Page 13 of Trapped With My Dark Elf
I consider it. Not the truth. Never that. Just enough so he can leave me alone.
“The forest changes things,” I say slowly. “Paths. Outcomes. What you think you see won’t always be what’s there.”
Another partial truth. Another piece placed exactly where I want it.
He is silent, calculating, and I can feel the weight of that attention pressing against every word I’ve given him, testing it, measuring it, searching for fracture points.
Finally, he nods once.
“Rest,” he says. “We leave at dusk.”
He turns to go. Then pauses at the door.
“Aeryn.”
I don’t answer immediately.
“Yes?”
“If you intend to mislead me,” he says without turning, “be very certain you understand the consequences.”
A warning. I almost smile, because he thinks the threat will make me more careful. He doesn’t realize, it will just make me better.
“I always do,” I reply.
He leaves without another word. The door closes and silence returns.
I sit there, unmoving, listening to the faint echo of his presence fading beyond the walls, feeling the remnants of the visions still shifting in my mind.
The forest will make it worse. I know that now. It will blur everything. Break the patterns I rely on. Turn certainty into contradiction. It should terrify me. It does, honestly, but beneath the fear, something else takes shape.
Something sharper. If the visions cannot be trusted. Then neither can the paths they create. Which means I am no longer bound to them. Which means I can choose. What to follow. What to ignore. What to change.
They think my power is a weakness. A liability. Something to control. They’re wrong. If the future fractures…Then so does everything built on it.
Including him.
Since they dragged me into that chamber, I feel something dangerously close to anticipation. I am not losing control. I am redefining it.
4
VAEDROS
Morning in the ancestral stronghold never arrives gently, because this place does not permit softness in any form. The first light that filters through the narrow slits carved high into the obsidian walls enters not as warmth but as a thin metallic wash that turns every surface colder, sharper, more severe, as though even dawn has been trained to obey the temperament of House Drazharel.
I stand alone in my private armory while servants wait outside the threshold for permission to breathe too loudly, reviewing the equipment arranged across the black stone table with the same care I would grant a battlefield map, because preparation is rarely about objects and almost always about limiting variables before they become problems.
A heavy escort would be interpreted as strength by men who mistake noise for power, but in truth it would create delay, invite divided loyalties, and multiply the number of witnesses available to misread or interfere with every decision I make, so I dismiss the first list of names without bothering to look twice at it. Too ambitious. Too eager. Too likely to imagine my absence from the center of the board as an opportunity for theirown advancement. The second list fares no better. Competent soldiers become liabilities when competence convinces them they deserve opinions. By the time the steward returns for a third attempt, I have already decided what I knew before the exercise began.
No escort.
No advisors.
No unnecessary hands.
If the seer proves useful, additional bodies will only restrict movement. If she proves dangerous, additional bodies will only give her more minds to influence, more mistakes to exploit, more confusion to hide within. People complicate what precision can solve alone. I choose two pack beasts, supplies for changing terrain, compact weapons rather than ceremonial ones, a field tent, healing tinctures, and a set of travel clothes dark enough to disappear beneath trees that have never welcomed visitors. The rest remains where it belongs, in rooms built for men who need display to feel important.
I fasten the clasp at my throat and study my reflection in the polished steel mirror mounted beside the weapons rack. Dark black hair, arranged as it always is, severe enough to imply discipline, effortless enough to imply that discipline costs me nothing. Silver runes winding over my forearms beneath fitted sleeves. Eyes that reveal only what I decide they reveal. Appearances are not vanity. They are architecture. People step differently inside structures they do not understand.
