Her face is inches from mine. I am feeling the quick rhythm of her breath, see the tiny flecks of gold shifting through pale irises, smell rain-washed skin and the mint oil from earlier headaches lingering faintly at her temples.
My own pulse answers with inconvenient force.
“Release me,” she says, voice low.
“Warn me sooner.”
“Stop engineering reasons to hold on.”
There is no safe reply to that.
“I wish you could trust me. I don’t plan to harm you,” I say, because if I want trust, maybe I have to be honest.
I loosen the rope slowly. She steps back just as slowly, one hand remaining against my chest for a fraction longer than balance requires.
Then it is gone.
We continue through the white grove with greater distance in our bodies and none in the air between them. The mission remains ahead somewhere beneath roots and stone, yet every calculation now bends around a truth I can no longer dismiss.
Understanding her has become more urgent than reaching the artifact. And wanting her trust may be the most dangerous shift of all.
13
AERYN
The white grove thins behind us, its pale trunks fading into the layered green of deeper growth, yet the tension from that halted moment remains braided through every step that follows. I feel it in the measured distance Vaedros keeps at my side, close enough to seize, far enough to deny wanting to.
I feel it in the silence he carries now, sharpened and watchful, stripped of the lighter edge our exchanges had acquired over recent days. I feel it most of all in myself, in the treacherous pull that still exists beneath caution, the part of me that has begun wanting to believe him precisely when belief has become most dangerous.
The forest gives no comfort to divided minds. Roots thrust through the ground like knuckled fists. Vines hang in curtains heavy with rainwater that falls in sudden cold drops when brushed. The air is warm beneath the canopy yet threaded with pockets of chill that slide over skin like passing hands.
Somewhere high above, unseen creatures trade harsh calls that resemble laughter. Every scent arrives layered, wet bark, bruised fern, old decay, flowering sweetness, the faint mineralsting of stone split open somewhere nearby. Paths present themselves and then seem to reconsider.
My head begins to ache before the vision takes me. I know the signs now with intimate dread: pressure building behind the eyes, the sense that sound is receding while colors sharpen too much, my pulse turning strange and distant inside my own body. I slow without meaning to. Vaedros notices immediately.
“You’re fading again.”
“Your concern grows theatrical.”
“I dislike surprises that bleed.”
I almost answer. Then the world vanishes.
The vision seizes me whole.
I am on my back against black stone slick with moisture. My wrists are pinned above my head beneath one of Vaedros’s hands. The pressure is absolute. His weight holds my hips to the ground with merciless precision. Blue fire burns in sconces along curved walls I do not recognize, filling the chamber with cold light that turns his skin to polished shadow and silver runes to living flame. Blood runs warm from my nose into my hairline. I can smell iron, smoke, and the resin scent that belongs to him.
“Give me the rest,” he says.
His voice is low, calm, patient in the way a blade can be patient.
“I have nothing left.”
“You always have something left.”
Pain tears through my skull as visions are dragged from me one after another, each ripped free before it can form. I scream. He does not look away. There is grief in his face or a perfect imitation of it. When the last thread is gone and emptiness hollows me clean, he brushes hair from my mouth with unbearable tenderness.
Then his other hand closes around my throat. I feel each finger. I feel air fail. I feel the exact moment my body begins to lose the argument. I wrench back into the forest gasping.