The new rule. Every vision, every fragment, every unclear thread.
I look toward the elderbrush. “Movement ahead. Low to the ground. Something waiting beneath the shrubs, perhaps more than one.”
There is no vision. There is no threat. There is only a path, sunlight, berries, and my need to know whether his new restraint collapses the moment I hand him an answer he wants.
Vaedros studies the shrubs, then the ground, then me. “How close?”
“Twenty paces beyond the bend.”
“What size?”
“Wolf-sized.”
His eyes remain on mine a fraction too long. “Certain?”
“No.”
That part is true. He nods once and turns toward the bend, drawing his blade halfway free as he moves. I expect him to avoid the shrubs entirely or force me ahead to prove the claim. He does neither. He angles us uphill, skirting the edge of the elderbrush while keeping the pack beasts downwind, then removes a small silver disk from his coat and flicks it toward the place I indicated.
The disk strikes a stone with a crisp ring. Nothing moves. He waits. Still nothing.
Then he continues around the bend without comment, choosing a path that would have avoided an ambush if one existed while preserving speed if one did not.
Annoyance rises through me, warm and unwelcome. He has neither believed me fully nor dismissed me fully. He has adapted around me.
“You didn’t challenge it,” I say once we clear the shrubs.
“You sounded uncertain.”
“I gave a warning.”
“I treated it as one possibility among several.”
“That is very convenient for you.”
“That is the point of competence.”
I glance at him, and sunlight cuts through the pines just then, striking the navy blue of his eyes and the runes visible beneath his rolled sleeves until he looks less like a court predator dragged unwillingly into wild country and more like something the forest should fear learning from. His hair, dark and too controlled despite wind and travel, has begun to loosen at the temples. Mud stains his boots. A faint bruise shadows one cheek fromyesterday’s collapse. None of it diminishes him. It makes the elegance sharper, less ornamental, more real.
“You knew,” I say.
“I suspected.”
“And you let me lie?”
“I let you reveal method.”
Heat creeps up my neck, which is absurd after everything this forest has done to me.
“You sound pleased with yourself.”
“I often am.”
A laugh threatens, and I hate him a little for earning it.
Then the real danger arrives from behind us.
A whistle cuts through the trees, quick and piercing. Vaedros moves before I understand the sound, one arm sweeping me sideways as an arrow slices through the space where my shoulder had been and buries itself deep in pine bark. The pack beasts panic. Another arrow follows, then another, striking stone, dirt, leather.