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Coën ducks under a swipe of the bullvore’s hand and his foot slides into a crack in the stone; he goes down hard, ankle making a sickening noise as it breaks, and his head bounces off the stone. His sword tumbles from his grip.
So this is how he’s going to die.
He rolls, ignoring the pain in ankle and head, as the bullvore’s foot comes down, and scrabbles for his sword, knowing he won’t reach it in time -
And the bullvore’s bellow is cut off in an odd choking noise.
Coën looks up to find that there’s a sword through the bullvore’s throat, and a witcher perched on the monster’s broad shoulders, face set in a ferocious snarl. The witcher’s hands twist on the hilt of the sword, and the bullvore topples like a felled tree, landing with an earth-shaking thump only inches away from Coën’s ungraceful sprawl.
“Shit, that was close,” the newcomer says, yanking his sword free in a spray of ichor and hopping agilely off the bullvore’s carcass. “How badly hurt are you?”
Coën stares for a long, stunned moment before levering himself carefully into a sitting position and responding, “I have a broken ankle and a concussion.” He must have hit his head very hard; his rescuer is rather blurry, and all he can see of the man’s medallion is a silver circle. Not a Viper, then, but that’s about all he can deduce. He is an omega, by the smell. He has longish dark hair and green eyes and what Coën thinks might be a worried expression.
“Yeah, you got your bell rung pretty solidly, didn’t you?” the other witcher says. “Here, let me see.” Coën turns his head to let the man examine the lump he suspects is already rising; the other witcher probes at it with surprisingly gentle fingers. “Yep, that’s nasty. Alright. Sit tight a moment.”
“I don’t believe I’ll be going anywhere very quickly,” Coën says, and the blurry witcher chuckles and then goes swarming up a tree to reach the top of the cliff that holds the late bullvore’s den. Coën, watching, deduces that the man must have jumped down from the top of the cliff to land on the bullvore - an impressive leap, with magnificent accuracy. Coën will have to express his gratitude properly when the man returns.
It’s not very long at all, he thinks, though his perception of time may be a little foggy due to the concussion, before a pair of fuzzy figures appear at the top of the cliff and come scrambling down the tree: Coën’s rescuer, and another man, taller than the first, with brilliant red hair. When they’re close enough, Coën breathes in to discover that they’re both omegas - with the mingled scents which suggest they’re bonded, no less. Fascinating.
“Damn, you weren’t joking,” the redhead says. “Fuck, Griffin, you got any blood left in you?”
Ah. The hot stickiness on the back of Coën’s neck is blood, isn’t it.
“I believe I retain some, yes,” Coën replies, focusing hard on speaking clearly despite his concussion. “Less than I might desire, perhaps.”
The redhead snickers. “No shit,” he says. “Right, you wrap his ankle, I’ll do what I can for his head. You got a horse, Griffin?”
“No,” Coën says, as his original rescuer drops to his knees beside Coën’s injured ankle and begins realigning the bones, which hurts like hell. The redhead moves to his side and starts daubing at the blood with a cloth, wiping it away carefully.
“Makes it easier,” the redhead says. “Where’s all your shit?”
Coën gestures vaguely in what he hopes is the right direction, and tries to suppress a wince as his original rescuer begins wrapping a bandage tightly around his ankle to hold it in place long enough for witcher healing to kick in. The redhead finishes cleaning away most of the blood from his head and neck and bends close, peering at the injury, then snorts.
“Just whacked it good - nothing actually broken here.” He claps Coën on the shoulder and comes around in front of him again, fishing a bottle out of his belt-pouch. “Here. Swallow.”
“I have my own,” Coën says, gesturing towards his own belt. If he wasn’t so out of it, he would have drunk one already, though drinking Swallow before setting his ankle would have been unwise.
“Yeah, but mine’s better,” the redhead retorts.
“It is,” the other man chimes in. “Much better, I promise.”
Coën takes the vial with a murmur of thanks and knocks it back, startled at the taste - slightly less foul than he expects - and the lack of an immediate wave of nausea following the draught.
“Right, I’ll get you up the cliff, Aiden’ll get your things,” the redhead says briskly. “You can camp with us til you’re healed the fuck up, alright?”
“You do me much honor,” Coën replies weakly.
“Griffins,” the redhead says, rolling his eyes. “So fuckin’ polite.”
“Everyone looks polite compared to you, Lamb,” Coën’s original rescuer, who is evidently named Aiden, retorts cheerfully. “It’s the not-swearing that does it.”
“Ah, fuck you,” Lamb (which is such an incongruous name that there must be a reason for it) replies, with a rude gesture that makes Aiden snicker.
“Later,” Aiden replies, sticking his tongue out, and then, to Coën, adds, “Don’t mind him. He’s just like this. Only start worrying if he stops cursing.”
“I shall bear that most firmly in mind,” Coën agrees.
“Right, up you get,” Lamb says, hooking a hand under Coën’s arm and hauling him to his feet - well, one foot, at least. “Think you can hang on pick-a-back?”
“I shall manage, yes,” Coën agrees. Lamb turns away, and Aiden comes around to boost Coën up so he can cling onto Lamb’s back like a child in a sling. Coën loops his arms around Lamb’s neck and his legs around Lamb’s waist, trying not to jar his bad ankle too badly. He’s rather impressed by the other man’s size: he doesn’t think he’s met any omegas who are larger than he is before, but Lamb is both taller and broader, and doesn’t seem to mind Coën’s weight at all.
