Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Do you trust me?” Keira asked Lambert, and she had her hands behind her back for two reasons, maybe three-- firstly, because then she wouldn’t twist them together and show her agitation, secondly, because that meant her chest was the frontmost part of her and the way she was dressed now meant her tits were on display for him to look at, so he would, because that was the shorthand they’d settled on about that, and thirdly because then maybe he’d think she was hiding something in her hands, something either dangerous or fun or maybe both, which was the thing she knew he liked most about her: she was both dangerous and fun.

Oh, if only this were about hiding something in her hands.

No. This was about-- well, she had no choice. He’d trusted her to discover this for him, and she had to answer it, but to do that she had to trust him not to fuck up like had last time.

Complicating matters was her knowledge that no matter what, this would be the end of the-- well, whatever this was, between the two of them.

“Do I-- what the hell kind of a question is that, huh?” he asked, looking at her tits, but he looked up into her face quicker than she’d expected. From the crooked smile, he was definitely trying to decide whether this was about something fun or something dangerous, though she well knew how fuzzy that line was in his experience of the world.

“It’s the one I’m asking,” Keira said, giving him a teasing smile, biting her lip a little, and twisting her body from side to side in a childishly flirty gesture that happened to give him an even better look at her tits.

She’d done a lot of experimenting with her self-presentation lately, and he’d been there with her through all of it. He knew fine well that if she had her tits out like this, she wanted him to look. She wanted to distract him, and maybe it was just self-torture to draw it out, but anything she could to do soften the blow might make this easier.

“Well,” he said, “I mean, part of our deal is that I’m a cynical bastard and I don’t trust anybody, but I also am well aware you could pretty much squash me like a bug at any time that you cared to do that, so. The answer is that no I don’t trust you but yeah I’d probably let you do whatever you wanted to me because it isn’t like I could stop you and if I didn’t like that, I’d probably have stopped coming around before now.”

“But if I were going to squash you like a bug, I’d already have done that,” she pointed out, putting on a mildly petulant tone.

“You could always change your mind,” Lambert said, sunny and breezy and bitter all in one. “Everyone does eventually.”

That was-- that stung, for some reason, and it didn’t sting her pride, it stung some other part of her she hadn’t really known she had, some weird bit that was upset on his behalf, to learn that everyone else in his life had let him down. And they’d trusted one another so much, so far; she’d told him things she hadn’t even really told herself before--

but they weren’t in love and they weren’t soulmates and that wasn’t really her business, no matter how much they’d seemed to trust one another up til now.

She gave him another teasing smile to cover up how much that had stung, and how much she hadn’t expected it to. “I promise,” she said, “were I to decide to squash you like a bug, I’d give you a running start.”

“Ah,” he said, “I won’t hold you to that.” He waved a hand, a dismissive gesture, and stalked a bit farther away, then turned and came closer again. Maybe it was her awareness that things were about to change, but he looked particularly good like this, mostly unarmored, in sturdy workmanlike leather trousers that fit him like skin and showed off his well-formed thighs and muscular ass. He’d put on both fat and muscle over this winter, and he was right, he looked better with more meat on him, with a little sleekness over the hard corrugation of muscle--

She dragged her attention back to the present. “Well,” she said. “I’m asking if you trust me because I want to tie you up.”

He paused at that, arrested in mid-step, and frowned at her, eyebrows drawing down. “Tie me… up,” he said.

She lifted her chin and her eyebrows. “Yes,” she said. “I want to restrain you completely, so you can’t escape.”

“You can do that by snapping your fingers,” he scoffed, “any old time you want.”

“I need to do it without any magic at all,” she said. She’d given this a lot of thought, in the fourteen hours it had taken him to show up after she’d come home from the absolute, concrete confirmation of her terrifying, horrifying, exhilarating discovery.

He considered that a moment, still frowning, then his face twisted up in a wry sarcastic smile. “Yeah but you could still do it by snapping your fingers,” he said. “Like, putting some twine or whatever on me isn’t going to actually change the balance of power between us, here,” and he made a back-and-forth gesture between the two of them, and he’d taken off his gambeson and was in his shirt with the sleeves rolled up so she could see his wiry, strong forearms, his slender-strong wrists and capable hands so fluid as he gestured, as he so often did when he really got talking-- and the bracelet she’d made him, that he wore all the time, that carried her protection of him or more accurately the ability she’d given him to protect himself--

In her distraction, she’d accidentally taken her hands out from behind her back and somehow she had them crossed over her chest, which wasn’t as good a posture-- it still showed off her tits, and gave her some cleavage to make the whole scene even more appealing, but it also closed her off and gave away that she had nothing in her hands.

