Chapter Text
Renfri has known she is a curse upon Creyden since she was old enough to know anything at all.
She was born under the Black Sun, which is omen enough. Her mother died in bearing her; a common grief, but still another to add to her tally. And then, when she was barely a few months old, the White Wolf came to Caingorn, slew the old prince, and set his own vassal on the throne. Renfri’s father Fredefalk bent the knee rather than lose his own head, and Creyden was taken by the Witchers.
Renfri’s not quite sure how that can be her fault, but Lady Aridea, her father’s second wife, makes it quite clear that it is. That if Renfri had not been born, somehow, the Witchers’ eyes would not have turned to Caingorn and its vassal principalities, and Father would not have to spend all his time dancing attendance on Prince Grzegorz in Hengfors, and Creyden would be very nearly independent, answering only to the prince in Hengfors, like it was before the White Wolf took all of Caingorn.
Lady Aridea is also very clear in explaining that if the Witchers ever set eyes on Renfri, they will slay her, as they slay all cursed beasts; and for the crime of harboring her, all the court of Creyden will likewise be put to the sword. Renfri would cheerfully die if it meant taking Lady Aridea with her, but she does love her father, even if he’s almost never home and has left Lady Aridea in charge of Creyden and Renfri’s own raising. Renfri has already slain her mother; she cannot bear to be the instrument of her father’s destruction, too. And while Lady Aridea’s favored courtiers are such nasty creatures that Renfri would not shed a single tear for their deaths, the chambermaids and stableboys and cooks have done nothing to harm her.
Rather the contrary, in fact. The chambermaids have shown her the servants’ passages, by which she can escape Lady Aridea’s eyes and scolding tongue. The stableboys have made a little hiding place for her up in the hayloft, well-concealed from any search, where she can curl with a book or a bit of food or a blanket and be safe for a while. And the cooks always set something aside for her, even when Lady Aridea has decreed that so wicked a child should have no supper, so that when Renfri comes creeping down through the servants’ passages in the wee hours of the morning, there is a covered plate awaiting her, and her achingly empty stomach can find relief.
So when the Witchers come to visit, as they do every few months, Renfri hides. The hayloft is a welcome refuge, but sometimes the Witchers bring horses, and then Renfri goes out the little gate in the back wall of the keep and down into the forest, running and running until she is far enough away she can only barely hear the great bell that summons everyone to supper - far enough that no Witcher, however keen his nose, will be able to smell her curse and hunt her down.
The forest is full of dangerous creatures: wolves, and bears, and wild boars, and then the monsters which the Witchers come to hunt, wyverns and griffins and bruxae and other things as cursed as Renfri is. She learns to avoid them, to climb trees and wade through rivers and curl at the bottom of little hollows, still as stone, hardly breathing. She sometimes wonders how pleased Lady Aridea would be if she did not return from the forest - if a bear or a wyvern or a bruxa should find her and devour her.
Lady Aridea would probably be delighted, actually. If Renfri dies, her half-brother Jarmagdo, five years her junior and carefully kept far from Renfri’s tainted presence, will be first in line for Father’s throne. And, of course, the curse will be gone, too. Unless maybe whatever ate Renfri would also eat the curse? That would be kind of funny, actually, if there was a cursed bear or something wandering around and Lady Aridea had to deal with that instead of a cursed girl-child.
But Renfri doesn’t actually want to be eaten; it sounds like a painful and unpleasant way to die. At least if the Witchers ever catch her, they’ll just take her head off, quick and clean.
She’s not quite sure how it’s going to work if she actually lives long enough to be named her father’s heir. The formally named heir to Creyden can’t hide from the Witchers, after all - they’ll need to meet her, to hear her oath to the White Wolf, to make sure she’s not a threat to their hold on Caingorn. But if they’ll kill her as soon as they see her, and the court with her, then…
Well, maybe Father has a plan. Maybe when Renfri is old enough, he’ll send her to a temple of Melitele, or to a hermitage high in the mountains where no one ever goes. Or maybe he’ll marry her off to some prince or duke down in the southlands where the Warlord of the North does not yet hold sway - Temeria, or Cintra, or even Nilfgaard, so far away Renfri can’t even imagine it - and Renfri will never see Creyden again, and the Witchers will never even know she was there.
