Chapter 32: THE WAITING YEARS
Six years passed like water through fingers.
We fell into a rhythm—Geralt's contracts, my songs, the endless roads connecting villages that needed monsters killed. The dual claim on Ciri faded into something distant, a promise made to a child we'd never met, growing up in a palace we'd left behind.
She's six now, I thought sometimes, counting years on my fingers. Learning to read. Playing with toys. Having no idea that two wanderers claimed her before she was born.
The thought always felt strange. Unreal. Like remembering a dream.
The contracts kept coming. A griffin in Kaedwen that took Geralt three days to track and thirty seconds to kill. Drowners in every river we crossed—they seemed endless, breeding in any water deep enough to drown a man. Wraiths that haunted abandoned estates, bound by tragedies too old for anyone living to remember.
I sang through all of it.
Healing melodies when Geralt came back bloodied. Battle hymns when he needed the edge—though I was careful about those, rationing their use so he wouldn't grow dependent. Terror ballads for the rare fights where I was present, usually by accident.
My Stage 3 abilities served us well. The elemental manifestations proved useful for distraction—dancing flames that drew monsters toward traps, frost that slicked surfaces and made footing treacherous. The Shield Ballad saved my life twice, deflecting attacks that would have opened my throat.
But advancement eluded me.
The texts I'd studied suggested Stage 4 required something beyond fame. Ten thousand believers whose lives had been changed by my songs—not just entertained, but fundamentally altered. People who'd made different choices because of what they'd heard.
I was famous. My songs played in every tavern on the Continent. But changing lives? Shaping destiny beyond my immediate presence?
That requires something bigger. Something that matters.
The frustration gnawed at me during quiet moments. I'd come so far—from confused transmigrator to Legendary Bard—and still the next threshold felt impossibly distant.
Our partnership healed slowly.
Geralt never fully stopped watching me with assessment in his eyes—noting my timing, my awareness, the moments when I seemed to know things I shouldn't. But the suspicion faded into something more like acceptance. I was strange. My abilities were unusual. He could live with mystery as long as I remained useful and loyal.
Trust rebuilt itself through accumulated experience. Contracts survived together. Enemies defeated. Nights drinking in taverns while my songs filled the room and his reputation grew.
"Toss a Coin" had become inescapable. I heard it everywhere—children singing in streets, soldiers marching to its rhythm, lovers humming it as they walked home from celebrations. The song had taken on a life completely independent of me.
Geralt pretended to hate it. But I caught him humming the chorus once, late at night when he thought I was asleep.
I counted the years on my fingers one evening, sitting by a campfire while Geralt sharpened his sword.
Almost a decade. Ten years in this world.
My original life—the one with cars and computers and stories on screens—felt like something someone else had told me. The memories remained, but they'd lost their weight. I couldn't picture my old apartment anymore. Couldn't remember my mother's voice.
I'm not that person anymore. Maybe I never really was.
Julian Alfred Pankratz had been a young academic with modest talent and comfortable expectations. Jackier was something else entirely—a bard whose songs shaped emotions, whose voice could heal wounds and inspire terror. A man bound by destiny to a child he'd never met.
Which one am I? Either? Neither?
The question had no answer. I set it aside and went to sleep.
Rinde appeared on the horizon on a gray autumn afternoon.
"There's supposed to be contract work here," Geralt said. "Something about unusual magical disturbances."
My stomach tightened. I knew what waited in Rinde—or rather, who. Yennefer of Vengerberg, exiled sorceress, furious and beautiful and dangerous. The woman who would complicate everything.
In the story I remembered, Geralt had bound himself to her through a djinn's last wish. A love that felt destined but might have been manufactured. A relationship that would span decades, break both their hearts, and ultimately shape the fate of kingdoms.
And now I'm here. Part of the story instead of watching it.
"You're quiet," Geralt observed.
"Thinking about the song I'm working on." A lie—my power flickered slightly in protest—but not enough to matter.
We rode toward the gates, and I steeled myself for an encounter I'd dreaded and anticipated for years.
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