Jaskier is fae, and, as a child, his parents tried to teach him how to entrap mortals. They gave him instructions and left him in a fairy circle to wait for a victim.
Another child wandered in. He was guileless and didn't seem to realize what Jaskier was. The little fae didn't want to harm him, but he knew his parents would be mad if no deal was made.
He planned to ask for something harmless after giving the boy a flower crown; however, unprompted, the child swore to protect Jaskier forever.
Years later, Jaskier met the child, Geralt, as a grown witcher.
“You’ve grown,” Geralt murmured, his gaze lingering on Jaskier as though measuring something deeper than height or breadth.
The fae—still draped in the easy fiction of a bard’s life—tilted his head, a smile curling like sunlight through leaves. “And you haven’t? It’s called ageing, my dear witcher.”
Geralt’s brow furrowed, faintly amused, faintly wary. “I didn’t think your kind followed time the way the rest of us do.”
“We don’t.” The answer came quick as a blade, neat and final. Then, softer, edged with mischief, “But the truth of it would likely knot itself into something your mind would rather not untangle.”
Geralt huffed, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “Charming. I can’t tell if I’ve been insulted.”
“That depends,” Jaskier said lightly, though there was a glint beneath it, something older than his borrowed years. “Do you feel insulted?”
Geralt didn’t answer. Truth be told, there were precious few truths about the fae written anywhere, fewer still that could be trusted. And standing before him now was the only one he had ever known—had ever kept.
“I should be thanking you,” Jaskier went on, the brightness dimming just a shade.
Geralt blinked, caught off guard. “For what?”
“For not killing me when we were children.”
A pause settled between them, thin and sharp as frost. “I was a child too,” Geralt said at last.
“Yes,” Jaskier agreed, voice gentler now, though no less certain. “But you were a child raised in a keep full of witchers. I imagine more than a few would’ve relished the chance to get their hands on a fae boy.”
Geralt’s jaw tightened. “I wouldn’t have let them.”
Jaskier’s eyes flickered, searching, curious. “Why?”
And there it was—the quiet, unadorned truth, laid bare without flourish.
“Because I swore to protect you.”
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