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Silk and linen slipped smooth and rough over Triss' skin. Her gown, uncaring, fell to pool at her feet, in a ring from which she stepped almost reluctantly. She crossed her cold arms over her naked chest, standing bare in the middle of the empty room. The light of dusk was fading fast. No longer were the inn's curtains and soft bedsheets washed in a dusty dim blue, but rather in a cool and dark shadow like an inhalation that leaves the air devoid of oxygen.
Triss shivered despite the walls and glass meant to keep the bitter winter chill outdoors. She ought to have put some clothes on. But she stood there in her desolation for some long moments longer.
Finally, she drew out a cotton nightdress from her pack. She sat on the edge of the bed once she had slipped it on and allowed the silence to devour her. Not a sound from beyond the walls of her room. Not even a peep. She was ashamed to find herself holding her breath to hear better.
What would it help? What if she could hear a lusty whisper or a moan from the next room over? Would it make her feel better, to hear one of them call the other's name in ecstasy?
Their breaths mixing together, black on white, violet on gold; strong hands on lithe waist, dark lips on stubbled jaw, strength and grace, heartbreak healed, souls bound, destiny, beauty. Unfathomable, devastating beauty.
She squeezed her eyes shut and her fists closed in her lap. She should have had some idea of what taking this journey with these people would mean for her, and yet she'd ignored all the warning bells in her head. Miles and miles of overland travel with Geralt and Yennefer. Sharing supplies, sharing campsites, sharing everything but all the things that were theirs, but not Triss'.
Of course it had to be them, and it had to be her skills that they needed when they got to Ard Carraigh. How could she have refused their request? This yearnsome torture was a prison of her own design, and she'd climbed in the cage willingly.
"I have to go to sleep," she said voicelessly to an empty room that held no answer. She lay down without saying good night to anyone.
It didn't feel like she slept, but she must have, because when next she opened her eyes, the room had gone pitch black.
What awoke her was the sound of the door, opening slow, and then closing again. Where she lay, facing the window, she could only see the hulking figure from the corner of her eye. The dark reduced it to no more than a moving silhouette. She held her breath and stayed very still, cataloguing her options—could she call for help? Would she have time to portal? Should she stay still and pretend to be asleep, or stand now and—
The smell reached her. Rough and ashy and leathery, the smell of survival, the smell of...
"Geralt," she mouthed. By then, he was beside her bed, swift and ephemeral as a spectre. He stood there unmoving for so long that she braved a look up at him.
His eyes glowed ominously. They were locked onto her.
"Geralt," she repeated, courageously enough that it might even have been called a whisper. She shifted onto her back, and in the same instance he fell over her and crawled into her bed.
For a moment, they froze, him straddling her and her pressed back into the pillows. He stared at her and waited to be pushed away.
She didn't. And then his chapped lips were against hers.
If the idea of going along on this trip had set alarm bells ringing in Triss, this should've turned her skull into a belfry. She could scarcely imagine an act more out of character. Were him and Yennefer arguing? If she had enhanced her hearing with magic earlier, would she have heard bitter insults instead of moans of pleasure? And if so, was it wise to allow Geralt to do this, to take out his anger toward Yennefer with her, to wreak havoc on every shred of goodwill Triss had been able to build with them both?
More importantly, did she give a shit?
The hands she was tangling into Geralt's hair seemed to suggest otherwise.
This was— well, not everything she'd wanted, but a damn good chunk of it. This, the taste of Geralt on her lips, his weight and bulk pushing her down like a hen brooding.
The gentle stroke of his hands on her hips turned more commanding for just a moment, shifting her so he could press them closer together. His thigh nestled forcefully between hers and she could taste him headily all throughout her, spreading through.
Their fronts were pressed together, the fabrics of their clothes shifting and rucking with every motion. Geralt lowered his head to lean into Triss' neck, to place wet kisses along the length of it. Triss let her head fall back and gasped into the rhythm their coarse grinding was creating.