“See you at camp,” Aiden says, and jogs off into the woods in what Coën thinks is the right direction. Lamb waves and heads for the much-clambered-upon tree, scaling it easily even with Coën clinging to his back.
The other witchers are camped on the top of the cliff, maybe a mile from the edge; Coën loses some time as Lamb trots along, distracted by the throbbing pain in head and ankle, and doesn’t quite come back to himself until Lamb pats his arm and says, “Hey, Griffin, let go.”
Coën carefully unwinds himself from Lamb to stand on his good foot, blinking around at the tidy encampment: two picketed horses, a banked fire, two bedrolls laid out so that they’re really one large bedroll, a neat little heap of packs and saddles, two logs drawn up near the fire as seats.
“Siddown before you fucking fall down,” Lamb suggests. Coën hops over to one of the logs and does as ordered, stretching his bad leg out and squinting at the bandages wrapping it.
“This is very good work - and very good Swallow,” he says. “My thanks, friend.”
“Eh. Don’t mention it,” Lamb says, flapping a hand. “You got a name, Griffin?”
“Oh! I apologize; I am remiss in my courtesy. My name is Coën. And yours, good sir?”
“Lambert of the Wolves,” Lamb says - Lambert fits him better, yes. “And my mate’s Aiden of the Cats.”
Coën blinks. That two omegas are mated is nothing he has not seen before; that a Wolf and a Cat are mated is shocking indeed. “I owe him my life,” he says, instead of asking how in the gods’ names that pairing came about. “If he likes, I will gladly give him the reward for the bullvore’s contract, once I have collected it.”
“Sure, seems fair,” Lambert says, shrugging. “How’d it get the fuckin’ drop on you anyhow? Damn things aren’t stealthy.”
“I wasn’t expecting it to be awake this near noon,” Coën admits. And he didn’t scout as carefully as he ought to have done.
He hasn’t scouted carefully in…a while.
Since the destruction of Kaer Seren, really. Or maybe just since he got the word, three months ago, that the last brother he knew was still alive had fallen.
Since he’s known without a doubt that he is the last Griffin, and will never know a brother’s companionship again. Erland’s code does not allow him to lie down in bitter grief and loneliness and let death take him, but Coën cannot quite keep himself from making careless errors, leaving gaps that might allow him to finally put down this aching pain in his heart and join his brothers in their long Path among the stars.
“Fair, the damn things are usually nocturnal,” Lambert agrees, and then turns, grinning, as Aiden comes trotting into the clearing. “There you are.”
“Here I am,” Aiden agrees, putting Coën’s packs down next to Coën and then leaning against his mate. “I think I got everything.”
Coën checks his gear swiftly. “Aye, this is everything, and my thanks for it. I will be glad to give you whatever reward I gain from the bullvore contract, in thanks for your timely aid.” And if that leaves him with little enough coin to reach the next town - does that really matter?
To his surprise, Aiden frowns, eyes flickering from Coën’s face to his meager packs and back again. “Looks like you need it more’n I do,” the Cat says softly. “Been a hard season?”
It has, and it hasn’t. Coën’s gotten plenty of contracts. He just hasn’t cared enough to insist when the eventual payment was half or a third what had been promised. Nor to haggle with apothecaries about the price of ingredients, selling or buying. Nor to spend time begging innkeepers for a room or a place in the stable loft, not when he can sleep rough. He shrugs wordlessly.
“Right, well, figure that out once you’re healed enough to go get the payment,” Aiden says briskly. “Please tell me you didn’t try to start cooking anything, Lamb.”
“Fuck off, when would I have had time?” Lambert grumbles
“You’re sneaky,” Aiden retorts, and the two of them turn away from Coën, fussing at each other cheerfully as Aiden starts cooking something and Lambert goes to tend the horses.
Coën sits there listening to the merry banter and thinks he might weep for the sheer camaraderie of it. It feels like sitting in the kitchen in Kaer Seren, listening to his brothers jest as they work.
“I can peel carrots,” he offers, since his vision has cleared as the concussion fades. He is handed a knife and a heap of root vegetables, and allowed to sit just quietly and try to keep from bawling like a child as his rescuers laugh and swear and make idle, easy plans for the coming days.
*
Two days later, Coën is no closer to understanding how a Wolf and a Cat managed to end up mated, but he will freely admit that they are a marvelously matched pair, and so clearly and deeply in love with each other that it is an honor to be allowed to witness. That they have allowed Coën to keep company with them - more, have made him welcome - is an honor of which he knows he is not worthy.
And it hurts far, far more than his healing ankle to watch them together and know he will never again have such companionship as theirs. Not a mate - he has never wanted a mate - but brothers, comrades, friends.
As soon as his ankle is healed enough to walk on, he goes to collect the bullvore contract, arguing harder than he has in a while for the full amount - not for himself, but for Aiden. He leaves the payment beside their bedrolls when he slips from the camp early on the fourth day since the bullvore’s death, knowing they would argue that he should keep part of it - part of that which he did nothing to earn.
They’ve been talking about going east, so he goes west.
