TEMERIA -
A chamber lay deep beneath what had once been an elven watchtower, long since swallowed by Temerian forest, its walls still bearing faint traces of carvings too worn now to read. Philippa had cleared out centuries of dust and rubble to make room for workbenches, shelves of jarred reagents, and a single iron-barred cell built into what had probably once been a storage vault. Magelights floated near the ceiling, casting a cold, bluish glow over everything, including the woman seated on the narrow cot within the bars.
Triss Merigold looked up as footsteps echoed down the stone corridor, and her expression hardened the moment Philippa Eilhart came into view, Sheala de Tancarville trailing a step behind her, silent as ever, watching everything with her usual unreadable composure.
"Come to check on your prisoner?" Triss said, not bothering to rise from the cot. "How thoughtful."
"I've come to see whether you've regained your senses yet," Philippa said, stopping just outside the bars, her tone as if she was speaking to a wayward child rather than an equal. "The moment you have, you're free to go. You know that."
"I'll never forgive you for what you did to Seb," Triss said, voice flat and cold. "Never. Not if I live a thousand years."
Philippa's brow arched, something almost amused in it. "I didn't kill him, Triss. I sent him somewhere cold to cool his temper, nothing more. A little inconvenience, considering everything he threatened to unravel."
"He was trying to bring someone dear to him back!" Triss was on her feet now, hands gripping the bars hard enough to whiten her knuckles. "You bitch! do you have any idea what you took from him, sending him off like that, alone, with no way of knowing if he'd even survive it?"
"Calm yourself," Philippa said, entirely unmoved. "Get back to your senses, Triss, and I'll let you go, just as I said."
"You're the one who needs to get back to her senses!" Triss's voice cracked with fury now, raw and unrestrained. "What you've done is going to be the end of all of us. You murdered the kings of the North, Philippa. For what! so you could carve out a kingdom of your own, ruled by mages, answering to no one but yourselves? And what of Nilfgaard? What of every common soul across every kingdom who never agreed to any of this, who'll wake up one morning to find their king dead and mages sitting where he used to? That wasn't strategy, Philippa. That was reckless, and arrogant, and it was irresponsible."
"This is precisely why I never wished to discuss any of this with you," Philippa said, something tightening faintly around her eyes despite her composure. "We still have a great deal of work left to do, and none of it is helped by.."
"What, more assassinations planned?" Triss said. "Hold on." She studied Philippa's face more closely, something shifting behind her own expression. "Some of them survived, didn't they.." A slow, smile spread across her face. "You actually botched it. You botched the whole thing."
Philippa said nothing for a long moment, her silence answer enough.
"What of it," she said finally, clipped. "We will still achieve our goals, regardless of a few loose threads left untied."
"Your goals," Triss corrected, cold. "Not mine. Not the Lodge's, not really, not anymore .. just yours, dressed up to look like something grander." She stepped closer to the bars. "You understand Sebastian will come for you. He'll find you, and he will kill you, Philippa, and I won't lift a single finger to stop him when he does."
"I should like to see him try," Philippa said, something faintly condescending in the words.
"You don't understand at all." Triss's voice dropped lower, more dangerous for its sudden quiet. "That boy never.. and I mean never goes all out. Not once, not in all the time I've known him. He restrains himself, always, every single time, because he's terrified of what happens if he doesn't. You might look at him and see some ordinary witcher with an unusual set of tricks. That mistake is going to be the last one you ever make, and I'm afraid you already did that."
Philippa's composure didn't crack, not visibly, but something behind her eyes sharpened. "Are you warning me, Triss. Or threatening me."
"I'm doing both," Triss said, "because you betrayed him at the single worst possible moment you could have chosen. While he was trying to save someone dear to him. While everything hung on that one chance." Her eyes burned. "You don't get to walk away from that, Philippa. Not from him. Not ever."
Near the far wall, half-hidden in the shadow of a crumbling archway, Sheala de Tancarville said nothing at all, her eyes moving slowly between the two women.
"There's something else you should know," Philippa said, folding her hands before her. "Your dear friend Yennefer... the one who refused to join our little group of sisters, is currently working alongside the Black Ones."
Triss's expression flickered, something wary sliding into her eyes despite herself. "What are you talking about."
"Exactly what I said. I imagine she's doing it for the girl's sake, naturally, Yennefer never could resist playing mother to lost causes." Philippa's mouth curved faintly. "And Emhyr is not a stupid man, Triss, whatever else you might think of him. Given everything that's happened lately across the North, Nilfgaard will launch its offensive soon. Temeria will fall first, and fastest, with no mages or their dear King left standing to help them deter it." She let that settle a moment before continuing. "Which is precisely why we intend to ally ourselves with the Emperor. And you, Triss, are going to help make that happen. You're going to convince Yennefer to broker it for us."
Triss stared at her, something between disbelief and fury working through her features. "Me."
"You. She's not on particularly good terms with me, as you're well aware our history doesn't exactly lend itself to productive negotiation. But you, she still trusts. Or did, before all this." Philippa's gaze sharpened. "The Emperor already knows what happened to the monarchs of the North. He suspects both myself and the witcher who was meant to be guarding one of those kings and simply vanished the day he died. You understand what I'm telling you, I think. The boy is already wanted for regicide in three kingdoms."
"Yes," Triss said, voice gone flat and cold. "I understand perfectly. You need Yennefer to clean up your mess, because you've made yourself too radioactive to approach the one man who could actually protect you from the consequences of what you've done." She let out a short, humorless laugh. "And you're a fool if you think Yen would ever agree to that. Or that I'd lift a finger to do your bidding after everything you've already done. You're actually shameless, Philippa. Truly."
"The only monarch I genuinely wanted dead," Philippa said, entirely unbothered by the insult, "was Radovid. Foltest as well, in time, though less urgently. Strangely enough, Radovid lived which leaves me in a considerably worse position than I'd planned for." Something hard settled behind her composed features. "So. We will ally ourselves with the Emperor, in exchange for Radovid's head delivered to him personally. Whether you agree to help arrange it, or Yennefer does, matters very little in the end. I just wanted to ask nicely." She turned, already moving toward the corridor, Sheala falling silently into step behind her. "The Emperor will agree to it regardless. He has every reason to want Redania's king gone, and I intend to be the one who hands it to him."
Triss watched them go until the sound of their footsteps faded down the stone corridor, and only then did she let herself sink back down onto the narrow cot, the fury draining out of her by degrees and leaving something colder and more frightened in its place.
"You won't win this," she said quietly, to the empty chamber, to the retreating shadows, to no one at all. "Whatever you think you're building, Philippa! it'll collapse under its own weight, same as everything you've ever built on other people's blood."
She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes, breathing slow, forcing the tears back before they could properly fall. 'Seb.' She thought his name like a prayer, like something to hold onto in the dark. 'Wherever you ended up... whatever godsforsaken corner of the world she threw you into... please be alive. Please be whole or I'll never forgive myself.'
She thought of Ciri, too, of everything Seb had risked to find her, the sheer, reckless certainty in his voice the last time she'd seen him before Philippa's betrayal had torn everything sideways. 'If you made it to her. If you found some way through, some way to bring her home, then please, just stay safe, I have a bad feeling of what's coming.'
/-\
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