Page 195 of Sunsplitter

Now, she turned her time-honed ire upon a new enemy: death itself.

Upon the endless Void trying to swallow her, as it had failed to do so many times.

Upon this stupidarrow in her head,this single stroke of rotten luck. But never once in Fi’s stubborn, overconfident life had she stopped fighting.

She was going to get out of here.

And she was going to marry this soft, son-of-a-bitch daeyari.

She grabbed the front of the arrow with her left hand, fingers still reinforced in metal claws. With her right, she pointed to the nuisance projectile, miming a command to help her pull.

Antal balked, blinking in alarm. Absolutely useless.

Fi gripped the arrow and pulled on her own.

The first yank dragged metal against bone, not enough to dislodge. Thank the merciless Void, Fi wasn’t squeamish—and thank themercifulVoid for dulled pain receptors. She adjusted her grip to pull again, fingers slippery against blood-coated metal.

This time, Antal joined her. He looked fit to crumble, to dissociate back into Void ether from agony alone, but he managed to wrap two hands alongside Fi’s. They pulled together.

The arrow slipped free of Fi’s skull with a stomach-turning sensation she never wanted to experience again, much less describe.

Gingerly, she inspected the damage. Her left eye was… gone. Cracked bone and an empty socket. Her vision blurred, thoughts growing foggier, blood flowing faster down her cheek. Obviously, she was in the process of dying. Not the ideal state for a calm mind.

She clawed for focus, reaching out a hand to touch the Void.

Fi had done this before. She could do it again.

Granted, this was more complicated than healing a clawed-up stomach, simple layers of flesh and muscle. An eye. A skull. Brains. How did she begin mendingbrains?

She had to trust what Veshri had said: her body would remember how to mend itself, if she provided material.

Concentrating was the hard part. Cold emptiness danced at her fingertips, the feeling of something almost there—drowned by the throb in her skull. Veshri had made it look easy.

She kept reaching. The thinnest wisp brushed her finger, light as gossamer. Nearly too thin to grasp. She gathered the strand like a silken lifeline. Then another. Another. A painstaking process, collecting what she could scarcely touch.

When a clump of ether finally dangled at her fingers, she pressed it to her eye.

Cold sank into the wound. Tingling.

Fi gritted her teeth, the sensation like eating ice cream too fast. Ozone plaqued her tongue. Antal floated at her side, aghast at any number of things: the hole through her head, the blood on her jacket, the ether writhing at her fingertips.

But he never let her go. He wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her steady as she worked, the warm press of his body helping to fight off the chill.

These structures are ingrained, Veshri had said.The body knows how to repair itself.

Immortal wisdom notwithstanding, Fi did try to visualize what her intact head looked like. That seemed to help with Voidwalking. The inside bits were harder to visualize, but she had a basic picture. The tingle shifted to a squirm. A stretch.

She felt flesh weaving back together. That was the easier part. Fi gathered more ether, heart thudding despite the crush of the Void. A different pressure built inside her head. A crack and a snap of bone.

An eye. What made up an eye? She scrambled back to her school lessons, never a stellar student at anatomy, but she recalled sclera. Iris. Lens. Retina. Nerves to tie it all together.

All woven from immortal ether. Veshri had told her she might rebuild herself, though Fi hadn’t imagined it would be this dramatic.

Antal watched, black sclera impossibly dark in the Void, the glow of crimson eyes impossibly bright. He never looked away from her—though worry quivered on his mouth, though he ought to never have to watch someone he loved bleed out in front of him again. He looked at her as if there was nothing in all the Void and Planes more important to look at.

To be with someone I loved, Veshri had said. A fitting reason to seek immortality. To choose life, however she emerged on the other side.

The prickling stopped.