“I thought of that,” she said. And she hadn’t wanted to do this part, but she’d sort of expected she’d have to. “So if I’m going to bind you it’d only be fair if you bound me first.” She sighed, and picked up the bag on the table next to her, tipping it out to show half of a pair of dimeritium shackles with a key protruding from the lock.

“Why the fuck do you have that,” Lambert said, staring at it as though it were an animate dangerous creature that might bite him.

She half-shrugged. “Useful things, sometimes,” she said.

“You gonna put that on me?” he asked, looking hunted and confirming he really hadn’t parsed what she’d said.

It hadn’t even occurred to her, but of course Witchers had magic, and dimeritium would hurt them, possibly even as much as it might hurt a mage.

“No,” she said. “I’m going to put it on me, and give you the key to hold in your hand, and then chain you up, and you have the key to my chains and I have the key to yours, and with that thing on I wouldn’t be strong enough to get the key from you unless you wanted to give it to me.”

It wasn’t as bad as a pair, but it would be bad. She knew she could recover quickly, as long as he didn’t leave the thing on her for too long. She’d pay for it, later, but she’d already been having night terrors so it hardly mattered at this point.

Of course she had a spare key. She wasn’t stupid. But it was over in her bedroom, in a drawer, and it would take her some time to go get it, so it wasn’t entirely a stupid gamble to give him this power over her but it also wasn’t a farce; he really would have power over her, at least temporarily. It wasn’t an unfair trade. She wouldn't be able to restrain him well enough to keep him from escaping, entirely-- she couldn’t keep him from making Signs, for one thing, unless she somehow tied his hands shut or something, and she knew he was so strong and so reckless he’d hurt himself to escape if he really needed to.

There was a chance he could kill her, if she were in dimeritium and he broke out of the restraints; she’d only be able to run like a normal woman, and she’d never reach the spare key in time to free herself before he caught up with her and could do whatever he liked to her. He had to have done that math already, too, because he was looking at her with a less-deep but far more worried frown.

They were both the sort of people who almost always had done that kind of math at any given time, she suspected, but they also didn’t talk about it, kind of as a feature of their-- well, whatever this relationship was.

“I’d been hoping this was gonna be some kind of sex thing,” he said, “and I get the feeling you were figuring I’d think that, but I really don’t think it is, is it?”

“No,” she said. He was smart, and she knew that, but she’d blinded so many people with her breasts, she’d really counted on this working on him. She shouldn’t really have been surprised that it hadn’t. She sighed. “I guess the shine has worn off my tits, for you.”

“That’s never going to happen,” he said, giving them a regretfully admiring look. “But you forget I kind of know you now, and if this was just a sex thing you’d probably have already just gone for it.”

“I use words with you sometimes,” she protested, not really all that wounded but feeling like she should pretend to be.

“You are right now,” he said, his tone almost something passing for gentle, from him. “So tell me what this is about.”

I think the fuck not. Time for a new tack, but fortunately she’d strategized a few of them. “What this is about, is that I want to know if you trust me, because this is for your own good. So much so that I’m willing to let you put that thing on me.” She nodded at the shackle, which on its own looked like a fairly ugly and unfashionable bracelet and not at all like something she was mortally afraid of after several terrifying near-death experiences she regularly still had nightmares about.

That was why she only had half of the pair; she’d experimentally put a pair on and had thrown up before she could get them locked. So, half a pair it was. She’d managed a whole minute with that one, and that was a start.

He walked over to it and picked it up, and frowned, and then grimaced and put it down. “It’s real,” she said. For some reason she hadn’t expected him to be that suspicious.

“It sure is,” he said, and he looked at her breasts-- no, he was looking at her wrists, where they were crossed over her midsection. “Keira, I-- I know how you feel about that sort of thing, and I don’t understand what could possibly be important enough that you’d-- be willing to do that to yourself, first-off, and second-off, why you think that’d be any kind of enticement for me. Why’m I gonna want you to torture yourself?”

“Because it would be fair,” she said. “I want to talk to you on a truly level footing, Lambert, and while that’s not strictly possible, I think this would be the best way to ensure it.”

