Upstairs, the door squeaked. Yennefer stood at the stairs, leaning on the gallery balustrade.

“Witcher, could you come here?”

“Of course.”

The sorceress leaned her back against the door of one of the few rooms with furniture, where they had put the suffering troubadour.

The witcher approached, watchful and silent. He saw her left shoulder, slightly higher than her right. Her nose, slightly too long. Her lips, a touch too narrow. Her chin, receding a little too much. Her brows a little too irregular. Her eyes…

He saw too many details. Quite unnecessarily.

“How’s Dandilion?”

“Do you doubt my capabilities?”

He continued watching. She had the figure of a twenty-year-old, although he preferred not to guess at her real age. She moved with natural, unaffected grace. No, there was no way of guessing what she had been like before, what had been improved. He stopped thinking about it; there wasn’t any sense.

“Your talented friend will be well,” she said. “He’ll recover his vocal talents.”

“You have my gratitude, Yennefer.”

She smiled. “You’ll have an opportunity to prove it.”

“Can I look in on him?”

She remained silent for a moment, watching him with a strange smile and drumming her fingers on the doorframe. “Of course. Go in.”

The medallion on the witcher’s neck started to quiver, sharply and rhythmically.

A glass sphere the size of a small watermelon, aflame with a milky light, lay in the center of the floor. The sphere marked the heart of a precisely traced nine-pointed star whose arms reached the corners and walls of the small chamber. A red pentagram was inscribed within the star. The tips of the pentagram were marked by black candles standing in weirdly shaped holders. Black candles had also been lit at the head of the bed where Dandilion, covered with sheepskins, rested. The poet was breathing peacefully; he didn’t wheeze or rasp anymore and the rictus of pain had disappeared from his face, to be replaced by an idiotic smile of happiness.

“He’s asleep,” said Yennefer. “And dreaming.”

Geralt examined the patterns traced on the floor. The magic hidden within them was palpable, but he knew it was a dormant magic. It brought to mind the purr of a sleeping lion, without suggesting how the roar might sound.

“What is this, Yennefer?”

“A trap.”

“For what?”

“For you, for the time being.” The sorceress turned the key in the lock, then turned it over in her hand. The key disappeared.

“And thus I’m trapped,” he said coldly. “What now? Are you going to assault my virtue?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Yennefer sat on the edge of the bed. Dandilion, still smiling like a moron, groaned quietly. It was, without a doubt, a groan of bliss.

“What’s this all about, Yennefer? If it’s a game, I don’t know the rules.”

“I told you,” she began, “that I always get what I want. As it happens, I desire something that Dandilion has. I’ll get it from him and we can part ways. Don’t worry, he won’t come to any harm—”