It is a month before he encounters them again. He has taken a contract for a nest of harpies, and yes, he should have scouted better, but in fairness to him, harpies aren’t clever animals, and he thought his Aard had caught them all.
The one that hits him in the back is an unpleasant surprise. He topples onto the loose scree of the mountainside with a yell, barely managing a Quen in time to keep from tearing his face open on the sharp rocks, and rolls to slash at the last harpy. He does hit, though not hard enough to kill the monster, and they go down the slope together, a rolling ball of sword and Quen and talons and feathers.
They land hard at the bottom, the scree sliding down to cover them, and though the harpy is thoroughly dead, Coën is not far from joining it. He lies there panting for a while, wondering if it’s worth getting up again, and then a brawny arm plucks him up out of the bloody rubble and a familiar gruff voice says, “Look, I realize being covered in blood is a fucking occupational hazard for us, but could you try not to be beat to a fuckin’ pulp whenever we find you?”
Coën blinks at Lambert in confusion. “I thought you went east,” he says dazedly.
“Yeah, well, for some reason Aiden thought you might be in some sort of trouble, with the whole sneaking off like a fucking thief in the night thing,” Lambert grumbles. “Though I guess thieves don’t usually give people money. Come on, bird-brain, let’s get you patched up.”
“You don’t have to,” Coën says, baffled, as Lambert slings one of Coën’s arms over his shoulders and half-marches, half-hauls him away from the mound of scree and the dead harpy.
“There’s not so many witchers left that we can afford to lose one,” Lambert grumbles. “Specially when you don’t seem like as much of a knothead as most alphas.”
“I thank you for the compliment,” Coën says, even more baffled. “Do you often have trouble with alphas being rude to you?”
Lambert snorts. “Try all the fuckin’ time. Somethin’ about seeing a big omega just makes most of ‘em want to knock me down to show they can. Doesn’t usually go well for them.”
“No, I can’t imagine it would,” Coën agrees. Lambert does not strike him as an omega who goes willingly to his knees for any but a very lucky few.
“You get the rest of the harpies?”
“Yes, they’re all dead, and the nest smashed. The last one took me by surprise.”
“Fuckin’ buzzard,” Lambert says. Coën thinks he’s referring to the harpy. “Hate those things. Always one more than you thought there was gonna be.”
Coën chuckles. “Indeed.”
“Those and nekkers. Fucking nekkers,” Lambert spits, and goes off on a vitriolic, profanely multilingual, and honestly hilarious rant about how much he hates nekkers. Coën listens with admiration, briefly distracted from his own melancholy as he counts the languages in which Lambert can swear; he makes it up to five before they reach the camp where Aiden is waiting for them.
“Hey, you found him!” Aiden says, looking up from a pot of something that smells delectable. “Shit, Coën, what’d you do, slide down a mountain face-first?”
“Well, yes, more or less,” Coën says. “There was one more harpy than I expected.”
“Ah, yeah, they’ll do that,” Aiden says. “Come sit down and let Lambert fuss at you. Lunch’s almost done.”
“I don’t fuss,” Lambert says.
Aiden winks at Coën, who finds himself stifling a chuckle and then sits down hard with astonishment. When was the last time he laughed?
“Right, looks like mostly superficial, but this one needs stitches,” Lambert says, poking at the back of Coën’s sword arm. “Hold still.”
Coën holds obediently still, letting himself be stitched up. He takes the bowl of venison stew Aiden presses into his hands once his arm is bandaged, and discovers it tastes as good as it smells. And he averts his eyes politely when Lambert bends to kiss Aiden, deep and sweet.
They’re good together. They remind Coën very strongly of some of his own brothers. Ealdred and Jerome were just as devoted to each other, just as openly affectionate. Just as oddly willing to include Coën in their warm company, though they knew he would never share their bed for more than sleeping. The reminder hurts like a broken bone ill-set; Jerome is gone these many years, and now Ealdred too is lost.
“I thank you for the food and the care,” Coën says, setting his empty bowl carefully aside. “I will not intrude upon you further.”
“If it was a fuckin’ intrusion I’d have kicked you out,” Lambert says, frowning at him.
Aiden nods. “I would have helped anyone with the bullvore. But we coulda left you to fend for yourself once you were patched up. You’re pretty good company.”
Coën blinks. He’s fairly sure he’s terrible company at the moment. He certainly doesn’t much like being around himself.
“You do your share of the camp chores, you don’t hassle us for being omegas, and you have interesting opinions on both alchemy and cooking,” Aiden says, apparently noticing his confusion.
“That is a very low bar to clear,” Coën points out.
“And yet so many knotheads trip right the fuck over it,” Lambert says dryly. “Look, you don’t gotta camp with us, but at least meditate until you’re not bleeding all over fuckin’ everything before you go collect on the contract.”
Coën can see the sense in that. “Thank you,” he says, and composes himself to meditate. The quiet banter of his companions lulls him easily into the required calm, and he rouses in the early evening, feeling more refreshed than he has in a long time.
Lambert is sitting beside the fire, writing or drawing in a journal. Aiden is sprawled out beside him with his head on Lambert’s knee, looking utterly peaceful.
They are very beautiful together, and Coën is intruding upon their peace, no matter what they say. He stands and bows. “I thank you, for…everything. I will take my leave now.”
