Page 65 of Sunsplitter

It didn’t matter.

Fi shut her eyes. Getting here was the easy part.

All her focus went to a mental image. Voidwalking wasn’t as limited as daeyari teleportation. She could reemerge on any Plane—ifFi had been there before, andifshe could visualize her destination in perfect, painstaking detail.

She pictured Antal’s sitting room upon the cliffs. Cold seeped into her, as she imagined the color of the stone, the way it felt on her bare feet, warmed by hidden conduits. Her chest ached, as she visualized the exact arrangement of pillows. The gleam of each silk tassel. How they caressed her skin when Antal held her down and—

Fi plunged into freefall, wind roaring past her ears.

Then out the other side. She careened back onto the Winter Plane, catching herself against the wall of Antal’s sitting room. Frigid. Breathless.

Alive.

Holy fuck, she’d actually done it. No life-or-death motivation required. Fi shook with relief and triumph. A feat no other human on the Season-Locked Planes could perform.

“See that?” she shouted from the den of a daeyari, looking out upon the valley of Thomaskweld. “Voidwalking!Easy!”

Fi might not have claws. She might not know what to call herself, this not-Arbiter, this partner to a daeyari she was still struggling to understand. But she wasn’t weak. She could fight, and she could Voidwalk. She could be what Antal needed.

Now, if she could just get her hands to stop shaking.

Fi’s adrenaline thinned a little, alone in the dark sitting room,no witness to her feat. She had no idea when Antal would be back. Dumb daeyari and his dumb trip to the Twilit Plane.

Despite Fi’s attempt at annoyance, her shoulders slumped. A sigh.

She hoped her dumb, soft daeyari was doing ok on his own.

The last time Antal had seen Tyvo, his neighbor to the north, the old daeyari had shredded Antal’s neck open with his bare teeth. He’d be dead, if Fionamara hadn’t intervened.

After Verne’s defeat, Tyvo had sent a single message:

You useless fucking daeyari. If you ever fucking set foot in my territory again, I’ll cut your fucking head off and spike it to the top of a shiverpine.

Judging by Tyvo’s snarl now, his mood hadn’t improved over the past year. He crossed the gallery of the amphitheater, ignoring every daeyari in his path, orange eyes boring into Antal.

“Tyvo,” Antal greeted him with forced pleasantry. “What an unexpected surprise—”

“You have some nerve, showing your face here.” Tyvo stopped in front of him, tail a violent lash. “Pathetic little daeyari. I ought to pry out your fangs and toss them to the Void.”

His antler hadn’t recovered. One side of the rack curved to eight points, the other side severed near the base by Fionamara’s sword. Daeyari could draw on Void ether to regenerate flesh, muscle, bone, the same healing their mortal bodies once performed, sped to seconds instead of days. But their mortal antlershad been slow to grow, could never regenerate. Forcing the process incurred abnormalities, fractals of red marring Tyvo’s regrowing nub.

The confrontation turned heads in the departing crowd. Daeyari paused in the nearest tiers of the gallery, eyes keen as wolves scenting blood. No fighting was tolerated within the halls of the Daey Celva. Tyvo shouldn’t dare press closer. Antal still braced, unsure whether propriety would dissuade an attack.

And viscerally aware of his father beside him. Teeth on every side.

“Greetings, Tyvo.” Avroz spoke in a menacing low, that calm command he wielded like a weapon. His eyes flicked to the crowd. “Surely, this isn’t the place?”

Tyvo’s attention snapped to a new target—as if Antal needed the rescue. As if he were a velvet-antlered daeyari clinging to his father’s heels.

“I expected better.” Tyvo prowled closer to Avroz, undaunted by the latter’s low tail. “Fromyourson, Avroz? Disgraceful, to have raised such a failure of a daeyari.”

Antal flinched.

So did Avroz, a tick of his tail almost too subtle to notice. Around them, the crowd was silent, the brawl of two territory lords and a councilor far too delicious to interrupt.

“Inexperienced,” Tyvo continued. “Lazy.” He tapped his severed antler. “And the disrespect, to take another daeyari’s antler!”

“If you feel so persecuted,” Avroz said, “you may petition official grievance—”