In the meantime, Renfri learns from governesses who come and go like the tides, none of them staying long enough for Renfri to even bother remembering their names. The ones who treat her kindly are sent away as soon as Lady Aridea learns of it, and the ones who know she is cursed and treat her unkindly are sent away as soon as Father learns of it, and Renfri learns to read and write and sew, to do basic maths and brew simple salves and play a lap harp indifferently well, mostly because she is interested. She watches her half-brother while the weaponsmasters train him in the yard, and think his lessons look far more interesting than her own, but no one is going to allow a cursed girl to learn to use a blade, so she does not bother to ask. She does imitate the motions, though, alone in her room with a stick or a spindle in place of a dagger, and thinks she might be a little better than Jarmagdo is, if anyone ever let her try. But girls don’t fight, and cursed girls even less so.
When Jarmagdo isn’t practicing and the governesses aren’t around, Renfri has far too much time to herself. Sometimes she creeps around through the servants’ passages, watching through tiny peepholes to see the life of the court to which she is so unwelcome; sometimes she goes exploring in the forest. She can sit still enough that the animals ignore her, and she learns the habits of squirrels and rabbits and deer, of songbirds and hawks and the vicious little shrikes who flit about the thornbushes.
When it is too wet to go exploring in the forest, she takes one of their precious books and finds a place to hide and read. There are a dozen books in the little room Father calls their library, and Renfri memorizes them all during long hours curled in her hayloft hideaway; she doesn’t really understand everything, but the stories of battles are thrilling to imagine, and the travelogue purporting to describe the peoples of far-off Ofir is absolutely fascinating. The fencing manual Renfri reads cover to cover, and acts out every movement, though she doesn’t think she gets them all correct.
There’s a single book of tales, too, which Renfri thinks belonged to her mother, and that Renfri hides so Lady Aridea will never find it, and reads so often she could recite every tale word-perfect. They’re good stories, about beautiful princesses and daring knights and evil witches and true love. Renfri knows she’s more like the evil witches than the beautiful princesses - oh, her little brass mirror tells her she’s pretty enough, with a pleasant face and her hair worn long the way Lady Aridea says noble ladies must keep it, but the beautiful princesses have curses like speaking jewels, or falling asleep until kissed by their lovers, not bringing destruction on everyone around them.
Renfri hasn’t brought any destruction since that first year of her life, when she slew her mother and brought the White Wolf to Creyden, but Lady Aridea says it’s only a matter of time.
Renfri just hopes that when that time comes, she’ll be able to bring destruction down on Lady Aridea first.
*
When Renfri is twelve, the king of Kovir leads an invasion of Caingorn, and his troops come right through Creyden. Jarmagdo and his little sister and even littler brother are sent to Hengfors as fast as horses can bear them, to be kept safe in the capital; Lady Aridea orders the keep fortified and brings in the people of the surrounding town for safety before the Koviri army arrives to besiege Yspaden.
Renfri is ordered to stay in her tower room and not come out for any reason at all. If she does anything, anything at all, it might be enough to let the Koviri army into the keep - her curse might take even a single word spoken, a single step out of her rooms, as enough of a crack to break the keep’s defenses. Renfri spends a long, terrible month huddled in her room, watching out the arrow-slit windows as the Koviri army attempts to breach the walls, with nothing to do but pace and worry knots into her hair that are so tangled she has to cut them off again with the tiny penknife which is the only sharp object she’s ever allowed to handle.
Let her curse affect them instead of the keep’s defenders, she prays to whichever god might be willing to listen to a cursed girl. Let them have all the bad luck she can cause. Let their reins break, their food spoil, their horses run away. Let squirrels and mice infest their supplies. Let bears eat their foragers.
(And that’s proof she’s cursed, isn’t it? No good girl-child would think of such nasty things, would be able to pray for such misfortune to befall even enemies. But as long as her curse doesn’t hurt her people, the servants who have always been kind to her, the townsfolk who have never done her any harm, Renfri is willing to be wicked enough to wish harm on the Koviri soldiers.)
She’s watching out the window when the Witchers arrive.
