13. Aeryn
AERYN
The white grove thins behind us, its pale trunks fading into the layered green of deeper growth, yet the tension from that halted moment remains braided through every step that follows.
I feel it in the measured distance Vaedros keeps at my side, close enough to seize, far enough to deny wanting to.
I feel it in the silence he carries now, sharpened and watchful, stripped of the lighter edge our exchanges had acquired over recent days.
I feel it most of all in myself, in the treacherous pull that still exists beneath caution, the part of me that has begun wanting to believe him precisely when belief has become most dangerous.
The forest gives no comfort to divided minds. Roots thrust through the ground like knuckled fists. Vines hang in curtains heavy with rainwater that falls in sudden cold drops when brushed. The air is warm beneath the canopy yet threaded with pockets of chill that slide over skin like passing hands.
Somewhere high above, unseen creatures trade harsh calls that resemble laughter. Every scent arrives layered, wet bark, bruised fern, old decay, flowering sweetness, the faint mineral sting of stone split open somewhere nearby. Paths present themselves and then seem to reconsider.
My head begins to ache before the vision takes me.
I know the signs now with intimate dread: pressure building behind the eyes, the sense that sound is receding while colors sharpen too much, my pulse turning strange and distant inside my own body.
I slow without meaning to. Vaedros notices immediately.
“You’re fading again.”
“Your concern grows theatrical.”
“I dislike surprises that bleed.”
I almost answer. Then the world vanishes.
The vision seizes me whole.
I am on my back against black stone slick with moisture.
My wrists are pinned above my head beneath one of Vaedros’s hands.
The pressure is absolute. His weight holds my hips to the ground with merciless precision.
Blue fire burns in sconces along curved walls I do not recognize, filling the chamber with cold light that turns his skin to polished shadow and silver runes to living flame.
Blood runs warm from my nose into my hairline.
I can smell iron, smoke, and the resin scent that belongs to him.
“Give me the rest,” he says.
His voice is low, calm, patient in the way a blade can be patient.
“I have nothing left.”
“You always have something left.”
Pain tears through my skull as visions are dragged from me one after another, each ripped free before it can form.
I scream. He does not look away. There is grief in his face or a perfect imitation of it.
When the last thread is gone and emptiness hollows me clean, he brushes hair from my mouth with unbearable tenderness.
Then his other hand closes around my throat. I feel each finger. I feel air fail. I feel the exact moment my body begins to lose the argument. I wrench back into the forest gasping.
Leaves, trees, daylight, mud.
My knees buckle. Vaedros catches my arm before I hit the ground, and I recoil so violently he releases me at once.
Blood spills hot over my lip.
“Aeryn.”
He reaches again.
“Don’t.”
The word comes out rough and frightened enough to humiliate me. He is going to kill me…
He stops, dark blue eyes narrowing not with cruelty but confusion. The distinction should matter. It does not. My body still remembers the pressure of his hand around my throat, though the hand before me has not touched skin.
“What is it?” he asks.
Nothing I can survive telling you.
“Wrong footing,” I say, wiping blood with my sleeve. “We need to turn south.”
We have been trending east for the last hour. South leads toward lower ground where the forest smells of clay and hidden water. I know it is poor terrain. I choose it anyway.
Fear makes poor strategist and persuasive commander. He analyzed me for too long.
“You changed direction quickly.”
“So did the future.”
He should challenge harder. He should refuse. Instead he gestures with controlled irritation.
“Lead, then.”
We descend through a tangle of alder and hanging moss into land grown soft under constant seepage.
The soil darkens. Every step releases the scent of saturated earth and roots rotting beneath the surface.
Gnats rise in silver swarms when disturbed.
The trees lean outward from a central depression filled with reeds and low fog.
Water glimmers intermittently under mats of vegetation.
Vaedros’s pace shortens.
“You brought us into a basin.”
“You say that as though geography is personal.”
“You’re trembling.”
I had not noticed until he says it. The vision still clings under my skin. Every time he moves into the edge of my sight, blue fire flickers behind my eyes.
“We cross and climb out,” I say.
“Or we circle.”
“We lose hours.”
“We keep breathing.”
Anger sparks because he is being reasonable when I need him to be wrong.
“Then go back,” I snap. “I’m not chained to you.”
His expression hardens. “Ye, you are. We had a deal. Stop pretending you don’t have benefit from it.”