She wondered, briefly, if she should keep quiet, if this was to be secret, illicit, or if Geralt would want her to exaggerate her sounds, if this was some plot for revenge in a lovers' quarrel— who was she not to do her part?
She sighed again and relaxed. His hands were on her shoulders now, slipping her nightdress off and letting it pool at her waist. She tugged at the ties of his shirt until they fell loose. Then it was the plane of his chest and its wiry body hair against her bare breasts, white scars on faint freckles.
Triss tried to take it all in, as though she could hold the image of this as a memento forever after it was over. His hands, smoothing down her shoulders and arms, the feeling of arousal beginning to leak out of her, her heartbeat between her legs, the smell and heat of his breath, the dark room, the figure in the chair beside—
"Yennefer!" she nearly screamed, shoving Geralt away sharply.
Yennefer adjusted her hands folded calmly in her lap. She looked mildly surprised at Triss' panic. She said, "Well, don't stop on my account. This was just getting good."
"I'm— This isn't—" Triss stammered, trying to pull the blanket over her chest, though Geralt's large shape still straddling her—and trapping the blanket beneath them—made that hard. Her gaze flicked between him and Yennefer. She was clad in a dark nightdress, sat on a chair that left her legs only a few inches from the edge of the bed. "What are you doing here?"
"Watching," Yennefer said, as though to an idiot. Now her perfume was beginning to fill Triss' nose as well. The air had gone from the neutral wood and incense scent of an inn to this intoxicating, breathless cocktail of the two of them, the smell of their unkillable unity.
Triss said, "You planned this, didn't you?"
"Come now, don't be daft," Yennefer said dryly. "Do you think he'd ever have done this on his own?"
She gestured to Geralt, and Triss turned to look at him. The telltale symptoms of enchantment looked suddenly obvious. He was breathing harder, his heartbeat faster than a witcher's should have been. There was a faint, lingering sweetness to his smell that wasn't usually there. Triss placed tender fingers onto his jaw to tilt up his head and examine his pupils, blown wide to fat almond shapes that she'd initially attributed to the dark.
She didn't know how she'd missed the signs. Perhaps this was still how she remembered him in some part of her mind. She wasn't really listening to Yennefer saying, "He offered little resistance to the idea. I'd expected him to protest more, honestly."
"Do you know who I am?" she asked him.
"Of course he knows who you are," Yennefer answered in his stead. Geralt focused on leaning into Triss' touch, ever closer until they were a breath apart again. His eyes were round and soft and doglike. Yennefer said, "It's just not you he's thinking of."
"Yen," Geralt crowed softly, as if on cue, his eyes falling down to Triss' breasts.
"Yen," Triss echoed, but she choked on it. She squeezed her eyes shut and bit down a sob. "Why?"
Her accusatory tone appeared not to bother Yennefer. "Many reasons. Take your pick."
Triss looked over at her, staring firmly despite Geralt's wandering hands. They caressed her chest, her nipples, her waist and stomach, down to the edge of the curls that began there. Her body bowed at the touches, but she kept her eyes on Yennefer, who sat with her legs crossed, the image of poise and control. Triss asked, "Revenge?"
"In part," Yennefer said with a genuine gentleness that clashed blade on blade with everything else. "Only in part, Triss."
Geralt's fingers, thick and dextrous, dipped past the pooled fabric of Triss' nightdress and between her legs. She weathered the shame of the heat and wetness they found there. Fuck it.
"It's true, this is a punishment," Yennefer said calmly, watching Triss settle back into the pillows and—gods help her—open her legs wider, tug the dress off entirely even as Geralt continued his gentle rubbing. "For you, not for him. He's paid his penance. And he's obedient, Triss, he does what I ask of him. Does it with great delight, usually. Because you're good, aren't you, Geralt?"
Geralt's breath shuddered and he pressed his forehead to Triss'. His face twisted when he nodded. Triss throbbed against his fingers and found herself wanting, wanting that, whatever ecstasy it was he received from serving Yennefer and earning her praise. Gods, was she casting the charm on Triss, too? She had to be.