He blinked, and gave her a horrified look. “What the fuck is this about,” he said.

“I’ll tell you once we’re both bound,” she said, and picked up the dimeritium cuff, turned and walked down into the root cellar. She’d used magic to construct this room-- actually, to transport it here, from a dungeon, and she was going to banish it back there when she was done.

He followed her, and paused and made an awed little whistle as he saw it. “You’re for fuckin’ real,” he said. It was a set of shackles set into a concreted wall, which would hold him by hands and feet, with another length of chain to fasten hands to feet so he could only kneel.

“I am,” she said. “I’m deadly serious, Lambert. Do you trust me?” She swung the door shut behind him and turned the key in the lock.

“I don’t understand you,” he said.

“Then trust me,” she said, “and I promise, I will explain it all, and then I also promise you I will help you with what’s going to have to happen next, and the sooner you free me, the faster I’ll recover my magic and be able to help you fully.” She picked up the dimeritium cuff. “Do we have a deal?”

“I was gonna ask if I should be naked,” he said, “but we already figured this wasn’t a sex thing.” It wasn’t much, as a joke, so she didn’t dignify it with a response. He was hedging, and putting off giving her a real answer, but she wasn’t going to tell him what this was about until he was secured, and that was that.

She pulled the key out of the bag and used it to unlock the cuff, and then started to slide it onto her wrist. It tingled unpleasantly and soon would burn, but there was no help for that.

Lambert darted forward and snatched it away from her. “I don’t want you to put that thing on,” he said.

“I want to,” she said. “It’s important, Lambert.” Quite unexpectedly, her voice trembled; she was afraid of the cuff, naturally, as she’d been shackled before and contemplating how much it would hurt was making her remember those other occasions, which had uniformly been horrible. And maybe it was also that she was upset about this. Fuck; he knew her well enough to read that. She couldn’t look at his face. “Give it back.”

“No,” he said. “Fuck, Keira. Don’t do that. I’ll do it, do what you want to me, but don’t put that thing on.”

She set her jaw. “It’s important, Lambert,” she said. “I really really need you to know that I can’t hurt you or control you once you’re bound. I know that doesn’t matter to you now but it will.”

“Tell me what this is about first,” he said.

“No,” she said, and made herself look him in the face. “I already offered you the deal. The deal is, we’re both bound, and then I tell you. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

She didn’t actually have a backup plan for if he left it. In all her scenarios somehow she’d never foreseen him objecting to her binding herself. Of course he knew what dimeritium would do to her. Of course he knew about her nightmares. Of course he-- well, they weren’t soulmates but it surely wasn’t admitting too much to admit they cared about each other, at least a little bit. Enough that he wouldn’t want to see her in distress. Enough that she’d installed padding on the cuffs for him, which hadn’t come with any but she’d known he’d struggle and would be too upset to notice whether he hurt himself or not.

“Take it or leave it. What if I leave it?” he asked, too cunning by half, and she sighed.

“You can’t leave it,” she said wearily. “I need you to do this, because I need to tell you what I need to tell you, and this is the only way I can think of to do it.” Where we don’t both die, she bit off, because that was probably too much information, but it was true; he’d run off immediately half-cocked and she’d have to dive in to save him and without preparation they’d surely fail and both get killed and ruin everything.

Even if it all went well-- well, she cut herself off from that. This wasn’t the time.

She could probably do it without him but when he found out that she hadn’t told him he’d hate her forever, and while it wasn’t like she was going to get to keep him, she really didn’t need him as a fucking enemy, not over this, not because she couldn’t get him to sit still long enough to listen to an important thing.

“Why do you need this,” he said, frustrated, and she shook her head.

“The deal,” she said, and held out her hand. “Do you trust me, or do you not trust me, Lambert?”

His jaw worked as he looked at her: he was clearly looking her over the way one might an opponent. “This is important, huh,” he said, but it wasn’t a question.

“Incredibly,” she said, hand unwavering.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m not giving you this fucking thing back. I’m not doing this. You’re not-- holding yourself hostage, that’s ridiculous. What the fuck is this about?”

“I’m not telling you until you agree to it,” Keira said. “Believe it or not this is for your own good, Lambert.”

“When have I ever done something for my own fucking good?” he said, and she reached for the cuff and he held it up over his head like they were schoolchildren.

“I cannot believe you,” she said, staring at him. He wasn’t even that much taller than her. And she was a mage. She could just-- take it back. And then she’d be proving her own point. “You are a child.”

