28. Vaedros
VAEDROS
Consciousness returns slowly this time, not as a clean break but as something heavy pulling me upward through pain that has already settled into place.
It sits deep along my side, steady and insistent, sharpening with each breath until it becomes impossible to ignore, and I let it anchor me before I open my eyes, letting the body speak first before I decide what to do with it.
The air is cool and still, carrying the scent of damp stone and faint smoke, and that alone tells me enough to understand I am no longer inside the ruin.
When I finally look, the rest confirms it.
Rough stone walls curve around me in uneven shapes, shadows shifting with the low burn of a small fire set a few feet away, contained carefully between arranged stones.
The ground beneath me has been cleared, flattened enough to keep my balance steady even in this state.
A cave.
I stay where I am for a moment longer, letting my breathing settle into something controlled before I move, because rushing this part would be inefficient.
My hand drifts to my side, pressing lightly against the bandage that holds the wound together, and I feel immediately how deep the damage runs beneath it.
The binding is tight, applied with enough pressure to slow the bleeding without cutting off movement entirely.
Not careless. Not rushed.
Aeryn.
I shift slightly, testing the edge of it, and the pain answers without hesitation, sharp enough to warn but not enough to stop me from thinking through it. The injury is severe, but not fatal. Not if managed correctly.
I push myself upright.
The motion is slow, deliberate, each movement measured before I commit to it, and for a while it works.
My weight settles, my balance holds, and I almost complete it before the strain tightens along my side and forces me to stop.
I hold there, steadying myself against the stone, then ease back down before the attempt becomes something less controlled.
Standing is possible. Remaining upright is not.
I lean back against the wall and turn my attention outward instead, letting stillness work in my favor while I listen. The sounds beyond the cave reach me faintly, carried across distance that strips them of detail but not structure. Movement. Organized. But no longer close.
The battle has shifted.
I don’t need to see it to understand what that means. The absence of immediate threat, the direction of sound, the time that has already passed, none of it supports the possibility of reengagement from this position. Whatever remains of the conflict is no longer here.
Which means the artifact is gone.
That settles quickly.
I close my eyes for a brief moment and run through it again, not searching for alternatives, only confirming what already aligns.
Xalith did not arrive late. He arrived when it mattered.
He let the ruin do the work for him. Let me do the work for him.
Then he stepped in at the point where control required division.
Velkiron entered at the same time. Multiple points. Clean execution. No hesitation. Planned.
The conclusion requires no adjustment.
He took it.
I open my eyes again and look toward the cave entrance, where the light has already begun to fade, softer now, angled low enough to suggest late afternoon moving toward evening. The fire beside me burns steadily, recently fed, its heat controlled and contained.
She is not here. Which means she left. Or she is close enough not to matter.
Neither possibility concerns me immediately, though both tell me what I need to know. She did not abandon this position entirely. The fire alone confirms that.
I shift forward again, testing my weight, pushing slightly further than before just to confirm the boundary instead of guessing it.
The answer comes immediately. Pain cuts through the movement before I can stabilize, sharp enough to disrupt balance, and I stop before it forces me into something less controlled.
I settle back again. I have to move soon.
The instinct remains. It always does. But instinct without the ability to act on it serves no purpose.
For now, I stay.
The next instinct follows naturally. I think about the artifact.
Where Xalith would go with it. Not back into open ground. Not somewhere obvious. He doesn’t protect power. He uses it. Which means he won’t wait.
Velkiron complicates that. If they moved together, even temporarily, then the next step won’t be simple retrieval. It will be conflict.
I map the possibilities anyway. Routes. Distances. Time lost since the chamber collapsed. What remains reachable, and what is already gone.
The plan begins to form. It always does.
It stretches forward from what I know, building itself from fragments that still hold structure even now. Xalith will not hide for long. That is not in his nature. Power in his hands is not something he guards in silence. He tests it. Pushes it. Forces it into the open until something breaks.
That creates a window. It also creates risk.
Velkiron’s involvement shifts that balance further. If they believe the artifact can be controlled, they will not leave it in his possession without challenge. If they believe it cannot, then their objective changes entirely. Either way, conflict follows.
I could use that.
Under different circumstances, I would already be moving. Positioning ahead of it. Cutting off routes before they fully form. Forcing both sides into a space where outcome can be shaped instead of reacted to.
Instead, I am here.
The distance between those two realities is small in theory. Absolute in practice.
I let the thought settle without resistance. There is no value in forcing it into something it cannot become yet.
My gaze drifts briefly to the cave entrance again, tracking the slow shift of light as it continues to fade, measuring time without needing to count it directly. Every moment that passes widens the gap between what was possible and what remains.
That, more than the injury, is the real limitation.
Not the wound.
Timing.
I adjust my position slightly against the stone, easing the strain along my side without fully shifting it, testing whether the pain has dulled or simply settled into something more manageable. It hasn’t.
I lean my head back against the stone and let the reality take shape without trying to correct it yet, because there is nothing to correct from this position. The mission has failed. The artifact is gone. My brother has it, and Velkiron was part of ensuring that outcome.
And Aeryn?—
I pause there, not because the conclusion is unclear, but because it requires a different kind of assessment.
She did not stay. She did not pursue him. She brought me here. That decision altered everything. Had she remained, there was a chance, uncertain, but present, that the artifact could have been contested. That path carried its own cost. It also carried mine.
She removed that variable.
Me.
I consider that without attaching anything unnecessary to it. It was not hesitation. It was not confusion. It was a choice made under pressure with limited time and incomplete information.
It changed the outcome.
That is what matters.
Footsteps interrupt the thought before it goes further, light against stone, controlled and familiar enough that I recognize it immediately.
I turn toward the entrance just as her silhouette appears against the fading light outside, her shape briefly outlined before she steps inside and the fire catches her fully.
Dust marks her clothing. Blood stains her sleeve. Her posture is steady, but the strain beneath it is there if you know where to look.
She stops when she sees me awake. Only for a moment.
Then she moves again, composed as ever. We look at each other across the small space, and for a few seconds neither of us speaks. Everything that happened in the ruin sits between us without needing to be said, the weight of it clear enough without explanation.
The artifact is gone. The mission failed. And we are still here.
“You’re awake,” she says.
“Yes.”
Her gaze shifts briefly to my side, assessing the bandage, then returns to my face. “You shouldn’t be trying to stand.”
“I’m not succeeding,” I reply.
There’s the faintest shift in her expression at that, something that almost resembles relief before it disappears again.
I am watching her, taking in the details I missed at first glance, the way she holds herself as though she hasn’t fully stepped out of the chaos yet, the tension still carried in her shoulders.
“You made a decision,” I say.
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “Yes.”
No explanation. No attempt to soften it.
The fire cracks softly between us, the only sound in the cave for a moment as the light continues to fade outside.
Finally, there is nothing immediate to control, nothing to direct, nothing to correct.
Only the result. I failed, and now I need to fix everything.