobilized, and unable to move or do anything except lift his head and shoulders, and make small, very limited thrusting motions with his hips.

“Oh gods,” he moaned again. “Oh fuck.”

Those two phrases seemed to be the full extent of his vocabulary, at the moment, and his mind felt as narrow and limited as his range of motion.

“Breathe,” Eskel reminded him, that hand still pressed tight to the back of his neck. Jaskier followed the directive.

He drew in a deep lungful of air, breathed out, and suddenly the splitting-open pain of Eskel’s huge cock had receded. At least, he no longer felt like he was being ripped in two, and that instinctive, panicked reaction to pain and pressure had faded, so he was no longer trying to jerk and scramble away. Not that he could have moved, even if he wanted to.

“Okay?” Eskel was whispering against his left ear. Jaskier considered the question—he didn’t want to just instinctively nod and agree, that wasn’t fair to Eskel—and found that yes, he actually was okay.

“Okay,” he huffed, flexing experimentally. “Just…stay still.”

Eskel felt absolutely enormous inside him, as if his cock was actually expanding inside. For a long moment, Jaskier just focused on breathing. His entire body was one long, tight line of tension, and he had no idea how Eskel was actually going to fuck him like this: it felt like, if he moved even an inch, Jaskier’s whole body would split right in down the centre like a halved coconut.

He realized that Eskel was actually holding himself up and off of Jaskier, enough so that he only felt where they were connected where Eskel entered him. How the Witcher was able to hold his huge body in a full plank position above Jaskier without any sign of strain was…impressive. Hot, and impressive.

Gods. All right. Maybe he could start to imagine Eskel fucking him, now.

“Can you…” Jaskier tried, shifting a little. He found he could wiggle his hips and flex his fingers all right. And shift his toes. Nothing felt numb, and in fact he was quite comfortable (aside from being pierced in half). He was still having trouble forming words, though.

“Yes?”

“Just…relax? Rest some of your weight on me?”

Eskel gently and very gingerly lowered his body, until his chest and upper thighs were resting on Jaskier’s back and hips. Jaskier sighed happily at the contact. Having Eskel’s plush belly fill the hollow of his lower back felt…delightful. And despite the strain on his poor arsehole, Jaskier was starting to feel very comfortable indeed.

“You need to—thrust?” Jaskier muttered. “Or—”

“I’m fine,” Eskel said. He actually sounded fine, as if he was quite happy to be stretched out and buried hilt-deep in Jaskier’s arse, and hadn’t the slightest desire to move.

Well. Jaskier was happy to take a few more moments to acclimate. He honestly loved the sensation of having (some of) Eskel’s weight on him. But after a few more moments, he started to respond to…other sensations. The hard, unyielding press of Eskel’s cock, his sweat-slick skin and the delicious scent of his arousal, sweat and precum, all mixed together to bring Jaskier from ‘shocked and in pain’ to ‘dealing with it’ and finally back to ‘aroused enough to fuck’.

“Eskel,” he grunted, feeling his own cock start to plump back up, “Fuck me.”

Eskel, bless the man, took that as his marching orders, and began to slowly, incrementally, start to move his hips. He went slow enough at first that Jaskier was only aware of a brief pinching sensation, and the slight burn of the stretch.

By the time Eskel had worked up to half-speed, Jaskier had forgotten any hint of real pain: now, there was only the marvellous sensation of being filled, and fucked. The intersection between burning friction, physical pleasure, and (Jaskier could admit it) the pleasant tease and odd combination of humiliation and comfort he'd always felt when being held down and fucked open by a much larger, stronger man. He wasn’t sure if women ever felt that same little thrill—he’d never dared to ask—but gods, it always made him just a little bit harder, the sex a little bit hotter, when he thought about how sweet, and easy, and eager he was taking a big strong man’s huge cock.

He suspected that, by taking a Witcher’s cock (and Eskel’s, specifically) he was probably ruined for any mere human sexual partner. Who could possibly measure up to Eskel, after all?

“Oh gods you’re big,” he moaned again, loud and lewed. He thrashed against his bonds, but the linen wraps held firm, and he remained pinned in place, arranged exactly as Eskel wanted him. The hard, unyielding girth of the log beneath him was a perfect counterpoint to the hard, unyielding girth of the man splitting him open, and the soft, perfect texture of the bear fur, and even the cooling, tacky substance of his own spend, felt incredible.

He wanted more.

“Harder,” he grunted, shocked at the raw edge in his own voice. “Want to…wanna feel you, 'Skel,” he said, half of the sentence lost as Eskel pushed him down firmly into the bear fur while he pulled out and dove back into the tight clench of Jaskier’s hole.

Jaskier…drifted, after that, body awash with sensation and lost in the perfect rhythm of Eskel’s thrusts. He’d it wanted hard and fast. He’d wanted to be used, broken down, brutalized, and yet simultaneously treated as if he was some soft, precious object that ought to be handled with diligent care.

Somehow, Eskel had found a way to give him both—all—of those things. And Jaskier was flying. He’d never felt like this before, not with sex, or drugs, or drink. Not even his near-death experiences came close to giving him the same strange sensation of half-soaring, half-falling. And that was how he felt, in this moment: like he was in freefall, and the only thing preventing him from spinning off into the stratosophere, or splattering at the bottom of some cavern, was the steady pressure of Eskel’s weight, the comfort of his scent, the ceaseless rhythm of his body thrusting into Jaskier’s.

It felt like being on the sea, in a storm, but kept safe inside the thick oak hull of a ship. He’d never even come remotely close to this spinning, conflicting sensation of safety and danger, desire and despair.

He wanted to bottle this feeling, capture it like lightning, and never let it go.

Of course, all things must end. As the wave of pleasure crested and Jaskier felt the approach of a second earth-shattering orgasm, he shouted out to Eskel, “That’s it, fuck me, Witcher!” and felt Eskel respond in kind, with the sharp, ceaseless snap of his hips and a deep grunt of pleasure that seemed to erupt out of Eskel like a geyser. Jaskier felt the moment he came, hot cum flooding into him, spilling out as Eskel continued to pound away through his orgasm. He let out a low, ragged moan and spilled again and again into Jaskier, so much so that Jaskier felt some of Eskel’s spend drizzle out down his leg even when Eskel stopped the now-ragged, arythmic thrusting of his hips.

“Oh fuck me,” Jaskier muttered from where he was drifting, his whole body weighted down by Eskel’s considerable bulk, limp and relaxed and boneless on the bearskin. He felt Eskel start to shift, and actually hissed at him. “Just…don’t move, please,” he begged, when he could form sounds beyond that snake-like snarl. Eskel complied: he only shifted his weight incrementally, so as not to completely crush Jaskier, and gathered him into his arms.

To Jaskiers floating, blissed-out mind, the bonds that had fixed him to the log simply melted away. But, no: he realized a few minutes and an eon later that Eskel had cut the bandages. Later, he offered Jaskier a waterskin, and it occurred to Jaskier that while he’d been floating in between Eskel eating out his ass, getting that lovely bearskin rug placed under him, and then Eskel fucking the daylights out of him, Eskel had been busy grabbing all the supplies he’d need afterward, just so he could stay firmly planted on top of and wrapped around Jaskier. Eskel hadn’t moved away so much as an inch, and for the half-hour or forty-five minutes it had taken Jaskier to come back down from the top of his drifting, floating world, Eskel had held him, safe and secure in his arms, and rubbed his back, and murmured soft, meaningless sounds of affection and reassurance.

By the time Jaskier had truly surfaced, at least enough to be aware of the wider world, he found that Eskel had rolled them off the log and down onto a soft pallet of blankets. Jaskier was spread out over Eskel’s chest. With both of the man’s thick, heavy arms wrapped around him, and the soft pillow of his chest, Jaskier was both held up and pinned down. It was perfect. Eskel was perfect.

“You really have ruined me, you know,” Jaskier managed, sometime later. Eskel had already coaxed him to drink half the waterskin, and eat a few handfuls of almonds and dried fruit from their bag of trail rations. He felt marvelous: well-fucked, fed and watered, and wrapped up in Eskel’s arms. He couldn’t imagine wanting anything more in this life, or the next.

“Darling husband,” Jaskier found himself half-mumbling, half-slurring later that night, “I want you to know that, whatever happens when we reach Ban Ard…you’ve made me very happy. Happier than I ever thought possible.”

There was a long silence, and he felt the soft brush of Eskel’s kiss against his cheek. “Me too,” Eskel said. Jaskier felt the faint prickle of tears rolling down his cheeks as he slipped off to sleep.

***

They reached Ban Ard just as autumn was bursting its way across the Continent. The leaves were turning red and yellow under crystalline blue skies, the fields stripped and trimmed of all produce save the last shaggy coat of winter hay, and the college town was bustling with a fresh crop of new students.

Eskel found himself scanning the cobblestone streets and marketplaces for familiar faces as he and Jaskier entered the city. It was a strange impulse. Eskel had only studied at Ban Ard for a single year almost eight decades ago. He didn’t really expect he’d recognize anyone, or that anyone might recognize him, but some mages lived hundreds of years longer than Witchers. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

“Has it changed that much?” Jaskier asked quietly, and Eskel shook his head as he gazed up at the familiar soaring spires of the mages’ college. The two stone towers that had formed the original school were twice as old as Kaer Morhen, yet the whole building was in perfect repair, from the ornate scrollwork and frowning gargoyles on the tips of the steeple spires to the chimera galleries and stonework foundation on the lowest arcade. Eskel had never been to Areteuza, but somehow he doubted that the sorceress’ school was as garish as the mages’ Gothic college. Sorceresses and mages were very different breeds of people, for all that they had in common.

“Not much,” Eskel admitted, surprised. He had expected Ban Ard to look very different, as if the changes wrought in Eskel himself over the past eighty-odd years might have been reflected in the college’s stone façade. But that was a ridiculous, self-important notion. Of course Ban Ard was the same: it had served the Continent for over a thousand years. The Mages’ guild predated all of the now-vanished Witcher schools, and even Eskel’s own extended lifespan could be measured in the blink of an eye compared to the enormous institutional history of Ban Ard.

Still, he hadn’t expected the college to look nearly the same as the day he’d last passed through these gates, seventeen years old and trailing mindlessly after Vesemir’s piebald, numb and resigned to whatever fate awaited him. Yet it did.

The narrow streets and wide market squares also looked roughly the same as they had a century ago, though a fire or some other disaster seemed to have befallen some of the buildings, as the shops and houses clustered around the town square were built from new-cut stone, and had obviously been rebuilt and replaced. But the layout of the small city was the same, with one wide central road splitting off into various squares, spanning out across the river, and ultimately feeding right up to the college gates. No one came to Ban Ard to visit the city; everyone was here for the college. Given the number of inns and taverns still operating, visitors had continued to pour in during the years of Eskel’s absence.

He led Jaskier down a few side streets to the Half-Cup Inn. It had been owned by a family of elves in his day, and Eskel found it oddly reassuring to find a tall, very handsome man with pointed ears still serving behind the bar.

The elf didn’t recognize Eskel—he was likely a relative or a hired hand—but he rented Eskel a room without the usual dance of fear and suspicion. A Witcher was an unusual sight in Ban Ard, to be sure, but strange folk of all stripes often visited the mages’ college. The elf didn’t seem to think Eskel would be a problem. He did cast a suspicious look at Jaskier, though: Witchers didn’t have human travelling companions (Geralt being the one notable exception). Still, Jaskier weathered the elf’s suspicious look with ease, and they were given their room key without further hassle.

Eskel left Jaskier in the room and went to make sure Scorpion was settled comfortably in the stables. He was eager to rejoin Jaskier and take him on a short tour of Ban Ard, so he hurried through the tasks of brushing Scorpion, and oiling and cleaning his saddle and tack. Despite his attempt to rush, Jaskier found Eskel before he’d finished, blue eyes bright with curiosity as he took in the bespelled feed and water buckets that magically refilled themselves, and the broom that was sweeping out a stall by itself.

“That’s remarkable!” Jaskier gasped, and Eskel smiled. He’d had the same dumbfounded reaction when he’d first seen how things were done in the mages' town.

“Half the businesses in Ban Ard rely on magic, not manpower, to do their work,” Eskel said. “Makes for a very clean and orderly city, but it’s almost impossible to find someone when you need help with a basic chore.”

“Unless you’re a magic-user too,” Jaskier added, and Eskel had to concede the point. “Feeling nostalgic for your old stomping grounds?”

“No, not really.”

Eskel had rarely left the college buildings during the year he’d studied at the college. He’d been all too aware of his obvious status as an outsider, a mutant Witcher adept who stuck out like a sore thumb among the students, teachers and residents of the small city. He’d also been too long accustomed to the rhythms and routines of his training at Kaer Morhen. It didn’t even occur to Eskel that he could leave the school grounds and visit the town itself until his first year was nearly over. Unlike young Witcher adepts, the students of the Mages’ college were not kept as virtual prisoners until their training was nearly complete. He’d been free to come and go as he’d pleased, but hadn’t realized it until it was far too late to take any real advantage of the opportunity.

“So, where do we start?” Jaskier asked, frowning a little at Eskel’s serious expression. He seemed to sense Eskel’s emotional shifts without having to ask, but Eskel didn’t see the point in dwelling over the ironies and disappointments of the past.

“We’ll go see my former Potions instructor first. He still has a position here, last I heard, and he was always very kind to me. If he can’t advise us about the curse directly, he should be able to tell us where to go next.”

As much as the centuries-old college remained the same on the outside, the inside of the school also seemed to have resisted the passage of time. Every hall was almost identical to the old school map in Eskel’s memories, and he had no trouble locating the old Potions laboratory. No one stopped to question them in the halls, either, though more than a few harried-looking underclassmen paused to briefly gape at Eskel’s broad shoulders, twin swords and amber eyes, and even at Jaskier and his bandaged fingers.

There was a class in session when they finally reached the laboratory, but the lecture hall’s door had been left ajar. Eskel led Jaskier inside the classroom, and they leaned shoulder-to-shoulder against the back wall and listened to Father Abernathy’s potions lesson.

Abernathy had been an old man in Eskel’s day, and he was positively ancient now. His pepper-gray hair and beard had turned white in the decades since Eskel had last seen him, and his face was impossibly wrinkled, too. Eskel had never understood the aging process of mages. He thought Abernathy’s greying hair and wrinkles might have more to do with his Chaos depleting over the years than the passage of time, but then he barely understood the aging process of Witchers, either, and couldn’t begin to truly guess how old Abernathy really was, or how long he might yet live.

The lecture hall was full of bright-eyed first year Adepts, and Eskel grinned at their avid interest in Abernathy’s lesson on healing tinctures. By happenstance the class was reviewing the list of ingredients that went into making the same healing salve he’d been using on Jaskier’s burns. Eskel took care to note a slight discrepancy in the amount of celandine he’d been using when Abernathy fell silent. The constant scratching of quills stopped, too, and Eskel felt the attention of the room shift towards the back of the hall as the students turned to stare at Eskel and Jaskier.

Father Abernathy looked shocked to see him, and Eskel realized that he ought to have written ahead. He hadn’t seen his former Potions master in eighty years, and though Eskel was roughly the same—a little taller and bulkier—Abernathy had known Eskel long before he’d acquired his scars. He might be unrecognizable now, and few mages would be happy to see a big scarred Witcher lingering at the back of his classroom.

“Boys,” Abernathy said in a voice gone creaky with age, “I’m afraid we’ll need to end our class early today. I’d like each of you to make a batch of the salve we’ve reviewed, and remember the examination on flower-of-the-poppy is next week. Class dismissed!”

The students filed out slowly. A few of the braver ones dared to stare at Eskel, but they all ignored Jaskier completely, aside from the two boys who glanced at his bandaged fingers and whispered together as they left the room.

Eskel waited until the last few boys had cleared the room before approaching his old professor. “Forgive the interruption, Father,” Eskel said. “My companion and I didn’t intend to disturb your class.”

Abernathy shook his head. “No disruption, my boy. I’m very glad to see that you’re still alive. Though somewhat the worse for wear,” he added, black eyes skating over Eskel’s scars and deformed lip, and the way Jaskier gripped his hand.

Eskel caught the faintest whiff of distress from the bard, and gently tapped his thumb over Jaskier’s pulse point in reassurance. This mage could be trusted.

“I never expected to see you in Ban Ard again,” Abernathy said as he slowly packed away the vials and glass beakers he’d been using to demonstrate for his class. His fingers were long and thin and knobby from arthritis; it looked painful for him to handle the small objects, and Eskel stepped forward to help. He felt the weight of Abernathy’s gaze as the old mage examined his scars again, as well as the crowsfoot-lines that had formed around Eskel’s eyes and mouth, and the other scars and wrinkles carved into his skin by time and suffering.

“I’ve come for a reason,” Eskel said. “This is Jaskier,” he said, tilting his head at the bard who drew himself up to his full height and smiled brightly at Abernathy. “My husband.”

“Ah!” Abernathy said, his tone suddenly much brighter. “Well, that’s exciting. Congratulations, my boy! He’s quite a handsome fellow, isn’t he?”

Eskel exchanged a quick grin with Jaskier, who was blushing but still smiling at Abernathy. “Very handsome,” Eskel said softly, feeling his own cheeks heat before he ducked his head again.

“I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance,” Jaskier said, going so far as to give Abernathy a deep courtier’s bow. “Eskel thinks very highly of you and your skills. He believes you might be the one to help us with our, er, problem.”

Jaskier was very careful not to say curse out loud, which Eskel thought was for the best. They were technically violating Redanian law by trying to break their spellbound curse. Dijkstra’s spies could be watching from anywhere, even from within the mages’ college.

“Well, I shall do my best to help,” the old man muttered, tugging at his long, white beard. “Perhaps you’d care to come back to my rooms for tea, and we can discuss it?”

“Thank you,” Eskel said sincerely. Abernathy could have easily turned them away. Eskel had tried to part on good terms with the school faculty, but Abernathy had argued strenuously against his leaving Ban Ard, right up to the moment Eskel had departed with Vesemir.

Once they’d safely packed away the rest of Abernathy’s glassworks, the old mage led Eskel and Jaskier out of the lecture hall and down a long corridor that linked the colleges’ classrooms and laboratories and the staff accommodations. Eskel had never been in this part of the school when he’d attended Ban Ard. He glanced around curiously at the beautiful tapestries and oil paintings that adorned the walls. The college was extremely well-funded, far better than Aretuza, and the priceless art collection on display in the teacher’s hall was only one example of the school’s enormous wealth and resources. The stone halls were swept clean by either magic, or a veritable army of invisible servants, and illuminated by the flickering light of precious oil lamps.

Eskel had once found the evident wealth of Ban Ard almost more difficult to process than the most frivolous or awe-inspiring applications of magic. Even at its peak, Kaer Morhen had always been a cold, spartan training school, where coin, along with food, heat, and luxuries of any kind—not to mention basic comforts—were in short supply. The only thing in abundance at the Witcher school had been hard steel, endless toil, and death.

In comparison, Ban Ard had been a veritable pleasure-palace. Eskel had fattened up on the rich, savoury meals served in the student dining hall, lingered too long in the scented baths, and enjoyed his own private room with a bespelled hearth that pumped out as much heat he could have wished. It had felt like he’d fallen straight into the lap of luxury when he’d started at Ban Ard, but he’d never truly been able to enjoy it.

He’d been too busy grieving, then, feeling guilty and homesick for his cold, stark Witcher training school in the north.

As Abernathy led Eskel and Jaskier through the hallways, they passed a few other instructors. Most nodded politely at Abernathy, and spared a curious glance or two for Eskel and Jaskier. However, when they’d progressed deep into the heart of the Teacher’s Hall, Eskel was surprised to run across two people he recognized, both former classmates from his year: Jarrow of Posada, and Chird, who’d come from somewhere far to the east in the lands of Zerikkania. Both had obviously Ascended: they wore the long blue robes of master mages, and had the ethereal beauty all wizards possessed. Chird seemed to have stopped physically aging somewhere in his mid-20s, while Jarrow looked to be around thirty-five or forty. Strangest of all, they both seemed to recognize Eskel immediately.

“That you, Bear?” Chird asked with pleased grin, teeth flashing white against his dark skin as he stepped forward to give Eskel a hug.

The gesture caught Eskel by surprise. Chird had always been a good friend, and he'd been one of the few physically demonstrative students at Ban Ard, but Eskel hadn’t expected to be immediately embraced after an eighty-year absence. Still, he opened his arms automatically, and Chird rubbed his chin over Eskel’s shoulder in a heartrendingly familiar way.

“We thought you were dead, Bear,” Chird said, and Eskel squeezed his old friend tightly. He’d never dreamed that any of his former classmates would even think of him once he’d vanished after that first year at Ban Ard, much less grieve him. But then Chird had a welcoming heart. He was a bit like Jaskier in that way, Eskel thought.

Chird sighed in his arms. “Chaos still flows through you,” he said with another bright smile. “Feels as nice as ever, Bear.”

“Uh, thank you,” Eskel said, meeting Jaskier’s eyes over Chird’s head. Jaskier was grinning at him, and mouthed Bear? at him; his grin widened when Eskel shrugged and blushed.

“Step aside, Master Chird,” Jarrow said, drawing the shorter man back and away from Eskel. “Our Bear owes me a hug, too!” Jarrow immediately folded himself into Eskel’s arms with a happy sigh.

Eskel had forgotten how much his classmates loved hugging and snuggling with him. He’d been quite tactile with his fellow mage students during his time at Ban Ard, always ready to offer a hug or a friendly pat on the arm. Such gestures were common among the Witcher trainees at Kaer Morhen, too, and it had never occurred to him to behave any differently at Ban Ard. But apparently, at least among the young student mages, the Chaos in Eskel’s touch felt wonderfully warm and relaxing. As that first semester had drawn to a close, he’d frequently found himself at the bottom of a puppy pile of exuberant young mages determined to cuddle with him. A few had even invited him to their private rooms for more carnal forms of contact, but Eskel had turned those down. He’d thought himself quite heartbroken, at the time, though it had been nothing compared to the pain waiting when he returned to Kaer Morhen later that year.

Eskel lingered to speak to his old friends. Chird and Jarrow were both staring at him with an unexpected mixture of relief and sadness. “I’m so glad you’ve come back to us, Bear,” Chird said. His eyes had changed since he’d Ascended, no longer the soft, warm brown of Eskel’s memories; now they were a brilliant emerald green. And Jarrow’s light blue eyes had been turned silver to match his platinum-blond hair. But aside from these minor physical changes Jarrow and Chird were both very similar to the boys in his memories, for all that Eskel himself had aged and changed and collected more scars than he could count. Both of them seemed grieved by the damage done to his face, and Eskel turned away to spare them.

“It is good to see you,” Eskel said quietly. If he’d been able to cry, he might have shed a tear at this unexpectedly warm reunion. “I hope we can catch up? I’ve a room at the Half-Cup Inn, and Jaskier and I will likely be there until—”

“Wait, is that Jaskier the Bard?” Chird interrupted, casting a surprised look Jaskier’s way. At the sound of his name, Jaskier turned and gave a funny little wave with his bandaged hand, and Chird rushed over to shake his hand. Jaskier reflexively drew back, clutching his bandaged hands to his chest, and Eskel went to stand by his side.

“This is indeed Jaskier the Bard,” Eskel said, unable and unwilling to hide the pride he felt in being able to introduce Jaskier to his old schoolmates. “My husband.”

“Oh that’s delightful!” Chird fairly gushed, waiving the more circumspect Jarrow forward to join them in the middle of the hall. “Congratulations to you both!”

“Thank you,” Jaskier said smoothly, leaning into Eskel’s side. Eskel took the hint and wrapped his arm around him, feeling instantly calmer and more centered now that he was touching Jaskier again.

“Bear, you must tell us everything,” Chird continued, “How did you meet the Continent’s most famous trubador? Master Jaskier’s songs are very popular here in Ban Ard, you know. Especially among the elves. We’ve had quite a steady stream of refugees come through here ever since Nilfgaard took Cintra, and they’re forever demanding his songs in the taverns and festival stages. You work is very much admired in Ban Ard, Master Jaskier.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Jaskier said, and Eskel could hear the emotion in his voice. “I’ve been on a long sabbatical, and haven’t been able to perform as often as I might have wished,” Jaskier said. Eskel marveled at the bard’s ability to wrap a lie around a core of truth. “Should I ever fully return to the stage,” he added, “I think Ban Ard will be my first stop.”

This seemed to delight Chird and Jarrow. They both smiled widely at Jaskier, and Chird gave him a pat on the shoulder.

“I hope that whatever has kept you from performing will soon abate,” Chird said, bright green eyes almost glowing in the relatively dim hallway. Eskel didn’t think his old friends would use their magical mind-reading abilities—he’d certainly feel the Chaos working if they did—but then Chird had always been remarkably intuitive. He’d clearly picked up on Jaskier’s unspoken grief.

“And I have no doubt that our Bear has been a good husband to you,” Jarrow added. He’d always been a bit more awkward about these things than Chird, but that didn’t mean he was any less sincere. Eskel blushed again at Jaskier’s smirking smile.

“Eskel,” Jaskier said, and then in mock-panic, said, “Oh, my apologies, Bear, has been an exemplary husband, and a very fine mate indeed. He’s always performed his martial duties exceptionally well.”

Jaskier didn’t need to add the extra wink at the end, as his double meaning was perfectly clear, but the gesture seemed to delight Chird, who let out one of his dearly familiar high-pitched giggles that Eskel had always found so disarming. Eskel almost forget to be embarrassed at Jaskier’s less-than-subtle praise.

“All right, you’ve all tortured poor Eskel enough,” Abernathy chuckled at his colleagues. Jarrow and Chird turned back to the old instructor with rather sheepish expressions. “Stop accosting our Witcher friend and his husband. We’re on our way to tea. You can snuggle your Bear later,” Abernathy muttered, continuing down the hall as quickly as his ancient bones could manage.

Eskel and Jaskier said reluctant goodbye to the two mages, with Eskel reiterating his offer to visit together at the Half-Cup Inn. He turned to follow Jaskier and Abernathy down the hall to the old teacher’s rooms.

“Finally, here we are,” Abernathy said after leading them down a few more sets of twisting corridors. His staff accommodations were airy and bright, and far larger than the single student dormer Eskel had been assigned during his year at Ban Ard. No matter how large and airy Abernathy’s chambers might have been under normal circumstances, however, the receiving hall and dining rooms were cramped and stuffed full of teetering stacks of spellbooks, distillation equipment, and glass jars of rare magical ingredients. These items were arranged in haphazard piles all around the room, and shoved randomly onto every available flat surface. It was clear Abernathy didn’t entertain very often, as there was barely room for the old wizard in his own chambers, let alone additional guests.

Eskel and Jaskier helped Abernathy to clear off two spare chairs in the little dining area. The chairs were ancient, wobbly things that creaked under the slightest weight. Eskel sat down gingerly, half-certain his chair would snap under him. Jaskier seemed to have the same concern; he perched on the edge of his chair and gave Eskel an amused shrug.

“There now, I’ll conjure us some tea,” Abernathy offered, quirking a familiar white eyebrow at Eskel. “Unless you’d rather do the honours?”

“You know I was never any good at food,” Eskel demurred, and Abernathy chuckled.

“No, you weren’t. Poor old Dago despaired of you ever getting the knack of it. And I suppose you stopped practicing as soon as you went back to your Witcher school, eh?”

Eskel shrugged. He’d stopped practicing nearly all of his magic lessons as soon as he’d returned to Kaer Morhen, and didn’t start up again until years after he’d finished his final Trial, earned his medallion, and become a full-fledged Witcher. Those first hard years on the Path hadn’t left much room for practicing spellwork or refining his potion-brewing skills, but he’d kept up with those basics enough, at least during the winters, to retain most of what he’d learned at Ban Ard. And once he’d survived those first miserable, lonely years on the Path, he’d had nothing but time to study the arcane.

Rather than watch Abernathy cast his spell, Eskel watched Jaskier’s face. His lovely blue eyes lit up when Abernathy’s conjured forth a steaming teapot, three earthenware mugs, and a plate of honeyed biscuits, and Jaskier laughed and clapped to show his appreciation for such skill. The bard’s unfettered joy made Eskel grin. He must have been wearing quite a besotted expression, because when Jaskier turned to see if Eskel shared his joy, his smile grew softer, more private, though his eyes were still shining with delight at Abernathy’s parlor tricks.

“What was so difficult about the conjuration of food?” Jaskier asked, still smiling at Eskel to let him know he was only teasing. “Seems like being able to make food materialize out of thin air would be a very useful skill for a Witcher.”

Eskel ducked his head, feeling the back of his neck heat. Before he tried to answer Jaskier’s question, Father Abernathy took pity on him.

“It was the energy transference, wasn’t it?” Eskel’s old teacher said softly. “You struggled with that. And I don’t think it ever came naturally to you, did it?

“Witcher signs are cast using internal Chaos reserves,” Eskel explained. It wasn’t the first time he’d gone over this particular point, though he hadn’t really discussed his magic with Jaskier. “Once a Witcher’s natural chaos is depleted, we have to stop casting Signs, because drawing from another source isn’t possible for Witchers. Most Witchers that is,” he amended, flushing a little. “It always felt like I was working against my natural instinct: pulling from the outside, instead of pushing from within. I never quite got the hang of it.”

“But you didn’t give up, did you?” Abernathy guessed, his creaky old voice warm with unspoken praise. Eskel blushed and scratched at his scars. It was a bit too much like getting a compliment from Vesemir, though the old Witcher offered those just as sparingly as Abernathy had in Eskel’s youth. The two were very much alike, Eskel thought. Vesemir and Abernathy were both taciturn, reserved, highly skilled and competent in their own right, yet willing to spend the time and energy to guide young people on their own Paths to mastery. And neither the sorcerer nor the old fencing-master had ever treated Eskel as just another student to train: he’d been like a son to Abernathy, just as he’d been to Vesemir. Eskel knew he’d broken the old man’s heart when he’d decided to leave Ban Ard.

And Vesemir. He was Eskel’s father, in every way that counted, and Eskel had always adored his fencing instructor. But like the other teachers and mages of Kaer Morhen, Vesemir had played a role in breaking Eskel’s heart. But Vesemir had also helped mend it. He’d shown Eskel more love and affection than anyone alive, except perhaps Geralt—and now Jaskier—but some things were very difficult to forgive.

Eskel forced himself to set the past aside. What had happened so long ago was over. Dead and buried. He made himself answer Father Abernathy’s question instead.

“I eventually harnessed my Chaos,” he confirmed. “And I learned how to draw from external Sources as well as my own reserves, and how to do complex conjurations. The, err, spectral companion I told you about?” Eskel said to Jaskier, who nodded. “It’s considered a challenging spell for everyone except a master sorcerer. But I still don’t like magical food,” he admitted. Such foods sat poorly in his belly, and he felt empty after consuming a conjuration. Perhaps his natural Chaos was too sensitive to be fooled.

Abernathy chuckled at him. “It’s an acquired taste for powerful Sources like you,” he said, including Jaskier in his wide smile. Jaskier had gone still after taking a huge bite of one of the conjured honey biscuits, and seemed reluctant to chew and swallow the food, until Eskel nodded at him to continue. Magic food wouldn’t bother Jaskier, and he needed the calories.

“I see you two are well-matched,” Abernathy said after watching them smile at each other like a pair of lovesick fools. “So it is clearly not marital troubles that have brought you to Ban Ard. Why have you come, Eskel?”

Eskel took a moment to pour for Abernathy and Jaskier and fill his own mug before replying.

“Jaskier and I have been spellbound,” he said. He held out his left hand to show Abernathy his ugly black ring, and Jaskier did the same. “It’s a powerful binding curse. I didn’t want to risk trying to break it myself before we found an expert. We were warned that any attempt to remove the rings, or even separate for very long, will kill Jaskier. The one time we were separated, the curse almost killed him.”

“Hmmph,” Father Abernathy said, taking Eskel’s hand to examine the black ring. “Binding curses aren’t usually fatal.”

“This one is, or so said the mage who activated the spell. We’re, ah,” he fumbled, glancing at Jaskier for help.

“It’s a Correctional Marriage,” Jaskier said bluntly, setting his bandaged hand overtop of Eskel’s. “I was convicted of treason, and my punishment was to be spellbound and married to a Witcher.”

“Wasn’t quite the harsh punishment your jailers expected, eh?” Abernathy guessed. His ancient, watery eyes were bright with amusement. “As if our Bear here would ever mistreat a prisoner.”

Eskel flushed at the conviction in Abernathy’s voice, and then blushed further when Jaskier added, “No, of course not. Dear Eskel saved me! And he’s been nothing but kind and attentive ever since. I don’t think any ‘bride’ could expect more from a handfast husband.”

Eskel looked up to meet Jaskier’s eyes, and the sincere affection there made his heart stutter and his throat constrict with emotion. Gods, he’d never dreamed of having someone like Jaskier in his life. More than ever he felt Fate-blessed, and humbled by the trust Jaskier had shown him. He was determined not to let Jaskier down.

“What can you tell me about the binding ceremony itself?” Abernathy prompted.

“There was an ordinary handfast ceremony, and the mage put an activation spell on the rings. They’d been enchanted a century ago, or more,” Eskel explained, returning his attention to the task at hand. “Redania stopped performing Correctional Marriages when the Witcher schools fell, according to their spymaster.”

“And the spell itself?” Abernathy prompted. “Do you remember the incantation?”

Eskel shook his head. “It was in an ancient Elder dialect. I wasn’t able to translate any of it.” He was ashamed to admit it, but he could remember almost nothing of the incantation itself. Even the phonetic pronunciations escaped him.

“I couldn’t understand it either,” Jaskier added after a beat of silence. “But I think I could recite it again.”

“Truly?” Abernathy said, sitting back in his chair, which creaked even under the old wizard’s slight weight. “You can recite it from memory? But how? If the Elder dialect is obscure as Eskel claims…”

“Oh, I have a trained ear,” Jaskier reminded them both, sipping at his tea. “You can’t graduate from the bardic college at Oxenfurt unless you’re able to instantly memorize bits and pieces of…well, pretty much anything,” he added with a small, private smile aimed at Eskel. “I can recite it phonetically, and we can jot it down. That should allow us to translate it.”

“You’re certain?” Eskel murmured, rubbing Jaskier’s inner wrist below the last loop of bandages. He didn’t for a moment doubt Jaskier’s abilities. But that incantation channeled very powerful magic, and Jaskier wasn’t a Source of Chaos himself. If the recitation did something to trigger the spell, and something happened to Jaskier, Eskel would never be able to live with himself.

“I’ll be fine, dear heart.” Jaskier turned to cup Eskel’s cheek. The scarred side, the part of him no one had ever touched, except for Jaskier. “If you or Abernathy feel any hint of Chaos stirring, I’ll stop right away. I promise,” he said, leaning in to brush his lips softly over Eskel’s scarred mouth, leaving behind the lingering bitterness of magically-conjured food, and the familar comfort of Jaskier’s touch.

Abernathy went to fetch an ink, a quill, and some paper while Jaskier closed his eyes and tried to recall the words of the spell. Eskel watched his lover’s face with a mixture of awe and trepidation. He seemed just as determined as Eskel was to free them both from the spell’s implacable hold, but for some reason Eskel suspected that Jaskier’s heart wasn’t quite it in. Nevertheless, he was doing all he could to help break the curse.

“I think I have it,” Jaskier said when Abernathy returned with the writing instruments. Eskel’s heart was pounding. He took a length of parchment from the stack Abernathy had brought, and readied his quill, but kept his other hand free to cast a cantrip or a spell of protection. Abernathy did the same, and they both waited, pens poised above the parchment, as Jaskier recited the incantation:

“Dwy galon, un dyhead,” he began, in what proved to be a very good Ancient Elder accent. “Dwy dafod ond un iaith. Dwy raff yn cydio’n ddolen. Dau enaid ond un daith.”

Eskel and Abernathy dutifully scribbled out the words, and neither Eskel’s ring nor Jaskier’s seemed to do anything unusual. Eskel’s medallion didn’t even react to the incantation. Jaskier’s lack of natural Chaos seemed to have protected him from activating any part of the spell.

Abernathy was squinting down at the scribbled-out dictation, and took Eskel’s parchment to compare the two versions. He muttered to himself, striking out a few words and correcting the spelling on Eskel’s document. (He hadn’t been lying—he’d never been any good at Ancient Elder).

After a quarter-hour or so, Abernathy said, “Ah! I’ve got it!” He’d written out three versions of the incantation: a cleaned-up and recopied version of what Jaskier had been able to recall, what seemed to be a direct translation beside it, and then a much longer, more complex version of the same incantation in Common. The third version looked entirely different from the original spell, and Eskel wasn’t exactly sure where Abernathy had gotten it from. As far as he could tell, it bore little resemblance to the incantation from the handfast ceremony.

“It’s not an Elder dialect,” Abernathy explained, sounding a little breathless. “It’s a rather obscure mix of Old Nord and a dead human language carried over from before the Conjunction. It does sound very similar to Ancient Elder, but once I stripped out the bits of Old Nord, I remembered that I’ve seen this before! Comes with being horribly long-lived, I’m afraid,” Abernathy added, wiping at his watery eyes.

“The original words aren’t a spell at all,” he added. “I believe they were likely meant to be said during a handfasting ceremony. Listen:

“Two hearts, one wish,
Two tongues but one language,
Two ropes that join connected,
Two souls but one journey.”

“Is that a handfast vow?” Eskel asked. Witchers weren’t often invited to any weddings; the only handfast ceremony he’d ever attended had been his own, with Jaskier.

“Aye,” Abernathy said. He rose and went over to one of the numerous piles of books lining the room and began digging through them. “If the rings were already enchanted centuries ago, only an activation spell would be required. And those words are common enough, though the language itself is unusual.” He kept flipping through his collection of books, looking quickly through one stack and building another with the discards. Eskel got up to help but Abernathy waived him off.

“It might take me some time, but I’m positive I have a copy of the original enchantment spell. I’ll know it when I see it,” said the old mage, and Eskel cast a skeptical glance around the cluttered room. There had to be sixty-odd piles of books in the dining room alone, and more in the apartment’s other rooms.

He glanced up at Jaskier, who seemed to have come to a similar conclusion: this was going to take some time.

“Perhaps we could go and consult with one of the other mages while you work?” Eskel suggested. “Is Farrington still around? He was always good with enchanted objects; might be worth showing him our rings.”

Abernathy was crouched down examining a few final volumes at the bottom of a large stack. He looked up at Eskel and then Jaskier.

“Eskel, you go. Find Farrington. You might also want to consult with Gloria Henselt. She’s our botany teacher, but she’s also a fairly deft hand when it comes to curses. Those two might have some good ideas about breaking your spellbond, especiall if I can find the original enchantment. And Farrington’s new apprentice might have some good ideas too.”

“What about me?” Jaskier asked, glancing nervously at Eskel. After spending months on the road together, and lovers for most of that time, Eskel wasn’t any more comfortable with parting than Jaskier was. But Jaskier offered him a reassuring smile, and Eskel was forced to see the sense in Abernathy’s plan. They’d need more mages working on this if they had any hope of breaking the unusual binding spell.

“Just…be quick,” Jaskier murmured, bandaged fingers gently caressing Eskel’s cheek. “And while you’re gone, I’ll see if I can coax Abernathy to recall any embarrassing anecdotes from your schooldays, Bear.”

Eskel groaned, though it was a happy sound. He’d always secretly liked that nickname. “You’ll be disappointed,” he predicted, leaning in to steal a quick kiss from Jaskier. “I was a very diligent and well-behaved student.”

Jaskier smiled at him, and then darted in for another kiss. “I don’t doubt it. Hurry back to me, all right?”

“As quick as I can,” Eskel promised, savoring the lingering warmth of Jaskier’s mouth as he picked his way around the stacks of books towards the door.

“And no snuggling wizards in the hallways!” Jaskier called after him, which made Eskel laugh. The sound boomed down the stone corridor as he closed the door behind him.

***

Father Abernathy was still going through the stacks of books when Jaskier turned back. He wasn’t going to be any help there, obviously. His fingers were finally healing, but he was still leery of handling anything that would put more than the lightest pressure on his fingers. He wouldn’t have the dexterity to handle the heavy tomes, or stop one of the stacks from toppling over if it started to sway. Rather than make a nuisance of himself, he sat back down with the magical tea and helped himself to another buttery honey biscuit.

“Eskel seems quite taken with you,” Father Abernathy said, apropos of nothing. The old mage, wizened and white-haired and impossibly ancient, sat in the middle of a ring of spellbooks. Though he wasn’t looking at Jaskier, Jaskier knew he had the mage’s full attention.

Being in close proximity to a powerful sorcerer never ended well, in Jaskier’s personal experience. Not that he was questioning his choice to send Eskel away. They clearly needed to divide and conquer if they were going to break the spell, and Father Abernathy had been very kind. Eskel clearly trusted his old professor, but he was still a stranger. And he was a very old, very powerful sorcerer. Never a good combination, Jaskier thought, even as he tried not to feel nervous about being left alone with Abernathy.

“I’m quite taken with him as well,” Jaskier said after an awkward beat of silence. “Eskel’s a gift.”

Abernathy nodded at him. “I’m glad you see that. He’s always been quite special. And if those old charlatans and sadists at the Witcher school hadn’t gotten their hooks into him again, Eskel would have become the most powerful mage this Continent has ever known.”

Jaskier almost choked on his biscuit. What?

“Whmph?” he mumbled, trying to swallow and cough at the same time. “What does that mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” Abernathy said, and then sighed and got—slowly—to his feet. “Didn’t he tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Jaskier said, feeling a cold finger of dread trace the length of his spine. “Eskel always made it sound like he didn’t belong here.” He paused, thinking of the warm reception Eskel had gotten, how obviously well-liked he was by the mages even after an absence of seven or eight decades. “He basically said he flunked out of here, and had to go back to his Witcher school with his tail between his legs. But…that’s not true, is it? He was well-liked. He was doing well here.”

“He was,” Abernathy said, nodding with approval at Jaskier’s deductive reasoning skills. “It might have taken Eskel extra time to finish his coursework, but he certainly could have pushed through and Ascended, if he’d stuck it out for a few more years. He would have been a very powerful mage. He’d have gotten a court position too, if he’d wanted it. Eventually. I’m still positive that at least one King would have seen the value in a Witcher-Mage.”

“So why didn’t he?”

Abernathy sighed and sank back down in his seat at the small dining table. He suddenly looked more like a tired old man than an ageless master of potions and the mystic arts.

“Eskel had been badly flogged just before he came to Ban Ard. He knew how to hide his injuries—a bad sign, I thought, because it meant that he’d been likely whipped like that before—and no one realized that he was in any kind of discomfort. Our Professor of Healing finally noticed he was moving too stiffly for a 16-year-old during a casting session. Poor boy had been making do with dirty bandages and a homemade suture kit. Half his back was shredded down to the bone.”

Abernathy shuddered. “I’ve always tried very hard not to jump to conclusions about Witchers and their ‘training’ methods. They weren’t preparing young boys to become court mages or historians, after all: they were making warriors. Monster-killers. Naturally their methods would be different than our own here at Ban Ard. But Eskel was such a kind, good-natured boy. I couldn’t imagine what he’d done to deserve a lashing like that. It would have killed an ordinary human. Or left them crippled for life.”

Jaskier felt ill. He’d seen the scars from those lash wounds on Eskel’s back months ago, that day on the river. Since then he’d kissed those scars, and laved them with his tongue, and tried not to think about how badly someone had hurt his sweet Witcher. He’d known that a lashing delivered by someone with baseline human strength wouldn’t have left scars like that.

Witchers had done that to Eskel. Half his back shredded down to the bone. Gods.

“I eventually got the truth out of Eskel,” Abernathy continued slowly. “He told me he’d fallen in love with another boy at the school, and they’d been caught together one too many times. The last time was right before Eskel was supposed to start his training year here. The Witchers gave him 100 lashes and exiled him here, to Ban Ard.”

Jaskier was suddenly finding it a bit hard to breathe. He only knew about one boy in Eskel’s past: Geralt. And Eskel had all but confirmed that his relationship with Geralt hadn’t just been platonic: he’d said there was a story. But Geralt had told Jaskier he wasn’t interested in men. He’d said so explicitly that night at the brothel. He’d said he could never love another man, or be with another man.

“Witchers believe that men who let other men have them aren’t men at all.” That’s what Geralt thought.

Perhaps he’d believed something very different, once?

“Do you know what happened to the friend?” Jaskier asked, trying to hide the mounting confusion coursing through him. “The one Eskel was caught with?”

“He was put through some sort of experiment, apparently,” Abernathy frowned. “They sent a letter here, just after Yule, informing Eskel that he’d died.”

Now Jaskier truly couldn’t breathe. His lungs seemed to have forgotten how to work as his mind spiraled out, replaying a thousand conversations with Geralt, at inns and brothels and around campfires across the Continent. They’d travelled together nearly twenty years, and it turned out he knew absolutely nothing about the man he’d been in love with for over half his life.

Abernathy didn’t appear to notice his distress. He continued in his ancient, creaky voice. “Oh, Eskel was devastated, of course. But he seemed to accept it, eventually. Such deaths were common at the Witcher school. Eskel threw himself into his studies, and I think he’d decided to stay at Ban Ard for good.”

Jaskier recovered enough to prompt Abernathy to continue. “And then?” he said, half-sick, half-fearful. But he knew. Of course he knew how this story ended.

