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Lambert hates a lot of things about being a witcher.
He hates the brutally sadistic training. He hates the death-toll of the Grasses and the horrors of the Medallion Trial. He hates the sanctimonious preaching of the older witchers about how monster-hunting is a service to the world. He hates the cold of winters high in the mountains of Kaedwen. He hates the way people spit in his food and short his pay and turn him out of inns. He hates having been made into a monster nearly as awful as the ones he fights.
And, at the moment, he hates the fact that he’s alone in the middle of fuckoff nowhere with a single stale heel of bread and a rind of unpleasantly moldy cheese for his only provisions, and a badly injured leg which means he won’t be hiking out of this forest very quickly, and no money to his name, so even if he did make it out, he wouldn’t be able to buy any food at all.
Frankly, this fucking sucks.
Somewhere unpleasantly nearby, a wolf howls, and is answered by another. Lambert grits his teeth. Great, a hunting wolf-pack, that’s all this fucking day needed. Getting eaten by wolves would be an ironic way for a Wolf witcher to die, but it’s not how Lambert wants to go. He shuffles backwards until his back hits a tree, then uses the trunk to shove himself upright, teetering slightly on his good leg, and draws his sword.
“Well,” someone drawls, “you do seem to be in a bit of a pickle, friend.” And a human-looking person comes sauntering out from between the trees.
“No fucking shit,” Lambert bites out, looking the newcomer over warily. He didn’t make any sound when he approached, which is worrisome. He’s a smallish man, with his hair shorn very close to his head - so close Lambert can’t tell what color it is - and something odd about his eyes, wearing a long green coat, and he’s carrying a flute in one hand and smiling smugly.
“Are you planning to help, or just watch?” Lambert asks after a moment.
“Oh, I thought I’d watch,” the newcomer says lightly, and springs upward - far higher than a human could jump - to land sitting on a broad branch of a nearby tree. He lounges back against the trunk, twirling his flute between his fingers. “It should be marvelous entertainment. A Wolf against wolves!”
“Fuck you,” Lambert suggests bitterly, and then the first wolves come spilling into the clearing and he can’t spare any attention for the asshole in the tree.
He does kill them all. He’s very, very good at killing things. He even avoids getting more than a few nasty scratches that should heal up into no more than faint scars, witcher healing being what it is.
And as the last wolf collapses, sliding off his blade in a welter of gore, the damn green-cloaked asshole applauds.
“Beautiful!” he cries, leaping from his branch to land lightly in front of Lambert. “Oh, that was very entertaining indeed.”
Lambert snarls wordlessly. The bastard laughs.
“Oh, you’re delightful,” he says merrily. “I tell you what, in return for the entertainment you’ve just given me, I’ll offer you a deal.”
Lambert narrows his eyes. That can’t possibly be a good sign. Especially since he has no fucking idea what the bastard is, or what sort of powers he has at his command. He doesn’t quite seem fae - they tend to back off when someone has steel in their hands - and he certainly isn’t human or elf, which leaves a whole lot of questions and absolutely no answers. Lambert doesn’t like that at all. “What sort of a deal?”
The asshole sticks his hands in his pockets and swirls his coat back and forth. “I will loan you my coat for seven years,” he says, grinning. Lambert does not trust that smile. “Anytime you put your hand into its pocket, you will have enough gold for whatever you desire.” He beams proudly.
“And the catch?” Lambert asks.
“Oh, that! Well - let’s see.” The asshole looks Lambert up and down, tapping his flute against his lips thoughtfully. “I have it. You’ll have to wear the coat the whole time, of course. And also you can’t cut your hair or your nails, or bathe, or spend more than one night under the same roof. Oh! And -” he bends down, and if Lambert didn’t know he was some sort of fucking extremely magical bad news, he’d know it now, because the asshole grabs the fur of one of the dead wolves and stands, and the fucking wolf’s entire pelt comes off in one piece. He holds it out. “And you’ll wear this, as well.”
“Why the fuck would I take that deal?” Lambert asks incredulously.
