Chapter 2
She woke to darkness, the room around her a murky canvas of shadow shapes. It neither brightened nor clarified with her blinking, and Yennefer realized it wasn’t dark. She was blind.
“Shit.”
The moment the word left her lips, a gasp sounded beside her, and Yennefer jerked away from it. Whatever rickety small cot she occupied nearly collapsed under the shift. “Who’s there?” she demanded as she tried to catch her balance, but her arms felt heavy, and wrong. Her heart kicked into a gallop, and she began to flail, trying and failing to grab at her own hands and wrists where she felt no form, only pressure and pain.
“Yennefer, stop! It’s me, Triss. You’re injured.” Hands latched onto Yennefer’s forearms and guided them back to her sides. “You must hold still.”
Yennefer dragged in a breath. “Triss.” Her skin was sickly hot under Triss’s hands, and she realized she had no clothes on. No clothes, just a thick sheet, and a healer tending to her. She was in a medical camp. She had to be. Injured. Triss said she was injured.
“I can’t see.”
“I know. Stay calm.”
Calm seemed leagues away. “What’s happened to me?”
“Be still, Yennefer, please.” She pushed on Yennefer’s arms again and pinned them. “You’re okay. I promise.”
“My hands—”
“Will heal,” came the firm reply, and the utter lack of doubt in Triss’s voice affected Yennefer like medicine.
She inhaled as deeply as she could manage and freed a bit of the tension from her muscles on the exhale. A million thoughts of Sodden pelted through her aching head, and somewhere among them: Triss, burned and shaking on the ground. “Triss, are you alright?”
She heard the smile in Triss’s voice, so familiar she could almost picture it. “I will be.”
“Good. That’s good. The others?” Sabrina, sprawled on the ground. Tissaia, shaking on the hill. Gods, Tissaia. She had been right there, mere feet from her side when Yennefer set the world ablaze and bent the flames around her. She remembered such rage, such incredible pain, remembered being awestruck by her own power. Terrified of the horror she’d made and of losing control of it.
And then there was nothing. Yennefer could remember nothing that came after. One moment, she was channeling, screaming her lungs away, and the next, she was waking blind in the bed she still occupied. What if something terrible had happened after she lost consciousness? What if Tissaia…? Her stomach lurched at the thought. She tried to take Triss’s hand but received a shock of pain instead. When her body tensed, her pain magnified at the fold of her abdomen.
“Fuck! My stomach.”
“You will open your sutures if you don’t stay calm, Yennefer.” Triss’s voice was tired but not unkind. She understood Yennefer’s panic, likely bore it in her own chest. “And the more stressed you are, the harder it will be for your body to heal. And you need to heal.”
Yennefer relaxed herself with cold, rapid breaths, and the pain’s intensity waned. She tried and failed to calm her thoughts. “Is Tissaia alive?”
“She is. And safe.”
“Unharmed?”
“Mostly, yes.”
Yennefer tensed. “The fire? I tried to—”
“No, before,” Triss soothed. “She confronted Fringilla.”
Fucking Fringilla. What had she done? Yennefer recalled Tissaia’s weakened state when she found her on the battlefield, the way her legs had shuffled without poise. The pained stare in her eyes as if she’d lost something vital and hadn’t a clue where to begin looking. The way she’d fallen to her knees. Yennefer had thought her exhausted, or devastated, and surely, she was both, but she had also, apparently, been injured. But how? How could Fringilla have possibly gotten one over on Tissaia?
“She used a particle form of dimeritium,” Triss explained as if reading her thoughts, and Yennefer’s blood turned icy. “Tissaia inhaled it, and her lungs were affected.”
“Inhaled it?”
“Yes, a diabolical way to attack a mage.”
“Her Chaos?”
“Restored now, but she tires easily with its use,” Triss said, quietening as if she was ashamed to say it aloud. She cleared her throat. “A decoction was made to leech the substance from her body. She’s been taking it for a few days now and seems well. I believe she will recover.”
Relief spanned Yennefer’s body like a warm breeze. “Fully?”
“Fully,” said a firm voice from across the room.
Yennefer turned her head toward the sound and saw nothing but warping shadows where she knew Tissaia should be. An ache went through her as she realized she might never see the woman again, standing before her, no doubt proud even in her weakened state. Yennefer tried to picture her, hands clasped tightly at her waist, fingers clenched, evaluating Yennefer with her give-nothing gaze. The image formed in full, and the ache detonated. It rolled through every inch of Yennefer’s body, and her eyes began a furious watering. She quickly turned her head away from where she knew Tissaia to be and closed her eyes to ward off tears.