“And then a Witcher appeared at our gate. He claimed he was Eskel’s fencing instructor, and that he wanted a word with the boy. Eskel spoke to him in my office for a quarter-hour or so. I went back in afterward, and Eskel seemed quite calm. He told me that he was very sorry, but that he had to go back to his school. His friend was still alive.”

That missing piece slotted into place, and all Jaskier could do was grieve. For Eskel. He’d been in love with Geralt—been lovers with Geralt, apparently—and been punished severely for it. Sent into exile for it. They’d told Eskel that Geralt was dead.

They’d lied to him.

“You can guess the rest,” Abernathy said. “Eskel wasn’t going to abandon his friend, even if it meant going back there. I told Eskel that he and his friend would both be welcome at Ban Ard. I even offered to portal him up to the keep’s front door to collect his friend! They could have left that place together, and come back here. Eskel would have become a mage, not a Witcher.”

Jaskier could see it, in his mind’s eye: Eskel, unscarred and impossibly young, bursting out of a portal and racing into the Witcher’s keep to rescue Geralt. To tell him he’d live out their long lives together. Free from fear. Free from scars, and monsters.

Just as clearly, he saw that it had never happened.

He knew that Eskel and Geralt had both earned their medallions, and had gone on alone to walk their lonely Paths. And then, multiple decades later, Geralt had sat Jaskier down at some brothel and explain why he could never be with a man.

Little wonder why.

Abernathy was frowning down into his magicked mug of black tea. “That fencing instructor must have convinced him to return to the Witcher fortress. Or his friend might not have been in any condition to travel. Whatever the reason, Eskel never returned to Ban Ard. I’d heard that his school—all the Witcher schools, really—had been destroyed, and there were only a few Witchers left alive to walk the Path. I’d always hoped that Eskel and his friend had survived, that Eskel’s sacrifice had been worth it.”

Jaskier opened his mouth to say that Geralt had survived the purges, but then Abernathy continued.

“Eskel wrote me afterward to say that his friend had been killed, too, years before. I don’t think they had any time together before Eskel was left alone.”

Jaskier blinked away a thin film of tears. Fuck. This was worse than he’d thought.

But he still wasn’t sure what Abernathy meant. Eskel had said his ‘friend’ Geralt was dead? Maybe old Father Abernathy was mistaken? Though it didn’t seem likely. Mages didn’t have faulty memories.

One thing was clear: he had to get Eskel to explain about Geralt, and find out exactly what they’d been to each other.

And what had gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

***

Abernathy was still looking for the right book by the time Eskel returned to collect Jaskier. He hadn’t had much luck working out the mechanism behind the curse, even with Farrington and Henselt’s expert help. They’d each examined his ring as best they could, but they’d agreed that, unless Eskel or Jaskier were able to take their ring off for further study, there weren’t any more magical tests they could run. Until Abernathy found the source of the original enchantment, they were at a bit of an impasse.

Eskel wasn’t discouraged. He said as much to a rather pale and shaken Jaskier as they left the college and walked back to the inn.

“Don’t lose hope yet,” Eskel said, hoping to raise Jaskier’s spirits. “We’re just getting started! There are other mages we can consult…”

He trailed off. He could feel Jaskier’s spirits sinking lower and lower with every word he uttered. The spellbound was transmitting Jaskier’s bleak mood and dissolute spirits back to Eskel, but he had no idea how to make Jaskier feel better.

He came to a stop when they were halfway over the bridge between the college and the city proper, and turned to face Jaskier. He put his hands lightly on Jaskier’s shoulders, but Jaskier seemed determined not to look at him. He kept his head down, and Eskel finally had to stoop just to get a good look at Jaskier’s face.

His Lark was crying.

He’d seen Jaskier cry before, of course, out of rage and grief and frustration, and unendurable pain. But this, this awful, silent shedding of tears, was far worse than those other times, because Jaskier seemed to be holding on so tightly to whatever was making him cry that he was almost choking on it.

But why? What was he afraid of? Jaskier had to know Eskel would never judge him for his tears. If anything, he envied him the ability to have that sort of emotional release.

“What is it, love?” Eskel murmured, desperate to offer Jaskier some reassurance. “Did Abernathy say something unkind? Or—is it the curse? Jask, I swear, we’ll get it sorted out. You won’t have to live with this spell hanging over you forever.”

Jaskier stared at him in mute, red-eyed misery for a long moment, and then dropped his gaze to the cobblestone bridge. “It’s not the curse,” Jaskier ground out. “And Abernathy wasn’t unkind. Can we please just go back to the inn?”

Eskel tried to batten down the worry roiling up through his gut. Something had happened, but Jaskier didn’t want to talk about it.

Having lived for many years with a group of the most stubborn, silent, brooding and recalcitrant Witchers on the Continent, Eskel knew there was no point in trying to force Jaskier to talk about whatever seemed to be eating at him. He needed space to work through his own thoughts and feelings. When Jaskier was ready, Eskel would be there to listen. That was exactly how he usually approached it with Geralt and Lambert, and even Vesemir. It was unnerving, that was all, for his Lark to be so miserably silent.

“Of course,” Eskel muttered, dropping his hands so Jaskier could shoulder past him. He walked ahead of Eskel all the way back to the inn.

Dinner wouldn’t be served at the Half-Cup for a few hours yet, and so Eskel led Jaskier upstairs to try to regroup and rest for a while. Jaskier went directly over to the bed and laid down on his back with his bandaged hands folded over his chest. He’d stopped crying, but his eyes were red and swollen. His body was one stiff line of misery, and the sight made Eskel’s heart ache.

What in the Fates had crushed Jaskier’s spirts so thoroughly? He’d been fine when Eskel had left him alone with Abernathy, and Jaskier had already said that Abernathy hadn’t said anything unkind. So what had done it? He kept coming back around to the possibility that Jaskier might be feeling hopeless about the curse, perhaps even falling into despair over the fact that he might be tied to Eskel for the rest of his natural life.

The thought hurt like hell, and it was enough to sour Eskel’s mood, too. He tried to find something to occupy himself instead, and so he took the whetstone out of his pack and sat down by the hearth to sharpen his swords. He could have performed the task blindfolded, however, so it wasn’t quite the distraction he needed. Every so often, Eskel glanced over to the bed. Jaskier had rolled over with his back was to Eskel; even the bard’s spine looked depressed.

By the time Eskel had sharpened, oiled and polished both swords (and even cleaned and oiled his scabbards) Jaskier still hadn’t said a word. Seventh bell chimed, and the scents and noises of the dinner crowd wafted up from the tavern downstairs. Eskel’s belly gurgled. He’d forgone those magic biscuits in Abernathy’s office, and they’d had little else since breakfast. Hunger seemed as good an excuse as any to break the foreboding silence.

“Shall we go down for dinner?” he asked Jaskier’s back. The bard didn’t so much as twitch in response. “Or I could bring a tray up?”

“Whatever you think best,” Jaskier said in a flat, sterile voice. Eskel frowned at the back of his head.

This wasn’t good. He felt discombobulated and adrift, and he realized with a start that he hadn’t touched Jaskier in hours. Perhaps that was the problem? They’d made love every day since that marvelous night outside Rinde, and when they weren’t busy fucking or kissing, they were riding doubled up on Scorpion or asleep in each others’ arms. This could be touch-starvation setting in. Jaskier might be feeling the first stirring discomfort from the curse as it pressured him to make skin contact with Eskel.

If Jaskier didn’t want to touch Eskel, even to save himself discomfort, Eskel would rather open a vein before he’d force Jaskier to do anything against his will

Be patient, he told himself. Don’t push. Whatever was bothering Jaskier, it would eventually come to light, and they could talk it over. Neither of them were going anywhere, after all, until the spell was broken.

“I’ll…I’ll go down for dinner, then. You’re welcome to join me later, if you’d like,” he offered, trying to make his offer sound inviting instead of worried and desperate.

“I’m fine,” Jaskier said so quietly that it strained even Eskel’s enhanced hearing. “You go on and eat.”

Eskel hesitated, wanting nothing more to gather Jaskier into his arms and hold him, to offer what comfort he could with his body and his presence. Instead, he nodded at Jaskier’s back, and went to put his swords away. He also returned the whetstone and sword-oil to his pack, but quickly ran out of other make-busy tasks.

When he turned to leave the room, however, his resolve deserted him. He couldn’t leave Jaskier without making some attempt to comfort. The last time this had happened, back in Rinde ages ago, they’d shared a hot bath together, and things had been all right. (They’d quickly gone awry again, thanks to that wretch Valdo Marx, but Eskel put it out of his head).

Eskel approached the bed, making sure his footsteps were audible and that he wouldn’t startle Jaskier. Jaskier didn’t freeze or flinch away, but he didn’t relax, either. Eskel wished desperately he could take on Jaskier’s pain and bear it himself, if only to save his lark the agony of suffering alone.

“Jaskier, please. I l—” he started to say, and then caught himself. No. No, he couldn’t finish that sentence. He couldn’t release those words yet. He’d chosen to lock them away so long ago. Even as the words rattled the bars of the cage he’d built for them, desperate to escape, he refused to let them loose.

What if this is your only chance?

He wrestled with that thought. He knew as well as any Witcher that tomorrow was only a promise, and that his Path might be cut short at any time. Could he go to his inevitably sudden, painful end knowing he’d had this chance to release what had been locked up in his heart for so long? Gods, Jaskier might even return those words with some of his own.

But would he mean it? Could he mean it?

The odds were vanishingly small. He knew Jaskier felt some regard for him. Liked him, even: they were friends. And Jaskier had never been anything less than wonderfully responsive—hungry, even—for Eskel’s touch.

But that wasn’t love. Eskel might not have much experience with the emotion, but he knew there was a difference. Of course, he’d take whatever Jaskier wanted to give him, and gladly, with sincere thanks, but he how could he even think of inflicting his coarse, brutish form of love on Jaskier? Especially when Jaskier couldn’t say no?

“I’ll be back up by tenth bell,” Eskel said, finally defeated. “I hope you’ll feel better soon, Lark,” he said as he closed the bedroom door.

***

Jaskier stayed in bed until he heard Eskel’s footsteps retreat down the stairs and into the tavern proper. As soon as he was sure the Witcher was downstairs, he rolled over and blinked up at the dusty blue canopy above.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Eskel and Geralt, GeraltandEskel, and how much godsdamned sense it made. It explained why Eskel, who was by far the most loving and affectionate man Jaskier had ever met, had remained alone for so many years. And why Geralt, the stubborn bastard, seemed to think himself incapable or undeserving of love. Neither one of them had been able to reach out and claim the one thing—the one person—they’d truly wanted. Whether it was due to the prejudices and narrow-mindedness of their own guild, or out of fear of hurting the other, both Witchers had foregone love and shackled themselves to duty instead.

Fuck. If only Jaskier had been a disinterested spectator, this entire situation would have seemed like an exceptionally tragic romance. A ballad for the ages, something to sing on long winter nights when longing and heartache trembled through the frozen air.

But he wasn’t a spectator to this. He was now a part of this multidecade tragic thing between Eskel and Geralt. And he knew his fragile mortal heart wouldn’t survive it.

What place did he have in the epic love story of two immortal warriors? Geralt and Eskel were two sides of a coin: light and dark, ice and fire, fate and magic. They were demigods with perfect, battle-scarred bodies and wounded hearts fated to bleed for an eternity. So what role could Jaskier have in the face of that epic love ? He was some insignificant little human whose whole life would come and go in a blink of their feline eyes.

He’d been, at best, a temporary reprieve for Geralt in his loneliness. A distraction for Eskel’s heartache. Neither of them could be with the one they loved, and he’d merely been a stray line or a footnote in their tragic story.

He sighed again, and blinked back against the hot sting of tears. The worst of it was that he couldn’t even be angry. Oh, Geralt had hurt him, certainly. But he’d never lied to Jaskier, or offered anything more than what he’d had to give: friendship.

And Eskel. Big, strong, warm-hearted Eskel, who was so incredibly easy to love, had offered Jaskier everything he could, and more. But not his heart.

He understood it all now. Eskel was in love with Geralt. Always had been, and always would be, if what Abernathy had said was true. He’d given up everything to be with Geralt. He’d given up magehood, and a chance at a happier, safer life. He’d become a Witcher for Geralt. Jaskier knew without question that Eskel’s loving heart wouldn’t have allowed him to turn his back on him, not at the moment when Geralt needed him most.

What happened afterward seemed obvious. Both Witchers must have concluded that the punishments they’d endured, the heartache and pain—the hurt they caused simply by loving each other—meant they couldn’t be together again. But those feelings had endured for decades now.

But what prevented them from being together now? Yennifer? She’d rejected Geralt, and at least according to what she’d said back in Oxenfurt, she wanted nothing to do with him. And Jaskier had told Eskel what sort of misconception Geralt was labouring under, still believing that their guild continued to forbid love between men. But that was no longer a hard rule, according to Eskel himself.

All Eskel had to do was talk it over with Geralt. Convince him that they’d face no more whippings or reprisals and could be together once again, just as they had as children and young trainee Witchers in love.

Jaskier couldn’t have written a more perfect ending to their ballad: two scarred old warriors, both of whom had given their lives many times over to the Path, finally coming home to find rest and comfort in each other.

They deserved each other. They fit together, in ways Jaskier and Geralt certainly never had. Hells, if Geralt’s two Destiny-fated loves were Eskel and Yennifer, little wonder Jaskier had never stood a chance.

And Jaskier and Eskel? Well. He’d been deluding himself, clearly. He’d fallen into the same trap as always. Fallen for a lonely, scarred man, mistaking his friendly affection and the convenience of a willing bedmate for true love.

He’d get over it. He’d survived Geralt’s rejection, after all. How much worse could parting from Eskel possibly be?

Aside from the spell, he reminded himself. No matter what happened, he had to get clear of the ringbound curse. He couldn’t spend the next 20 years of his life following Eskel around and begging for whatever scraps of affection the Witcher could spare. No, when Eskel and Geralt finally, inevitably reconciled—as they might do this very winter—Jaskier had to be long gone.

He had no real place in their story, aside from that of a jester. Some light comic relief.

He used his elbows to leverage himself up and off the bed, and thought carefully about what steps he ought to take. It seemed that a mage more powerful than Abernathy and the rest of the Ban Ard faculty would be needed to break the curse.

And of course, the most powerful magic-user he knew was Yennifer of fucking Vengerberg.

Fine. He could try to track her down. Chireadan would help. The Sandpiper’s network was perfectly capable of locating one wayward witch, even if she had vanished into thin air right in front of Jaskier back in Oxenfurt all those months ago. He’d write to his contacts, and someone would track her down. If it took until spring, if he had to follow Eskel all the way up to Kaer Morhen and watch him reunite with Geralt…well, he’d endure it.

He’d lived through much more painful things. If what he’d done after that godsdamn dragonhunt could count as living, anyway.

The thought of Eskel loving someone else, bedding someone else, felt like Jaskier’s heart was being cut out by a spoon. But he’d heal from that. He’d have to.

Decision made, Jaskier went over to their saddlebags to fish out some coin, and put on his warmest travelling cloak. He wouldn’t have venture far in Ban Ard to find someone who’d send his request for Yennefer’s whereabouts out to the far corners of the Continent. There were plenty of raven aeries in the college town, and more than enough mages to help speed the request along even faster.

He gripped the soft sack of coins with his bandaged hand, and tried to tell himself this was for the best. Eskel would be free of Jaskier, free of the burden of his care, his friendship, and he could finally be with the man he’d loved for decades. And Jaskier would be free of the curse, at least. He could strike out on his own again, just as he had at 17 and 37, and carve a new path for himself.

One that veered sharply away from Witchers, once and for all.

He listened carefully for any noises outside the hall. The coast seemed clear—Eskel was probably still downstairs in the tavern—and Jaskier slipped out down the servant’s hallway and out into the yard where the privy was.

He made his way back to the first of the market squares they’d passed earlier that day, and kept his eyes peeled for an aerie or a mage-for-hire. Nineth bell had not yet rung, but the streets were deserted, the early dusk and chill of autumn forcing the shopkeepers and vendors to close up shop long before sunset. Jaskier thought he spotted the silhouette of a raven aerie just west of the third town square, and decided to duck down an alley to cut some time from his journey.

He made a sharp left as he came around the side of a bookseller’s shop, popping out of the blind alley right into the street.

And crashed headlong into the Sorceress.

He knew her at once, of course. He’d never learned her name, but he remembered her curly brown hair and freckles and red, red lips. Most of all he remembered her fathomless black eyes. She had the eyes of a taxidermized beast, glassy and flat and remorseless. She’d been there, quietly observing, whenever Dijkstra had tortured him in the dungeons under Oxenfurt. She’d scoured his mind for secrets, for any trace of Geralt, and the touch of her Chaos had always sent white-hot agony searing through his bones and sinew.

Jaskier scrambled back and stared at her, frozen in horror.

Fancy meeting you here, she said without moving her lips. The words were projected right into Jaskier’s mind. One more invasion.

He curled his bandaged fists, preparing himself for the agony of striking The Sorceress with his injured hands. But it was his only chance to get away. He’d always been chained down and drugged and starving whenever she’d fumbled through his mind before. This time, she would not take him so easily. He wouldn’t allow it.

Oh, I wouldn’t try that, she grinned her red-lipped grin at him, already anticipating his move. You’re no match for me, little sparrow. Come along quietly, now. I have questions for you.

“It’s Lark, actually,” Jaskier said, and swung his fist at her face with every last scrap of his strength. His fist—and the weighted sack of coin he’d been clutching since he left the inn—caught her at the corner of her eye, and she staggered back in shock.

“Oh, what the FUCK?” she screeched, but Jaskier had already whirled and dashed back down the alley, dodging between rubbish bins and broken old crates, darting and weaving and aware the whole time that a howling, raging beast was nipping at his heels. Sorceresses hated to be denied, as he well knew. But he wouldn’t let Dijkstra’s mage take him without a fight.

He had to get back to Eskel. He couldn’t just vanish. Eskel would blame himself, and if he put up a fuss and ran into Dijkstra’s sorceress…

He’d be tortured. Eventually, even Eskel would break. He’d lead the Redanians right to Geralt.

Jaskier couldn’t let that happen.

He’d almost made it back to the inn—he was close enough to hear the awful tavern musician’s fucking pan flute rendition of Her Sweet Kiss, Gods help him—when he slipped on some rotten beets and went crashing to the cobblestones.

Of course he tried to catch himself with his hands before he could dash his brains out on the road. And of course, when he landed with his full weight on his blistered, slowly-healing palms, the pain almost made him black out. He stayed conscious, somehow, but it was a near thing. He couldn’t even stagger to his feet or cry out for help. The most he could do was clutch his throbbing hands and roll to his back, and try not to sob.

That’s when the Sorceress caught up to him. Her perfect red lips were curled in a snarl that promised violent and bloody retribution for his attempt at escape.

“That was a serious mistake, Sparrow,” she said, but by then his vision was already tunnelling, and he could feel the snap and roar of a portal opening very close by.

“It’s the last one you’ll ever make. I promise you that.”

***

Chapter Text

Jaskier had gone blind. That, or it was pitch-black in the wherever-he-was, with not even the faintest glow of ambient light to break the oppressive darkness. He could smell earth and rot, moisture, mold, and fungus. Somewhere, water dripped.

A root cellar, then. Possibly a crypt. Jaskier was underground, wherever he was. For the first time in weeks, he couldn’t feel so much as a hint of Eskel’s presence through the bond.

It felt like he’d lost an arm or a leg, or some vital organ. Eskel was gone. He’d barely noticed how much he’d come to rely on the steady pulse of the spell that meant Eskel Eskel Eskel safe good warm safe. Until it was gone.

He wanted to weep.

The Sorceress could have portaled him anywhere on the Continent. He could be right back where he started, in the dungeons underneath Oxenfurt. Or he could be in Tretragor, or Blaavikin, or the Tower of the Gull. Or even in another dimension entirely. The Continent was massive, and the Sorceress had near-infinite power along with the resources of the entire Redanian crown at her disposal.

One thing was certain: Jaskier was never going to see Eskel again.

He heard something moving in the darkness around him. Jaskier went absolutely still, suddenly aware that he could be sharing this pitch-black prison with a werewolf, or a vampire, or some other heinous beast. Likely the creature had perfect night-vision, given Jaskier’s general bad luck.

“Ah, hello?” he said into the darkness, fully prepared for the answering growl of a monster that would rip him to shreds and eat him alive before Jaskier had the time to scream.

“Hello,” said a voice in the dark.

Jaskier shrieked in alarm and scrambled backwards until his back connected with a solid dirt wall. Some earth crumbled away to land in his hair, and he frantically batted it away, almost as horrified by the idea of insects crawling all over him in the dark as he was by an unseen, unperceived companion suddenly materializing in the cramped underground space.

“Who—who’s there?” he gasped, twisting his head in desperate search for something—anything—in the all-encompassing blackness.

He thought he saw the faintest glimmer of light, oddly similar to the retinal flare of a cat’s eyes. Or a Witcher’s.

“Please, for the love of the Fates, please say something,” Jaskier begged, too terrified to grope around in the blackness lest he accidentally touch some part of his companion and discover thick fur or scales instead.

“Only if you promise not to shriek again,” came the response, and Jaskier slumped in relief. He was sharing a cell with a human, or at least something human-like.

“That was more of a manly cry of distress,” Jaskier shot back, and he relaxed a little when his companion chuckled.

“So you say.”

The man inhaled, and Jaskier heard the wheezing, wet scrape of his lungs. It seemed his companion was ill, or injured. “Please,” the stranger said, “What’s the date?”

The quiet desperation in his voice made Jaskier answer quickly. “Tenth of Velen, or maybe the eleventh, if I was out longer than a few hours.”

“Oh,” the man said, bleakness in his tone. “Been here longer than I thought, then.”

“When did they grab you?”

“Just after the Lammas festivals,” he said, and Jaskier heard that soft scraping again, and a pained inhale. It sounded like his companion was trying to shift around to find a more comfortable position in their pitch-black cell. It didn’t sound like he was having much luck.

Jaskier brushed at the dirt wall at his back, and followed it up to a very low ceiling. There wasn’t even enough room in the cell to stand upright: he had to hunch over as he felt along the wall, trying to pay attention to the slightest change in the wall texture. Aside from the damp clumps of dirt and the odd bit of grit he could feel through his bandages, he encountered nothing but dry, dead vines or tree roots. The wall itself was made of solid, hard-packed dirt, and he found no seam for a door.

“There’s a grate in the ceiling,” the other prisoner explained from his spot in the opposite corner. “They drop a bucket of slop down here once every 12 hours or so. I use the empty one for waste; that gets hauled back up when they send down the new one. Just to warn you, I don’t think these bastards bother to clean the buckets much as they change ‘em out.”

Jaskier shrugged; he wouldn’t live through more than four of the bucket-change-cycles anyway: the spell would kill him within 48 hours. Or less.

“You all right?” His companion sounded concerned, which surprised Jaskier. “Heartbeat’s going pretty fast. You injured?”

“How do you know my heartbeat is—” Jaskier recalled the strange retinal flash he’d caught earlier. “You wouldn’t happen to be a Witcher, by any chance?”

He heard another low scraping sound, as if the man was repositioning himself again. Or perhaps shrinking away in anticipation of violence.

“I am,” he asked, and Jaskier blinked in surprise. Seventeen years with Geralt, and he’d never met another Witcher. Now they seemed to be popping up everywhere. “That a problem?”

The Witcher didn’t sound angry or hostile, just curious. Perhaps he was simply too exhausted to challenge his new cellmate’s prejudices.

“Not at all,” Jaskier said smoothly. “Some of my best friends are Witchers.”

“That so?” the man asked, and barked out a short, pained laugh. His soft, melodious voice and Zerikkanian accent was very different from either Geralt’s deep rasp or Eskel’s rough baritone. Jaskier found himself smiling in return.

“Indeed,” Jaskier said, and then thought, in for a copper, in for a crown. “My name is Jaskier, and I’m a friend of—”

“Geralt of Riva,” the Witcher supplied. “You’re the White Wolf’s bard.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said, feeling caught off-guard. He’d been about to say that he was a friend of Eskel’s. “No. I mean, I am, but…I haven’t seen Geralt in a very long time. And you are?”

“Aiden,” said the man.

“And it sounds like you’re originally from Zerrikania, Aiden?” Jaskier offered, trying to be conversational.

“You have a good ear for accents,” Aiden remarked. “I’m from a city there called Thessos, according to the Witcher who claimed me. I don’t remember very much of it.”

He broke down in a coughing fit, and Jaskier frowned again at the wet rattle of his lungs.

“Are you hurt, Aiden?” Jaskier asked. There was a brief silence.

“You might say,” Aiden said. “I put up a few objections to being kidnapped. Our captors broke a few ribs and put a bolt in my eye in return.”

“A bolt? From a crossbow?” Jaskier said, shuddering. A crossbow bolt to the eye—or the resulting shock and blood loss—would have killed a human instantly. Even a Witcher healing wouldn’t be able to do much with an injury like that, especially if Aiden had been down in this black pit for over a month with nothing but water and piss-tained gruel.

“Was a bit rude of them, I’ll grant you,” Aiden said.

“Is there anything I can do?” He fumbled for the tie of his cloak. “My cloak, at least—the Sorceress let me keep it. You must be cold.”

There was a surprised silence from the other side of the cell, and then Aiden said, “Uh, no. That’s kind of you, but you’ll probably need that extra layer more than me. Gets pretty nippy down here at night.”

Jaskier shivered again. “Do you know why they grabbed you?”

“For the same reason they grabbed you, I suspect. They’re looking for the White Wolf’s lair.”

Jaskier squeezed his eyes shut. Not that it mattered; it was so dark down here he couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open or closed. “They tortured me for nearly months, back in Oxenfurt,” Jaskier confessed to the black void. “But I couldn’t tell them anything about where Geralt winters. Not that I would,” he said hastily, afraid Aiden might mistake his meaning. “I just honestly don’t know where he might be. I haven’t even seen Geralt in more than two years.”

“So you escaped from them before, then? In Oxenfurt?”

Jaskier rested his chin on his bent knees. “No. Not…not by myself. Another Witcher helped me get out. We suspected the King’s spymaster had men following us all the way from Oxenfurt. I just happened to stumble across his sorceress in Ban Ard.”

“I understand,” Aiden said with a sigh. “So you can’t point them to the Wolf’s winter den, either? Neither can I. Guess the joke’s on them.”

“But you’re a Witcher,” Jaskier said, frowning. “Haven’t you wintered there yourself?”

“I have never had the honour of meeting the great White Wolf,” Aiden said. “I’ve heard many stories about him, of course. But my kind aren’t welcome at his keep.”

“Your…kind?”

He heard Aiden shift places again. “I’m a Cat,” he said bluntly, as if that was supposed to mean something to Jaskier.

“A Cat?”

“Wolves don’t like Cats,” he said. Jaskier had no earthly idea what that meant. Eskel had mentioned a few of the other Witcher School: Bears, Cranes, Griffins, a whole menagerie of creatures. Jaskier couldn’t recall if he’d mentioned a School of the Cat, but perhaps there was some rivalry between the different groups of Witchers?

“Dijkstra and the Sorceress might not care for such distinctions,” Jaskier theorized. “Perhaps they think one Witcher school is interchangeable with another?”

“Doubtful,” Aiden wheezed. It sounded like he was lying on his back, now. “My brothers knew I was friendly with a particular Wolf. They sold me to the Redanians. I overheard them tell the Sorceress that I could lead them to the rest of the pack, since I was already letting one mount me.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said, not quite sure how to respond to that admission. Aiden sounded blithe about it, but there was a little cloud of tension filling the void between them now. Jaskier wanted to show Aiden that he was an ally in this, too.

“I’m handfasted to one of Geralt’s brothers,” Jaskier said. “That’s how I got out of prison. We think the King’s spymaster, Dijkstra, let us go just so he could follow us to the, ah, ‘winter den’.” He didn’t dare say Kaer Morhen out loud, in case the walls were listening.

“Handfasted? To which Wolf? Their little pack has grown small over the years. Surely not the old man: he never comes down from his mountain.”

“Oh, you mean the old teacher, Vesemir?” Jaskier muttered, confused. “No. I’m talking about Eskel. Geralt’s, uh, brother.”

“I see.” Aiden went quiet.

The silence lasted so that Jaskier suspected he’d fallen asleep. And sleep did seem like a good idea. Jaskier didn’t know how long he might have until his separation from Eskel triggered the curse. If he was lucky (clearly, he was not, but hope springs eternal) he’d have a few hours of reprieve before the awful cramps and headache would start. It seemed sensible to get what rest he could before the agony began.

He settled down into his cloak and shut his eyes—not that it mattered, in this pitch-black hellhole—and tried to sleep. He was almost there, dozing in the odd in-between place between sleep and the waking world, when he felt a hand squeeze his throat.

“You made a grave error, my friend,” Aiden said, and his voice was just as conversational and friendly as ever, even as he was strangling Jaskier. Jaskier’s eyes watered and he tried to struggle, but it was useless. Aiden appeared to be smaller and lighter than Eskel or Geralt, but he certainly had a Witcher’s strength.

“You should have claimed to be handfasted to Coën the Griffin, or one of the Bears: Vartok, Everard, or old Jarek. I might have believed that,” Aiden hissed, and now all the friendliness was gone from his voice. “But I know for a fact that Eskel is dead. So, why not be honest with me now?”

He squeezed harder, enough to make Jaskier cough and struggle for air, but not kill him outright. Something wild and dark entered Aiden’s voice. “Are you a spy, little bard? Or a whore they hired to play a part, to try and seduce secrets out of me? I thought I made myself clear,” he said, low and vicious: “I would never betray my love. I’d tear out my own throat first. I certainly won’t hesitate to shred yours, sweet nightingale.”

Jaskier coughed again and scrambled at Aiden’s vice-like grip, trying to nod and signal that he understood, hoping Aiden could at least feel his movement in the dark. Aiden squeezed tighter, just for a half-second, and then released Jaskier so he could sputter and choke into the dirt floor.

“That was completely uncalled for!” Jaskier huffed, once he’d finally recovered enough to draw air. “You don’t need to threaten me, Aiden. I told you before: I mean the Wolves no harm. And Eskel is very much alive! We’re handfasted, as I said. I—here, look, give me your hand,” he said, stretching out in the dark. He fumbled around until he caught Aiden’s hand, and placed Aiden’s fingers over the ring on his thumb.

“I’m Eskel’s Correctional bride! We’re spellbound together. This ring ties me to Eskel. If he were dead, or had taken off his own matching ring, I’d be killed instantly. So he is still very much alive!”

That knowledge was a small bit of comfort in the midst of this madness. “Hold my hand up to your medallion, if you don’t believe me: you’ll be able to feel the vibration of the spell’s Chaos!”

“That’s not possible,” Aiden said, even as he did as Jaskier asked, and touched Jaskier’s thumb–and the ring–to the cold silver of his Witcher’s medallion. Jaskier felt the tremble of the vibration himself.

It seemed to be enough to give Aiden pause, at least. He froze for a moment, and then Jaskier felt his fingers trail over the bandages on Jaskier’s hand. “What happened to your fingers?”

“Burned by a fire mage who was also looking for Geralt.” Jaskier said. “When Redanians arrested me shortly afterward, they decided to keep the ball rolling. But I’m recovering just fine now, thanks to Eskel.”

Aiden finally let go of Jaskier’s hand, and there was a long, considering silence before he spoke again.

“I’ve heard some of this before. Magic rings, Correctional Marriages, even this spellbound curse. The School of the Cat used to marry convict women so they could claim contracts in Redania,” he said. “But the leader of my school stopped the practice more than a century ago.”

“Yes, Dijkstra said they’d revived the practice just for me. He thought Geralt would come running if he heard I was in trouble. But Eskel showed up instead.”

“Eskel is dead,” Aiden said quietly, and he sounded so certain that it made Jaskier feel a sickly sense of panic crawl over his skin. “I know he meant a lot to his pack. And to my Wolf in particular. He loved him as a true brother, though of course he only admitted that after I got him roaring drunk.”

“Wait,” Jaskierr said, thinking quickly. “Are you talking about Lambert? When did he tell you this?”

“Yes, Lambert of the Wolf School. He told me about his brother’s death in Ard Carraigh, just after the passes opened this spring. We always meet there after the winter ends. My Wolf hungers for me,” Aiden said, and Jaskier could hear the warmth and affection running through his words like a rich gold vein in a mineral deposit. Jaskier was a bit surprised by the obvious depth of Aiden’s affection. All of Eskel’s stories painted Lambert as a bit of an asshole.

“There has to be some mistake,” Jaskier muttered. “I met Eskel this summer, and he was very much alive! He said he hadn’t gone ‘home’ last winter because he was worried Geralt was in trouble. He’d followed Geralt’s trail all the way to Cintra, and then down to Sodden. He was there in the spring, probably around the same time you were meeting with Lambert. If someone died at the castle last winter, I don’t think it was Eskel.”

“That is curious.” Aiden said, and Jaskier could almost hear his shrug in the dark. “Perhaps he is a Doppler?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never actually met a Doppler, but they’re supposed to flinch from silver, aren’t they? Eskel showed me his silver Wolf medallion the day we met, to prove he knew Geralt. And I’ve never seen him without it, though he tucks it away inside his gambeson whenever we’re around humans.”

“That is wise,” Aiden said. “It is a poor time to announce a connection to the White Wolf.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Jaskier said, bothered by the fact that Geralt’s friends—and friends of friends—were being targeted by the Redanians, and possibly the other kingdoms, for information about Geralt’s whereabouts.

“This will infuriate Geralt beyond measure, you know,” Jaskier said. “Even if he hates me now, and doesn’t like Cats on principle, he’s not going to stand for someone going after the people he loves. Or the people they love.”

“Are you truly a bard?” Aiden said, teasingly. “That sounded quite bloodthirsty for a poet.”

“I’m a man of many deep feelings, including wrath,” Jaskier replied, rolling over onto his side. The black ring on his thumb was starting to feel a touch warmer. “I ought to warn you: once this ringbound curse activates, it’s…well, it’s bad. I’ll be in a lot of pain. And I don’t know how long it will last, or how long I can stand to be separated from Eskel before the curse kills me. There’s no way Eskel will find me here. Hells, I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”

Jaskier sighed. “I know it’s a lot to ask, Aiden, especially of a relative stranger. But, would you kill me, if I beg you? I’m…not all that fond of suffering.”

Aiden seemed to be listening carefully to his request. “Is it truly that hopeless?”

“You’ve been here for over a month. Wouldn’t your Wolf have come for you by now, if he could?”

Aiden was silent, and finally said, “Of course he would.” The unspoken implication—that either Aiden’s Wolf was dead, or had no idea where to look for him, seemed to make Jaskier’s point.

“My left eye’s gone.” Aiden continued. “And if they keep me down here in the dark much longer, my right eye won’t be of much use either. The world has no use for a blind Witcher,” he finished quietly. “No, bard, I’m no more a fan of suffering than anyone else. So I give you my word. Hold out as long as you can, and when you can’t take it anymore, I’ll make sure to give you a quick death. I promise you that.”

“Thank you,” Jaskier said, very sincerely. He groped in the darkness for Aiden’s hand. He found his leg, which seemed sufficient, and gave his ankle a squeeze with his thumb and pinky.

Jaskier flopped onto his back. “I wish I could see him once more. Just to say a proper farewell.”

“Geralt?”

Jaskier snorted. “No. Eskel. He’s…well. You never met him, I suppose. But he really is the most wonderful person! Loving, and kind, and he tries so hard to do the right thing no matter what it costs him.”

“So this is more than just a Correctional Marriage, I take it?”

Jaskier sniffed, and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling as he thought about that question.

“Yes,” he said. For the first time, he felt willing to admit the truth the confines of his own head and heart. If he was going to die in agony in a day or two anyway, what was the point of pretending otherwise? Besides, he wanted someone to know.

“I…I’m in love with him.”

“My felicitations,” Aiden said dryly, though Jaskier heard the smile in his voice. “It’s a fine thing to love, and to be loved in return. Even finer when the sex is good. Is that the case? Does your Wolf make you howl, too?”

Jaskier couldn’t help it: he dissolved into a fit of giggles at Aiden’s blunt question. “Hey, I’m pouring my heart out to you here, Witcher!”

Aiden was laughing too, a light and musical sound only slightly out-of-tune, probably from disuse. “So he’s that good, hmmm?”

“He is,” Jaskier said, sighing dramatically. He was glad Aiden, at least, didn’t seem shy about discussing sex with another man.
“He is a good lover, since you ask,” Jaskier said a short while later. Far better to think about Eskel—or sex with Eskel—than let the fear and thoughts of death consume him. He could float off on the honey-sweet memories of the last precious weeks, at least for a while. “I’m not sure if it’s just Eskel, or Witcher stamina in general, but I have never been fucked so often or so thoroughly in my life.”

“Oh, that might be the mutagens,” Aiden said with a yawn. “It’s the same with me and my Wolf. Can go for hours. Days, sometimes, if we really push it, and lay in enough water and food beforehand.”

Jaskier boggled at the idea, and then felt hot and flushed as he imagined a days-long sex marathon with Eskel.

“You know,” Aiden said, evidently as eager for a distraction from their bleak circumstances as Jaskier. “Before me, my darling Wolf had only been with a few human whores? He’d all but lost interest in sex. It took some time to convince him to try it with me.”

“What’s a ‘long time’?”

“Oh, a decade or so,” Aiden yawned again. “Not too terribly long, at least in the grand scope of things, but Lambert is a stubborn git. And he’s terrified of the prospect of hurting someone.”

“A Witcher who’s afraid to hurt someone? That must make for a difficult profession.”

“Oh, my Lambert has no problem hurting monsters—humans, as well as the traditional sort. But he has quite a soft heart underneath all the posturing. I’ve seen him pay a strumpet’s full fee, but still slink away the second he smelled her fear. And whores are always afraid of Witchers, you know. I think he’s spent more not getting fucked then any man alive.”

Jaskier made a sympathetic noise. He’d seen Geralt get refused outright or thrown out of brothels up and down the Continent, at least until Toss a Coin and The Wolven Storm began circulating more widely. At least I helped him to get laid more often, Jaskier thought with a wince.

“Aiden, after I’m gone…if you do somehow make it out of this mess, and find your Wolf again, will you tell him about Eskel? That he’s alive, and doing his best to make it home?”

“Of course,” Aiden said right away. “I’m not quite sure how to explain it. Or if he’ll believe me. But I’ll tell Lamb and the Wolf that their brother is safe and well.”

“Thanks,” Jaskier said, finally feeling sleep call to him once more. “I do love him, you know” he mumbled. “Wish I could have told him that.”

“Maybe you’ll still have a chance to say so.”

Jaskier hoped so too. But he didn’t quite believe it.

***

The next few days were as agonizingly painful as Jaskier had expected.

Their captors never brought them up out of the crypt, simply opened a small dead-man’s-hole in the ceiling to drop waterskins and buckets of thin gruel. Jaskier resigned himself to once more existing as a half-feral creature like the one he’d been reduced to back in the Oxenfurt prison. He had company this time, which was both better and worse. Better, because he wasn’t alone in the despairing dark, and worse, because there was someone to witness his shame.

Thank the gods it was so dark in the cell: Aiden didn’t have to watch him shiver and shit himself in the corner. Unfortunately, he couldn’t fully muffle his cries of agony when the awful cramping pains set in around the 22 hour mark.

“This is an exceptionally cruel curse,” Aiden hissed at one point. Jaskier was shivering so hard his teeth were clacking together, but if he’d been able to speak, he would have heartily agreed. The curse was fucking awful. That warm, flowing connection to Eskel was lovely, but the rest of it was absolute bullocks.

Although it was impossible to tell, Jaskier calculated that he made it to dawn on the third day before he began to think about asking Aiden to snap his neck and be done with it. He only hesitated because Aiden had become something like a friend, or at least an ally. In fact, he was probably his fifth-best friend, after Eskel, Chireadan, Priss and Essi. And it seemed unfair, just a little, to ask a friend to end his life.

So he suffered through hour after agonizing hour, trying to hold out as long as he could, and asked Aiden random questions to distract himself from the curse’s crushing grip.

If Jaskier somehow managed to survive this experience, and regained enough dexterity to write and play an instrument, Aiden provided enough material for a whole new ballad cycle during their time underground. Witchers were even more unbearably tragic than he’d first realized.

Geralt had told him almost nothing even remotely useful. Good-natured Eskel often tried to put a positive spin on some of what he’d told Jaskier. But Aiden, as it turned out, was as bloodthirsty and spiteful as Jaskier, and he seemed quite happy to join Jaskier in denouncing everything from King Vizimir and the fucking Redanians to Nilfgaard, the whole concept of Law of Surprise, the terrible brothels of Hagge, and a foul stew they apparently dared to call ‘food’ at a particular tavern in Skellige.

Jaskier wasn’t completely lucid throughout every one of Aiden’s cutting dissections, but when he was able to focus long enough on what the Cat Witcher was saying, it was certainly an entertaining way to pass the time.

At one point, during a small breather between one wave of agony and the next, Jaskier made the mistake of asking why the Wolves hated Cat Witchers so much. “Is it a dog-and-cat thing?” he grunted out between two gut-twisting waves of cramps.

“No,” Aiden said, before launching into a story about one of the most heartless acts of betrayal and cowardice Jaskier had ever heard, aside from Eskel’s account of the Sacking of Kaer Morhen itself. Granted, the angry mob that had sacked and burned Kaer Morhen had killed hundreds of children and a mere handful of teachers, and just a few of the mages. It had been a slaughter of unimaginable proportions.

But Aiden’s description of what had happened at the Arena at Drakenborg made Jaskier’s skin crawl. The wholesale slaughter of what remained of the Wolf School Witchers, along with all of the Cats, made him feel ill. Jaskier was surprised to hear Aiden confirm that both Geralt and Eskel had been there that day. They’d each been wounded, and still managed to fight their way out thanks to Geralt’s unmatched sword skills and Eskel’s powerful Signs. They’d even managed to save a few others on their way out, including—according to Aiden—one of the very Cats who’d betrayed the Wolves of Kaer Morhen to make a very one-sided deal with old King Radovid I.

Of course, the King had promptly betrayed the Cats, alongside the Wolves, and ordered their deaths as well in an attempt to rid the Continent of all Witchers.

When this treachery had been uncovered, Eskel and Geralt had simply left the wounded Cat alone in the woods to meet whatever end Fate decided.

“Seems quite merciful,” Jaskier said, shivering and squinting against a pounding headache. “I probably would have slit the bastard’s throat.”

“I wish they had,” Aiden said. “That Witcher was Jad Karadin, the same bastard who sold me out to the Redanians. He’s a waste of air. When I get out of this pit, my Wolf and I will hunt him down and feed him his own intestines.”

“That’s very poetic, Aiden.”

“It pleases me to hear you say so, Nightingale,” he said, and sighed. “I will also insist that Lambert finally take me up to his winter den and introduce me to his pack. I have always wanted to meet old Vesemir. He doesn’t think much of us Cats, and for good reason, but I would still like to shake Master Vesemir’s hand. And I am tired of wintering alone. I’d risk the old Wolf’s wrath—and the rest of the pack’s disdain—if it meant I would no longer need to part with my love.”

“Eskel will be nice to you,” Jaskier promised, without a single doubt in his mind. Aiden had already explained that he himself had been locked in a storeroom with a few of the other Cats who’d refused King Radovid’s deal when the fighting in the arena began. Aiden had nothing to do with the ensuing slaughter; he’d nearly torn off both thumbs trying to break out of the storeroom in time to warn the Wolves.

Eskel wasn’t the sort of person to let prejudice overshadow what was fair and just. Jaskier was confident that Eskel, at least, would support Aiden’s presence at Kaer Morhen.

“And the great White Wolf?”

“Fuck!” Jaskier gasped as another spasm ripped through him. The bouts of pain were growing closer and closer together. He had another few hours, if that, until the spasms coalesced into a near-constant seizure. Death would be sure to follow. “D-don’t know. About Geralt. He’s. H-hard. To predict.”

“You said your friendship was over,” Aiden prompted, in an obvious bid to keep Jaskier present and conscious. “What happened?”

“B-beats me.” Jaskier choked out. He thought he’d understood why Geralt had said those awful things on the mountain. But he’d been wrong about Geralt before.

He wished he could have lived long enough to see his friend again. Even if Geralt still hated him, it would have been nice, Jaskier thought, to see his face once more. They might have even mended things between them, with a little more time.

Unfortunately for him, time was running out. He could feel the curse mustering its power, trying to syphon up whatever Source it could draw from—perhaps Jaskier’s own life-energy—for one final, fatal push. At this point, he almost welcomed death. He’d been in agony for so long; surely it couldn’t last forever?

He closed his eyes and reached out for that invisible string that connected him to Eskel. He imagined tugging on it (Like a fish on a line), testing the connection, searching for even the faintest trace of Eskel’s steady, reassuring warmth. He knew he’d never see his scarred, beautiful Witcher again, but he’d like to feel him once more, at least. Maybe send one last pulse of awareness through their bond, if only to say goodbye.

But he found nothing. Felt nothing. Jaskier was alone.

He shuddered and curled in on himself, and tried not to cry.

***

Minutes or hours or days later, he felt Aiden nudging his shoulder.

“Nightengale? You still with me?”

“Ngh,” Jaskier managed. His mouth felt dry as chalk, and he had a horrible taste in his mouth. And what was that smell? Rotten eggs? His head was throbbing and the cramps hadn’t abated much at all.