"But it can be so much more than a punishment," Yennefer continued crooningly. Triss could feel her pleased gaze as pointedly as she could feel Geralt's fingers circling her clit.
"If you're," and here Triss' voice shattered into breathlessness for a moment, "toying with me, it's not— Geralt— !"
Her nails dug into his arms and her hips pressed into his hand. He looked beatific, so loving and proud and stupid. He should not, could not have remembered her body this well after this long, after how brief their trysts had been, but somehow he did.
"It isn't funny," she pleaded with her cheek in the pillow.
"It's not supposed to be," Yennefer said. She gave Geralt a small nod, and with that his fingers quested lower until they could push slowly into Triss and draw a croon from her throat. Her back arched slightly, her stomach and breasts a wanton display for Yennefer just as Geralt's shoulders and back must have been.
Hungry violet eyes watched her in the dark. Without thinking of it, Triss found herself performatively cupping one of her breasts in her hand, still staring back at her observer.
"That's nice," Yennefer said casually. "Twist the nipple for me? Good. What a sweet little noise, too. Geralt, dearest, pick up the pace, mm?"
More sweet little noises fell like candies from Triss' mouth as he obeyed. The crook of his fingers was the perfect shape, curved into her as though he truly wanted to be there. He kissed her other breast, and then her lips when she grabbed his hair and pulled his face up to hers.
Triss gasped into Geralt's mouth and contracted around his fingers. His thumb pressed against her clit, moving just enough to make her head spin. Her thighs were trembling, teetering on a precipice. The shape of his cock pressed into her leg through his pants, at an angle where she knew Yennefer could see it too.
With the hand not holding Geralt's face close to her own, Triss reached out heedlessly towards Yennefer's chair. She wanted to seize and claim and own like a dragon with its hoard of treasures, wanted and wanted and wanted, the heat in her stomach coiling tighter and tighter—
Until it snapped, and like that, she was shuddering against Geralt, whining crookedly from her open mouth into his. Heat wracked her, and so did the cutting awareness of the texture of Geralt's fingers and Yennefer's gaze on the most tender parts of her.
"Yennefer," Geralt said dumbly as Triss pulsed, again and again, around his fingers.
"Good job," Yennefer said warmly. Who it was she was addressing was lost on Triss, all the more because of the warm, sunset fog that filled her head. "Clean your fingers, now, dearest."
Geralt drew his hand away, leaving Triss splayed and open and still twitching with aftershocks, and suckled and licked his fingers clean of her.
"Does it please you to know I hadn't planned for that?" Yennefer asked, and this time Triss got the feeling she wasn't speaking to Geralt. She confirmed as much when she tilted her head towards the chair and found Yennefer gazing at her, chin rested against her hand. "I wasn't sure I'd have him make you come at all. Ah, well, all art requires improvisation. And I did say this could be enjoyable, for all of us. I'm enjoying myself. I don't need to read his mind to say likewise for Geralt. Are you enjoying yourself, Triss?"
"I'm..." Triss shook her head and hid her twisting face in the crook of her elbow.
"Fine, fine," Yennefer sighed. "I won't press. You'll tell us, when you're ready. In the meantime, Geralt, you can take out your cock now."
That drew Triss' attention back faster than anything. She watched, bewitched, as his hands moved deftly over the ties of his pants and fished out his cock. He grunted softly as he stroked it, slow, polite.
"Help him, Triss," Yennefer commanded, and Triss obeyed, empty of any notion of rebellion. She laid her hands on his hips and trailed them up his sides. The fabric of his open shirt yielded and bunched at her wrists. She thumbed his nipples on her way up, pushed his shirt until it fell like a dead thing off his shoulders.
His eyes were so soft. She could almost believe he wanted her.
