“You were bleeding into a cave floor a couple of days ago.”
“And yet here I am.”
I glance at him again. “Gods, you’re arrogant.”
“Yes,” he replies calmly. “You like that about me.”
Heat rises unexpectedly beneath my skin, which only annoys me because he notices immediately.
“There it is,” he murmurs.
“I regret speaking.”
“No, you don’t.”
Unfortunately true.
“What happens after this?” I ask eventually.
Vaedros turns toward me fully then, the humor fading from his expression. “After the war?”
“Yes.”
“You think we survive it?”
“I saw enough to ask the question.”
That answer holds him quiet for a moment.
Then, “I stay.”
The simplicity of it catches me off guard more effectively than any elaborate promise could have.
“With Zethon?” I ask.
“With you.”
No politics wrapped around his answer. No strategy hidden beneath the surface.
I study him carefully anyway. Habit. Survival. “Even if this falls apart?”
“Yes.”
“Even if they stop trusting me?”
“Yes.”
“Even if there’s nothing left worth gaining?”
A faint crease appears between his brows. “You still think I’m negotiating.”
“I think you spent your entire life turning survival into strategy.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” I admit. “It isn’t.”
The quiet stretches again. Somewhere below us, a horn sounds once across the camp.