“Hostage situations never work out,” he said. “You’re not going to fucking torture yourself.”

Well, she had a point to prove. “Lambert,” she said, in a last attempt to use reason, “if you don’t agree to this, then I can’t tell you this extremely important thing, and then you’re going to find out about it after it’s all over, and you’re going to hate me forever for not telling you in such a fashion that you’d have been involved with it, but I can’t tell you about it unless we’re on an even footing.”

“This is insane,” Lambert said.

“You are insane,” Keira said, and snapped her fingers, removing the cuff from his grasp and putting it squarely into hers.

“That’s fucking cheating,” Lambert said, grabbing for it.

“It’s important to me,” she said, turning away to shield her arm with her body as she slipped the cuff onto her arm and carefully turned the key in the lock one-handed, with great concentration, “that I am not capable of controlling you with my magic, because I expect I’ll want to, and if I give into that I might wreck everything.” Fuck, it hurt; the tingling was intense to the point of pain immediately, and of course all her magic went dead at once, and it was good she’d dressed carefully with no glamors because they’d all be gone now. Ah, she’d had one on the roots of her hair, that was gone now, but, well, no help for it.

Ah, fuck-- her tits. She didn’t generally wear any kind of breast support because she had magic for that. They didn’t quite fall out of her shirt but they came a lot closer to doing so than was strictly appropriate for public display. Not that she was in public here.

The important thing was that the wards on this place weren’t directly tied to her. She’d made sure of that-- they were still active. No one would disturb them here. She wasn’t stupid enough to put them in danger, especially not now, with something so important waiting for them.

She shook her hair back, looking up at him. “The faster you assume the position the faster we can get this over with and this thing off of me,” she said, smiling tightly. At least her breasts’ sudden break for freedom ought to be distracting.

“It’s hurting you,” he said, completely undistracted by her tits. Bastard, he could at least look. It probably shouldn’t have been surprising that he didn’t, given how good his boundaries in general were. Men were weak, but he wasn’t a man.

“I’m more aware of that than you are, I promise,” she sing-songed, and walked over to where the shackles were set into the walls.

“I didn’t agree to that,” he said.

“Fine,” she said, “so I’m in dimeritium for no reason and we’re just going to sit in this room until I pass out.”

“I didn’t fucking agree to you putting that thing on either,” he said hotly.

“Well,” she said, “now I’m a woman of completely normal capabilities, or in fact somewhat under average, so probably you can just knock me down and take it off me, and do whatever else you want to me in the meantime. It’s your big chance, Lambert.”

“Fuck you,” he said, really hurt, and it shouldn’t have pleased her but somewhere, viciously, it did; she was in horrible pain and she wanted a reaction from him.

“I have information you really, really need,” she said. “And it’s really important to me that you sit still to hear it. Important enough that I’ve hobbled myself too. I don’t know how else to present this to you.”

“Hostage-taking is not the way to do this,” Lambert fumed.

“Hostage-taking generally only works when you get an important enough hostage,” Keira said, feeling a bit brittle about it. She wasn’t the hostage, was the thing. There was an important hostage, and it wasn’t her.

“Stop fucking manipulating me,” Lambert snarled.

She grinned at him, sharp and a little feral. “You knew what I was when you got into this,” she said. “It would be intellectually dishonest of me to use any other approach, after all this time being what I am.”

“I’m not doing this,” Lambert said, flinging up his hands.

“I promise,” she said, “you want to do this.” She shivered; her arm had gone numb and it hurt.

“Take that fucking thing off and I’ll do it,” he said.

“If I weren’t wearing this fucking thing,” she snapped, “I’d have already put you in there myself, and this would all be moot. I’m not taking it off, Lambert. Get in there and we can end this miserable farce. Leave, and you can find out in a couple of weeks or months what it is that I was trying to tell you, and you can hate me for not telling you all you want but just know that I tried and it’s your gods-damned fault you wouldn’t listen.”

“That’s because your terms are insane,” Lambert said.

“They will make sense,” she said, teeth gritted, “once you know what I’m going to tell you, but you have to get in there first.”

“This is fucking stupid,” Lambert said, and he paced back and forth along the concreted-stone wall a few more times, but finally threw up his hands and flung himself to the floor near the shackles.

