He glances back over his shoulder, amusement barely visible. “Your performance distracts from the obvious.”
I follow through the opening with more irritation than the moment deserves. “You enjoy being insufferable.”
“I enjoy adaptation.”
“That sounded rehearsed.”
“Like I can’t think of something smart on the spot.”
The concealed trail descends toward the water I heard earlier, ending at a stream clear enough to expose black stones beneath the current. The sound of it soothes something frayed in my skull. I kneel and rinse the dried blood from my face while Vaedros fills skins and scans the opposite bank for movement.
“You changed your approach,” I say.
“I have several.”
“You used to challenge my answers directly.”
“You used to think that was my only method.”
I look up. He stands framed by cedar trunks and silver water, dark hair immaculate despite the miles, features composed in that infuriating way of men who seem born understanding angles and consequence. Beauty should feel softer than this. With him it resembles a polished blade—beautiful because it was made to cut cleanly.
“You’re studying me,” I say.
“I was under the impression that it had become mutual.”
The stream covers many sounds, though not the one my pulse makes when he says things like that.
I rise too quickly and nearly slip on wet stone. His hand closes around my waist before gravity finishes its argument, drawing me against him for one startling instant. Heat meets cold through layers of damp fabric. His grip is firm, controlled, entirely capable of becoming something else.
I steady myself and step back at once.
“Careful,” he says.
“Concern doesn’t suit you.”
“Neither does clumsiness, yet here we are.”
I should insult him. Instead I hear myself ask, “Which version of you is this one?”
His gaze sharpens. “How many did you see?”
“Enough to know certainty is a luxury.”
“And in those futures, did any of me earn your trust?”
I think of knives, fire, warmth, chains, rain, blood, impossible tenderness.
“I haven’t decided whether trust is the relevant measure.”
Something unreadable passes through his expression. Then he releases the waterskin stopper and hands it to me as though we have discussed weather.
We move on.
By late afternoon the forest grows stranger still. Mushrooms pulse faint blue beneath fallen logs. A deer with antlers twisted into spirals watches us from ten paces away and vanishes when I blink. Once I hear voices ahead speaking in tones I recognize as my own, though no one stands there when we arrive. Vaedros hears nothing, or claims not to.
At the next split in the trail, I offer three contradictory instructions simply to see what he does.
“The slope ahead collapses if we take the ridge.”