“You aren’t safe here. You’re here with her out of sorrow for the other one. Even when you’re close to her you only think about the other one. She knows it. But she plays along, because it pleases her, and you dissemble splendidly; you’re awfully convincing. Have you thought about what will happen when you give yourself away?”

* * *

“Are you staying with her tonight, too?”

“Yes,” Geralt confirmed.

“That’ll be a week, did you know?”

“Four days.”

Dandelion strummed the strings of his lute with a dramatic glissando. He looked around the tavern. He swigged from his mug and wiped the froth from his nose.

“I know it’s not my business,” he said, for him unusually emphatically and forcefully. “I know I shouldn’t meddle. I know you don’t like it when anyone meddles. But certain things, Geralt, my friend, ought not to be left unsaid. Coral, if you want to know my opinion, is one of those women who ought to always wear a conspicuous warning sign. One proclaiming ‘Look but don’t touch.’ In menageries, they put things like that in terrariums containing rattlesnakes.”

“I know.”

“She’s playing with you and toying with you.”

“I know.”

“You, meanwhile, are simply filling the void after Yennefer, whom you can’t forget about.”

“I know.”

“So why—?”

“I don’t know.”

* * *

They would go out in the evening. Sometimes to the park, sometimes to the hill overlooking the port. Sometimes they simply walked around the Spice Market.

They visited the Natura Rerum osteria together. Several times. Febus Ravenga was beside himself with joy. On his orders, the waiters danced attendance on them. Geralt finally experienced the taste of turbot in cuttlefish ink. And then goose legs in white wine and veal shank with vegetables. Only at first—and briefly—did the intrusive and ostentatious interest of the other guests bother him. Then he followed Lytta’s example and ignored them. The wine from the local cellar helped greatly.

Then they returned to the villa. Coral shed her dress in the anterooms and led him—quite naked—to the bedroom.

He followed her. His eyes never left her. He adored looking at her.

* * *

“Coral?”

“What?”

“Rumour has it you can always see what you want to see. All you need is a few spells and an artefact.”

“I think I’ll have to twist another of that rumour’s joints again.” She lifted herself up on an elbow and looked him in the eyes. “That ought to teach it not to gossip.”

“Please—”

“I was joking.” She cut him off. There wasn’t a trace of merriment in her voice.

“And what would you like to see?” she continued, after he had fallen silent, “Or have prophesied? How long you’re going to live? When and how you’ll die? What horse will win the Grand Tretorian? Who the electoral college will elect as the Hierarch of Novigrad? Who Yennefer is with now?”