“Well,” the bastard says brightly, “if you make it the full seven years, you shall keep the coat, and have as much gold as you desire for the rest of your life, however long that may be.”
That’s…really fucking tempting, actually. Enough gold will convince even very reluctant innkeepers to feed and house a witcher. Enough gold might be able to hire masons to repair Kaer Morhen’s shattered walls, and make the place a little less disastrous. Enough gold would let Lambert buy a horse, and feed the damn thing, and keep his armor and weapons in good condition, and pay for healing or messages to be sent to his brothers or -
Hell, enough gold might let him fucking retire.
“And if I don’t make it the full seven years?” he asks.
“Oh, well, then you’ll be mine,” the asshole says, and smiles. It’s not a nice smile at all. “To do with as I please.”
Lambert thinks about it for a long moment, then grits his teeth and shakes his head. But before he can open his mouth to refuse, the asshole adds lightly, “Of course, if you don’t want to make a deal, that means you’re fair game for other entertainments.”
“Oh you bastard,” Lambert snarls. “Fine. Fuck you, fine. Seven years I’ll wear your damn coat, and at the end of it you’ll give me the coat and the gold and leave me be. That’s the deal I’ll make with you.”
The asshole laughs. “You drive a hard bargain, Wolf,” he says, and shrugs out of his coat. Lambert sets his sword against the tree and pulls the damned thing on - it fits him, somehow, despite the asshole being half his size - and then takes the wolfskin and drapes the bloody, horrid thing over his shoulders.
“Lovely,” the asshole purrs. “Now remember, no cutting your hair or your nails -”
“Or bathing or spending two nights under the same roof, I remember,” Lambert bites out. That’s going to be the worst of it. A hot bath is one of the very few luxuries he ever has, and traveling constantly even during the winter is going to be miserable.
“Have fun! Or don’t! Either way, I’ll be entertained!” the asshole chirps, and wiggles his fingers in a mocking farewell, and vanishes.
“Fucker,” Lambert bites out, and sits down again to bind up the still-oozing wound on his leg.
He limps his way into town well after nightfall, half a dozen wolf-pelts bundled up under one arm and the cursed one over his shoulders, and goes straight for the inn. The innkeeper does not want to let him in, bloody and filthy as he is. Lambert fishes in a pocket of the green coat with a free hand and pulls out a handful of gold.
“A decent meal and a room for the night,” he snaps, dropping the coins onto the bar. “And come morning I’ll be gone.”
The innkeeper looks at him, then at the gold, then at him again -
And takes the coins with a nod. “The room to the left, up the stairs, and I’ll bring you up some supper,” he says.
Lambert goes limping up the stairs, snarling quietly in rage and pain.
A dose of Swallow and a night of meditation put his leg to rights, and he manages to sell the uncursed wolf pelts the next day, then looks at the handful of silver he’s gotten after long haggling, curses volubly, and drops the whole handful into the hat of the hungriest-looking child he sees.
And then he goes to buy a fucking horse.
*
It turns out the most annoying part of the deal is actually not being able to cut his fingernails. Lambert stands out in the rain to get clean or at least cleaner, and goes wading through rivers to catch fish, and gets a hedgewitch to spell the wolf pelt to not rot after he painstakingly scrapes it as clean as he can without taking the damn thing off his shoulders, so he doesn’t smell more than moderately horrible to his own nose. He finds ways of binding back his steadily longer hair, and mutters curses about the ruin of his well-kept beard, but at least that can be braided up out of the way. His nails, though, those are harder to deal with. He eventually learns to chew them off at a ragged but bearable length, which evidently doesn’t count as cutting them, probably because it’s amusing for his invisible but doubtless present watcher to see him gnawing at his own fingers like an animal. His toenails he just has to let break as they will, which is fucking miserable.
Also he doesn’t dare buy a tent, lest it count as a roof, so if he can’t find an inn he’s sleeping rough, open to the elements unless there’s a cave or a convenient downed tree, and that’s pretty fucking miserable too.