There aren’t many of them, and even though Renfri is terrified of Witchers, she’s more scared that the Koviri soldiers will be able to pull them down, to defeat the White Wolf’s forces. The Witchers, at least, have never done any harm to anyone within Yspaden’s walls, and as long as they don’t know about Renfri, they won’t. The servants even say that the Witchers who visit are polite, in a rough sort of way, and never offer insult to the chambermaids, and praise the cooks generously. But the Koviri soldiers - well, Renfri has read about sacks. She doesn’t want to see Yspaden burning.
There are only twenty-one Witchers, though, and there are more than two hundred Koviri soldiers. Renfri doesn’t know how less than two dozen Witchers are supposed to be able to lift the siege, but the Witchers ride forward, drawing their swords, like they don’t even notice how badly they’re outnumbered.
She understands very well a few minutes later. The Witchers aren’t outnumbered. Not when they have magic: golden shields that block sword-blows, blue waves of force that send their enemies flying, purple lines of light that make the enemy soldiers trip and stumble and freeze in place, held by some inexorable power. And even besides their magic, every one of the Witchers is a master swordsman, far better even than the extremely expensive ex-mercenary Lady Aridea hired to teach Jarmagdo to use a blade. They move like they’re dancing, graceful and terrible. Renfri’s mouth goes dry as she watches, thrilled and horrified in equal measure as the Witchers mow through the Koviri soldiers like scythes through wheat.
The last few Koviri soldiers - fifty or so, perhaps - drop their swords and fall to their knees when their commander is slain, begging for mercy. Renfri waits to see what the Witchers will do - how they will slay their downed enemies, how they will have their vengeance for the Koviri king’s temerity.
The Witchers put up their swords.
Renfri presses closer to the window, eyes wide, breath caught in her throat. One of the Witchers takes off his helm, revealing dark skin and close-cropped black hair, and swings down off his horse to approach the kneeling soldiers. He speaks to them - not loudly enough for her to hear, of course - but whatever he says, it makes the Koviri soldiers gape in astonishment. The one who must be highest-ranking among them lays his sword at the Witcher’s feet, and the Witcher takes it with a nod, and gestures for the Koviri soldiers to stand, and gives orders.
The soldiers start moving among the fallen, laying out the dead and tending the wounded.
The Witcher who spoke to them turns, surveying the battlefield, and his eyes flick up to the keep, even at this distance a startling gleam of gold. Renfri yanks herself back from the window, falling against the wall with a hand pressed to her chest. He didn’t see her. He can’t have seen her, not so far away, not through an arrow-slit.
He let the soldiers live, the ones who surrendered. Unless he plans to kill them after the battlefield has been cleaned up - but no, surely not. Witchers don’t lie, that’s one of the things the servants have said about them, so he wouldn’t have said he’d spare them - which is clearly what he did say - if he didn’t mean it.
Witchers know what mercy is.
The Witchers ride away the next morning, leaving the surviving Koviri soldiers under Lady Aridea’s governance until they can be returned to Kovir.
The soldiers vanish a few days after that, and Renfri hears one of the cooks talking about having to get rid of a stew pot. It’ll never be clean again after having that much rat poison in it.
Witchers may know what mercy is. Lady Aridea does not.
*
When Renfri is fourteen, she gets her courses. This is unfortunate for a lot of reasons. The first one is that she ruins a set of sheets and Lady Aridea makes her wash them herself, which is fucking miserable - Renfri doesn’t exactly do a lot of her own laundry, and sheets are heavy when wet, and the harsh lye soap she has to use to get the bloodstains out leaves her fingers raw and sore. Given that she’s also dealing with stabbing pains in her stomach and a new and uncomfortable belt of cotton batting, the experience is not one Renfri is keen to repeat.
The second unfortunate consequence of getting her courses is that Lady Aridea apparently realizes that Renfri is very nearly a woman, and thus very nearly old enough to either be named Father’s heir or start becoming the wicked destroyer her curse is bound to make her - or both.
Lady Aridea sends for a mage.
The first Renfri knows of it is at dinner, almost two months after her first courses. She hasn’t bled on her sheets again, mostly because when she starts thinking she might be close to getting her courses, she goes and sleeps in the hayloft on a bit of rough canvas, which can be thrown out if it gets covered in bloodstains.
