‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ CHAPTER THIRTEEN ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
a game of gwent

   A TRUTH WAS SAID OVER AND over again, promised and sworn. Rennen had learned the truth was easy to manipulate, easy to coax out of its precious hideout like a gemstone yet to be discovered. A soft smile from rose-tinted lips, fingers brushing against a hand like fragile petals; cup after cup of alcohol to ease the tongue—it was easy to pull the truth from a man.

   The witcher was a man hardened by the many fights he had been in and the many years he lived. The simple things she had learned about flirtation would not coax a truth from his mouth; she knew that not even sex or torture would push a truth out of him. He was a witcher, trained since he was a child to keep every emotion deep within himself.

   A lot like an assassin.

   Yet, Rennen had never been one to keep things sealed inside of herself. She had been a forest fire ready to spread, a brutish force with harsh winter in her blood alongside something she had never been able to name. A flame that would never be put out. At any moment, it would free itself from its restraints and burn everything around her like the prophecies that were ingrained into her mind. 

   Like the monsters in her cards.

   She looked down at the deck of cards in her hand; they were full of monsters with wide grinning maws covered in rows of sharp teeth and long claws that would shred anything they touched. The illustrations were horrendous with the maws and claws covered in blood from whatever victim the artist had imagined they ate before, the eyes were open wide in a frenzy and devoid of all humanity many creatures held. A lucid moment of a decision based on survival.

   The moment Rennen had seen the illustrations on the cards, she stole them. A thing that was solely hers, always hidden beneath everything in her bag and never told a soul about where she got them or how, because if someone were to ask why she had taken them, she wouldn't know what to say. 

   She would never divulge how the monsters in the cards reminded her of herself. 

   "A truth. . ." Geralt repeated with a hum, tasting the word over his tongue. He kept his mouth set in a straight line as he rummaged through his bag for his own deck of cards. They appeared small in his hands, his fingers too large as he shuffled. He did not look up. "Why a truth?"

   She glanced down at the cards, noticing they were based on the Northern Realm: siege weapons used in battles, foot soldiers, heroes, and infantries. Everything needed to win a war. They did everything her cards did, the only difference was the illustrations. Simple paintings of the heroes and their worth, the siege weapons in fields of green and infantries standing tall with no fear in their bleak eyes. She scrunched her nose and let her eyes wander up to his. "Why not a truth?" she asked, raising a single brow and tilting her head to the side. "I can do more with a truth than with money, don't you think?"

   "No," he quickly said, "you can do more with money than with some truth."

   "You would think that," she mused, her thumb brushing against the glossy surface of the cards. They already had the smudginess of her fingers ever since she last touched them, a hint of ale in the corners from when she had accidentally spilt the last droplets. "You are a witcher, after all, isn't all you think about money?"

   Geralt laid the hand that held his cards on his thigh, his other arm falling to the side carelessly. "I wasn't born rich."

   She met his gaze. "Neither was I." Was that all that he saw when he looked at her? A girl born to the riches of the isle of An Skellig, who dressed in the prettiest dresses and waltzed in castle halls of all nobles as if all she had ever desired was to be married and be the lady of her own house? "My father has money, not I."

   "No, you steal it."

   Her jaw clenched, teeth clacking together loud enough he must have heard it. "I have learned to live with them, so that I may live." The words left her mouth slow and deliberate, of memories from the moment she had last seen him those many years ago. The dwelling on the edge of a mountain made within its rocks, the sunlight that warmed the rocks and cast slits of light between the broken areas; two men tied back to back in front of a Sylvan, a king, and a woman who prayed to the Dread Mother. In the shadows, an assassin who was to answer the prayer. "Did you not say that to the King of the Elves, Geralt? I have done the same, so that I may live."

   Geralt swallowed, eyes flickering around until they fell back on her.

   "You kill necrophages and insectoids and spectres, but I kill monsters too," she interrupted him. "My monsters may not swarm like kikimores or haunt like wraiths, but they are just as dangerous. And just like you, witcher, I earn my coin by killing them." 

   Fury was something familiar she clutched to with all her might. A lifeline. It coursed through her veins and crept inside of her like vines reaching for a sliver of sunlight. It begged for her to allow it to take over, to engulf her in whatever damnation it held. And for a small moment, she thought she would let it swallow her whole like a starved beast.