But he’s eating pretty well, what with the pockets full of gold, and he can keep his armor and his weapons in good condition and buy new boots and socks regularly. And - well - he’s kind of enjoying being able to drop gold in the hat of every hungry-looking child he sees. He can remember being that small, and that hungry; they shrink away from his bulk and his stink and his general air of unwashed barbarity, but he can still make their lives a little easier, and he likes that.
He sends a message to Kaer Morhen by hideously expensive spellraven, that autumn, to let his brothers know that he’s alive but won’t be home for the winter for at least the next six years. He doesn’t get a response, but then, he didn’t pay to have the raven linger around for one, either. He’d rather not know if the answer is good riddance.
He makes it through the winter by going south instead of north, far enough that he can camp overnight without freezing to death but not so far south that the coat-and-wolf-pelt combination is going to make him roast alive during the days. It’s a delicate balance to keep, but he manages it.
He also manages to survive the four separate attempts to kill him for his money. Which are not the same as the two attempts to kill him just for being a witcher. His steel sword sees almost as much work as his silver one, that winter, and it’s frankly depressing.
He moves north again as the weather warms, taking contracts and paying far too much for inn rooms and decent food. It’s midsummer, and he’s far enough north that there isn’t much settled land left because frankly it’s fucking hot in a coat and wolf pelt at this time of year, when he realizes someone is following him.
Lambert being Lambert, he sets a trap, and comes back to check it a few hours later to find another fucking witcher dangling upside-down by one ankle, trying to fold himself in half for long enough to reach the rope. Lambert snorts and cuts him down; the witcher lands in an ungainly heap, but rolls to his feet with commendable haste. He stares at Lambert in obvious shock.
“You aren’t a monster.”
“Not usually, no,” Lambert replies very dryly.
The witcher shakes himself and grimaces, then offers a hand. “Coën of the Griffins; my apologies for intruding upon you. I was hired to hunt the rabid bear reported in these woods.”
“Rabid bear?” Lambert sputters.
“Well, to be fair to the alderman, he did not say as much, only that there was some enormous creature, like a bear upon its hind legs, stalking the forest and menacing people; I could not deduce what such a monster might be, and therefore thought it perhaps a natural animal driven mad.”
Lambert snorts. “No such luck, sorry. Just me. Lambert of the Wolves, assuming they still claim me.”
“You are…in some dishevelment, friend.” Coën raises an eyebrow. “If you are in need of assistance, my coin will stretch perhaps to a bath and a meal and some less…disreputable clothing?”
Lambert shakes his head, rather touched. “I would fucking love a bath and some different clothes, but I can’t,” he says grimly. “Curse, you know how it is.”
Coën winces. “I do know,” he agrees. “Is there any other way I may aid you? Can it be broken?”
“Nah, I just gotta stick it out,” Lambert sighs. “But - here.” He digs in a pocket. “Open your purse.”
Frowning in confusion, Coën does so. Lambert dumps a heaping handful of gold into it, then a second, filling it brimful. Coën gapes.
“Curse has some interesting side effects,” Lambert tells him dryly. “Call it compensation for having to come hunt me down - I know the alderman ain’t gonna pay you if you go back and say there wasn’t a monster after all.”
“Indeed,” Coën says dazedly. “Would you like me to buy you anything, then? It may be easier for me to enter town than you, at the moment.”
Lambert thinks about it for a minute, then shrugs. “Nah; I’ve got what I need. But if you run across any other Wolves, tell ‘em I’m still kicking, would you?”
“I will bear that word,” Coën pledges, and bows, and takes his leave.
Lambert chalks that up to the fact that he’s been camping in the forest for weeks and has twigs in his hair and the wolf pelt is roughly the color of dirt - the green coat stays green no matter what Lambert does to it - and assumes it won’t come up again.
So of course a Cat witcher comes hunting him about three months later. That one he has to stab lightly to make them go away, though they do eventually slope off, grumbling, when he offers twice the bounty the local baron put on his head for them to leave him be.
Over the next three years he meets three more Cats, four Vipers, and a very grumpy Bear. He also gets to see several of his brothers again.