She takes her seat at dinner with her head down, not wanting to catch Lady Aridea’s eye and earn a lecture about proper deportment, and is most of the way through her meal before she glances up to see that there’s a strange man sitting to Lady Aridea’s right.
He’s an older man, with a bushy grey beard and fancy robes. A mage - nobody else dresses like that. And he’s smiling benevolently at everyone, but Renfri - well, maybe it’s her curse, but she thinks his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. They are blue as ice, and cold as winter stone.
“Renfri,” Lady Aridea says when the meal is done, and Renfri stiffens. She hasn’t been rude to anyone - well, she hasn’t spoken to anyone - and she hasn’t caused any trouble recently -
“Master Stregobor is here to examine you.”
“Why?” Renfri blurts.
“To see what effects your unfortunate curse has, my dear girl,” Master Stregobor says, with a smile Renfri thinks is supposed to be reassuring but just looks oily.
“No,” Renfri says without thinking, and Lady Aridea smirks and beckons to a pair of guards - her men, not Father’s - who take Renfri by the arms and haul her up through the corridors to Lady Aridea’s solar, only grunting softly with pain when she manages to kick one in the shins and rake her nails against the other’s arm. They hold her still for Master Stregobor’s prodding, too, the bastards.
The examination hurts, and is humiliating, and she hates it. She glares at Master Stregobor the whole time, and spits curses and threats that make Lady Aridea tsk and shake her head, like Renfri is proving every rumor true.
And when it’s done, he turns to Lady Aridea while Renfri is still pulling her clothing back on, furious and mortified, and says, “She is indeed a mutant, your majesty, cursed by the Black Sun at her birth. It would be wisest, I think, for her to be given into my care, that I might see if the curse can be alleviated - and keep it from causing harm to any others.”
Renfri would rather die.
Lady Aridea wrinkles her nose delicately. “Her father may object,” she says. “I will write to him.”
Master Stregobor bows and smiles, oily and smug. “Assure him that I will care for her as I would my own daughter,” he says.
Renfri feels like retching. She really hopes Master Stregobor doesn’t have a daughter, because if he does, then...ew.
She makes her escape from the solar as soon as she can, and ends up in the hayloft, curled in a safely hidden ball. Well - hidden from Lady Aridea. Who knows if the mage can track her somehow?
If Father sends her with Master Stregobor, what is she going to do? He might say he’ll treat her well, but Renfri isn’t an idiot. As soon as she’s out of Creyden, Master Stregobor will do whatever he likes with her.
But Father doesn’t seem to think she’s as bad as Lady Aridea does. He doesn’t spend a lot of time with her, since he’s usually in Hengfors attending on Prince Grzegorz, but he brings her gifts for Solstice and her birthday, and strokes her hair when he sees her in the hallways, and seems pleased when her governesses tell him she’s doing well. He won’t just give her away, surely.
Unless he’d rather have a son inherit Creyden. Unless he believes Master Stregobor will treat her well. Unless Lady Aridea convinces him Renfri really is dangerous.
It isn’t fair! She’s never done any harm on purpose! Yes, she killed her mother, but she was an infant - she didn’t mean to! And she was not four months old when the White Wolf came to Caingorn, she didn’t choose that. And she hasn’t hurt anyone since she was old enough to know better, not even Lady Aridea. Surely if she was going to be wicked and destructive, she would have started with the woman who’s been so miserable to her.
But fair has never been any part of her life. Renfri wipes the bitter hot tears from her cheeks and goes down to supper, grimly determined that if Master Stregobor lays claim to her, she’ll get away somehow. Gods only know how, but she’ll come up with something.
The next day several of the chambermaids stop near where Renfri is lurking in one of the servants’ passages and gossip, loudly and deliberately, about the queen sending a messenger to Hengfors with a letter to the prince, even though the usual messenger left only a week ago. Renfri silently thanks them. She has a few weeks to figure out what to do if Father does agree to let Lady Aridea send Renfri away.
