Page 34 of Sunsplitter

She nearly shouted when someone knocked on her door.

“Breakfast in the kitchen,” came Geslam’s muffled voice. “If you care to join, Arbiter.”

Her growling stomach said she probably should.

Fi dressed for the balmier weather: hair tied into a tail, a long-sleeved maroon shirt with silver-embroidered collar. This complicated her game ofhow many weapons can I discretely hide on my person?She managed her sword hilt stuffed into her pants. Two energy chips in her pockets.

She emerged to a quiet house. The sitting room was empty, brushed in purple twilight. No speck of blood from the night before.

In the kitchen, she found a bowl of cooked grains, reminiscentof oats, a bit chewier. It came with tart berries. A decadent cream. Overall a pleasant meal, accompanied by a mug of coffee that looked far too black for her liking, but she attempted a polite sip—

Fi gagged, struggling not to spit it out on the table.

Whatwasthis? She typically drenched her coffee in sugar, but still expected the nutty undertone. This wasbitter. Loamy. Savory, in an unsettling way.

Several alarmed looks snapped onto her. She shared a table with the vavriter, Geslam. Three human groundskeepers. An aurorabeast tender. Fi had trouble making eye contact with that last one.

“Sorry,” she rasped. “Too hot.” She set the “coffee” aside—never to be touched again.

Thankfully, the others returned to ignoring her.

Not a frightened quiet. There was enough comfort in their postures, enough small talk among themselves, they felt at ease with each other. Not with Fi. For the best, really. She didn’t want to risk interrogation, especially with the steward watching her so closely.

After eating, she found Antal.

He stood outside on the patio, surveying the more expansive gardens behind the house. His dark jacket was slim-cut like all his clothing, back ornamented in Winter Plane pines, the silhouettes framed by sheer gauze teasing his lighter skin beneath—a cruelty, at a time when Fi couldn’t run her hands beneath every fold. She paused beside him, a respectful distance.

His gaze lingered longer than it ought to. Crimson eyes slipped over her face, over the rest of her. Fi returned a nod.I’m safe. Nothing happened in the night.

Antal let out a breath and returned to studying flowers.

The gardens were breathtaking. The cavern was circular, theceiling carved open to natural light, domed in tinted glass that Fi assumed prevented anyone from seeing inside. The house curved a semicircle around one edge. Plantings filled the rest.

Antal had described his mother as a cultivator of some renown, growing rare plants for private collections, creating floral arrangements. Admittedly, Fi hadn’t grasped the scope of it until she saw the overflowing beds and trellises, blooms as dainty as a fingernail or larger than her head, varieties she couldn’t begin to name. Somecolorsshe wasn’t sure she could name.

“Good morning, Antal!”

Yme emerged on the patio in an airy dress of midnight fabric speckled with stars. She greeted her son by tapping her nose to his cheek. Not a glance at Fi.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?” Yme asked. “The spindle jasmine are blooming, of course. Oh, and I have some lovely new proteas in the back beds.”

“What are your favorites, azaevi?” Antal returned, mild yet dutiful.

The pair set off down a gravel path lined with tangerine roses and white hibiscus. Arbiters probably weren’t supposed to trail their daeyari during personal moments like this. Fi stayed behind on the patio, a seat on a stone bench overlooking the grounds.

However harshly Antal had spoken of his mother, he at least seemed more at ease around her. Yme led him to a trellis of those spindly jasmine flowers. At her prodding, Antal leaned in for a sniff. She smiled. He didn’t, though, his shoulders relaxed when Yme’s tail brushed his in that odd, affectionate way.

Fi had never felt so self-conscious about not having a tail. Now, and that moment last night when she’d seen the more intimate way Ixli twined her tail with Antal’s.

Oh boy. That had been some shit, hadn’t it?

Fi wouldn’t call herself jealous. Antal was two and a half centuries old. Of course he’d hadmanypartners before her. Razik, she knew the most about. Antal had spoken of some others, political rivals he’d maneuvered behind closed doors. Not uncommon for daeyari, he claimed.

He’d never mentioned Ixli. If he said he had no more feelings for her, Fi trusted him.

But if not jealousy, then insecurity, maybe? Something itchy about seeing another daeyari pin Antal to the floor, the way Ixli had dragged real fangs across his throat, the tangle of their tails—

“You don’t enjoy flowers, vavraesa?”