Page 186 of Sunsplitter

“Do I wish I’d had a better father?” Fionamara said. “Of course. I wish I’d had a father who bought me ice cream for my birthdays, and braided my hair, and didn’t try toserve me to a carnivorous immortal to elevate his own social status.”

Antal tried to pull away. She held tight to his collar.

“But I could never fix the way he tried to use me. I could never fix him falling into a drunken stupor every night. I could never fix him pulling our family apart like rotting wood. Do you know why? Becauseheneverwantedto fix those things!”

Antal loathed the man anew for putting her through such agony. He settled his lashing tail, trying to anchor it against her leg.

“This is… different,” he stammered. “So much of this is my fault.”

She fell still as a midnight sky. Even her grip on his collar loosened.

“Your fault?” she said, low.

“I could have been better—”

“Your fault?” she roared with Void-chilling fervor.

Antal, over two centuries old and woven from eternal ether, shrank back.

“My father thought giving me to a daeyari would help our family,” Fionamara said. “I ruined that for him. Would you tell me that was my fault?”

Antal was a whisper to her tempest. “Never.”

“I ran away from everything, left my brother and my friend behind, because I couldn’t bear the crushing weight of that place any longer. Would you tell me that was my fault?”

“No.”

“I never spoke to my father again before he died. Would you tell me that wasmy fault?”

Antal soothed a hand through her hair. “None of that was your fault. Your father hurt you.”

“Listen to yourself, you stubborn daeyari!”

She pulled him into a crushing embrace. Antal shattered from the force of it. Something inside him had been shattering for so Void-damned long, he could hardly hold the pieces, couldonly holdher, the one warm thing amidst a world that had tried to break him so many times.

Avrozhad tried to break him so many times.

“You asked me once,” Fionamara said, her fingers buried to the roots of his antlers, “if I ever forgave my father for what he did. I’d spent years, convinced that everything wasmy fault.” She pulled back, eyes bright. “Butyouhelped me work through that, Antal. Now you’re trapped in the same place. Avroz is supposed to be supporting you, protecting you. He’s the one who failedyou. But he has no reason to change, because he’s already getting everything he wants.”

She was right. Antal knew, with the clarity of reason, that every word she said was right. But reason didn’t stop him shaking. It buckled against the lifelong instinct to do as Avroz said. To behave. To not fight, because fighting hurt, fighting was futile.

“We can’t do nothing,” Fionamara entreated. “For you. For the promises we made to Thomaskweld. Just once, that asshole needs to face consequences.”

She made it all sound so easy.

“Iwantto do something,” Antal said. Just as entreating. “But treason isn’t a light accusation, Fionamara. Without any proof?”

“Then wefind proof.”

“How?If he’s discarded the marked antler? If no one saw what he did—”

Fionamara grabbed his hand. That resolve in her eyes was what he’d fallen in love with. And what terrified him most about her.

“Two months ago,” she said. “That’s when Avroz ran into the aedari. That was when the first house burned down on the Winter Plane. We start there. We search every site again, until we find something.”

They arrived at a snow-coated clearing. It was dark, only light from the aurora and dagger-crisp stars. Cold, as a breeze sighed through the shiverpines.

Pointless, to bother coming here. Antal knew in the deepest fibers of his ether, they’d find nothing. Even if Avroz had accidentally led an aedari to the Season-Locked Planes, he’d never leave evidence.