Eskel looks appalled, listens to Lambert’s curt explanation of his state, shakes his head, and draws Lambert a map of the caves and isolated hunter’s huts he’s found across the North. Lambert has to argue for an hour to get Eskel to take a purse full of gold when they part ways. Geralt looks even more appalled, spends an entire evening picking the twigs out of Lambert’s hair, and takes even longer to convince to take the gold. Lambert eventually has to fall back on arguing that Geralt’s fucking horse would appreciate having nicer oats.
Gweld, thank fuck, is easier to convince. So is Gardis. And it’s nice to see his brothers, even if they can’t bear to stay long. Lambert can’t blame them. He’s gone mostly nose-blind to his own stench by now, but they certainly haven’t.
He is a little surprised that all of them make him swear on his swords that he’ll meet up with them again at least once a year, naming times and places and glaring at him until he agrees, and then Eskel goes even further and makes Lambert promise he’ll come back to Kaer Morhen once the seven years are up ‘so we can all hug you properly after we dunk you in the hot springs’.
It’s…baffling, but kind of nice, to know his brothers care.
*
It’s almost exactly at the halfway mark when he rescues the idiot noble.
The man has gone out hunting, which isn’t necessarily stupid, except that he’s gone out in a forest with a leshen in it. Lambert hears the yelling and the leshen’s bellowing from a couple of miles away, and by the time he gets there, the idiot noble and two of his huntsmen are the only ones left alive, and the huntsmen are both badly injured. Lambert kills the leshen - it’s not an easy fight, but he’s got plenty of bombs, thanks to having enough gold to buy the ingredients - and patches up the huntsmen as best he can, and then turns to the idiot noble.
“So, let’s talk payment,” he says dryly. He doesn’t strictly speaking need to take payment for contracts, not with the coat’s pockets filled with gold, but he’s not going to work for free, because that would set a precedent, and then his brothers would get even more shit about charging for their work than they usually do.
The idiot noble dusts himself off and sniffs snootily. “Payment? Good…sir, it would be utterly crass of me to offer coin for my life. This is Redania. The proper recompense for such a selfless act is clear in all custom and law…little though I like it. Come along. You will dine with me tonight.”
Lambert raises an eyebrow, but the noble stalks off without any further explanation, so Lambert slings the worse-hurt huntsman over his horse and drapes the other’s arm over his shoulders and follows the idiot noble out of the woods and up to a truly extravagant manor house.
Servants come hurrying out to attend on the noble and help the huntsmen in. Lambert’s horse is taken by an obsequious groom. Lambert himself is brought to a set of opulent rooms and offered a bath - which he refuses - and a manservant’s aid in grooming himself, which he also refuses. He does comb his hair and beard, little though that helps anything. He looks like a wild man, he knows; these days, nobody even notices he’s a witcher, his thick mane of hair and beard concealing his strange eyes from all but close examination. And nobody cares to get close enough to look that carefully, given the smell.
The idiot noble and his wife and daughters all look thoroughly appalled when Lambert shows up to dinner still looking and smelling like a fucking beast.
But dinner is served nonetheless, and Lambert makes a decent meal of it. There is no conversation; he hardly expected any.
When the last course has been cleared away, the idiot noble turns to his daughters. “This man saved my life without need, at his own risk,” he says coldly. “There is, by law and custom, only one repayment. Which of you will give your hand and life to him in recompense?”
Lambert’s jaw drops. “You - you want one of your daughters to marry me?” he blurts.
“Want? No. But it would be the ruin of my honor if I did not give appropriate recompense for your service,” the idiot noble sneers. “I cannot risk my standing at court. Well, daughters?”
The eldest of the three gives Lambert a coldly contemptuous look. “I love and honor you, Father,” she says, “but I am meant for a prince, not a beast.”
The idiot noble nods and turns to the next girl. She swallows, gives Lambert a long look, and murmurs, “I cannot bear the thought of wedding a man so like a bear upon two legs.”