“Alright,” Lambert says, frowning a little. “Don’t go falling over any more fucking cliffs, yeah?”
“I will do my best,” Coën promises, and escapes as politely as he can from that warm camaraderie of which he will never again be a part.
*
The third time one of the unlikely couple rescues him, Coën really, truly, wasn’t trying to let himself die. There is no cliff to fall over; he scouted the area carefully before approaching; he has an abundance of potions on his belt and Igni ready in his hand. A single archespore - even a particularly large one - should be a relatively straightforward fight.
Unfortunately, his scouting did not reveal the surprisingly large cellar of the abandoned farmhouse where the archespore is growing. Nor did it reveal that the floor of the kitchen has rotted almost entirely away.
Coën turns the archespore into a charred ruin, takes a step backwards, and goes right through the floor into an entire colony of the horrid things. His reflexive Igni gets him some breathing room, but a dozen archespores in a confined space is a very different proposition from one archespore in the open air, and he discovers that he can either hold Quen against the poisoned thorns or cut the foul things to pieces, not both.
He’s wondering how to solve this particular dilemma when a familiar lilting voice says, “You do end up in the damnedest scrapes, don’t you, Griffin?” and a wave of Igni sweeps over the archespores, singeing them and drawing their attention away for long enough for Coën to destroy two before he has to put his Quen back up.
“And you seem to have made a habit of getting me out of them,” he calls back up. Aiden laughs.
“Igni in three, two, one,” he replies, and they repeat the flame-and-strike that worked so well the first time. With another witcher to help, finishing off the rest of the archespores isn’t terribly difficult, and Coën even manages not to get hit by any of the poisoned thorns.
“I think we ought to burn this whole ruin to ashes,” he says once he is standing in the middle of a heap of very dead archespores. Aiden, peering down from the edge of the ragged hole in the floor, snorts softly.
“Yes, I think that would be wise,” he agrees. “What d’you think the chances are you’re going to be able to collect for all of these?”
“Slim to none,” Coën says ruefully. “The contract was for one.”
“Damn,” Aiden says sympathetically. “Mine’s just for ‘whatever’s eating all the damn deer’. Mind if I take a couple of archespore heads for proof?”
“Please do,” Coën says. “They are half your kill, after all.”
Aiden drops down into the cellar, landing with appropriately catlike grace, and slices a few trophies off, bundling them into a sack. “You doing alright, then?” he asks, giving Coën an uncomfortably piercing look.
“I am as well as I can be, I think,” Coën replies. Aiden nods, claps him on the shoulder, and leaps gracefully out of the cellar.
Coën takes a deep breath, smelling ash and burnt archespore, and gets to work.
He gets a decent reward for the contract - the alderman actually pays for three archespores when presented with the evidence, if at a very stingy price - and his next few contracts are both simple and relatively lucrative, and he thinks he might be starting to sleep a little better at night, without constantly waking to reach for a brother who isn’t there -
And then he realizes that as autumn starts to chill the air, he has unconsciously turned his steps north, towards Kaer Seren’s tumbled stones. That he is relaxing because somewhere in the back of his foolish mind he thinks he is going home.
Home, which no longer exists, to brothers who are broken bones beneath the fallen mountainside.
The sudden vivid reminder leaves him reeling, stumbling through the world as if his ears are wrapped in woolen batting and his eyes shrouded in fog. But he can still fight.
Maybe.
Or maybe whatever monster he finds will be just fast enough to send him to join his brothers in their endless sleep.
He takes a contract on an alghoul. It is, for a wonder, exactly what the contract said it would be; usually aldermen do not correctly identify monsters, but this one is an alghoul, and a rather slow one at that. Even with his reflexes hindered by the weight of his grief, Coën is able to dispatch it without too much difficulty.
The alghoul falls, head rolling away across the poachy ground, and Coën follows it down, collapsing to his knees as his vision blurs, tears burning against his pockmarked cheeks.
He should get up, claim the alghoul’s head, burn the body, and return to town for his reward. He should get up. He knows he should.
He cannot.
He doesn’t know if he will ever find the strength to rise again.
He realizes he’s making a low, wounded sound like an injured animal; his throat aches with it, but he cannot seem to stop. His hands are shaking.
He should get up.
He cannot make himself move.
“Ah, hell, Griffin,” someone says, rough voice oddly gentle, and a big hand closes on his shoulder. “Fallen off a cliff again?”
It feels like he’s fallen off a cliff. Like he’s falling and falling and there’s no ground, nowhere to stand.
Two pairs of hands haul him to his feet, and Coën lets himself be lifted, lets his rescuers drape his arms over their shoulders and steer him away from the graveyard, step by stumbling step. He doesn’t think they go far, but his sense of time seems to have gone awry; it could be a mile or ten that they guide him through the trees. Finally they stop, and one of them holds him upright as the other unbuckles his armor. When he’s down to his tunic and trousers, they lower him down onto something soft that smells of bracken, and then to his dazed astonishment they both lie down beside him, draping themselves over him so he’s surrounded by witcher-warm bodies and the smell of a pair of contented omegas.
He weeps himself to exhaustion in Lambert and Aiden’s arms.
*
“So you’re coming with us,” Lambert says the next morning, before Coën can even apologize for intruding upon their lives yet again.
