“Release me.”
“No.”
I twist, elbowing for space. He catches my forearm, pivots, and pins me between his body and the trunk of a cedar slick with rain. The hold is practical. My pulse does not understand practicality.
“Listen carefully,” he says, face inches from mine, mud streaked across his jaw, hair finally ruined by weather and effort. “You are frightened of something you refuse to name. You are sabotaging terrain. You are becoming dangerous in ways even you do not control.”
“You think this is about control because everything is about control to you.”
“I think this is about survival.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Both.”
For one suspended instant we are too close to breathe properly, his body caging mine, heat pouring from him into the damp air, my hands braced against his chest where I can sense the violence of his heartbeat matching my own.
Then he steps back. The loss of contact feels like another kind of fall.
“We move together,” he says, voice roughened into something quieter. “You do not leave my reach again.”
I should refuse.
Instead I wipe mud from my face and nod once because the basin still groans behind us and because I no longer trust my own instincts cleanly enough to stand on principle.
We climb out by a narrower route along exposed roots. He keeps one hand on my arm at steep descents and does not pretend it is optional. I do not pretend I fail to notice every time his grip tightens before loose footing, every time he positions himself downhill to catch my weight if needed, every time he scans the trees before releasing me.
My interference costs us almost the whole afternoon. We backtrack twice. We avoid one ravine only to meet another. Rain begins and ends without warning. By dusk we have covered little ground and spent too much energy doing it.
Failure accumulates quietly. So does desire to run.
While Vaedros builds a small fire beneath a rock shelf, I study the dark around us and begin mapping exits. The stream behind camp could mask sound for several minutes if followed upstream. The slope to the west offers thicker cover though poor footing. The trees eastward stand wider apart, faster travel with greater exposure. His habit after dark is to sit facing the main approach.
I gather every route the way others gather prayers.
Yet when he hands me a cup of hot broth without comment, when his thumb brushes mud from my wrist where the sink pulled hardest, when he takes the outer edge of the shelter so wind reaches him first, escape feels less simple than it should.
I hate that the new visions have made him dangerous to trust. I hate more that I still want to.
14
VAEDROS
Cold arrives long before true night. It seeps upward through stone and wet soil, threads itself through damp cloth, settles in joints and fingertips with patient cruelty, and by the time I finish banking the fire beneath the overhang, Aeryn’s shivering has become too violent to dismiss as discomfort.
The basin mud soaked her nearly to the waist, the rain finished what the mire began, and exhaustion has stripped away the stubborn reserve she usually wears like armor. She sits wrapped in a blanket that does nothing except outline the tremors moving through her body, lips pale, hands clenched so tightly around the fabric that her knuckles have gone bloodless.
She would rather freeze than ask. I expected nothing else.
“Closer,” I say, nodding toward the fire.
“I can see it from here.”
“An impressive strategy. Heat by observation.”
She glares weakly and remains where she is. I cross the small shelter in three steps, crouch, and lift her before she can waste energy objecting. She is lighter than she should be, all tension and cold limbs beneath wet layers. Her breath catches against my throat in surprise sharpened by indignation.
“Put me down.”