He kissed her. Yennefer chuckled, though the sound hardly reached Triss' ears as the two fell into the mattress, a hand from each of them now entangled clumsily around Geralt's cock. His hips rutted into their collaborative strokes. Yennefer said, "Let him in."
Triss did. She lifted her leg onto Geralt's hip and guided him down. Fuck, how long had she dreamed of having this again?
And it was as perfect as it had been back then, a stretch that made her voice break. She twisted against the mattress, him pushing and loosening her until they were hip to hip and she felt him in the depths of her. Their groans nearly harmonised. Her breath hitched when he started moving, and when her head fell to the side, she found Yennefer staring again with a quiet smile of satisfaction.
She said nothing, but that look made Triss' blood boil. She wanted, suddenly, to bite and clutch in jealousy. An animal part of her screamed that all this could have been hers, if not for Yennefer. And so she sobbed, "Fuck you."
"Yennefer," Geralt grunted above her. "Yen."
"Fuck you," Triss repeated even more brokenly, grasping at his sturdy back to pull him as close as she could. Fuck, it had been so long and he was so big. She forced herself to relax, to take him easy. His pace increased. She pleaded to the gods to let her be enough.
"Tantrums really aren't your style," Yennefer said steadily.
"You could have at least let him say things other than your name," Triss said raggedly between gasps.
"He can," Yennefer said, brows raised. "Nothing's stopping him. Dearest, say something else."
"So tight," Geralt responded. His voice was a husky puff of air tickling right into Triss' ear and she clenched around him at the sensation. "Agh— ! Feels good, Yen. It feels so good..."
"That's a good boy," Yennefer said. "See, Triss?"
"Fuck," Triss choked and threw her head back.
Geralt laved kisses and love bites over her throat and neck, the shape of him so impossibly strong, the feeling of his muscles and scars shifting where Triss grabbed and caressed, until Yennefer said, "Dearest, I can't see. Lean back and show me."
Triss cursed her to hell and back for Geralt's heat pulling away, leaving only cool air and Yennefer's burning gaze on her belly. And for the fact that for a single thrust as he adjusted, Geralt went deep enough that it felt like he might never leave. Triss let out a shout and scrabbled for a hold on the blankets and bedclothes.
"You do have lovely hips, Triss," Yennefer observed coolly as Geralt plowed into Triss. "And lovely tits, too. I'd quite forgotten how lovely they were. I can't begrudge my Geralt as much for what you did to us all those years ago. Although, to be clear, I begrudge you both a great deal, still."
Her voice was as even as if she was comparing nail files or insulting a page boy. Somehow, Triss heard it crystal clear over the sounds of her and Geralt's exertion, over the slick slaps of his cock slamming in and out of her wetness. Her leg wrapped tightly around his waist, the other hanging wide to not obscure Yennefer's view.
"But this will grant us all some closure," Yennefer continued wryly and leaned closer toward Triss. She was staring at Triss, Triss could tell, and she tried not to look back at her, but couldn't help it. Yennefer smiled. "Tell me, did he have you like this, back then?"
Triss gasped on a particularly harsh downstroke, her back pressing into the the wrinkled sheets. "Yes! It was— It was just like this— Fuck, fuck!"
Yennefer hummed, apparently satisfied. "Dearest, can't you see she likes it most when you fuck her hard? Have some consideration. Give her what she needs."
Geralt grunted and shifted and Triss had a moment of pointed and wondrous anticipation before he manhandled her hips as he wanted them and thrusted, and then did so again and again and again, hard and deep enough that it burned. Each slap of their hips sent sympathy pangs through her clit like lightning. She cried out, louder and more hopeless with every thrust. "Ge— Ger—"
Geralt's one hand dug its nails into her hip, the other on the headboard so he loomed over her. His medallion dangled over her face. His face twisted, his rhythm stuttered, his voice cracked. "Yen..."
"Not yet, dearest," Yennefer said worrilessly and bit her lip. "She's close."