She spends those weeks putting together a traveling pack, sneaking hardtack and jerky from the kitchen, a thin blanket from the stables, a battered old saddlebag that no one will miss, a flint and steel, her precious book of tales, even an old dagger she manages to sneak out of the armory while everyone else is at dinner. She hides the pack near the back gate, the little one that nobody else ever uses. If Father says she has to leave, she’ll leave, alright. But not with Master Stregobor. No, she’ll leave at her own will, and go -
Well, she’s not sure where. She would have planned to go south and west, out of the Wolflands and away from the threat of Witchers. But the Wolflands stretch all the way down to the border of Cintra now, and Renfri doesn’t think she could make it that far. Which leaves...north into the mountains, where she’ll probably be eaten by a bear or a wyvern, or west towards Poviss. She could probably make it to Poviss, actually. Maybe she could find work as a scribe, or something.
West to Poviss it is, then. And hopefully King Rhyd of Poviss won’t do anything stupid and get himself conquered by the White Wolf anytime soon.
But she’s not going to run unless Father does tell Lady Aridea to send her away with Master Stregobor, so she just waits and jitters and worries knots into her hair, and does her best to avoid Lady Aridea and Master Stregobor, with mixed success. Lady Aridea at least is predictable, and Renfri can guess where she’ll be, but Master Stregobor has a nasty habit of lurking around unexpected corners and smirking at Renfri when she comes around and jumps at the sight of him.
If she were allowed to have a dagger, she’d probably stab him. Which is only more proof that she’s a vicious, cursed monster, and shouldn’t be trusted with a dagger anyway.
And then the letter from Father arrives, and Lady Aridea takes it into her solar, and Renfri paces her room for hours, waiting to hear Father’s verdict.
But what Lady Aridea says, that night at supper, is, “Your father prefers that his eldest daughter not leave Yspaden.”
Renfri’s breath leaves her in a great whoosh of relief. Lady Aridea raises one elegant eyebrow in disdain. “However, there will be Witchers coming to see the castle’s records. They will arrive tomorrow. You will need to stay in the forest for several days to avoid them.”
“Yes, Lady Aridea,” Renfri says, ducking her head obediently. This could be her chance to leave - but no. Father said she should stay in Yspaden. Father has not given her up to Master Stregobor.
Master Stregobor looks like he’s bitten something sour, too, which makes Renfri want to stick out her tongue at him. He may have convinced Lady Aridea, but Father hasn’t betrayed Renfri. And Father rules here, even if Lady Aridea is his regent.
“Leave tonight,” Lady Aridea commands. Renfri nods.
When supper is over, she goes to the cooks to get enough food for several days in the forest, and then down to the back gate to find her pack. To her surprise, there’s a man waiting there - someone she doesn’t know.
“Lady Aridea told me to bring you to a safe place, since it’s gonna be longer’n usual,” he says gruffly. Renfri frowns at him in confusion - Lady Aridea has never cared about that before - but if Father’s letter said he was going to name Renfri his heir, for instance, then Lady Aridea would almost have to take slightly better care to keep her safe. Father would be angry if he came home to find Renfri hurt or slain so soon after such a message.
It’s weird that she doesn’t know the man, but Lady Aridea likes to hire slightly rough-edged handsome men and then send them away again after a few months; there are always a few of them hanging around. And this man has the right look to be one of those: decently attractive, but with a nose that healed crooked after a break and a sort of scruffy beard. Just the way Lady Aridea likes them.
“Alright,” she says, and shoulders her pack. “Let’s go.”
The man lets her lead the way into the forest. Renfri heads north and east, into the mountains behind Yspaden, figuring that’s probably where this mysterious safe place will be. Presumably the fellow will tell her which way to go once they get far enough away from the city.
By the time it starts to get dark, they’re far enough from Yspaden that Renfri can’t see or hear it anymore, and she’s starting to wonder when her companion is going to say something. She sure as hell doesn’t know where this “safe place” is, after all.
She turns to ask him as much, and is startled to find him very close behind her. And there’s a look in his eyes she doesn’t like at all. She backs up a step, then another. He follows, crowding in close, and she thumps back against a tree and can go no further.
“What are you doing?” she blurts, as he looms over her. “I am a princess of Creyden - you dare not do me harm -”
He leers down at her. “Don’t I?” he drawls. “Her ladyship says, take the girl out in the woods. Bring me back her heart. Say you saw the mage kill her. Couple birds with one stone, see? Get rid of you, get rid of the mage so he can’t tell any tales...”