   If she burned everything around her, like the fury wanted her to do, then the experiments the druid performed on her body when she was a child were because he and her father were correct.

   Geralt turned his head to look out to the water once again. Anything but her. His mouth was set in a straight line, pointer finger tapping against his cards as if he was irritated and wanted the conversation to end. He wanted to get back to the game. 

   "There is no difference in our monsters, Geralt," she continued, staring into his eyes. She would not waver or fall weak beneath the quick glances he threw her way. "Though I'd like to say that mine are more dangerous. After all, the monsters I hunt know what they're doing." 

   He sat still. The cold wind blew milk-white strands of hair across his face, but he did not budge. For a moment, he was a statue in the centre of a city. Pale skin like marble, perfectly shaped by careful hands to bring him to life and to show him off; a sketch in the centre of a book made by excited hands in the middle of the night under candlelight, rough charcoal lines for his face and nose and lips.

   Rennen wanted to continue to look at him, to search for anything that would make him appear like the monster others wanted him to be. All she could see was a man. 

   She cleared her throat and gripped her cards tight in her hand. "How about you start, Geralt?" Her eyes focused on the surface of the rock. 

   A game of Gwent consisted of three rounds, one had to win two of the rounds with more points to win the game. The best option was to win the game early on, considering one could only draw two cards going to the second round. She had played the game too often and thought she had mastered it when a dwarf won every coin she carried. The dwarf had laughed heartedly as he pulled the coins to his chest as he told her to be careful of what she bet, and then he taught her. 

   She blinked and focused her sight on the game, realising she won the first round because she put down too many cards. The rest of the game was not in her favour.

   Geralt let out a hum of approval, then laid the first card for the next round without as much as a second thought. 

   She inhaled deeply through her nose and laid down her card, then her eyes moved to look up at him. 

   His focus was on the game, eyebrows slightly furrowed in concentration. Only his hair with the wind moved, the quick flex of his fingers as the tips brushed against the top of his cards to pick one out from the deck. He stopped halfway through laying one down. "Why did you return to An Skellig?" he suddenly asked.

   "Why are you so interested?" she asked, raising a brow. Her hair had dried with the cold wind, what fell on her back had dried but the warmth disappeared. All she felt was the coldness of the wind, what the fury left behind once it had been smothered. "You forget, Geralt, but I am only a mere contract. There's no need in getting to know me."

   He stopped halfway through putting down a card. "A mere contract. . ." he repeated. 

   "Once you leave An Skellig, I will be but a fleeting thought," she continued. A sigh left her mouth and she laid down her last card, knowing the witcher had won. She pulled out a bag of coins from the bottom of her bag and laid it on his hand, her fingers brushing against the skin of his palm. A quick sting of something surged from the small connection. Not the needles his medallion had pushed into her, but a gentle lull of a hammock on a cool day. She let her fingers linger. 

   Geralt did not look up from the bag of gold on his palm, nor from the fingers that lingered against his skin. 

   Rennen pulled her hand away, closed her fingers inside of her fist and pulled it behind her. "The coin I said I would give you. I don't know how much Jaskier paid you, but that should be plenty to consider it double."

   He closed his hand around the bag, the coins clanking against each other inside. "You said you wanted a truth." He looked up at her. "Why?"

   "I lost. There's no need for truth."

   "You paid me more of what Jaskier paid me for a measly game of Gwent." He pushed the bag of coins into his own bag and stood up. For that small moment, the witcher in front of her appeared as any other person. A mere man who had not gone through whatever he did to become the witcher he was. His mouth opened and he said, "I believe in Destiny."

   She stared up at him. For a small moment, she almost allowed herself to give him a smile. A genuine one. She swallowed that smile and took a step closer to the edge, where the water met the rocky shore. "Destiny," she repeated, tasting that word in her mouth. It was bittersweet, and the bitterness overpowered everything else. "That's a strange thing to believe in."

   "You don't?" He took a step by her side.

