Feeling and seeing could be the root of a healing no potion ever dreamt of being able to grant. When desire calmed and the raging sea of hunger released into a breezy sigh, the sands have settled and there was only peace mustered in the calming sounds of each other's breaths, nestled into each other on a creaking bed that has been the thunder to their storm.

"Really?" Geralt murmured from time to time, between little sighs of satisfaction, just to assure Azaras that he wanted her to keep going with her words, as long as his hands were free to trail through her locks of black hair. They spread over his chest and he threaded through, wrapped strands at a time on twists on his fingers, just from one hand; the other had been claimed by her entirely.

Geralt's right arm was what her head rested on, so she kept that hand as a warmth on her own bare chest, riddled in little spots of red, slowly fading away and beginning to feel a goosebumps-giving cold nip. "Yes," she confirmed proudly, "I saved Eskel's life. In fact, he was so grateful that he insisted to give me a couple of things."

Stories were like fields. Plain hills did not roll into attention, but the more flowers they held, the more colorful they were in details, the less likely to be ignored they became.

Azaras' exaggerations were amusing little fibs even she laughed gently about.

"What things?" Geralt urged with another question. It was easier to hear her drown away the silence of his life, picture every single word of her and avoid speaking of just what miserable state he reached by having to leave her for a second time. He feared fate now, were it to try and deal them the same hand a third time.

Azaras felt Geralt's hand stop combing her hair. That gentle feeling, soothing away all worries and accumulated anxiety, massaged her whole being, making it so that when it stopped, she felt a pending need to moan a little protest. Her throaty groan was muffled by her own hand leaving its post. Where he held warmth to her chest, she played circles on his skin with her thumbs.

Now, instead, she halfways sat up and reached over the edge of the narrow, old bed they could afford, to get the vial from amongst her clothes, piled, fortunately, on the ground, rather close.

Geralt's shoulder now felt the cold. His chest raised confused by the absende of her, jealous almost that only the very tips of his fingers could now reach her back. Food had been rare for her, he suddenly had time to notice, because her bones stood out a little too clear. New scars have shown up too, scars he did not know the stories of, but he could guess were there because he did not have patience to wait beside her "corpse" just a little while longer.

That potion worked.

It was also a potion Azaras showed him when she leant back into their framed position. The bed beneath them creaked as loud as a dying crow to have her return, but it was not the object, but the man whose sounded acceptance mattered.

Geralt hummed in approval of her return and took the little bottle she presented him with. "He said you Witchers get taught alchemy and that thing can help me be stronger in a fight."

"Did he now?" He flipped the bottle between his fingers once, before returning it to Azaras, who looked up to him, for confirmations. Something told him she trusted Eskel's words, yet she simply needed to hear hie voice more often too. Perhaps, Geralt considered, tiredness caught up to her and she would sooner fall asleep.

Either way, he cleared his throat as silently as he could, though it did not change the roughness of his tone. "These potions are deadly to normal humans, but not to Witchers. We use their benefits, even though the first effect usually turns our flesh and blood to poison."

Azaras nodded, attentive to how his lips moved, giving Geralt the comfort of bracing her with one flinch of a smile. "In fact, being poisonous comes in handy against things like those who left bite marks on your back."

She looker away.

Expecting him to notice and actually hearing the gentle flow of his voice tease care about her wellbeing, reminded Azaras just how safe she was feeling then, and how much on the edge she felt before. "Drowners," she explained. "Almost didn't make it to you. I suppose you'll have Eskel to thank for that as well, this time, because he showed me how to use a sign for fire."

Lonesome beauty, her right hand raised in piquant gestures. No flame erupted from her palm and due to her visible frustration, Geralt had to hold back with every nerve not to laugh harder than just a little shiver through his body.

Under their faint, thin blanket, where their bare legs intertwined, Azaras nudged him. "It worked once," she tried to keep her pride intact. "Won't need it again anyway..."

"Can't have you not knowing these things now." Indeed, things have changed. The graze of death on her soul fixed the flaws of the Blood Sorcerer's take on mutating her; it completed the trial at last and now that she was a Witcher, Geralt shared an opinion he thought Eskel had in mind as well... that Azaras had to be taught their ways.

Geralt wasn't a particularly good teacher though and he was aware of how little patience he owned when his right hand wrapped around Azaras' wrist, guided the position of her palm in the air. They both watched, saffron gazes in silence, how his hand encapsulated hers whole.

All of a sudden, Azaras was overwhelmed with recalling a little too much of everything she felt for Geralt, everything he never once said back. Actions spoke for themselves and part of herself was resentful of just how much doubt her need for reassurance brought.

Geralt felt the stillness of her breath and let go of her hand, "Are you alright?"

Her mind spiraled away while her hand remained suspended in the air, her eyes staring rather blankly, towards sadness. Azaras realized at last, that she was about to run out of purposes to hold. She found Geralt, the Blood Sorcerer who created this version of her was dead and she will soon end her list of vengeance. Whatever laid for her beyond was unknown to her and that was a bothersome, if not absolutely terrifying thought.

Not even a glimpse of certainty showed into her mind, because at the end of the day, she couldn't even be certain that Geralt would remain by her side. Wouldn't he rather go about and resume his Witcher work? She must have become a burden financially to him and that was why she hadn't yet heard the words...

