6. Vaedros
VAEDROS
The creature dies badly, which is the only mercy I extend it.
It comes low through the undergrowth with the speed of something built to kill before being seen, all tendon and hooked bone beneath slick hide the color of wet bark, jaws opening wider than anatomy should permit as it launches for my throat, and instinct takes over before thought can become language.
Steel clears leather in one smooth motion. I pivot rather than retreat, letting its momentum carry it past the line of my body while my blade enters beneath the forelimb and rips upward through softer tissue hidden behind the plated ribs. Heat spills across my hand.
The smell arrives a heartbeat later—rot, stagnant water, and a sweetness so spoiled it turns the stomach.
It thrashes, claws gouging bark from the nearest tree, hind limbs striking wild arcs through fern and leaf mold, and one hooked talon catches my side hard enough to slice through cloak and skin before I drive the dagger from my left hand into the hinge of its jaw and wrench until something vital gives way.
Then there is only the forest breathing around us. The corpse twitches twice, settles, and begins to look like it belongs to the ground more than it ever belonged to life.
Pain burns along my ribs where the claw opened me. Blood warms the fabric at my side in a slow spreading line. I wipe the longer blade clean on the creature’s hide and sheath it before turning.
Aeryn stands several paces back, pale in the green gloom, eyes fixed not on the dead thing, but on me.
“You knew something was here,” I say.
“I knew many things were possible.”
“Convenient.”
“True.”
That is the difficulty with her. She avoids falsehood by building homes inside ambiguity and inviting me to chase her there.
I kneel beside the packs and retrieve a bandage roll, salve, needle, thread. The wound does not merit stitching unless I intend to scar dramatically for effect, and while I appreciate theatre, I dislike wasting supplies on it.
She steps closer. “Let me see.”
“I wasn’t aware permission had been granted.”
“You can continue bleeding while being clever, if you prefer.”
I hand her the salve. I don’t need help, but proximity under pressure reveals more than interrogation in comfort ever will.
She crouches beside me. The forest floor is damp beneath our knees, fragrant with crushed pine needles and dark soil. Somewhere above, unseen wings disturb leaves in short nervous bursts. The dying light turns her hair almost luminous where it slips forward over one shoulder.
She parts the torn fabric at my side with careful fingers, and even that measured touch sends a bright thread of sensation through muscle already tightened from combat.
“This is shallow,” she says.
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’m evaluating whether the forest is losing standards.”
She cleans the blood first with water from the skin, slow and precise despite the tremor she tries to hide in her hand.
Vision strain still lingers in her; I can recognize it in the faint shadows beneath her eyes, in the extra beat she takes before each breath settles fully.
She smells of cedar bark, cold air, and the metallic trace of earlier blood she failed to wash entirely from her sleeve.
“You watched instead of warning me,” I say.
She does not look up. “You survived.”
“That answer is aging poorly.”
“And yet you keep returning to it.”
The salve bites cold when she spreads it across the cut. I do not flinch. She notices that too.
“You dislike losing control,” she murmurs.
“I dislike preventable inefficiency.”
“Call it whatever comforts you.”
I catch her wrist before she can pull away for the bandage. Her pulse jumps once against my fingers.
“Do you enjoy provoking me,” I ask, “or do you simply lack preservation instincts?”
Her gaze lifts to mine, clear and unsoftened despite the closeness. “Do you enjoy asking questions with answers already attached?”
For a moment the wound, the creature, the forest itself receded behind the sharper awareness of her kneeling between my knees with one hand trapped in mine and the other braced against my thigh for balance.
Dangerous arrangements should be avoided.
Instead I release her slowly enough to make the choice visible.
“Continue,” I say.
She binds the wound tighter than necessary. I almost admire it.
By the time night settles fully, we have made camp in a narrow crescent of stone where three boulders break the wind and force approach from only two sides.
Fire remains small by design, fed with dry wood that smokes little and burns hot.
The beasts are tethered within sight. Supper consists of hard bread softened in broth and strips of salted meat improved only by hunger.
The forest beyond the firelight murmurs constantly, distant clicks, wet rustles, branch creaks that resemble footsteps until listened to properly.