She wasted absolutely no time, but put them on him efficiently. She’d looked at how they worked, before, and made sure all the locks were functioning nicely, so it took her no time at all to get him chained in and pull the key out, and put her own key into his hand. She stepped back. “Test it,” she said. “Really test it.”

He was looking at her wrist, which wasn’t showing burns yet but was starting to redden. He jerked at the chains half-heartedly, glaring resentfully at her. “No,” she said, “really do it,” because she wanted to know now if they were going to tear right out of the wall the moment she said what she had to say.

He sighed, and gave a really solid jerk to the one holding his wrists to his ankles. “Ow,” he complained. “Listen, it’s tight. What the fuck, Keira.”

“Aard the wall,” she said. “I want to know if it holds.”

With his hands behind his back, he couldn’t cast a Sign directly at her. But if he got even partly free, he could-- and in this state with no magic if he hit her with--

Well, he could kill her. She already knew that. They both already knew that.

She crossed her arms, and then uncrossed them immediately when the cuff seared against the tender flesh of her opposite arm, trying to make the gesture casual.

He rolled his eyes ostentatiously, seeing that, and cast the Sign behind himself resentfully. The wall shivered, but didn’t come down, and the chains didn’t come loose.

“Is that good enough?” he asked. “You want I should try to garrotte myself, or something? Get creative?”

“That’s good enough,” she said. She felt sort of weak in the knees, and maybe it was the dimeritium and maybe it was all the emotion. Fuck, she really hadn’t counted on having this many emotions about all of this, it was damned inconvenient. She sat down on the chair that was the only furniture in the room besides the shackle wall, and took a breath, and let it out.

“So what’s this about,” Lambert said. “This isn’t some weird relationship advice somebody gave you.”

She laughed humorlessly. “No,” she said.

“Because if some auntie told you this would make us a stronger couple or something, they told you that because they hate you,” Lambert went on. “Though come to think of it I can’t imagine why you’d want us to be a stronger couple. Maybe it was for your own good. This auntie is looking out for you, I take it back.”

“Shut up,” she said fondly, but also, that stung. This was not for her own good.

“You keep saying,” Lambert said, “we’re not, like, soulmates. And yet here you are physically holding yourself hostage to compel me to do this bullshit.”

“Stop,” she said, trying to focus. She’d rehearsed what she was going to say, too, and now it wouldn’t come to her, not easily. “So, today-- yesterday, now,” he hadn’t come back last night, he’d come in just now at midmorning. “Yesterday I-- encountered-- someone.” He started to mutter something, and if she’d had her magic she would have silenced him with a spell, but now she just spoke louder. “I’d had some suspicions, and had gone to this place somewhat expecting to find-- more information, but what I found was a person, and this person was entangled in a number of control spells by a mage, which wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting to find, but as it happens, explains all my anomalous results perfectly.”

“Okay,” Lambert said, frowning. “I figured this was gonna be you telling me something awful you’d done, so just for the record, feel free to get to that part, I’m kinda braced for it.”

A reasonable assumption; like most mages, Keira had done many horrible things in her life. But that stung. “No,” she said, “unfortunately, this really isn’t about me at all.”

He was impatient, and the tingling had made her arm go numb and it really quite hurt. She steeled herself. “I managed to find out the subject’s real name, and something of his history, and what’s more I was able to prise a large enough crack into the spells to verify his identity. It aligned with the results I’d found earlier from... another spell.”

“Okay,” Lambert said slowly, wary. “Like… where are you going with this?”

This was the part where he was going to rip those shackles out of the wall, forget he was holding the key to her cuff, and run off to get himself killed. She made herself stand, and stood against the closed door; he’d kill her to get out, maybe, but in this state she was only a woman. That might slow him down.

Gods, would he kill her? He killed a lot of people and he wasn’t sentimental about it. As she’d planned this scenario she’d simply assumed he wouldn’t, but now that she was powerless and locked in this room with him she wasn’t so confident in that assumption. She’d been wrong before, many times, and every time, it was a shock, and the fact that it would be a shock this time too didn’t mean it would really be any different.

“His name is Aiden,” she said, “of the school of the Cat,” and Lambert froze through, uncannily still, eyes wide and fixed on her like a predator, “and when I showed him unprompted an illusion of your face he reacted to it so strongly it’s impossible that it’s not him.” She swallowed, letting her legs shake.

“That’s why you couldn’t find a body,” Lambert said softly, not breathing.