Geralt protected her raised hand into his own, bring it down between them. Genuine worry riddled fine gold specks into his eyes, but he did not know what happened behind hers to suddenly look at him so sad.

His bones grew weary, yet now, seeing her unsettled pushed away every capacity of his to just fall asleep. Instead, he swore he'd be the guardian, for which his smile led her to relax again. "Go to sleep."

A possessive love ran in the veins of Arcapan, cloaked in curtains of blood and drenched for life in darkness. Jealousy cried out of the crunch of the paper Sylvain held into his hand. Were it not for Yulis, the Blood Sorcerer sent to him by Nildgaard, their fresh allies in a long war, Sylvain would have never even known about the betrayal of the words. They hurt more than the days of torture from which he wished to return running back into Geoffrey's arms as a whole man, not just a half.

Instead, Sylvain felt how his emotions were ripped out, how his only comfort came from the new mage of his keep and how the opening of the doors and the beginning of the noise in his tower bubbled up venomous rage in him.

Geoffrey was dragged out of his best as soon as the dawn cracked on the sky, pulled up the stairs by force by fellow knights, rugged altogether so hard his knees have bruised by all the hard margins they have hit on the way up, on the way to the room and to the shock. He could not help but gasp at the miracle of seeing Sylvain standing, on his own, with no scheme or illusion, but actual legs, just like those he used to have once, before the darker days.

Sylvain did not turn around. He heard the gasps and knew Geoffrey would now regret not trusting Yulis the way he did from the start. He raised his chin and glanced out the window, where the sun shone in his eyes, on his silked hair and bright crown. For bravery, he glanced at the graveyard below, "You betrayed me, Geoffrey."

Words stuck in the knight's throat and he was too lost to answer. Tears built in his eyes from seeinf Sylvain now walking, stepping around at last and straightening up before his knelt position. But what the king said was an omen of death and revolt.

"Seeing you giving your heart to a mere bard, right over my sister's grave, was a profanity I could forgive by blaming the wines and punishing Jaskier for your sins. But...," Sylvain saw Geoffrey squirm at the mention of the singer from the festivals. After just one night, in which they did not know they have been watched from the windows above, Geoffrey still cared about that commoner more than he did his king?

For that, Sylvain decided on mercilessly speech, "But siding with our enemies and endangering our whole kingdom is something I never thought I would see you do." He raised the piece of paper and threw it on the table, where it rolled.

"You recognize it," Sylvain noted by the way Geoffrey's eyes followed that trash. "Your message did not reach any Witchers, otherwise I would have had you killed in the market already for this treason."

"People are being murdered, Sylvain!" Geoffrey screamed. Trails of spit formed grates inside his wide open mouth across his shout.

Sylvain took two big steps forward, carefully watched by the mage admiring his work. The back of his hand slapped Geoffrey across the face to hard not only did his cheek grow red, but the armoured knights had to also hold him from falling over.

He hit him again though, over the other side of the face too.

"I am your king!" Sylvain shouted down in his face. A third slap follwoed

"This mage is killing our people," Geoffrey dared raise his hand back. "You are no king if you-"

The fourth hit was a punch that knocked blood out of Geoffrey's mouth. Sylvain's stomach growled so loud he took a step back and averted his gaze altogether from the crimson splattered scene.

"Throw him in cage with his lover," he ordered, raspy, consoled only by the approach of Yulis, covering him in those dark long sleeves. "Let them rot and crawl in their own filth." His poisonous words drowned away in a whisper towards the mage that Geoffrey could not hear as he started getting dragged away.

But he read the filthy words coming from the lips of the sorcerer: Not yet.

It was sooner rather than later that all the pushing around had Geoffrey get thrown into the dark room, stench of blood embodied into death, where it took him a while to even see or understand that he failed to call for help and he ended with a punishment worse than death. Geoffrey's only relief from a torturing realization was hearing, in shock and pity, the voice of another soul he didn't know until then he wkuld condemn.

"Who...?" Jaskier's throat was so dry the words were razors. He reconsidered dosaging his sounds and instead remained quiet, only getting closer in a dragged crawl. Weak and tired, he was confused to even feel another presence in this hell.

"He's gone mad," Geoffrey scattered to his knees, finding in the dark, the bard's hands. He held them, guilty. "I'm sorry I brought this misfortune upon you, Jaskier."

A long silence pondered.

"The knight?" Filled with interferences of hard R's in the wrong places, Jaskier's whispers came through after thinking back of the clearer memories he had.

"Yes, Geoffrey," he nodded eagerly, fast, though he too, spoke only in whispers. "If I knew he'd be wrathful in blind jealousy, I would have never followed you out in the graveyard, I swear."

Though fate was cruel, Jaskier smiled into his silence. Of course, it was just so ironic that another romance idle would be the end of him. He knew a certain Witcher who would very much pulls his eyes out with speeches on how he was asking for the cruel, violent jealousies he made everywhere he went.

"But I also swear this, I'm getting you out of this place." Even without a plan, Geoffrey had one gram of faith for the good wills of the history not yet spoken.

And he decided then: he'll have to leave Arcapan behind and go look for help himself. No matter how he'd come about doing that.

chapter dedicated to IcyMoonSword