   "What has Destiny ever brought me, other than misfortune?" She turned her head to look up at him, to try and memorise not the colour of his eyes but the way he looked beneath the slivered moon. Tall and handsome, she had to admit, but full of regret. His eyes flecked with gold, the way his pupil widened, the crinkles on the corner of his eyes. Her voice lower to a whisper and said, "Destiny and Fate can go fuck themselves." She turned her body to face his. If she breathed, their chests would touch. She held her breath. "What's so great about it that you believe?"

   "Meeting you three times is no mere coincidence, Rennen." His voice was just as low as hers, carried to the other side of the fjords with the breeze. The way he sounded, she wanted to keep listening. "Blaviken. Posada. Here?"

   Rennen pushed a small smile on her lips and laid a hand on the wolf medallion on his chest. The needles began to creep up her arm, she allowed them to reach further than her elbow. Up her shoulder and neck to her other shoulder as it began to make its way down the rest of her body. It began to hurt, but she did not pull away. There was a certain pleasure in the pain that didn't allow her to pull away, or touch any other part of him. She touched him but it was not him, a wall between witcher and assassin. "Goodbye, Geralt."

────── ⚔ ──────

   The witcher disappeared when they returned to Urialla Harbour.

   Rennen had glanced around to search for him, to have a final conversation before he returned to the mainland and would be lost to her for whatever length of time. She didn't see no broad back retreating like she once did in Blaviken, no milk-white hair or the dark-as-night-cloak he continued to wear. He disappeared like a wraith. 

   The assassin wondered if she would ever see him again. 

   The first thing she did when she arrived at the castle was head straight to the baths to scrub off the grime and relish in the hot water. Pink, bell-shaped flowers and white, star-shaped flowers floated in the water alongside green, thin leaves from a cistus shrub—the scents coated her skin once she was clean. She stayed in the baths until her skin began to prune and her thoughts began to haze with the steam, and even then she did not want to leave. The haze was the only time her mind was quiet, focused on the scents and the taste of liquor on her tongue. Yet, even through the haze, her mind was not entirely silent. 

   It twirled and changed like the winds of a hurricane until she almost fell asleep in the hot waters. Only then did she decide to leave. 

   The moment she stepped out of the baths, a woman stepped in front of her. "Jarl Torgeir wishes for your audience, Lady Rennen," she said, her head bowed in front of her. 

   Rennen raised a brow. "My audience? Lady?" She scoffed and rolled her eyes, shaking her head. "You don't need to be so formal with me, lass."

   The woman's mouth fell open. She quickly clamped it shut and blinked several times. "Jarl Torgeir wants to see you."

   "That's better." Rennen ran a hand through her hair. "Lead the way, then."

   The woman quickly turned and lead the way to her father's office. It was silent except for the fire crackling in the fireplace and the nib of a quill scribbling on paper. Her father sat behind his desk, head down as he wrote on paper. The desk was still strewn with open books and papers, a platter of something steaming and a plate with cookies right by whatever he was writing in. 

   Rennen nodded at the woman and pushed her way forward, taking a seat on the chair in front of the desk. She leaned back against it, rested her arms on the hand and tilted her head to the side. "You wished for my audience?" she asked, almost giving her father a smile. 

   Torgeir stopped writing. "How was the hunt?"

   "Hunt?" She shuffled her feet and glanced around the room, admiring the colourful volumes of books against the walls before she took a look back at her father. "I thought it was only to gather herbs for the druid. If you wish to call being attacked by sirens a hunt, then it went well."

   "Fenrir said you had been hurt."

   The faint throb of the slashes made by the sirens were mere white lines, reminders of how close their sharp claws had gotten. For a moment, she almost reached up to where they were but kept her hands wrapped around the arms of the chair. "A mere scratch."

   "Did the druid take a look at you?"

   "I have lived on my own for quite some time, there is no need to have that poor excuse take a look at me," she said in a monotone voice. "Was this why you suddenly called for me, for some fatherly curiosity after so many years?" An emotionless laugh left her mouth. "Too late for that, Father."

   Torgeir laid the quill on its side and finally looked up. "Eist told me you wish to go with him to Cintra."

   "I'm already bored of An Skellig."

   His jaw clenched. He inhaled deeply through his nose, fingers flexed atop the wooden table, and a calm demeanour suddenly pushed through his features. "I have been in search of a husband for you," he suddenly said. "You are past marriageable age, but that shouldn't be a problem."

