“Am I now?”
“You keep finding reasons to stand too close.”
“Your vanity remains resilient in difficult conditions.”
She turns while walking backward for three steps, studying me with infuriating calm. “No. Your strategy changed.”
I say nothing, because she is correct. Force would fail here. Threats produce surface obedience and hidden sabotage. Chains cannot compel useful foresight. Control, if it is possible at all, requires understanding where fear lives in her, where pride stiffens, where pain limits, where curiosity opens doors she would bar against direct command.
The mission remains the artifact. Yet my methods now orbit her more than the relic buried somewhere ahead.
By late afternoon clouds gather low and heavy, turning the light metallic. Rain begins as a whisper through leaves, then thickens into steady silver lines. We shelter beneath an overhang of stone where water drips in measured rhythms from moss-dark edges.
Aeryn wrings rain from her hair. “Was this also part of your education?”
“I learned that weather lacks discipline.”
She laughs, genuine and brief, brighter than the gray around us. The sound catches me off guard.
There are moments when she appears younger than the history in her eyes. There are others when she looks older than the forest.
“What did they call you before Aeryn?” I ask.
Her expression closes at once.
“Persistent,” she says.
“That was not the question.”
“It was the answer you earned.”
Fair. I step closer, reaching past her to secure the loose tarp line against the rock wall. She does not move away. Rain drums around us. The narrow shelter traps her scent, wet cedar, skin warmed by exertion, the faint mineral trace that follows every vision.
“Troublesome little prophet,” I say quietly.
She blinks once. “What?”
“Your new title.”
“I didn’t request one.”
“You’ve requested very little directly. I’m compensating.”
Her gaze lifts to mine, wary and amused. “Careful, Vaedros. Nicknames suggest attachment.”
“Only in people who lack discipline.”
“And cuddling by a fire suggests what?”
There it is. Straight to the blade.
“Efficient heat distribution.”
She smiles slowly, devastatingly aware of the ground she has taken.
“Of course,” she says.
The rain continues. The forest waits. Somewhere ahead lies an artifact capable of altering war.