“What?” Coën says blankly.
“You’re coming to Kaer Morhen with us,” Lambert says.
“It’s nice,” Aiden adds, sitting up and stretching luxuriously. “Damn good food, and they’re all cuddly bastards. And there’s a bard!”
“I dunno, is the bard a selling point?” Lambert asks. “He’s fuckin’ noisy.” But he’s grinning, and Aiden laughs. Coën is so very confused.
But he’s also still so tired, and it’s far easier to just let Lambert and Aiden bring him along than to try to go his own way. Aiden goes and haggles the price of the alghoul out of the alderman, and they all head north and east, Coën walking beside their horses and letting them lead him where they will.
He does his share of the camp chores. He picks herbs for potions when he sees them, and hunts rabbits or pigeons or deer, and gathers edible berries and tubers from the woods. Lambert and Aiden take contracts, but neither of them will allow him to assist, and Coën doesn’t quite have the energy to insist; he tends their horses instead, and waits for them to return, and helps stitch them up if they are injured.
They get hurt less often than he might have expected, perhaps because they do most often work as a team. Griffins never did walk the Path together, so Coën doesn’t know what it might be like to have a companion watching his back. Coën’s brothers did not usually travel the Path in pairs; even those who were mated found that they could cover more ground by splitting up and only meeting every few weeks.
Perhaps if they had not done so, Jerome would still be alive. And if Jerome were alive, then Ealdred might have survived as well. And -
And it is no use to dwell upon such things.
It’s starting to snow gently when the three of them finally reach the base of the Trail which leads up to Kaer Morhen. Lambert gives Coën a long look as they start climbing. “Stay on the uphill side of the Trail,” he says. “The edge gives way sometimes, and you’ve fallen off enough cliffs, given that you can’t actually fly, catbird.”
Coën nods. He doesn’t think he’d deliberately let himself fall, but he has to admit he might not catch himself if he happened to lose his balance.
The Trail is genuinely miserable to climb. Coën bows his head and trudges upward into the teeth of the wind and snow, knowing that if he stops he probably won’t start again. If it weren’t for Lambert ahead of him and Aiden behind him, he wouldn’t bother to keep going, but they are there, and it would be a poor repayment of their kindness to make them carry him the rest of the way.
He’s so weary by the time they reach the keep that he doesn’t quite realize they have, just that the wind seems to have died down a bit and the ground is flatter as he plods forward -
And then there’s a high gleeful shriek and Coën’s head jerks up as a brightly colored someone goes shooting past him and collides with Lambert hard enough to knock the omega over. Coën stands there blinking in astonishment.
The brightly colored someone turns out to be a beta in a brilliant turquoise outfit that doesn’t look nearly heavy enough for the weather. He’s not a witcher. He is kissing Lambert quite enthusiastically. Lambert, to Coën’s bafflement, is kissing back.
Aiden laughs instead of objecting. “Oi, bard, where’s my kiss?” he asks.
Lambert rolls to his feet with the man clinging to him like a monkey, peels him off, and hands him over to Aiden, who bends the man back in a dramatic kiss. Coën gapes at that for a moment.
Someone laughs softly, and Coën turns to see a tall pale alpha striding forward. Lambert leaps into the alpha’s arms, and the alpha catches him and whirls him around before kissing him thoroughly.
Coën is honestly so confused he almost forgets his weariness.
“Griffin,” a gruff voice says, and he turns again to see an old Wolf, a beta by the smell, with grizzled grey hair and a stern expression. “You look done in.”
“Sir,” Coën says, putting a hand to his chest and bowing a little. From what Lambert and Aiden have said during their travels, this must be Vesemir, Grandmaster of the Wolves.
“We found him down in Aedirn,” Aiden says. He’s got the beta slung over his shoulder like a sack of brightly colored parsnips; the beta is giggling madly, apparently unconcerned with being upside down. “He needs a soak in the hot springs and a winter of your good cooking and about a month at the bottom of a puppy pile.”
What?
Vesemir nods like this makes perfect sense. “Come on in, lad,” he says to Coën, gruffly kind. “Be welcome in Kaer Morhen.”
Coën bows again. “Thank you,” he says, because what else is there to say?
*
He’s shown to a room that smells mostly of dust - whoever used to live here is long since gone. But there’s a bed with heavy curtains, and a stand for his armor and his swords, and a chest for his belongings; he doesn’t need anything more.
And then Aiden loops a hand around his elbow and tows him down several flights of stairs to a surprisingly warm cavern with half a dozen pools of steaming water inset into the floor. The beta and the pale alpha and Vesemir are already in one; Lambert is in the process of undressing. Coën shrugs and imitates him.
Sliding into the water is so astonishingly pleasant that it even overwhelms the haze of misery which has shrouded Coën for so long. It helps that Kaer Seren never had anything like this. Their bathing room had a rinsing station and then an enormous wooden tub that could fit fifteen or twenty Griffins at a time, and was kept warm by the judicious use of Igni by whoever was in the water. It was nice, yes, but it was never as purely relaxing as this is.
“There we go,” Aiden says, slipping into the water and leaning against Lambert’s shoulder. “That’s better. Right, so, Coën, these are Vesemir and Geralt and Jaskier; Wolves and bard, this is Coën of the Griffins.”
