Chapter 233

A carriage rolled out of old Vizima and headed east toward Foltest Castle.

“Tell me, Adda, what exactly happened?” The Witcher’s cheeks bulged in and out as he greedily tore into white bread stuffed with fresh vegetables and beef, washing it down now and then with a mouthful of goat’s milk.

After lying in that coffin for three days and living on dry rations, the Witcher’s hunger had reached its threshold. He felt he could eat an ox.

“Do you remember anything? Why did the curse flare up again?”

Adda sat across from him, in the innermost seat of the carriage.

The Princess of Vizima was far more civilized about it. With slender, elegant fingers, she slowly tore her bread into crumbs, then brought them to her crimson lips and chewed in small bites, carrying herself with noble grace.

She had changed into a clean black lace dress now, no longer in the untroubled state she had been in inside the coffin.

A black lady’s hat trimmed with ruffles hid her tangled, dirty red hair. She was still wrapped in the Witcher’s great cloak, and beneath it her figure was noticeably thinner than it had been a week earlier.

Roy had seen that with his own eyes. That willow-slender waist, which could be encircled in a single hand, had grown lean to a point, no longer as strong and healthy-looking as before.

“My last memory,” Adda said, staring absently at the Witcher as she pulled the cloak closer, apparently feeling cold, “was taking off the amulet and drinking the potion Abigail prepared for me. After that, I lost consciousness, and did not wake again until I opened my eyes inside the coffin.”

“What sort of potion?” The Witcher raised a brow.

“An elixir, meant to break the curse on me...” Memory flickered in Adda’s narrow eyes. “I confirmed it with Abigail ... Ostrit, the man who cursed my mother and me more than twenty years ago, really did worship the Arachas. While he was alive, that bastard was always lurking in the God of Ill Omen’s sanctuary in the sewers, and according to Abigail, he begged the High Priest of the time for the method of the curse.”

“That was the source of the ill fate I bore. And Abigail, as a priest of the God of Ill Omen, had the means to rid me of it.”

The Witcher lowered his head. Just as he had suspected.

After thinking a moment, Adda laughed bitterly at herself. “I still remember the elixir’s recipe perfectly. It needed three drops of wolf’s blood, three drops of bile from a woman only just buried ... and my father Foltest’s blood ... several such key ingredients, before she could mix the so-called elixir that would break the curse.”

“Your Highness...” Roy rolled his eyes. “Did you trust Abigail a little too much? So far as I know, blood can be worked into a curse. Were you not afraid Abigail might use Foltest’s blood against him? He is your father, and the King of Temeria.”

“Cursing a king is not so simple.” Adda said, “Foltest carries more magical amulets than anyone could count, merely hidden where ordinary eyes cannot see them. No curse can take hold on him. To truly threaten his life, unless...” Adda stared at Roy and paused in thought, “unless a Witcher with your sort of skill went and served as an assassin.”

“Pff—”

“What is it, Roy?”

“Mm ... nothing. Ate too fast and choked a bit.” The Witcher wiped goat’s milk from the corner of his mouth and cold sweat from his brow. “Your Highness, do not joke like that. I would never become any sort of assassin, and neither would a Witcher of the Viper School.”