But the cramps had abated, at least a little. Jaskier lay perfectly still and carefully counted off the seconds between each attack, and then did it again and again until he was certain.

The curse was loosening its grip. Eskel was coming.

“Oh thank the Goddess!” he cried out, rolling over and shifting unsteadily onto his knees. “Aiden! Aiden, I think I feel something. It’s getting better. I think Eskel’s on his way!”

Aiden grunted something in the darkness, and then swore very loudly when he kicked over their overflowing toilet bucket in the dark. But Jaskier didn’t care—even that smell couldn’t dampen his elation.

He wasn’t going to die! Eskel was going to save him again, just as he’d promised. Just as he’d always done.

“What if he’s been captured?” Aiden said. “They could be bringing him here to join us in this stinking pit.”

“I don’t think so,” Jaskier said, folding in on himself with a gasp at a fresh wave of agony. But the waves were definitely receding; he remembered the feeling at the inn at Windley. He knew he wasn’t just imagining it. “Even if they have caught him, we’ll be able to figure something out. An escape. Eskel will know what to do.”

“You have a lot of faith in him,” Aiden pointed out. “If he does show up, I want to check to ensure he’s not some Doppler or a Katikan with aspirations of grandeur before we trust him with our lives.”

“He’s not a Doppler,” Jaskier insisted. “And I don’t think Katikans can shapeshift. Can they? At any rate, Eskel’s not a monster!”

“Lambert said he turned into a Leshen.”

“I don’t even know what that means!” Jaskier said. “All I know is, he’s coming here. We should get ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“A rescue.”

***

The rescue, it turned out, happened much sooner than even Jaskier’s most optimistic projections.

He’d just reached the point—barely—where he could manage to stand and hold himself upright. His head was throbbing and whole body still hurt, but Jaskier was encouraged by the progress. In another hour, he might be able to walk a few steps without collapsing in agony.

He was just about to share this exciting news with Aiden when, for the first time, they heard a noise from what Aiden called the ‘Upper World’ that wasn’t the rusty screech of the dead-man’s-hole grate opening up with another bucket of gruel or stale water.

“Was that an explosion?”

“Shhhh,” Aiden hissed at him. “I must listen.”

Jaskier kept absolutely silent, and endured two more waves of cramping—still getting measurably farther apart, thank the gods—when they heard another rumble. This one was closer and louder, and seemed to shake the walls of their earthen prison. Dirt rained down over them, and Jaskier ducked to cover his head.

Ugh. There were spiders and earthworms and centipedes down here, he just knew it.

The rumbling happened again, and again, even as Jaskier continued to endure waves of pain. The rumbling-maybe-explosions had to mean that Eskel was almost here, right? He must be launching some sort of attack on the Upper World, maybe shooting off fireballs or conjuring a terrifying spectral wolf (or a turtle) to confuse the enemy.

“A moment,” Aiden said again, listening intently after another concussive rumble. “That is a Dancing Star.”

“A what?”

“A Witcher bomb! And—good gods, that’s LAMBERT!” Aiden laughed, almost smacking Jaskier in the face as he pulled him in for a celebratory hug. “My Wolf is here! And he is blowing our enemies to smithereens!”

The explosions overhead were getting a lot stronger, almost in exact relation to Jaskier’s weakening cramps, and he let himself hope that Eskel had somehow reunited with his wolf-brother. Maybe both Witchers had come to save the day?

Finally the explosions stopped, and Aiden went absolutely still beside him. A heartbeat later, he began frantically shouting, “LAMBERT! DOWN HERE! IN THE CRYPT! LAMBERT! OPEN YOUR FUCKING EARS!”

Jaskier joined in, figuring adding to the general cacophony couldn’t hurt.

“OI, WITCHERS!” he bellowed, putting his Oxenfurt-trained lungs into it, “WE’RE DOWN HERE!”

A few moments later, they heard a much closer explosion, the clang of a sword, and finally the scrape of the dead-man’s-hole opening up somewhere far above.

“Aiden?”

“Little Wolf! Thank the gods!” Aiden cried, just as Jaskier mouthed, Little wolf? to himself.

Jaskier crowded up close to Aiden under the spot where they thought the dead-man’s-hole opened. The small access hatch didn’t let any light in—perhaps the underground entrance was very far away—but Jaskier felt the blissful waft of fresh(er) air caress his face, and realized that yes. They might, in fact, be saved.

“Aiden?” Lambert called down, “You okay? How the fuck do I get down there?”

“It's an old elven tomb, my love,” Aiden called up. “There should be a way to enter. Check one of the sarcophaguses?”

“Sarcophogi,” Jaskier whispered. He grinned when Aiden gently elbowed him.

“I thought you were a bard, not a grammarian!”

“You do realize that’s virtually the same thing, right? Bards need to know the rules of language so we can break them!”

“Aiden,” maybe-Lambert called from above, “who in the fuck is down there with you?”

“He claims to be a friend of your brother’s,” Aiden called up, and even Jaskier could hear the teasing wink in his voice. “Little Wolf, he might have some very good news for you!”

“Let me get you out of there first,” Lambert said, and then released a torrent of cursing that would have impressed the hardened crew of a Skelligan pirate ship.

“Um, he seems nice,” Jaskier whispered to Aiden, who snickered and elbowed him in the dark. “Eloquent.”

“I fear his language has influenced even myself,” Aiden confessed. “Before my Wolf, I was a godsdamned gentleman.”

“I fucking heard that!” Lambert said from above. He sounded closer now.

There was an unimaginably loud grinding noise, a faint crack, and then Jaskier heard the rumbling of an ancient pair of gears start to turn.

“Best cover your eyes, little nightingale. The light will blind us for a bit.”

Jaskier took Aiden’s advice, squeezing his eyes shut and clinging his arm across his face for good measure. They both sighed in relief as fresh cold air rushed down into the tomb.
He heard the ring of a man’s heeled riding boots on a step stone staircase, and Lambert’s voice saying, “Aiden?”

And then there was the faint sound of two bodies colliding, and choked-up, tearless sobbing.

“Aiden what the fuck happened? I thought you were dead. And—fuck, your eye!”

“I’m all right, my love,” Aiden promised. He felt Aiden’s thin fingers wrap securely around his elbow. “Please, just get us out of this cursed tomb.”

“Fuck, Aiden. I’m gonna to learn necromancy just so I can revive and murder these fuckers all over again,” Lambert said as they made their stumbling way up from what felt like the bowels of the earth itself.

“So how did you find us?” Jaskier finally asked, interrupting a series of profane yet heartfelt murmurs between Lambert and Aiden as they made their way up to the surface. “Oh, I’m Jaskier, by the way. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“Wait,” Lambert said, coming to such an abrupt dead stop that Aiden banged into him, and Jaskier banged into Aiden. “Jaskier. Jaskier. Like, Geralt’s bard Jaskier?”

“I’m not Geralt’s anything,” Jaskier said tiredly as they resumed their egress from the tomb. “But if you’re asking if I’m the illustrious author of modern taproom classics such as ‘Fishmonger’s Daughter’ and ‘Toss A Coin,’ then yes, I am Jaskier the Bard.”

“Well you sure sound like a fuckin’ bard,” Lambert muttered. “Funny, I’ve been wanting to shake your hand and buy you a round ever since you wrote that song about my idiot brother. He fucking HATES it, which means that me and the others get to sing to him every evening all winter.”

“I’m happy to play a role, however minor, in torturing Geralt,” Jaskier said, and promptly stumbled over what his still-adjusting vision mistook for a root. In fact, it turned out to be the femur of an old elven skeleton. Aiden caught him before he could crash to his knees.

“Careful, Nightingale. We must see you live long enough to be reunited with your own love.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jaskier said. He still felt weak, sick and shaky, but he was walking under his own power, and the waves of cramps were still decreasing. Eskel had to be somewhere nearby.

“Lambert, where is your brother?” Jaskier asked. He could feel fresh air and the hint of warm sunshine finally piercing through the endless catacombs.

“Geralt? Fuck if I know. He was taking the Princess away to the Temple of Melitele, last I heard. I think Vesemir’s gotten a few raven envoys since, but unless Geralt’s been using portals or some bullshit to get around, they’re not all from him because the messages are coming from too many places at once.”

“Princess? You mean Cirilla, the Lion Cub of Cintra? So Geralt has claimed his Child Surprise after all?” Part of Jaskier was glad to hear it. He’d only somewhat understood Geralt’s reluctant to claim her. Certainly, it had made logical sense for Geralt to leave Princess Cirilla in a massive palace, surrounded by a loving family and guards and tutors and luxuries of every kind. But once Cintra had come under threat, the Princess’s safety had vanished. She would have needed a guardian and protector like Geralt. Part of Jaskier suspected that Geralt needed her, too: caring for someone bound to him by Destiny was perhaps the only thing that might force Geralt to finally drop his defenses and allow himself to form an attachment to someone. Geralt might have been a happier man, if he’d simply faced his destiny all those years ago.

“I was referring to your other brother,” Jaskier said, belatedly. “He’s somewhere in the area. I can feel him, although I can’t quite—”

“What other brother? Do you mean Coën? How many fucking Witchers have you met, Bard?” Lambert asked.

He felt Aiden squeeze his elbow again. “Jaskier, a moment? Let us breathe for a moment before you start winding Lambert up.”

“Hey, what’s that mean?” he heard Lambert ask, and then they were up in the fresh, clean, open air.

Well, almost clean. It did stink rather badly of saltpeter, sulfur, and blood.

“Uh, how squeamish are you, Bard?” Lambert asked. “I really fucked these guys up. Thought they’d killed Aiden.”

“Aww, Little Wolf,” Aiden murmured, and Jaskier suspected that if he dared to risk blindness and open his eyes, he’d see a very tender scene unfolding in the midst of absolute carnage.

“Did you kill the Sorceress?” Jaskier asked, feeling that this might be relevant just in case they were not, in fact, alone in these woods. “She sometimes transforms into an owl.”

“The fuck?” Lambert grunted; Jaskier suspected Aiden had just given him a pinch. “Uh, no. No dead Sorceress, I’m afraid. Or…owls.”

“Then keep your eyes peeled,” Jaskier said, and slowly eased his own eyes open.

The setting sun was blindingly bright, just as Aiden had predicted. It took several long moments of frantic blinking and eye-watering discomfort before Jaskier’s sight adjusted. His vision was still blurry, and he’d probably have to be careful in direct sunlight, at least for tomorrow.

Aiden seemed to be faring much worse. He still hadn’t been able to crack his remaining eye open. Jaskier watched Lambert carefully peel away the bandage wrapped over Aiden’s injured eye.

The Wolf Witcher turned green and had to step away to retch into the grass.

“That bad, my love?” Aiden whispered.

“You were right: eye’s a lost cause,” Lambert finally said when he could manage. He spit into the grass, and then dug through a small bag fixed to his belt. He pulled out a glass vial of filled with a bright green potion—Swallow, or so Jaskier guessed—and put it in Aiden’s hand. “It’s infected. Don’t want it to burst in there. Once we get somewhere safe, I’ll pour half a jug of White Gull down your throat and dig it out for you, okay?”

Jaskier turned away and made a very determined effort not to listening in as his new Witcher friends discussed the finer points of field enucleation.

Jaskier wandered through the forested area around the tomb, surprised that the Sorceress had portaled him out to the elven ruins of Shaerrawedd. The ancient burial grounds were perhaps four days’ ride from Ban Ard, and Jaskier didn’t doubt for an instant that Eskel had been hot on his trail since he’d been kidnapped.

Eskel wasn’t quite close enough for Jaskier to feel those little pulses of his emotions through their magic bond, but he was definitely nearby, and getting closer. The curse had abated enough for Jaskier to feel…well, not ‘normal’ or anything approaching ‘good’. But at least he no longer actively felt like he was dying, or wanted to die.

As the sun set and the shadows lengthened, Jakier turned back towards where he’d left Lambert and Aiden arguing amidst the corpses of their enemies. The elven ruins in Shaerrawedd famously formed a honeycombed network of tombs and crypts, which meant wraiths and spirits.

The ghosts would probably show up as soon as the moon rose.

He was hurrying back the way he’d come when something tightened around his waist like a lasso. He swayed and managed to stop himself from toppling over, and immediately checked for a vine or tree branch or whatever had caught him and made him almost lose his footing. There was nothing. The forest was silent (never a good sign) and he realized it must be the spell at work.

He’d felt this same tugging sensation before, he realized. Back at the inn of Windley. It had been the spellbond attempting to yank him back to where Eskel had been battling potion toxicity in the swamp. That time, Jaskier had barely been able to crawl out of the room then to alert the innkeeper to send a rider to ferry Eskel out of the swamp. Right now, Jaskier was alone in a dark, probably-haunted forest, with his vision blurred and the power of the curse still thrumming through his body. He was weak, and dazed, and he knew he wasn’t strong enough to follow that invisible string by himself through a haunted forest.

“Aiden?” he called. “Lambert?”

There was no answer, and he felt a cold chill down his spine. “You two better not be off fucking somewhere,” he muttered as he looped back towards the decimated campsite.

He felt the spell tug at him again. This time it wasn’t strong enough to stop him in his tracks, but he did twist a bit in the direction the spell wanted him to go.

“Yes, yes, all right,” Jaskier said as he tramped alone through the forest. “I want to find Eskel too! But not without backup. If I don’t get killed outright by a wraith, I’ll probably be eaten by a bear, or a griffin, or a…a giant centipede!” He felt—or, more likely, imagined—a pulse of reluctant agreement from the ring: Jaskier’s luck really was absolute rubbish.

“Glad we’ve sorted that out,” Jaskier said. He’d finally retraced his steps and returned to the campsite where he’d first emerged from the tomb with Aiden and Lambert. His companions had vanished, though enough scorched earth, bomb craters and—ugh—pieces of dead bodies remained to prove that Lambert had come through here on his way to save them.

He might have taken Aiden back underground to help the Cat adjust to the light, but Jaskier suspected something else had drawn them away. Or driven them off.

An unusually thick mist was gathering near the base of the ruins, and he thought he heard rustling footsteps crunch through the autumn leaves.

Fuck his luck.

Jaskier did the sensible thing, and looked for a place to hide.

He scrambled under an overturned wagon that had likely belonged to his Redanian captors. It had been blown sky-high by one of Lambert’s Dancing Star bombs, scattering its contents and flipping over the whole wagon. It seemed to have been carrying a load of grain and flour. After maneuvering himself under the wagon, it only took a moment or two before Jaskier started to feel a desperate need to sneeze.

But the footsteps were drawing closer, and he had absolutely no desire to be dragged out from under the wagon by a wraith’s tongue.

He held his breath and DID NOT sneeze, and waited for those ghostly footsteps to fade.

A rabbit screamed somewhere in the forest, and then he heard the faintest hoot of a barn owl.

Godsdamnit. Couldn’t he just have one single, solitary moment to catch his breath? Apparently not.

The footsteps seemed to retreat. Jaskier let out a single breath of relief.

The night promptly erupted into chaos.

A plume of orange fire lit up the ruins, burning through the mist and setting most of the autumn foliage on fire, along with the remains of the campsite and the bodies of Djikstra’s kidnapping crew.

The roasting flesh wasn’t a smell Jaskier would soon forget.

His plan to hide from the spirits and wraiths under the overturned wagon seemed less sensible now, particularly because he couldn’t move very quickly without using his hands to scuttle out from under the overturned vehicle. He did his best, shimmying through the small gap between the buckboard and the ground, and was almost free of the wagon when another massive plume of flame streaked through the air.

This time, it set the wagon on fire. There had been enough flour dust sifting through the air under that wagon to—

Jaskier scrambled away and managed a half-dozen staggered steps before he threw himself to the ground and covered his head. A second later, the flour dust drifting in the air combusted into another huge fireball. Once he felt the wave of heat from the explosion dissipate, Jaskier heard a strange rumbling noise, a bit like an avalanche, and struggled to sit up enough to scan the ruins, which now resembled a rather signed and pockmarked battleground.

Lambert’s joke about necromancy had been eerily prophetic. The entire elven tomb was suffused in a sickly green glow that made the small, animal part of Jaskier’s brain want to FLEE FLEE FLEE. He heard that rumbling scrape again, and again, granite-on-granite, and realized that the sound was actually the scrape of the lids on the elven sarcophagi as they were pushed open by their (formerly) deceased occupants.

He watched, wide-eyed and frozen in terror, as the ancient rotted corpses of several hundred dead began to clamber up out of their tombs.

This shouldn’t be possible, he thought wildly, unable to fully believe what he was seeing. Necromancy, especially at this scale, was forbidden by both the Sorceresses of Aretuza and the Brotherhood of Mages. No wizard in this generation, nor any other, was permitted to reanimate the dead. That sort of dark magic was famously unstable and unpredictable. And worse, the mage, or whoever was responsible for this travesty, was trying to control a group of elves who’d been dead for centuries. Elves who had likely perished in battle against their human oppressors, meaning humans—even well-meaning and defenseless ones, like Jaskier—were their blood-sworn enemies.

While he wasn’t exactly sure about the memory function or cognitive capacities of a reanimated elf corpse, Jaskier knew it wasn’t a good idea to be caught here alone. He had to find somewhere to hide.

Somewhere that wasn’t in the middle of an undead army that had once sworn to drive every single human off the Continent and back into the sea.

He heard the hoot of an owl again, and looked for another place to hide. The elven dead seemed to be forming up into battalion lines, and he dropped to his belly and crawled through the dry, musty autumn leaves until he’d left the largest of the burial mounds behind.

There was a separate small tomb set just below a rocky outcrop that didn’t seem to have been disturbed by either Jaskier’s captors or the unseen mage who was currently building up a whole army of the undead.

Jaskier checked the distance: it looked like a fairly easy jump from the top of the small rise to the roof of the burial chamber, which was flat and high enough off the ground that, if Jaskier were to lie on his belly, would hide him from anyone on the ground. He hoped. It seemed unlikely that undead elven warriors would have great visual perception, but who knew how such dark magic worked?

He hunkered down on top of the burial chamber and tried to sneak a peek at the army of the undead. Draugrs, he remembered. His old Professor of the Arcane would be very proud.

Jaskier didn’t need to wait for very long. The fireballs were back, flaring hotter and brighter than ever. The orange light seemed to set all of Shaerrawedd Forest ablaze, and Jaskier blinked against the blinding flash of light to see what was happening.

The undead elves had formed up into even lines, and were marching forward through the trees, commanded by an unseen general to attack something else beyond Jaskier’s blurry field of vision. That was the source of the fireballs, he suspected, given the relative distances involved. He heard someone shouting something, the faint clang of steel, and then…

And then he recognized the familiar shimmering golden light of Quen

Eskel’s Quen.

Jaskier didn’t hesitate. He shimmied down off the roof of the burial chamber, scraping his belly a little, and dropped off the side of the tomb. He was running as soon as his feet hit the ground toward the golden promise of the familiar Quen.

Which, predictably, led him almost right through the middle of the undead elven army’s advance line.

He skidded to a stop.

The undead warriors all paused and turned as one to stare at him. Their bone-white skulls and eerily empty sockets certainly made for an intimidating audience.

Jaskier fancied that, if the brows of the undead hadn’t all rotted off decades ago, every single elven eyebrow would have been cocked in confusion.

“GET THE WITCHER!” shrieked a woman, and…yes. There was the Sorceress. She was standing at the top of the small rocky rise (which had graduated to a proper hill) and was surveying the undead army like a Nilfgaardian general commanding his troops. Staring up at her, dead centre in the middle of a small copse of trees, was Eskel.

The Witcher was breathing heavily and covered in sweat, dirt, and what might either be mud or blood spatters. His gambeson was torn and soaked through with sweat, but he showed no signs of flagging or exhaustion. Instead (at least to Jaskier’s heavily-biased eyes) Eskel looked good: powerful, commanding, and compellingly beautiful in his rage. In fact, he looked every inch the warrior-mage he’d shaped himself into over the course of his long life.

Though he stood alone against an encroaching army of hundreds of undead elven draugrs and a powerful Sorceress, Eskel didn’t seem afraid. Instead, he gazed up at the Sorceress on the rise like she was a mere obstacle in his way.

“WHERE IS HE?” Eskel roared, loud enough for even Jaskier to hear even a half-league away in the middle of the undead army. “WHERE IS JASKIER?”

“Why do you even pretend to care, Witcher?” he heard the Sorceress say. She had to amplify her voice with Chaos to be audible across the battlefield. “The bard is bound to you by magic, not love. You have nothing to offer him but pain. So leave him to his fate; he’s likely dead already. You should just go home.”

“Well, that’s hardly compelling enough to get Eskel to just bugger off,” Jaskier muttered. One of the undead elf-skulls swiveled back around to look at him. Jaskier shrugged.

“It’s not! I know Eskel. He’s not that easily deterred!”

The undead elf’s disintegrating jawbone fell off and tumbled to the forest floor.

“Should I—” Jaskier hesitated, and tried in Elder, “Shall I retrieve that for you, good fellow?”

The elf was still staring at him (at least, Jaskier thought so—as he’d suspected, the draugr’s eyes had rotted away long ago) but Jaskier knew exactly how it felt to need help with a basic task.

He bent down and scooped up the undead elf’s withered jawbone. It was so old and brittle it felt like it would disintegrate in his hand, but Jaskier managed to slide the jawbone back into the elf’s (completely rotted) skull.

“Might try to tie that with a scarf, or something” he recommended.

The undead elf started to crackle something at Jaskier, but his jawbone fell off again before Jaskier could translate the old Elderspeech.

“Well, best of luck to you,” Jaskier said, before switching to Elder. “Friend, I would not battle with that vatt'ghern. He protests the desecration of your burial ground. It was the careless human mage who destroyed your sacred chambers, and disturbed your slumber! Yet she dares command you to fight? Perhaps you should return to the earth, and let the humans fight amongst themselves.”

He hoped his Elder held up well enough. And that the undead elf could hear him. The drauger didn’t exactly have any ears, organs, or other necessary soft cartilage required for communication. But on the off-chance the undead elf did understand Jaskier’s words, well, Jaskier thought it was worth seeding a little doubt amongst the Sorceress’ troops.

Before the elf could decide otherwise and raise his sword, Jaskier scampered off to hide in the woods.

He considered trying to cut a wide arc around the Sorceress and her army so he could make his way to Eskel. But after nearly twenty years of Geralt’s lectures about not putting himself in danger and staying out of the way and do not go anywhere near me when I start swinging my sword, Jaskier, I swear to all the gods, Jaskier decided a temporary retreat might be in order.

Also, he wanted to watch Eskel fuck up a skeleton army. This was going to inspire so many ballads.

The Sorceress stayed in place at the top of the ridge to control her army, and Jaskier watched as the first two lines of elven dead approached Eskel’s position amidst the copse of trees. Eskel recast Quen around himself, which proved fortuitous when the undead elves all began firing arrows directly at him.

Most of them misfired, their bowstrings and wooden arrow shafts having rotted away long ago. The few arrows that reached their target simply bounced off Eskel’s Quen shield, about as effective as springtime rain against a leaded glass window.

A second row of archers had as much luck penetrating Eskel’s Quen, and Jaskier could hear the Sorceress shouting orders from the mound about forming new lines and pressing forward.

From his position to the left and slightly to the rear of the battlefield, Jaskier could see small groups of the elven draugrs turning back towards the ruins. Jaskier didn’t want to stop watching Eskel—the man was, quite frankly, magnificent—but it was a little amusing to watch the undead elves scurrying back to their stone coffins, climbing inside, and pulling the heavy lid shut over them like a frustrated old lady shutting the door against a group of rowdy children playing in the lane.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the undead forces remained loyal to their necromancer, and continued closing in on Eskel’s position.

After a third volley of arrows failed to penetrate or even reach Eskel’s Quen shield, the Sorceress directed the elves to switch to a direct assault. It was clearly a suicide mission. Or whatever the equivalent might be for the undead. The elves still under the Sorceress’ control unsheathed their rusted swords and rushed forward with a battle cry. The ghostly wail of the undead rose up as the elves cried out to their ancient gods for strength and speed. It was an unnerving sound, one Jaskier was unlikely to forget until he met his own mortal end.

Eskel used a massive blast of Aard to blow half the army off its feet.

Before any of the undead could recover (or locate their missing limbs) Eskel hit them again with another huge light-the-night fireball. The next six lines of the elven battalion were reduced to charcoal and ash. Eskel’s Quen shield didn’t so much as flicker as he conjured bigger and bigger concussive blasts of air that swept the elves off their feed. Several more huge fireballs rained upon the undead army.

Two spectral wolves, both massive creatures made of transparent inky-black shadows speckled with starlight, dashed across the field. The ghostly creatures leapt over one row of undead archers, and then began ploughing through the lines, tossing the skeletal warriors aside and smashing them to dust against tree trunks and the unforgiving ground.

Jaskier did have to stop watching when one of Eskel’s two spectral wolves stopped to chew on an ancient femur.

The elven lines broke then, starting in the centre. More and more draugrs began turning away in large groups and marched back towards their stone tombs under the earth.

The Sorceress didn’t appear phased by the mass desertion of her forces. She only looked pissed, and perhaps ready to conclude that maaaabye this just wasn’t her night.

“Witcher!” she shrieked. Jaskier wondered if her voice was like that because she’d spent so much time as a bird of prey. “You will rue the day you crossed me!”

“You crossed me,” Eskel reminded her. “But we can end this. Just tell me where Jaskier is!”

“If the spell didn’t kill him already, your little catamite whore probably suffocated when you started raining bombs down over the tombs of Sherrawedd.”

“I didn’t—” Eskel started, and then did a double-take. “Wait. Did you say bombs?”

The Sorceress never had a chance to reply, because at that moment, Lambert popped up behind her and clouted her over the head with the weighted handle of his dagger.

She dropped like a stone. As soon she went down in an unconscious heap, the entire skeletal army imploded, bursting into piles of dust and weathered, ancient bones.

The unnatural green fog around the tombs evaporated, and the eerie light blinked out. Only Eskel’s golden Quen remained to illuminate the dark forest.

“Lambert?” Eskel said, sounding a bit stunned to see his brother.

Lambert leapt down from the top of the ridge and landed in a rolling tumble at Eskel’s feet. He held out his hand Eskel, and Eskel dropped his Quen to help his brother up.

Before Jaskier could scream out a warning, Lambert sprang to his feet and held his silver dagger at Eskel’s throat.

“You sick fuck of a Doppler,” Jaskier heard Lambert hiss. “I don’t know what your game is, but you drop my brother’s face right fucking now, or I will gut you where you stand. Got it?”

Eskel went wide-eyed and held his hands up, making no attempt to break Lambert’s hold or knock the knife away. The two Witchers stared at each other in rage and betrayed confusion.

“Jaskier!” Aiden called from the ridgeline above. “Are you well? Any wounds?”

Jaskier’s friend was crouched over the Sorceress’ prone form on the hill, busy binding her wrists together with a tattered burial shroud. It wouldn’t do much, unless Aiden also had a pair of dimeritium handcuffs on him, but at least she’d trussed up like a turkey whenever she recovered consciousness.

“Aiden, please don’t let your boyfriend kill my husband,” Jaskier called back to Aiden, knowing Lambert would be more likely to listen to his lover than the strange human bard he’d just pulled out of an underground tomb.

Jaskier hadn’t shouted very loudly, but it was enough to distract Lambert. “Wait, did you say fucking ‘husband,’ bard?”

Eskel used the moment of distraction to eel out of Lambert’s hold. He darted forward faster than a man half his size, and grabbed Lambert’s wrist, squeezing hard until he dropped the silver dagger.

Lambert didn’t seem deterred. He kicked at Eskel’s knee and Eskel dropped to the ground, and the two Wolves began to wrestle and exchange a flurry of blows. Jaskier raced forward, not knowing how he might intervene in a fistfight between two Witchers. They were rolling and striking each other almost faster than the human eye could perceive, twisting and locking and breaking holds, punching and kicking and biting.

Well, Lambert was doing most of the punching and biting. Eskel seemed mostly trying to get his brother under control long enough to figure out what was going on.

Aiden finished binding up the Sorceress and slid down the hill to Jaskier’s side. To Jaskier’s surprise, Aiden rolled his eyes and threw out a short blast of Aard that forced the two other Witchers apart, at least temporarily.

Eskel had a blacked eye and, Jaskier suspected, yet another broken nose. He was also sporting a vicious-looking bite on his neck. Blood was leaking steadily from Lambert’s lip, and a dark bruise was already spreading across his cheekbone.

“Aiden! What the fuck! Help me gut this asshole!”

“Stop talking about gutting people!” Jaskier shouted as he threw himself to the ground at Eskel’s side. He reached for Eskel just as Eskel reached for him, and an instant later Jaskier was locked in a bone-crushing hug.

“You’re alive, thank the Trieskla, you’re alive,” Eskel was muttering as he nuzzled into Jaskier’s hair, scenting his neck. His lips ghosted over Jaskier’s pulse point, and Jaskier had to blink back against the hot stink of tears as he felt their bond snapped back into place, as strong as ever. He could feel Eskel again. The steady stream of comfort and affection was flooding back into the dry, barren places in his soul, and it felt like a garden sprung up in the rush of their bond.

“It’s been three days. I thought you’d be gone by now,” Eskel said, pulling back enough to cup Jaskier’s face. “Gods, I thought you were dead!”

His beautiful scarred Witcher looked so agonized by that thought that Jaskier and to surge forward and kiss him. He wrapped his arms around Eskel’s neck and clung to him, peppering Eskel’s scarred cheek with kisses and nonsensical apologies.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he chanted. “I thought I’d try to send a message to track down Yennefer of Vengerberg back in Ban Ard, and that witch grabbed me instead, and…gods, yes, I almost died. I almost begged Aiden to kill me, it hurt so much.”

He felt Eskel draw in a deep, sobbing breath, and the Witcher clung to him almost desperately, as if he couldn’t bear to hear about Jaskier in pain. “But then I felt you! I knew you were coming. You kept getting closer and the pain receded and I, I couldn’t—”

“Thank the gods,” Eskel murmured again, kissing Jaskier’s neck.

Jaskier trailed off, and pulled back enough to look Eskel in the eye.

The Witcher was pale and exhausted under his bronze complexion, and Jaskier wiped a streak of dirt off his scarred cheek. He probably hadn’t stopped to eat or sleep since Jaskier had been taken in Ban Ard. But how had he covered all the distance from Ban Ard to Shaerrawedd in less than three days?

“Father Abernathy portaled me here,” he explained, so focused on Jaskier that he didn’t even seem to be aware that Aiden and Lambert were hovering nearby, hanging on every word. “The other mages were helping me try to locate you too. We had locating spells running across half the Continent. But…I felt you here, in Shaerrawedd. It was the spellbond, Jaskier. I felt a tug, and just…followed it, until I found this place. But the Sorceress was already here.”

“She was probably watching you, hoping you’d give up on me and lead her right to Geralt,” Jaskier guessed. He was feeling a little steadier now that he could hold and touch Eskel again. He also couldn’t seem to stop kissing him, but Eskel didn’t seem to mind.

“Jaskier,” Lambert interrupted. “Would you stop sucking face for a second, and answer one question: who the fuck is this?”

***

Chapter Text

“Lambert, it’s me,” Eskel said, staring up at his brother in disbelief. “You recognize me, right?”

Lambert only made a rudely dismissive gesture and continued to direct his questions to Jaskier.

“Jaskier, do you know who the fuck this is? Because he looks like my brother, and sounds like him, but my brother’s medallion is hanging on the godsdamned Tree of Remembrance in the great hall of Kaer Morhen. I saw his fucking body. So I know this isn’t Eskel!”

“Lamb, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eskel said. Lambert just wasn’t making any sense. “I’m—I’m not dead.”

“Fuck you aren’t! You brought a bunch of fucking whores up to Kaer Morhen last winter, and then you turned into a leshy! You killed two of the Bears! And then Vesemir and Geralt had to run you through with a fucking flaming silver sword to kill you. So yeah,” Lambert paused. His black eyes were so dark and filled with pain that it made Eskel’s own heart break, even if he couldn’t fully comprehend what his brother was saying. “You are pretty fucking dead, ‘Eskel’,” Lambert finished with a sneer.

“Look, I can prove who I am,” Eskel said. He kept his arm firmly wrapped around Jaskier while he fished his medallion out of his gambeson, and let it dangle on its silver chain. “My medallion is right here.” He flipped it over so Lambert could read the initials he’d carved on the flat back surface of the meteorite. G. L.

Lambert pulled his own medallion out, and flipped it over to compare. Two initials, equally well-worn, had been carved there as well: E. G.

Geralt’s medallion would complete the cycle: E. L.

They’d done it after Eskel had been attacked and scarred. He’d been in the infirmary for a solid week while Vesemir and old Remus worked to save his eye, and then his mouth, from the creeping magic poison in the wounds. The two old Wolves had managed it, eventually, but saving Eskel’s life had only marked the start of a long and painful healing process. The stitches had split again and again, whenever Eskel woke screaming from a nightmare, until there was barely enough of his upper lip left to suture back together. He couldn’t sleep, or speak. Eating was agony too, and for a while Eskel had simply given up. Geralt had lapsed into a form of sympathetic muteness, and the insomnia that had plagued Geralt since the second round of the Trial of the Grasses returned with a vengeance.

In other words, Eskel and Geralt had both turned into surly, grunting bastards. And on the hottest evening of that whole long, miserable summer, Lambert finally reached his own breaking point.

He’d marched down to the infirmary, hauled Eskel out of bed, grabbed Geralt from his sleepless pacing, and brought them both down to the armorer’s forge in the lower courtyard where he’d built up a massive fire in the furnace. The stone flagons in the courtyard nearly melted from the heat that night.

“You two fucking assholes are NOT vanishing on me,” Lambert had said, holding out his hands. “Gimme your medallions. If one or both of you morons dies out on the Path, I’m gonna need to know which one of these is yours.”

He’d been right: Eskel’s medallion had been forged from the same piece of silver meteorite as Geralt’s and cast at the same time, having earned their medallions during the same Trial on the same night. Their medallions were identical, and unique among all others worn by the remaining active Witchers. The dozen Wolf Witchers who’d still walked the Path at that time, including Lambert, were the lone survivors of their own graduating classes, and each wore a distinctly different medallion. The rest of the school’s medallions were hanging from the Tree of Remembrance, or rusting in some unmarked grave.

Lambert had been right. If Eskel or Geralt died on the path, no one would be able to identify which one of them had perished based on their medallions alone. It would take some other identifiable piece of armor, or an eyewitness who remembered an injured, dying Witcher, to confirm which of them was never coming back.

“Carve the other’s initial on your medallion,” Lambert ordered, handing them each a red-hot chisel. “Eskel, if I find yours and it says G, I’ll know.”

Eskel and Geralt had looked at each other then, in that blazing hot courtyard, and set to work engraving the tough meteorite. When they held their two identical medallions up for inspection, Lambert looked shocked—and more than a little moved—to see they’d each carved an ‘L’ alongside the other’s first initial for good measure.

“Now yours,” Eskel had mumbled, trying not to put any pressure against yet another fresh set of sutures on his ragged upper lip.

Geralt, knowing exactly what Eskel was going to say, finished it for him. “We’d know yours as well, brother.”

Decades later, in the shadows of the elven burial grounds of Sherrawedd, Lambert blinked down at Eskel’s medallion, and understood what Eskel meant.

“I didn’t check for the initials,” Lambert whispered. “If they were there, I would have noticed them. I…I don’t think they were. It…wasn’t you. It wasn’t Eskel.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Eskel said gently. “Whatever Geralt and Vesemir killed, it wasn’t me.”

Eskel finally pulled Lambert into a proper hug, and pressed their foreheads together.

“Shhh, Lamb, it’s me. It’s okay. I’m here.”

“We buried you, you fucking asshole,” Lambert rasped. He punched at Eskel’s shoulder with one hand, and pulled him closer with the other.

“What exactly did you bury?” Eskel asked, and felt a tremble run through his brother’s shoulders.

“Your…your body,” he whispered. “Left it by that wolf den. The one near Old Speartip’s cave? Wolf pack there polished you off.”

“Wasn’t me,” Eskel repeated, gathering his brother closer even as his mind raced. Gods, if the others thought he was dead this whole year…If Geralt and Vesemir had really been forced to kill him themselves…

“We have to go home,” Eskel said. He couldn’t let Geralt and Vesemir live with that kind of grief and guilt for even a moment longer.

“Fuck right we do,” Lambert said, voice still creaky with emotion. He squeezed Eskel again once more, and then finally stepped back. His eyes were still as dry as any Witcher’s.

“Perhaps we could start again, with proper introductions, this time?” Jaskier suggested. Eskel nodded and pulled Jaskier closer. He’d almost lost him. He still felt that, if he were to stop touching Jaskier even for a moment, he’d slip away again.

“Right, fuck, okay,” Lambert said, with his usual eloquence, swiping at his eyes. “This is Aiden. Aiden, my brother Eskel.”

The stranger, Aiden, was a bit taller than Lambert and painfully thin, with light brown skin marred by layers of sweat, grime, blood and bruises. One eye was covered by a dirty bandage, but his visible iris was an unnaturally bright green. He had the same vertical pupil as Eskel and Lambert. A Witcher, obviously, and not a Bear or Griffin. Eskel knew all the living members of those schools; they’d been joining the Wolves each winter at Kaer Morhen for decades now.

“Aiden’s a Cat,” Lambert said bluntly. He slipped his arm around the other Witcher’s waist and tugged him closer, watching Eskel’s face for any hint of disapproval or rejection.

Eskel raised an eyebrow, but he wasn’t terribly surprised. He and Geralt had suspected for years that Lambert had taken a lover on the Path. Their youngest brother wasn’t known for his subtlety. But Lambert had bristled anytime they’d tried to ask, and Lambert would follow any questions up with an angry, sometimes furious denial before vanishing into the most remote sections of the ruined keep. Eskel and Geralt had come to an unspoken agreement not to press Lambert about his secret lover. Vesemir had never even acknowledged it as a possibility.

Now Eskel wished he’d tried harder to gain his younger brother’s trust. It stung to know that Lambert hadn’t felt able to even tell him Aiden’s name before now.

Eskel forced his damaged lips to form a smile and reached out to shake Aiden’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said warmly.

Aiden looked as fragile as Jaskier had when he’d first been bonded to Eskel: thin, dirty, with a bedraggled beard and a long tangled mass of black hair. Lambert’s Cat had been suffering in captivity for some time.

"And you," Aiden said, still wary of Eskel's goodwill but clearly willing to give the Wolf Witcher the benefit of the doubt.

Eskel turned to check Jaskier again: he couldn’t stop running his hands over his husband's arms and shoulders, massaging his sides as if he had to assure himself of Jaskier’s wellbeing through touch alone. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’re not in any pain? No injuries?”

“Just exhausted,” Jaskier admitted. His eyes looked bruised from either sleeplessness, or pain, or both, and, like Aiden, his pale skin was covered in grime and dark earth. “The curse strenuously objected to parting from you.”

Eskel crushed Jaskier up against him, and Jaskier held him just as tightly as he could with his bandaged hands. Jaskier buried his face in Eskel’s shoulder, and Eskel caressed the back of his neck, shaping his hand to the delicate, vulnerable curve of Jaskier’s skull.

“I’m so sorry, love,” he murmured, holding Jaskier close. He’d failed him again. Again, Jaskier had paid the price for their spellbond.

“Wasn’t your fault,” Jaskier mumbled. His mouth was crushed up against Eskel’s jaw, but he made no effort to pry himself loose. “I shouldn’t have gone out alone.”

They had to talk about that. Jaskier had said he’d left to track down a sorceress.

“Why were you looking for Yennefer of Vengerberg?”

“To break the spell,” Jaskier sighed. “Geralt’s sorceress. She’s the most powerful mage I know. If anyone can help us break the curse, she probably can.”

“What curse?” Lambert asked, interrupting their conversation. “Wait, you can tell me once we make camp. Preferably not in these fucking woods. These burial mounds are gonna be crawling with whatever wraiths didn’t get drafted by that witch.”

“Speaking of which, uh, witch” Jaskier said, turning to stare down at the sorceress’ prone form. “What are we going to do with her?”

She was breathing shallowly, and a small, vicious part of Eskel, briefly considered tossing her down into one of the empty burial chambers and sealing her inside.

She’d kidnapped and tortured Jaskier. She’d done the same to Aiden, and Eskel could tell by the tense line of Lambert’s shoulders that he was thinking along the same lines. Aside from what she’d done to the men they loved, she was a dangerous sorceress who’d kidnapped and tortured at the behest of the Redanian crown. The fact that she practiced necromancy and therianthropy—both of which were banned across the Continent—meant she was a threat to every man and beast, living or dead.

Someone had to stop her. She was far too powerful to release. But killing her might be a waste of an opportunity.

“I can Axii her,” Eskel decided, already thinking about how he could do it. He’d need to shore up the Witcher sign with a few other spells and enchantments, but it wouldn't be too difficult. “I’ll get her to write a report for Dijkstra saying that Lambert, Jaskier and I were killed by bandits on our way to Kaedwin, and that Aiden died in her men’s custody a few days ago.”

“What the fuck does that accomplish?” Lambert asked. He was never happy with any plan he hadn’t come up with himself.

“They’ll stop looking for us,” Eskel said simply. “For a while, at least.”

“And what happens to her?”

“I’ll signal to my friends at Ban Ard. The Brotherhood of Sorcerers will want to put her on trial for necromancy,” Eskel said. “She’s committed a grievous crime. Mages might have somewhat flexible morals, but they forbid both fire magic and necromancy for a reason.”

“She could still get a message out to Djikstra,” Jaskier pointed out, well aware that locking the Sorceress away wouldn’t solve all of their problems. People escaped confinement all the time: he and Aiden were living proof of that.

Eskel tilted his head, considering the problem. “Not if she doesn’t remember what happened here,” he said slowly. “When I Axii her–”

Lambert snorted. “You serious? Axii only holds, what, a few days? A week at most? She’ll remember what really happened eventually.”

“No, she won’t.” Eskel’s voice was so vicious that it shocked Lambert into silence. “I can strip her of her memories,” Eskel continued. “She won’t be able to access her Chaos, either, once the Brotherhood is done with her.”

“You can’t permanently block her memories with Axii,” Lambert repeated. “It doesn’t fucking work like that!”

Eskel knew he was unsettling his brother, but he had to do this. For Jaskier and Aiden’s sake, he had to take away the Sorceress’ memories of tonight. For good.

Aiden had been watching the back-and-forth between the Wolves, but finally interrupted to agree with Lambert. “He’s right, Eskel. The Axii sign is only temporary.”

“My signs hold,” Eskel said. “I can cast an Axii that will remain in place as long as I require.”

He saw Aiden’s posture change, and the look of skepticism on Lambert’s face drain away to fear and uncertainty.

“Eskel, what you’re saying is impossible,” Lambert said, still sounding obstinate as ever despite the growing fear on his face. “No one’s Axii can do that. The fucking twice-grassed Great White Wolf can’t even do that, and he’s supposedly the best Witcher ever to crawl out of the mages’ laboratory. Vesemir’s Axii holds for what, six days? Max? And he’s been casting it for two hundred years. So how the fuck can yours last as long as you want?”

Eskel forgot, sometimes, as all Witchers did, how relative time was. Lambert hadn’t even been born the year Eskel had returned from Ban Ard. For all that he and Geralt had always treated Lambert like a younger brother, he'd been trained almost forty years after than Eskel and Geralt had earned their medallions. Lambert must have forgotten whatever gossip he might have heard about the power of Eskel’s signs as a young trainee.

Eskel glanced at Jaskier, who looked as uncertain as Lambert and Aiden, though less afraid of what Eskel was implying. He’d told Jaskier more about his abilities, and besides that, Jaskier wasn’t a Witcher. He didn’t know what casting a years-long sign like Axii entailed, or why the average Witcher wasn’t capable of it.

There were good reasons why the Axii sign, like Somne, was limited to temporary uses like calming a panicked mount or distracting a guard. Mind control spells powerful enough to compel a person’s actions for years were dangerous for even trained mages and sorceresses to attempt. Only those who’d ascended to full magehood were capable of lacing such a complex series of spells without damaging the subject’s mind beyond repair. Even then, few would ever attempt such a thing.

And Axii, powerful as it was, was only a Witcher’s sign. Theirs was a supposedly inferior form of magic, closer to a druidic charm than a mage’s complex spell.

Eskel had never revealed to anyone, not even Vesemir, exactly how much he’d been able to boost his signs over the years with a combination of spells and his own vast stores of harnessed Chaos. But he knew he could do this. The sorceress was too powerful to leave unchecked. She still posed a significant threat to both Jaskier and Aiden if she knew they were still alive, and to all the surviving Witchers of Kaer Morhen. None of them would be safe.

“I’ll need to gather some herbs and prepare the spell,” Eskel said to Lambert. “You ride north with Aiden. Find him a healer in Leyda. We’ll catch up with you by sunset tomorrow.”

Lambert had that mulish look on his face that said he was going to argue about this with Eskel until the next Conjunction, but his petulant frown eased when Eskel put a hand on his shoulder.

“Please, brother. Let's get clear of this, and then we’ll talk, all right?”

Aiden touched Lambert’s elbow. “He’s right, my Wolf. Let’s ride north. I have no wish to linger in this cursed place.” Aiden didn’t even wait for Lambert to nod his assent before he said to Eskel, “If something goes wrong with the memory wipe, give her a clean death. It’s better than she deserves.”

Eskel raised an eyebrow as he watched Aiden all but spit and hiss in the sorceress’ direction. He quickly resolved never to get on his new brother-in-law’s bad side.

