Page 42 of Sunsplitter

“Theyareyour people.”

“It’s not the same. They aren’t daeyari.”

Thomaskweld was Antal’s home. Bright and humming and beautiful. He loved every scrap of it. He loved the growing warmth of its citizens, as hard as their trust was to earn.

But no human city could replace his favorite dusk-lit hours and bitter coffee. The twitch of tails in time with conversation. The comfort of his own language. Surely, Fionamara could understand that?

So why did she flinch when he said it?

“You said this was enough for you.” Her voice, too small. “ThatI was enough for you.”

The quiver on her lips struck Antal to his core. A velvet blade. Sharpest when she softened. He slipped his claws into her hair, cradled her in his palms like the treasure she was.

“Of course you are…enough.” The word hitched on his teeth, insufficient. “You’re so much more than enough, Fionamara. You’re the fiercest creature I’ve ever known. The gentlest hands I’ve ever given my heart to. You salvaged the pieces of me, helped me return to a person I’m proud to be. Helped build a home I’m eager to return to.”

She held him with glistening eyes. Unblinking. Uncompromising.

“But?”

Her demand made Antal pause. Made him dig, dredging for thoughts he’d hidden away.

“But you deserve so much more than what I can give you,” he said. “My family will never accept you.”

“I can’t offer you my family, either,” Fi countered. “Unless you dig up their ashes.”

“The rest of my kind will look down on you, simply for what you are.”

“Fuck them. I’m serious about that antler hat. That’s bound to shut up a few of them.”

Antal’s tail twitched in frustration. “We can’t be properly bonded.”

“Awedding?” Fionamara gave a caustic laugh. “You’re worried about a wedding, of all things? If that’s what you want…” She sobered, a snap to earnestness that seemed to startle even her.

“I would,” she whispered. “In a heartbeat, I would.”

Like a blade through his heart. Antal wanted nothing more than to have all of her. Smiles and scowls. Laughs and long, soft traces of fingers over lips.

But…

“It would be a human wedding,” he said. “Not a daeyari one.”

“What’s the difference?” she pressed, frustration or anger edging the words.

“Daeyari are bonded with their partners in the Void,” Antal explained. “Parents stand as witness to the union. But Avroz will never agree to bond me to a human.”

“Then it doesn’t matter. We can do things our way.”

“Yourway.”

Fionamara recoiled fully this time.

He’d hurt her. Antal hadn’t meant to hurt her. She was a flame, both guiding beacon and warmth to thaw a decades-chilled heart. It washewho didn’t know how to balance all these weights caving his shoulders.

Fionamara shivered. She wrapped her arms over her chest, dressed in the thin shirt she’d worn on the Twilit Plane. Antal hadn’t noticed. Daeyari weren’t susceptible to cold.

“Can we go home?” she said. “I didn’t grab my coat.”

“Of course.” He offered his hand, and an apologetic, “Fionamara…”