“Tissaia,” Triss said, her tone disappointed, “you are supposed to be resting.”
A swishing sound followed, and Yennefer guessed it was Tissaia’s skirt brushing the floor as she made to join them. “You know very well I have been with the council all morning.”
“Yes, but sitting with the council. Sitting is more restful than walking around.”
“The Brotherhood is here?” Yennefer asked and managed to keep her voice steady. “Where is here, exactly? Are we still at Sodden?”
“No, Yennefer. We’re at Aretuza,” Triss told her.
Aretuza? How did we get back to Aretuza?
“Dear,” Tissaia said, and Yennefer was sure she was speaking to Triss, because she only called Yennefer pet names when she was being superior. Yennefer despised how much she craved them anyway, how much she liked their sharp edges. “It is you who needs rest now. Go on.” Obviously Triss. Where was Yennefer going to go? She couldn’t even see. “I will speak with Yennefer.”
The sound of her name on Tissaia’s tongue was like a spell, and a subtle sense of peace floated through her. Yennefer was unlikely to ever admit it if asked, but she had always associated Tissaia with sanctuary. Her presence in any room imbued it with an incredible sense of structure and safety, even if, for Yennefer, it came dressed as an annoyance. As long as Tissaia de Vries was alive, then the world was turning. All was not lost.
“Very well,” Triss said and stood, her chair screeching over the floor. She touched Yennefer’s shoulder. “Remember what I said about staying calm. It’s important.”
“I will ensure she behaves,” Tissaia said from nearby, and Yennefer felt a lovely tickle of humor in her gut.
“When have you ever managed that?”
Tissaia’s amused snort was like a burst of color in the dark. “Let today be the first. Off you go then, Triss.”
Yennefer followed the sounds and shadows of Triss’s departure while Tissaia assumed her abandoned seat. At the close of the door, the woman was straight to business. “What do you remember?”
The shift was dizzying. “Ah, um.” Yennefer trilled her lips and laughed. It hurt. “Fire. Loads of it.”
“After the battle, you were placed in an induced sleep to keep you still while your wounds were tended to. You have been in that sleep for nine days.”
“Nine?”
“The first three days, we remained at Sodden while healing the worst of the collective’s injuries. Yours were catastrophic.” Her speech was clear and neutral, as if giving a lecture, and it brewed a strange, muddy nostalgia in Yennefer’s chest. Her voice wrapped around the word “catastrophic” like a blanket, softening its touch, and Yennefer found it comforting. “On the fourth day, we began sending small numbers back to Gors Velen by portal. We had all crossed over by the fifth and made to Aretuza. We have been here since. Your sleep was lifted two days ago, but you had yet to regain consciousness.”
The facts floated and floated, and Yennefer floated with them. Were it not for her pain, she might have assumed she had actually died at Sodden. She didn’t feel real anymore. “I’m blind?”
“You are,” Tissaia answered, and Yennefer felt her wretched blank eyes begin to water again. Tissaia’s hand settled over the soft inner skin of her upper arm, and it only spurred the process on. Tears slid down her cheeks. “For now, Yennefer.”
Yennefer wanted to tell her that she couldn’t know that, that there was no way to be sure. But Tissaia always knew. She was always sure. Maybe that could be enough to hope when all she wanted to do was scream. “My hands?”
“Still there.”
“I can’t feel them.”
“They are heavily bandaged and mostly unhealed still. You were badly burned, Yennefer, worse even than Triss, and will require much aid. You lost most of the flesh on your fingers and palms. Your left hand, in particular, was consumed to the bone.”
Yennefer fought for a breath that seemed keen on evading her, and Tissaia’s hand moved to her chest, just over the mounting panic of her heart.
“This is temporary,” Tissaia said again, and her chair creaked. Her other hand found Yennefer’s cheek. “Listen to me, Piglet. It is temporary.”
The bandaged bulge at the end of Yennefer’s arm throbbed as she tried to lay her hand over the one on her chest.
“I’m here,” Tissaia said at the attempt. “Take a breath.”
Yennefer did as she was told. Once. Twice. Thrice. That’s better. She heard Tissaia sigh as if she had been holding her breath, too.
“There is more.”
“Of course there is.”
“Your abdomen was impaled.”
“Sabrina,” Yennefer said as the moment returned to her. The sharpness in her gut. Sabrina’s empty eyes.
