I almost laugh from sheer exhaustion.
“You do enjoy flattering yourself.”
“That was not an answer.”
“I rarely give any you demand.”
The forest shifts again while we stand there. A fallen branch rolls uphill. Mushrooms extinguish their glow one by one.
I move first, angling through a narrow seam between gray trunks toward a route I did not see in any vision and do not fully trust. Perhaps especially because I did not see it.
After several steps I hear him following. Of course he follows. Of course I am aware of the exact cadence of his boots behind me.
The new path descends through fern-heavy ground into a hollow where mist pools ankle-high. Every sound arrives softened. Water beads on my lashes. My headache throbs with each heartbeat, though the worst of the vision has receded into a residue of dread I cannot shake.
Vaedros comes abreast of me where the trail widens.
“You answered quickly this time,” he says after a while. “Too quickly for someone uncertain.”
“I’m always uncertain.”
“False.”
I keep my eyes ahead. “Confident people say that when they want company.”
He reaches out and catches my wrist, not hard enough to hurt, firm enough to halt me. The contact sends a treacherous awareness through my already frayed nerves.
“Look at me.”
I do, because refusing now would concede too much. Mist curls around us. His dark hair is damp from the hollow air, a few strands fallen from perfect order at last. There is mud at the hem of his coat, blood dried near one cuff from an earlier cut, indigo eyes intent enough to feel like touch.
“Whatever you saw,” he says quietly, “you changed the route to keep control of it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because I saw you become exactly what I fear. Because I do not know whether the vision came from the forest, my past, or something else. Because if I tell you, I hand you the power to confirm or deny it.
Instead I say, “Because control shared too freely becomes surrender.”
His thumb shifts once over the pulse point inside my wrist. A tiny movement. Far too noticeable.
“And if I asked for trust instead?”
I look into his eyes, hating how handsome he is in the dim hollow, how intelligence sharpens every line of him into something almost beautiful enough to be believed.
“I would assume you were injured more badly than you admit.”
For one heartbeat his mouth nearly curves. Then he releases me.
We keep walking through the mist with new distance between our shoulders and none at all beneath the surface. I nolonger know whether the greater danger lies ahead in the forest or beside me on the path.
Either way, Vaedros does not have full control of the outcome. Neither do I. And for now, that will have to be enough.
12
VAEDROS