Page 30 of Sunsplitter

Each time he thought this ill-fated visit couldn’t take any more from him, a new torment. That human who’d looked like Razik. This room like a time capsule to a life left behind. A vase of his mother’s spindle jasmine flowers, smelling as divinely sweet as he remembered.

Now, Ixli.

She mantled over him, charcoal-gray skin brushed blue in the dusk light, eyes orange-red like molten metal. Her toned thighs pinned his hips, clad in scaled silviamesh. A matching tunic clasped around her neck. She’d woven her white hair into one plait over her crown, a loose bob below, the dividing line a stark contrast of black antlers. Three points each. The same as his.

“Antal,” she purred, soft and familiar. Wicked and barbed.

“Ixli.” He fell automatically into speaking daeyari. “What are you doing—”

She nuzzled her nose beneath his chin. And as her tail slipped into a deeper coil with his…

“Ixli.Stop.”

She pulled back. Still straddling him, just with a more flustered brow. At last, Ixli looked to her side.

At Fionamara standing by the door. Sword hilt drawn. By Void and Veshri, how was that woman ready to do battle with every dangerous creature that crossed her path?

As the silence dragged, Fionamara’s brows shifted from a stunned arch to a glare. One that landed on him. He was going to hear about this later, wasn’t he?

“One of yours, Antal? How distinguished you’ve become.” Ixli spoke imperiously, that practiced cadence of immortals speaking around their lessers. “You may leave, human. Your daeyari will have no more need of you tonight.”

“Shecan stay.” Antal pushed onto his elbows. “Why are you here?”

Ixli frowned. “You’re back. I thought you’d want to…”

Every tick of Ixli’s eyes was razor-keen. Her flinch so subtle, he might not have noticed, if they hadn’t been so close.

She leapt off him with pantherine grace, onto her feet and distance between them in one smooth motion. Antal took several—a slow stand, a wary appraisal of the daeyari facing off against him. Ixli stood without compromise, tail high. She was all slim lines and sharp muscle, the honed stance of a huntress. She was lethal in her light gray silviamesh, her warrior’s aptitude worn like a second skin.

She was a too-familiar smell of moonlight and steel mixing with the jasmine. A memory as crushing as everything else in this room.

“I thought you’d be at dinner,” Antal said numbly. He hadn’t wanted her there, but had braced for the worst.

“I thought you’d prefer privacy.”

Her words were too soft. Black claws curled at her sides, always ready to fight, even after the decades they’d spenttogether—or perhaps because of it. More sensibly, Ixli’s scowl was entirely because of all the nights they’d spenthere.

In this room.

In his bed.

On the windowsills, and the floor, and the…

Antal severed this unproductive train of thought, before he ground his fangs flat.

“So what brings you here now?” he asked.

“Am I…intruding?” Ixli’s coral eyes narrowed on Fionamara.

Who still had her damn sword hilt out.

“Put it away,” Antal ordered—a plea in the undertone.

Fionamara huffed but did as he asked. Clearly, there was something wrong with him, lured to deadly creatures time and again. Antal shifted a subtle step between her and Ixli, just in case.

“Why are you here, Ixli?”

“I thought you’d be free. Avroz said you’d finished dinner.”