Page 97 of Sunsplitter

Golden eyes snapped onto Fi.

Fuck.

He didn’t lunge at her. Didn’t even unhinge his jaw for a monstrous shriek. The dreaded immortal foe of all daeyari straightened slowly, standing several inches taller than before. His features had shifted, cheeks higher, skin tanned. His eyes were bright gold, glowing with energy, a sweep between Fi and the dead daeyari.

He stepped closer. Fi backed away.

He paused, hand raised.

“Aive, bretiri,” he said, soft and slow. “Aive.”

Fi didn’t know the words. She knew the tone, the hand gesture: calm.

Tough sell on that one. She appraised the cramped space, the dead immortal on the floor. The aedari advanced slowly, more soothing words in a language she didn’t speak.

“Ase-su selgu isi atec ne dusven?” His head tilted, unnervingly human apart from the eyes.

A curl of fingers beckoned her closer.

Another predator, with a face to disarm his prey.

He tensed when Fi dug into her pocket. Not for her sword, because fuck that in close quarters. After how swiftly he’d beheaded Jazst? She grabbed a fossilized shell, polished carnelian smooth in her palm. Transport stones. A bitch to replace after she’d lost her first set.

When she cracked the two halves of the shell apart, they hummed with energy, eager to rejoin. She hurled one half out an open window. The other half, she held tight, activating it with a pulse of her own energy.

The aedari lunged, just as Fi’s stomach lurched.

This was sharper than Antal’s teleportation. More molten than Voidwalking. Transport stones used dematerialization, a process mortal bodies could only bear in short bursts, before melting. Fi reappeared where the other half of the stone hadlanded in the farmhouse yard, skin covered in invisible fire ants, gasping a curse at her fickle human flesh.

Now, she grabbed her sword hilt. A lesson Fi knew well: never run from an immortal. She palmed a daeyari energy capsule from her pocket, Shaping the burning cold current to form a crimson blade. The yard was empty.

Then it wasn’t.

The aedari appeared with no static on her tongue. Different from a daeyari teleport, a low snapping sound, a burst of heat as he was suddenly in front of her. He eyed her sword. Lifted his.

Then shouted as an arrow impaled his arm.

The metal projectile lodged clean through his bicep. A long metal ribbon attached to the end, trailing several feet along the ground. He had only a moment to stare at it.

He dodged a spear thrust. A flash of red energy, silver armor.

By the limitless Void, Fi never thought she’d be glad to see Ixli.

The daeyari moved with lethal focus, another thrust of her spear at the man’s head, the shaft metal and blade Shaped of coral energy. The aedari parried. Slashed. A dance of blades. His metal sword had strange symbols carved down the length—glyphs, Syvr had called them. They lit up as he swung, coating the edge gold, hissing against Ixli’s red.

She blocked with her spear shaft then swiped with a free hand, metal-tipped claws raking his cheek. Fi needed to raid a daeyari armory.

Even the aedari’s blood was gold, bright as sunlight. He pushed two fingers to his cheek. A tattoo on his wrist lit up, another glyph, then his skin knit together with a gilded flash.

Static struck Fi’s tongue as Antal appeared at her side. He grabbed her shoulders, eyes wide as he looked her up and down.

“Fionamara,” he breathed. “Are you—”

“Fine!Let’s go!”

The aedari pushed backward, as if to teleport again—then jerked to a halt.

He snarled as the arrow in his arm flared red. So did the attached ribbon. Ixli had grabbed the other end, winding it around her fist, fangs bared as she held them tethered. The aedari tried to rip the arrow free, but his hand recoiled from searing red energy.