And Triss fucking was, close like the scrape of an arrow that grazes you, close like a swimming through a fucking flood, close like the smell of sex and love and Yennefer sitting there in her chair, poised and perfect while Triss shattered in the bedsheets, like the glint of her lilac eye and the swell of her breasts in her gown's open collar just close enough to almost touch—
"Yennefer!" It was a true scream. She quaked, clenching and unclenching quickly around Geralt, reaching for Yennefer, lost in the insatiable pleasure of want. She hung in it for countless rapid thrusts, knowing nothing but sensation and Yennefer's eyes. Pitiful wordless pleads spilled from her.
"That's wonderful, just wonderful," Yennefer's painted lips said, her voice, incredibly, tremoring. "Now you can come, my dearest."
Geralt let out a garbled mess of noises, wrapped both arms tight around Triss' waist to rut into her like a march hare and seized. His body trembled and his cock pulsed. Triss raised a shaking hand to caress his beautiful, pleasured face.
They might have stayed in that statuelike panorama forever, breaths mingling, him softening. At length, though, Yennefer said, "Not bad at all, either of you."
Geralt collapsed like a taut leash around his neck had been let loose. He groaned softly. Triss sought his jaw with her hands to find his eyes again, dreading the idea that Yennefer's spell might have expired and left him to regret this—
but no. His gaze was still glassy and enchanted.
Triss let him fall away from her and into the soft bed. Her own eyes drifted to Yennefer, who was rubbing her thighs together and glaring like a hunting cat.
"Don't think we're done yet," she said sharply past Triss. Geralt responded with a grunt.
"I'm tired," Triss replied in his stead, mouth hanging open with breathlessness.
"Lucky girl, you get to watch," Yennefer said and leaned back in her chair. She discarded her nightgown and let her legs fall open. Triss' eyes landed immediately on her visibly wet and swollen pussy, as perfect as the rest of her. Yennefer preened. "Say 'thank you.'"
"For what?" Triss asked, making Yennefer raise her brows.
"For the privilege of seeing this," she replied and circled two fingers lightly over her clit. Her whole body twitched. "Geralt, come here."
Geralt made a sleepy noise, but clambered obediently over Triss.
"On your knees. There you are, my good boy. Go ahead, don't be shy... oh! Fuck..."
Triss didn't long wonder why even the chance to watch was worth a thank you.
The air filled with an obscene, wet sound, and matching groans from Geralt and Yennefer, reactions to his tongue meeting her flesh. Yennefer's head fell back and her mouth open in a cry. She was utterly incredible, something too flawless to really exist. Her throat shifted as she swallowed, her hair tressing over pristine shoulders.
She tangled a hand roughly in Geralt's hair and took control of him. Her hips moved, fucking his face, his tongue, and he groaned in the rapture of being used. Triss scrambled up to be closer to this and licked her lips reflexively. How did Yennefer taste? Had she changed since those few nights of exploration years and years ago?
She met Yennefer's half-lidded eyes with her own ones blown wide.
Did Yennefer regret those nights?
Triss never had.
Yennefer sobbed again, holding Geralt at a specific spot and rutting hard against his mouth. Her legs framed and trapped him in perfect symmetry. She and him, they looked so violently right together, nestled perfectly like puzzle pieces, and Triss could only crawl towards, to lean closer like a moth to flame.
"Yennefer," she whispered, drawing Yennefer's eyes back to her. That violet gaze was frantic now with a need for completion. Did she deserve any less? It was the least gift that could be given by things so lowly as Geralt and Triss, to please her, to touch her... "Yennefer, Yennefer—"
Triss leaned over the gap between bed and chair which Geralt occupied. She rested her weight on one hand upon the armrest, just to get closer. She didn't look where she touched, fumbling against Yennefer's skin, her mind only on their leaning together, on Yennefer's free hand cradling her skull and drawing her near until their lips met. Triss fell open for Yennefer's tongue to claim her, to let her have her way. She'd have given her whatever she wanted.