“I guess we’ll see you in fuckin' Leyda, then,” Lambert said to Eskel. “Bard, you want to come with us? Or are you gonna stay to watch Eskel do whatever the fuck he thinks he’s gonna do?”

“Oh, I’ll be staying with Eskel,” Jaskier said, unable to conceive of any possible reason to part from Eskel again. He needed time and a lot of skin contact with Eskel to recover from the curse’s punishment. Eskel wished he wasn’t looking forward to it so much. But fuck, he’d almost lost his mind these last few days, thinking the curse might have killed Jaskier. He needed to undress Jaskier and check him over for injuries, to verify with his own hands that he was indeed unharmed. He needed to wash the grime from Jaskier’s skin, and try to soothe away those shadows under his eyes with feather-light kisses and the gentle worship of his body.

He needed to hold Jaskier against him, and listen to the fast, steady beating of his heart.

Doing all of it wouldn’t erase the heartstopping terror of the last few days. It certainly wouldn’t begin to make up for all Jaskier had suffered. Between his kidnapping, captivity, and the torture inflicted by the spell, his Lark would need good food, and loving care, and most of all, he needed to be safe.

Eskel couldn’t provide any of the things Jaskier needed right now. Not beyond whatever paltry care and meagre comfort Eskel could offer right now, anyway.

The rest would have to wait until they were safe behind the high walls of Kaer Morhen.

Until then, he’d do what he could to protect Jaskier and the other people he loved.

***

Spellcasting, Jaskier was starting to learn, was a dull and tedious affair that seemed to require a great deal of painstaking preparation. Thank the Gods he’d never had anything resembling a Conduit moment, because Jaskier had neither the disposition nor the patience for magehood. He was bored just watching Eskel hem and haw and draw exacting lines and a series of sigils on a huge stone in the center of the elven burial grounds.

Jaskier could offer only limited help. He picked up enough kindling to feed a fire, gently brushed out Scorpion after Eskel removed all the tack (those fiddly buckles were still well beyond Jaskier’s limited range of motion) and hooked a bucket over his arm to gather water. He’d ‘helped’ Eskel gather up some flowers and a few herbs from the haunted forest (mostly by pointing out where a particular bud was flowering) while sticking close to his Witcher because, well, it was a haunted forest. Not that Jaskier had any desire to stray from Eskel’s side.

Once they’d gathered the ingredients Eskel required for the whatever-it-was he was about to do (Jaskier had seen Geralt cast Axii before; he knew buckthorn and celandine and verbena had nothing to do with Witcher signs), Jaskier decided he ought to try and get as thorough a wash as he could manage. His bandages were a lost cause anyway, grimy with dirt and damp for reasons Jaskier didn’t really want to think about. Eskel would just have to clean and re-wrap his hands anyway, so he didn’t exactly need to worry about his bandages getting wet while he bathed. And so, for the first time in nearly half a year, Jaskier endeavored to give himself a good brothel-bath.

He scrubbed himself down with a wet rag and a bit of water from the nearby (and probably haunted) stream without feeling any pain. In fact, his burns were barely troubling him at all. By the time he was done, semi-clean and wearing one of Eskel’s enormous spare shirts with the fresh, cool breeze of the upside-world washing over his face, Jaskier felt much more human.

Jaskier did have some lingering aches and sore spots from the spell’s ‘punishment’, but those were soothed by simply walking over to where Eskel had set up a makeshift magic-making station, and wrapping his arms around the big man as he worked.

He slipped his arms around Eskel’s broad back, and Jaskier’s heart gave a little flip as Eskel paused in what he was doing (grinding herbs, so boring) to settle his hands gently over Jaskier’s. It was the first time Jaskier had felt any part of Eskel without thick wads of bandages in the way.

While his healing fingertips were still mostly numb and unable to actually perceive any sensation (except pain, when he bumped them) Jaskier could feel the heat of Eskel’s skin, and the stretch and pull of his skin and muscles as he moved and breathed. He could certainly feel the press of Eskel’s palms on the backs of his fingers, and it was glorious.

Jaskier pressed his cheek against Eskel’s shoulder blade and closed his eyes so he could focus on the sensation and the unnaturally slow, steady drumbeat of his lover’s heart. He wanted to stay like this forever. Now that his hands were healing, he could hold Eskel like this more often. And that was lovely, because his big bear of a Witcher needed to be held.

“I think I’ve found my next career,” he mumbled against Eskel’s shoulder.

“What’s that?” Eskel asked, low scrape of a voice already threaded with amusement.

“Professional barnacle,” Jaskier said. “I feel uniquely suited to the role.” He clung to Eskel’s back and followed his movements precisely as Eskel set about grinding up the herbs again.

“You might be on to something,” Eskel said, pausing to twist and drop a kiss on Jaskier’s temple. “You do make an exceptionally good barnacle.”

“It’s because of my dedication. I take my craft seriously.” To demonstrate his point, Jaskier moved in tight precision with Eskel, not letting even an inch of space come between their bodies. “Might help if you removed your shirt.”

“Another good idea,” Eskel said warmly. He stripped off his shirt as requested, and Jaskier felt his eyes grow round as he watched Eskel’s scarred arms and shoulders pebble in the autumn night. Nothing short of subzero temperatures would truly bother the Witcher, so Jaskier didn’t worry about Eskel being too cold. He simply enjoyed the display of rippling muscles and the soft, dark body hair that furred Eskel’s chest and belly.

“You too, Limphet,” Eskel said, tugging at the hem of the red shirt Jaskier had borrowed from Eskel’s pack. It was big enough on him to be more of a dress than a shirt, strictly speaking.

“I’m still filthy,” Jaskier said, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious. Even though he’d washed, he’d just spent almost three days underground in a dirt-packed crypt. Nothing short of a nice long soak and a good scrubbing would make him feel clean again.

“I don’t care,” Eskel rumbled at him. “You need the contact.” He met Jaskier’s eyes before dropping his gaze to stare down at their joined hands. “I need the contact, too, lark. Need to feel you again,” Eskel admitted.

Jaskier was touched. Of course he knew Eskel liked their easy intimacy. He’d always reacted to Jaskier’s touch like a starving man being offered a bowl of hot stew, bolting it down as quickly as he could, as if afraid it would be snatched away.

If Jaskier had his way, Eskel would never go hungry for contact again. If his fingers somehow miraculously healed before he and Eskel had to part, Jaskier vowed to spend the rest of their time together running his hands through Eskel’s lovely thick chest hair, caressing his sweet face, and touching the rest of his big, strong, beautiful body in every way he could think of.

Eskel looked down on him—they were almost of a height, though his Witcher was a little taller—and held Jaskier’s chin steady while he bent to kiss him.

This wasn’t quite the frantic kiss of their reunion, but more like one of their sweet, languid good-morning kisses: a reintroduction, a kiss to affirm that they were together again, and they would not be parting anytime soon.

(A lie, perhaps, but a comforting one. Jaskier reasoned that they both needed the comfort after the horrible events of the last few days).

Eskel was the first to break their kiss. “I’m sorry. This has to be ready before she wakes, love,” Eskel said gently. To Jaskier’s surprise, Eskel made no move to dislodge him. Instead, he held Jaskier’s wrists together at his waist, and swiveled back around so he could keep working. He held Jaskier’s hands in place until Jaskier gained the presence of mind to keep hugging him.

Jaskier resumed his barnacle-practice with a smile.

Anyone else would have snapped at him by now. Or pulled away, or berated him for this childish need for contact and attention. But not Eskel. He seemed to genuinely regret not being able to indulge Jaskier further.

What a relief it was not to be treated like a nuisance! Or even thought of as such, because Jaskier could sense the familiar, steady pulse of Eskel’s affection through the bond. It didn’t even seem to occur to Eskel that he ought to be annoyed by Jaskier’s endless clinging. Instead, he seemed to enjoy it.

The thought was fuel for the fire already burning in Jaskier’s heart. He’d told Aiden the truth down in that crypt: he loved Eskel. Had loved him for a long while, now. Probably since Eskel had first cast that shimmering, golden Quen shield over him back in Djikstra’s office three months ago. He’d been afraid to admit the truth to himself before.

Right now, he couldn’t remember a single reason why.

Eskel wasn’t Geralt, or his parents, or any of the other people who had hurt him, shamed him, or rejected him for being too loud, too needy. Too much. Right from the start, Eskel had always treated Jaskier as if he were the perfect measure of a person. Jaskier didn’t know if Eskel loved him: he’d called him ‘love’, but that didn’t prove anything. And for once, Jaskier didn’t feel the desperate need for reciprocity. He could acknowledge (to himself, at least) that he loved Eskel with his whole ridiculous, fractured, damaged poet’s heart.

It would be nice, he supposed, if Eskel loved him back. But he knew Eskel cared for him, and was willing to accept Jaskier as he was. That was more than he’d ever had before, with anyone.

Let it be enough, he thought, and focused on perfecting his barnacle-craft.

***

Eskel finished preparing the spell and the incantation that would boost the power of his Axii just a few minutes before the Sorceress awoke. The dimeritium shackles on her wrists ensured that she couldn’t work any magic, but Eskel still felt the moment she woke up. Her Chaos snapped back into place like a spark from a struck flint.

Her Chaos was incredibly powerful. He’d never encountered another magic user who burned with Chaos as if it were a living thing, a power almost too big to be contained. Eskel suspected that, like himself, the Chaos burning within her would spark and spill over whenever another magic-user came close. He was tempted to put a hand on her wrist to test it, but something about her Chaos gave him pause. Her magic seemed tainted somehow. He perceived it as the sort of thick, oily black smoke that came boiling up off a coal fire: powerful, but combustible. Perhaps that was the cost of performing necromancy.

“Jaskier, can you cut off her gag, please?” Eskel asked, listening to that voice inside that said, Do not touch her. He didn’t think he was simply being overcautious. If she contained as much Chaos as Eskel, any direct contact between them might have unpredictable consequences.

Something flickered in her cold black serpent’s eyes. She felt it too.

The Sorceress worked her jaw, and then licked tentatively at her parched lips. “Water?” she croaked. At Eskel’s nod, Jaskier helped her drink from a cup. Eskel itched to draw him close again, but he pushed that aside to focus on the bound viper at his feet. He knew she’d strike if he were foolish enough to give her any opportunity.

Eskel couldn’t afford to be foolish. Not now, with Jaskier’s very life at stake.

“I’m sure you know our names,” Eskel said. “We never learned yours.”

She said nothing. Her flat, glassy black eyes reflected only brittle contempt for him, and an ice-cold fury.

She reminded him of Diedre. His Child Surprise had eyes just like the Sorceress’: fathomless, black wells of madness and cruelty. Had she been born under a Black Sun as well?

“I’m going to make you write to your master for us,” Eskel said to her calmly. “Then I’m going to take your memories, and turn you over to the Brotherhood,” Eskel announced, just to see if her black eyes would reflect something that looked even slightly human. “You know how they feel about necromancy.”

“Might lock you inside a deep dark hole for a while, with only a bucket to piss in,” Jaskier hissed at his side. “See how you like it!”

“And that’s if you’re lucky,” Eskel added, letting his scars twist his smile up into the mask of a monster. He knew exactly how horrifying his scars looked in the shifting, flickering firelight.

“Or?” she said. She looked almost bored.

“What do you mean, ‘or’?”

“You’ll try out your little Witcher spell and make me write your letter—which won’t work, by the way,” she spit, “and then turn me over to the Brotherhood. Or….what? What do you want from me?”

At least she was going to let him be efficient about this. Eskel didn’t have any real hope she’d cooperate and answer his questions—he had no real leverage, just threats—but he had to try.

“The ringbound curse,” Eskel said, tapping at the ugly black ring on his third finger. “How can we break it?”

“Ha!” Her laugh was like a freezing wind. “You can’t. It can only be broken by the mage who cast it: Paxtor of Carreras. And he’s been dead for half a century. So best of luck.”

Eskel leaned over her, and for the first time, the Sorceress looked uneasy. “That’s a lie,” he snarled. “There are always multiple ways to break curses. Especially death-curses. Magic like that requires a tremendous amount of power: we could cut off the Source, or trap it and neutralize it, or transfer the binding power to some other inert object.”

“Sounds as if you’ve already consulted with an expert or two,” The Sorceress licked her red lips. “So why ask me?”

“Because you’re a powerful mage, and you’re probably the one who advised Djikstra on every aspect of the spellbond. I doubt he came up with that plan to use Jaskier to capture Geralt on his own.”

She clicked her tongue at Eskel. “Oh, I wouldn’t underestimate Sigismund,” she tutted. “He’s actually quite a brilliant man. But I’m afraid I can’t help you, Witcher. The ringbond curse is one of the few that can’t be broken by anyone, other than the original caster. If the spell were easy to break, they would never have dared use it on Witchers in the first place: you beasts are stubbornly resistant to magic,” she reminded him, her voice dripping with disdain.

“I don’t believe you,” Eskel said. She shrugged, as if she didn’t care. He doubted it was feigned.

“It’s a simple, yet brutally effective spell: there’s simply no way of breaking it. I’d advise you to enjoy having a wet hole or two at your disposal for a while, and when you tire of the boy, you won’t even need to bash in his head or slit his throat to be rid of him. Just remove your ring. You can leave his body for the graviers and the ghouls.”

The image made Eskel feel ill. Just speaking to the woman made him feel unclean. He hadn’t expected any answers, and he hadn’t gotten any. Eskel still didn’t believe the curse was unbreakable. But it was clear the Sorceress would be of no help, and so he didn’t see the point in delaying any further.

“You tortured my friends,” Eskel said, trying to stay cool and detached even as he remembered the pain and brutal mental invasion she’d inflicted on Jaskier when he’d fallen to his knees in Dijkstra’s office all those weeks ago. The Sorceress had scoured Jaskier’s mind like that for months, searching for clues about Geralt’s whereabouts while he lay chained up and starving in some Redanian torture chamber. Eskel was almost tempted to inflict the same kind of pain on her that she’d caused Jaskier, and probably countless others.

Taking her memories would be punishment enough.

Eskel closed his eyes and reached for the Chaos swirling within, calling it up like he was hauling buckets of water out of a deep dark well. Once he had enough raw Chaos at his disposal, he nodded at Jaskier, who uncorked the potion vial with his teeth and sprinkled it over the woman’s face. She flinched away and hissed at him, but Jaskier was stoney-faced and unmoved in his resolve. He looked grim, and Eskel hoped this wouldn’t haunt him. Jaskier didn’t owe his torturers anything, not guilt or grief, or even mercy. Eskel suspected his kind-hearted husband might have offered it, if the Sorceress didn’t pose an existential threat to the Witchers of Kaer Morhen.

“The worst part of all of this was how ineffectual you were,” Jaskier said coldly, staring down at the Sorceress as she choked and struggled. “You haven’t found anything useful at all, have you? That’s why you went after Eskel: you were getting desperate for information about Geralt. So now you’ll lose your memories and be turned over to the Brotherhood for your crimes, and all for nothing. Such a pointless waste.”

The Sorceress looked unbowed. She was still trying to glare up at Jaskier even as Eskel said his incantation. The drops of the potion began to glow a blueish-purple where they’d landed on her face, like inverted freckles.

The potion took effect immediately. It was a modified version of an enchanted sleeping draught, designed to lull the subject into a compliant state. He’d dictate the letter to Djikstra so it was written in her own hand, and then she’d go to sleep. Afterward, she wouldn’t remember so much as her name. The memories would come back under Eskel’s Axii, but she’d recall only he’d decided to give her access to, and in the sequence he wanted. He’d plant the false memories of Aiden’s death and then his own, and Jaskier’s.

“Jaskier? Are you ready?”

Jaskier nodded, and repositioned his hands so he could hold her head in place with the pressure of his palms.

Eskel drew the sign for Axii, and began his work.

***

They were both quiet as they rode to meet Lambert and Aiden at the little village of Leyda. Eskel seemed lost in his thoughts, and Jaskier was content to let him brood. Now that their connection was restored and they’d both gotten some skin contact, he could feel Eskel’s emotions again: his Witcher regretted what he’d done to the Sorceress, or perhaps that they’d failed to learn anything about the curse from her.

Jaskier didn’t have any doubts that they’d done the right thing. Letting the Sorceress live but altering her memories and turning her over to the Brotherhood had been the best decision. They’d shown her far more mercy than she’d ever shown Jaskier while he screamed and begged for death in the cells under Oxenfurt, with the stench of his own burning flesh thick in the air.

He resolved not to waste any more time thinking about any of it, and leaned back into Eskel to soak up as much warmth and comfort as he could.

They were both exhausted, and he hoped Aiden and Lambert had found a room to rent in Leyda, or at least set up camp somewhere warm and dry. He was looking forward to a good long sleep in Eskel’s arms, and then…

Well, then he would ask Eskel about what Father Abernathy had revealed about Eskel’s history with Geralt. He needed to know the truth. Had Eskel loved Geralt all those years ago? Had Geralt shattered Eskel’s heart back then, as surely as he’d broken Jaskier’s? Or—had Geralt returned Eskel’s love? Had their feelings simply withered away as they’d grown up?

Gods, Jaskier had no idea what he’d do with the information when—if—Eskel finally told him the truth. He wasn’t sure knowing the truth would change anything about their circumstances. If the Sorceress had spoken true, and there really was no way to break the ringbound curse, then they’d be trapped together in this strange marriage for the next twenty-five years. And what kind of love could grow in soil polluted by obligation, and watered by force?

In Jaskier’s experience, love was nearly impossible to cultivate, and remarkably easy to kill. It withered away even under ideal conditions, between people who were perfectly matched and had large, loving families to help guide and support their growth. He and Eskel—much as Jaskier adored the man—were both terribly broken people. They’d both been scorched by rejection and the fires of heartbreak: perhaps all either of them had to offer was ash.

But perhaps…perhaps, between the two of them, there might be an inch or two of good soil left? Just enough for something to take root and grow?

Perhaps.

He clung to that faint green hope as they approached the lights of Leyda.

***

Lambert and Aiden had holed up in an abandoned crofter’s cottage just outside the village proper. The hut was well off the main road, and although the dwelling itself was small and in poor repair, it would keep them all warm and out of the rain long enough for Aiden and Jaskier to recuperate. There was even a little stable for Lambert and Eskel’s horses, and a wild orchard and an overgrown vegetable garden behind the hut that might yield some fresh food to supplement whatever game Eskel and Lambert could hunt down.

“This was a lucky find,” Eskel said as he tossed Scorpion’s reins down to Lambert. His brother had wandered out to greet them. “Any trouble on the way here?”

Lambert shook his head. He looked a little scandalized by their untucked shirts and the flash of Jaskier’s bare back and Eskel’s exposed belly as they dismounted.

His brother would have a lot of questions, and Eskel wasn’t looking forward to his reaction when he explained about the ringbound curse.

“Did you track down a healer for Aiden?” Eskel asked, forestalling his brother’s questions.

Lambert nodded. “Got a wisewoman to come up from the village. She’s been here all morning and afternoon cleaning up that eye,” Lambert said. “Uh, Jaskier, she can give you once-over too. If you want.”

“No, I’m all right,” Jaskier said. “Nothing that a good meal, sleep, and a lot of cuddling won’t cure.”

Eskel hoped that was the case. His little lark had been through a lot, and he wouldn’t have much time to recover before they had to press north to Kaer Morhen.

There was an awkward silence, and then Jaskier said, “I’ll just go check on Aiden, shall I?” He headed towards the hut.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Lambert whirled on Eskel.

“You gonna explain what the fuck is going on with Geralt’s bard? Why is he with you? Why is he even here? Why were you all…unbuttoned?”

Eskel sighed and walked Scorpion over to the little lean-to stable. His stallion whickered at Lambert’s mount, a dappled grey mare. Unfortunately she seemed to share Lambert’s truculent personality, and gave poor Scorpion a sharp nip before turning away to focus on her own feedbag.

“It’s a long story, Lamb,” Eskel said. “The Redanians had Jaskier in custody, and were using him as bait to lure Geralt in. But I showed up instead. They released Jaskier into my custody, but only because they thought we’d lead them to wherever Geralt was wintering.”

Lambert’s black brows climbed higher. “And what do the Redanians want with Geralt?”

“They want his Child Surprise,” Eskel said quietly. “Jaskier said she’s special.”

“Fuckin’ right she is,” Lambert muttered. “She’s got Elder Blood.”

Eskel went still. “What? How is that possible?”

“Fuck if I know,” Lambert said with a huff as he dropped Eskel’s saddle over the tack post. “We found feainnewedd blooming all over the training course after she’d cracked her head on the Pendulum one too many times. Vesemir got pretty excited about that, as you can imagine.”

Lambert was deliberately not meeting Eskel’s eyes. The little pit of anxiety that had grown in the instant Lambert mentioned feainnewedd and Elder blood doubled and then tripled in size.

“What happened?”

Lambert shook his head. “We all lost our godsdamned minds, that’s what fucking happened! You were dead, Eskel! It cut the heart out of all of us! Vesemir and Geralt more than anyone,” he added, looking so miserably small and hunched-over that Eskel almost didn’t recognize his prickly, cocksure little brother. “Geralt fucked off to investigate some monoliths or something, and Vesemir locked himself away with that sorceress Merigold to try and use the girl’s blood to recreate the Grasses.”

Eskel couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The words were pouring out of Lambert like puss from a lanced wound, flowing too fast for Eskel to make sense out of any of it. He grabbed Lambert by the shoulders and forced him to meet his eyes.

“What in the Fates is that supposed to mean?”

Lambert bared his teeth. “Exactly what I fucking said! Vesemir thought he could recreate the mutagens, make some more baby Witchers. And Geralt’s little Princess volunteered to be the first test subject! Vesemir would have done it, Eskel. He had her strapped down to Sad Albert, and if Geralt hadn’t shown up at the last second, Vesemir would have injected that poison into her veins, and—”

Eskel let his brother go and took a step back. His knees felt weak. He’d thought…he’d thought all of that was dead and buried.

“Vesemir wouldn’t do that,” Eskel said, aware that his denial sounded like the stubborn hope of a heartbroken child, not a man with more than a century of hard-lived experience behind him.

Lambert snorted bleakly. “’Course he would’ve. In a heartbeat. I know you’ve always worshiped the old man, but even you can’t be that blind. Vesemir would have sacrificed a hundred children—a thousand—if it meant he could have a castle full of Wolves again.”

Eskel knew his brother was right. If Vesemir thought he’d found a way to recreate the Grasses, he would have started raiding orphanages and foundling homes the instant the snows melted.

“Not that I’m any fucking better,” Lambert ground out, which surprised Eskel. “When Geralt brought his Princess up to Kaer Morhen, she was scared, reeking of grief and fear just like every poor fucking kid who’s come within a hundred yards of our gate. And instead of oh, I dunno, trying to fucking comfort her, like a decent godsdamn person, I put a wooden training sword in that little girl’s hand and put her up on the Pendulum course myself.”

Lambert knocked his forehead against the post supporting the half-stable, and then punched it for good measure. “Fucking Varin did the same thing to me the day I arrived! You remember him, right?”

Eskel grunted. He’d had his fair share of run-ins with that old bastard, same as any Adept, but Lambert always had a particular talent for pissing off even the most good-natured of their instructors. Varin had taken a horsewhip to Lambert several times, and that was only what Eskel had witnessed firsthand.

“I have hated that sadistic asshole for fifty goddamn years,” Lambert muttered. “Gweld and I actually went up and pissed on his grave after the Sacking, you know? Still, the first chance I got, I went and did the same godsdamned thing to Geralt’s little girl.”

“You are nothing like Varin, Lamb,” Eskel said, horrified that Lambert would try to draw that sort of comparison.

“Nice of you to say so.” Lambert squeezed his eyes shut. “But I’m not so sure.”

Eskel gave him a moment to collect himself: he’d worked enough alchemy experiments with Lambert to know when he needed to either back off, or risk an explosion.

“Anyway,” Lambert finally said, once his hands had stopped visibly trembling, “just wanted you to know what a fuckin’ shitshow you’re gonna be walking into up there. And that’s if you can convince them you’re you, and not some fuckin’ ghoul wearing Eskel’s face.”

“You believed me,” Eskel pointed out, and Lambert gave him a grim, teeth-baring smile.

“Yeah, but none of them are as calm and level-headed as me, are they?”

Eskel had to laugh at that, and reached out to ruffle Lambert’s carefully-coiffed hair.

“Hey,” Lambert squawked, unable to duck fast enough to escape his reach, “fuck off!”

Eskel sensed that Lambert’s mercurial mood had finally leveled off, but he knew neither of them were quite ready for the close confines and sick-smells they were likely to encounter inside the hut. He grabbed a pick and a currybrush, and tossed the hoofpick over to Lambert. Lambert’s poor horse’s hooves were always in terrible shape.

They both set to work, more relaxed now that they had a task to focus on. Eskel set an internal count of twenty: he made it to fifteen before Lambert spoke again. “So. You and the bard. What’s the story there, exactly?”

Eskel felt himself blush, not quite able to meet his younger brother’s eyes. Lambert gave him a filthy grin and let out a low wolf-whistle.

“Well, it’s about time you shook the cobwebs off your dick and plowed someone! Just didn’t expect it to be Geralt’s someone.” He broke into a choked-off chortle when Eskel punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow, hey, what was that for? I’m happy for you!” He rubbed at his upper arm. “That’s gonna leave a bruise, asshole.”

“You’ll recover,” Eskel said, turning away to brush out Scorpion’s coat. He truly had missed his brother, even if Lambert’s emotional range vacillated somewhere between hostile, belligerent, and wildly inappropriate. “And Jaskier’s not Geralt’s. It wasn’t like that between the two of them.”

“According to who?”

“Jaskier, of course.” Eskel paused. “What, did Geralt say something?”

“Not to me,” Lambert muttered. “As if that morose motherfucker’d ever talk about his emotions with anyone except you and the latest in his succession of godsdamned Roaches. But your bard’s written a thousand songs about the great White Wolf. I’ve heard that breakup tune of his in just about every tavern in Kaedwen.”

“It’s just a song,” Eskel said softly.

Scorpion snorted at him, and he realized he was being a bit too heavy-handed with the currycomb. Eskel eased off and stroked Scorpion’s neck in apology.

“If you say so.”

Eskel recognized the complicated mix of skepticism and pity stamped on Lambert’s face, but his brother seemed willing to change the subject. “So how’s the sex? Better or worse than the succubus?”

Eskel tossed the currycomb at Lambert’s head. “Do not mention the succubus around Jaskier! He’d…well, he’d probably write a song about it!”

“What, are you kidding me? Of course I’m gonna tell him about the succubus!” Lambert hooted.

***

Once they’d settled the horses, they went to the hut for the healer’s report on Aiden. The wisewoman had given the Cat a sleeping draught and removed the remains of his damaged eye earlier that afternoon. Eskel could tell she was skilled: she’d cleaned the wound carefully and packed it with gauze and a poultice to speed up Aiden’s already-fast healing.

“You’ll need to change that out every day,” she said in her creaky, ancient voice. Eskel listened carefully, but the aftercare instructions were designed with a human’s healing in mind. He’d only need to dose Aiden with Swallow, and make sure to keep the wound clean. Aiden’s Witcher healing would do the rest.

Aiden was slumbering peacefully on a pallet Lambert had built up in the dimmest, darkest corner of the hut. He’d piled their bedrolls and blankets over a stack of pine boughs and dry leaves, and the smoky hut was filled with the sharp scents of pine and autumnal decay. Lambert knelt down at his lover’s side, black brows drawn together in worry, and watched him sleep for a moment. Eskel clapped him on the shoulder.

“Your Cat will be fine,” he whispered, too low for a human’s range of hearing. “We’ll rest here a while, and when Aiden’s strong enough, we’ll head north. He’ll be safe at the castle. And he’ll have all winter to recuperate.”

Lambert’s scowl only deepened. “If Vesemir lets him stay.”

Eskel put his hand on the back of his brother’s neck. “He may not welcome a Cat, but Vesemir’s not going to just turn him away, either. Not if you vouch for him.”

“I don’t know. If it were you or Geralt dragging home some stray, maybe,” he sighed. “But we both know the old man’s never had a lot of faith in me or my judgment.”

The note of regret in Lambert’s voice made Eskel’s heart ache. He knew Vesemir loved his three young Wolves equally, but he’d never been very good at demonstrating it. Especially not with Lambert. They were oil and water, their dispositions and temperaments as different as Lambert and Geralt’s. And Lambert had never blamed Geralt for the suffering he’d endured as a child. Vesemir, rightly or wrongly, was the last of the old masters, and thus the only one left alive who could serve as a target for Lambert’s ire.

“Might not be much of an issue anyway,” Lambert said cheerfully. “We could still die on the godsdamned mountain. It’s getting late in the season; passes might even be closed by the time we get there.”

“We won’t take any unnecessary risks,” Eskel promised. “If it looks like it won’t be safe for Aiden and Jaskier, we’ll find somewhere else to winter.”

He winced as he said it, trying to imagine how Geralt and Vesemir and the others would feel if Lambert didn’t show up the first winter after they’d ‘buried’ Eskel. At least they could send a raven, now: a message from Lambert would get through the warding magic, even if Eskel’s access had been revoked due to his ‘death’.

Lambert slipped his hand into Aiden’s lax palm, and bent to kiss the Cat’s temple. Eskel turned away to give his brother a moment of privacy with his lover, and immediately went to Jaskier.

Jaskier was speaking quietly to the hedgewitch by the door. The old crone had taken his left hand, and Eskel tensed as she touched the black ring on Jaskier’s thumb.

“Hey! Leave that be!” Eskel said sharply, shouldering his way between Jaskier and the wisewoman. The woman immediately dropped Jaskier’s hand and took a step back. Thankfully she didn’t appear to be afraid of Eskel, and he couldn’t scent the acrid tang of fear. If anything, she looked at him with pity.

“Your man was asking me ’bout that ring. It’s a stubborn sort o’curse, Master Witcher, to be sure,” she said, and then turned her attention back to Jaskier. “You’ll need more than an old hedgewitch to break it.”

“Oh, we’re well aware,” Jaskier said with a bleak-sounding chuckle. Eskel put his arm around Jaskier’s shoulders. “But thank you for taking a look.”

The wisewoman glanced between Eskel and Jaskier. “I’ve been at my work for a long time, lads,” she said. “Seen many a bindin’ curse. Usually they’re foul things, soaked in bloodmagic, and forged in pain. But this one,” she said, reaching out once more to tap Jaskier’s ring, “T’aint evil. Oh, it were made by evil men, and it’s got the potential for great harm, but I can feel the good in it too. T’was always the way with those ringbound spells.”

“You’ve seen these before?” Eskel asked, surprised. If what Dijkstra had told him was true, Correctional Marriages had fallen out of favour centuries ago, though the tradition had lingered in isolated pockets, such as the hill tribes of north Caingorn.

“Oh, aye,” she said easily. “Rings like this were popular handfasting gifts, once. Not enchanted with curses, mind,” she said, putting one gnarled finger on the cold lump of metal on Eskel’s finger. “T’were never used to enslave or compel an unwilling spouse. That was a perversion cooked up by mages.” She turned and spat on the ground.

“These rings were meant to be a field set for springtime planting: a place for the seeds of love and happiness to take root and grow. Course, it was up to the handfasted couple to tend and water the crop. But the magic helped to bring about a blooming. Then the mages got involved and twisted everything up.”

The wisewoman touched Eskel’s hand, and nodded at where Lambert was crouched by Aiden, still out cold on the pallet on the floor. “I don’t have to tell you Witchers that mages have a tendency to meddle in what they oughtn’t, do I?” she said a little louder, and Lambert jerked his head up, scowling and then nodding at her.

“Mages rip up what’s thriving,” she said, “and sow what don’t belong in its place.”

Jaskier frowned at her. “My dear lady,” he said, “I hope you aren’t implying that Witchers are some sort of…unnatural weed!”

“Not at all,” she said gently, and some of the fire went out of Jaskier’s eyes. “I’m sayin’ a Witcher is a made thing, not a born thing. Some folk’ll say that’s unnatural. But I say Witchers are like winter wheat: planted in the cold and the dark, reaped too early, then ground up to suit the rest of us. None of that’s unnatural, lads. Just a step out of season, that’s all. You’ve thrived just the same.”

She was looking at Jaskier. “I’m only telling you this since you asked. Happiness is a bit like a weed. It can take root in the foulest soil, spring up under the worst sorts o’conditions. Thrive, just as you Witchers always have, in what seems like the wrong place and the wrong season. This old binding spell will be what you choose to make of it: a curse, or a blessing.”

“But it’s killing him,” Eskel said, ignoring the way his heart leapt at the old wisewoman’s words, or the flooding feeling of relief that came through Jaskier’s end of the bond. “Jaskier could die because of this godsdamned spell.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Oh, perhaps. Perhaps. But tend to your happiness, lads. Nurture what’s between you, and let it grow strong. That’ll do more to choke out the mages’ foul work than trying to rip up what’s done. Don’t salt the earth. See it through, and harvest what you can. Won’t be easy, but you two’ll do all right.”

A tear glistened on Jaskier’s cheek, and he wiped it away with his bandaged finger. “Thank you,” he told the wisewoman, something like awe in his voice.

Eskel was torn. He didn’t agree with the old hedgewitch’s assessment. He was the one benefitting from this spell, the one who was reaping happiness and pleasure, along with an intimacy he’d never dreamed of finding in his long, lonely life. But it was all at Jaskier’s expense. Even if Jaskier was getting something out of the spellbond with Eskel, his life would always be at risk for as long as they wore the cursed rings. He’d never be more than four short days away from suffering and death.

He barely heard Lambert step in and pay the hedgewitch, or noticed when she left.

His eyes were burning. It was from the smoking fire Lambert had laid in the dwelling’s little central firepit, he supposed. The crumbling walls and decayed thatched roof let in too much of a draft. The tiny chimney-hole cut in the ceiling couldn’t draw off the smoke.

“Eskel—”

Eskel looked up to meet Jaskier’s lake-blue gaze. He looked gutted, and Eskel could feel the sorrow pulsing through their bond. Gods, he’d never meant to hurt Jaskier. He’d only wanted to help him. To save him.

He started to say as much, to apologize, when Lambert stood up and crossed his arms. He was glowering, as usual, but in a way that made Eskel sigh internally.

He hadn’t explained the spellbound curse to Lambert, yet.

This was not going to go over well.

“So I only understood about half of what that old witch meant,” Lambert said in a voice like gathering storm clouds. Eskel could almost feel the snap and crackle of his temper building up, charging the air like a summer lightning storm. “You didn’t just ‘take custody’ of Geralt’s bard to get him out of prison, did you?”

“Now wait a moment! I am not Geralt’s anything—" Jaskier began, but fell silent at Lambert’s sharp, quelling gesture.

The Witcher was glaring at Eskel, body tensed and coiled and ready to lash out.

“No,” Eskel said, planting his feet and squaring his shoulders. “No. I had to marry him first.”

“And this curse?”

“Jaskier’s spellbound to me,” Eskel explained, meeting his brother’s furious gaze. “If we’re parted, or we if try to remove the black rings, the curse will kill him.”

“I see,” Lambert ground out. “So why are you fucking him, then? Or did the ‘curse’ make you do that, too?”

Eskel closed his eyes, readying himself for the blow. He wasn’t going to duck or try to defend himself. He knew he deserved a broken nose or a split lip, along with whatever other punches Lambert wanted to level at him.

His brother was probably the only person who would both understand the true scope of Eskel’s crime, and be willing to punish him for it.

Lambert had nursed a lifelong hatred of those who stripped away the choice and autonomy of others. Eskel had seen firsthand the savagery Lambert unleashed when confronted with slavers and pimps and rapists. He’d killed scores of such men without hesitation. And always with his silver sword, never the steel.

His brother’s moral clarity on this specific issue far outshone any other Witcher’s, including Vesemir’s or Geralt’s. And Eskel knew whatever justifications he tried to make would only damn himself further in Lambert’s eyes.

Truly, he welcomed Lambert’s judgment. Even before he’d left Dijkstra’s office, he’d known that the spellbond would be an ongoing violation of Jaskier’s autonomy. Even if Jaskier didn’t seem to hate or resent him for it (yet), Lambert certainly would.

He might kill Eskel with silver, too.

“Lamb?”

Eskel flicked his eyes to Aiden. The Cat Witcher was awake and sitting up, though obviously still groggy from the healer’s sleeping draught.

“Lambert, what is it?” Aiden was frowning at the back of Lambert’s head, reading the taunt line of his lover’s shoulders and obviously sensing the impending violence crackling through the air.

“This scarred bastard got himself a Correctional wife,” Lambert snarled. His brother always had a remarkable gift for making his anger and contempt feel like a living, breathing, tactile thing.

“So now Geralt’s bard is bound to him for life. Seems Eskel’s finally found someone to warm his cock without having to pay for the pleasure.”

“The spellbond is not Eskel’s fault!” Jaskier shrieked. “And I am NOT Geralt’s fucking ANYTHING!”

In a move no one (except, possibly, Geralt himself) could have expected, Jaskier threw himself across the room in a running tackle that Lambert should have been able to easily evade.

But Lambert was too zeroed-in on Eskel, and he’d dismissed the injured bard as a potential physical threat within five minutes of meeting him. He simply wasn’t prepared when Jaskier rammed his shoulder into his side, momentum carrying them both down to the hard packed dirt floor of the hut.

Lambert’s head cracked against the floor, and Jaskier didn’t give the Witcher any time to recover. He jammed his knee up into Lambert’s testicles in a move perfected over the course of twenty years of tavern brawling, and immediately rolled away out of striking range. Jaskier got smoothly to his feet and brought his bandaged fists up in a classic gentleman’s boxing stance.

There was a stunned silence in the room, broken only by Lambert’s soft, almost disbelieving grunt of pain.

“What the fuck was that?” he wheezed, heaving himself up to balance on his knees while he cradled his battered testicles with one hand, and used the other to check the back of his head for blood. “Eskel, does your bard have some kind of…of fucking death wish?”

Even in the midst of all the chaos and swirling emotions, Eskel noticed that Jaskier didn’t raise a single objection to being referred to as his bard.

“You don’t speak to Eskel like that again. Ever,” Jaskier huffed. He was practically vibrating with anger and adrenaline. Sweat was pouring off him and soaking through his chemise. Eskel (and Lambert and Aiden, he assumed) could hear how quickly his heart was beating as he prepared to fight a Witcher barehanded, with bandaged hands .

“Eskel didn’t do anything wrong,” Jaskier continued. “He saved me! And just in case you somehow missed it, Eskel is just as bound to me as I am to him. Which means I am just as culpable for violating Eskel’s autonomy as he is mine!”

The effete language and affronted sarcasm in Jaskier’s voice might have been almost funny, under other circumstances.

Eskel glanced at Aiden, checking to see if the Cat was preparing to defend his lover by launching an attack on Jaskier. Not that Aiden would need any weapons. A single blow from a Witcher’s fist could stop Jaskier’s human heart, or cave his skull in.

He made ready to cast Quen over Jaskier if Aiden so much as twitched in the bard’s direction.

Instead, Aiden merely rolled his (remaining) eye, heaved himself up, and sauntered slowly over to Lambert. He bent over and put his hands on his narrow hips. If he had a tail like his feline namesakes, it would have been puffed up and twitching.

“My love, I thought your Wolf mutagens were supposed to make you more emotionally-restrained than us Cats? But I see now that you, and your brother, and even this feral human would fit right in with the Dyn Marv Caravan. You three are making me feel homesick.”

“Aiden. I love you. But please shut the fuck up,” Lambert grunted out, still cradling his testicles. “I’m gonna puke.”

“What, no one’s ever kneed you in the balls before? I find that hard to believe,” Jaskier taunted, hopping back and forth like he was shadowboxing. At least, that’s what Eskel thought he was trying to do. Jaskier had a….unique fighting stance.

“Jaskier,” Eskel said, coming over to gently capture his lover’s wrists. He almost sighed in relief to see that, whether by luck or instinct, Jaskier had managed to protect his hands when he’d crashed into Lambert. “I appreciate your defense of my, ah, honour. But Lambert’s right.”

“I am?” Lambert groaned, at the same instant Jaskier said: “He’s not!”

Jaskier turned away from Lambert to look at Eskel, which, under other circumstances, would probably have cost him his life. “You are not a ‘scarred bastard’, Eskel! And you aren’t some sort of…of rapist, either, or whatever your brother was implying. You are the kindest, most decent and most thoroughly good man I’ve ever known!”

Jaskier’s face was flushed red with adrenaline and he was damp with sweat, and he looked pleadingly at Eskel as if he was ready to argue Eskel’s own worth until he’d cowed everyone who might dare suggest otherwise.

He really was the most beautiful person Eskel had ever known.

He moved towards Jaskier with his hands outstretched, hoping to pacify Jaskier and prevent him from attempting another attack on Lambert. He’d gotten lucky once, but Jaskier wouldn’t survive a second round.

“Jaskier,” he sighed, “I’m glad you think so. Truly. But Lambert is right.”

“I am!” Lambert’s strained voice wafted up from the floor. At least he sounded like he was more confident about the idea this time.

“He’s not,” Jaskier insisted. “Unless you can look me in the eye and claim to have married me because you wanted a, what was it? A ‘cockwarmer?” Jaskier drew in a breath to glare down at Lambert. “Which, for the record, I would have been absolutely delighted to do! For free,” he emphasized, which made Eskel’s face heat. “If your sweet, selfless brother had ever asked me to do so before I propositioned him, I would have gone down on my knees for him in an instant! I’m not sure if you’ve seen his—”

“Jaskier, please,” Eskel broke in desperately. His cheeks were flaming red.

Aiden chuckled at that, but Lambert just looked…well, he looked like a Witcher who’d been kneed in the balls by a human he ought to have brushed off as easily as a misbehaving kitten.

“Anyway, Eskel married me to save me from Dijkstra, who was going to continue torturing me until I’d given him something useful about your other idiot brother. And then he would have had me hanged as a smuggler and put my wretched corpse on a pike on the west bridge. So no, Eskel my darling. Your brother is mistaken. I hope I’ve made my point.”

“I’m convinced,” Aiden said with a yawn. “My head is pounding, and my throat is as dry as the Great Desert. Lambert, would you please stop babying your balls, and fetch me some water?”

No reply came from the floor, so Eskel went fetch Aiden some water instead.

***

Chapter Text

Things were a bit calmer after the fistfight.

Lambert seemed to recover from what he insisted was “the stupidest fucking excuse for a fight I’ve ever had” and went out into the woods to hunt down dinner. Aiden took a dose of Swallow, and went back to sleep. Jaskier and Eskel left him to it, and went to set up the fire pit outside.

The autumn night was chilly and damp with the promise of rain. But for now, at least, the night sky was clear and cloudless, lit by a bright crescent moon and the constellations as they wheeled in their endless transit overhead.

Eskel cleared dead leaves and wet branches out of the former resident’s firepit while Jaskier collected some dry kindling. Soon enough they had a blazing hot fire that sent a cascade of sparks up into the sky. Jaskier plopped himself down on a ragged old saddleblanket they used for Scorpion’s tack, and watched the flames flicker against the blue-purple-black balayage of the evening sky.

“Fingers feel all right?” Eskel asked from just outside the orange circle of their fire. Jaskier shrugged, shivering a little. It was a nippy evening, despite the fire. In truth his hands were aching more from the cold than the burns, but he still couldn’t make himself hold out his hands to the fire. Seeing his bandaged fingers silhouetted by dancing flames was enough to make his heart race and his chest tighten in anxiety.

He startled when Eskel dropped a pair of gloves into his lap and draped a thick wool blanket over his hunched shoulders.

“Stay warm. I’ll be right back,” Eskel said, brushing a kiss to his temple before vanishing back into the dark hut. Jaskier picked up the leather mittens. They were sized more for Eskel’s big broad hands than Jaskier’s smaller, stick-thin fingers, but he didn’t recognize the mittens as belonging to Eskel. They were brand new, made of fresh-tanned leather and lined with clean silky brown rabbit fur.

The mittens were big enough to slip easily over Jaskier’s bandages, and blissfully soft and warm. He wriggled his fingers, stretching them out gently.

When Eskel returned, he was carrying a big cast-iron stewpot that sloshed with what Jaskier guessed would be their standard camp dinner: a mix of water, salt, a bit of fat, and whatever vegetables Eskel had scavenged from the abandoned garden at the side of the house. They could add squirrel or rabbit to the pot, or whatever critter Lambert caught, and go to bed with full bellies.

Jaskier held up his covered hands, and wiggled his mittened hands at Eskel. “Where did you get these?”

“Oxenfurt,” Eskel replied. Jaskier smiled, deeply touched. Eskel had purchased gloves for him months ago, at the height of summer. He was always thinking of Jaskier’s comfort.

Eskel knelt down beside Jaskier to tend to the fire. He added a few more logs and repositioned the hot coals until he was satisfied, and then finally sat back to watch the fire. Jaskier watched his Witcher. Eskel looked troubled—his scarred lips were tight, and his brow had a pinched, pensive twist—and Jaskier guessed he was probably thinking about what Lambert had said to him.

Jaskier put his clumsy mittened hand over Eskel’s. Eskel looked up at him with a tired smile.

“Rest, dear heart,” Jaskier said. “Come sit with me.”

“Take your shirt off first,” Eskel said, and Jaskier gave Eskel a lewd wink.

“You first, darling.”