Aeryn sits opposite me, knees drawn slightly upward, cup warming her hands. She has regained enough color to look dangerous again.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” she says.
“Then you should be grateful I keep the thoughts to myself.”
“I doubt that would improve them.”
There it is again, that precise insolence sharpened to invitation.
I set my cup aside. “Tomorrow we reach a split in the ridge trail. One route descends toward water. One climbs into exposed stone. Which takes us nearer the forest’s interior?”
She sips before answering, buying time while pretending not to.
“Water is faster.”
“Not what I asked.”
“Then ask what you mean.”
I smile despite myself. “Which route would you choose?”
“Depends who I’m traveling with.”
“You’re with me.”
“Exactly why the answer changes.”
She offers no direction, only the shape of one. Deflection disguised as wit. Effective enough to be worth studying.
Later, when she sleeps, or performs a convincing imitation of it, I rise and build the test.
Two lines of ash are drawn beyond camp, one leading left between birch trunks, one right through ferns.
In the dark, both appear recently marked.
In truth, the left path ends in a deadfall I inspected earlier.
The right path leads safely to the ridge trail.
At dawn I will ask which route she foresaw.
If she chooses left, she guesses. If she chooses right, she knows more than she admits.
If she refuses, that too becomes information. Elegant and simple.
I return to my bedroll almost pleased. Morning arrives silver and cold. Mist hangs low among the trees, turning distance into suggestion. Aeryn wakes already watching me, which means she was never asleep as early as she pretended.
“You snore strategically,” she says.
“I was baiting lesser predators.”
“How reassuring.”
I lead her beyond the stones to where the ash lines wait untouched.
“I found signs of movement in the night,” I say. “Two possible routes. Choose.”
Her eyes travel from one line to the other, then to my face, then back again. She crouches near the left mark, not touching it, merely observing.
“Why ash?” she asks.
“To track disturbance.”
“To track me, more likely.”
“Should I be insulted that you think so little of my broader intentions?”
“You should be concerned I think so accurately of the narrow ones.”
She rises and walks not to either path, but several paces beyond them to a patch of moss-covered stone.
Then she points upward. I follow her gesture. A snapped branch hangs above the left route, held by fibers ready to fall if brushed. Beneath the right, half-hidden in fern, lies the drag mark of something heavy pulled recently across the soil.
Neither path is clean. Except I know the right path was clean when I marked it. Which means something moved through camp after I slept. She turns back to me, expression almost innocent.
“You asked me to choose. I choose neither.”
I look again at the disturbed earth, recalculating the entire night.
“You altered the right path.”
“No.”
“You expect me to believe coincidence favored your argument.”
“I expect you to notice you asked the wrong question again.”
I step closer. “Did you go out after I fall asleep?"
“Did you?”
The answer arrives at once and annoyingly: yes, she circumvented the test not by solving it, but by refusing its frame entirely. Whether she altered the trail herself, noticed fresh movement before I did, or simply recognized the trap and made a third option, the result remains the same.
She won.
Most people become less appealing once they prove troublesome. With Aeryn, the opposite occurs. Difficulty sharpens interest. Resistance creates contour where obedience would flatten everything into utility.
I should dislike that realization.
Instead I find myself wanting to know what she will do next.
We break camp in near silence, though it is the charged kind rather than the empty kind. I secure the packs while she checks the beasts for burrs and hidden cuts with unexpected gentleness. When we resume the trail, I do not order pace or direction immediately.
She notices.
“You’re adapting,” she says.
“I’m gathering evidence.”
“Is that what you call fascination?”
I grab the lead rope and begin walking. “Careful, Aeryn. Vanity is most dangerous when fed too early.”
She falls into step beside me, close enough that our shoulders nearly brush when the trail narrows between stones slick with morning dew.
“And denial,” she says softly, “is most obvious when elegantly phrased.”
The forest deepens ahead, layered in shadow and possibility. Behind us lies the test she ruined. Beside me walks the first person in years who makes failure instructive.
That may become a problem. I continue forward anyway.