21. Aeryn
AERYN
The memory of his mouth does not fade the way it should.
It lingers in the quiet spaces between thought, returning at the most inconvenient moments, not as something sharp or overwhelming, but as something steady, persistent, woven into my awareness that refuses to be dismissed as easily as everything else I have learned to suppress.
I tell myself it is distraction, that it is no different from any other lapse in judgment brought on by exhaustion, by proximity, by the constant pressure of surviving beside someone I should never have allowed this close.
That explanation would be easier. It would also be a lie.
The forest moves around us in long stretches of travel that blur into one another, days passing without clear division, marked only by the gradual shift in terrain and the slow deepening of something between us that neither of us acknowledges directly.
We do not speak about what happened. We do not need to.
It exists in smaller things now, in the way our shoulders brush when the path narrows, in the way his hand finds my elbow when the ground turns uneven and lingers half a second longer than necessary, in the quiet awareness of each other that has become constant rather than calculated.
I let it exist. Carefully. Without naming it. Because naming it would require trust. And trust is still a variable I have not solved.
So I test something else instead, because I owe him the benefit of the doubt. I want to trust him.
The visions come as they always do, uninvited, unpredictable, pressing against my thoughts with that familiar insistence, but I no longer surrender to them blindly.
I begin to separate them, to hold them at a distance long enough to examine their shape before I act on them, searching for the subtle differences I have started to recognize, the unnatural clarity, the imposed urgency, the way certain outcomes feel forced rather than discovered.
It begins small.
A shift in the ground ahead. A minor collapse along a narrow stretch of path that would force us to detour, costing time, nothing more. The vision presents itself sharply, too sharply, every detail aligned with the expectation that I will intervene.
I do not. I keep walking.
Vaedros follows without question. The ground holds. Nothing changes.
I do not react outwardly, but the confirmation settles inside me with quiet precision, another piece aligning with what I am beginning to understand.
Not every vision belongs to me. That realization should terrify me. Instead, it steadies something. Now I know that every vision of him betraying me is different from the others. Somehow it feels forced and it's always accompanied by that presence…Should I tell him about it?
Over the next few days, I continue. I test what I can without risking anything that would matter beyond inconvenience, withholding small warnings, adjusting direction by degrees rather than declarations, watching how the world responds when I choose not to act on what I see.
Patterns emerge. The imposed visions push toward immediate action, toward interference, toward decisions made without time to question them. The organic ones allow space, unfolding without pressure, existing whether I act or not.
I begin to categorize them as they arrive, marking the difference instinctively, storing each confirmation until it becomes something closer to certainty.
Vaedros notices.
“You’re changing your approach,” he says one evening as we move through a stretch of forest where the light fades earlier than it should, the canopy thick enough to turn the air cool and dim.
“I’m refining it,” I reply, keeping my voice steady, though the words carry more weight than I intend.
Vaedros studies me more closely now, his attention sharpening that suggests he is no longer observing surface behavior alone, but tracing the structure beneath it, following the patterns I have only just begun to recognize myself, and I expect him to press further, to demand explanation, to pull at the threads until something gives. He doesn’t.
He lets the silence hold instead, controlled, deliberate, leaving the space open rather than filling it, and that choice unsettles me more than pressure would have, because it removes the need to resist and replaces it with something far more dangerous.
The option to speak. He doesn’t need to ask. Whatever he sees is enough. That, more than anything, shifts something in me. Because he is not taking the information. He is waiting for it. Trust does not form through what is forced. It forms through what is withheld and still respected.
The realization settles uneasily, pressing against instincts that have kept me alive far longer than trust ever could, and I consider leaving it there, letting the silence remain intact, letting the structure between us stay exactly as it is.
Instead, I hear myself speak.
“There’s something else,” I say, the words quieter now.
His attention sharpens immediately, not outwardly, not in any way that would be obvious to anyone else, but I feel it in the stillness that follows, how his focus narrows without shifting position.
“When I see certain outcomes,” I continue, choosing each word carefully, measuring how much to reveal without understanding fully what I am describing, “they don’t feel the same as the others.”
A pause follows, brief but deliberate.
“In what way.”
“They feel… directed,” I say, the word settling with quiet resistance, because it is the closest I can come to something I cannot fully define. “Like something is pushing them into place before they happen.”
He doesn’t interrupt. So I keep going.
“And it’s always the same kind of outcome,” I add, my gaze shifting briefly away from him before returning, because saying it while holding his eyes feels like stepping into something I cannot take back. “The same version of you.”
That gets a reaction. His posture stills that is too precise to be natural, his attention locking onto mine with a focus that feels sharper than before, not aggressive, not confrontational, but intent that this matters more than anything I have said up to this point.
“What version,” he asks.
I hesitate.
“The one where you…” I stop briefly, recalibrating, choosing not to soften it because he wouldn’t believe it if I did. “Where you take everything from me. Every vision. Until there’s nothing left. And then you decide I’m no longer useful.”