He couldn’t help but watch and admire as Eskel stripped off his own wool tunic and undershirt, revealing his scarred, muscular torso. His bronze skin gleamed red-gold in the firelight, and Jaskier thought once more of Svarog, the powerful creator-god who ruled over fire, sunlight, and the forge.

Now clad only in his trousers, Eskel dropped behind Jaskier and waited until Jaskier had pulled off his shirt to ease him back into Eskel’s familiar warm strength. He covered them both up with a blanket. The spellbond thrummed between them and Jaskier sighed, feeling the last dregs of the terror, exhaustion and uncertainty he’e been battling the last few days finally ebb away. Eskel wrapped his arm around Jaskier’s chest, gently stroking his shoulder. Every so often, he stopped to press his lips to Jaskier’s cheek or temple, as if to reassure himself that Jaskier was still there.

“I’m sorry about fighting with your brother,” Jaskier said, glad for once that he couldn’t see Eskel’s face. He knew Eskel wasn’t angry with him for knocking Lambert over, but he was also aware that, if they made it to Kaer Morhen, they’d all be spending the next five months in close quarters. Starting a bareknuckle brawl with a Witcher was stupid for a number of reasons, but the winter wouldn’t exactly be a pleasant one if he couldn’t get along with Eskel’s family. So far he’d managed to make at least two of Eskel’s ‘brothers’ despise him, which didn’t bode well for Jaskier’s future relations with his in-laws.

At least Aiden liked him, he supposed.

“Don’t worry about it, love,” Eskel said, kissing his temple again. “You’re hardly the first person to try and throttle Lambert after knowing him for less than a day. And you were more successful than most! He’ll respect you for that, and you’ll patch things up in no time. Lamb’ll get you drunk on his truly terrible pepper vodka—I mean it, it’s godawful—you’ll lose one or two games of Gwent to him, and you’ll be thick as thieves by midwinter.”

“He won’t, ah, hold a grudge? You’re sure?”

That made Eskel laugh out loud. It was a great booming sound that Jaskier could feel reverberating up along his back and out into the night.

“Oh, godsdammit, yes! Of course Lambert holds a grudge! He’s a master grudge-holder. He could hang out a shingle and take on apprentices to teach them the craft.” Eskel’s chuckles died down. “But he tends to save his ire for those who deserve it. You went after him on my behalf, which he’ll appreciate once he’s had some time to think about it. Speaking of which,” Eskiel said gently, “you didn’t need to do that. But thank you.”

Eskel tweaked Jaskier’s nose, which made him snort and fake-snap his teeth at Eskel like a crocodile. He laughed and they fell into a comfortable silence, listening to the crackle of the fire, the wind rustling in the trees, and the sounds of small animals moving through the forest.

“Are you worried? About seeing the other Witchers?” Jaskier asked “What if they’re harder to convince than Lambert and Aiden?”

“Geralt will know me,” Eskel said, sounding confident.

Jaskier’s heart dropped like a stone.

He had to ask now. If he didn’t, he’d lose his nerve, and they might be halfway to Kaer Morhen before he’d have a chance to talk to Eskel privately again.

“Eskel,” he said slowly, searching for the words. When Eskel ‘hmmmm’d’ in response, Jaskier cleared his throat and forced himself to speak. “Father Abernathy told me what happened. Why you really left Ban Ard, and why you didn’t Ascend as a mage.”

Eskel didn’t move away from him, or fidget. There was no discernible change in his breathing or body language. Still, Jaskier could feel him tense up and start to withdraw through the spellbond.

Jaskier caught Eskel’s wrist and pulled him back physically, as if he could grab Eskel’s own retreating emotions and hold them in place.

“Abernathy said you were in love with a boy back at Kaer Morhen, and they whipped you for it. Then they told you he was dead, and exiled you to Ban Ard. Is that true? Was that…was that Geralt?”

There was no sound in the night, except for the crackling fire. He felt Eskel’s medallion vibrate where it was pressed between their bodies. Jaskier didn’t know if Eskel was trying to cast some kind of spell as a distraction. Or it might have been Eskel’s Chaos surging up in response to the emotions swirling between them and through the bond.

Jaskier tightened his grip on Eskel’s wrist, and his fingers sang out in a painful warning. He couldn’t use enough pressure to hold Eskel in place; he could barely make a fist. But he couldn’t let Eskel avoid this question.

“Please. Please tell me. I need to know what happened between you two. Before either of us see Geralt again.”

Eskel’s amber eyes were dilated into wide vertical slits to balance out between the bright fire and the nighttime darkness. It turned his eyes black, like he was overdosing on his toxic potions, and the flickering firelight cast his beloved, familiar face into snarling, twisting shadows. The scars on his cheek and lips contorted his face into odd shapes, and for just a moment, Eskel looked like a stranger.

The thought made Jaskier shudder. Eskel was his anchor; right now he was Jaskier’s strongest connection to the world. Without Eskel’s care, his friendship, his affection, Jaskier felt like he’d float away. Or drown.

But maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe he'd misjudged this thing between himself and Eskel all along? He’d been wrong about Geralt for years, after all. He’d believed he was friends with the Witcher, but instead he’d been a mere annoyance, a lodestone around Geralt’s neck for almost twenty years. Maybe Eskel felt the same.

Maybe, just like with Geralt, Jaskier would never have the kind of relationship with Eskel that he yearned for.

“Eskel, please,” he said softly.

The medallion stopped vibrating, and Eskel shook himself out of whatever paralysis had stymied his reply. He touched Jaskier’s face, cupping his cheek in his broad scarred hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice rough with tears no Witcher could shed. “You deserve the truth. But it’s not my story to tell. It’s Geralt’s, and he—”

“You said that before,” Jaskier pointed out, careful not to sound as angry as he felt inside. “But we both know that’s bullshit, Eskel. Of course it’s your story, as much as it is Geralt’s! And by refusing to tell me, you’re still confirming that there’s something to tell: that Geralt and you were…intimate. That’s the truth, right?”

Eskel stared at him for a moment, swallowed hard, and nodded.

“Thank you,” Jaskier said. He closed his eyes, and breathed. “Clearly he never wanted me to know. I am sorry if you feel like you’ve betrayed his confidence, but Eskel…I really don’t care about Geralt anymore. He never trusted me. Certainly not that, but he didn't trust me with anything else that mattered: nothing about his home, his family, his past. He never told me a single thing. He’d just grunt while I’d babbled on like an idiot, and we spent twenty years like that: talking, but never saying one godsdamned thing that was true.”

“Geralt doesn’t know how to be honest, Jaskier,” Eskel said quietly. “He locks everything away.”

Jaskier felt like he’d forgotten how to breathe. He hadn’t really expected Eskel to offer any insight, but that—

“Eskel,” Jaskier bit out, struggling for control, “if you are trying to tell me, ‘don’t take it personally, he's like that with everyone’, I swear to all the Seven Spheres, I will knee you right in the bollocks.”

Eskel put a broad hand on Jaskier’s back. Jaskier jerked away, and then instantly sank back into the contact, because he was a weak, weak man.

“That’s not what I’m not saying,” Eskel said.

“Then what? Are you saying that Geralt never tells anyone anything personal? Or that he, what, misdirects? Because he's fundamentally incapable of being honest? Or did he think that, if he were honest about having slept with a man, I’d use it against him, or suddenly start harassing him again?”

The idea of that made Jaskier feel sick. He wasn’t sure Geralt’s suspicion about that was wrong, either: he might have done exactly that, if he’d known the truth back then.

Pain and pity flashed across Eskel’s face in the firelight, and Jaskier realized that yes. That was it. That night in the brothel in Hagge, Geralt hadn’t said, I don’t like men. He’d said, My guild won’t allow it. The lie had served just as well as the truth. It dissuaded Jaskier from pursuing a man who, in the end, hadn’t wanted him. Whether or not Geralt actually liked men—and evidently he did, because he’d slept with Eskel—Geralt had never and would never want to be with Jaskier. Gods, but that truth stung.

Instead of being honest, Geralt had fallen back on the ‘rules’ of his Witcher’s guild. At least those rules had actually existed—Geralt hadn’t lied about that—and if the scars on Eskel’s back were any indication, they’d been brutally reinforced.

“Does Lambert know?” Jaskier asked, not meeting Eskel’s eyes.

Eskel shook his head. “It happened a long, long time ago. Geralt and I weren’t even Witchers back then. Vesemir’s the only one left alive who knows the whole story.”

“He’s the one who finally came to Ban Ard to tell you Geralt had survived the second Grassing, right?” Jaskier said, blotting at his eyes with the mittens Eskel had gotten him. “Why did they lie to you in the first place?”

Before Eskel could answer, Jaskier said quickly, “And please don’t tell me it’s ‘not your story’ to tell again, Eskel. Of course it’s yours! You’ve been living with the literal scars of it for, what, eighty years?”

He slid his hand up Eskel’s bare back, where he could feel the long, shallow grooves of the whipping that had cut his sweet, gentle Witcher right down to the bone. Geralt had some similar scars on his winter-pale back, though Jaskier had always taken them for claw marks. He wondered now if they were from the same lashing Eskel had endured.

Jaskier should have put this together ages ago. He’d been an idiot.

“They didn’t lie to me, Jaskier,” Eskel said slowly. “That second Grassing killed Geralt. It killed the boy I’d fallen in love with. That beautiful red-haired boy. He died in that basement laboratory. And it was all my fault.”

***

Eskel was shaking, and his eyes were burning. If he’d been human, he would have been weeping. But he wasn’t: he was a mutant, an abomination. He was everything that old Monsterum pamphlet had claimed.

Part of him wanted to push Jaskier off his lap and run off into the woods. But Jaskier was right: he needed to know the truth. Gods knew, Geralt would never tell him the story. Because Geralt couldn’t.

“What do you mean, ‘Geralt died’? He survived that second Grassing. That’s…that’s why he has silver hair, isn’t it? And why he’s stronger and faster than the rest of you? That’s what you told me.”

“Yes,” Eskel croaked. Gods, this was so hard to explain. There was a thick lump of emotion lodged in his throat, and he was finding it difficult to speak past it. “The White Wolf lived. But Geralt was gone.”

It was the only way he’d ever been able to make sense of it for himself, but how could Jaskier could possibly understand? He'd had only ever known the brooding, silent Wolf, the white-haired albino who’d left humanity even further behind than most Witchers. He’d never known Geralt before that second Trial, when he had a mop of curly red hair and bright green eyes alight with mischief and affection. Jaskier had never known Geralt at all: he’d only known the creature that had replaced him.

“Father Abernathy called it an ‘experiment’,” Jaskier said. His forehead was wrinkled up in confusion. You hinted that's what the second Grassing was. Your masters turned Geralt into a lab rat?”

Eskel nodded. He was so grateful that Jaskier was putting it together on his own, because he wasn’t sure he could find the words to explain.

“No one had ever survived two rounds of the mutagens," Eskel explained quietly. "The mages tried it again, before and after Geralt, over and over—Lambert was even a candidate, once, until Vesemir put a stop to the idea. But everyone else died.”

“What made Geralt so special?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Eskel said, rubbing at his scarred brow. “Oh, Geralt was a fine student. He studied hard, and he was better than most of the other boys with a sword. And unlike most of us, he actually wanted to become a Witcher. But he was no true prodigy.”

Eskel frowned, and remembered the day in the snow-lined courtyard when everything had changed.

They’d been at fencing practice the entire afternoon. He and Geralt had paired up for the drills as usual, much to Master Vesemir’s obvious displeasure. He’d caught them together in Geralt’s room only a few days beforehand, and had yanked Eskel out of the bed by the ear. He’d hissed at them both to stop being sentimental idiots.

If only they’d listened to Vesemir.

The training yard that day had been filled with the familiar dull clash and clang of metal blades, until an overhead screech had cut through the noise.

A juvenile wyvern had gotten lost and flown too close to the Witchers’ keep. As the beast circled overhead, the boys crowded up together in the courtyard and fell into a defensive formation, but they were boxed in by the high walls of the keep. Before anyone could react, the wyvern twisted, dove down, and spit fire at one of the students caught at the outer edge of the circle.

Geralt.

Eskel reacted instinctively. He cast Quen at Geralt with one hand, and sent a blast of Aard shooting up to knock the wyvern out of the sky.

The wyvern’s flame hit the shield over Geralt just as the blast of Aard sent the beast tumbling down. The wyvern collided with the mages’ tower and bounced off the wall separating the training yard from the lower bailey. By the time the wyvern hit the ground, Vesemir was there, waiting. He lopped off the beast’s head with a single blow.

But the damage had been done.

Everyone in the training yard had come to a complete standstill. The other instructors and the small groups of Adepts, all of the boys Geralt and Eskel had played and trained with since the day he’d arrived at Kaer Morhen, were staring like they no longer recognized him.

Eskel’s shimmering golden Quen shield had withstood the monster’s flames; it was still perfectly intact over Geralt. Eskel had hastily dropped the Sign and sprinted over to the boy who meant more to him than life itself.

“Are you all right?” Eskel asked, taking Geralt by the arm to help him up. But even Geralt was staring up at Eskel in shock, and all Eskel could think was please don’t hate me. Not you, too.

Their group of Adepts had only started learning Signs. Eskel and Geralt had both miraculously come through the Grassing just one month prior, and everyone in the courtyard that day knew it should have taken Eskel months of further practice to muster even a puff of flame for Ignii or a tiny gust of Aard.

He shouldn’t have been able to cast a full Quen shield at all, at least not for a few more years. And no Witcher could cast Quen over another person. That was beyond anyone’s skill. Not even their ancient Grandmaster Rennes was capable of such a feat. Most damning of all, no Witcher aside from a few Griffin Witchers of legend had ever been able to dual-cast a Sign.

Yet Eskel had just performed three supposedly-impossible feats in a single heartbeat.

Two of the school mages had come down from the south tower to examine Eskel. They explained that Eskel had had a Conduit moment, and the mages theorized that Eskel’s natural Chaos had been enhanced by the mutations from the Trial of the Grasses. The Chaos had swelled within him and finally burst forth to supercharge his signs, allowing him to do what no Witcher, mage, or sorceress had ever done before.

“I was the one the mages wanted for the Second Grassing,” Eskel confessed to Jaskier. “It should have been me shackled to that table. Not Geralt.”

“So why did they pick him?”

“Our old Grandmaster Rennes intervened. Vesemir put him up to it, I think,” he sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “The mages couldn’t seem to agree what to do with me. Half wanted to send me to train at Ban Ard. The other half wanted to put me through that second Grassing and see if that might enhance my Chaos further. That was the whole purpose of the second round: to maximize a Witcher’s natural Chaos. Grandmaster Rennes cast the deciding vote to send me to the college.”

“And Geralt?”

“They still needed a test subject,” Eskel said darkly. He gripped Jaskier’s hand. “I swear, lark, I had no idea what they were planning. I would never have abandoned Geralt if I’d known. We would have run away together, if I’d ever thought there was even a chance—”

“Shh, darling, I know,” Jaskier said, touching his scarred cheek. “It wasn’t your fault. And Geralt survived; you said he was the only who ever had. If you’d been Grassed in his place, you might have died.”

“I’d wished that I had,” Eskel said grimly. “For years afterward. The mages only picked Geralt because I—” he choked again, and swallowed carefully. “Because I insisted on saying goodbye. We’d been warned over and over not to be together. But we’d been caught before, punished before, and I—gods, I was so in love with him, I didn’t care if they whipped us! We were going to be separated for at least a year, and neither of us could bear it. So we went up to the old watchtower, and…”

He sighed. So long ago, now. A whole lifetime. “That was the last time we were together, like that. Old Varin caught us and hauled us out of the tower. Grandmaster Rennes was furious: he said he was tired of accommodating our ‘infatuation’, and that we needed to be taught a lesson. My casting Quen over Geralt was bad enough, but now we were openly defying our instructors. He ordered Vesemir to make an example out of us.”

“Vesemir was the one who whipped you?”

Eskel nodded. “I was still unconscious when they loaded me into the wagon to take me to Ban Ard. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Geralt.”

“And then they put him through the second Grassing while you were gone. But why did they tell you he’d died?”

“That was Grandmaster Rennes’ idea,” Eskel said. “Vesemir didn’t know. They thought knowing he was alive would ‘distract’ from my studies.”

Eskel had struggled to forgive Vesemir for the role he’d played in separating him from Geralt, but it had been a bit of a comfort to know that his old fencing instructor had never lied to him. The lie itself had ended Vesemir’s long friendship with Grandmaster Rennes. He’d resigned from his teaching position at Kaer Morhen and had gone back to the Path once he’d collected Eskel from Ban Ard. Vesemir hadn’t returned to teach at the school until the Grandmaster’s death many decades later.

“But why lie to you?” Jaskier asked, still struggling to understand. “What was the point in telling you Geralt was dead?”

“They honestly never believed he’d never make it, I think,” Eskel sighed. “At least at first. Vesemir told me that, during the Second Grassing, Geralt screamed himself to the point of permanently damaging his voice. He didn’t speak for almost a year, and when he did, he could barely form any words. I told you his teeth fell out, and grew back in as fangs? He couldn’t eat; he was starving to death even as his body was trying to build itself up into what Geralt looks like now. The agony he went through was so much worse than what the rest of us had to endure. It…I think it did something to his mind, Jaskier,” Eskel admitted quietly. He’d never shared that with anyone before.

Not even Geralt.

Jaskier looked as heartbroken as Eskel had felt when he’d returned from Ban Ard.

“When Vesemir brought me back to Kaer Morhen, Geralt didn’t recognize me. I barely recognized him, and not just because he looked like a completely different person. After the second trial, Geralt really was a total stranger. That extra Grassing didn’t just change his body: it stripped Geralt of his memories. Almost all of them.”

He had a flash of the Sorceress, her black eyes dead and frozen with hate. Eskel shook his head to clear away the vision.

“Geralt didn’t know me. He didn’t recognize anyone, at first. He could learn easily enough—he could master any physical skill you wanted to teach him, especially sword fighting. He was so fast and strong and tireless he surpassed the rest of us after just a few weeks. But outside of training, no one wanted to interact with him. The other Adepts wouldn’t speak to him, or eat with him. The day I came back, I found Geralt picking scraps out of the refuse pit, scrounging for anything soft he could chew without cutting his gums on his new fangs.”

“That’s horrible!” It sounded like Jaskier was also struggling to reconcile his friend Geralt with the feral animal Eskel had met the day he’d returned to Kaer Morhen.

“It took a long, long time to gain his trust: it was like he’d turned into a wolf who’d snarl and snap at you if you tried to reach out. I told him we used to be friends, but he didn’t believe me. He didn’t even know what ‘friends’ meant.”

Jaskier had a sad look on his face, and Eskel knew he was perhaps thinking of other times when Geralt had been gruff, or cold, or lashed out. Eskel wished again, almost desperately, that Jaskier could have known Geralt as he’d once been: a boy filled with love and laughter, who would have adored Jaskier as much as Eskel did now.

“It took Geralt years to claw his way back to something halfway human. He had to rebuild himself from scratch, but he didn’t have enough pieces. He’d get angry about that. Sometimes to the point of violence, and I know the instructors and mages talked about killing him. They were worried he might hurt someone on the Path, give people even more of a reason to think Witchers were inhuman monsters.”

“Is that… You were in love with Geralt once, but he was too much of a monster to—?”

“No, of course not,” Eskel said sharply. The question was a fair one, even as it shredded his heart. “I’d come back for Geralt, but the Geralt I’d known was gone. So I stayed for the Wolf left in his place. He needed a friend just as much as I did.”

“But you could have become a mage!” Jaskier insisted. “Abernathy said you could have Ascended, gotten a court position! You could have been anything, Eskel!”

Eskel shook his head. “I was never going to be happy serving at some lordling’s court. And I couldn’t just leave Geralt in that mess, with no one to help him or talk to him, or even care if he had enough to eat.”

Jaskier looked very close to crying, and Eskel didn’t blame him. If he still had the ability to cry, he would have shed rivers of tears over what had happened to Geralt.

“What happened after you came back to the school? What then?”

“Then we trained for the Trial of the Medallion together. It took another year or so, and we became something like friends again. We went out on the Path after that. Neither of us went back to Kaer Morhen for a while, but eventually we started wintering there together. The Path was good for Geralt, in some ways. Before Blaviken, at least. He managed to recover some memories of our childhood together. It was never quite the same, but he has been a good friend to me.”

Eskel didn’t think he imagined the blush staining Jaskier’s cheeks red even in the flickering glow of their campfire. “And you never—”

“No,” Eskel said quickly. “No. And Jaskier, please. I need you to swear that you will never say a word about any of this to Geralt, all right?”

“Why not?” Jaskier frowned at him. “Surely he deserves to know the truth?”

“No!” Eskel said. He sounded desperate even to his own ears. “No, it’s not—I swear, I’m not trying to hide this from him. But Geralt honestly doesn’t remember what we were to each other. And it’s better that way. Knowing would only cause Geralt pain. It wouldn’t change the past, and I think it might even break him, somehow. It just wouldn’t fit with anything he believes about himself, or about the Wolf School.”

“What do you mean?” Jaskier asked, tipping his head. “Surely Geralt is aware that some Witchers sleep with men. I mean, he must know that you—”

Eskel rested his forehead against Jaskier’s bare shoulder. “Yeah,” he said softly. “He knows that I sleep with men. We talked about it before. A few times, anyway. After—this,” Eskel said, waving at his scarred cheek. “Geralt made some bad joke about how I’d have an easier time fending off the ladies. I told him I was much more interested in what the men thought. Geralt actually sat me down and made me explain it to him.”

“What did he say, once he understood?” Jaskier was staring at Eskel so intently it made Eskel twitch and look away, but Jaskier waited until Eskel looked up at him.

“He just listened. He said he understood, and that he was sorry he’d made a joke about it.”

“Oh. Well. That was—decent, I suppose.” He gnawed on his lower lip, avoiding Eskel’s gaze. “But…but what if Geralt remembers someday? Or spontaneously decides that he wants more than friendship from you?”

Eskel almost laughed at the idea. “I…I offered, once. After the scarring. I was in so much pain, and lonely. Feeling sorry for myself. Geralt was kind about it, but he made it very clear that he wasn’t interested.”

He still remembered the mix of panic, confusion and embarrassment on Geralt’s face when Eskel had asked to share his bed. The rejection had stung, at the time, but it had allowed Eskel to finally start putting the past behind him. Hearing what Geralt had said to Jaskier had helped finally put it behind him, too. Part of him would always love Geralt—the boy he remembered, and the man he would follow into hell itself. But it wasn’t meant to be.

Eskel heard Jaskier mutter, “Blast it, Geralt,” and then he drew Eskel into a long hug.

Eskel shivered, overwhelmed. He’d never told another living soul about any of this, and telling Jaskier about it was like reliving some of it all over again.

Sometimes Eskel felt he’d died on that table during that Second Grassing, right alongside the boy he’d loved. Maybe neither of them had made it out of that lab alive.

“Eskel,” Jaskier said, touching his face. Eskel turned his head to kiss wrist. At least his poor hands were warm, now, thanks to those mittens.

“I’m okay,” Eskel said, shakily. Jaskier still looked worried. “It’s been over eighty years, Jask. I’ve learned to live with it.”

Just like I’ll have to learn how to live with losing you, too, he thought, but didn’t dare say out loud.

They sat and watched the flames for a while. Eskel got up to stir the stew pot, and when he settled back down Jaskier climbed into his lap again, and laid his head on Eskel’s shoulder.

“A very wise man once told me, ‘it’s okay if you’re not okay’.” Jaskier mumbled against the bare skin of his neck. “What you’ve been through, Eskel…it’s unimaginable. I feel so horrible for you. And for Geralt too, frankly. At least you have those memories, even if they’re painful ones. But as far as Geralt’s concerned, he never had you as a lover, or as a friend. That day you showed up to find him eating out of the rubbish pit was probably the first day Geralt remembers anyone being even remotely kind to him.”

“Perhaps,” Eskel said quietly. “But I wasn’t very kind to the Wolf. Not that first day, or for a while after that.”

“Oh I doubt that very much.” It was Jaskier’s turn to gently kiss the tips of each of Eskel’s fingers, one by one. “I can almost guarantee that you are probably the only person who has always been kind and loving towards Geralt. In fact, I’m willing to put good coin on the fact that the only reason Geralt knows anything about love or affection is because of you.”

Eskel shook his head, feeling both overwhelmed and slightly offended on Jaskier’s behalf. “Well, that’s just plain untrue. He had you, too, Jaskier. And I know you were good at loving him, even if Geralt never let himself acknowledge it.”

“How do you know?”

Eskel kissed his shoulder, his cheek, both to buy time to formulate his answer, and also just because he wanted to feel Jaskier’s skin under his lips.

“Because I know you. You’re good at caring for people.”

“People…like you?”

“Perhaps,” Eskel hedged, with a small, tremulous smile. He felt oddly brave tonight. Maybe it was because he’d just spent the last three days desperately searching for Jaskier, expecting the whole time to arrive too late, and find him already gone. He’d almost lost Jaskier twice already, and he doubted very much that he’d get a third chance.

He had to tell Jaskier how he felt. Telling him the story about what had happened with Geralt had just solidified it for him: he was in love with Jaskier. He’d spent enough of his long life alone and grieving. It was time to set aside the past, and reach out for a happier future.

Eskel shifted Jaskier around on his lap so that they were facing each other. He found his courage in Jaskier’s beautiful blue eyes.

“Jaskier,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking,” he paused, rooting around for the words. Jaskier made a little hmmmm of encouragement, and settled more comfortably against Eskel’s chest. He sighed and tipped his head to nuzzle against Eskel’s neck.

They’d already spent so many nights by the fire like this, with Jaskier straddling his lap and their bare chests pressed together. The warm familiarity of it, and the fact that he’d almost lost Jaskier for good, made Eskel finally speak.

“I love you,” he finally said, in his crushed-glass voice. “I’ve been in love with you for a while, now. I...I just thought you should know,” he added awkwardly.

Jaskier had gone completely still against him, to the point where he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. As the moments ticked by in silence, Eskel felt his pounding heart freeze, and then it felt like it was shrivelling up in his chest. Gods, had he misjudged this that badly? He felt the powerful surge of something welling up through Jaskier’s end of the spellbond, but he had no idea what was going on inside the maelstrom of emotion he could sense swirling inside Jaskier. Was he relieved? Horrified?

Eskel caressed Jaskier’s bare back, hoping touch might ground him a little. “It’s all right if you don’t feel the same way,” Eskel said slowly. “I don’t expect this to change anything between us.”

That seemed enough to jolt Jaskier out of whatever stupor he’d slipped into. He gave a distressed-sounding little moan and flung his arms around Eskel’s neck.

“No, no, darling, please! Don’t worry! I’m so sorry—you’ve just caught me off-guard!” Jaskier said, speaking quickly as he clutched Eskel tightly. “Of course I feel the same way! I love you! Quite madly, actually. Have for a while. I even told Aiden about it!” He pressed a soft kiss to the hinge of Eskel’s jaw, and then peppered a line of kisses across his scarred cheek before drawing back to look Eskel in the eyes. “I never let myself believe you might feel the same way.”

“I do,” Eskel said firmly, and felt his lips twist up into a smile. He could feel a warm, sweet emotion flowing through the spellbond now, spreading slowly like syrup, or sun-warmed honey. That was Jaskier’s love, he realized. He’d felt it before, but he hadn’t dared to put a name to it, or even hoped that it might be directed towards him.

Laughter bubbled up out of Eskel, and his heart felt almost buoyant with happiness. It was true: Jaskier loved him. He could feel it spreading through the bond between them. He wrapped his arms around Jaskier’s narrow waist and pulled him in for another long kiss, unable and unwilling to hide his relief and joy.

“I love you, Jaskier,” Eskel said again, just because he could.

***

Jaskier’s head was spinning. He felt almost dizzy with joy, ears buzzing and limbs all atremble with astonishment. Eskel loved him. He’d come right out and said so, with no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding. Jaskier was still having a hard time believing it. He’d almost found the courage to tell Eskel how he felt, but he hadn’t let himself think too much about Eskel’s reaction.

He surged up and kissed him again, so deliriously happy he could scarcely think of anything beyond Eskel loves me loves me. Now that the initial shock was wearing off, and he’d moved past his own stunned disbelief, the truth was starting to sink in: this was real. They could have this, together.

The thought made him surge up and claim Eskel’s mouth. He lost himself in kissing him—this wonderful man, who loved him—before finally drawing back to study Eskel’s face.

He looked as joyfully bewildered as Jaskier did. His bronzed cheeks were flushed, his amber eyes alight with happiness. He’d never seen Eskel look any more handsome than he did at this moment, with his beautiful, damaged mouth curled up into a shy half-smile as he stared in besotted wonder at Jaskier. Jaskier knew he probably looked the same, lit from within with love and happiness.

“I think we ought to celebrate,” Eskel said, because he was a brilliant and wonderful man.

Jaskier smiled coyly. The always-simmering heat between them was starting to catch fire like a box of tinder. “Sounds like a lovely idea,” he said. “And how would you like to ‘celebrate’, hmm? Champagne? Music and dancing?”

“I have a slightly better idea,” Eskel said, grinning back at him. Jaskier felt his heart flutter at the sight. Gods, he really did adore this man. “You’ll have to take your pants off.”

“Ah, I see,” Jaskier said, nodding gravely. “Naked dancing, then. My favourite.”

“I suppose it is like dancing,” Eskel mused as he began to work on Jaskier’s laces. 

“You must be a wonderful dancer,” Jaskier sighed, too busy trying to nibble on Eskel’s earlobe to be of much help with the pants situation. “I’ve seen you practicing sword forms. You move very well.”

“That’s—ah—very kind of you to say,” Eskel said, with a little gasp as Jaskier sucked on his earlobe. “I haven’t had much experience with, ah, dancing.”

Jaskier ground their hips together as a counterpoint. “I think you’ve had plenty of practice this summer, love.”

“I meant the other kind of dancing,” Eskel said dryly, which made Jaskier laugh. They both seemed to be feeling the same kind of giddy elation, and Jaskier realized that he’d never expected being in love would be so much damned fun.

Eskel helped him to stand up so they could both get their trousers off. Jaskier threw his arms around Eskel’s neck and pressed their nude bodies together. He shivered at the press of Eskel’s hard cock against his hip, and sucked in a breath of the chilly night air.

“Your brother is going to get an eyeful if he catches us like this,” he murmured into Eskel’s ear. He felt Eskel’s shoulders shake with suppressed laughter at the thought.

“Lambert will either shriek at us and claim we’ve scarred him for life, or he’ll slip back into the hut with Aiden and we won’t hear a peep from either of them til morning,” Eskel predicted, running his hands down Jaskier’s back to cup his arse and drag him closer. “But I’d rather not think about Lambert right now.”

He trailed off with a groan when Jaskier sinuously rubbed their hips together, both of them hard and leaking.

“And who would you rather think about, my love?” Jaskier said, testing out the words. He’d called Eskel ‘love’ before, of course. But knowing that it was real, that they both felt the same way, added a whole new weight to the expression.

“My husband,” Eskel said, with another soft kiss. Jaskier’s heart swooped like a sparrow soaring through the morning sky. He let out a giddy little puff of laughter. Eskel sounded so proud as he said those words. It made Jaskier’s heart sing..

“Well your husband would like to work on those dancing lessons,” he said, and slid his tongue into Eskel’s mouth.

***

Later, when the moon had risen and they lay drowsing together, sweat and spend cooling on their bodies, Eskel stirred and brushed his mouth against Jaskier’s shoulder.

“Mmph?” Jaskier mumbled, unwilling to be roused from his post-coital nap. He was deliciously warm under the blanket, with Eskel pressed up along his back and blasting out heat like a forge, and he felt sore in exactly the right places. It would be so easy for him to drift off into a well-deserved night’s sleep. But something seemed to be gnawing at Eskel; he could feel it through their spellbond, and in the restless way Eskel kept stroking his thumb against the soft skin of Jaskier’s belly, just below his navel.

“E’rything a’right?” Jaskier slurred, pushing himself back from the bring of sleep.

Eskel sighed, and kissed his shoulder again. “Just thinking.”

“’Bout what?” Jaskier yawned and stretched. A pleasant shiver ran up through his body from both the stretch of gently-abused muscles, and from rubbing against Eskel’s hard body and soft, spent cock. Gods, he could probably go again, and he knew Eskel only needed about five minutes to recover before he could go for another round.

Jaskier got so distracted fantasizing about Eskel flipping him over onto his belly and forcing that big cock right back into his already stretched-out hole, without any preamble, that he almost missed it when Eskel rumbled, “It’s nothing.”

Jaskier didn’t think it was nothing—Eskel didn’t seem overly distressed, but he was certainly thinking about something—but he lost the thread of the conversation when he felt Eskel’s cock start to firm up against his backside. He shimmied and rolled his hips back against Eskel experimentally, grinning when Eskel stopped stroking his belly to clutch at his hip so he could grind back against him.

“You sure? Don’t you need to sleep?”

“Mmmf,” Jaskier huffed, letting his eyes drift closed. “Want you more. Want to—” he yawned broadly, and flopped over onto his belly. “Want to make sure we consummate this marriage properly.”

There was an amused silence, and he felt Eskel reaching for wherever he’d stashed their vial of oil. “I’m pretty sure we’ve done that already.”

Jaskier gave a sleepy shrug. “Wanna be extra thorough.” He flopped over onto his belly, and folded his arms to pillow his head as he let out another yawn. “’Sides, we love each other now. Makes it more official, wouldn’t you agree?”

“What, our marriage?” Eskel straddled Jaskier’s thighs and thumbed at his rim, checking to make sure he was still loose enough for another plowing. Jaskier sighed in contentment, and shoved back—much as he was able, given Eskel’s not-insubstantial weight bearing down on his thighs—against the touch of Eskel’s oiled fingers at his hot, slightly-puffy and slightly-sore hole.

“Yep.” Jaskier’s whole body was loose and relaxed, and he was so sleepy he wondered if he might actually manage to drift off while Eskel was fucking him. The idea made his cock twitch in interest, but he had the refractory period of a mere mortal man, and was therefore unlikely to muster up a full cockstand anytime soon.

“You know,” he mumbled into his folded arms, “I really do like it. Being married to you.” He twitched and gasped a little when he felt Eskel’s cock press against his opening. Gods, he’d never get used to just how big his husband was.

“Glad to hear it,” Eskel said, the smile in his voice fading out to a low moan as he slid into Jaskier’s body. Despite having been recently (and very thoroughly) fucked, the breach burned a little. Jaskier closed his eyes and waited for his body to adjust. Eskel, bless the man, waited it out with him. He held himself perfectly still until Jaskier relaxed. Eskel must have felt his body give, but he still waited until Jaskier gave him a little nod of approval before starting to thrust with a slow, steady roll of his hips. It made Jaskier sigh and melt down like a lead block in a blacksmith’s forge.

He wasn’t up to another hard pounding tonight, and Eskel seemed to recognize that before Jaskier himself had. He fucked into Jaskier slowly, and as gently as he could manage with that giant cock of his. Enough so that Jaskier could drift off into something halfway between a doze and a trance.

It wasn’t quite the soft, quiet space in his head he slipped into whenever Eskel held him down or tied him up and fucked him with raw, brutal efficiency. Much as he'd come to love and crave the sensations and the headspace created by that sort of rough lovemaking with Eskel, he liked this softer, gentler version just as much. Eskel seemed to feel the same. While he enjoyed the rougher, more demanding form of sex with Jaskier, this slower pace seemed to be more intuitive for his sweet Witcher.

At any rate, Eskel appeared to be determined to take his time. He punctuated every second or third long, slow, breathless thrust with a lick or a nip or a kiss to Jaskier’s bare skin. It felt like worship. Between the steady contact and the slow rock of Eskel’s hips, Jaskier sank down even further down into drifting, sleepy pleasure.

Eventually, he must have shifted or given some other unconscious signal, because Eskel sped up his thrusts and changed the angle of penetration to brush up against Jaskier’s prostate, and then started hitting it directly. The sharp starburst pleasure brought Jaskier up out of his daze. He spread his thighs wider and tried to get to his knees; Eskel caught him around the waist and boosted them both up so Jaskier could meet his thrusts with some resistance. Their bodies curled together and Jaskier felt his eyes roll back in his head, the pleasure was so intense. Eskel still wasn’t fucking him hard, but by hitting Jaskier’s prostate with such unerring, unflagging accuracy, it was more thn enough to inspire his half-hard cock try to blurt out a little cum, despite having already been drained completely during their earlier round.

“Come on, come for me, love,” Jaskier chanted, hanging his head and panting. It seemed to be the ‘love’ that finally did it: Eskel shuddered and managed a single, staggered thrust back into Jaskier before his cock pulsed and spilled inside of him.

They slumped down together, Jaskier on his belly and Eskel stretched out his back. They both lay still for a moment to catch their breath. Eskel started to shift away, but Jaskier clutched at his wrist with a muffled grunt of protest. “Stay.”

Eskel obliged him, sinking back down to cover Jaskier with his big broad body. Jaskier felt surrounded and cradled by his delicious hot skin, those strong arms wrapped around him with a comfort and a reassurance that made his eyes sting.

“Gods. I love you so much,” Jaskier said, blinking hard. He suddenly felt overwhelmed, but that didn’t make much sense. They’d barely done much at all, especially compared to the evening’s previous exertions. But then, Jaskier realized, he’d never made love before. Perhaps that was the difference.

“I love you too,” Eskel rumbled. He was softening up, but not quite enough to slip out yet, Jaskier wanted to keep him inside the tight clutch of his body forever. He nuzzled against the back of Jaskier’s neck. “I’ve never said that to anyone before. I like it. Like saying it, to you.”

“I like hearing it,” Jaskier croaked out, and felt a little surge of pleased satisfaction through their bond, though he wasn’t sure if it was his own, or Eskel’s. “You didn’t…you never said that to Geralt?”

He’d been prepared for Eskel to tense up at the question, or even pull away. Instead, he tightened his arms around Jaskier again, hugging him closer. “Never had the chance.”

Jaskier’s heart shattered all over again. Gods, Eskel’s whole history with Geralt was so tragic, he had no idea how to approach it. To have loved someone so much, only to be greeted like a stranger….

“That’s why I finally said it to you,” Eskel continued, wrenching Jaskier from his sad thoughts. “I came so close to losing you. And I thought, even if you didn’t feel the same, even if it didn’t change anything between us…you deserve to know that you are loved, Jaskier.”

Jaskier felt his eyes sting again, and this time he didn’t bother to hold back his tears. They were happy ones, at least. He clutched at Eskel’s wrist, wishing again that he could truly feel his beloved’s skin with more than just his thumbs. At least he had Eskel’s solid weight resting against him, covering him, grounding him, surrounding him with his warm skin and familiar scent.

“You don’t know what that means to me,” Jaskier said softly. “Or, well. Perhaps you do. But I’m so glad you told me. I really was going to say something to you too, you know. I just hadn’t found the words.”

“Imagine that! A master bard, struck speechless,” Eskel chuckled. But there was no sting in his words, no mean dig at Jaskier’s verbosity or his endless chattering. Instead, Jaskier felt only waves of love and affection in his words, in the bond between them.

“You really told Aiden?” Eskel said.

“I did,” Jaskier smiled. “Back when we were down in the crypt together. It seemed far more preferable to talk about how wonderful you are than to think about what the curse was going to do to me. But you found me, and right in the nick of time!”

“Well,” Eskel said, shifting a little, “technically Lambert found you.”

“You were there too,” Jaskier insisted, “and you were magnificent. Anyway, I wasn’t exactly sure how you’d react, but I was fairly certain you wouldn’t cast me off, if I told you that I loved you. You’re far too nice for that,” he said, trying to make a joke of it, but fell quiet when Eskel covered his hand with his own big palm.

“You said that before, when I told you. You said I’d caught you off-guard, and that you didn’t think I could be in love with you.” Eskel sounded a little hurt. “Is it because I’m a Witcher?”

“What? No, of course not!” Jaskier thrashed under Eskel’s weight, and Eskel immediately sat back so he could turn over and glare up at him with incredulity. “Why would you even think that?”

Eskel had the grace to look a little ashamed, though he still didn’t seem willing to make eye contact with Jaskier. “I know you don’t carry the same prejudices as other humans. But part of me wondered if you thought I might not be capable of…of loving you, in that way. Especially if Geralt was your only real point of reference.”

“Well, I happen to believe that Geralt is also capable of loving someone,” Jaskier said, perhaps a bit snidely. “Not me, obviously, but he does truly care for Yen, and—” He broke off in a huff. “Anyway, if it isn’t abundantly clear by now, I can tell the difference between you and Geralt. You’re similar, in some ways—of course you are—but you’re also you: kind, supportive, easy to talk to, handsome as sin. And eminently capable of loving and being loved.”

He had to kneel up to hug his poor Witcher then, because Eskel seemed to be struggling to absorb so many compliments in such quick succession. Jaskier resolved to keep working on it with him. He loved Eskel dearly, but the man still had abysmal self-esteem, a trait which wasn’t likely to change overnight. (He’d noted how Eskel seemed to squirm in particular discomfort when he’d said he was ‘handsome as sin’. Clearly, Jaskier had much more to do to convince his dashing husband how absolutely irresistible he really was).

Eskel seemed to settle once Jaskier wrapped him up in a firm hug. He waited until some of the tension had eased from Eskel’s shoulders to release him, and then began to hunt down his discarded trousers.

“If you must know,” Jaskier said, grimacing a little as he felt Eskel’s cum leaking slowly out of him, “I wasn’t surprised because I thought you were incapable of love. Not at all.”

He wet a rag and ran it between his thighs and arsecheeks to clean up the worst of the mess. Eskel really hadn’t been kidding when he’d warned Jaskier about a Witcher’s prodigious spend.

“Then why--?”

“No one’s ever loved me before,” Jaskier said quickly, as if he were verbally lancing a boil. “Not really. Most people can barely tolerate me in the long-term. I think the longest relationship I’ve ever had, before you, only lasted about six months. And that was due to the fact that the Countess wintered in Toussaint, so we went a half-season without seeing each other. She threw me out on my ear only a few days after we were ‘reunited’.”

Eskel made a sympathetic noise, and Jaskier glanced over to see that he’d wiped himself down as well, and pulled on a pair of trousers. Happily, Eskel had elected to forego a shirt, and Jaskier took a moment to admire his thick chest and muscular torso in the firelight—how could a man who looked like that ever doubt his own appeal?—before he resumed his seat by the fire.

“Anyway, darling, when it comes to love, my track record is rather abysmal. Far worse than yours. So it wasn’t so much doubting you, dear heart, or your capacity to love—which, by the way, seems to surpass that of any human I’ve ever met. I was only doubting myself, and my own worthiness as an object of your affection.”

Eskel had taken a seat beside Jaskier, listening quietly, arms looped around his bent legs with his chin resting on his kneecap. It was an odd posture for such a large man, and Jaskier found it just as endearing as so many of Eskel’s other traits and habits.

He was truly, completely gone on the man. And what a relief it was, not to have to censure himself for it, or try to lock those feelings away! Jaskier couldn’t quite remember why he’d ever thought of love as some sort of trap to avoid. It felt so incredibly freeing.

“Never doubt yourself, Jaskier,” Eskel finally said. “I can certainly understand why you might feel that way. Your past experiences haven’t been any better than mine.” He shook his head ruefully, and then reached out to drag Jaskier closer, slinging his arm over his shoulders in a companionable hug.

“Those people who ‘couldn’t stand you’ were all blind fools, as far as I’m concerned,” Eskel said. “I don’t know why they couldn’t see what a treasure you are. But,” he said, with his shy, twisted grin and lovely amber eyes alight with what Jaskier realized was honest adoration, “as terrible as it sounds, I’m almost glad they were such short-sighted idiots. Geralt included. You might not have given me a second look, otherwise. I just wish it hadn’t been so painful for you.”

“Eskel!” Jaskier said in mock-horror, “that sounded dangerously close to a selfish, self-centered thought! I barely recognize you!”

“Perhaps I’m growing as a person,” Eskel said dryly, stretching out towards the fire. “Or it’s just you, making me want to be selfish and hoard you all to myself, like a great Golden Dragon.”

Jaskier laughed. “I’ve actually met one of those, and interestingly enough, there was no sign of any horde of gold. He wasn’t selfish either. I’d say he was downright emotionally insightful, though his advice did have some unintended consequences for Geralt, his lady sorceress, and myself.”

***

Eskel listened as Jaskier told him the strange story of Borch Three Jackdaws, and he wished he’d gotten that tale out of Geralt himself. He had so much to discuss with his brother. He barely knew where he’d start when—if—they were reunited at Kaer Morhen this winter.

The conversation died out once Jaskier’s tale was done, with only the crackle of the fire and the night wind rustling through the forest to fill the silence. Eskel still felt keyed-up after all the sex and the emotional revelations of the night. He was distracted by thoughts of the winter to come, the potential conflicts threatening to overshadow the joy of possibly seeing his family again.

Jaskier seemed to be thinking along the same lines. He fidgeted beside Eskel, and eventually bounced up to stir the stew base still simmering over the fire.

“Are you worried about seeing Geralt again?” Jaskier asked, and Eskel frowned as he considered the question.

“Worried? Not exactly. I’m concerned he might not believe that I’m me, at first. But eventually I should be able to convince him that, whatever that thing he killed was, it wasn’t me.”

“Ah,” Jaskier said, and Eskel realized why he’d asked.

“And you? Are you nervous?”

Jaskier shrugged. He could feel Jaskier mulling over the question through the spellbond.