Coën nods a polite greeting to his hosts, who nod back - well, except for the beta, Jaskier the bard, who beams and bounces a little, making the water slosh. “A Griffin! I’ve never met a Griffin witcher before!”
Coën swallows. “I am the last of my School.”
Jaskier winces. “Well, hell, there I go sticking my foot all the way in my mouth. I’m sorry. That must be terrible.”
Somehow, his forthright sympathy - the unprompted kindness of someone who isn’t even a witcher, who has no reason to care about the loss of Coën’s brothers - is enough to turn the formless grief that Coën has been carrying for so long into a sharper, solid thing -
One that can be expressed.
Coën covers his face with his hands and weeps, unable to even hold off the tears long enough to step out of the bathing room and keep from inflicting his outburst on his hosts.
And his hosts -
Surround him, strong arms wrapping around him and warm bodies pressed to his, until it is almost like being in a roost of Griffins again. Aiden and Jaskier murmur soothing nonsense in each ear; the Wolves do not speak, but Geralt rumbles a deep comforting purr, so low-pitched Coën feels it in his bones rather than hearing it with his ears.
Coën weeps until he runs out of tears, and feels rather like a wrung-out dishcloth. Someone hands him a soft rag, and he wipes his face clean as his companions move back a little, giving him space.
“My apologies,” he croaks, not quite daring to look up. “That was unseemly of me.”
“Grief is not unseemly,” Vesemir says quietly. “I have wept so, and for a like cause.”
Coën looks up to find the Wolves and their bard and Cat regarding him, one and all, with deep sympathy - not pity, which Coën could not have borne, but a clear understanding of his pain, one that every witcher alive can share, at least a little. And the bard - the human bard - says softly, “Weep as you need to, Coën of the Griffins. All those who winter here will grieve with you.”
“My thanks,” Coën whispers, feeling raw and fragile and -
Safe, here in this den of Wolves.
*
He’s tired enough that Lambert ends up half-carrying him up to the bedroom he’s been given, and he sleeps through the night and all the way until past noon the following day. When he finally stumbles downstairs, stomach growling with emptiness, he follows his nose into the dining room and finds a long, empty table and a hearth piled with furs. On the mantel above the hearth, there’s a tray covered by a large bowl, with his name scrawled in chalk on the wall beside it.
He lifts the tray down - it’s quite heavy - and discovers it holds a meat pie and a half-loaf of bread, both of which smell amazing. There is a spoon handy, which is good, because otherwise he fears he might have set to with nothing but his bare hands, forgetting all manners.
He’s halfway through the pie, which is possibly the finest thing he has eaten in a decade, when a door opens and the bard comes padding in. “Coën!” he says, apparently delighted. “Oh, hang on -” he vanishes through another doorway, and reappears a few moments later with a large pitcher and two mugs. “Lambert makes the hard liquor, but Vesemir brews the ale,” he explains as he sits down and pours them each a mug. “And it’s very good. I have eaten better in this keep than in actual palaces.” He gives Coën a warm smile. “The rest of the pack are all off playing on their terrible pendulum course; they’ll be in once they’ve got enough bruises.”
Coën discovers it’s very hard not to smile back. “And how many bruises are ‘enough’?”
Jaskier laughs. “Oh, gods, I think it depends on how impressive they are. Lambert boasted for a week the time he managed to turn his entire arm black-and-blue.” He takes a deep drink of ale and sighs contentedly. “So have the Chaos Duo told you who’s going to be here this winter?”
“I must admit I did not ask,” Coën says, a little sheepishly. He…didn’t really care, to be honest; any company seemed much like any other. But the Wolves and their Cat and their bard are clearly not like any others, and it would be a grave discourtesy to treat them so.
“Well, fair enough.” Jaskier’s smile is gentle but not pitying. “There’s not too many more of us. Eskel should be here soon, gods willing - he’s Geralt’s other half, and my other beloved. He was traveling with Kiyan this year, to make sure the poor kitty didn’t get kidnapped by a crazed mage again, so they ought to show up together. And then Gaetan promised he’d be home before we got snowed in. So that’s three Cats, four Wolves, one Griffin, and a bard.” He grins brightly. “Sounds like a good time to me.”
Coën blinks at him. “Crazed mage?” he asks at last.
“Oh, right.” Jaskier shakes his head. “Geralt rescued Kiyan from a truly terrible example of the genus, last summer. Poor Cat was nearly dead.”
“Rescuing near-dead witchers of other Schools appears to be a habit of the Wolves, then,” Coën observes.
Jaskier snorts. “Truer than you know; Eskel found Gaetan dying of a gut wound and brought him home the other year.”
Coën muffles a smile with another bite of pie. “It is a habit, then.” A rather charming one, too, and so painfully compassionate that it makes his chest ache.
Jaskier grins. “My darling Wolves do make a habit of being kind,” he says, and then sobers. “On which note. I can’t imagine Lambert and Aiden would have brought you home if you were any sort of knothead, but there are a few things you need to know.”
Coën meets his eyes and nods gravely. “Tell me.”
“All three of our Cats are omegas, and they’ve all had some shit experiences with alphas. Most Cat alphas are apparently not worth the air they breathe.” Jaskier’s voice is flat and furious.
Coën nods again. “I will give them every courtesy.”