The youngest girl takes a deep breath, sits up so straight it seems her spine must be an iron bar, meets Lambert’s eyes, and says clearly, “For our honor and the service you have done our house, good sir, I will be your wife.”
Lambert’s jaw drops. He genuinely didn’t expect any of them to agree. But the girl doesn’t flinch, her dark eyes locked on his, her cheeks pale with fear.
“Alright,” he says at last. “But not now.”
“What?” the idiot noble asks, as his youngest daughter breathes out in obvious relief.
“Not now,” Lambert repeats. “I have…business that will not wait. I will return in four years. Until then -” he reaches into his belt-pouch and fishes out a ring he found in a wyvern’s crop a few weeks ago. It’s soft gold, a little misshapen; he breaks it in half without any trouble, and pushes one half across the table to the youngest girl. “Here. You keep that, as a pledge.”
The youngest daughter bows her head and takes the broken half-circle of gold. “I will keep it safe, good sir,” she replies.
“Very well,” her father says disdainfully. “You are sworn to him, Milena, until he returns.” He eyes Lambert dubiously. “Or for four years from this day.”
Lambert nods.
He sleeps that night in a featherbed, which is a pleasant luxury, and the next morning gets up bright and early and goes down to collect his horse. To his surprise, the youngest girl - Milena, her father called her - is waiting when he leads the horse out of the stable.
“Sir,” she says quietly. “I thank you for your forbearance.”
Lambert snorts. “The way my life is right now, I don’t want to be livin’ it, much less dragging some poor fucking innocent around behind me. You’re a hell of a lot better off staying here.”
Milena swallows. “I am, and yet - I hope you will return, sir.”
Lambert’s eyebrows rise. “The fuck?”
“You have shown yourself…capable of kindness, sir. I know who my father meant for me to marry. For four years, I will have the protection of your promise. After that…” She trails off with a delicate grimace. “After that, I may well find myself shackled to a man far more a beast than you.”
Lambert stares at her for a long moment, what the fuck running in a loop through his head. Finally he jerks a nod. “Four years,” he says gruffly. “I’ll be back.” And then, on some strange impulse, he fishes a handful of gold out of his coat and pours it into her hands. “And if I’m not, or if you think better of waiting, go get yourself to a temple; that’ll pay your way into a cloister.”
Milena curtsies, eyes fixed wonderingly on the gold. “I will do as you say, sir,” she promises. “But -” She looks up, and smiles, and Lambert feels like he’s been taken out at the knees. “I will hope for your return,” she murmurs, and turns and hurries away.
“What the fuck,” Lambert says aloud, and leaves before anything else bizarre can happen to him.
*
Witchers don’t usually pay a lot of attention to time, other than whether it’s getting close to winter, but Lambert has a bit of wood in his saddlebag and scratches a new mark into it every morning. Three and a half more years to go. He’s counting down.
In year three, he gets into a nasty fight with an entire flock of katakans. He kills them all, but it’s a very near thing; he lies there in a pool of his own blood, panting for breath, waiting for the Black Blood to drain from his system so he can drink a Swallow, and by the time his toxicity is low enough for the healing potion, he only barely has enough strength to lift it to his lips. He spends three days mending enough to even move from the bloody ground, and he is distantly aware through his pain-hued meditation that someone is watching him.
He knows who.
He heals as much out of spite as anything else. He’s not going to die and give the asshole the satisfaction of winning.
In year two he’s thrown into a dungeon on some stupid pretext, and it takes the strongest Axii he can muster and a heap of gold heavy enough that he’s not sure he could carry it and the gods’ own luck to get him out again before a second night falls. He retreats into the woods for a long time after that, unwilling to risk another imprisonment. He’s pretty sure the asshole who gave him this deal won’t care if being two nights under the same roof is voluntary or not.
In year one he finds Geralt being stoned out of a town, horrid insults being yelled after him; Geralt is limping, clearly injured, his horse nosing worriedly at his shoulder.
