Page 87 of Sunsplitter

“They’ll kill a derived daeyari without qualm, if one confronts them. But the aedari’s larger goal is finding the Twilit Plane. Derived daeyari don’t reproduce. If they could snuff the first-form daeyari at our source, only the beasts would remain, easier to control.”

Pricks. Like most of the immortals Fi had met.

“So when we find this scout,” she said, “how do we kill it?”

Antal studied the sunbeams through the leaves. He sniffed, the breeze sweet with loam and meadow grass and who knew what else to his predator-honed senses.

“We’ll deal with that when we must, Fionamara.”

The same answer. Every time she’d asked. As if Antal still hoped, despite his agreement, he wouldn’t have to fight this aedari himself.

Without a doubt, he didn’t want Fi to fight it.

He circled back into the trees without her, retracing the trail for the dozenth time, their quarry no closer. Fi kept her chin up, fists clenched.

That seemed like all she could do.

A day off from the search meant a day back in Thomaskweld.

Not to rest, of course. That would be absurd.

Fi was a little annoyed at Antal for being gifted with senses she couldn’t fathom. She was a lot annoyed at him trying to coddle her through a hunt for a deadly immortal. She was anew levelof annoyed when he woke early, insisting they get a headstart on repairs requested by one of the city’s energy factories.

That annoyance lost some of its edge, when the energy foreman met them with a smile warmer than the Summer Plane.

“Lord Daeyari! Miss Kolbeck! Welcome back, so good to see you! Now get your asses in here and fix my conduits, before the whole east sector freezes.”

Antal grinned at the welcome—which was, she’d said a hundred times,not fairwhen Fi was trying to be mad at him.

The foreman led them inside. When they’d begun these errands a year ago—Antal personally inspecting the conduits Verne had sabotaged, cataloguing upgrades to modernize the city—Fi had never strayed more than two feet from his back. She hadn’t been confident the skittish factory workers wouldn’t try to bury something sharp in it.

Now, the foreman walked easy at Antal’s side, talking through a list of energy outputs, maintenance logs, recent employee birthdays. Something in the familiar drift of snow against the high factory windows, the lack of daeyari shooting her death glares, allowed Fi a welcome moment to lower her hackles.

This was the goal of everything, wasn’t it? To see their home safe. Thriving, in spite of every vicious creature battering their door.

The factory floor gleamed with copper conduits and transformers humming with energy. Fi swung by the staffroom to pilfer the largest mug of coffee she could find.

She’d been up late, visiting the Thomaskweld hospital, searching for a meal for Antal. There was a woman who’d fallen off the roof of her shop while repairing some shingles, had hit her head wrong, nothing the doctors could do. Fi had spent an hour with the grieving husband, offering tissues and condolences, building up to the request. Eventually, he’d agreed.

Antal had told her she didn’t have to. He’d told her to rest.But merciless Void, Fi had watched Antal crumple when he’d refused another dinner invitation from Avroz, and they all needed their strength to face this aedari, and sometimes this whole thing they were trying to do felt as fragile as dew-strewn cobwebs melting at dawn.

As she sipped her coffee, the foreman unbolted the side of a transformer, exposing a hollow workspace within.

“This regulator, right here!” He pointed at something inside the machinery. “Keeps losing current. Alloy isn’t fit for the voltage.”

Antal leaned inside. “Impossible. We tested it.”

“Look at it, Lord Daeyari!”

At the foreman’s touch, there was a snap of silver energy. A fizzle. Antal’s tail swished.

Fi was amazed to see them standing so close, shoulders nearly brushing in the cramped workspace. Talking, as if it was possible for human and daeyari to share the same goal. Around them, the factory hummed. Workers sat at their stations, gripping metal conductors, Shaping energy out of their bodies and into the conduits, power feeding the storage tanks and channeling out to the city. The heartbeat of Thomaskweld. Warm and alive and—

Oh. What theshit.

Fi did a double take. Down the hall, a figure strode toward them. This was her day off, and she was so tired, and so worn out on immortal drama for the next twelve hours at minimum.

The last thing she wanted to see was another daeyari.