“Gaetan doesn’t want any alpha, ever - he’s been very clear about that,” Jaskier says firmly. “And Kiyan might or might not offer to share his bed. But it’s up to them, always.”
“Always,” Coën agrees. How else would one behave? “I - well. I must confess that while I quite enjoy closeness, I do not feel the urge to…to use my knot. I have aided omegas through their heat, at their request, but I will not importune any of the omegas of the keep, I swear it.”
Jaskier’s stern expression melts into a smile. “Well then, we all ought to get on very nicely. Especially if you’re going to enjoy the puppy piles as much as the rest of us do.”
Coën smiles back. “I expect I will. Griffins, too, enjoy - enjoyed - such closeness, though we called it roosting together.”
“That is delightful,” Jaskier says, eyes lighting up. “May I - and do please tell me if this is overstepping - but may I spend some time this winter prying for stories? I would love to write songs of the Griffin School, even if most of them must be laments.”
Coën hesitates. “Not…yet,” he says at last. “Perhaps later this winter, when my grief is less raw.”
“Of course,” Jaskier says at once, and reaches over the table to touch Coën’s hand gently. “I am an unrepentant ass in many ways, but I hope that I will never deliberately bring more grief to a friend.”
Coën swallows around a sudden lump in his throat. “I am glad to have such a friend,” he rasps.
“You have all of us, now,” Jaskier says, very gently. “I do not pretend we can replace what you have lost, but what we can do, we will, and gladly so.”
Coën swallows again and nods, and Jaskier has the tact to drop the subject, prattling happily about one of Geralt’s misadventures while Coën finishes his meal.
*
Aiden and Jaskier have both strongly implied that Coën will be welcome in the ‘puppy piles’ of the Wolf School, but he is still reluctant to push himself where he might not be truly wanted. So when the Wolves and Aiden come jostling and bantering up to the hall from the hot springs, shirtless and laughing and, as Jaskier intimated, bearing a number of interesting bruises, Coën prepares to take his leave as politely as possible.
Which intention is immediately thwarted by Aiden slinging an arm over his shoulders and saying, “Come on, then, you still look exhausted. I vote Coën gets the middle of the pile today.”
“Mm,” Geralt says, nodding, and Coën finds himself chivvied onto the heap of furs on the hearth, with Aiden on one side of him and Jaskier on the other, Lambert draped over Aiden and Geralt cuddled up beside Jaskier and Vesemir stretched out with his head on Geralt’s side.
It’s not quite like roosting - Aiden and Jaskier are both much cuddlier than even Jerome tended to be - but it’s warm and comfortable, and everything smells like extremely contented omegas -
It’s not his School, not his brothers, not Jerome and Ealdred’s familiar scents. He will never have those again. But he is surrounded by friends, people who understand his grief and wish to ease his pain; he is safe and warm and well-fed and - thank the gods, thank every god, and most especially thank Aiden and Lambert, who saw a wounded Griffin and chose to offer aid unlooked-for -
It is better than it was.
*
‘Better’ is not ‘healed’. Coën knows that. He is a witcher, after all; he has suffered grievous injuries ere now. But he is still somehow surprised when he wakes one morning and rolls over in the wonderful warm bed he has been given and reaches for Jerome and Ealdred and they are -
They are not there.
The room smells like Coën, and a little like Aiden and Lambert, and nothing like any of his brothers, nothing like Kaer Seren by the sea.
Downstairs, the gong rings, and Coën rises, because what else is he going to do? He dresses without care and makes his way down to the courtyard, and Vesemir gives him a long, searching look before gesturing for him to spar against Eskel. The big Wolf has been as kind as his brothers, and Coën quite likes him - Eskel is fond of poetry, and his Path often brings him through Kovir and Poviss, which means they have visited many of the same places and even met some of the same people - but today he cannot muster more than a polite nod as they step into position.
Eskel is faster than he looks, and his Signs are stronger than even any of Coën’s brothers’ were, and Coën is not surprised when he ends up flat on his back with Eskel’s swordpoint against his throat. He closes his eyes and raises his chin. “I yield.”
Eskel steps back, frowning. Coën clambers to his feet. Vesemir’s frown is grimmer, but he points Coën to Aiden, who steps forward with a nod. The Cat is agile and ruthless and clever, and Coën is feeling slow and sluggish today, every cheerful shout and clash of swords reminding him that this is not his keep, these are not his brothers, even in the midst of this easy camaraderie he is and always will be alone.
Aiden disarms him. Coën raises empty hands and does not bother signing Quen.
Aiden steps back, lowering his sword, and frowns.
“Mph. Carry on,” Vesemir says gruffly to Aiden, pointing him over to Kiyan, and strides over to Coën, scooping up the fallen sword and handing it back. “Come with me, Griffin.”
Coën sheaths his sword and follows the old Wolf. To his surprise, Vesemir leads the way to the kitchen, gestures for Coën to sit at the table, and begins making mulled wine.
Coën watches silently until Vesemir pours the hot spiced wine into two thick mugs and sits down across the table, pushing one of the mugs into Coën’s hands. It smells good. Coën curls his fingers around it, enjoying the heat, and takes a sip. It tastes as good as it smells.
“If you fight like that on the Path, you will die,” Vesemir says quietly.