Lambert takes full advantage of the fact that he currently looks like a fucking bear, charging at the townsfolk with a roar that shakes the earth, and is very pleased when they scatter like scared pigeons. He picks Geralt up and carries him into the forest, patches his wounds and feeds him and fusses over him, and travels with him for a month to make sure Geralt doesn’t do anything stupidly self-sacrificing for a while.
And when they part, Lambert takes a look at his calendar-stick and realizes he has less than three months to go before the seven years are over.
He turns his steps towards the same misbegotten forest where he first made this deal, grimly determined that either he’ll see it ended - or he’ll find a way to fucking kill the asshole who forced it on him.
*
Milena has been wearing mourning clothes for three years now - three years and a half, really, or a little more. It is getting worryingly close to the four years which her nameless betrothed promised. She still has the gold he gave her, locked away in her jewelry box, in case he does not return and she does need to flee to a temple.
But she has been wearing mourning clothes, because she has been promised to a beast of a man, a wild creature, filthy and terrible, and wearing mourning is appropriate for such a fate.
Marta mocks her constantly. If she had not spoken up, Marta taunts, their father would surely have found a way to make the man leave while still preserving their family’s honor; it is Milena’s own foolishness which has bound her to a beast in human form.
Marika doesn’t mock her, but she grieves. She helps Milena sew her wedding trousseau, tears rolling down her cheeks with every stitch; she braids Milena’s hair and embroiders her gowns in black-on-black, face drawn in lines of misery. It ought to have been her, she murmurs. She should have been brave enough to offer herself, and not left such a fate to her little sister.
But what is done is done, and Milena is promised. She wears the half-ring her betrothed left her in a locket on a chain around her throat, the cool metal a reminder that he said he would return. And he gave Milena four years of - not freedom, no, but almost such. She no longer has to worry that Father will find her a match from among the noblemen of the court. Mother no longer demands that she perfect her manners and her dress so as to be an ornament to the family and her future husband. She has time to herself, to sew or walk in the gardens or go down into the city to bring alms to the priestesses to distribute to the poor. It is a blessing she isn’t sure her betrothed knew he was giving her, but a blessing all the same, and she will thank him for it, when he returns.
It is three years and ten months after her father brought the beast-man home when the stranger arrives.
He must be noble, everyone assumes. He is wearing silk and satin, every stitch perfect; his horse is a high-stepping, elegant creature made for speed. His guards are grim and terrible, eyes darting in all directions, but their armor is beautifully made and their sword-hilts bear shining gems. Perhaps he is a prince from a far-off land, Marta decides. Marika thinks it more likely he is the son of a merchant, one of the wealthy men from the southern lands who are more powerful than princes. Milena watches him from a window, admiring his flame-red hair and the breadth of his shoulders. He is not for her, but there is no reason she cannot appreciate the view.
Father invites the stranger to dinner, of course - to dinner, and to stay the night, or as many nights as he pleases. The stranger accepts.
“I’ve come looking for a wife, you see,” he tells Father. “And I’ve heard you’ve three lovely daughters.”
“So I do,” Father admits, and gives orders that they should dress in their finest clothes and present themselves for the stranger’s appraisal.
Milena wears a mourning gown. It is a beautiful dress - she made it herself, and did all the embroidery with her own hands - but it is not a courting dress. Father may have chosen to forget that she is pledged already, but she has not. She has her honor, if nothing else.
The stranger nods to them as they take their places at the table. Marta is wearing purple, almost deep enough to be a royal shade, with amethysts gleaming at her throat and in her hair. Marika chose green, with emeralds dripping from her bracelets and her ears.
Milena is wearing black, and her jewels are pearls. Her father gives her a furious look; she does not look like a fit bride for so wealthy and powerful a man as the stranger can be assumed to be.
The stranger looks them all over. “Purple to catch a prince,” he says thoughtfully to Marta, who preens. “Green for youth and beauty,” he adds to Marika, who looks pleased; Marta’s preening turns to sour jealousy. “But why are you in black?”
“Your pardon, sir,” Milena says, bowing her head. “I am not available for courtship. I am pledged to another.”
“Oh?” the stranger asks.