“Nervous? Absolutely,” Jaskier finally said. He went over and took his seat beside Eskel, who kissed his bare shoulder in silent encouragement. “And worried. I…fuck,” he shuddered. “What if Geralt yells at me again? Or tries to send me away?”

“I won’t let that happen,” Eskel promised. He could feel Jaskier’s pain through the bond, sharp as a dagger to his own heart. He pulled Jaskier into his lap and hugged him close. Jaskier made a soft, broken sound, and buried his face in his neck.

“Jaskier, you know that I’m with you, right? I’m on your side. Geralt can huff and puff all he likes, but I want you there. You’re my husband, after all, and we love each other. Geralt doesn’t get a say in whether or not you come to winter at Kaer Morhen.”

“I don’t want to cause a rift between you two,” Jaskier mumbled against his neck. Eskel chuckled.

“We’ve fought over stupider things before, lark,” Eskel said. “And in this particular case? Geralt can go fuck himself.”

“That is the smartest thing you have ever said,” Lambert remarked, materializing out of the darkness to throw a blood-stained sack down beside the fire. Jaskier let out a little noise of alarm—startled by Lambert’s dramatics, Eskl guessed, but also because he'd been brawling with the Witcher just a few hours ago.

Jaskier tensed in Eskel’s lap, but Lambert waved him off.

“Calm your tits, bard,” he said cheerfully. “Not gonna try for Round Two. I’m not that eager to have my bullocks smashed in again.”

Eskel snorted with laughter, and even Jaskier managed a small smile. Eskel expected Jaskier to stand up or try to put some distance between them, but Jaskier stayed exactly as he was, apparently content to remain draped over Eskel’s lap and completely unconcerned with what Lambert thought about it.

“So why’s Geralt gotta go fuck himself? I mean, I’m with you in principle,” Lambert said as he removed two skinned rabbit carcasses from the sack and used his dagger to carve up the meat for the stewpot. “But is there any specific reason?”

Eskel glanced at Jaskier, and Jaskier nodded his permission. Neither of them noticed Lambert’s soft smirk at their easy, unspoken communication.

“Geralt might not be happy to see Jaskier again,” Eskel said.

“We didn’t part on the best terms,” Jaskier added.

“Yeah, I heard that ‘Burn Butcher Burn’ tune of yours a couple of times while I was looking for Aiden,” Lambert said as he dumped the rabbit meat into the stewpot. “Temerian Blue Stripes sing friendlier songs about the Scoia’tael, you know. Our idiot brother fucked you up pretty good, I take it?”

Jaskier looked away and blinked quickly at the orange flames of their campfire. “Pretty good,” he agreed.

“Well,” Lambert said, stirring the stew. “If it makes you feel any better, we’ll be lucky if we even survive the trip up to Kaer Morhen. And if we all die, you might not have to face Geralt at all.”

“Yes, thank you, that’s very helpful, Lambert,” Jaskier said, and they all turned to watch the dancing flames of their campfire.

***

Chapter Text

A few days later, once Jaskier and Aiden had recovered their strength and Aiden’s eye injury had mostly healed over, they left the hut outside of Leyda and rode north. They crossed the swift, treacherous Gwenllech River at the bridge at Vattweir, and then headed northeast towards the Blue Mountains and the small city of Ard Carraigh.

Jaskier was surprised to discover how much he enjoyed travelling with Lambert and Aiden. Eskel’s prediction proved accurate: Lambert seemed to forgive Jaskier easily for the “ballbusting” he’d delivered, and soon enough they were cheerfully bantering and trading insults. By the time they’d passed through Vattweir, Jaskier and Lambert were engaged in some sort of competition to see who could compose the dirtiest limerick. Their more sedate mates were (unwillingly) drafted as referees and judges, chiming in only occasionally when Jaskier or Lambert appealed to them to judge the merits of a particular composition.

“I do not understand this rhyme scheme,” Aiden protested. By now, Jaskier could tell when he was exaggerating his Zerrakanian accent.

“Oh, c’mon Aiden! Don’t play dumb. You helped me write that one about the temple priest from Yarmulak!”

“And I have regretted it ever since,” Aiden said, very gravely.

Jaskier laughed so hard he almost tumbled off Scorpion, but of course Eskel was there to catch him and keep him in the saddle. Lambert and Aiden were riding doubled-up on Lambert’s mount, too, although they planned to buy an additional horse and a few pack mules once they reached Ard Carraigh.

Travelling with a group of Witchers was markedly different than travelling with just Geralt, or Eskel. A party of three Witchers would have attracted attention no matter where they went. But the sight of a bandaged human riding pillion with the fiercest-looking of the group attracted far more stares and whispers, and even the odd catcall, as they made their way through the Kaedweni countryside. Being stared at like a sideshow made Jaskier feel uncomfortable and exposed; he couldn’t imagine how it felt for his Witcher companions. He wished they could travel off the high road, at least, but they were racing against time and the winter snows. They couldn’t afford to lose even half a day getting bogged down on a muddy sideroad.

Early on the second day, they passed by a field where local farmhands were cutting down the last of the winter wheat. Every single man, woman and child labouring in the field stopped to stare agog, with wide, terrified eyes. Jaskier had seen the reaction often enough with Eskel, and before that with Geralt, but being faced with all those angry, loathing-filled faces made Jaskier want to hop down off Scorpion and wade into the shorn fields to give the narrow-minded villagers a piece of his mind. But he knew well enough that his Witcher companions wouldn’t appreciate a confrontation. So they rode on together, and every time they passed a village or a farming settlement, Jaskier was keenly aware of the hate-filled glares and vicious epithets tossed in their wake.

“Is it just me,” he said, once they’d all settled down around the fire for dinner that night, “or are people getting more hostile, the further north we go?”

It didn’t escape his notice that both Eskel and Lambert flinched at his question. Even Aiden, who’d been dozing on the blanket beside Jaskier, seemed to wince at the question. Lambert muttered a string of curses that far surpassed anything the local serfs had been able to come up with that day.

“They’re all a bunch of fuckin’ assholes up here. I keep telling Vesemir that we ought to abandon Kaer Morhen for good, find another place to winter. Maybe in Toussaint. Weather’s nicer, it wouldn’t involve climbing a fucking mountain to get there, and people in the Duchy don’t seem to think Witchers are the absolute scum of the earth. Down there we’re just, y’know. Regular scum.”

“None of you are scum,” Jaskier said firmly. “And you’d think they’d appreciate you more here, in northern Kaedwen: this part of the Continent is overrun by monsters! King Henselt doesn’t seem at all fussed about protecting the peasantry here. He’s barely set foot from Ard Carraigh in a decade.”

Lambert shrugged, clearly uninterested in regional politics. He was crushing herbs to make up a draught for Aiden; the poor Cat had been battling a near-constant migraine since they’d emerged from that dirt-lined cell in Sherawedd.

Eskel had just returned from the river, and had set up a small fish-cleaning station to prepare the batch of fresh trout he’d caught for their dinner. Jaskier was looking forward to it. A good fry-up seemed just the ticket to lift everyone’s spirits.

“Humans have an instinctive fear-response to Witchers,” Aiden said. “It’s in their nature to hate us, little nightingale.” His tone suggested he was repeating this from some authority figure, perhaps an instructor at his Cat Witcher school. Eskel and Lambert nodded, as if they too had heard the same adage, perhaps from their own instructors. Jaskier blinked at all three of them in surprise.

“But…I’m human,” Jaskier pointed out, pitching his muttered, “mostly,” fairly low, though of course his Witcher companions all heard it. Lambert’s head snapped up, but he relaxed when Eskel waived him off.

“I’ve never been afraid of Witchers. When I was a boy, I’d always thought of you lot as something akin to the Redanian kingsguard, or the noble knights of Toussaint, or the berserker warriors of Skellige. You know: brave, stout-hearted men who wade into battle against monsters, ghouls and other unspeakable evils in defense of the innocent.”

Lambert snorted. “Who in the hell was feeding you that horseshit? Your old nan have a head injury, or something?”

“Not that I know of,” Jaskier murmured, realizing suddenly that he didn’t actually know who had first told him about Witchers. It just felt like he’d just always known about the Continent’s infamous monster-slayers, and valourized them alongside knights and noble guardsmen without a second thought.

“At any rate,” he said briskly, “having met and become, shall we say, intimately acquainted with real-life Toussaintini knights, Skellegan berserkers, and Redanian kingsguards, only Witchers have ultimately lived up to my boyhood fantasies.”

That made Lambert chortle. “All right, Eskel gets credit for that one, I guess,” he said. “Not sure I want to know how he embodied your ‘boyhood fantasies’ of Witchers, but…”

Jaskier blew a raspberry at him. “No, truthfully, you’re all exactly as brave and noble as I’d once thought. Perhaps moreso, considering how ungrateful the general public is for your hard work, and all your sacrifices.”

“Now you’re just trying to sweet-talk us,” Aiden smiled. He leaned over to nudge Jaskier’s hand in a silent demand for head-pats, and sighed happily when Jaskier did as demanded, smoothing his bandaged fingers gently over Aiden’s long black curls. “I am glad to meet at least one human who doesn’t hate and fear Witchers. It wearies the soul, sometimes,” he admitted, and shared a brief, speaking glance with Lambert.

“So how did you start travelling with Pretty Boy, anyway?” Lambert asked. He’d finished with his mortar and pestle, and was carefully pouring the mix of fragrant herbs into a teapot for steeping. “I mean, I guess if a human had to pick a Witcher to travel with, there are probably worse choices. A Bear would probably have killed you outright just for asking. But if you’d met a Griffin, a Cat, or any other Wolf, you’d’ve done all right. Hell, if you’d met Eskel, you two obviously would have been sucking each other’s cocks within the week, when you weren’t busy making doe-eyes at each other.”

“It took us a little over a month, for the record,” Jaskier muttered, sharing a small, private smile with Eskel at the memory. Perhaps they did look a bit doe-eyed.

“Anyway,” Lambert continued, “It’s some shit luck that you just happened to pick the most truculent, morose, self-hating bastard in the whole school to tag along with.”

“So I’m starting to realize,” Jaskier sighed, staring into the flames. He’d had the same thought himself, once he’d gotten to know Eskel a little: how differently would his life have turned out, if he’d met his beloved Witcher that day in Posada instead of Geralt?

“Geralt wasn’t that bad, you know,” he felt compelled to say. Given what Eskel had told him about Geralt’s tragic past—and it was tragic, Jaskier still wanted to weep whenever he thought of what his friend had endured—he knew Geralt had probably done his best to put up with a stubborn, foolhardy young bard who’d suddenly inserted himself into his existence. “And I didn’t make it easy for him,” Jaskier added.

Eskel had stopped to wash the fish guts off his hands and place the two spits of trout over the flames. He dropped down onto the log beside Jaskier, and pulled him into a one-armed hug.

“You were a good friend to him,” Eskel said, with the patient tone of someone who was prepared to repeat themselves a thousand times for the truth to sink in.

Jaskier shrugged, and cuddled up against Eskel, burying his face in his husband’s neck. Now that they were only a few weeks from Kaer Morhen, seeing Geralt again was starting to go from an abstract idea to concrete reality. And no matter how many times he’d imagined their reunion might go, he had a hard time picturing Geralt actually being happy to see him again. Showing up married to his suddenly-resurrected best friend, with Lambert and a Witcher from an enemy school in tow?

Jaskier was starting to think he’d get off lucky if all Geralt did was shout at him again.

“You’re nervous about seeing Pretty Boy again, huh?” Lambert asked.

“A little,” Jaskier said, his reply muffled against Eskel’s gambeson.

“Well, you’ve got us for backup,” Lambert said. Aiden touched his wrist, nodding, and Eskel made his own show of support by squeezing Jaskier a little closer and kissing his forehead.

Despite these warm reassurances, Jaskier could still feel his own fear and doubts about Geralt creeping over him. Like the approaching chill of winter, nothing seemed to withstand his ice-cold certainty that their forthcoming reunion was going to go very, very badly.

***

They reached Ard Carraigh and purchased an extra mount for Aiden, as well as a few pack mules and as many extra supplies as they could safely carry up the mountain. With so many unexpected mouths to feed, Eskel had reasoned, they'd need to bring as much as possible.

With Lambert and Aiden there to briefly distract Jaskier, Eskel was able to sneak away to a certain shop on the high street and make a covert purchase or two. Perhaps the gifts were a little premature, but if all went well, they’d be safely settled into Kaer Morhen by Yule. Eskel didn’t intend to be empty-handed on that day.

The first snows had already dusted the ground by the time they finally set out from the Kaedwini capital. By the time they reached the little village of Blaidd Gwyn a week later, proper winter had settled over the foothills of the Blue Mountains, and there was ice forming at the edges of the Gwenllech. If Eskel had been travelling alone on horseback, he wouldn’t have worried about making it safely to Kaer Morhen before the passes closed. Now, however, with Scorpion doubled-up carrying two riders, and Aiden still plagued by double-vision and migraines, they’d be moving at a snail’s pace up the mountain.

He and Lambert shared a quiet word about it as they all sat down to enjoy one last hot meal at the only tavern in Blaidd Gwyn.

“Ascent’s going to be risky,” Eskel admitted. He tried to dredge up a small smile of reassurance for Jaskier and Aiden’s sake, but they both looked a little unnerved.

“It’s risky as fuck,” Lambert corrected around his mouthful of stew. He jabbed his spoon in the vaguely northeastern direction of Mount Morhen. “Even if the passes are clear and wide-open as a sorceress’ cunt, Killer’s gonna be a bitch, as always. The horses and mules’ll do all right if the temperatures doesn't drop too far. But if we hit a bad storm, or there’s an avalanche, or if one of ’em breaks a leg—”

“Yes, well, let’s not dwell on all the negative possibilities.” Jaskier sounded more optimistic than he looked. “We’ll just have to keep an eye out, move quickly, and work together.”

“We’re still probably fucked,” Lambert predicted.

“My dear,” Aiden said, squeezing Lambert’s hand, “you have a remarkable ability to cast doubt on any venture.”

“Yeah, thanks, I work hard at it.” Lambert stuck his tongue out at Aiden, who slapped at his arm, and Eskel watched in amusement as his brother and the Cat shoved at each other a few more times before settling.

Jaskier was frowning down into his stew, and Eskel touched the back of his hand gently. “It will be alright. We can turn back if it looks too dangerous.”

“I know,” Jaskier sighed. “I just…I have a bad feeling, that’s all.”

“Your bard normally good at prognosticating?” Lambert asked, but they were all feeling the same uneasy, unspecified sense of dread about climbing the mountain. But they didn’t have a choice: press on to Kaer Morhen, or journey all the way back to winter at Ard Carraigh, or even return to Ban Ard until the spring. It would probably have been a more sensible option. But every time Eskel thought about turning back, he pictured Vesemir and Geralt sitting with the others in the near-empty great hall, surrounded by ghosts and eyeing the empty benches where Lambert and Eskel would normally sit.

He couldn’t let his adoptive father and brother go another winter believing that he was dead, or that Lambert might have also perished somewhere on the Path.

“I think we’ll just have to push on,” Eskel said softly, but there was steel in his decisive tone. “We’ll attempt the mountain, and hope the Fates are kind.”

“The Fates being kind to a Witcher? Yeah, that’ll be the day,” Lambert grumbled.

Jaskier put his bandaged hand over Eskel’s, and they shared a soft smile. A warm light of hope flickered through their bond, and Eskel flexed his fingers just so he could hear the dull metallic ‘ping’ of their rings touching.

“Oh, I wouldn’t underestimate the Fates,” Eskel said. “Sometimes they can be very kind indeed.”

***

Eskel had cause to question those words over the course of the following week as they attempted to scale Mount Morhen.

It was, as always, an exhausting slog of an ascent up the first half of the trail. They had to follow the west bank of the Gwenllech for several days until they’d reached an ancient ford. The fast, treacherous river slowed a bit around a manmade sandbar, constructed by a much earlier generation of Witchers, and while the currents were still strong, it was possible for their party to wade through freezing waist-deep water. The crossing itself took an inordinate amount of time. Before crossing, they had to unpack all of the animals and work out a conveyor line of ropes to haul all of their supplies and gear across safely. As it was, they still lost a whole bag of flour to the river, which made everyone grimace. It was already shaping up to be a lean winter, and they couldn’t afford to lose more of their precious foodstuffs.

The horses and beasts of burden approached the ford nervously. Only Eskel’s loyal Scorpion had made the trip before, so Eskel led the stallion across to the other shore as an example to the others. The mules, Lambert’s horse (named ‘Horse’, of course) and Aiden’s dappled palfrey Bella followed along nervously. Eskel waded back and forth along the line several times, and then stood in the freezing water until the people and animals all reached the other shore safely. The last mule, a little older and less sure-footed than the others, stumbled a bit in the deepest part of the crossing. Eskel had to physically lift and hold the beast up until she found her footing again.

Jaskier was waiting for him there on the other shore, bright-eyed and alert from adrenaline, already redressed and warm again from the fire Aiden had built. He was a sight for sore eyes, and Eskel drank him in, dragging him close for a kiss that chased off some of the chill of the Gwenllech.

After that, Eskel shucked his wet leggings and huddled with Jaskier under a blanket, and waited for his teeth to stop chattering.

“Well, that’s done! At least the hard part’s behind us, right?” Jaskier said brightly, which made both Eskel and Lambert wince.

“Uh, no,” Eskel said. “Trail’s cut so that we’ll have to cross the river two or three more times before we reach the base of the Killer.”

Jaskier went pale under his rosy autumn tan. “You’ve mentioned this ‘Killer’ before. I sincerely hope the name is just some bit of whimsical Witcher hyperbole.”

“Wish it was, Lark,” Eskel said, just starting to feel his toes again. “The Killer makes a few looping approaches to Kaer Morhen. Sections of it were used as a survival course for young Adepts. There’s lots of ravines, jumping and climbing obstacles, monster dens…it’s claimed dozens of lives, over the years.”

“And that’s the only approach to your winter keep? Lambert,” Jaskier said, pitching his voice louder, “I’m with you. The lot of you should pack up and move your winter home to Toussaint. This is madness!”

“We used to have a wide graded road, with actual bridges across the river,” Lambert explained. “You could get from Blaidd Gwyn to Kaer Morhen in, what, three days?” He didn’t wait for Eskel’s nod to continue. “But after the fuckin’ Sacking, we collapsed all the bridges, and wiped out all the roads with controlled avalanches and mudslides. Then we cut a new branch down from the Killer, designed so that if you wanted to come up to the keep, you could only do it single-file on horseback. Not sure how they got fucking siege weapons up to the keep the first time. I think mages must’ve portaled them in,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

Vesemir had been the only survivor of the Pogrom, and Eskel had never dared press him for any details of how a mob of humans and a few mages had overrun a keep full of Witchers and Witchers-in-training. Hundreds of humans had died in the attempt, but ultimately they’d all but finished off the School of the Wolf.

Jaskier stroked his side in comfort, and brushrd a soft kiss to Eskel’s scarred cheek.

“We should get moving,” Aiden said, rising with a stretch. “I smell snow on the way.”

“Right,” Eskel agreed. He gave Jaskier’s hand a little squeeze, and then threw off the blanket, re-dressing in the dry clothing he’d placed in one of their oiled transport sacks. “Should be able to keep going until after midnight, long as the weather holds.”

“Great,” Jaskier said, half-heartedly.

***

The worst of the winter snows held off until they reached the south end of the Morhen Valley a week later. The Killer had been exactly as awful as described, but they’d all made it safely up the trail with only minor injuries.

But their good luck didn’t hold forever.

The storm came down on them too fast. A light snowfall throughout the morning had turned into a genuine blizzard by late afternoon, and by sunset the group was wading through whiteout conditions. The wind came howling down from the peaks of Mount Morhen, gathering speed as it swept across the valley floor. The vicious wind lashed snow and ice at the group of three men and their animals as they made their way along the lip of a narrow ravine. It was stronger than even the Witchers, strong enough to steal all sound and the breath from their lungs.

To Jaskier, it felt almost as if the wind were trying to push them back, blow them off course, and keep them from Kaer Morhen.

Lambert and Eskel acted quickly as soon as the blizzard hit. They created a lead rope and tied all of the people and animals to it, ensuring that no one would falter in the snow and get left behind. Eskel was loathe to leave Jaskier’s side, but he had to wade up to the head of the line and use huge bursts of Ignii to cut a trail through the thick drifts of snow. It was physically and mentally exhausting work, testing even Eskel’s vast reserves of Chaos. But he continued, aware that they had to reach shelter before the storm swallowed them whole.

Lambert had been right. The Fates were not kind to Witchers, or to the humans who loved them.

At the end of the single-file line of horses, mules and people, Jaskier was beginning to flag. He’d kept up with the days of grueling travel up the mountain, just as committed as his Witcher companions to get to the keep as quickly as possible. As the weather grew colder and his breathing grew more laboured the higher they climbed, Jaskier’s strength thinned out along with the atmosphere.

After a long day spent wading through knee-deep snow, the whiteout conditions had proved too much. It had sapped the last of his strength and he kept falling, dragging on the rope line.

Aiden detached himself a few times to try to help Jaskier get up. The last time, he found the human had stopped shivering. Jaskier’s bone-white, blue-tinged face made him call out to Lambert up the line, but the wind stole his breath away.

He pointed to the rope, and yelled to Jaskier that he had to go up the line and check with Lambert. “You can't keep doing this!" he yelled to the bard. “We have to find shelter!”

He made sure Jaskier had stumbled back to his feet and resumed his slow, faltering pace before turning away to work back up the rope line to Lambert. By this point, Aiden was dizzy and his head was pounding. The awful double-vision from his eye injury still plagued him, and Aiden was cold and exhausted, although he was in a better condition than poor Jaskier.

“The human!” he bellowed into Lambert’s ear. “He’s fading. We have to get to shelter!”

“WHAT?” Lambert hollered back, catching only two or three words despite his enhanced hearing.

“JASKIER!” Aiden yelled, almost into Lambert’s ear. “HE WON’T MAKE IT!”

“I’LL GET ESKEL!” Lambert yelled back, and then made his own slow, torturous way up the second half of the line through the thick snow, bypassing the shaggy mules and miserable, shivering horses until he reached Eskel, who was facing into the storm and still determinedly blasting away at the snow in their path.

When Lambert reached him and yelled something about “YOUR HUMAN!” into the wind, Eskel felt his heart drop. Something was wrong: he couldn’t quite feel Jaskier’s presence through the bond. It felt oddly muffled, like grass covered in snow.

He left Lambert to take over blasting Ignii and hurried back down the line, passing an exhausted-looking Aiden. With every step, his heart swelled up with dread. That wrong-wrong-wrong feeling echoed through him like a disembodied voice in a gaping chasm.

When he finally fumbled his way down to the end of the lead line, he found nothing but a dangling bit of cut rope.

Jaskier was gone.

***

Jaskier stumbled and fell again, stumbled and fell, again and again. It felt like he was moving underwater. The lead rope dug into his waist, and he was dragged along for a few steps before he managed to shuffle to his feet, only to fall again.

He’d never known cold like this. He’d thought he’d been freezing in the dungeons beneath Oxenfurt, but even the chill of wet, bare stone was nothing compared to this icy hellscape. He could feel the wind tearing at him, freezing the tears on his face, even his eyeballs. The only blessing was that he also felt fuzzy-minded from the cold, like he’d been sipping from Lambert’s flask of awful pepper vodka since the storm started.

Aiden was there for just a moment, or so he thought. He registered only the green flash of the Cat Witcher’s eyes in the dark, endless snow, the warmth of his hand circling Jaskier’s bare wrist below his rabbit fur-lined gloves. He’d yelled something at Jaskier, but the wind had whipped it away.

Aiden yelled at him again, dragging him back to his feet. He thought he heard, “Can't keep doing this!” and Jaskier nodded. No, he couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t keep going. Everyone else—Eskel, Lambert, and Aiden—might die because of the weak, stupid human dragging them down.

The mule ahead of him was struggling too, swaying and stumbling; Jaskier’s weight on the poor creature’s rope threatened to take her down too. If she did, she’d never get up. But she had to. She carried the supplies they needed so desperately, the food that would keep everyone alive through to the spring thaw. The mule had a purpose; what purpose did Jaskier serve? He didn’t carry badly-needed supplies; he was a burden, if anything. A burden to everyone, Eskel most of all.

Why is it whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days, it's you, shoveling it?

The words echoed in his head, battering against him like the whirling snow. As if Geralt were throwing those poisoned words in his face as Jaskier struggled to put one foot in front of the other.

If Jaskier just went away, wouldn’t that be easier? He could sit down and rest, let the others continue on. Eskel might mourn him, but…

If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.

If he gave up now, he’d never have to see his oldest friend glare at him with icy contempt. And…the mule would live.

The mental calculation made sense to Jaskier’s freezing, exhaustion-fogged mind. He just wanted to rest. He was so cold.

He was done being a burden.

Jaskier fumbled for the dagger at his belt—the one Eskel had insisted he wear, given the sorts of monsters that made their home on the mountain—and cut himself free from the rope. He wouldn’t need to go far. No one, not even a Witcher, could find anyone in this blizzard. He just had to step a few feet off the trail, and find somewhere to sit.

Then he could rest.

It wouldn’t take very long. Not in this brutally cold world.

***

Eskel stared at the cut line in his hands, trying to understand what had happened. Was someone following them? Had someone taken Jaskier? The line had been cut but he couldn’t think of any alternative explanation…unless Jaskier had cut it himself.

He searched the immediate area, walking in circles around the mule train as far as he could risk without losing his bearings. There was no sign of Jaskier, and eventually Eskel had to move up the line to tell Lambert and Aiden that Jaskier was gone. They were both horrified, but pragmatic.

“WE GOTTA FIND SHELTER!” Lambert howled into his ear. “WE DON’T, WE ALL DIE!”

Eskel couldn’t argue with his brother’s logic. But he also couldn’t abandon Jaskier to the elements. “I have to find him! I’ll…I’ll bring him back to the cave.”

“And if he’s dead?”

“Then I’ll bring back his body.”

He headed off, thankful for both the bond and his sharpened Witcher senses. He picked up Jaskier’s trail at the end of the mule train and moved slowly, systematically, through the winter darkness and whirling snow. He refused to give into panic although all he could think was, I did this. I took a human on the Path, I’m the one who pushed to ascend the mountain too late in the season. If Jaskier is dead, it’s because of me.

Eskel searched for what felt like hours, following Jaskier’s faint tracks until they were buried in the endless snow, and then his scent, until it too faded. Finally, he was left with nothing but the spellbond, that flickering tendril of Chaos that bound him to Jaskier. He could still feel Jaskier out there, at the other end of the spellbond, but in the whirling snow he couldn’t tell which direction he was facing, let alone where Jaskier might be.

Maybe, Eskel thought, he should just trust his heart with this one.

He closed his eyes and dropped to his knees, falling into something like his normal meditative state. He reached out with his heart, looking for Jaskier, fumbling along the invisible string of Chaos binding them together. He tugged on that thread, followed it in his mind’s eye until…there.

He stood up, and headed off into the howling maw of the storm.

Cutting a trail through the snow felt like wading through tar, but he kept going, kept following the thread even as he felt the spellbond shiver and weaken. That was Jaskier growing weaker, somewhere out there in the white oblivion. Eskel could feel his fragile human heart slowing, slowing, slowing in the cold. Eskel picked up his pace, blasting again and again with Ignii to melt some of the snow in his path, determined to reach Jaskier in time.

If he was too late, they’d both perish on this mountain. Because Eskel had already decided: he was not going back without Jaskier.

He finally found his little lark just as the bond started to shiver and shimmer, as if it were evaporating in front of him. Jaskier was slumped in the hollow of a tree stump, sheltered slightly from the wind but nearly buried by the snow piling up around him. Eskel tugged Jaskie’s scarf aside to check his pulse—his fingers are freezing, he knows, he knows—and Jaskier’s eyelids fluttered faintly. Jaskier was blue with cold, freezing to the touch. And his pulse was just a faint, thready beat under Eskel’s thumb. He was almost gone.

Eskel opened his jacket, baring his teeth against the frigid rush of air, and tucked Jaskier up close against his chest. He pulled off his gloves with his teeth and wrapped his hand around any bare skin he could reach without exposing Jaskier to the wind, and sank down to his knees.

“Please don’t go,” he begged, over and over again. “Don’t leave me.”

The wind felt so cold on his face, and Eskel realized with a shock that he was crying. But that was impossible. He couldn’t cry. No Witcher could: it was a physiological impossibility. Their tear ducts were cut off and burned out by the Grasses.

Regardless, there were tears in his eyes. He could feel them like ice on his cheeks even as he rose and started to stumble back through the snow, carrying Jaskier in his arms like a bride.

“Don’t go!” he yelled into the wind. It might as well have been a whisper, for all the gods seemed to care. He prayed to the Trieskela anyway, prayed to the goddesses of fate and fortune, begging them to spare the human who held his heart in his battered, bandaged hands.

***

It seemed to take hours for Eskel to work his way back to the trail Lambert and Aiden had cut
through the snow.

Aiden had scored the bark high up on some of the trees, giving Eskel a faint trail to follow. He didn’t dare to stop and check to see if Jaskier was still breathing. If he stopped and found that Jaskier had already gone, Eskel knew he wouldn’t bother to keep going.

He smelled smoke and followed the scent to an old cave that had once marked the Adept portion of the Killer, the so-called ‘less treacherous’ section that had still claimed the lives of a half-dozen boys every year.

He carried Jaskier inside and stood for a moment, his body almost unable to process the warm air inside the cavern. Lambert and Aiden had staked the animals just inside the entrance to the cave, where they’d keep each other warm and their large bodies could radiate some heat into the depths of the cave where the humans huddled. He heard Lambert say something to him, but Eskel couldn’t hear what it was. He knew there was a fire, but his face and hands were numb. It was only when Aiden touched his cheek that he realized Aiden was talking to him.

“Let us take him,” Aiden was saying.

Eskel tramped down the reluctance that welled up over handing over Jaskier’s limp form. He wasn’t ready to let him go. He knew he’d never be ready.

But handing over Jaskier was necessary. And Eskel had always tried to do whatever was necessary, no matter how much it hurt.

He passed Jaskier over to Aiden, avoiding so much as a glance at Jaskier’s white, motionless face. He’d seen far too many frozen bodies on this mountain. Too many wide, sightless eyes. If he didn’t look at Jaskier’s face, he could still pretend that there was still life and warmth and breath in the man he loved.

So Eskel didn’t look. He knew that Jaskier was already gone.

He sank down to his knees, and stared into the flames. It felt natural to let the numbness creep over him like frost on a windowpane, until his insides were frozen solid, and nothing else could hurt him. Just like nothing more could hurt Jaskier now. Not even Eskel.

He was more than half-broken open with grief and guilt when Aiden said, “Eskel, could you come get Jaskier warm while we make soup?”

And suddenly he could smell the smoke from the fire, and the snow, and the cold damp scent of the cave. And Jaskier. Gods, he could smell Jaskier, that honeyed-citrus scent that would always remind him of the hot summer sun and Jaskier, grinning back at him

He reached out with trembling fingers to touch Jaskier’s face. His little lark’s eyelids fluttered, but stayed shut tight. He was still so cold. And Aiden had told Eskel what to do. So he didn’t waste any more time, and stripped them both bare as the day they were born. He slid into one of the bedrolls laid out by the fire and gathered Jaskier up close, and coiled around him like a dragon’s tail. He would will whatever life and warmth remained in his tired old body to Jaskier. He’d…gods. He’d give him anything. Everything.

Jaskier groaned. He wasn’t conscious, but drifting closer to the surface now—and again Eskel felt that strange, impossible burn of tears again. He buried his face in Jaskier’s neck and rocked them together.

He lost more time, then. It grew darker and darker outside the mouth of their cave, until it was impossible to tell if it was night, or if the snow was piling up high enough to cover the entrance and block the light, or both.

Lambert pressed a bowl of watery soup into his hands with a muttered, “Eat up, you fucker—not gonna let you starve on my watch”. Eskel let go of Jaskier just long enough to eat, pausing every so often to dribble the salty broth past Jaskier’s chapped lips. Every time the bard coughed and swallowed, it felt like a benediction.

When the soup was finally gone, Eskel eased down onto his back and dragged Jaskier on top of him, along with every fur and blanket Lambert and Aiden could find. He and Jaskier were pressed chest-to-chest, just like they would usually sleep together on the Path. The steady thump-thump-thump of Jaskier’s heartbeat was still his favourite of all Jaskier’s songs.

Eskel made long, slow passes up Jaskier’s bare back, trying to push more warmth into him as the blizzard howled outside. It was dark and smoky in the cave, but Eskel could see well enough with the firelight. Lambert and Aiden were cuddled up together in their own bedroll, and it felt like a peaceful moment in the eye of the storm. He was so damn grateful for it. He’d begged and pleaded and made demands of the Fates before, much to his shame. But the Trieskela had been very kind to him today.

Jaskier would live.

He would.

***

Eskel woke with a jerk. The fire had burned down low, and the howling wind had faded. The storm seemed to have passed, but aside from the echoing heartbeats of the pack animals and the men sheltering together in the small cave, Eskel couldn’t register any sound at all.

But something had woken him.

He rubbed Jaskier’s shoulders, not expecting a response. The lark was still out cold, though he was much warmer now, and his skin had lost that horrible blue-white pallor. Eskel kissed Jaskier’s temple before he could even register the impulse, and then kissed his forehead again, more firmly this time.

He was finding it hard to separate himself from Jaskier, and not just because it was difficult to peel their damp skin apart. But there was something happening outside, and he had to figure out if it was a threat.

Lambert was stirring too, and untangling himself from his Cat with soft curses. Eskel kept his eyes averted until they’d both pulled on their leggings and their gambesons. He caught the white gleam of Lambert’s smile in the dark.

“Fucksake Eskel, you always act like someone’s maiden aunt, and I know you’ve dipped your wick in some pretty wild—”

“Shhh!” Eskel hissed, mostly because that odd rumbling noise outside had gotten louder. What was that? An avalanche? Had the Fates spared their lives in the storm last night only to send half of Mount Morhen crashing down on top of them in the morning?

Aiden heard it too. The Cat was awake, and his retina flare—brighter than a Wolf’s, somehow—flashed like Lambert’s white teeth in the dark cave. But he lay prone and wrapped up in the bedroll, as if bracing for…

“Oh holy fuck, that’s our rescue!” Lambert whooped, startling Horse and the mules, and making Scorpion dance a few steps to the side. Eskel chased his brother to the cave’s entrance. It only took a flash of Ignii and a quick burst of Aard to melt the ice that had formed over the mouth of their little shelter.

The world outside was a sparkling, blinding void of white snow and blue sky. The blizzard had covered the entire pass with only the very tops of the trees still visible. Everything else was buried under at least six feet of fresh powder. It was disorienting not to be able to read a landscape he’d known since his long-vanished boyhood, but Eskel could still appreciate the startlingly beautiful sight of a world swept clean by nature. The rocks and soil and trees and grasses would be sketched in soon enough as the snow settled, but for the whole mountain was a dazzling blanket of pristine white under a blue sky.

He heard (and felt) that rumbling again, and now he recognized the noise: it was a far-off blast of Aard. Definitely a rescue party. Only the Witchers of Kaer Morhen lived on this side of the mountain, which meant that their brothers were coming to their aid.

Lambert whooped again, and Eskel’s rusty laugh echoed up and down the snow-shrouded mountain pass.

They were saved.

Aiden had managed to extricate himself from his bedroll and pull on his braies by the time Eskel made his way back. The Cat stopped him at the mouth of the cave.

“Your nightingale is still asleep,” Aiden said, holding his hands up to prevent Eskel from barreling straight past him in his eagerness to check on Jaskier. “What was the noise?”

Aiden’s good eye was narrowed to a tiny vertical slit of green-gold against the bright sunshine. The rest of his face was one giant matching squint. However, it wasn’t really the sun that seemed to be bothering the Cat. His body was one tight line of coiled tension.

Eskel gave him a reassuring clap him on the shoulder, just as he would have done with Lambert. Or Tolbert, Hemrik, or Geralt.

“It’s a search party from the castle,” he explained, unable to tell if Aiden was relieved or troubled by the news. Safe to bet on the latter, Eskel reasoned, given they both knew exactly how the surviving Wolves (and Bears, and Griffins) felt about the Cats. “They’ll get here in a couple of hours. Less, if we clear a path out to meet them.”

“My Signs are too weak,” Aiden admitted with a shake of his head. The motion sent the gold rings in his ear dancing and sparkling in the sun. “You and Lambert will need to clear the way. It may be wise to let Lambert greet your brothers first. He can warn them about the undead Wolf, the bard, and the stray Cat he’s bringing home.”

It was sound advice. If Eskel suddenly appeared to the other Witchers, he’d be staring down the hilt of at least five or six silver swords in a heartbeat. Aiden was likely to face the same cold reception as soon as the others caught sight of his Cat medallion.

“They’ll be civil to you, once they get the lay of the land,” Eskel promised. “Lambert’s the only one who would’ve been an asshole to your face, and he’s already on your side.”

“Fantastic. Only took me a decade or two to win him over,” Aiden muttered, trying to match Eskel’s joking tone. But his face was still all pinched up in worry. “But what about Vesemir? Or the White Wolf? Lambert wasn’t sure how they’d react.”

“They’ll be surprised, but they’ll get over it.” He hoped so, at least. He knew Geralt wouldn’t say much to Aiden regardless, and there was no point in predicting Vesemir’s reaction. Either the old man would turn Aiden away as soon as he got a good look at his medallion, or he’d allow Aiden into the keep, but only under close supervision.

All right, so ‘civil’ might be a bit optimistic, but Eskel didn’t want to offer Aiden false reassurance. He had his own battle ahead.

Lambert’s furious disbelief at his ‘resurrection’ had set a worrying precedent, and Eskel realized that he might have to fight for his life after an hour of blasting a path through several tonnes of fresh snow.

“Will you stay here with Jaskier?” he asked Aiden. “I don’t want him there, in case the others—”

“Of course, my friend,” Aiden said with an understanding grimace. “We’ll wait here for Lambert’s signal.” He squeezed past Eskel to go and work out a plan with Lambert. Judging by the concussive bursts of Aard and the high-pitched cackling that drifted into the cave, the youngest Wolf had already started to blast away the snowdrifts.

Eskel finally gave in to the deep, instinctive urge to set eyes (and hands) on Jaskier again, and confirm one more time that his love had made it through last night’s storm. He also had to ask Jaskier what had happened. Not now, maybe, but later. (Goddesses be good, let there be a later). Once Eskel finally had Jaskier tucked up safely under piles of soft furs in his—possibly their—bed, back in Kaer Morhen, he could ask. By then he might have found a way to live with whatever explanation Jaskier had to offer.

He knew Jaskier had cut the line. The lark had drawn out his dagger, and deliberately sliced through the rope connecting him to Eskel and the others. He’d wandered off alone into the howling void, and Eskel still didn’t understand why.

Jaskier was still sleeping soundly, and Eskel was loathe to wake him. He needed the rest. But Jaskier also needed food and water, and Eskel had to check his wrappings to make sure his poor fingers hadn’t turned black with frostbite.

Eskel didn’t want to wake Jaskier up while looming over him. He stripped off his gambeson and lay down bare-chested next to Jaskier, and pulled him into his arms. The lark might not need the extra body heat anymore, but the spell would enable him to recover faster with more skin contact. And Jaskier needed that now more than ever.

“Jaskier? Sweetheart? Can you wake up? It’s morning now.”

Eskel hoped the rumble of his voice would ease Jaskier gently back to the waking world. And, perhaps more futilely, he hoped Jaskier might find some comfort in the familiar press of Eskel’s body.

“Storm’s over. We survived,” Eskel whispered, relieved when Jaskier finally started to shift and stretch. “They’ve sent a search party from Kaer Morhen. Lamb and I are going to dig our way through the snow to meet them. But I need to check your fingers first, make sure there’s no damage.”

“You’re still obsessing over my fingers?” Jaskier mumbled. His voice was still scratchy from sleep and the ordeal of survival. “You never—” he paused to yawn, “Never could leave them alone.”

“No,” Eskel agreed. “Never could.”

He moved to sit up, but Jaskier squeezed the arm Eskel had wrapped around his ribs. He stilled, and there was silence for a moment, broken only by the faint far-off rumblings of Lambert’s Aard.

“I almost got you killed, didn’t I?” Jaskier whispered.

“Almost got us both killed,” Eskel corrected him. He’d intended to save his questions for later, but Jaskier sounded so small and unsure, and Eskel had to know. “Why…why did you cut the line?”

“I don’t—” Jaskier began, then fell silent, wrinkling his forehead in confusion. “I don’t really remember. It just seemed like a good idea, to cut myself free and wander off. I was thinking ‘oh, at least the mule will be fine’.”

Eskel felt his eyebrows climb up almost to his hairline. “The mule?”

“Yeah, the little old lady at the end of the line. I kept falling and dragging her down. Didn’t want to let both of us die.”

Eskel had no idea what to say to that. He’d heard stories about humans doing very strange things when suffering from hypothermia.

“I…I kept hearing Geralt’s voice,” Jaskier finally added, perhaps sensing that Eskel needed a better explanation. “It was an echo of what he’d said to me on the mountain back in Caingorn. ‘If life could give me one blessing…’ Not sure why, but I kept hearing it.”

“Your mind was playing tricks on you,” Eskel said finally, although he wondered if there wasn’t some darker, more malevolent force at play. He’d expected their late-season attempt to climb the mountain would be fraught with difficulties, but it also felt as if there was something else working against them. Something deliberately trying to keep them away from Kaer Morhen.

He shivered at the idea, and held Jaskier closer.

“I…I had my own moments of doubt,” Eskel confessed, covering Jaskier’s hand with his own. The ugly black rings clinked softly together in the echoing cave. “After I found you, I couldn’t bear to check to see if you were still breathing while I carried you back to camp. I was certain that if you were dead, I wouldn’t want to get up again.”

Jaskier made a low, wounded noise in the back of his throat and squeezed Eskel tighter. “Eskel, you cannot think like that!”

“Says the man who was going to sacrifice himself for a mule.”

That made Jaskier smile, and he shook his head. “I can’t explain it. I’m just grateful you came for me. I love you, you big stupid Witcher,” he said, eyes shining with tears.

“Gods, I love you too,” Eskel sighed, wrapping his arms around Jaskier. His heart felt swollen, overflowing with too much emotion.

He kissed Jaskier then, and Eskel could feel the love they felt for one another flowing through the bond.

They’d be all right. As long as they could make it safely to Kaer Morhen, everything would work out just fine.

***

Chapter Text

It took the rest of the morning to clear a path toward the other Witchers through the waist-deep snow. Eskel tirelessly cast Ignii over and over again to melt down the snowpack, while Lambert followed behind and used Aard to shatter the ice and cut a wider trail for the horses and mules. They both worked like demons, each determined to get their lovers somewhere safe and warm.

When they could hear the shouts of their rescuers from the other side of the final snow-blocked pass, Eskel cast one final blast of Ignii, and then scouted around for a place where he could conceal himself from the other Witchers when they finally pushed through their end of the ice-encrusted pass. “I’ll stay out of sight until you can explain.”

“Great,” said Lambert. “I got no fucking idea how I’m supposed do that.” Eskel smiled at his brother’s grousing as he retreated up the channel they’d cleared. He ducked out of sight behind a tall snowbank, within range to hear every word Lambert would exchange with their rescuers.

He crouched down and listened to the rumble of the other Witchers blasting through the blocked passage, smiling when he heard Coën’s shout of, “Lambert, you asshole, we thought you were dead!” and the rumbling assent of two of the Bear Witchers, Hemrik and Everard.

“You damned fool! Whatever possessed you to try the mountain trail so late in the season?”

That was Vesemir, and Eskel raised an eyebrow at the raw emotion in his old mentor’s voice. Vesemir usually restricted his displays of affection to wordless pat on the shoulder, or a gruff, Well done. Right now, he sounded raw and almost desperate, as if he wanted to hug Lambert and throttle him at the same time.

Evidently the hug won out. Eskel heard Lambert make an undignified squeak of surprise, followed by the sound of Vesemir thumping him on the back.

“I, uh, had my reasons,” Lambert said, with only half his normal defensiveness. He seemed a little unnerved by Vesemir’s unprecedented display of emotion, but also quietly pleased.

Finally, Eskel heard the rumble of Geralt’s familiar voice. “We saw three others with you on the trail.”

“Uh, yeah,” Lambert said, “About that. Look, uh, someone give me a medallion, okay? Or, something silver. Don’t want you to think I’m a fucking doppler or bewitched.”

There was a soft scrape—someone removing a silver sword from a scabbard—and a moment of silence as they tested Lambert’s response to the silver blade.

“Just…hear me out before you react, all right? You’re gonna think I’ve gone nuts, and maybe I have. But, look, a friend of mine got himself kidnapped by a sorceress working for the Redanian crown. I tracked him south to Shaerrawedd Forrest. The sorceress was keeping him sealed up in a crypt at the old Elven burial grounds there. You know, the one with all the underground tombs?”

There was a general murmur of assent from the Witchers. Everyone had worked at least one wraith contract in Shaerrawedd. It was practically a rite of passage for new freshly-minted Witchers, when the schools had still been in operation.

Geralt, of course, was the one to ask, “What ‘friend’ of yours did the sorceress kidnap?” He left the implications of the question--the only friends you have are here at Kaer Morhen-- unsaid.

