Page 198 of Sunsplitter

There was a moment for her to gasp. For her eyes to widen in furious recognition.

Avroz twisted the hilt and yanked it into two separate blades, severing the aedari’s head. A shockwave of golden energy struck the clearing, blindingly bright, shaking the shiverpines.

Then quiet.

The glow of golden wings extinguished. Without them, the forest fell dark, only a faint aurora overhead—and a smolder of energy swords, red light stark against snow. Avroz appraised the corpse at his feet, the aedari’s head rolling to rest several feet away.

“Well,” he said, “that’s enough of that.”

Everything happened too swiftly. Antal was caught in the avalanche.

The aedari had ambushed them, a trap to lure whoever came for the antler. A fight they shouldn’t have been able to win.

Fionamara—with an arrow through her head.

That part, Antal recalled in a blur, thoughts slurred by panic. He’d held her in the Void. He’d watched the blood course down her cheek. Veshri’s high and sharpened antlers, he’d been so certain he was watching her die.

Then, with the ferocity of Veshri himself, she’d pulled the arrow from her skull.

She’d woven Void ether in front of him, repairing flesh and bone and sclera like a daeyari could. And thewayher eye had reformed? He could hardly stop staring at the impossibility.

And then came Avroz.

The second aedari lay upon the ground, head severed, wings extinguished. His father stood over the corpse. A victory. At last, their quarry was defeated, Antal’s deal satisfied, all he’d bargained for now guaranteed. He ought to feel relief. He ought to feelhappy.

Nausea churned his stomach as he grabbed Fionamara. Her hair was a mess from vanquishinganotherimmortal, easy to pull the tangles so they covered half her face.

“Do notlet him see your eye,” Antal whispered urgently. “Please, Fionamara.”

She returned a fierce, but questioning scowl.

Avroz extinguished his blades. True darkness sank over the clearing, only the aurora overhead, Fionamara’s lantern dim where it had been cast among burnt rubble. Avroz returned the hilt to his belt with chilling nonchalance, his traveling clothes like swaths of shadow.

He turned toward Antal, slow and deliberate. A challenge. Antal fought the urge to shrink away, to say nothing, to avoid the fight that always proved futile.

“How could you do this?” he said, hushed as the whispering aurora.

A long pause hung over the clearing.

“Do what, Antal?” Avroz returned. “Don’t be vague.”

“The aedari you fought on the Contested Planes.” Antal pushed his voice higher. “You didn’t kill them. You led them here?”

Avroz’s tail fell to a low swish. His expression was blank, eyes narrowed to calculated indifference. Weighing an adversary—Antal knew the look like the angles of his own teeth.

“How unfortunate,” Avroz said. “This would have been simpler, if you hadn’t known.”

“Andsimpler still,” Antal spat, “if you hadn’t faced those aedari alone by accident.”

Avroz stiffened minutely.

“Byaccident?” He dragged out the word in distaste.

The Plane fell still again. In that moment of quiet, as his father’s words sank in, Antal wondered how many times hischest could fracture, before there was nothing left. It wounded him enough, the thought that Avroz had led the aedari here by mistake.

But even that was naïve, wasn’t it? Avroz would have been the first to know of any aedari sightings, from his seat on the Daey Celva. He knew their abilities, their tactics. He’d separated from Syvr and Ixli, even when she was hoping for her bands.

“You found the aedari on purpose?” Antal said, quiet again. “You led them here…on purpose?”