Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ciri knew she wasn’t normal.

Normal kids didn’t have to be locked up from midnight to dawn every night. Normal kids didn’t get along better with a druid than their only living flesh and blood.

Normal kids weren’t cursed.

Normal kids weren’t given up to witchers.

Ciri was scared. Grandmother had been the one to greet her that morning instead of Mousesack for once.

She introduced her to Geralt, saying she’d been claimed by the Law of Surprise before she was even born. Ciri knew children taken in by witchers were either turned into witchers themselves or killed.

Did her grandmother think the mutations would get rid of her curse?

Her grandmother’s eagerness to give her up almost hurt as much as not being able to say goodbye to Mousesack or her grandfather.

But nothing hurt Ciri as much as the knowledge that Cintra was attacked right after she left with Geralt.

The witcher bundled her skin and spikes in thick furs that night while she cried for the place that should’ve been her home.