“That’s why I couldn’t find his body,” she confirmed, and went on: “It’s him, Lambert. Aiden is alive and he’s under a mage’s control, but he’s still in there, I could feel that he’s all still in there.”

Lambert sucked in a breath and tried to stand up and the chains jerked him back down, and he tried again, as uncoordinated as if he were blind drunk, and the same thing happened, and he knelt there staring at her and not really breathing and not really moving for a long, long moment.

“I’m going to free him,” she said, “and you’re going to help me, but we need to plan first, this mage is powerful and I’m not prepared yet, and we need to get him out alive and intact and make sure the mage can’t destroy him instead of surrendering him, and I need you to stay here and listen to me and let me make a rational plan, and I understand that you want to go immediately and kill everyone in the world and free him but you can’t, Lambert, I need you to listen to me, and that’s why I needed you to trust me. I need you to trust me, Lambert.”

Lambert breathed in, finally, and said, “Aiden’s alive,” in a croak.

“He’s alive,” she said. “I saw him.” She absently gestured without thinking it through first, and it hurt so fiercely when she tried to reach for her magic and slammed into the dimeritium that she grunted and doubled over and slid down the door, losing any control over her knees. “Ow fuck,” she said, after a long tense moment of silence, and scrubbed her hand, the one without the shackle, over her face. “Okay, when I don’t have this on I can show you an image of what he looks like now but. I can’t right now.”

“Get me out of these,” Lambert said, and tried again to stand and got jerked right back down. “Fuck. Get me out of these.”

She crawled over to him, elbows shaking and threatening to dump her on her face. Her shirt gave up entirely on containing her breasts, and she simply could not care. “In a minute,” she said. “Lambert, look at me.”

“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, Keira, Aiden’s fucking alive?”

“Yes,” she said, “and I know, and I understand, but I need you to look at me, Lambert.”

“Fuck,” he said wildly, struggling, “let me out, I gotta--”

“Look at me,” she said, and if she’d had magic she’d’ve used it then, she knew it, to shut his mouth and compel his obedience, and that was why this thing was burning into her skin. “Look at me.”

He was breathing hard, straining to pull his wrists apart with desperate little wrenches of his shoulders-- he was bruising himself, but he’d be hurting himself worse if she hadn’t put that padding on there-- but she walked closer on her knees (and she was bruising herself too, on this floor) and put her hand up and grabbed his jaw. He jerked his head away, but she grabbed him again, and this time she hung on. “Look at me,” she said.

He met her gaze, teeth bared and eyes wild. But she must look equally desperate; as he focused on her, his wildness ebbed a little and he actually looked at her, eyebrows drawing together.

“I will save him,” she said. “You, and I, we’ll save him; I will do whatever it takes. You can’t do it without me, Lambert; the mage will just take you captive too, or kill you, or make Aiden kill you. If you really get the drop on her maybe you could hurt her but she’d kill him, or damage him beyond any recovery. But if you let me help you, and if you let me plan this, we will succeed, Lambert. We will get him back. You trusted me enough to do this,” and she held up the key to his shackles. “So trust me enough to let me save Aiden.”

Lambert made a horrible groaning sound, eyes closed and face scrunched up, but then he snapped his eyes open again and looked at her. “A mage has him,” he said.

“Yes,” Keira said. “And if you kill the mage, the control spells will destroy him.”

“Fuck,” he said.

“If you fail at killing the mage, her control spells are strong enough that she’ll force him to kill you,” Keira went on, ruthless. “You cannot do this without me, Lambert, and even then, you cannot do it unless you let me be in control of the plan. You have to let me do what I need to do in order to do this.”

He was very, very clearly looking for a way around this, because he was only a fan of relinquishing control in highly specific circumstances and most of those were sexual. And that was why they were both in extremely not-sexy shackles at the moment.

“Fuck,” he said again.

“But you have me,” she said. “I will do this, Lambert, and I will succeed. I will bring him back to you. If you do what I say, we can do this and we can save him.”

“You,” he said, “I can’t--”

“It was either I put you in shackles or I put you under control spells myself,” Keira said, and she was crying now. “I can save him-- we can save him-- but you have to let me do it, you have to-- have I ever wronged you, Lambert?”

“Everyone has wronged me,” Lambert said.