The words are heavier than I expect, shaped not just by what I have seen but by the way those visions feel when they come, too sharp, too certain, too final.
“And those are the ones that feel… different,” I finish quietly. “Like there is some presence behind it. Not showing me the future. Choosing which future I see.”
For a moment, he says nothing. But the silence is not empty. Something tightens beneath it, subtle but unmistakable, and I feel it in how his gaze holds mine a fraction longer than necessary.
I study him more closely now, searching for something beyond the surface, for confirmation or contradiction, for any indication that what I’m sensing in those visions comes from him.
I don’t find it. That I find instead is something else. Recognition of the pattern. Not recognition of guilt. Recognition of a method: pressure applied through fear, using prophecy as the opening. That realization settles into place slowly, reshaping the way I interpret what I’ve been seeing.
So I shift my focus. Back to the work. Because whatever is influencing those visions…he might know it And that changes everything.
The forest ahead opens into something unnatural, a break in the landscape where growth gives way to structure, where stone emerges through layers of decay, rising in fractured lines that still hold intention despite time’s attempt to erase it, and the shape resolves slowly into something deliberate, something that was never meant to belong to the wilderness now consuming it.
The artifact is there.
Close.
I can feel it. I don’t understand how, a pull that is not counting on sight alone, something deeper aligning with the same part of me that the visions occupy, as though recognition exists on a level I cannot name.
Then the vision deepens.
Fire follows.
It spreads outward from the structure in violent, uncontrolled waves, devouring everything in its reach, the forest itself bending under the force of it, recoiling as though it recognizes something fundamentally wrong in what has been unleashed, and within that destruction I see movement, figures cutting through the chaos with purpose rather than fear, their presence defined not by form but by power.
I know what they are. I know who they belong to.
House Drazharel.
The realization settles with cold precision, not as surprise but as confirmation of something I have been unwilling to fully accept, and as the vision sharpens further, building toward an outcome that presses too close to certainty, I feel it again, that subtle pressure that suggests direction rather than discovery, and I hesitate not because I fear what I am seeing, but because I understand what it might become.
The outcome builds toward something worse. Something final. Something I am not ready to name.
I stop it.
Force it closed before it completes, cutting it off with deliberate resistance, refusing to let it settle into something fixed, something inevitable, and the abrupt absence leaves my breath unsteady, sharp enough that I feel Vaedros’s attention shift toward me immediately.
“You saw something,” he says.
I do not answer right away. Because the truth is no longer simple. Because what I saw is no longer just a warning. It is a possibility that reshapes everything.
“A structure,” I say at last, keeping my voice controlled despite the tension still settling through me. “Stone. Old.”
His gaze remains on me, steady, searching.
“And.”
“It’s close,” I add. “We’re almost there.”
I give him only the part that moves us forward. Nothing about the fire. Nothing about the destruction. Nothing about the way his presence stood at the middle of it.
He is thinking and being silent for longer than necessary, as though measuring the edges of what I am withholding, but whatever he finds there is not enough to challenge, not enough to force the issue.
He nods once. We adjust course.
As we move, the forest begins to change in response to our direction, the density thinning unevenly, the air cooling as though drawn toward something that exists beyond the natural order surrounding it, and I let my focus shift away from the vision and into something far more immediate.
Understanding. Because what unsettles me is not the destruction itself. It is the connection.
The way the outcome ties directly to him, to his House, to the purpose that brought us here in the first place, and the realization forms slowly but with increasing clarity as I walk beside him, watching the way his attention sharpens the closer we get, the way his presence aligns toward the structure ahead.
He will take it. That is not in question. And if the vision holds any truth at all…Then whatever follows will not leave him unchanged.
That is where the fear settles. Not in what he might do to me. In what this might turn him into. I do not know if the vision was altered. I do not know if it was real. But I know enough to understand that I cannot allow that outcome to unfold without question.
So I make a decision. I will guide him to it.
I will not stop that part. Because I need to see it.
Because I need to understand it. But I will not let him claim it without knowing what it does, without knowing what it costs, without being certain that the version of him I saw is not the result of something he does not yet realize he is becoming.
Even if it means standing in his way. Even if it means turning against him.
The thought settles heavier than I expect, because of the recognition beneath it, the quiet, unwelcome truth that my hesitation is no longer driven by survival alone.
It is driven by him.
I shift my focus again, forcing it outward, mapping the structure as it begins to take clearer shape through the trees, tracing possible entry points, noting where the walls have collapsed, where the terrain narrows.
I do not rely on vision for this. I rely on observation. On preparation. On the understanding that when the moment comes, I may not have time to hesitate.
We approach closer to the ruins together, the forest falling away into a silence that feels older than the land itself, the air heavier, cooler, carrying the weight of something that has been waiting far longer than we have been searching for it.
Vaedros steps forward without hesitation. I move beside him. But this time, I am not following him into what comes next. I am preparing for the moment I might have to stop him.