12. Vaedros
VAEDROS
The hollow of mist gives way to rising ground before noon, and with every step upward the forest resumes its habit of rearranging certainty into inconvenience.
Trunks crowd closer, then spread without reason.
Moss glows on one side of stones and then, several paces later, on the opposite side as though direction itself has grown bored.
Water can be heard to our left for nearly an hour without ever becoming visible. The air carries cedar, wet bark, and the faint metallic tang that often precedes one of Aeryn’s episodes, though today another scent threads beneath it, wariness sharpened into resolve.
She changed after the last vision.
The alteration is subtle enough that a careless observer would call it fatigue.
I am not careless. She now chooses pauses a fraction earlier when I near her blind side.
She answers with truths trimmed thinner than before.
Her gaze lands on my hands more often than my face, then leaves quickly, as if touch itself has become part of some equation she dislikes.
Whatever she saw in that singular vision remains between her ribs like concealed steel.
I dislike concealed steel when pointed in my direction.
We reach a shelf of dark stone overlooking a shallow basin choked with pale reeds. Wind moves across the basin in visible lines, flattening one patch after another. The movement reveals no animals, no water source, no obvious route forward. Yet something in the timing feels wrong.
I stop. Aeryn takes two more steps before noticing the silence behind her. She turns, hair lifting in the breeze, eyes bright and guarded.
“Why are we halting?”
“Because your last three directions share a flaw.”
“How flattering. I have patterns now.”
“You always had patterns. You merely preferred believing they were invisible.”
I crouch and study the basin. Reeds bend in alternating waves that break around a central strip left strangely untouched. Beneath the wind’s rhythm lies another pulse, slower, regular, mechanical enough to offend the landscape.
“You guided us here quickly,” I continue. “Too quickly for someone uncertain.”
“Perhaps I’m improving.”
“Perhaps you’re compensating.”
Her jaw shifts almost imperceptibly.
There.
I rise. “Immediate answer. Hazard ahead.”
She glances toward the basin, then to me. “You’ve become fond of dramatic phrasing.”
“Hazard,” I repeat. “Now.”
No time for theatre. No time to curate omissions. Pressure reveals the seam between instinct and strategy. Her eyes narrow. She looks once across the reeds.
“Loose ground,” she says. “The left side sinks first. But we are getting closer to the artifact. So you should be happy.”
Observable evidence suggests otherwise. The left side bears scrub growth heavy enough to imply firmer soil. The untouched strip in the center interests me far more.
I nod as though convinced and begin descending directly toward the central route. She does not move. Then she follows. No correction. No protest. No warning sharpened by urgency. Useful.
Halfway down the slope the air cools abruptly. Mud darkens beneath my boots. Reeds hiss against my legs. I keep pace, senses wide, waiting for the moment she decides silence costs too much.
It arrives three steps before danger.
“Stop.”
The word cuts through the wind cleanly. I halt on instinct. The ground ahead shivers once, then collapses inward with a wet gulp, exposing black water beneath a crust of woven roots thin as paper. The sink pocket widens where my next step would have landed, swallowing reeds in a circling drag.
Behind me, Aeryn breathes hard.
“You waited,” I say without turning.
“You’re welcome.”
I face her. Color has drained from her cheeks. Blood pearls beneath one nostril, either from effort or the strain of whatever she used to judge the basin. She wipes it away too quickly.
“You knew the center was unstable.”
“I knew enough and you are unharmed.”
“And still you let me walk to the edge.”
“I told you to stop.”
“Late.”
“Effective. You are being picky.”
The basin wind moves between us carrying water rot and the green scent of crushed reeds.
She holds my gaze with that maddening mixture of defiance and exhaustion.
Confirmed again. She is choosing when to act, but now it is different.
It's more like she is scared than she is just trying to prove a point.
I step back onto firmer stone and circle around her, close enough that the sleeve of my coat brushes her arm. Her pulse jumps visibly at the base of her throat. Mine answers in a manner I choose to ignore.
“From this point forward,” I say, “you remain within reach.”
She laughs once, sharp as flint. “That sounds suspiciously like kidnapping.”
“That happened days ago. This is adaptation.”
“I prefer more scenic forms of imprisonment.”
“You continue to receive excellent views.”
I get the lead rope from the nearer beast and hand it to her, shortening the line so she must walk beside me rather than ahead or behind. Practical. Efficient. Entirely unrelated to the awareness sparked whenever distance narrows between us.