Yennefer twitched again, violently, shaking as she neared her orgasm. Triss and Geralt both moaned obligingly. Her pleasure was their keenest awareness, the purpose of their being. Geralt's lips wrapped around her clit, Triss' head and Yennefer's separating to nestle in the crooks of one another's shoulders so Triss could bite the juncture of her neck—
A warbling sound fell from Yennefer. Her free arm wrapped around Triss' shoulders for anchorage as she trembled and trembled and—
whined brokenly into Triss' skin. She fell back into the chair, gasping, leaving Triss cold enough to cry again. Yennefer was flushed down to her perfect breasts, humping the aftershocks out onto Geralt's tongue like a toy.
"Good, good," she panted at length and pushed Geralt away. "That's enough."
Geralt groaned but did draw back. He slumped instead against the side of the bed. He looked blearily up at Triss where she sat dishevelled, trying to recover her balance. She could almost smell the slowly fading enchantment like liqueur on a drunk's breath.
Slowly, he asked, "You're not mad, are you?"
"...No, Geralt," Triss answered breathlessly, leaning back onto her elbows. "I'm not mad."
"Good." Geralt nodded and drooped his head down against the mattress.
"Get in the bed, dearest. You needn't be on the floor anymore," Yennefer instructed before he could doze off. Geralt crawled up and past Triss to lay beside her. Tangling into the blanket, he grunted sweetly, like a little hoglet.
Yennefer moved finally from the chair to the bed with a pleased sigh, and cradled Triss' face in her hands. Triss looked up at her as one might look at an epiphany.
"Well?" Yennefer asked. "Are you enjoying yourself?"
"Can I touch you?" Triss asked. "This one time, before this... before this ends?"
It ached inside to see the softness on Yennefer's face then.
Triss said, "Please?"
There was little humour in Yennefer's chuckle. She took Triss' hand in hers and guided it between her legs. "How could I say no to a request so polite?"
Triss watched her face in a trance as her fingers slipped somewhere burningly hot and soft. Yennefer did not use her hand as she'd used Geralt's face, but rather invited Triss in without instruction. It was not a gift Triss received lightly.
She fucked her gently and easily, taking heed of wherever she found her most sensitive, her clit and those spots on her inner walls. If it had been long since she'd been with Geralt, it'd been a lifetime since this, and it was a discovery of something completely new to see Yennefer's face shift, to caress her thigh, to hear the gasps and soft whines Triss' hand could earn from her. Something new and fleeting that would soon disappear.
Triss tried to forget that and live in only this, just for now. Yennefer sobbed into the silence of Geralt's sleep beside them. Her cunt squeezed hotly around Triss, head thrown back, trembling like a leaf. Her hand closed around Triss' forearm as if in some half-hearted attempt at control, hips twitching toward and away. Triss could feel her growing tighter, tighter, before she came with a gasp and a cascade of tremors.
Triss worked her gently through the aftershocks until her breath was deep and heavy, but no longer gasping.
Yennefer tugged at her forearm to pull her hand away and sighed away the unsteadiness. So easily could she return to that picture of unshaken poise. But still, she was sweaty and flushed. Triss tried feebly to memorise the sight.
"You know the drill," Yennefer said with a wave of her hand. Her voice was shot from moaning. "Clean those fingers up, dear."
Triss chuckled. She kept her eyes locked with Yennefer's as she sucked them clean. Violet eyes pinned her in place.
She did taste the same.
It was a long, long moment before Triss let her fingers drop with a smack.
"Satisfied?" Yennefer asked with quirked brow. Triss gave no response but a rueful smile.
Sighing, Yennefer settled into a comfortable sit on the edge of the bed. She brought up a hand to caress Triss' face.
"I don't easily forgive, I'll be the first to admit that," she said, almost challenging Triss to interrupt with the look on her face. Triss knew, as well as she knew Geralt would have, that that would have been a very stupid thing to do. Her politesse earned her a small smile. Yennefer said, "I could never move on from what happened. You understand. Not without some act of control over you and him. Something to take it back, for myself."
