“I say it like a terrible use of strategic talent.”
She flicks water at me.
I should object on principle. Instead I look at the droplets darkening my sleeve and ask, “Flowers or herbs?”
Now she truly smiles, quick and bright enough to alter the whole clearing.
“Both.”
The expression vanishes before I can decide whether it was offered or escaped.
We resume travel, and it's been years since I recognize a disadvantage no map can solve. I do not know how to guarantee the terms I promised her. My authority holds within Drazharel lands and among those who fear the consequences of crossing me. Beyond that, promises become weather. I dislike weather.
The trail divides around a collapsed cedar. I stop.
She waits, perhaps expecting another request for guidance disguised as command.
Instead I ask, “What frightens you more—the visions or losing them?”
Her gaze hardens immediately. “You’re becoming greedy.”
“You interest me.”
“There are safer hobbies.”
“Those tend to bore me.”
She steps closer than necessary to pass around the fallen trunk, forcing me either to move or allow our shoulders to brush. I choose neither quickly enough. Contact happens, brief and electric through damp fabric.
“Answer your own question first,” she says.
I watch her move ahead, every line of her body balanced between caution and defiance.
“What frightens me,” I say to her back, “is irrelevance.”
She stops. The forest hums around us with insect wings and distant dripping water. When she turns, something in her attention has changed. Less mockery. More consideration.
“That,” she says quietly, “might be the first useful thing you’ve given me.”
Then she keeps walking.
By late afternoon we enter a region where the trees grow farther apart and strange white stones jut from the earth in circles half-swallowed by roots. The air feels charged, metallic on the tongue. My skin prickles beneath travel leathers. Aeryn’s pace shortens. Her hand goes to the inside of her left wrist, thumb pressing pulse.
Vision coming.
I move nearer instinctively.
She notices and lowers the hand at once.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You hovered.”
“I adjusted position.”
“You hover elegantly.”