Page 193 of Sunsplitter

Fi lunged.

There was a burst of heat in her mouth as she grabbed him, a stab of pressure as she pushed them both into the Void.

The cold was nice, sometimes.

The quiet was a reprieve, when everything was moving too fast. Fi, afloat in endless black, tried to be still a moment. To let her thoughts catch up.

She felt wrong.

This wasn’t the cold she was used to in the Void. Something burned in her head, that strange pressure against her skull. Everything, too slow now. She tried to think straight, fog blooming behind her eye.

It hurt.

Why did it hurt?

Antal floated at her side.

She’d pulled him into the Void with her, still had her handclenched around his shirt. When she tried to look at him, that was wrong, too. Out of focus? She tried to blink. That hurtmore.

He was staring at her.

Fi had never seen his eyes so wide, his face so ashen in the dim Void light. He reached for her, his hand shaking, his mouth forming the silent shape of her name.

Fi reached for her face as well.

And felt the arrow lodged in her skull.

Well. This was a situation.

The timing must have been flawless, the kind of luck that would convince someone to camp out at a poker table for a week. Vaguely, Fi recalled the strange taste in her mouth just before she’d Voidwalked. That pressure hitting her head.

The arrow must have struck an instant before she’d stepped off the Plane. Now, the Void held the wound in stasis.

Or slowed it down, at least. Fi’s thoughts were still fuzzy.

Gingerly, she touched the metal shaft sticking through her left eye socket. She reached behind her head and—by the endless, merciless Void, it went all the way through.

Fi nearly laughed.

Only because the alternative was to scream, and that hardly seemed productive.

Antal was staring at her. Unblinking. Eyes wide enough to drown in.

She’d never Voidwalked with anyone, aside from Veshri, and this premier experience felt distinctly marred by the trembling hand Antal placed on her cheek. He floated with her in the black abyss, hair weightless against his antlers, tail drifting asoft coil around her leg. The terror in his crimson eyes could have sunken her to the depths.

He looked at the arrow. At her. Each dart of his gaze, more panicked.

Panic wasn’t necessary. Fi would be fine. She’d always been fine, had escaped from daeyari shrines, survived fangs, evaded scorching feathers, and… an arrow through the head was definitely a new extreme.

Fi lay a comforting hand on Antal’s chest—dismayed, to find herself shaking. He wound his fingers with hers. Sweet, soft daeyari. He shouldn’t have to see her like this. She didn’t want to hurt him, and if this was the last time he ever got to hold her—

Oh no.

There cameherpanic. It crept up on her as the initial shock wore off, as the throb in her eye grew more noticeable.

She had a fuckingarrowthrough herhead.

Fi tried to steady herself, despite the floating. Tried to ignore the pain, but that only made the throbbing worse somehow. Tried not to hyperventilate, with no air to fill her lungs.