“I never have,” she said, desperate. “Not for anything important! I could have, just now! I could have not told you until I was done, or I could have lied, or I could have just put you under a spell to keep you out of the way, and I didn’t do that, I didn’t do any of that. I want to do this right. I am trying to do right by you, Lambert. I need you to cooperate. I need you--”

He gritted his teeth, and he had tears in his eyes too. “Fuck,” he said, yet again. “I-- what do you need me to do?”

“You’ll do it?” she said. “You’ll agree? You won’t sabotage my plan? Won’t go running off on your own to attempt something insane that won’t work and will only make it worse?”

He struggled with that for a moment, and finally said, “Fine. Fine, Keira, I’ll-- do what you want. I’ll-- whatever you say.” Oh, he was crying, now. It-- it hurt that same part of her that had stung earlier, and she wasn’t going to think about that.

“I’m not the hostage,” Keira said. “Aiden’s the hostage. I just needed it to be fair. And I need to know you trust me.”

Okay, maybe she needed to hear him say the words. He didn’t love her, they weren’t like that, and she was going to get him the love of his life back and he wouldn’t need her then, but she needed to know that he’d trusted her, they’d had that, and here she was on bruised knees in the dirt and he could snap her neck like a twig and he wouldn’t, she needed to know that, and maybe that was something she ought to give some more thought but not right now. Not right now. Right now she needed him to say it, maybe more than she’d ever needed anything before in her life.

“I don’t trust anybody,” he said, ragged.

“You trust me,” she said. “I need you to say it, Lambert. I need you to trust me.”

He sobbed, and nodded, and looked up at her. “I trust you,” he said.

Maybe he was only saying it because she had him over a barrel; even if he had snapped those chains and run out of here he’d’ve had to waste time tracking Aiden down. But she’d no doubt he’d’ve found him. The only reason he hadn’t was that the reports of the man’s death had been so credible and so final-- hadn’t Keira recovered his medallion, his silver sword, after all? No Witcher would be parted from those and live. If Lambert had had the slightest suspicion-- and he’d find him, now. All he really needed from her was to know he was alive, and he’d find him.

But he wouldn’t be able to get him out alive on his own, that wasn’t her own vanity-- that was a realistic assessment of the other mage’s capabilities. He likely could kill the mage, but surely couldn’t disable the traps in Aiden’s mind before they killed him.

And-- he’d said it, for whatever scrap of worth it had. He trusted her, at least enough to say it convincingly in this moment of great duress. But it wasn’t magical duress. She hadn’t done this to him with magic.

At least she had that. Maybe it was all she was ever going to get so she’d better satisfy herself with it.

“Okay,” she said, and crawled around behind him to unfasten the chain connecting his wrists and ankles.

He shot to his feet and she had to grab at his hands to get him to hold still so she could unfasten the cuffs there, and then he stood for the ankle shackles, and then she dropped the key and lay on the floor facedown because her whole torso had gone numb and maybe this had been a stupid idea and she just needed a moment to contemplate that she was going to get him the love of his life back and he wasn’t going to need her anymore, and that was the only thing she really reasonably could do because she wasn’t a decent person, exactly, but she did care about him, an awful lot, and he was never going to be whole in a world with her and without Aiden and that was just the way it was and anyway she wasn’t a good person but she couldn’t leave a man in soul-deep thrall like that-- even if Aiden been nobody, a stranger, she’d still be figuring out how to free him. Whatever it cost her personally, it had to be done.

And anyone Lambert had loved like that-- well-- he didn’t love her, and she didn’t expect him to, and she wasn’t a good person anyway, but Aiden-- he must be a good person, Lambert had said so and he wouldn’t say things that weren’t true.

For his own sake, she would save him.

No matter what it cost her.

Lambert was a good person too, was the funny part. He was an asshole, sure, but he was also a good person, a moral person, and if she lied to him-- he couldn’t tolerate that, no matter what else they had. She’d never lied to him so far, not about anything important, and she couldn’t now. She wouldn’t now. She didn’t even want to, it just-- would have been easier. She could have gone on her own and freed Aiden and-- and what? He’d certainly search for Lambert, each of them was the love of the other’s life and then she’d have to explain why she hadn’t told Lambert what was going on.

No, this was how it had to be, she’d made the right choice, and it fucking sucked.

Lambert’s hands were shaky but gentle as he picked her up off the floor and pulled her into his arms. “Keira,” he said. He sounded really wrecked.