“Yes,” Coën agrees. He knows. He isn’t sure what moves his tongue to add, “I will join my brothers, then.”
Vesemir sighs, and nods, and takes a drink of his wine. There’s a long silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire. Finally Vesemir says, “When the mob had left Kaer Morhen, and I had clawed my way from under the piles of corpses, I laid my brothers out and lit their pyres. I threw the bodies of our enemies from the cliffs, to be food for necrophages. And when that was done, and in all of Kaer Morhen I was the only thing that breathed save for the rats amid the grain, I went up to the tallest tower and I stood on the windowsill and I thought how very easy it would be to lean forward and follow my brothers into death.”
Coën’s breath catches in his throat. “Why did you not?” he rasps.
Vesemir meets his eyes solemnly. “I truly wish I could say that it was knowing that my brothers still on the Path would need me - that when they came home that winter, they would need someone to be there. But it wasn’t the thought of my living brothers that made me step back.” He smiles, a rueful little twist of lips, and raises a hand to touch an old, faded scar on the side of his throat. “It was thinking of how very sarcastic my mates would be if I came to them before my time.”
Coën blinks. He was not expecting that.
“I’m not going to say it was easy,” Vesemir continues softly. “It wasn’t. Stepping back off that windowsill was the hardest damn thing I think I’ve ever done. And there are still days, in the long summer months when there is no voice in this keep but mine, when I wake screaming from the memories, when I roll over and there is no body in the bed beside me, that I think of that windowsill again.” He sighs and looks down at his hands, curled around his mug.
“How do you - step away?” Coën breathes. How do you carry this pain, and not break under it?
Vesemir shakes his head. “I go down to the smithy and beat pig iron into uselessness, and then I smelt it down and do it again. I don’t know if that will work for you. But pick something you didn’t do before. Something you can concentrate on, lose yourself in, that won’t bring up any memories at all.” He takes a deep breath. “And then, do something that does bring up memories. The good ones, not the ones about their deaths. I carve my brothers’ names into stones. They’ll last longer than I do.”
Coën blinks. He…hasn’t tried that. He’s been either consumed with grief or trying hard not to think of everyone he has lost.
Kaer Seren was destroyed for the sake of its library.
“Is there…parchment I could use?” he asks slowly. “And ink?”
“Yes,” Vesemir says, smiling slightly. “Quite a bit of each. I learned to stock up when Geralt started bringing his bard back each winter.”
Coën nods. “I…would like to use some.” A book of names. Of memories of each of his brothers. Their quirks, their likes, their habits. A way to remember his brothers that is not the vivid grief of a heap of tumbled stone.
And he will need to consider something he could begin to do that is the equivalent of taking a hammer to hot iron. He's always wanted to learn to carve...
*
As the snow begins to melt, Coën begins to spend more time out on the battlements, breathing in the brisk wind as it skips down the mountains and watching the trees begin to gain the pale green haze of future leaves. Something about the color feels like hope.
There are hard days still. There have been days this winter when he could hardly bear to climb out of his bed. There have been days when Vesemir took one look at him out on the sparring grounds and shook his head and sent him back inside. There have been days when he ended up tackled into the center of the puppy pile, Aiden and Lambert on top of him, Kiyan and Gaetan pressed to Aiden’s back and Eskel and Geralt wound around Lambert, because the Cats and Wolves of Kaer Morhen decided unanimously that he needed the comfort of bodies near his own.
But there have been good days, too. Days he has chased Aiden around the sparring grounds, flinging snowballs at the unrepentant Cat, as Aiden cackles with glee and snow melts down the back of Coën’s tunic. Days he has joined the puppy piles of his own volition, purring contentedly as the warmth and nearness coaxes him to sleep. Days he has spent writing down memory after memory of his brothers in a book which Vesemir has promised will sit in pride of place in Kaer Morhen’s library, safe from wind and weather.
Days he has distracted himself from grief with hammer and chisel and file, trying to teach himself to turn soapstone chunks into something other than soapstone gravel. It is slow going, but it is a very effective distraction. One of the long-dead Wolves of this keep was a carver, and Vesemir brought out the slightly ridiculous stash of soapstone that had been stacked in a cellar for long decades and made Coën free of it. Someday soon, Coën hopes, he might be able to carve something a little more complicated than an egg or a bean.
It is odd to be planning for the future. To be thinking about where to find soapstone on his Path, or who he might know who could give him advice on technique.
Odd, too, to realize that he is looking forward to walking the Path again. And not so as to find an end to his Path, either. Not looking for a fight that he can lose, to join his brothers in all honor. Not hoping for that fate.
A Griffin is raised and trained and Grassed to be a protector, to hunt the monsters which prey upon the humans every Griffin swears to guard. Coën may be the last of his School, but he can still uphold his School’s honor.
And if he finds the Path becomes too much a…a windowsill, Vesemir has promised that Coën may return to Kaer Morhen, to rest his weary heart a while, regardless of the season. And all the Wolves and Cats of Kaer Morhen have made it very clear that they expect to see Coën back again next winter, to join their sparring and their meals and their puppy piles.
They are not his brothers, no. His brothers are gone. But they are his cousins, and Kaer Morhen is not Kaer Seren, but it is a home for all that.
He is the last of the Griffins, but he is no longer alone.