“No.” Tissaia’s fingers flexed over Yennefer’s chest, a small, warm compress. “Well, yes. You were wounded by Sabrina, but the wound was easily managed. The branch was responsible for the more dire damage.”
Branch? What branch?
Her confusion must have shown on her face, because Tissaia sighed through her nose and said, “You don’t remember,” as if requiring no answer. She sounded oddly relieved. “You fell and landed on a branch among the brush. It took us some time to find you once the fire was quelled.”
“How can I not remember being impaled by a fucking branch?”
“You were delirious,” Tissaia said. “What is the last moment you recall?”
“I don’t know. I…remember little. Heat. Pain.” Yennefer locked onto Tissaia’s soft breaths, tried to map her way up to her gaze in the unnatural dark. “You,” she said as that last moment slipped into her mind again like a whisper, “looking up at me as if ready to die.”
“I was.” Tissaia slowly retracted her hand. “I thought I would.” Her voice drifted as her chair groaned again, and Yennefer imagined her easing back into her seat.
“You underestimated my capacity for control.” Cold assaulted the spot on Yennefer’s chest where Tissaia’s hand had been. She missed the weight, the connection. Without it, the dark felt expansive, and she: unmoored.
“Yes, though in my defense, you’ve shown little affinity for it in all the years I’ve known you.”
Yennefer could hear the smile in her voice, or as much of one as Tissaia was like to give. A small twitch at the corner of her mouth, perhaps. “This was different.”
“Yes. Many fates depended on you. You turned the tide of that battle, Yennefer, in seconds. You’re a hero.”
It wasn’t what Yennefer meant, but Tissaia’s words struck and sunk in. Hero. Not a title she’d ever imagined would be attributed to her, certainly not by the woman who’d said it. But she supposed it was true, as strange and ill-fitted as it seemed. She had carried a weight she wasn’t sure she was ever meant to and had, apparently, saved the day. Mages were still alive because of her. Tissaia was still alive. Tissaia. That, of course, was the real difference. It wasn’t the fate of a battle that had guided Yennefer on the hill, that kept her rooted to herself until she could no longer withstand the heat. It was the fate of the woman at her side. It was the existence of that one safe circle.
However strained their relationship, Yennefer could not sacrifice it. Would not. Not for any battle, nor for anyone. Not even when she had wanted to. And truth be told, she hadn’t the faintest clue why. There were times they had hated one another so thoroughly that mere gazes made wounds, yet Yennefer cared for Tissaia, profoundly. Never had she understood their connection, but she knew at the core of her that she would go to the gods-forsaken ends of the world if it meant keeping it intact.
“Tissaia,” Yennefer said and thought to confess as much, but when Tissaia’s curious hum answered, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “I’ll never be the same. Will I?”
She heard Tissaia shuffle closer again, then a hand covered her shoulder. “Fear is natural, Yennefer, but you need not succumb to it. I have promised you this trouble is only temporary, and I shall keep my word.”
Yennefer’s heart ached at the words. Damage like what Tissaia had described was not something that could be wholly healed, not with any herbs, potions, or enchantments Yennefer knew. She would be scarred and minorly functional, at best, because regeneration at the level she would require it would demand an incredible cost in balance. One she would ask no one to pay. Tissaia knew that. Why was she pretending otherwise?
“Chaos always has a price,” Yennefer said and her eyes began to sting again. “First thing you ever taught me. That, and that no one would blink if I died.”
The air in the room turned still. No circulation. No breath. Then Tissaia huffed and moved her hand from Yennefer’s shoulder to her bicep. Her fingers cuffed Yennefer’s arm and squeezed tight enough for it to hurt, but Yennefer couldn’t tell her to stop. She looked pointlessly for Tissaia’s eyes. Darkness gazed back.
“But you would,” she whispered into Tissaia’s mind, unsure if her Chaos was even stable enough to receive it.
Tissaia’s breath shook. “Until my eyes bled,” she replied with such sharp sincerity that a lump formed in Yennefer’s throat.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” she confessed, and Tissaia’s grip finally eased. “I couldn’t bear this without you.”
“You could. But you needn’t have to.” Her fingers patted where they had bruised then disappeared entirely. “Rest now. Someone will arrive shortly to check you over and tend to any needs, and tomorrow, we will begin.”
Yennefer frowned as Tissaia’s steps tapped across the floor in retreat. “Begin what?” she called after her to no avail. The door opened and shut with no answer in-between, and Yennefer knew she was alone.