[Chapter 4: The Variable]
285 Words
“The most dangerous enemies are the ones who smile while measuring where to cut.”
The next morning, I found him.
He stood near the fountain in the central square, sunlight glinting off the polished steel of his sword hilt. Broad-shouldered, sharply dressed — and wearing the same smile he had when he drove a blade between my ribs in my last life.
Kaden Vey.
I approached slowly, weaving through the morning crowd. His eyes found mine before I reached him, and the smile widened.
“Strange,” he said as I stopped a pace away. “You look exactly as I remember.”
You wouldn’t say that if you knew how much I remember, I thought.
“Likewise,” I replied, masking my voice with polite indifference. “I hear you’ve been asking about me.”
His brow lifted. “I’m curious about many things.”
We traded words like swords — each question parried with another question, each answer vague enough to hide more than it revealed.
Kaden’s gaze was sharp. Too sharp. He was testing me, probing for weakness. And beneath it all, I sensed he was measuring something else: whether I’d become a threat too soon.
“You’ve changed,” he said finally, his tone too casual.
“Perhaps,” I allowed. “Or perhaps you’re just seeing me clearly for the first time.”
He chuckled, but his eyes stayed cold.
When we parted, I didn’t relax. If Kaden was here now, years before I’d met him in my first life… then the future was already breaking apart. And if he’d already marked me, I couldn’t afford to simply defend myself.
It was time to make the first move.
- Writer
