Leaves, trees, daylight, mud.
My knees buckle. Vaedros catches my arm before I hit the ground, and I recoil so violently he releases me at once.
Blood spills hot over my lip.
“Aeryn.”
He reaches again.
“Don’t.”
The word comes out rough and frightened enough to humiliate me. He is going to kill me…
He stops, dark blue eyes narrowing not with cruelty but confusion. The distinction should matter. It does not. My body still remembers the pressure of his hand around my throat, though the hand before me has not touched skin.
“What is it?” he asks.
Nothing I can survive telling you.
“Wrong footing,” I say, wiping blood with my sleeve. “We need to turn south.”
We have been trending east for the last hour. South leads toward lower ground where the forest smells of clay and hidden water. I know it is poor terrain. I choose it anyway.
Fear makes poor strategist and persuasive commander. He analyzed me for too long.
“You changed direction quickly.”
“So did the future.”
He should challenge harder. He should refuse. Instead he gestures with controlled irritation.
“Lead, then.”
We descend through a tangle of alder and hanging moss into land grown soft under constant seepage. The soil darkens. Every step releases the scent of saturated earth and roots rottingbeneath the surface. Gnats rise in silver swarms when disturbed. The trees lean outward from a central depression filled with reeds and low fog. Water glimmers intermittently under mats of vegetation.
Vaedros’s pace shortens.
“You brought us into a basin.”
“You say that as though geography is personal.”
“You’re trembling.”
I had not noticed until he says it. The vision still clings under my skin. Every time he moves into the edge of my sight, blue fire flickers behind my eyes.
“We cross and climb out,” I say.
“Or we circle.”
“We lose hours.”
“We keep breathing.”
Anger sparks because he is being reasonable when I need him to be wrong.
“Then go back,” I snap. “I’m not chained to you.”
His expression hardens. “Ye, you are. We had a deal. Stop pretending you don’t have benefit from it.”