Oh, he’d-- had he taken the cuff off? She was going to lift her arm to check but it was too heavy so she didn’t. Maybe he hadn’t. She was just being dramatic, she’d worn a pair of dimeritium shackles for far longer than this and she’d been fine afterward. Well, not fine, not directly, but she’d recovered her magic pretty directly and that was what was important because then she’d been able to defend herself.

Well. Magic, and brass knuckles, which were the only two really sure things in this world.

“Keira,” he said again, and he was still crying.

“I’m fine,” she said, and she was crying too, which was stupid. He hadn’t killed her after all, hadn’t even tried to, and she’d known he wouldn’t, but then she’d known a lot of things in her long life and it was always a nasty surprise to be wrong about that sort of knowledge. “Fuck.” She tried to sit up and push him away but he wouldn’t let go of her and he was stronger than she was anyway and especially now when her arms were like waxed thread for some stupid reason.

But her magic was back, enough of it-- dimeritium didn’t sap it, it just blocked it, so it was all right there even though it hurt to use, so she wasn’t helpless anymore and he couldn’t hurt her even if he wanted to. But he’d proven he didn’t want to.

She gathered herself, stuck as she was in his grip, and gestured, and a little detached self-contained illusion popped up, of the trapped Witcher’s face, as he’d looked when she’d shown him a similar illusion of Lambert. She’d picked one she’d taken for herself of Lambert in full animation, narrowing his eyes at her and raising a hand to make a point and then laughing, one of his special laughs that was equal parts nastiness and amusement, and the other Witcher had stared at it and his whole face had twitched strangely into an expression that was clearly readable as longing.

Which, really, sealed the deal beyond all doubt; nobody who wasn’t stupidly fond of Lambert would look longingly at him laughing his nasty I’ve-bested-you laugh.

Lambert stared at Aiden-- long face, craggy nose, a fairly typical level of facial scarring for a Witcher, one green-gold eye and one a strange flat shade of blue-green, hazy and pupil-less-- and any tiny doubt she’d had that this might not be the right person evaporated as Lambert’s face crumpled.

“Fuck,” he said, and tears streamed down. “Fuck.”

She should tell him the context of that expression, but, well, she was tired. She didn’t. She let it spark out into nothing. “It’s him,” she said.

“It’s him,” Lambert said, choked and teary. “His eye-- they shot it out with a crossbow when they-- when they killed him. Fuck, how could he still be alive?”

“I thought it looked artificial,” she said. “It looks something like Vilgefortz’s early technique, with the gemstones-- but it did seem to be functional.” After she killed the mage controlling Aiden, she’d have to get her notes, and maybe she could make improvements. It made it that much more crucial that they took her completely by surprise, so that she could get all her notes. And, of course, Aiden, as intact as possible.

She’d realized right away as she’d gently pried at those control spells that she couldn’t free him immediately-- there were some nasty traps built into them, and the mage who’d cast them would know and would be able to retaliate if they were tampered with in any real way. This was going to take planning and some caginess to get close enough for success.

“Some of those scars on his face were new too,” Lambert said. He sobbed, still clutching her tightly. “Fuck! How is he alive! If I’d known--”

“I know,” Keira said, resigning herself to being held onto; he wasn’t going to let go of her, and she didn’t want him to, really. He would, soon enough. That was fine. He wasn’t her fucking soulmate. She sighed, and reached up, and traced her fingers through the tears on his face. “I know, Lambert. You’d have found him if you’d only known to look.”

He was shaking, now. She managed to pry herself from his grip and sat up, kneeling on her bruised knees and reaching over to take his jaw in her hand.

“There’ll be time later to blame yourself,” she said, “but right now we need to make a plan.”

He stared at her, and pulled himself together and said, “Yeah,” and got to his feet and helped her up.

She had to lean on him a moment, which was dumb. He very, very gently tugged at her shirt until it covered her tits again, as much as it ever did. “I did always figure you held those in there with magic,” he said quietly.

She laughed, and buried her face in his shoulder. “I do,” she admitted. “I have it, why not?”

He laughed too, pained and gentle, echoing her “why not?”, and she leaned against him and managed not to sob. This-- he wasn’t hers, she’d only had him because they were both too damaged for anything else, too homeless-- but if he had a home, well.

She’d see him back in it, and use anything she had to get that for him. It was strange, and she’d literally never cared enough to do that for anyone else before, not really, but here she was.

It fucking sucked. So, she might as well lean against his reassuringly familiar frame as long as he’d let her.