Page 56 of Sunsplitter

The life determined for him. Avroz had always intended Antal to join the Daey Celva. No room for an alternative.

He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to flee this loomingstone, these dissecting eyes, back to the life he’d built for himself. But his territory was threatened. An enemy he couldn’t protect them from alone.

Antal forced himself to sit straight, tail a perfect curl around crossed legs.

The meeting floor was stone as black as the Void. Strips of inlaid light overlapped in lines of breathtaking complexity, hundreds of swirling hubs and connections—a map of Planes under daeyari control, and the Shard routes between. Around the map, twenty-one pillows sat in a circle. Half were filled already, the remaining members of the council still filing in.

Antal knew all of them. Qirza, the council’s head speaker—the youngest ever to achieve that title when she’d been five centuries old, her antlers now curved to seven points, an imperious daeyari with skin nearly as dark as her sclera. She was always first to settle upon her pillow, dressed in a gossamer shawl studded in starry quartz.

A few pillows down sat Rel, one of the younger councilors at four antler points, visibly complaining to the daeyari beside him, Lyve, a svelte old creature who’d spent every second of his seven centuries scheming. Lyve rolled his eyes at the rant—and landed on Antal in the audience. He blinked. Then, a hunter’s head tilt that made Antal clench his teeth. He and Antal had shared a bed for nearly two years, mostly because Avroz had wanted information from him.

And then came Avroz himself.

He entered the meeting floor in a dark tunic and cape of vesper fabric, golden bands glinting on his antlers. Each smooth stride was a calculation. Every greeting to his fellow councilors, a touch of his highest antler tip to Qirza, honed to play this game of teeth. Avroz settled upon his pillow on Lyve’s other side, cross-legged and tail neatly coiled.

Lyve met Avroz with a fanged grin, his greeting too distant to hear, sly from the sway of his tail. At Avroz’s quizzical look, Lyve nodded to Antal’s seat in the gallery.

It was slow, the way Avroz tipped his head up. So slow, Antal knew how intentional the motion was, outward calm even in the face of a surprise. They locked eyes. Avroz held the stare a long moment, barely a twitch on his tail. Antal’s flicked more notably.

His claws tightened when his father grinned.

Avroz broke eye contact just as smoothly, back to conversation with Lyve, nothing amiss.

That trick, Antal had never mastered. He fought to sit still, to keep his tail calm as more observers filled the tiers. He could still leave. Trust the council to handle the aedari, free himself from these smothering memories—

Antal tensed when a new smell hit him. Seafoam and mint, a breeze off a coastal cliff.

“Well,” said a bright voice behind him, “look what crawled out of the Void!”

A daeyari crouched upon the tier above, grinning wide enough to show fangs. Their dark hair was shaved at the sides, the longer strands on the crown bound in a herringbone plait between five-pointed antlers. They were slim-built, gray skinned, dressed in dark trousers and a soft blue tunic with silver embroidered up the sleeves.

“Syvr?” Antal said, barely able to breathe through the appearance of another ghost come to haunt him.

“Antal,” Syvr greeted radiantly, “it’s beenages.” They pointed to the neighboring pillow. “Do you mind?”

“I… suppose I don’t…”

They sprang down, claiming the seat. Contrasting Antal’s ramrod posture, Syvr sprawled upon the pillow, feet dangling over the edge of the tier, tail a contented sway.

Antal stared. He stared to a frankly impolite degree, too stunned by the sight of Syvr exactly how he remembered them, their grin so disarmingly warm that Antal contemplated fleeing this wretched Plane in earnest and never coming back.

Instead, he forced his guard up as high as he could muster. Another too-familiar face—this one even more dangerous than Ixli.

“Veshri’s high and sharpened antlers, isn’t this a fun surprise?” Syvr looked Antal over, eyes glowing a light azalea red. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

“Neither did anyone else,” Antal murmured.

Syvr glanced over the audience, several blatant stares honed on both of them now.

“Fuck them,” Syvr huffed. “Filthy gossip-mongers.”

The accusation was laughable—coming from Avroz’s spy.

Antal’s father currently kept two kezri. Ixli was an enforcer. When territory lords on more distant Planes had problems with derived beasts, bickering neighbors, or even rebellious mortals, they came to Avroz offering favors. He sent Ixli to settle their troubles.

Syvr was no warrior. They delivered messages, grew alliances, gathered information Avroz could spend like currency. Their warmth, as expertly crafted as his father’s glass facade.

“I’m hurt, is all.” Syvr splayed a dramatic hand over their chest. “You’re back on the Twilit Plane for the first time in decades, but I have to hear it second-hand? And I’ve heardendlessly. Your mother won’t stop talking about you. Keeps complaining you’re too thin.”