Renfri lunges sideways, hoping she can slip past and into the undergrowth, and he catches her by her long braid and hauls her back until he can grab her arm, laughing nastily as she cries out in pain. “None o’ that, pretty. Now, we can do this easy, or we can do it hard.” He licks his lips and laughs again when she tries to kick his shins. “Oh, I was hoping you’d pick hard.”
“My father will have you gutted,” Renfri snarls.
“Who’s to say I had anything to do with it, pretty?” the man replies, sounding very amused. “Nah, I’ll get me pay and be off, and no one the wiser but her ladyship, see?”
Renfri snorts. “She’ll have you killed, too, idiot.”
“Nah,” he says, shrugging, and he is an idiot, there’s no way Lady Aridea won’t kill him to clean up this loose end - she’ll probably have a goblet of wine waiting for him when he gets back, rich with rat poison - but that doesn’t help Renfri at all. She wrenches at her trapped arm again, tries to kick at his legs or his crotch, tries to strike at his eyes. All that gains her is his other hand wrapping around her other arm, tight enough to bruise.
Renfri could scream, but who would hear her? That’s the whole point of being out in the forest - no one will find her. No one will know she exists.
If she dies here, Father might care, but he has other children - she can be replaced by someone without a curse hanging over her head. The servants might miss her, but there’s little enough they could do about it.
She’ll be forgotten inside a year.
She sags, biting back a sob. The man holding her makes a rough, pleased sound, and topples her to the ground, pinning her with one hand and fumbling at her skirts with the other. For a long, terrible moment, Renfri thinks about just...letting him do whatever he’s planning on doing, and baring her throat for the knife when he’s done.
...No.
No, fuck that. She is Renfri of Creyden, and she isn’t going to give Lady Aridea the satisfaction of getting rid of her so easily.
The man has turned his attention to her skirts, apparently figuring she’s going to stay stunned with horror. Renfri glances around frantically, searching for a weapon. She has a dagger, but it’s in her pack, trapped under her. There aren’t any convenient fallen branches.
...She has a brooch, the Creyden crest that marks the royal family.
The man wrenches her legs apart and takes his weight off her shoulder to fumble with his breeches. It’s the best chance Renfri is going to get.
She yanks the brooch from her cloak and lunges upward, snarling furiously, and the man is so distracted by his own damn dick that she knocks him off balance, and slams the brooch against his head, and by some miracle - she wasn’t aiming, she doesn’t even know where she would aim - the thick bronze pin hits something, and the man makes a horrid strangled noise and clutches at the side of his head as she yanks the brooch away. There’s - fuck, there’s so much blood. Renfri scrambles backwards through the leaf litter, panting in horror. Her empty hand lands on a jagged rock, and she seizes upon it.
The man croaks something and topples over onto his face.
Someone laughs.
Renfri claws her way up a tree until she’s on her feet, staring around wildly.
Master Stregobor steps out from behind another tree, smiling that oily smile. “Well,” he says. “I suppose we have proof that you are indeed dangerous.”
“That - what - he was going to -”
“Well, you can hardly blame him,” Master Stregobor says. “Your curse draws evil to you, after all.” He smirks, and holds out a hand. “Come with me, girl, and I promise you will have a painless death.”
Renfri stares at him for a moment, so furious she’s speechless.
“Fuck you,” she snarls. “Leave me alone.”
Master Stregobor shakes his head, looking sad. “Your father will not be able to protect you once I make it known that you slew a man without provocation.”
“Without provocation?” Renfri sputters.
“You compelled him to desire you, and slew him,” Master Stregobor says, sighing like he regrets the words. The lying fuck.
“Father will believe me over you,” she spits.
“You are only a girl, and a mutant to boot.” Master Stregobor steps forward, smiling that horrid oily smile. “I am a mage of the Brotherhood, known and respected across the northern realms. I will offer only once more. Come with me, and you may have a painless death. If I must take you, that promise no longer binds.”
Renfri takes a deep breath and steps away from the tree. Master Stregobor grins triumphantly.
Renfri flings the rock at him as hard as she can.
Master Stregobor is apparently not expecting that; the rock hits him squarely in the forehead, and he reels back, clapping his hand to the sudden gushing wound, and Renfri whirls and sprints into the forest, in no particular direction but away.