“I know.”
“Hooked blade first.”
“I know.”
“Then stop enjoying yourself.”
“I multitask.”
The leader comes within five paces. “Hands away from weapons.”
Vaedros sighs with convincing annoyance. “You have mistaken this for negotiation.”
The next moments happen with terrifying harmony.
Vaedros throws the silver disk from earlier upward toward the ridge, and it bursts in a white flare that blinds the hidden archer. I slash the beast’s tether with my small knife just as the hooked-blade man lunges. Vaedros catches his wrist, turns the attack into the man beside him, and sends both stumbling into the open. I call, “Right shoulder,” because the future shows a spear rising there, and Vaedros ducks under the thrust without looking, driving his elbow into the attacker’s throat.
The leader fires the crossbow.
I see two paths.
“Down!”
Vaedros drops instantly, and the bolt clips through a loose strand of my hair before striking the hooked-blade man behind us.
The pack beast bolts across the slope, dragging loose supplies and chaos with it. One bandit chases on instinct. Vaedros uses that opening to close distance with the leader, not killing, only disarming with a twist so precise the crossbow falls and the man collapses to one knee with a cry.
I see the ridge archer clearing his eyes.
“Stone left!”
Vaedros rolls left as another arrow strikes where his spine had been. I seize a fallen spear and throw badly but effectively enough to make the archer flinch. Vaedros takes the moment, flings a knife, and pins the archer’s sleeve to a tree.
The remaining bandits waver. Vaedros rises, breathing hard, hair loosened around his face, indigo eyes bright with a danger.
“You chose poor ground, worse timing, and a target who warned you once,” he says, voice carrying across the slope. “Run while my wife remains merciful.”
My wife. Again.
This time I do not look away fast enough. The bandits run.
When the last of them vanishes through the trees, the slope seems to exhale. Leaves tremble. The escaped beast stops downslope to chew grass as if humiliation has no meaning. Smoke from the flare drifts bitter and sharp through the air.
Vaedros turns to me. “You lied about the shrubs.”
“You improvised a marriage.”
“You endangered our route.”
“You enjoyed calling me wife.”
His expression remains perfectly composed, which means I have struck something worth remembering.
“You played the part convincingly,” he says.
“I was motivated by survival and spite.”
“Reliable forces.”