“Even if it is about you?”
Especially then.
“Yes.”
She looks into the fire for a long time, watching resin bubble in the wood before bursting into tiny blue sparks. When she speaks again, the bravado has thinned to honesty.
“I don’t trust what I’m seeing anymore.”
The confession is quiet enough that the forest nearly steals it. I answer just as quietly.
“Then borrow my certainty until yours returns.”
She should mock that. She should reject the offer on principle. Instead she nods once.
I hand her a cup of hot water mixed with herbs for the lingering headache. Our fingers brush.
We break camp under a sky washed pale and clear after rain. I keep her beside me on the ascent, adjusting pace when fatigue shows, steering us away from low fog pockets and clustered stones, watching for the first sign of gold in her eyes or that distant look which means reality is thinning again. Protection and control often resemble each other from the outside. Intent is the only difference, and intent is invisible.
By midday the air grows cleaner. Pine replaces rot. Wind moves honestly through the branches. The ground holds firm beneath our boots. Aeryn’s shoulders lower by increments as the forest’s pressure eases.
She glances at me while stepping over a fallen limb.
“You’re hovering again.”
“I’m supervising.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Yet alive.”
A corner of her mouth lifts despite herself. That’s progress. The artifact still waits somewhere ahead beneath root and stone, war still gathers beyond the trees, my brothers still expectresults measured in power and conquest. Yet as we climb into clearer light with her stride gradually steadier beside mine, I understand the mission has changed shape again.
To reach the relic, I first have to keep her whole. And for reasons I am not prepared to examine too closely, that objective no longer feels purely strategic.
15
AERYN
Vaedros changes after the basin, and the change is quiet enough that I almost resent how quickly I notice it, because a cruder man would have made suspicion easy, would have tightened a chain, raised his voice, demanded obedience with the blunt certainty of someone who believes fear is the cleanest tool, while Vaedros does something far more dangerous and begins arranging the world around my limits as though patience has always belonged to him.
He asks before choosing direction now. He studies the terrain, names three possible risks, then looks at me as if my answer is one part of a larger equation rather than the entire solution. When the forest thickens, he does not order me closer; he adjusts the route until closeness becomes practical. When my fingers twitch toward my wrist, his gaze catches the motion, then moves away as though he has granted me privacy while remembering every detail.
It should comfort me. It does something worse. It makes me want to believe him. That is exactly why I cannot.
The vision remains vivid beneath everything else, preserved with a cruelty my ordinary visions never possess. Blue fire.Stone beneath my back. His hand at my throat. His face composed with that terrible almost-kindness while he uses me until nothing remains. I know how skilled he is with language, how easily he can turn concern into leverage, mercy into a debt, restraint into a leash I am meant to thank him for. If he wants trust from me now, this softer strategy may be another route toward the same cage.
So I decide to test it, the same way he does with me. Test for test I guess. The chance comes near midday, when the cleaner western rise opens into a long slope of amber grass broken by scattered pines and gray stones warmed under rare sunlight.
The air carries resin, dry leaves, and distant smoke from somewhere beyond the trees, faint enough that Vaedros notices it a breath after I do. A narrow path cuts across the slope toward a stand of elderbrush heavy with white berries. It looks harmless, which means very little here.
I stop and press two fingers to my temple, allowing my face to tighten as if the pain has begun.
Vaedros turns immediately. “Vision?”
“Yes,but I need privacy,” I say, letting the lie rest inside a word that has carried enough truth to feel natural.
He turns his back to me, but I can feel his attention sharpens without hardening. “Report.”