She idly stroked Triss' jaw and lower lip.
"But now, this has been resolved to satisfaction," she said softly. "I can..."
She paused.
"...Triss, I know this was a selfish trick. I want to offer to wipe it from your memory. With a spell. I don't need you to flagellate with heartaches forever, nor to think badly of me. I'm not cruel. I don't wish to cause you undue harm. Say the word and I'll make it disappear."
Triss stared up at her and almost laughed. She said, "'Not cruel?'"
Something in Yennefer's brow twisted slightly.
"As if that undoes it," Triss continued, bringing a hand up to hold Yennefer's where it hovered by her face. "As if that makes it alright to say it doesn't mean anything."
Yennefer's jaw set and she turned away. "It's the best I can do, Triss."
"What about him?" Triss asked. "Will you wipe it from his memory, too?"
"...He agreed to this," Yennefer reminded her, or perhaps reminded herself. "If he regrets it, that's on him."
"But me?" Triss asked.
"You understand it would have defeated the point if I'd asked for permission," Yennefer huffed. "And would you have said no, if I had?"
"No," Triss admitted. "But you could have asked anyway."
"Yes, well, you didn't, did you?"
There was silence.
Triss said,
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologise now," Yennefer said. "We're even."
It was quiet again.
"Shall I erase the memory, or not?"
"No," Triss said. "If I can't have..."
You, him, this.
"...At least let me remember the one night when I almost did."
Yennefer said nothing. Then she said, "Very well."
She settled down into the bed. Triss gave her the space to do so, the two of them nestled into a cuddle. Yennefer reached over her to tug lightly on Geralt's forearm. His eyes were closed when he turned, but he still obeyed with a soft grunt and rolled over to face the two of them in his sleep. He wrapped an arm around Triss and held her flush to him. Yennefer exhaled through her nose, draping her arm over Geralt's and tucking her nose into Triss' neck.
There, cradled, warm, between, Triss felt like a child, safe from nightmares in her parents' bed.
"Yennefer," she whispered at length. Yennefer's eyes cracked open. Even in the dark, Triss could see their beauty. She asked, "You said this was only part revenge. ...What else was it?"
Yennefer studied her face for many moments. Then she replied, "Less than you would like it to be."
Her smooth hand caressed Triss' face comfortingly when that response made it wrench up.
That was when Yennefer finally decided to say, "I'm sorry."
Triss met her gaze and nodded. "I understand."
She wanted to ask more—did you ever want me like I wanted you? Will you hate me if I can never let him go, if I can never let you go, if I can never stop dreaming of what I could be to both of you? And why now? Why tonight, when Ard Carraigh is still days away? Why did you do this? Why did you do this to me?
But instead she said again, "I understand."
She had to make the most of this. She could cry later. But she couldn't now, not when she, for once, had exactly what she wanted.
She lingered in something like wakefulness for several long moments, holding close the euphoria of being warm on both sides and the heady mixed smell of ash and leather and lilac and gooseberries.
She woke up to find destiny had again left her behind.
Her room was empty and full of light, and the air smelled of little but the faintest hint of sex and the distant scent of porridge from the inn's kitchen. Triss turned over in the cold sheets to stare out the window and into the winter.
She dressed herself, buttoned her dress up to her throat and packed her things methodically. Before the mirror, she wiped away a trace of black lipstick that stained her jaw. Then she was ready to leave.
She knocked on the door of Yennefer and Geralt's room. It was Geralt that opened the door, and he looked almost startled to find her. His eyes lingered on the ground awkwardly.
"Good morning," Triss said. Then came Yennefer, pushing past Geralt and giving her an easy smile.
"Good morning."
They stood, all three, for a moment, in that hollow of gazes meeting and unspoken truces.
Then Yennefer said, "Well, shall we keep going?"
And Triss replied, "Yes. Let's go."