Her fingers brush mine taking the rope. A mistake. The contact is brief and far too noticeable. She feels it too; the pulse at her throat betrays her before expression recovers.
“Your methods grow clingy again,” she says.
“Your evasions grow repetitive.”
We move on through the basin’s safer edge, our shoulders occasionally touching where reeds crowd the path.
Each accidental contact lands with disproportionate force.
I tell myself the body misreads tension as heat.
I tell myself many useful things. The stronger question presses elsewhere. Why the distrust now?
She has resisted from the beginning, yet this new caution carries a sharper personal edge, as though some unseen accusation has been entered into evidence without my knowledge. I review every recent exchange and find no answer I trust.
The trail beyond the basin climbs into a grove of white-trunked trees whose bark peels in thin translucent curls. Light filters through high leaves in soft green sheets. The place should feel peaceful. Instead the silence resembles attention.
“You’ve changed your angle,” I say after a time.
“So have you.”
“I’m asking first.”
She tugs lightly on the rope between us, reminding me she holds one end. “You’ve stopped trying to command outcomes.”
“Observation.”
“You’re trying to understand me.”
The statement lands too close to truth.
“And you,” I reply, “have begun reacting to crimes I have not yet committed.”
Her steps falter.
Not exactly proof, but contour.
She recovers instantly. “You overestimate your importance in my internal life.”
“I estimate very little. I measure.”
“Then measure this.” She lifts our joined rope hand slightly. “I dislike being managed.”
I step nearer until there is nowhere for the line to tighten further.
“I’d prefer trust.”
The words leave before strategy approves them. She searches my face with open suspicion, as though sincerity is the least believable thing I could offer.
“You don’t know what to do with trust,” she says quietly.
The answer should irritate me. Instead it wounds in a place I did not realize remained exposed.
We stop beside a fallen trunk to eat dried fruit and hard cheese.
While she drinks, I study the path ahead where a cluster of vine-laced stones creates a narrow choke point ideal for simple mechanisms. The forest builds traps of its own, yet old mortal habits appear here too, snare loops, weighted branches, sharpened stakes hidden under leaf cover.
Someone else has crossed this region within the last season.
I decide to test timing.
While repacking the gear, I palm a small iron hook and thin cord from my kit.
When Aeryn turns to rinse the cup at a nearby seep, I move ahead ten paces and rig the cord low across the narrowest part of the path, attached to a dead branch poised to swing down harmlessly if tripped.
Loud enough to startle. Light enough to bruise pride more than flesh.
Controlled scenario.
I resume my place beside her as though nothing has changed. We set off.
She grows quieter approaching the choke point. Her thumb presses once to the inside of her wrist. Vision incoming, perhaps. Or memory. Or simple intuition sharpened by survival.
Five paces.
Four.
Three.
Her breathing changes.
Two.
“Vaedros—”
I step through. The cord snaps taut. Branches whip downward with a crack of leaves and bark. I catch the main limb on my forearm before it strikes, then let it bounce harmlessly aside.
She had time to warn earlier. She chose the final instant again. Her eyes flash with anger when she realizes I expected it.
“You did that.”
“I suspected someone had.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Frequently.”
She jerks the rope from my hand and starts past me. I catch the line before she gains distance, drawing her back one sharp step. She collides against my chest, palms landing on my coat for balance.
Everything stills. The white grove, the filtered light, the branch settling behind us.
Her face is inches from mine. I am feeling the quick rhythm of her breath, see the tiny flecks of gold shifting through pale irises, smell rain-washed skin and the mint oil from earlier headaches lingering faintly at her temples.
My own pulse answers with inconvenient force.
“Release me,” she says, voice low.
“Warn me sooner.”
“Stop engineering reasons to hold on.”
There is no safe reply to that.
“I wish you could trust me. I don’t plan to harm you,” I say, because if I want trust, maybe I have to be honest.
I loosen the rope slowly. She steps back just as slowly, one hand remaining against my chest for a fraction longer than balance requires.
Then it is gone.
We continue through the white grove with greater distance in our bodies and none in the air between them. The mission remains ahead somewhere beneath roots and stone, yet every calculation now bends around a truth I can no longer dismiss.
Understanding her has become more urgent than reaching the artifact. And wanting her trust may be the most dangerous shift of all.