   She stilled. "What?"

   "The Jarl of Clan Brokvar will send his second son Aki and the Jarl of Clan Dimun will send Holger," continued her father, eyes focused on the paperwork in front of him. 

   She bit the inside of her lip until she tasted blood, her nails digging into the wooden arms of the chair. Clan Brokvar were considered cowards ever since one of their jarls withdrew from battle after he saw the enemy, and yet their archers compared to none in the isles. Clan Dimun were cheats, thieves, and marauders worse than any other in the isles, even when their progenitor was a man of virtue. And even though she did not want to marry any of these men, a fury ignited in her at the thought that her father wanted her to marry into a clan of cowards or a clan of thieves, though the latter were most like her.

   She considered it a disgrace.

   Rennen inhaled through her nose as slow as possible, hoping she made no sound to alert her father of the frustration that arose inside of her chest. "You want me to accept a marriage with either a second son or another second son who does not know how to sail and lost part of his arm in an autumn blizzard," she said, biting back her anger. "You must think so little of me to even think that I would agree to this stupid idea."

   "You are a woman of Clan Tuirseach, Rennen. That must mean you must marry to carry on the bloodline of clans and Skellige." He did not look up from his papers, he dipped the nib of his quill into the ink pot to continue writing. "You should have married when you turned fifteen, but. . ." He glanced up at her. "You weren't here."

   "I wasn't here," she repeated, nodding. "Do you wish for me to apologise for leaving? I won't. Not to you. Not ever." She slowly stood and laid her hands atop his desk, the fury igniting once again. The room became too hot, the flames from the fireplace and the candles higher than normal. "It was because of you that I left, or did you forget everything you did?"

   Torgeir laid the quill down, hands flat against the desk. "I had to—"

   "I was a child!" she hissed through her teeth. "Is that the excuse you use to justify all you have done? You wanted to make sure that I wouldn't destroy the world as the prophecies foretold, so you had a druid operate on me as if I were a corpse! I. Was. Alive." The fury was once again licking at her insides, begging to take over. Her hands were too hot, her chest felt as if something had wrapped around it and did not allow her to breathe. "Let me remind you of something, dear Father, but you made me the monster. You and that druid and your fucking experiments. If you thought that would save the world from my wrath, then you know nothing."

   When she pulled away from the desk, there were two burnt handprints where her hands had laid. Two black voids in the shape of her hands.

   Torgeir stared at the handprints with wide eyes, the stillness of his form like one of the paintings on the walls. "What. . ."

   Rennen did not know what kind of chaos ravaged inside of her; the war that tore her insides apart with the simplest thoughts. She swallowed and pushed a wide grin to her mouth, the taste of the blood from earlier still fresh on her tongue. "That, Father, is the monster you created."

  The power inside of her felt a lot like vines dancing and brushing against her insides in search of a way out. It wanted sunshine, the heat of something so it could burn bright and brilliant. That was the hotness Rennen felt all inside of her as if those vines of power were made with the same fire that danced atop the logs of wood in the hearth at the corner of the room.

   She swallowed and took steps back, the door out of the office just feet away from her back. "Let's end whatever conversation this is," she said, rubbing the palm of her hand with her thumb. "Firstly, I will not marry a second son. You might as well forget everything about these prospective husbands you saught because I will never marry anyone of your choosing. Secondly, I will go to Cintra with—"

   "You will not meddle in the affairs between Cintra and Skellige," Torgeir snapped. He had finally looked away from the two burnt handprints at the edge of his desk, his eyes wide as he stared back at his daughter. There was no love in his eyes, no love in the way he held himself. It was fright. His shoulders and hands were rigid, fingers closed into fists. "This is between myself and Queen Calanthe; it does not include you."

   She eyed him, watched the way his fingers flexed. "I will go to Cintra with Uncle Eist," she repeated, slow and careful. "You may try to block my passage to the ship, but remember I have other ways of travelling, Father." She rolled her shoulders back until she heard a crack, held her head high and allowed a little, wicked smile to fall onto her lips. "I stopped being your daughter a long time ago."

   Torgeir became still like the paintings on the walls, as if he had suddenly become one of the statues held in Freya's garden. He did not blink, he did not breathe but merely stared.

   "It would do you good to remember that."