Page 66 of Sunsplitter

“Is that the story you’re telling?” Antal interrupted. “ThatItook your antler?”

His own words startled him. They came out low, barbed, more confident than he felt. Antal would be better off slinking back, letting his father smooth this over.

Avroz’s glare said as much.

At the challenge, Tyvo circled closer.Closer. He bared his fangs inches from Antal’s cheek, a warning growl in his chest.

It had hurt when Tyvo had bitten into him. The memory shivered down Antal’s spine, the pain of shredded muscle and Tyvo’s teeth grating against his vertebrae. The fear, when he’d been certain he was going to die.

Then, a different fear, when Fionamara had raised her sword against the rival daeyari.

“You came into my territory unannounced,” Tyvo accused. “Attacked me.”

Liar. Antal ought to bow his head, back away with tail low.

Not now, when he’d just fought off a coup. Not here, with so many eyes watching for weakness—his father’s fiercest of all.

Antal pushed that last breadth closer, their noses nearly brushing, meeting Tyvo’s challenge. “You supported Verne’s bid to unseat me. You threatened to kill my human.” He dropped to a snarl. “Andshetook your antler, not me.”

A murmur went through the crowd.

Antal was close enough to feel the furious energy prickling off his opponent, a scent like charred pine resin. Tyvo’s claws flexed—claws that had tried to slice Fionamara open. That had left a slim scar across her lips. Antal bared his fangs.

“You’d call me a liar?” Tyvo said. “Suggest a mere human could best me?”

He stepped away with a scoff. His back turned to Antal was the sharpest insult yet, an unthreatened dismissal, refusing to counter such outlandish argument.

He stepped away because he had to. Tyvo had no evidence. Antal honed in on the bluff.

“Your son could use a sterner hand, Avroz,” Tyvo said. “He has no place here, among proper daeyari.”

“She still has it,” Antal said.

Tyvo’s head cocked slowly, baring one smoldering eye over his shoulder. “What?”

“Your antler.” Antal held his tone level. “My human kept the souvenir after she cut it off you, has it propped above her mantle. I can fetch it, if you’d care to compare markings?”

The murmurs grew. A quiet hum oflaughter.

In the blaze of Tyvo’s eyes, Antal watched every calculation—a measure of the distance between them, how swiftly Tyvo could lunge, what angle to put his teeth into Antal’s throat.

“Enough.”

The command struck silence across the gallery. A crowd of immortal daeyari fell as still as chastised kittens, shrinking aside to form an opening. Qirza, speaker of the Daey Celva, approached like a tempest of silver shawls, a single glower daring any daeyari to so much as snarl at her. Even Tyvo flinched.

“Councilor Qirza,” he greeted, words tight to his teeth. “I was just—”

“Causing discord in my gallery,” she returned with unflinching authority. “I’m aware.”

Tyvo had the audacity to bare his teeth. “I was attacked. Insulted. I’m owed resolution.”

“And as Councilor Avroz said, if you have grievances with any neighboring territory, you may submit them formally to the council. Perhaps you’d care to do so in my chambers, rather than snarling like a beast on the balcony.”

“I never—”

“Come.” Qirza gestured to the hallway—no room for argument.

Tyvo raked a molten look over Antal. Then Avroz.