I step forward before thought can intervene.
The ground opens.
A wet crack runs through the basin floor as the mat of roots beneath my boots tears apart. Mud slumps inward. Water surges black through the split. My right leg plunges thigh-deep into sucking cold, and the collapsing edge drags me forward toward a deeper sink hidden under reeds.
Vaedros moves before I can scream.
He catches my coat with one hand and a low branch with the other, body dropping to brace against the slide. Mud shears beneath both of us. His boots carve trenches trying to hold. I claw at reeds that rip free in my fists.
“Stop fighting me,” he says through clenched teeth. “Give me your hand.”
The command detonates against the memory of the vision. His hand pinning my wrists. His hand taking everything.
I freeze.
The basin drags harder. Water fills one boot. Cold bites bone.
“Aeryn!”
Reality and prophecy tear at each other inside me. If I trust him, I die. If I refuse him, I die here in mud like an idiot.
I thrust my hand upward.
His grip closes around my wrist, strong and burning-hot against the freezing mire. He hauls once, muscles locking through shoulders and back, then shifts his stance and drags me across the collapsing edge in brutal increments until we both roll onto firmer ground several feet away.
I lie on wet leaves choking on breath. He kneels beside me covered in mud to the thigh, chest rising hard, one palm still clamped around my wrist as if letting go might return me to the sink.
“What in the name of every dead god was that?”
His voice cuts sharper than I have ever heard it.
I yank free and push upright. “The ground gave way.”
“You led us here.”
“I didn’t tear the earth open. My visions are not always there to tell me absolutely everything.”
“You ignored every sign of saturation.”
“You followed me.”
His laugh holds no amusement. “An excellent defense. Shall I add it to the records when your decisions bury us?”
The basin continues collapsing in slow gulps behind us, swallowing reeds and fog in widening circles.
I stand, swaying slightly. “You wanted trust.”
“I wanted competence.”
The words strike harder than they should. Because some part of me has wanted his approval. Because some part of me has begun measuring myself against his regard. Because some part of me is furious that this matters.
I turn away first.
“Fine. Lead yourself.”
I take three steps uphill before his hand closes around my belt and drags me backward against him with efficient force.
“You’re staying where I can see you.”
“Release me.”
“No.”
I twist, elbowing for space. He catches my forearm, pivots, and pins me between his body and the trunk of a cedar slick with rain. The hold is practical. My pulse does not understand practicality.
“Listen carefully,” he says, face inches from mine, mud streaked across his jaw, hair finally ruined by weather and effort. “You are frightened of something you refuse to name. You are sabotaging terrain. You are becoming dangerous in ways even you do not control.”
“You think this is about control because everything is about control to you.”
“I think this is about survival.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Both.”
For one suspended instant we are too close to breathe properly, his body caging mine, heat pouring from him into the damp air, my hands braced against his chest where I can sense the violence of his heartbeat matching my own.
Then he steps back. The loss of contact feels like another kind of fall.
“We move together,” he says, voice roughened into something quieter. “You do not leave my reach again.”
I should refuse.
Instead I wipe mud from my face and nod once because the basin still groans behind us and because I no longer trust my own instincts cleanly enough to stand on principle.
We climb out by a narrower route along exposed roots.
He keeps one hand on my arm at steep descents and does not pretend it is optional.
I do not pretend I fail to notice every time his grip tightens before loose footing, every time he positions himself downhill to catch my weight if needed, every time he scans the trees before releasing me.
My interference costs us almost the whole afternoon. We backtrack twice. We avoid one ravine only to meet another. Rain begins and ends without warning. By dusk we have covered little ground and spent too much energy doing it.
Failure accumulates quietly. So does desire to run.
While Vaedros builds a small fire beneath a rock shelf, I study the dark around us and begin mapping exits.
The stream behind camp could mask sound for several minutes if followed upstream.
The slope to the west offers thicker cover though poor footing.
The trees eastward stand wider apart, faster travel with greater exposure.
His habit after dark is to sit facing the main approach.
I gather every route the way others gather prayers.
Yet when he hands me a cup of hot broth without comment, when his thumb brushes mud from my wrist where the sink pulled hardest, when he takes the outer edge of the shelter so wind reaches him first, escape feels less simple than it should.
I hate that the new visions have made him dangerous to trust. I hate more that I still want to.