"And if I move past you," he says, his voice quieter now, which is not the same as softer, "what do you do?"
"I interfere," I say. "Actively. "
Something in his expression shifts, not quite amusement, not quite acknowledgment, but somewhere in the register between the two. "You would interfere," he repeats.
"I would," I say, and I mean it with every steady breath I am currently managing to maintain, because I have seen what comes through the artifact and I am not willing to stand beside it and watch, not when the cost falls on every person under his house's protection as well as on him.
"Please," I murmur, surprising even myself. "For once trust me."
"You never trusted me before," he points out.
He studies me for longer this time, and I feel it, the full weight of his attention settling into place, pressing against every word I have chosen and every truth I have not. He is not guessing anymore. He is narrowing.
“You’ve redirected me before,” he says. “Delayed. Withheld. Adjusted outcomes in ways you never explained.”
I don’t respond. Not immediately.
“You expect me to believe this is different,” he continues, taking another step closer, close enough now that I can see the fine tension in his jaw, the control he is maintaining rather than the calm he pretends to hold. “That this warning is not another variation of the same strategy.”
“It is the same strategy,” I say quietly. “Just not for the reason you think.”
That gives him pause.
“And what reason is that?” he asks.
“To keep you alive long enough to hate me for it,” I answer.
Something sharp moves through his expression, too fast to fully read, but real enough that I know I struck something beneath the surface.
“You assume a great deal,” he says.
“I’ve seen enough to make the assumption,” I reply.
“And still you won’t tell me everything.”
“No.”
His gaze drops briefly to my hands, then lifts again, as though he is searching for the exact point where I will fail to follow through on what I’m saying.
“You won’t stop me,” he says.
“I will try.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” I agree. “It’s worse.”
The artifact pulses again behind me, stronger this time, the vibration threading through the air between us, distorting the air just enough to make the edges of him blur.
He notices. And this time, when he steps forward, it is no longer a test.
I am about to stop him when sound reaches us from outside the chamber, movement that carries the deliberate cadence of organized forces, boots on stone in the coordinated rhythm of a military approach. Multiple entry points activating simultaneously in the way that means someone has planned this arrival rather than stumbled into it, and the confrontation we have been holding between us fractures instantly into something that requires a different kind of attention entirely.
Vaedros turns toward the sound, and I watch his posture sharpen into something wholly operational, the calculation shifting in real time behind his eyes. I turn with him, because whatever is coming through those passages has just changed the shape of every probability in this chamber, and I need to see them before they see us.
26
VAEDROS