3. Aeryn
AERYN
The room empties slowly after the terms are set, the tension dissolving into quieter currents of calculation and anticipation, and I am taken somewhere smaller, somewhere contained, a chamber with stone walls that hold the cold long after the torches burn low, the air stale with disuse and faint traces of metal and damp.
They leave me alone.
For a while.
I sit on the narrow edge of the bed, my hands resting loosely in my lap, though the marks left by the rope still burn faintly against my skin, a reminder of how quickly control can be taken and how carefully it must be reclaimed.
I breathe, slow and measured. Counting the seconds between each inhale and exhale, anchoring myself in the present because the moment I stop doing that, the edges begin to blur, the fractures begin to form, and I cannot afford that, not now, not when everything depends on clarity.
It almost works.
A flicker presses at my vision, faint but insistent, like light slipping through a crack I cannot fully seal, and I press my fingers against my temples, forcing it back, forcing it down, refusing to let it take shape before I am ready.
Not yet.
The door opens without warning. I know who it is before I look.
Vaedros steps inside as though the space already belongs to him, the movement smooth, controlled, every detail of him deliberate, that feels less like habit and more like design, as if even the smallest gesture has been considered for its effect.
He closes the door behind him without breaking eye contact. Of course he does. He would never enter a room like this without ensuring control of every exit.
“I expected you to try to run,” he says.
“I expected you to make it impossible.”
A faint shift touches his expression, not surprise, not quite, but something close enough to interest that I notice it immediately.
He moves further into the room, and this close, there is no ignoring what he is.
His hair is a black, darker than blood in shadow, sleek and controlled, not a strand out of place, as though even chaos would hesitate before touching it.
His skin is obsidian-dark, smooth and unmarked except for the silver-inked runes that trace along his forearms, intricate and precise, catching the low light that makes them seem almost alive, shifting subtly with the movement of his muscles beneath them.
His eyes are the most dangerous part of him.
Indigo, reflective without revealing anything of what lies beneath, and when they settle on me fully, I understand why people listen when he speaks, why they bend even when they do not intend to, because there is something in that gaze that suggests he already knows the outcome of every conversation before it begins.
It is not power the same way his brothers wield it. It is something quieter. Something far more precise.
He is not built like them either, he is strong, but there is also strength in the way he carries himself, in the efficiency of his movements, in the absence of wasted motion, as though everything about him has been refined to serve a single purpose — control.
And it works. It works in ways that make people forget they are being controlled at all. Which makes him dangerous.
I hate the way my awareness lingers there, the way it registers details I do not need, the way it recognizes something almost magnetic in his presence, something that draws attention even when every instinct tells me to look away.
I don’t. That would be a mistake.
“You didn’t come here to admire the walls,” I say.
“No,” he replies. “I came for your first answer.”
Of course he did. He wastes nothing.
“Direction,” he continues, stepping closer, not enough to crowd me, but enough to remind me that distance is something he controls as well. “Where do we begin?”
I should refuse, but I don’t. Because refusing now gains me nothing. Because giving him something, just enough, gives me far more.
The vision comes when I let it. I allow the edge of it to surface, the shape of the path without the depth of it, the direction without the consequence, and it unfolds in fragments behind my eyes, overlapping images that blur and sharpen in uneven rhythm.
Trees. Dense. Shifting. A path that does not remain where it should. A clearing that appears only under certain conditions?—
Pain spikes through my skull, sharp and immediate, and I grip the bed to steady myself, forcing the vision to stop before it goes deeper, before it shows me what I do not want to see.
Enough. I lift my gaze back to him.
“North,” I say.
“But not directly. The path curves. You won’t see it unless you’re already on it.”
He watches me carefully.
“And what happens if we miss it?”
“You won’t.”
A partial truth. The best kind. Something flickers in his expression again, subtle, controlled. He knows. Not what I’ve hidden. But that I have hidden something.
Good. Let him. Let him question. Let him try to find the gaps. It keeps him focused on the wrong problem.
He is watching me, as though mapping the space between what I said and what I didn’t, and I can almost feel the calculations forming behind his eyes, the patterns he’s trying to build, the way he’s already adjusting his approach based on information I chose to give him.
He’s learning me. Faster than I would like. That makes him dangerous in a way the others are not. But it also makes him predictable. Because men like him cannot tolerate uncertainty. They have to understand. They have to control. And if they cannot…They adapt. Which means I can shape how he adapts.
The second vision hits instantly.
Violent.
Uncontrolled.
The room fractures around me, splitting into overlapping paths that collide and contradict, and suddenly I am standing in the forest?—
No.
I am standing in several forests at once. In one, the path is clear, leading us deeper without resistance. In another, it vanishes entirely, swallowed by shifting ground that opens beneath our feet. In another, Vaedros is ahead of me. He is bleeding, but still standing. In another?—
He turns.
And there is something in his expression that I cannot read before the vision tears itself apart, collapsing inward with a force that drags me back into the present so abruptly that I gasp, my fingers tightening against the fabric beneath me as the pain settles in waves behind my eyes.
I close my eyes briefly, forcing the fragments away, forcing myself back into control before he can see too much, before anything slips through that I cannot take back.
When I look at him again, he is watching me even more closely than before.
He misses nothing.
“Unstable,” he says.
Not a question.
“No,” I reply.
A lie. A necessary one. His gaze sharpens slightly.
“Then explain.”
I consider it. Not the truth. Never that. Just enough so he can leave me alone.
“The forest changes things,” I say slowly. “Paths. Outcomes. What you think you see won’t always be what’s there.”
Another partial truth. Another piece placed exactly where I want it.
He is silent, calculating, and I can feel the weight of that attention pressing against every word I’ve given him, testing it, measuring it, searching for fracture points.
Finally, he nods once.
“Rest,” he says. “We leave at dusk.”
He turns to go. Then pauses at the door.
“Aeryn.”
I don’t answer immediately.
“Yes?”
“If you intend to mislead me,” he says without turning, “be very certain you understand the consequences.”
A warning. I almost smile, because he thinks the threat will make me more careful. He doesn’t realize, it will just make me better.
“I always do,” I reply.
He leaves without another word. The door closes and silence returns.
I sit there, unmoving, listening to the faint echo of his presence fading beyond the walls, feeling the remnants of the visions still shifting in my mind.
The forest will make it worse. I know that now. It will blur everything. Break the patterns I rely on. Turn certainty into contradiction. It should terrify me. It does, honestly, but beneath the fear, something else takes shape.
Something sharper. If the visions cannot be trusted. Then neither can the paths they create. Which means I am no longer bound to them. Which means I can choose. What to follow. What to ignore. What to change.
They think my power is a weakness. A liability. Something to control. They’re wrong. If the future fractures…Then so does everything built on it.
Including him.
Since they dragged me into that chamber, I feel something dangerously close to anticipation. I am not losing control. I am redefining it.