Where did she go wrong?

Fringilla tried. She did, she promises. Every day, she tried to reach out to the other girls, to smile and laugh right alongside them and yet, it felt so empty. Her entire life, she had been raised to be the best. It was simply expected of her. With her uncle on the mages’ council it was no surprise when she had a conduit and most of the her family instead of congratulating her asked why it took so long.

There was never any need to put pressure on her to study more, to be the top of her class because she placed all that pressure on herself. If she wasn’t the best then she was wasting Aretuza’s time and she would never do that. Not when it had been drilled into her since she was a child that this was the only path for her. She had to listen to the Rectoress, learn the lessons, go to court, and spend her life serving the brotherhood like a good little mage should.

If she didn't, well, Fringilla remembered the stories of mages who ventured into forbidden magic, who broke off from the brotherhood and cannibalized their own magic, dying penniless in the streets.

But no matter how much work she put in, no matter how hard she tried, none of the other girls wanted to be close with her. At first, she thought Sabrina might be a good choice for a friend. They were both two of the only mages who could accomplish every task Tissaia set out before them and Fringilla thought she could appreciate Sabrina’s straight-forward approach to life.

What Fringilla hadn’t anticipated was Sabrina’s haughtiness. She thought that she deserved the world and if it wasn’t placed at her feet, that was the world’s fault, not her own. Of course, Sabrina was never dissuaded otherwise so when Fringilla was with Sabrina, most conversation would be taken up by talking about what girls wouldn’t last, who would be the first to leave, etc.

It was conversation Fringilla partook in for the necessity of a friend but otherwise felt no connection too. She tried to talk to Yennefer, but the other girl didn’t seem interested in talking to her, seemingly too interested in her studies and sneaking off all hours of the night to gods knows where.

She didn’t ask where or tell Tissaia because, well, they all needed an escape. Anica was close with Yennefer and when Fringilla tried to talk to Lark and Doralis they were friendly. However, one night Lark, Anica, and Doralis disappeared and never came back. Tissaia said they were sent back to their families and it left a pit in Fringilla’s stomach. She remembered the stories of cannibalized magic and tried not to think on where the girls truly were.

Her time in Aretuza was one of misery and isolation and she should have known from the second, the goddamn second that Tissaia told her she would have to suffer with a withered hand due to her incident the first day that she would find no home here.

Fringilla’s entire life had felt so empty, so hollow. Everything was simply a ploy for the next level. Her childhood existed simply to get her to Aretuza which existed to simply get her to court. Connections she tried to make didn’t matter and anyone she tried to talk to didn’t care.

Then, after the mage’s ball, sitting alone in her room, changing into the dress set out by King Fergus, tears rolling down her face, Fringilla realized. Her whole life was a facade. Even now, in her moment go utmost horror, in her realization that her skill level would never matter because she was destined to be discarded to shithole that was Nilfgaard, not a single person came to visit or comfort her.

Not Sabrina, not her uncle and certainly not Tissaia. She was just as alone as she had been her whole life but this loneliness felt more painful that anything she had felt before. This felt like an ache in her bones and a scream in her chest that she couldn’t let out.