“The hollow floods if we descend.”
“The old path circles safely if the old path still exists.”
He inspected me for a moment that feels longer than it is. Then he hands me the lead rope.
“You choose.”
I stare at it. “You’re surrendering control?”
“I’m relocating responsibility.”
“That sounds like surrender dressed for court.”
“That sounds like fear dressed as wit.”
I take the rope because refusing would concede more than accepting. After a brief pause meant entirely for his benefit, I choose the hollow.
He follows without protest. No suspicion voiced. No demand for certainty. No visible concern that I may be leading us badly on purpose. The absence unsettles me more than pressure would have.
Halfway down the slope he speaks from behind me.
“You expected argument.”
“I expected intelligence, Vaedros.”
He laughs quietly, and the sound does something inconvenient to the air between us.
The hollow does not flood. Instead it opens into a sheltered grove where the ground remains dry beneath broad-leafed branches and fallen logs form natural walls around a patch of level earth ideal for camp. My choice, however motivated, has worked.
Vaedros begins unloading packs. “You can stop trying to force me into one shape, Aeryn.”
I turn. “What shape is that?”
“The one easiest to predict.”
The truth of it lands unpleasantly. I have been measuring him through visions, through tests, through assumptions built from men who resemble him only in title and blood.
Meanwhile he has been learning the present version of me one answer, one pause, one lie of omission at a time.
I am not the only observer here.
He glances up from the fire kit. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Thinking loudly.”
I hate that he can tell.
I hate more that part of me admires it.
He strikes steel to flint. Sparks bloom. Flame takes the tinder in a soft rush, painting azure across his eyes until they look almost liquid.
Beautiful, intelligent, dangerous, impossible to sort cleanly into enemy or ally. The forest is not the only place where paths divide.
As dusk settles through the branches, I realize something far more troublesome than any vision.
I have started looking forward to finding out which version of him is real. And he has already begun asking the same question of me.