“He saved my father’s life, and as is law and custom, I offered my hand and life in recompense for his brave deed.”
“Strange sort of man, to leave you here.”
“He said he had urgent business. He will return,” Milena says, as steadily as she can. “He gave his word.”
“Huh,” the stranger says, and stands, going over to the sideboard to pour them all goblets of wine with his own hands. Father twitches with horror at so important a guest taking a servant’s role, but makes no objection. The stranger brings a tray over, setting a goblet before each of them and taking the last one for himself.
“To faithfulness,” he says, which is not the toast Milena was expecting. She drinks -
And something taps against her lips.
Frowning, she holds her goblet down below the level of the table and fishes as discreetly as she can in the crimson liquid with a single finger. And what she pulls out -
She sits there staring at it so long that Marta notices. “What is the matter?” she hisses. “Why are you sitting there like a fool?”
Slowly, Milena raises her hand above the tabletop, holding it out. Her fingers are wine-stained, but the golden half-circle in her palm gleams brightly in the candlelight.
“What,” Marika whispers incredulously.
The stranger gives Milena a crooked, pleased little smile. “I said I’d return,” he says quietly. “I didn’t expect you to actually wait, but since you did, now that I’m not a fucking horror, will you come away with me?”
“Yes,” Milena breathes, and holds out her hand, and he raises her to her feet and kisses her very gently.
Father is gawping and Marta is seething and Mother has swooned, and so it is Marika who turns to the servants and orders them to run to the temple and arrange for a wedding ceremony to be held upon the morrow.
*
“So,” Lambert says on his wedding morning to his bafflingly enthusiastic bride-to-be, “you oughta know I’m a witcher.”
A very, very rich witcher now, and it turns out that gold can buy a hell of a lot of respect. Also a lot of land, and even a fucking title. Lambert’s the godsdamned Baron of Wolvenburg these days, which means he owns the land Kaer Morhen sits on, and also that he can afford to outfit his brothers properly and send them out with gold in their pockets and hire hedgewitches to keep track of them, so maybe they can do things like team up to fight particularly horrid monsters. And since they’re wearing Lambert’s livery, they might get a little less bullshit from random peasants. Messing with witchers is one thing; messing with a lord’s vassal knights is quite another.
Several of his brothers - and Coën - insisted on coming with him to play out this little farce, and are having entirely too much fun pretending to be bodyguards. Lambert can’t begrudge them that.
“Oh,” Milena says, peering up into his face. “Well, that does explain your eyes.” She smiles brightly. “I rather like your eyes.”
Lambert blinks at her. “What the fuck.”
“I was prepared to marry you when you appeared…” Milena trails off, clearly looking for a polite term.
“Like a fucking monster,” Lambert supplies.
“Unkempt,” Milena decides, making Lambert snort a laugh. There’s an understatement if he’s ever heard one. But she keeps going, still smiling. “I would have married you for honor and duty, but then you were kind to me, and I bethought myself that a kind husband, even of such appearance, would be better far than an unkind one of great beauty. But now I find myself about to be wed to a kind husband of great beauty; how should I not be pleased with my lot?”
“I…don’t know what the fuck to do with that,” Lambert admits. Kindness is not usually the first attribute anyone assigns to him. Nor is beauty, for that matter.
Milena smiles and loops her hand through his elbow as the choir begins to sing. “I think you ought to marry me, good sir,” she says. “You did promise, after all.”
“So I did,” Lambert agrees, still baffled, and leads her out into the temple’s hall.
*
It’s Marika who marries a prince, two years later. Marta goes into seclusion - out of piety, according to her parents; out of jealousy, according to pretty much everyone else. And Milena, Baroness of Wolvenburg, lives happily ever after with her long-awaited husband.
Lambert isn’t quite sure how he got here, but he thinks maybe - just maybe - being able to protect his brothers and make a home for himself and even, somehow, find a wife who suits him in every possible way -
Maybe that was worth seven years of misery.
He’s still gonna stab that asshole if he ever sees him again.
But he never does.