“Aiden,” Lambert said bluntly. “I told you and Eskel about him a couple of winters ago, remember? That night we had that bad batch of White Gull?”

Geralt grunted in assent. They’d all nursed a headache for days after that ill-advised night, and Eskel recalled how Lambert had told some slurred, disjointed story about a Cat he’d run into on a contract. Geralt had asked if he’d caught fleas. Eskel had laughed at the jest, but even three sheets to the wind, he remembered the look of hurt that had flashed across Lambert’s face.

“Yeah,” Lambert said mulishly. “A couple other Cats had heard the Redanians were paying money for information about the White Wolf. They wanted to know where Geralt was wintering. These Cats happened to know that Aiden and I were acquainted, and they thought he might know how to get to Kaer Morhen. It seemed like an easy payday, so the Cats captured Aiden and sold him to the sorceress. She kept him locked away down in the Elven crypt for three fucking weeks. He lost an eye because of it.”

There was a shocked silence.

“Fuck,” Geralt finally said, and the other Witchers hmmm’d in response. Eskel knew they were probably thinking about their own friends or lovers out on the Path, wondering who else might have gotten rounded up and tortured for information about Geralt and Kaer Morhen.

“What did your Cat tell the sorceress?” Vesemir demanded. He sounded coldly furious, all the earlier warmth and relief at Lambert’s survival stripped from his voice. “Does this ‘friend’ of yours know how to find Kaer Morhen?”

“Fuck no!” Lambert shouted. “Of course not! Aiden didn’t know anything—he’s never even met Geralt! He couldn’t tell them anything about where the Wolf likes to winter. And I never told him anything about Kaer Morhen, because I knew you’d fucking lose your shit if I ever brought a Cat to your door.”

“But you have,” said Hemrik, one of the Bears. He sounded reluctant to get involved with what was clearly an internal dispute amongst the last three living Wolves, but also knew that someone had to point out the obvious. “The Cat is one of the three riders we saw?”

“Yeah,” Lambert said, sounding tired. “Figured, since he lost an eye for us, least we could do was offer him a place to heal up for the winter.”

Another murmur of assent. Not even Vesemir tried to argue that point. Geralt was the one who eventually asked, “And the other two?”

“Aiden wasn’t alone in the crypt,” Lambert said, and Eskel approved: better to explain everything step-by-step, as emotions were already running high. “The Redanians had Geralt’s bard.”

Geralt sucked in a breath. “Jaskier?”

“Yeah,” Lambert said, pushing on. “King’s spymaster had him arrested last winter, I guess. He, um, got away—” Eskel was probably the only one who’d noticed Lambert’s moment of hesitation—“and they recaptured him at Ban Ard. They kept him down in the crypt with Aiden for a couple of days. Anyway, I killed the guards and got the two of them out of there. But then the fucking sorceress showed up, and everything went to hell. And…okay, this is the part you’re not going to believe.” Lambert drew a deep breath. “Eskel’s alive. He showed up and fought the sorceress in Shaerrawedd.”

It went dead silent in the mountain pass, with only birdsong and rustle of the wind. “What?” Vesemir asked, in a voice Eskel had never heard the old Witcher use before.

“Look, I didn’t believe it at first either!” Lambert said quickly. “I thought he was a fucking doppler, almost slit his throat until that bard of Geralt’s pointed out he was wearing a silver medallion. It is Eskel, I swear! He said he left Kaer Morhen after you didn’t show up winter before last, and it took him more than a year to track you all the way to Cintra! According to Eskel, he was down in Sodden last winter when that Leshy showed up here. Whatever—or whoever—that thing was, it wasn’t Eskel.”

Eskel heard the crunch of snow—Geralt’s footsteps—and then the sound of Lambert gasping for breath. “That is not possible,” Geralt growled. “Eskel’s dead. I ran a fucking silver sword through his heart. He is dead,” Geralt repeated firmly, though his voice cracked a little at the end, allowing a tiny sliver of emotion to shine through.

Eskel sprinted down the path through the snow, skidding to a stop when he reached the group of Witchers. Coën, Vesemir and the two Bears were all staring at Geralt, who was holding Lambert up off the ground by the throat. He’d never seen Geralt look so furious. Or so devastated.

Geralt tensed, and turned. He dropped Lambert like a sack of potatoes, and didn’t spare him so much as another glance. He could only look at Eskel. Geralt’s face was devoid of any emotion, although Eskel could hear how his usual steady heartbeat was thump-thump-thumping away far too quickly.

“Lambert’s telling the truth,” Eskel said. He used his teeth to tug off one of his fingerless leather gloves, and then fished out his medallion from where it was tucked up inside his gambeson. He held up the silver medallion, making sure all of the other Witchers could clearly see him holding it tightly in his bare hand. “Whatever you thought you killed, Wolf, it wasn’t me.”

Geralt stalked over to Eskel. His face was twisted up into a feral snarl that made Eskel want to shrink back, but Eskel held his ground.

“I ought to tear your throat out,” Geralt growled. Every muscle in his body seemed poised to spring, and Eskel knew Geralt wasn’t going to listen to reason. He was ready to flip over his medallion and ask Geralt to compare the initials on his own, and then caught sight of a second silver chain around his brother’s neck.

Geralt’s own Wolf School medallion, identical to the one in Eskel’s hand, gleamed against the dark breastplate that formed Geralt’s strange new black cuirass. But there was a second medallion hidden under Geralt’s armor, and it didn’t take any great leap of logic for Eskel to conclude the obvious: that medallion must have belonged to the imposter Geralt had killed.

“Wolf, just listen to me,” Eskel said, keeping his voice low and steady. “Look at that second medallion. It’s a fake.”

This seemed to reach Geralt where logic and denial wouldn’t. He stilled, and then pulled out ‘Eskel’s’ medallion from underneath his unfamiliar black armor.

Geralt compared his own medallion to the one he’d taken off his dead brother’s body. Everyone else was silent. Why had Vesemir allowed Geralt to hang on to Eskel’s medallion? By all rights, it should be hanging on the Tree of the Dead back at Kaer Morhen by now, not tucked away inside Geralt’s shirt.

The front of the two medallions were exactly the same, and both appeared to be a perfect match to the one Eskel was holding. But when Geralt flipped both medallions over, he went absolutely still.

The back of the Leshen’s medallion was smooth and unmarked, lacking the worn initials carved into Geralt’s and Eskel’s (and Lambert’s) own.

Eskel flipped his medallion over and held it out for inspection, showing it to Geralt first, and then to the other Witchers. The old initials Eskel had carved there after the Sacking were clear in the dazzlingly bright winter sunshine.

Oddly, Vesemir barely glanced at this proof of Eskel’s identity. He was staring at Eskel instead, eyes moving restlessly over his face, trying to make sense of what he was seeing and hearing.

“See it now?” Eskel murmured, daring to get closer to his still, silent brother. “You didn’t kill me, Wolf.”

“But why?” Geralt hissed, anger and disbelief and tenuous hope battling it out across his face. “Why did that thing try to—”

“I don’t know,” Eskel said quickly. “But we’ll figure it out. Together.”

Geralt trembled as Eskel drew him into a hug. He pressed their foreheads together, part of an old reunion ritual they’d repeated every year for a hundred winters. “I am so sorry, Wolf,” Eskel said, unable to imagine the depth of the grief and guilt Geralt must have been carrying. If their positions were reversed, if Eskel had been the one to kill Geralt last winter…

He wasn’t sure he would have found the strength to carry on.

Geralt closed his eyes and leaned into the hug. Another wordless shiver of shock and relief coursed through him, and he gripped Eskel so tightly his bones creaked. Eskel held his brother just as tightly. They’d done this since boyhood, clinging to each other for comfort and reassurance. As always, Eskel pretended not to hear Geralt’s tearless sob of relief, and Geralt didn’t say anything when Eskel pressed a gentle kiss to his snow-white hair.

“Eskel. My boy,” Vesemir croaked. The old swordmaster’s voice had always been like stone, steady and unshakeable. Now, it trembled.

Eskel pulled away from Geralt so he could reach out and to hug his adoptive father. Vesemir seemed to be even more overcome than Geralt, somehow. Eskel almost staggered back under the weight of Vesemir’s relieved embrace.

Now Eskel finally understood exactly what Lambert had meant by, We all lost our fucking shit. He’d hinted that Eskel’s death had almost destroyed both Geralt and Vesemir, and Eskel could see some hints of that in how exhausted and worn-down they both were. Vesemir had lost weight; he seemed to have aged more in the last year than he had in the previous half-century. Sorrow and despair had deepened the lines of suffering in his face, and right now he looked almost as bad as he had in the months after the Sacking, when he’d had to oversee the burial of every one of his old friends and hundreds of children.

Lambert had been right: losing Eskel might very well have been the final blow for Vesemir. It must have sounded the death knell of the Wolf School for the old man, killed off the last spark of whatever flame of hope Vesemir had been clinging to about the future of their kind. Eskel wasn’t sure how anything, even his own miraculous resurrection, could close that gaping wound. For now, he’d have to focus on easing Vesemir’s grief, and help his father take a few steps back from the cliff’s edge of despair he’d so obviously been perched on for the last year.

The three of them held each other for a long moment. As always, Vesemir seemed to recover his emotional equilibrium first. He stepped back, though he kept a hand on Eskel’s arm, seemingly unable to let go of him completely.

“Where are the others?” Coen asked, obviously reluctant to interrupt their reunion.

Lambert was still kneeling on the snow, rubbing at his throat and sucking in great gulps of air. Those bright red marks on his neck would bloom into a ring of bruises, each one in the precise shape of Geralt’s fingers. Eskel would have to find a way to make this up to Lambert, too. Somehow.

“Lamb? Mind doing the honours?”

Lambert gathered himself enough to nod. He whistled twice, paused, and then whistled twice more in the pattern he and Aiden had worked out.

“Does anyone need medical attention?” Vesemir asked.

“Jaskier got caught out in that storm last night before we could find shelter,” Eskel said, intentionally skipping over a few details. “He was hypothermic when we found him. He’s fine—no frostbite, by some miracle. But we should get him out of this cold and back to the keep as quickly as possible.”

Geralt was still staring at Eskel like he was trying to memorize every minute detail of his face. However, as soon as Eskel mentioned Jaskier, Geralt seemed to find other things to focus on: the toes of his boots, the sky, the long path Eskel and Lambert had cut through the snowy landscape.

Eskel waited for Geralt to ask about Jaskier, but he remained silent.

Vesemir took over organizing their rescue party. He turned to Hemrik and Everard, the Bear Witchers, and delivered a series of orders. “Run back and let the witch know we’re bringing back a human who might need some healing,” he ordered, adding, “And get a fire going in one of the warmer rooms—Ciri can help—and gather furs and blankets. Put some soup on, too.”

Hemrik nodded and dashed off, plowing a wider trail through thick knee-deep snow as easily as if he were taking a stroll down a cobblestone street in Novigrad.

“Witch? So Triss is still at the keep?” Eskel asked, already planning to see if she might be able to help with the ringbound curse. But Vesemir shook his head.

“No, Triss departed a while back.” Eskel tilted his head; there was much more to the story, given Vesemir’s tone, but clearly it would have to wait.

“Geralt invited some other sorceress to stay and help with the girl’s training,” Vesemir explained. “Though what that witch can teach your Ciri is anyone’s guess,” he muttered darkly, and Eskel raised an eyebrow.

“Yen’ll be a good teacher for Ciri,” Geralt said with a sigh, as if he’d had this argument with Vesemir several times before. “No one here can teach her magic. And we can’t exactly send Ciri off to Aretuza. It was kind of Yen to offer.”

“Offer?” Vesemir repeated dryly. “She bloody well invited herself!”

Eskel quirked an eyebrow at his old friend, communicating in their old, unspoken code: Old man’s giving you a hard time – want help?

Geralt smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners, and he tilted his head to the left. Please.

“Jaskier’s told me a little about your violet-eyed sorceress,” Eskel cut in smoothly. “Yennefer sounds like a formidable woman.”

“You have no idea,” Vesemir said.

Geralt seemed to sober at the mention of Jaskier. “Yen said Jaskier ran afoul of a mage in Oxenfurt months ago. She said he got away, though.”

“He didn’t,” Eskel said bluntly. “Jaskier was arrested before he could flee Oxenfurt. He was in custody for about five months.”

“But then how—” Geralt fell silent, and tilted his head again, listening. Eskel heard it too: the crunch of hooves and human footsteps on snow. All of the gathered Witchers fell silent, watching as the two strangers came into view.

Aiden was in the lead. He looked calm and dignified as he guided Lambert’s mare, the two mules and Scorpion down the narrow path Lambert and Eskel had cleared through the deep snow.

Jaskier came last in their little train, almost waddling under multiple layers of winter clothing. He was still wearing the leather mittens Eskel had purchased for him back in Rinde, and looked thin and tired, clearly worn down by yesterday’s misadventures and the arduous climb up the mountain.

Jaskier looked for Eskel first, having no trouble picking him out from among the small collection of similarly tall, scarred, dark-haired Witchers. Jaskier gave Eskel a small, relieved smile once he saw that Eskel was alive and unharmed, and Eskel returned it with his own twisted grin.

He watched Jaskier scan the rest of the unfamiliar Witchers, and felt a sharp twinge of pain and unease when Jaskier finally laid eyes on Geralt.

The Wolf wasn’t looking at Jaskier. His face was completely locked-down again, as expressionless as a block of granite. Geralt’s arms were crossed, and he seemed to be waiting for Jaskier to acknowledge him first and break the awkward silence. Jaskier’s smile dimmed further and then snuffed out completely when it became clear Geralt wasn’t going to offer his hand or so much as a kind word in greeting.

Eskel felt Jaskier’s pain and sorrow flood through the bond, followed quickly by anger. However, Jaskier didn’t let any of his hurt feelings show. He drew himself up and offered the rest of the group a bright, seemingly genuine smile. Eskel felt himself fall even more in love with the man. His pretty lark was so fucking brave.

“Greetings, Witchers of Kaer Morhen,” Jaskier said grandly, voice pitched to carry out over the snow-lined valley. “It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance! I am Jaskier, the famous—” Jaskier hesitated for a fraction of a second, but only Eskel (and perhaps Geralt) knew him well enough to notice. “—poet,” he corrected smoothly, and gave a low, sweeping formal court bow, graceful despite the ridiculous bulk of his winter clothing. “At your service.”

Eskel bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling at the bewildered expression on the other Witchers’ faces. Vesemir and Everard were staring at Jaskier like he was some brightly-plumed songbird who’d accidentally flown into a tiger’s den and then perched within striking distance, proceeding to warble out a sunny tune to a beast who could kill him with a single blow.

Coën looked equally mystified, but Jaskier’s courtly greeting had clearly charmed the Griffin.

Geralt was the only Witcher who didn’t react to Jaskier. When the silence stretched into awkwardness, Jaskier was the one to finally mutter, “Hello there, Geralt. You look well.”

“You look like shit,” Geralt said gruffly. He seemed to be trying to slip back into an old pattern of banter, but when Jaskier didn’t respond in kind, Geralt’s face did something complicated and he cleared his throat. “So, why are you here?”

Eskel felt his lungs constrict as a sharp spike of emotional pain—Jaskier’s pain—pierced him like a knife slipped between his ribs. He almost grunted from the visceral pain of it, and Jaskier didn’t seem to be faring much better. They were both staring at Geralt in utter disbelief.

“Sorry, is that a rhetorical question?” Jaskier sputtered. “Are you asking why I happen to be on this mountain? Or, why I’m here with you, after you made it so abundantly clear that you no longer care for my company?”

Geralt frowned and grumbled, “I never meant to—”

He broke off abruptly when he noticed all of the other Witchers were staring at him. Geralt’s pale neck went red and splotchy while his face grew even colder and more closed-off.

Uh oh. Eskel knew that look.

“What should I have asked instead?”

“Literally anything else?” Jaskier suggested. “Perhaps, Are you all right? for a start.” Jaskier’s voice had taken on a higher pitch. “Or ‘what happened to you?’ Anything would be better than, ‘You look like shit; what are you doing here?’”

Jaskier repeated this in a gravelly baritone that was a fairly good approximation of Geralt’s low, scraping intonation, though he’d injected a chilly reserve that hadn’t been part of Geralt’s original question. The (slightly exaggerated) impression didn’t help cool Geralt’s rising ire.

In fact, Eskel hadn’t seen that exact combination of anguish and frustration on Geralt’s face since long before that second Grassing. The Wolf had always taken great care never to let his pain show: even in the worst of times, when the other Adepts were driving Geralt away with rocks or fists, when the older Witchers watched at his fangs and claws, Geralt had only ever looked stoic, or bored, or angry.

But never hurt. Never betrayed.

“What happened to you, then?” Geralt ground out. Even Eskel could admit, the question sounded like a growl.

Jaskier tightened his hand around Scorpion’s lead, and Eskel saw discomfort flash across his face for a moment. It might have been from the burns, or Geralt’s hostility, or both.

“Oh, he got married to Eskel,” Lambert interrupted, obviously gleeful at being the one to break the news. “Jaskier’s his fucking wife now!”

Geralt seemed to think this was one of Lambert’s exceptionally tone-deaf jokes. He glanced at Jaskier but, unable to bear his glare for even a fraction of a second, quickly looked to Eskel for an explanation. His yellow eyes went almost comically wide when he took in the thick black ring on Eskel’s finger. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“The Redanians got sick of waiting for you to turn up and save Jaskier. Vizimir’s spymaster decided to cut his losses and make do with me instead.”

“Dijkstra?” Geralt growled. “What did that bastard do to you?” His expression was dark with anger, and what Eskel suspected was guilt.

“To me? Nothing. But Dijkstra refused to release Jaskier unless I agreed to marry him.”

“So you are married. To Jaskier.” Geralt repeated, as if trying to make sense of it. Eskel could tell by the tense line of his shoulders and the way he’d crossed his arms that Geralt was fighting to keep his emotions in check.

“Yes, Eskel and I had a lovely summer handfasting under armed guard back in Redania,” Jaskier said with a wave. “It’s a shame you missed it, Geralt. But then you never did care much for weddings.”

Eskel frowned at the sniping tone in Jaskier’s voice, but then he couldn’t blame Jaskier for feeling resentful. Geralt hadn’t exactly welcomed him like an old friend. A nightsoil tradesman would probably expect a warmer reception than the one Jaskier had been given so far.

Eskel had seen and heard enough. He went over to his husband, who was suddenly looking at him with a pensive expression. Jaskier was afraid, Eskel realized. He was still so afraid that Eskel would denounce him, or turn him away.

Instead, Eskel gave Jaskier one of his terrible twisted-up smiles, which Jaskier returned with one of his own light-the-room grins, and slipped an arm around Jaskier’s waist. He tugged Jaskier close and kissed his cold cheek, briefly, and murmured, “I love you.”

Then Eskel and Jaskier turned to face Geralt and the rest of his small family together, as a united front. A married couple.

Eskel looked at Vesemir first. He was prepared for his father’s disappointment, even anger, although he hoped for much better. It was true: Vesemir had followed orders, had whipped Eskel and stripped the skin from his back to punish him for pursuing that ill-fated romance with Geralt all those years ago. But Vesemir had shown sympathy and understanding in the horrible aftermath, and he was still the only instructor of Kaer Morhen who’d ever tried to apologize for what had happened to Eskel and Geralt.

Eskel loved the old man for these reasons, and for many more besides. But he was still half-expecting to see condemnation in his father’s face as he introduced his husband.

Instead, Vesemir’s tired old eyes were filled with nothing but kindness and acceptance. He gave Eskel a slow nod of approval before Vesemir turned and offered his arm to Jaskier.

“Glad to meet you, son,” Vesemir said.

Jaskier blinked, and then grasped the old Witcher’s arm with a muttered, “Well met, Master Vesemir.”

“Well met,” Vesemir repeated softly, and gave Eskel a gentle pat on the arm as he turned away.

If Vesemir’s easy acceptance had sent Eskel reeling, he was unprepared to face Geralt’s seething anger.

“You—you love him?” Geralt repeated, having shifted from icy composure to red-faced anger to what looked like an apoplectic fit of rage. In fact, Eskel had never seen his brother look so furious. “What—how…”

“Geralt, your questions about that can wait,” Vesemir interrupted as if he had no more time for all this emotional fuss. “The human’s cold, and all of you look like you’re about ready to drop. Let’s get back to the keep.”

Everyone else turned to follow Vesemir back up the path to Kaer Morhen, but Eskel waited with Jaskier until all the others had filed past. Geralt hadn’t moved yet. When Eskel turned to speak to his brother, he found the Wolf was frowning at Jaskier, as if he could gain more insight by simply glaring at the man hard enough.

“I still can’t believe it.” Geralt said, very quietly. He couldn’t seem to meet Eskel’s eyes.

“I love him,” Eskel said, still unable to make sense of Geralt’s behaviour. A torrent of feelings flooded in from Jaskier’s side of the bond: anger, dismay, disappointment. It broke Eskel’s heart to realize that Jaskier had hoped Geralt would be happy for them. Or not angry, at least.

Geralt turned away and squeezed past the others, moving so quickly that within seconds he’d passed out of view.

“That could have gone better,” Jaskier said, voice dry as the deserts of Zerikkania. He looked tired and drained emotionally now, as well as physically.

He darted a glance at Eskel, hunching his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” Jaskier sighed. “I could have been nicer to him, I suppose. But then I’m not a very nice person, most of the time.” He looked away. “I did try to warn you about that.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Eskel said, dismayed and a little horrified by the way Jaskier seemed poised to take the blame for Geralt’s poor behaviour. Eskel was rattled, too: he’d never truly been on the receiving end of Geralt’s fury. He’d seen Geralt fight and even brawl with Lambert, other Witchers, and even (on a few memorable occasions) Vesemir himself. But Eskel had always been the peacemaker of Kaer Morhen, in addition to being Geralt’s best friend and confidant. He and Geralt had never actually fought, before.

It was disorienting to turn to his brother, his oldest friend, and suddenly see hostility in his eyes, instead of understanding and unwavering acceptance.

Eskel’s support seemed to catch Jaskier off-guard. He looked even more surprised when Eskel took his wrist and worked his fingers under Jaskier’s mittens until he found bare skin. Eskel rubbed him there with the calloused pad of his fingertip, trying to reassure Jaskier with touch as well as his words. The tiny bit of skin contact seemed to help. Jaskier melted a bit against him.

“It’s all right to be angry with him, you know. He hurt you.”

Jaskier shook his head. “At least he’s being honest about how he feels towards me, now.”

Eskel rubbed at Jaskier’s wrist. “I don’t give a damn how Geralt feels. You are what matters to me, and he has no right to hurt you like this.”

It felt like an unprecedented act of betrayal to say so. Eskel had spent decades trying to shield the Wolf from the unfair judgements of others. He’d translated, explained, and pleaded on Geralt’s behalf for decades. He’d done his best to convince others to tolerate Geralt’s strangeness, to accept his brooding silences, to be sympathetic in the face of his frustration. He didn’t mean it. He has trouble with words. Sometimes he doesn’t think. He means well, he just doesn’t know how to express himself.

Eskel had been making these excuses for Geralt since the day he’d returned from Ban Ard only to find Geralt sick and starving, treated like a monster and a pariah even by their own kind.

But at some point, Eskel realized, he’d stopped stepping in to defend the Wolf because it was the right thing to do. It had become a habit. A reflex. Rising to Geralt’s defense, offering explanations or excuses…it was just as ingrained as breathing, or riding, or cleaning his teeth.

When was the last time Eskel had stopped to consider if Geralt wanted, or even needed, his help? Was it possible that his unquestioning loyalty might have made things more difficult? And not only for Geralt, but for those who cared for him, like Lambert and Vesemir? Like Jaskier? Perhaps if Eskel hadn’t made it his mission to shield Geralt from feeling rejected or misunderstood, the Wolf might have learned how to express himself, to take responsibility and apologize for lashing out. He might have even learned how to use his words, without Eskel there to step in and act as his ambassador.

It was a sobering realization. It made Eskel feel suddenly, deeply ashamed of himself.

Jaskier touched his cheek; even through the many layers of wool, fur, and bandages, the contact felt like a lifeline. “It will be alright, my love,” Jaskier murmured and leaned in to rest their foreheads together.

After a calming moment of sharing the same breath, Eskel closed his hand over Jaskier’s and kissed the back of his mittened hand.

“I’ll talk to Geralt,” he sighed. “He owes you an apology, at the very least. You’ve gone through hell for him: he needs to understand that before he passes any judgment about how you and I found each other, or how we feel about each other now.”

Jaskier looked surprised and caught off-guard by this show of support, but he nodded and went over to where the Witchers were helping Lambert and Aiden ready the animals for the final leg of their journey.

Eskel turned and sprinted up the path the Witchers had carved through the snow.

It was time to talk to Geralt.

***

Geralt had managed to put some distance between them, but Eskel fell into a dead sprint and managed to catch up to him quickly. He was a bit out of breath when he finally caught sight of Geralt, who slowed to a jog and then came to a stop on his own accord. It was a small concession, but one Eskel was grateful for. After the horrible storm last night and the long hours of digging through snow and sign-casting this morning, even Eskel’s enhanced body was feeling a bit of bone-deep exhaustion.

“What?” Geralt snapped, looking and sounding very much like his namesake: a wolf, baring its teeth, trying to look strong. But Eskel already knew the truth. Geralt was hurting, too. He could practically see the wound, though he still didn’t understand what had caused it.

“Geralt, talk to me. Why are you acting like this?”

“Like what?” Geralt said petulantly. Eskel took a deep breath.

“Like a child.” Eskel met Geralt’s glare with one of his own. “You’re upset, but I don’t understand why. You’re acting like someone’s taken away your favourite toy.”

“We never had any toys,” Geralt scoffed, but his tone was bleak. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Jaskier, of course,” Eskel said, nearly at the breaking point of his considerable patience. “Look, I don’t know what caused the rift between the two of you. Jaskier himself doesn’t even seem to understand it. But you need to be kinder to him, Wolf” Eskel said, with a warning tone in his voice he’d never had to use with Geralt. “If only because he paid a heavy price for protecting your secrets. I will not allow him to be hurt any further. Not by you, or anyone else. Is that clear?”

Geralt was looking at him strangely. Perhaps it had never occurred to him that Eskel’s deepest loyalties could belong to someone else, one day.

“Clear,” Geralt grunted, looking away. “I…I regret—”

“Save your apologies for Jaskier,” Eskel said sharply. He was angry at Geralt too. Angry at how ill and dispirited Jaskier had been when they’d first met. How hard Jaskier had tried to prove himself useful on the Path, how he’d flinched and openly fretted at being yelled at, how he’d worried about being abandoned. How grateful he’d been to hear just a few kind words.

Geralt had hurt Jaskier, and badly. Eskel still couldn’t fathom why.

“You’re really in love with him?” Geralt said, into the strange new chasm that suddenly stretched between them. “Guess you must be. You told him so, right in front of Vesemir.”

“I’m not ashamed of loving Jaskier,” Eskel said. “I’d like to have the old man’s support, but I don’t need his approval. Or yours.”

“So why tell us at all?” Geralt said in a voice of crushed glass. He’d sounded just like that after the second Grasassing. Like forming words was physically painful. Perhaps it still was; it had been decades since Eskel had thought to ask.

“You sure it’s not just this spell?”

“No,” Eskel said vehemently. “The curse doesn’t work like that. Even if it did, I would have fallen for him anyway. He’s—”

“An annoying little peacock?”

Eskel yanked Geralt around to face him. “Why are you being like this?” Eskel demanded, searching for some explanation in Geralt’s blazing yellow eyes. “Why are you being so fucking cruel? Jaskier was tortured for you! They burned off the tips of his fingers; he can’t play anymore, because he was protecting you!”

“I—I never…” He reeled for a moment, and then righted himself. Eskel watched in astonishment as Geralt’s face hardened, going from horrified and guilt-stricken to remote and implacable. “I never asked him for that.” Geralt shoved at Eskel, trying to break away. But Eskel held firm; even Geralt’s prodigious strength couldn’t move him now. “I never asked him for his fucking friendship, or his loyalty, or his—”

“His love?”

Eskel saw his hit land. It made Geralt stumble and try to reel away, but Eskel’s grip was iron. “He doesn’t—”

“He does,” Eskel said, softer now. “Since he was sixteen fucking years old, Geralt. He told me so. And you told him that Witchers believe that it made him less of a man. Is that really how you see Jaskier?” Geralt wouldn’t meet his eyes anymore. There were two bright spots of red on his otherwise milk-pale cheeks, and Eskel finally dropped his hands and let go of Geralt.

He let his own stricken sense of hurt bleed into his next question. “Is that how you see me?”

Geralt finally looked up. “Of course not! I—” He huffed, clearly searching for the words, just as clearly not finding them. Tension coiled in his big, brawny body, and Eskel realized Geralt was gearing up to lash out again: at Eskel, maybe, or at himself.

Instead, Geralt whirled and punched his fist through the trunk of a spruce tree.

Eskel ignored the crack and splintering of wood, and the sound of the big spruce splitting and then tumbling over to crashing down through the thick woods behind them. Geralt’s shoulders were heaving; he was panting as if he were the one who’d just climbed a mountain.

“That is not how I see you. Or Jaskier,” Geralt finally bit out.

“So why did you say it? Why did you lie to him?”

“I wasn’t lying,” Geralt said desperately. There was so much confusion and raw pain in his voice that Eskel was catapulted back through time, to that day eighty years when he’d returned from Ban Ard and heard Geralt’s new broken-glass voice, and listened as Geralt tried to speak through a mouthful of new fangs.

“I wasn’t lying,” Geralt repeated. Only now it sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. “They hurt you, Esk. For doing that. They sent you away.”

“That’s not—” Now it was Eskel’s turn to try and fumble around for the right words. “Who told you that?”

Geralt gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Gweld, I think. Or Tommin. I’d asked about the scars on your back.” He glanced quickly at the ruined half of Eskel’s face. “Vesemir said it was rude to ask about the marks on a Witcher’s body. ‘Not all hunts are happy stories’,” Geralt said, in a good approximation of the cadence Vesemir had always used when lecturing. “Not all contracts pay out’.”

“So you asked Gweld or Tommin, instead?”

Geralt nodded. “Guess so. It’s—muddled. But I do remember what they said. The reason you were whipped. It was because you’d gotten caught with another boy,” Geralt said. “You’d…fallen in love with him.”

Eskel stared at Geralt for a moment. His pulse was pounding away in his ears like a blacksmith’s hammer.

Geralt was looking at him with sorrow and sympathy, but there was no spark of recognition in his yellow eyes. No real understanding. Just as Eskel had always suspected, Geralt had truly forgotten that he’d been the boy Eskel had loved, all those years ago.

“So you–” Eskel had to stop, and clear his throat. “You’ve always believed that love between two men was against the rules.”

“It was,” Geralt insisted. “They wouldn’t have punished you like that, otherwise.”

“Geralt,” Eskel said. He scratched at his scars. “I know your memories before that second round of the Grasses are a little, uh, shaky. But surely you remember something about how it used to be. At least half the school—especially the grown Witchers—were fucking each other. That wasn’t why they lashed me.”

Eskel sighed. He considered just telling Geralt the whole sorry tale. It might be better to get it all out in the open now, because if he said nothing, and Geralt found out later…there might be hell to pay.

We loved each other, once. It should be so easy to say. But now that the moment had arrived, this one chance to tell the truth after a hundred years of longing and regret, Eskel found he couldn’t say the words.

The boy Eskel had once loved was long gone. The man who’d grown up in his place sometimes seemed like a stranger, but Eskel loved the Wolf, too. They’d laughed and sparred and grieved and endured so much together, and he couldn’t even begin what life without Geralt might look like. And if his old friend Geralt had ever turned to Eskel on a cold winter’s night and invited him to his bed, Eskel would have gone. In a heartbeat.

But his heart belonged to another, now. And this version of Geralt, yellow eyes and snow-white hair, had never wanted him. So what purpose did the truth serve?

Perhaps another truth was more important.

“I’ve never been ashamed of it, you know,” Eskel said, looking out over the river valley. “Going to bed with a man, loving a man…there’s nothing wrong with any of it, Geralt. It’s certainly never made me less of a man. Or less of a Witcher. Whatever nonsense you tried to feed Jaskier when he was just a lovesick kid, you were just repeating the lies of frightened old men trying to cover up their own inadequacies.”

Eskel stopped and waited for Geralt’s reply. He’d always been good at this, patiently waiting for Geralt to dig up the words. Sometimes he helped out and went in with a shovel himself, but this time Eskel had to let Geralt unearth his own reply.

“I…I know,” Geralt finally admitted with a long, drawn-out sigh. “I know, Eskel. And I’ve never thought less of you for it. But I was just so afraid for Jaskier. For what the world would do to him. Especially back then.”

“Why?”

Geralt shrugged. “I thought it was going to ket him killed. You know he propositioned me the night we met? After I’d punched him in the stomach. Later that night he pulled off his shirt, winked at me, and asked if I wanted to ‘share bedrolls’.”

Eskel couldn’t help it: he laughed. Geralt frowned at the fondness in his chuckle. “It’s not funny, Eskel! Jaskier was a menace. I was fucking terrified for him!”

The sincerity in Geralt’s voice made Eskel fall silent. They were getting somewhere: Geralt was digging his way out, now, towards whatever lay at the centre of his bizarre hostility towards Jaskier.

“So because you were afraid for a vulnerable young human, you let him follow you on the Path for several years, and then you decided to break his heart?”

Geralt snorted. “I didn’t break his heart. He was just a horny kid, Esk. Jaskier never took anything seriously. I had to make sure he understood.”

“Understood what, exactly?”

Geralt wrinkled his forehead; his white-grey eyebrows almost touched. “That he couldn’t just go through the world like that.”

“Like what?”

Geralt made a delicate gesture. One that looked very strange on such a big, sturdy man. “You know. Like Jaskier. All heart-on-his-sleeve, flouncing around, spouting love poetry and batting his eyelashes at men three times his size. It wasn’t safe! And I didn’t want Jaskier to get hurt. Not like…not like you’d been hurt. He would have gotten himself killed. I was trying to protect him!”

“But you didn’t, Geralt,” Eskel pointed out. “Not then. Certainly not later, when you said those awful things to him. You only made him feel rejected, and ashamed of himself. And there is nothing wrong with Jaskier. He takes foolish risks, sometimes,” Eskel admitted, thinking of the way he’d tackled Lambert in that hut back in Leyda, “But he’s also incredibly brave, and kind, and he acts with his whole heart. It makes him fearless. And he sees people. Sees the truth in them. The value that others can’t even comprehend.”

He scratched at his mangled cheek again. The scars were drying out in the cold. “You know he never even asked me about these? I don’t even think he sees the scars anymore. Most shameful part of my life, and he never even asked, because he’d already decided to love me. The rest didn’t matter to him. Because Jaskier just…accepts people. Loves them. All he wants is to be loved and accepted in return.”

Geralt opened his mouth to try and argue that point, but then suddenly deflated like an empty waterskin. “I couldn’t give him that.”

“No,” Eskel said. “No, you couldn’t. And that’s…that’s what I can’t understand. I’ve been wracking my brain over that one since the day I met Jaskier. The one thing I know about you—it’s true of any Witcher, but you in particular—is that you’d tear out your own throat for anyone who treated you like a regular person instead of a monster.”

Eskel watched this observation sink home. He knew they were both thinking about that day by the refuse pit, when Eskel had offered a hand to Geralt, and brought him inside to eat with the other Adepts.

“Jaskier is fundamentally incapable of seeing either of us as monsters—even when he should, probably,” Eskel added. “I know you must have loved him, Wolf. And I can’t think of anything that would make you throw away a friendship like that. So what in the Seven Spheres did Jaskier do to deserve what you said to him on that mountain?”

“Nothing,” Geralt said. He looked diminished somehow, as if Eskel’s words had carved away huge slices of the man Geralt tried so hard to be. “Jaskier didn’t do anything, all right? I was angry, and he was just…there, as always. A convenient target.”

“He’s not a fucking straw training dummy, Geralt,” Eskel said, horrified.

“I know that,” Geralt said. All of his earlier anger had finally drained away. “It’s just, when I lost my temper with him before, he always came back. Always forgave me for lashing out. Like—”

“Like me?” Eskel said, frowning. “You’ve never treated me like that. I’ve seen you try and take a run at everyone else, sure. But never me.”

“I wouldn’t!” Geralt said quickly. “It’d be like chewing my own leg off. Like—” He paused, and shuddered at his own memories. “Like driving a flaming sword through my own heart. It’d kill me, Eskel. To hurt you like that.”

Eskel put a comforting hand on Geralt’s shoulder. He worried for a moment that Geralt might shrug off his touch, perhaps for the first time in their long lives, but he leaned into it instead.

“I am sorry that you were the one to do it, Wolf. To kill that—that thing wearing my face. And I’m sorry you had to live with the guilt of it for so long.”

Geralt shrugged. Eskel could see he was still carrying the weight of it, even now. It would probably take time for the truth of Eskel’s return to sink in. Geralt clearly wasn’t ready to set that burden down yet.

“Anyway,” Geralt said, “I wouldn’t hurt you. And I didn’t think I could hurt Jaskier. Not badly enough to make him finally leave me for good.”

“Did you mean any of it? Did you really want him to go?” It hurt to ask the question, because Eskel knew how much the answer—no matter what Geralt said—would hurt Jaskier.

“At the time, I suppose. For a few seconds,” Geralt said. “I only wanted to be left alone. Lick my wounds in private. And Jaskier…well, he can get under my skin sometimes. Like Lambert. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about him. But he just keeps talking, and I never know what to say to get him to back off. So it builds and builds, until what comes out of my mouth is the worst thing I can think of. Whatever I think will get him to leave me alone.”

Eskel folded his arms over his chest, considering the problem for a moment. He opened his mouth, ready to give some advice, or even offer to talk to Jaskier about it. But he stopped himself, and considered just much damage he’d already caused by trying to solve the Wolf’s problems for him.

He had to learn how to let go, and let Geralt figure out how to fix his own mistakes.

“You really fucked up, Wolf,” Eskel said, into the new charged silence that had never before existed in their friendship. “You never thought to track Jaskier down, after? Apologize?”

Geralt hung his head. “I was too ashamed.”

“Well, he’ll be staying with us for the whole winter,” Eskel said firmly. “So I suggest you find a way to make amends.”

***

The talk with Geralt seemed to help. They lingered on the trail for a while, waiting for the others and filling each other in on all the recent events of their lives. Eskel had a thousand questions for his brother—most of them about his Child Surprise, and the violet-eyed Sorceress waiting back at the keep—and listened as Geralt gave him a bare-bones description of the last horrific year: Eskel’s ‘death’, losing Roach, Vesemir’s attempt to re-start the Trial of the Grasses, and on Ciri as a test subject…it sounded to Eskel that most of the last year of his brother’s life had been a steady succession of horror and loss.

By the time the others had caught up to them, Eskel had his arm around Geralt’s shoulders, and Geralt had finally relaxed enough to laugh as Eskel’s recounted how Jaskier was able to take Lambert down, and knee him in the balls.

When Eskel caught sight of Jaskier’s pale, anxious face in the crowd of Witchers, he gave him a reassuring nod. Everything was going to be all right. Eskel did his best to send that feeling of comfort through their bond, and he reinforced it with a quick kiss to Jaskier’s cold cheek as soon as he reached his husband.

“Did you work it out with him?” Jaskier muttered. In his place up near Vesemir at the head of the line, Eskel saw Geralt’s shoulder’s tense when he heard the question.

“Made some progress,” Eskel said. He wrapped his arm around his waist. “You must be freezing. We’ll be at the keep soon,” Eskel told him. “Everyone’ll feel better after a hot meal and some rest.”

A quarter-hour later, they crossed the Gwenllech one final time, and stopped on the opposite shore to organize themselves for the final ascent up to the keep. Eskel heard Jaskier suck in a breath full of shock and awe as the high stone walls of Kaer Morhen finally came into view. It was always a breathtaking sight, no matter how many times Eskel had paused right here, in this very spot by the river, to take it in. The castle had been built a the top of a natural rise that gave a commanding view of the rest of the river valley. The inner keep had been carved right into Mount Morhen, with the mountain forming one of its four protective walls. With a mountain at its back, the river canyon on one side and a granite cliff on the other, the keep could only be approached by climbing up a steep hill and crossing over a drawbridge that spanned a deep gorge. From where they were standing on the bank of the river far below, Kaer Morhen looked like an impregnable fortress, a bastion of stone and granite that was as indestructible as Mount Morhen itself.

The majesty of this view was slightly undercut when Lambert bellowed, “Those fucking bears!”. Eskel, Everard and Coen immediately broke into peals of laughter.

“Lambert somehow manages to step in a pile of bear shite every time he comes home for the winter,” Eskel explained to Jaskier, once he’d caught his breath. “Lambert’s convinced the bears have some sort of latent magic or psychic ability, since they seem to know exactly where to take a dump on the trail.”

“Why doesn’t he just drive them off?” Jaskier asked.

“They’re part of the natural fuckin’ ecosystem, according to Vesemir,” Lambert grouched, scraping the sole of his boot along the edge of the riverbank.

“They play their part,” Vesemir said solemnly as he led their little party up the rise to the gates of Kaer Morhen.

They crossed the drawbridge, and Eskel had to snake his arm around Jaskier’s waist when he noticed Jaskier was leaning just a little too far to peer down to the bottom of the fifty-foot gorge.

“Are those…human skeletons?”

“Do you really want to know?” he asked, and Jaskier shook his head.

Eskel usually tried not to linger on any memories of the Sacking, but the gleaming bones at the bottom of the gorge were impossible to identify as anything other than remnants of the worst day in the keep’s thousand-year history. It had been impossible to retrieve any of their attackers’ bodies from the bottom of the deep gorge after the sacking. They’d been short-handed and shattered for months after the attack, and after collecting their own dead, Vesemir had decided to simply let the bodies of their enemies rot at the bottom of the ravine. Not even wraiths could scale the cliff walls, and it did provide a grisly warning to any who approached the keep with ill intentions.

They passed through the open portcullis and down the tunnel formed by the inner curtain wall, which echoed with the clattering hooves of their horses. Instead of letting himself get dragged down by old memories, Eskel focused on the mix of curiosity and wonder on Jaskier’s face as they emerged from the darkness of the enceinte and into the snowy wonderland of the vast lower courtyard. The lower courtyard contained stalls for their mounts and other pack animals, scattered practice dummies, and the Pendulum obstacle course. The giant cedar tree trunk that formed part of the training mechanism creaked and swayed in the chilly wind.

It was impossible to miss the reddish-brown stains on the sides of the pendulum. Jaskier stared at them for a moment, and then gasped when he noticed the incredibly narrow piles that formed the footwork portion of the obstacle course. A hundred-foot drop to the river valley below awaited any Adept or Witcher who tripped or missed one of the hand-sized footholds on that part of the course.

“How—?” Jaskier started to ask. Eskel took his hand and tugged him away from the terrifying apparatus.

“We learned it slowly. In sections. By the time we were ready to take the final Trial, we could all do it blindfolded, in less than 45 seconds.”

“39 seconds, if you’re Geralt,” Lambert added as he passed with several bags of provisions piled in his arms. “Fuckin’ prima donna show-off.”

“Heard that,” Geralt grunted, coming up from behind them with the horses. He was taking them up to the enclosed stables on the second-level courtyard. Eskel felt momentarily guilty for not helping settle the animals or haul in the supplies they’d brought, but Vesemir waved him off, saying that Eskel show his new husband around the keep.

He nodded at Vesemir in thanks, and led Jaskier over to the edge of the eastern wall, which opened to another spectacular view of Morhen Valley and the thundering waters of the Gwenllech in the deep gorge below.

“It’s beautiful,” Jaskier sighed. Eskel hugged him from behind and nuzzled into his sable-soft hair.

“I’m glad you’re here to see it,” he said quietly, thinking how easily Jaskier could have slipped away in yesterday’s storm. If he’d taken just a few extra minutes to find him, in that howling darkness—

“Hey,” Jaskier said, turning in his arms. “We’re here, love. You brought us home safe.”

Home. He loved how that sounded on Jaskier’s sweet lips.

Mindful of the fact that Jaskier needed warmth and food and rest, Eskel reluctantly let go, and led Jaskier up the switchback ramp to the second outer courtyard, which had mainly been reduced to a construction zone and a staging area for the work needed to keep Kaer Morhen’s walls from caving in. It was pleasant enough in the autumn and spring, but he’d spent many a muddy, wet, miserable winter’s day in this spot, hewing timber, building scaffolding, and cutting enormous blocks of stone to size.

They passed the makeshift construction area, and Jaskier startled at the sight of the keep’s last functioning ballista, which pointed directly at the gates of the lower courtyard. It was an ominous welcome sign, a leftover from even before the siege and the Sacking. Vesemir had charged Lambert years ago with the task of keeping the ballista functional. At the end of the solstice feast at Midinváerne, Lambert would always build up a giant bonfire and get everyone drunk on his special ‘seasonal’ White Gull. They’d all close out the old year firing off the ballista, sending giant six-foot spears sailing through wood and straw targets.

Eskel had to give it to Lambert: the man had a mad genius for destruction that far surpassed any other Witcher or mage.

The ballista was positioned next to a giant old-growth oak tree that had been planted just after Kaer Morhen’s construction had started, before the first stones of the keep had even been laid down. It soared above the walls of the inner bailey, providing much-needed shade on the hottest days of summer.

