“I trust your ability,” he replies evenly. “I do not trust the conditions affecting it.”
“That’s convenient.”
“That’s accurate.”
We stand there, halfway up the ridge, wind pulling at us, tension stretching tight between words and everything unsaid beneath them.
“You’re still controlling the outcome,” I say.
“I’m still responsible for survival.”
“You don’t get to choose that alone.”
“I’m not deciding alone,” he says, and there is something sharper in his voice now. “You presented options. I chose one. That is participation.”
“That is selection,” I counter. “Not collaboration.”
“And what would collaboration look like to you, huh? You are forgetting your place.”
The question lands heavier than expected. I open my mouth. Close it again. Because I do not have an answer that does not involve risking something I am not ready to risk.
The silence stretches.
Then—
The ground shifts. The moment snaps back into motion. Something moves beneath the surface ahead, exactly where the vision placed it, a sudden ripple through dirt and root that travels toward us with terrifying speed.
My breath catches.
“Now!” I shout.
Vaedros does not hesitate. He moves. Not in front of me. Not this time. He grabs my arm and pulls me sideways just as the creature bursts from the ground where I had been standing, a long, segmented body lined with hooked limbs that slash through air where my legs had been.
We stumble together onto firmer ground. The strike misses. The future fractures. Vaedros releases me instantly, blade already drawn, positioning himself between me and the creature, not shielding, not sacrificing, simply aligning for the next move.
I stare at him. The vision was wrong. Or changed. Or incomplete.
The certainty I felt dissolves into something far more dangerous. Doubt.
Since this began, I do not know whether I am being guided, manipulated, or simply losing my ability to tell the difference. What is going on?
18
VAEDROS
The creature’s body settles into stillness with a final shudder that ripples through its segmented length, the hooked limbs folding inward as though retreating from a world that has already rejected it.
I remain where I stand for a little longer than necessary, blade lowered at my side, watching the place where it emerged rather than the corpse itself, because the true threat in this forest rarely lies in what reveals itself openly. The ground appears calm again, roots undisturbed, soil already smoothing over the rupture as though the land resents being caught in the act of violence, and the wind carries the scent of damp earth and severed flesh away from us with indifferent efficiency.
Behind me, Aeryn does not move. I feel it without turning, the stillness that belongs not to recovery but to thought, to calculation forced into unfamiliar patterns, and when I finally shift my attention back to her, I find her watching me with a focus that is sharper than before, less reactive, more deliberate, as though something inside her has adjusted its approach in response to the fracture between what she expected and what occurred.
The vision failed. Or it changed. Or it was never as certain as she believed. That alone would be enough to destabilize most people. With Aeryn, it becomes something else, something active.
“You expected a different outcome,” I say, not as a question but as a placement, setting the observation between us with care, watching how she chooses to respond to it.
Her expression tightens, though not with surprise. “I expected you to step in front of it.”
“And I did not just as you asked me to do.”