Page 93 of Sunsplitter
“You. Of course I want you.”
“But?”
He set her down. Fi swayed against the wall, legs unsteady. Something cold and sharp tightened in her chest, arms crossed against a shiver.
“Antal…” She wasn’t sure if it came out a plea. A condemnation. Some slur of the two.
He raked his fingers through his hair, smoothing the strands, the wind messing them again in an instant. “What we’ve managed is tenuous enough. Avroz is tolerating you. He’s playing nice. I don’t want to make him angry.”
Minutes ago, he’d stood up to his mother, finally shouting what she deserved to hear.
But not Avroz. That was another beast. For his father, Antal still insisted on bending, just to avoid conflict. To keep Fi safe.
Did he think so little of himself? Of her? Of what the two of them had started to become?
He kissed her temple softly. A hollow gesture. “Later. I promise.”
The ache between Fi’s legs quelled fast enough. The ache in her ribs remained. Kashvi had told her to figure out where to compromise, where to let him go his own way.
But this just hurt.
It hurt, the way Antal looked at her, as if his eyes could beg an apology he had no words for. It hurt when he silently held out his hand. It hurt when Fi took it, knowing she had no choice.
His touch was light as fraying seams. She wasn’t sure which threads to grasp.
The trail was fresh.
Fi thought they’d have more time to prepare. She thought she’d have time to process the bone-chilling sight of Avroz waiting for them in the Thomaskweld capitol building, that wretched beast standing in their home, looking upon their city. The trail wasvery fresh, he informed them impatiently. They had to move. Now.
Fi barely had time to don her silviamesh, to arm herself. Then, back to the Summer Plane.
They met on a forested ridgeline, a human village a couple miles away, a farmhouse in the clearing below. Fi listened to the vital updates—a more concentrated scent than usual, hours old, the possibility of catching the aedari while it slept nearby—but when the daeyari turned to arguing over strategy, her patience thinned.
Jazst, the territory lord, had come. Mostly to be an ass, Fi surmised, insisting he share in the glory of catching an aedari on his lands.
Antal, dressed in a dark shirt with a pattern of vesper fabric starbursts, kept slipping unbearable looks her way.
Avroz took one look at the teeth marks on her neck, flicked his tail, then ignored her. Stillplaying nice—which only made Fi grind her jaw.
Ixli perched in a tree. Honestly, having well exceeded her angry daeyari interaction quota, Fi appreciated this approach the most. Ixli looked like a wraith of vengeance in her silviamesh underclothes and silver armor. At her back, she carried her spear shaft, a bow, and that single strange arrow attached to a ribbon. Even her claws were armored in metal sheathes.
And there stood Fi, a lone human in a pack of immortals. This fight with the aedari, the defining conflict of their species. Not hers.
She stepped away from the arguing, to the ridgeline to survey the house below.
Syvr joined her.
Fi bristled as the daeyari slipped around her side, feet silent on the loam. They’d not stood this close since she’d put a dagger in Syvr’s heart. She caught Antal’s eye.
He noted the proximity with a tail flick, but didn’t intervene. Syvr was less of an immediate threat than the others. Antal thought so, at least. And true, they’d never drawn a weapon on her, had never dug claws into her scalp.
They still ate humans. Fi kept a hand near her sword hilt.
“I apologize for interrupting earlier,” Syvr said, low. “It wasn’t my intention.”
Nope. She was not going to talk aboutthat.
Fi appraised the daeyari with narrowed eyes. They wore their hair shaved on the sides, a braid on their crown—all braids on these daeyari, unlike Antal’s shorter strands. Syvr’s antlers bore five points, five centuries, carved with stars and masks and little foxes.