There had always been a child’s rope swing fastened to the lowest branch of that tree. Right up until the Sacking, at least, someone had diligently replaced it as the wooden seat splintered and the rope frayed. After all of the children at Kaer Morhen had been killed, they’d left the swing to rot in the elements.

Much to Eskel’s shock, a new, sturdy swing had been fashioned; it hung from that same old branch, twisting slowly in the wind just like all the previous iterations. Geralt must have put it up for his Child Surprise.

Geralt had told him a little about Princess Cirilla, but Eskel had never pictured the girl as a literal child; he’d been expecting to meet a young woman in her late teens. The sight of the swing made him realize that he’d been expecting…

Deirdre. Eskel had expected a mirror image of his own lost Child Surprise to come prancing out of Kaer Morhen.

Eskel blinked and shook his head. Despite the troubling surface similarities between his Black Sun princess and Geralt’s child of the Elder Blood, he could not greet Ciri with any apprehension. The presence of that rope swing suggested she was still a young girl, likely still clinging desperately to whatever last bits of childhood had remained despite all the horrors she’d already witnessed in her short life. Geralt had told Eskl that the girl had spent weeks alone in a war-torn country, and that was after witnessing the death of her grandmother and other guardians.

Deidre had known horrors too. Horrors that she should never have faced alone. If Eskel had been just a little bit braver, a little more willing to take action instead of the path of least resistance, Deidre’s life would have been very different. She might have had a swing in the courtyard of Kaer Morhen, too, if Eskel had been a better man.

The tall oak doors of the inner keep flew open. He schooled his face to greet Princess Cirilla, but instead a short, slim woman with black hair and a dress to match stepped out into the courtyard. There was a beat of stunned silence, and then she flung herself at Jaskier, who somehow managed to catch her up in a breathlessly tight hug.

“Urk! Yen!” Jaskier grunted as the small woman collided into him. Eskel put a steadying hand on his back so that Jaskier and the woman wouldn’t topple over and dash their brains on the stone courtyard pavers.

“You fucking moron,” the woman hissed, even as she hugged Jaskier harder. Eskel felt his scars twist and pull as his eyebrows climbed up into his hairline.

So this was Geralt’s sorceress.

***

After a satisfying number of insults had been exchanged, Jaskier peeled away from Yennefer enough so that he could catch his breath. He felt suddenly, violently emotional at the sight of her beloved and be-loathed face.

Gods, he really had missed Yennefer, strange as it was.

“Witch,” he huffed, rubbing at his sore breastbone. Yen might have been a tiny woman, but she certainly packed a wallop of a hug.

“Bard,” she said. As always, Yennefer was somehow able to turn his professional title into an insult. “What in the goddess’ name are you doing here?”

“I, ah—” Jaskier began, running through and discarding a few different versions of the truth, as every attempt to summarize the last few months of his life sounded like some sort of implausible stage drama. He finally just reached for Eskel’s hand.

“I’m staying the winter here, with my husband’s family.”

“Your husband?” Yennefer repeated, and then craned her neck up to look up—and up—at Eskel. Jaskier watched her face carefully, wondering exactly how Yennefer might react to Eskel’s size and scars. He’d already decided that Eskel was the most handsome Witcher (having the first-biggest cock helped too, of course) but even he had to admit that his darling husband’s rugged appearance wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

However, he suspected that Yennefer would probably appreciate Eskel’s…everything. If nothing else, Jaskier knew that he and Yennefer of Vengerberg shared a similar taste in men.

And fast on the heels of that thought came the realization that Yennfer and Eskel would make a stunningly beautiful couple. They had such similar colouring: matching black hair, bronze skin, and unnaturally bright, beautiful eyes. And tiny Yen would be dwarfed by Eskel’s big frame, massive shoulders and impossibly thick thighs. Yes. Jaskier would probably—all right, definitely—pay good coin to watch Yen writhe atop his husband.

(Thoughts like these were part of the reason why Jaskier had never really thought himself the marrying type. But then Eskel had been wonderfully accepting of his predilections so far. He’d also been amenable to certain forms of experimentation not normally found within the bounds of holy matrimony…)

“Jaskier, you might want to introduce us first,” Yennefer said with a smirk.

Jaskier abruptly realized three critical points: a) Sorceresses could read minds; b) Eskel could probably feel the tsunami of lust and arousal that had just shot through their spellbond like a racing hound; and c) Jaskier had no choice but to go find an out-of-the-way corner where he could quietly die of shame.

Fortunately, the amusement dancing in Yennefer’s violet eyes, and the affectionate smile-grimace on Eskel’s handsome face, indicated that Jaskier’s death-by-shame might not be completely necessary.

“My darling Eskel, I’d like to introduce you to the transcendently lovely Yennefer of Vengerberg, sorceress extraordinaire and sweetest of all my ex-wives.”

“Ex-wife?” Eskel muttered, mostly to himself, before accepting Yennefer’s extended hand. Instead of roughly gripping her forearm, or awkwardly shaking her fingers, however, Eskel surprised both Jaskier and Yennefer by bowing low over her knuckles in a perfectly elegant formal courtier bow. “My lady,” Eskel said in his rich, rumbling-thunder baritone.

Jaskier saw Yennefer’s lips twitch. Yes, he was very much looking forward to spending at least one winter night getting wine-drunk with Yen. He was certain that Yennefer would enjoy his vivid descriptions of the exact size and girth of—

“Ex-wife?” Eskel said, once more, and Jaskier felt duty-bound to offer his poor husband at least a scrap of an explanation.

“Oh darling, I thought I’d mentioned, but when Yen rescued me from that horrid fire mage, she—”

“Yen?”

All three of them turned to blink owlishly at poor Geralt, who had chosen that precise instant to exit the stable and make his way up to the keep’s entryway. He looked extremely uncomfortable to be the sudden focus of their attention, but rallied enough to ask, “um, where is Ciri?”

“Upstairs, helping Hemrik make up some extra beds,” she said, and then turned to give Jaskier a more thorough once-over. She frowned as she took in his thin frame and bandaged fingers. Fuck. Jaskier had meant to keep wearing his mittens as long as possible, to avoid any mention of his burns until the moment arrived when he could peel off his gloves and jab his poor scarred, stick-thin fingers in Geralt’s face for maximum guilt.

But Yenn had noticed his bandages first. She’d just grabbed his left hand for a closer look when Princess Cirilla, the Lion Cub of Cintra, came bouncing down the stairs.

“Geralt, who is this?” the Princess said.

And then a very strange thing happened.

Eskel went utterly stiff beside him. He was staring at Princess Cirilla as if he’d just encountered a higher vampire or a werewolf in broad daylight. And Princess Cirilla was staring at Eskel as if she’d seen a ghost.

“You!” Ciri said, in a vengeful hiss of a voice that didn’t belong to a twelve-year-old girl. “You’re supposed to be dead! You aren’t supposed to be here!”

“Geralt?” Eskel was eerily calm and composed in the face of such unexpected hostility from his brother’s ward. “Can you explain why there’s a demon squatting inside this poor girl?”

The girl’s green eyes flashed. And everything devolved into chaos.

***

Chapter Text

In spite of having been a Witcher’s travelling companion for years, Jaskier hadn’t witnessed many actual life-and-death battles. He’d certainly never been a part of them.

Given the madness now unfolding upstairs in the Great Hall of Kaer Morhen, he was glad he’d missed most of Geralt’s monster battles. Given the shrill sounds of a piercing, otherworldly scream, the roar of several voracious and massive-sounding beasts, and the distinct whirlwind-whooshing sound of a portal, not to mention the screams of at least two dying men, Jaskier thought that fleeing and hiding was the only sensible plan.

There certainly wasn’t much he could do that a keep full of armored, battle-trained Witchers couldn’t, after all. Especially with his injured hands. He wouldn’t even be very useful for lobbing projectiles. However, Yennefer handed him a massive orange rock that she quickly explained was “a Jasper Stone, that turns wrongs into rights” and that he ought to “give it to Geralt—he’ll know what to do!”

Jaskier wasn’t sure what good a big heavy orange rock would do against the beasts above, whose footsteps shook the stone foundations of the castle itself. But Yennefer didn’t seem phased. She shooed him out of the lab, and Jaskier darted up a dizzying number of winding stone steps. All too quickly, he found himself outside the doors of the Great Hall.

The huge oak doors had been half-blown off their hinges. They listed towards each other like two inebriates outside a village pub. Just beyond the doorway, Jaskier could see all of the keep’s resident Witchers. There were twelve men in total, all engaged in a life-and-death battle with three massive basilisks.

He thought the beasts were basilisks, anyway. The creatures had familiar basilisk traits like hooked beaks, birdlike skulls, and webbed wings, paired with snake-like bodies and fangs. But these beasts were strange-looking, far larger than any draconoid species Geralt or Eskel had ever described. A single glimpse of the smallest of the three beasts—the one currently gnawing on one poor Witcher’s arm—made Jaskier want to close himself into the nearest garderobe and curl up into a ball.

But he had a maybe-important stone to deliver, so he darted through the Great Hall, dodging Witchers and beasts alike as they spun and pirouetted and lashed out at each other

He saw Geralt up front, squaring off against a portal of some kind, with Eskel at his side. The two men seemed to be taking turns yelling at the (still possessed?) Princess Cirilla, pausing to dodge the occasional whipping tail or claws of a basilisk when they weren’t fending off attacks from Vesemir.

Vesemir’s eyes were huge and black as coal, dark veins popping in the telltale signs of a potion overdose. He was attacking Eskel and Geralt, fighting them both in an effort to get to Ciri. Vesemir seemed to be trying to slaughter the poor possessed girl (or whatever demon rested within her) but Geralt and Eskel stood firm, each taking turns fending off Vesemir and trying to break through to Ciri.

The girl was protected under the familiar shimmering golden dome of a Quen shield. Eskel’s Quen, which meant nothing short of the whole keep coming down on their heads would put Ciri at a real risk of harm. But it was a shock to see Eskel and Geralt in a full-fledged sword fight with their gruff-yet-beloved mentor.

This was an absolute shitshow. Only a mage would be powerful enough to close the portal that had opened in the middle of Kaer Morhen’s dining hall. And with Yen still unable to do magic, the only person here who would be even remotely powerful enough to put a stop to it was…Eskel.

You’re not supposed to be here, that demon-squatter had hissed at Eskel through that poor child’s face. The facts clicked into place for Jaskier like a tumbler in a lock, right before he was hit by one of the basilisk’s wings and sent soaring through the air.

He landed with a bone-jarring impact and ended up half-sprawled across one of the heavy oak trestle tables that lined the dining hall. Jaskier lay there a moment, trying to catch his breath and waiting for the ringing in his ears to stop. He was closer now to the swirling black portal now. It felt like being slowly dragged into a hurricane. There was also something wet seeping into his pants, either wine or blood. Jaksier forced himself up to his elbows so he could check his surroundings.

A basilisk and two Witchers were locked into some sort of death-dance just a few yards away. Lambert and Aiden, he realized. Lambert was guarding Aiden’s blind side as they fended off the huge monster, who was spitting venom and attacking with its razor-sharp beak. The beast was bleeding, but its injuries had only seemed to infuriate it. It snapped at Aiden, who managed to duck in time while Lambert slashed down with his sword. But the beast was just as fast as Lambert’s lightning-quick strike, and evaded the blow. It hissed and spit another gob of acidic venom at the Witchers, who were forced to spin away before the sickly green spatter hit their exposed skin.

Jaskier managed to stop gaping at the fight long enough to consider how horribly exposed he was, lying on his back on the trestle table, and promptly decided to roll himself off the table and onto the unforgiving stone floor so he could at least hide under the table.

“Ouch,” Jaskier whimpered when he hit the stone flagons. He couldn’t even hear his own voice over the roar of the portal and the screeching of the basilisks. More monsters were coming through the portal behind Eskel, Geralt and the girl; he could already count three dead Witchers among the original group of twelve.

There wouldn’t be any Witchers left if this didn’t end quickly.

He hadn’t managed to keep his grip on the jasper stone Yen had given him, but honestly, he felt a bit lucky that he’d maintained control of his bladder after being walloped by the basilisk’s tail and sent soaring through the air. Jaskier could see the bright orange stone from here. It had landed just a few feet from where Jaskier was cowering under the table. If that damned stone could make even the slightest difference in this battle, he had to reach it.

Give it to Geralt, Yen had directed him. He’ll know what to do with it. And that made sense: given Geralt’s status as a twice-mutated, twice-grassed survivor, he was something of a rarity even amongst his own kind. A born hero. A legend in the making.

But Jaskier wasn’t married to Geralt. He’d certainly never seen Geralt face down an entire skeleton army, or stand up to a powerful sorceress who could have stood toe-to-toe with Yennefer at the height of her powers.

No. When Jaskier made his inelegant roll across the floor to grab the jasper stone, he had already decided to give the stone to Eskel. He’d know what to do with the artifact. Jaskier knew it. He just had to get the damned stone over there, somehow.

“Eskel!” he screamed. But Eskel couldn’t hear him, not over the whirling wind and the noise from multiple fights going on in different corners of the massive hall.

Right. He’d just have to make Eskel hear him.

He scrambled towards the stone, and in the same instant he picked it up, a powerful, searing pain blazed in his fingertips and palms. “Ouch, fuck!” Jaskier yelled. He dropped the stone immediately, shaking out his poor abused fingers as he stared at the rock in shock.

The jasper stone had gone from inert neon orange to a deep, glowing red. It was scorching hot. In the half-second Jaskier had held it, the rock had burned through most of the thick wads of linen bandages wrapped around his fingers.

There was no way he could carry that rock all the way over to Eskel.

“Eskel!” Jaskier screamed again, this time with all the power remaining in his professionally-trained lungs. He also focused on sending his emotions through the bond, a magic, LOOK AT ME! to match the power of his voice.

Praise be to all the gods, it worked. Eskel seemed to hear him. He lowered his blade and whirled around, narrowly dodging a strike—an actual sword strike from Vesemir! Was everyone possessed?–and immediately locked eyes with Jaskier.

“THE STONE!” Jaskier cried out, kicking the red-hot rock with his boot. “YEN SAYS IT CAN HELP!”

Eskel glanced down, eyes widening when he saw the glowing-hot jasper stone, Jaskier’s fingers and charred bandages.

“HANG ON!” Eskel bellowed, gearing up to race over to where Jaskier was standing. But Geralt needed him; one of the giant beasties—an albino basilisk, what the fuck was going on?—had spotted Geralt. The albino basilisk was going after Geralt with its beak and sharp claws, spitting venom at Geralt even as he parried to keep Vesemir from striking Eskel’s Quen in an attempt to get to Ciri.

It was all madness. If Eskel left Ciri and Geralt’s side, they’d both be undefended.

Jaskiser and Eskel and eye contact then, each of them realizing the dilemma at the same instant. They both came to the same inevitable conclusion. There was no other option: Jaskier would have to carry that red-hot stone across the room.

Eskel’s bright amber eyes were full of sorrow. Jaskier could only smile at him, and nod. This was his choice. If the jasper stone was the key to shutting down the portal, freeing Ciri from the demon’s grip, and saving all the remaining Witchers of Kaer Morhen…well, there wasn’t much of a choice at all, was there?

I love you, Jaskier mouthed.

I love you too, Eskel mouthed back. Jaskier could almost swear he’d heard Eskel speak the words aloud. But no, they only seemed to echo inside his mind through their spellbond, along with a swell of love and reassurance. Jaskier knew exactly what Eskel was trying to tell him, No matter what happens, I love you.

Jaskier would have to move the damned rock, no matter how badly it burned him.

Jaskier swallowed hard and shrugged out of his jerkin, wrapping it around his hands as a paltry additional layer of protection. He picked up the burning-hot stone, and winced at the heat radiating through the layers of cloth and bandages.

The hot surface of the rock melted through the layers of his jerkin almost immediately. As he stumbled over to Eskel, Jaskier could feel the rock scorch through the rest of his bandages, and bit back a scream as the stone finally making contact with his bare flesh.

Once again, Jaskier had to bear knowing what his own flesh smelled like as it roasted off his bones, and he fought back a wave of bile. But he couldn’t stop to gag. He couldn’t drop the stone. He had to get to Eskel.

He was only a few feet away from the little group now, half-delirious with pain and already mourning this final, devestating loss. Whatever Chaos power this stone held must be tremendous, because it felt like Jaskier was carrying molten lava. He staggered the rest of the distance over to Eskel, and finally made it to the golden barrier of his Quen.

It was an odd bookend to their time together That glimmering gold shield had been a part of his first real connection with Eskel, and perhaps it would be his last. Jaskier could feel the last bit of the skin on his hands melting away. The roar of the approaching basilisk thundered in his ears.

Jaskier dropped the stone. Darkness swallowed him whole.

***

It was dim and quiet when Jaskier woke.

So dim and so quiet, in fact, that Jaskier (not for the first time, alas) was sure he’d been struck both blind and deaf. There was a horrific ringing in his ears, as if he could still hear that annoying buzzing-whoosh sound of the portal in the Great Hall.

But he wasn’t in Kaer Morhen’s dining hall any longer. He was in some dark firelit room in another part of the castle. He was relatively sure he was still in the Witcher’s keep. Something about the way the lingering chill of winter seemed to cling to the small room’s stone walls made him think so.

The room was bare and nondescript as a monk’s cell. It had to be a spare bedroom; Jaskier didn’t think anyone actually slept here regularly, as there were no personal objects, tapestries, or anything else to suggest this was a habitually-occupied room.

He had a whopper of a headache. Every part of his body hurt, actually, although at least his hands were mercifully numb. He recognized the familiar sensation of Chaos crackling somewhere nearby. Eskel must have just been here. He felt his lover’s presence like the charge of static electricity in the air, though the sensation left only pleasure in its wake, no tiny spark of shock-pain like he did when Yennefer had touched his bare wrists or neck.

Gods, he hoped Yen was all right. Ciri, too: he was dying to properly introduce himself to the Princess of Cintra and tell her all about her mama’s betrothal feast. And the rest of the Witchers. He was sure Eskel was alive, thank the gods, if only because Jaskier’s own heart still continued to beat. Geralt had likely survived as well. The White Wolf had always had astonishingly good luck for a man who seemed otherwise cursed by Destiny herself.

He could only pray that Aiden and Lambert had made it through the battle. And Vesemir, and Coen, and that big fellow with the beard, and the shorter slim man with the nice-looking goatee, and the other handsome, burly Witchers whose names he hadn’t had a chance to learn. Jaskier prayed for all of them. He’d been looking forward to getting to know every member of Eskel’s little family, but he’d seen at least two or three bodies in the hall. Not everyone had made it.

His heart ached for Eskel. His husband already gone through so much just to get here, only to be met with so much violence and fresh grief.

Jaskier would help his love mourn his fallen comrades. Then he’d get drunk with Yen, meet the princess, and (hopefully) patch things up with Geralt. Somewhere along the way, he’d also need to figure out what life might offer to a man with no hands, as Jaskier was fairly certain what little remained after carrying that lava-hot rock would have to be amputated. Gods, he might lose everything below the forearm.

He shuddered at the thought, and then decided he was probably being too dramatic. Where there was life, there was hope, after all. Eskel would probably fashion him a nice prosthetic, and Jaskier would devote himself to improving his oral technique. Things would be fine.

He clung to that hope in the quiet, unfamiliar darkness of the room, and tried not to let grief consume him.

A few moments later, he heard the heavy tread of footsteps. His heart swelled with relief and joy at the prospect of seeing Eskel, only for his elation to evaporate when Geralt appeared in the doorway instead.

The Witcher was balancing a tray and looking distinctly…sheepish.

“Uh, hello,” Geralt said.

Jaskier didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to talk to Geralt, especially not right now. He wanted Eskel, wanted to cuddle with his husband, to ground himself with Eskel’s familiar scent and the steady thrum of his heartbeat, and feel the peace and pleasure of their bond soak into his very bones.

But Geralt was here now. At least Destiny was consistent in her sense of irony. How many times in the past had Jaskier longed to have Geralt’s attention like this? Two years ago, he would have been thrilled to lie abed while the handsome Witcher fussed over him. But now that Geralt was actually here, pale and sad-looking, citrine eyes gleaming with unspoken emotion, Jaskier wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

He wanted his husband. He wanted Eskel’s unwavering love, his dry humour, his kindness. He didn’t want whatever half-hearted apologies Geralt of Riva might finally deign to make, two years and a lifetime too late.

But it was clear that Jaskier was not going to get what he wanted. Or what he desperately needed. Instead, like usual, he’d have to choke down whatever rotten week-old fish Destiny had laid out for him.

“Geralt,” Jaskier said coldly. He wanted to sound as welcoming as the snow-capped peaks of the Blue Mountains.

Geralt stood frozen in the doorway for a long moment. It was one of the few times Jaskier had ever seen the man look genuinely afraid,, and it sent a mean thrill of satisfaction through him. At least Geralt felt something around him.

“I, um. I brought you some soup,” Geralt finally said.

Jaskier tried to leverage himself up on his elbows, hissing a bit when his fingers—or what was left of them—brushed against the piles of blankets and furs he'd been swaddled in.

“How long was I asleep?” Jaskier asked. He was wearing a different shirt, he realized. It had to be one Eskel’s; he was practically swimming in the folds of rich red chambray. Jaskier wasn’t about to check, not with Geralt standing there staring at him, but he didn’t seem to be wearing any leggings or trews underneath. Well, at least that would make it easy to use the chamberpot.

Fuck. He was back to needing a helping hand to take a piss. Jaskier knew he had a lot to live for, but he still had had to fight back against a wave of despair at the thought.

“Uh, soup?” Geralt said again, and Jaskier realized he was waiting for permission to approach. Jaskier shrugged. He honestly didn’t care if he ate or not, he only wanted to see Eskel. But Geralt set down the tray and then stepped back, watching him expectantly.

Jaskier watched Geralt right back.

For the first time in their long acquaintanceship, Geralt was the one to blink and look away. “Fuck.”

“Yes. ‘Fuck’ indeed,” Jaskier said, trying once again to lever himself up. “So what happened?” he asked, more to fill the awkward silence than because he really wanted to hear one of Geralt’s woefully inadequate explanations of a monster attack.

True to form, Geralt’s explanation left much to be desired: “Ciri was possessed by an ancient demon that feeds off pain. Eskel and Yen managed to coax the demon out, Ciri opened a portal, and they sent it to some other dimension.”

“I see,” Jaskier nodded, already aware that Geralt wasn’t going to elaborate on any of these extraordinary details. “And is everyone all right? Did we lose anyone?”

“Mereck and Everard,” Geralt told him, leaning back in the chair. “Diever will probably lose his arm.”

“I am sorry to hear that, Geralt,” he said, hoping he sounded sincere instead of condescending. He really did mourn those casualties. There were achingly few Witchers as it was. Just a handful left to rattle around in a castle built to hold thousands. Losing more of their ever-shrinking brotherhood would be a knife to the heart.

And Geralt had just gone through a whole year thinking he’d lost Eskel.

Jaskier felt a blinding bolt of sympathy for his ex-best friend. It hit him like a lightning strike, enough to jar him into finally looking at Geralt as he spoke to him, at least.

“And Princess Cirilla? Yen?”

“Both fine,” Geralt confirmed, settling back into his chair. He kept looking at a spot on the bare stone wall, just above Jaskier’s head, although Jaskier knew better than to feel insulted. Eye contact had always been a bit difficult for Geralt. “Everyone else survived unscathed, aside from a few minor injuries.”

Geralt glanced over were Jaskier’s hands were hidden beneath the blankets, but said nothing else.

Jaskier finally, inevitably, gave in. “Where’s Eskel?” 

“We were finally able to convince him to leave you long enough to visit the hot springs. Lambert said you wouldn’t exactly be thrilled to wake up next to a guy who smelled like he’d been rolling around in fiend shit.”

“I’ll take Lambert’s word on that,” Jaskier said, although he didn’t give a whit about how Eskel smelled. He only wanted to see him, and feel those strong arms around him again.

“Eskel wouldn’t leave your side the whole time, you know,” Geralt said slowly. “You’ve been asleep for five days now. If you weren’t awake by sundown, Yen was going to bring you out of it with magic.”

“Yen’s got her magic back?” Jaskier smiled when Geralt finally nodded. “Good for her!”

“I didn’t realize you two were so…hmmm. Close.”

“She’s my favourite ex-wife.”

“Ex-wife?”

“It’s a long story,” Jaskier said, finally looking up at Geralt. He narrowed his eyes. From across the dark firelight room and the distance created by two resentful, pain-filled years, Geralt seemed almost unrecognizable.

Jaskier had spent nearly twenty years staring at that face across thousands of campfires, sticky tavern tables, and lonely moonlit roads. He’d honestly believed that he’d known this man. Known Geralt, known him to his very bones, known him enough to idolize him, yearn for him, and adore him. But Jaskier had never really seen the real Geralt, had he? At best, he’d only ever caught a few, fleeting glimpses of the Witcher.

Even now, Jaskier had no idea if the brave, surprisingly sweet and kind-hearted man he'd thought he’d known had been the illusion. A golem, one Jaskier had carved out of his own desperate need for love and acceptance. Or had the cold, angry, bitter man he’d glimpsed in the shallows of a lake outside Rinde, and again on the top of King Nediemar’s mountain, been the reality? Jaskier had thought he'd finally learned the truth of Geralt, but now...

Now, faced with the reality of the man himself, neither Jaskier’s fantasy-Geralt nor the bitter, resentful man from that mountaintop in Caingorn seemed to have anything in common with the pale, uncertain stranger sitting at his bedside. This version of Geralt, who sat next to him in suffocatingly awkward silence while he tried to come up with some half-hearted apology, was a stranger.

“You needn’t bother, you know,” Jaskier finally said with a sigh. “I’m sure you have better things to do than sit here with me.”

Geralt finally looked at him. “I don’t, actually.”

Jaskier scoffed at that. “Geralt, that’s a bald-faced lie. Those creatures must have come close to destroying the whole keep! There must be repairs to make, damage to clear up.”

“We did most of that while you were unconscious,” Geralt said dryly, and then said in a softer tone, “Do you want me to go?”

No, Jaskier almost said. Automatically. Without a second thought. He’d never actually wanted Geralt to leave, not at any point in the whole course of their friendship. He’d spent most of their time together waiting for Geralt to leave, or to come back. For a contract, for a hunt in the next town over, for the winter, forever.

Ironically, as often as he’d fretted about it, when the ‘forever’ day of parting from Geralt had finally arrived, Jaskier hadn’t been prepared for how much it would hurt. Not even remotely.

“No, I don’t want you to go,” Jaskier said. “I suppose we should…talk.”

“Right,” Geralt said. “Talk.”

Jaskier wanted to roll his eyes. “Which means I must start, then? Unless we want to linger here until the next Conjunction.”

Geralt tensed his jaw but gave him a little ‘go ahead’ nod, and Jaskier took a moment to compose his thoughts. He’d rehearsed a thousand different versions of this speech: some were kind, understanding, mostly made up of heartfelt pleas and tearful offers of reconciliation. More often, the speech was hostile, full of anger, recriminations, accusations.

However, as often as Jaskier had fantasized about how he might articulate twenty years’ worth of pain and longing and heartbreak, he found that in the moment, all he could say was the unvarnished truth.

“You hurt me, Geralt. Badly. What you said to me that day—” He paused, only to hear the old worn-out echo of Geralt’s words that day: If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.

“What you said destroyed me. If it had just been a few ugly words spoken in the heat of the moment, I might have forgiven you. But you left, and never looked for me. Never sent so much as a letter to see if I’d made it back to Oxenfurt, or just thrown myself off the top of that mountain instead. Which I thought of doing, by the way.”

Jaskier didn’t want to look at Geralt’s face. He couldn’t bear to see the expression he knew he’d find there: the remote, slightly bored exasperation Geralt wore whenever he had to listen to some poor widow or orphan choke out enough detail about a monster to help him with a contract.

He soldiered on, staring at the useless lumps of his hands buried in the bedclothes. “I spent two years drowning myself in vice trying to forget you. Drinking, doing drugs, having bad sex with questionable people…anything to quiet the realization that you never gave a shit about me. I did write a few smashing songs and also managed to set up a refugee network for the elves, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear about all that.”

Jaskier took a tiny pause, just in case. But Geralt didn’t say anything, or make even the slightest noise of interest, so Jaskier carried on.

So far, this wasn't going as he'd hoped, but it was going exactly how he’d expected.

“That’s when Yen showed up. She needed help getting out of Oxenfurt—I’m sure she told you about all this already—and around the same time, a fire mage came by looking for you and the young princess. Of course, I had no idea where you went in the winter, where you might go, who your real friends were, so I was just as useless to him as I’d been to you. He tortured me anyway.”

He paused again, and felt a few fat hot tears well over and slide down his cheeks. Jaskier didn’t bother to wipe them away. Geralt certainly wasn’t upset by any of this. He was just sitting there, probably bored and thinking about whatever he thought about, listening to Jaskier sob on about the loss of his whole fucking life with that vacant expression on his stupidly handsome face.

“I can’t do this,” Jaskier finally said, once he was sure he could speak without breaking down entirely. “What’s the fucking point? You don’t care; you never cared, and it’s just a waste of breath to—”

He heard Geralt get up—hopefully, heading for the door—and jerked back, startled, when Geralt took a seat on the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. Jaskier flailed and tipped forward, staring up at the Witcher in shock as Geralt…

As Geralt wrapped his arms around him. Hugged him.

Geralt was hugging him, and it wasn’t the sort of awkward two-pat hug Jaskier had gotten from him before. No, this was an Eskel-like hug: bearish, full-bodied, with both of Geralt’s ridiculously thick arms wrapped firmly around Jaskier’s back. Geralt was even using one hand to stroke Jaskier’s hair, which felt so bizarre that Jaskier hardly even registered it through his shock.

Geralt didn’t hug. The man was the definition of a non-hugger,. Jaskier had already decided that Eskel had probably sucked up whatever limited hug-capacity had ever existed at Kaer Morhen, since he was so wonderful at it. The few times Jaskier had actually seen Geralt try to embrace anyone—a frantic teenager, a child whose mother had been eaten by a manticore—he looked about as comfortable as a scarecrow in a barren field.

But he was hugging Jaskier now, almost clinging to him as if he were trying to make up for all the many, many times he should have hugged Jaskier, but didn’t.

It was strange. Strange, and wonderful. And far, far too late.

“Geralt, what—”

“I’m sorry,” Geralt said. It sounded like the words were being ripped out of him. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, clearly at a loss but determined to push on with the ‘sorry’ and the hugging.

Jaskier cleared his throat. “And...what are you sorry for?”

“For—hurting you,” Geralt said. “All I did was hurt you, I think.”

Jaskier had to squeeze his eyes shut against the threat of fresh tears. “There were some good times, too.” He carefully didn’t say that even those ‘good times’, the happy years of friendship and travel, had been overshadowed by what Geralt had said to him that day in Caingorn.

“Well, I’m sorry for when I did hurt you,” Geralt said, after a long, heavy silence. “And for what happened to you after. You…you deserved better, Jaskier. You have always deserved a better friend than me.”

Jaskier kept quiet for a few moments, just in case Geralt had anything else to say, but he seemed to have exhausted his sparse verbal resources. The hug went on for longer than Jaskier might have expected, too. It was a nice gesture, but when Geralt finally released him and took his seat, they settled back into an awkward silence. Neither of them seemed to know what to say to each other.

It was fine, Jaskier told himself. This was only the first of many conversations they’d need to have to patch up their friendship. If they even wanted to try. At the moment, Jaskier wasn’t even sure he even cared.

The door banged open, and Geralt jumped up like he’d been scalded. Eskel stood in the open doorframe, clad only in his trousers, beautifully broad scarred torso on display. His hair was still wet and dripping at the ends. Jaskier felt a familiar heat start to simmer in his belly at the sight of those water droplets cascading down the hills and valleys of Eskel’s chest. He wanted to trace the path of each one with his tongue.

“I’ll just—” Geralt started to say, and then Yen appeared in the doorway right behind Eskel. She had to stand on her tiptoes to peer around his shoulder.

“You’re awake!” Eskel said, with one of those rare snarl-grins Jaskier had grown to love.

He smiled back, and then his smile turned brighter still when Eskel crossed the room, elbowed Geralt aside, and drew him up into a firm hug.

Jaskier was still wearing Eskel’s ridiculously over-large shirt, and so he didn’t get the full, blissful experience of full skin-to-skin contact with Eskel, but even through the heavy chambray, he could feel the warmth of Eskel’s body, and breathe in the sweet scent of his freshly-washed skin.

Jaskier closed his eyes and hummed in contentment.

He didn't notice when Geralt slipped out the door with the look on his face of a man who’d just dodged certain death (or at least a few very awkward minutes of conversation).

“Darling, you’re all right? Geralt said you’d lost some of your fellows in the battle, I’m so sorry,” Jaskier said in a rush, wishing he could cup the back of Eskel’s neck, or run his hands through his hair. Something to connect them, some gesture that didn’t begin and end with clumsy wads of bandages and shooting pain.

He knew it was pointless to dwell on what could not be, but he’d come so close to being done with the burns. Agony aside, he’d almost been able to touch Eskel without any bandages to get in the way. This was a horrible setback on many levels—he was still halfway certain he might lose both his hands—and coming so close but never getting to truly touch Eskel seemed like an unbearable blow, at the moment. He’d been so looking forward to it.

“I’m all right,” Eskel said quickly, perhaps sensing Jaskier’s bittersweet sadness. “We lost two in the battle: Everard, and Merek.” He hugged Jaskier tightly, and Jaskier squeezed back just as hard. “You missed the funerals. The Bears all got pretty drunk. None of them can stand the sight of each other, really, but now there’s only the three Bears left. They’re all still pretty broken-up about it.”

Eskel said all of this tiredly, and he sounded exhausted. If he’d been keeping constant vigil at Jaskier’s bedside for five days in between burying his fellow Witchers, well, no wonder. Jaskier nuzzled his scarred cheek.

He’d spotted Yen earlier, but he still jumped a little when Yen popped into view just behind Eskel’s shoulder. Not that Jaskier was complaining: he loved the way Eskel eclipsed the rest of the world when he was in his arms. It was Jaskier’s favourite view in the world.

It was hard to look away from Eskel’s warm amber gaze even for a moment. Five days. Hands or no, he and Eskel had a lot of catching up to do.

“Hello there, Witch,” Jaskier said. “Good to see you made it through alive.”

“Better than just alive, Bard,” she said, warmth threading through her usual insult like gold ore. “My magic’s been restored.”

“Oh, Yen, I heard. That’s wonderful!” Jaskier said, meaning it. He and Yen shared a quick grin before his attention was drawn back to Eskel like a compass needle swinging north. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take a look at my hands?”

“I’m not sure there’s much left for me to do,” Yen said, and he heard an odd note in her voice. Gods, the refreshed burns must be horrible if the famous Yennefer of Vengerberg, Hero of Sodden couldn’t do anything to heal him.

“Yes, I do wish you’d warned me that the jasper stone was hotter than Svarog’s forge,” Jaskier said, careful to keep his tone light. He didn’t blame Yen for what had happened. Magical artifacts were unpredictable. It wasn’t Yen’s fault that the stupid saviour-stone had maimed him. And if picking up that jasper stone had helped end that awful battle even an instant sooner, Jaskier would make the same choice all over again.

“Are your hands all right, darling man?” Jaskier said, scanning Eskel’s huge palms, which were calloused and scarred, but unblistered. Eskel must have handled the red-hot rock too, but perhaps he’d only touched it for a moment?

“There are no burns, Jask,” Eskel asked calmly, stroking his cheek. The dear man smiled at him again. “I’m fine. More importantly,” he said, gently catching at Jaskier’s wrists, “you are fine. Just look!”

Jaskier was still reluctant to look at his hands. He’d already seen far too many iterations of his mutilated fingers. The aftermath of that first round of burns from Rience would haunt his dreams for years to come, and his stomach turned at the prospect of seeing whatever remained of his fingers.

However, Eskel thought he ought to look, and he knew Eskel wouldn’t force him to confront any gruesome injuries without a reason. Jaskier took a deep breath. He cracked one eye open and saw…

His hands. His perfectly normal, ordinary hands. His former hands, really, exactly as they’d looked before he’d even known fire magic even existed. His fingers were no longer the stick-thin remnants of bone and sinew stripped and debrided down to nothing. These were his hands. There weren't even any scars, or any other sign that he’d been injured in the first place.

Jaskier flexed and curled his fingers in astonishment. The deadened nerves and shooting pain he’d lived with for so long was gone, replaced by his perfectly ordinary, perfectly wonderful sense of touch.

He could feel things again, he realized. Jaskier pressed the tips of his fingers together one-by-one, quickly running through the stretching exercise Eskel had taught him without any pain and, better yet, with the ability to feel again. There was no nerve damage, no loss of sensation whatsoever.

Jaskier dropped his hand, stroking the rough wool and silky texture of the blankets and furs on the bed. He gripped his own wrist, shocked at the familiar feeling of his own pulse, the warm, familiar texture of his own skin. Gods, he’d missed this easy connection to his own body.

He turned to Eskel, wonder shining in his eyes. He laid his hand down gently down over top of Eskel’s, covering that wide scarred hand with his own paler, unblemished palm. Gods, Eskel’s skin was so wonderfully warm, and solid, and real. He felt that strange little starburst of pleasure from the spellbond, but even that was different now, better somehow, because he touching Eskel, instead of being touched.

It felt like he’d put his hand right over Eskel’s chest, over his beating heart. He could feel the thrum of life flowing through this man he loved. A connection full of warmth and pleasure.

Jaskier couldn’t resist reaching up to touch Eskel’s unscarred cheek. That bright pulse of pleasure from the spell grew exponentially stronger. The sensation of Eskel’s warm skin, and the slight sandpapery scrape of his beard against his own palm almost made Jaskier moan out loud. The sharp surge of arousal he felt was nearly overpowering.

“Sweet goddess,” Jaskier muttered, shocked at the bright pulse of sweet pleasure soaring through him. “Is this–”

“Yes,” Eskel said, placing his hand over Jaskier’s to cup his cheek more firmly. Jaskier opened his eyes and grinned stupidly at his husband.

That’s when Jaskier finally noticed the ring on his hand.

He’d had the ugly black spellbound ring on his thumb for nearly six months now, since that day he’d followed Eskel out of the Oxenfurt prison and Djikstra’s office. He’d spent hours staring at the black ring while his hands rested on Scorpion’s saddlehorn, during nights around the campfire, and mornings spent lazing around with Eskel in bed before they had to start the day’s travel. He knew the ugly, ill-forged black ring on his thumb about as well as he’d known his own bandaged fingers.

But the ring on his thumb today was not the same black ring Eskel had placed there all those months ago.

This new ring was made of rose-hued gold. It was beautiful, carved with a tiny pattern of intricate vines and flowers. Roses.

He released Eskel’s cheek to examine the ring on his thumb for a moment, and then snatched up Eskel’s hand.

The ring on Eskel’s fourth finger had changed too. A similar pattern of weaving vines had been etched into the band, just like Jaskier’s ring, but the tiny flowers on the vines were different. Buttercups, instead of roses.

“Eskel, what happened?” Jaskier said, voice trembling. Had something changed their spellbond? It didn’t feel as if anything had been altered: he could still sense Eskel’s emotions: elation, relief, and a flood of honey-sweet happiness. And he could feel that warm, reassuring thrum of their connection. If anything, the bond between them seemed stronger now, that bright pulse of pleasure thrumming along as he touched and manipulated Eskel’s hand to compare their rings. That little buzz of pleasure whenever he touched Eskel, the one that had been there from the very beginning, was still in place.

“What’s changed?” Jaskier asked.

***

“It’s the binding spell.” Eskel explained, unable to look at anything other than Jaskier’s beloved face. He was confused, and a little worried. Eskel could sympathize; he’d been dealing with the same sort of anxiety and disbelief ever since his own ring had turned gold five days ago.

“The spellbond has—shifted,” Eskel explained, glancing at Yennefer. She tilted her head. They’d spent most of the last five days alternating between keeping vigil over Jaskier, and trying to determine what had happened to trigger the change in the spell and transform their black rings into gold wedding bands. But they were both at a loss.

“It’s some strange form of alchemy, we think,” Yen said. “A magical process of material transformation, although we have no idea how or why it happened. But the rings themselves have obviously been altered, and neither of us can detect any trace of the ringbound curse.”

Jaskier made a distressed noise, which made Eskel hug him closer.

“Eskel, Vesemir, and I have run every test we can think of to verify it,” Yen continued. “As far as we can tell, whatever curse was associated with the rings seems to have been rendered inert, although ultimately we have no way to test that. Not without removing the rings.”

“Which we’re not going to do,” Eskel interrupted sternly, trying not to glare at Yen. They’d had more than a few spirited arguments over this particular point. “We can experiment later. You and I can test ourselves over a short distance,” he said to Jaskier, “and if the curse is still active, you should start to feel it fairly quickly, with only minimal effects. But I’m not going to risk removing the rings. Not yet, anyway.”

Jaskier gave him a shaky nod, and they shared a brief, bleak smile. Eskel knew exactly how Jaskier felt, and not just because of what he could sense of Jaskier’s emotion through their bond. He was relieved the curse might have been broken, through whichever magic or means, but he was also left feeling strangely conflicted about it. Without the spellbond, what kept them together now?

Eskel knew he still loved Jaskier, with all his battered heart. And he was sure Jaskier loved him. Still, the fundamental force underlying their relationship–the curse, and all it represented–was gone, or at least altered in ways they didn’t yet understand. He’d spent the last five days trying to convince himself that this wouldn’t change anything, but…what if it did? What if Jaskier wanted to go their separate ways in the spring?

Eskel already knew he’d never try to force Jaskier to stay with him. Wouldn’t beg him to return, either, although he’d probably feel tempted to try.

He’d always known the curse wouldn’t last. Seven hells, he’d been determined to break it himself. He’d just thought, after everyone—even Djikstra’s Sorceress—had confirmed it was impossible to break, they’d have a bit more time. One winter together, at least, before parting became a real possibility.

“Sorry,” Jaskier said, somewhat nonsensically, but then he suddenly seemed to be having a difficult time looking at Eskel. “But how can the curse be gone? I can still feel you,” he said, staring up at Eskel with those depthless mountain-lake eyes. “I can feel how sad you are, right now.”

Eskel felt that damned telltale flush start to creep up his neck. “I am sad, Jask,” he confessed. “I suppose…I wasn’t quite ready for it to end.”

“Me neither,” Jaskier sniffed. When Eskel looked at his face, he wasn’t surprised to find that Jaskier was on the brink of tears.

“Ye gods, I didn’t think it was possible,” Yen said, from somewhere over by the door, “but it turns out that Geralt might not actually be the stupidest Witcher ever to walk the world. Perhaps he’s not even the stupidest man I know. You two are giving him such stiff competition.”

“Yen, would you kindly fuck off?” Jaskier said, and this time the tears managed to spill over.

Yen flung open the door using her magic instead of her hands. “Fine, I’ll go. But before I take my leave, I want to reiterate that you are both very, very stupid. You love each other. Neither of you wish to be parted. So stay together, make a home together, and be happy. Just…let yourselves have this, all right? Somehow you two morons stumbled across something the rest of us highly intelligent and equally deserving people haven’t found. Love is rare, and worth holding onto. Don’t fuck it up.”

And with that, Yennefer of Vengerberg swanned out of the room, and magically shut the door behind her.

Eskel sat, content to wait and let Jaskier work through what were doubtlessly very complicated feelings. Eskel had been through this himself just a few days before. Yen had even given him the ‘just be happy’ speech already.

“How…how do you feel?” Eskel finally asked, just because he couldn’t stand the heavy, miserable silence. “You don’t feel relieved. I thought you might.”

Jaskier met his eyes. “Ah HA! So you can feel my emotions through the spellbond!”

“There is no more spellbond,” Eskel said gently, and Jaskier sobered.

“Well, there’s still something between us,” he said stubbornly.

“Just a regular binding blessing, we think,” Eskel sighed. “Same as any handfast couple could buy from a hedgewitch for a few coppers or a chicken.”

Jaskier smiled sadly at that, and twined their fingers together. “Well, that’s…something, I suppose. And anyway, isn’t that what the hedgewitch in Leyda told us, about the ringbound spell? When she talked about fields and harvests, reap what you sow, etcetera? She said that you and I should make the most of the bond we share. So if—”

“If?” Eskel prompted. He could feel his heart beating in his throat. For once, it was as fast as any human’s.

“If we choose to stay together, then…then nothing has to change,” Jaskier finished. He was staring at Eskel, gaze skimming over the ruin of his face. “It would just be our choice, now. No one else’s. That’s the only difference.”

“And you’d choose to stay? With me?”

Jaskier twined their fingers together, and Jaskier caressed his scarred cheek. “Darling man,” he murmured. “Of course. Of course.”

Eskel was so close and staring at Jaskier’s face so intently that he only noticed he was smiling due to the wrinkles at the corners of his eye.

Crowsfeet, the humans called them. Eskel’s craggy century-old face sported dozens of those small lines. They looked nice on Jaskier, he thought. Jaskier was a man born for smiling. For love, and happiness, and a lifetime of joy.

Eskel felt his own broken smile twist up into a grimace. His face showed the opposite of what he felt inside, as always. But he knew Jaskier could tell how he felt, just from the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

“I love you,” Eskel said, and bent to kiss his husband.

Their new golden rings gleamed in the flickering light of the fire.

THE END