Page 193 of Voidwalker
Fi swallowed against the lump in her throat. “I went back to Nyskya. Verne was there.”
Antal’s tail fell deathly still. His claws dug trenches into the blanket.
“You ran back there alone?” he hissed. “You faced Verne?Alone?”
Well sure, when he put it so bluntly, Fi sounded like a reckless idiot. Shewasa reckless idiot. Somehow, she’d survived, made it back here to him, this last safe harbor after so much had been stripped from her, after Boden had—
“Stop looking like that, daeyari,” She urged her words into atease. A desperate grasp at levity, when everything else ached. “I’ll think you’ve started caring what happens to me.”
“Would that be such a terrible thing?”
Antal’s words bit like fangs. Fi reeled at the assault of hard eyes and bared teeth, the daeyari’s tail a sharp lash. Angry. He was angry at her? She clutched her fists into the sheets, drawing instinctive barbs she was too exhausted to wield.
“I didn’t know she’d be there,” Fi tried to argue back. “I held my own. Just… not enough.”
“She could have killed you.”
“She didn’t.”
“A lucky chance!”
His venom sank into her like another wound. Fresher. Hotter. Fi fought a sting in her eyes. She already knew this was her fault, always her fault, hated herself for running without thinking. She didn’t need Antal clawing the guilt deeper.
“What difference does it make?” she shouted back, baring her own teeth. “We knew this was a risk when we decided to fight. Even when we face Verne together, I could die.Youcould die. Boden already…” She swallowed, tightness overwhelming her chest.
“And do you think that means nothing to me?” Antal snapped. “Thatyoumean nothing to me?”
Fi fell speechless at the crack in his voice. Like a fissure through ice. Chips from that marble facade he wore, crumbled and strewn to the floor.
“I vowed I wouldn’t do this again.” Antal’s words dropped low, cutting like a knife. “Then, the first mortals in a century who let me into their lives? One dies by a Beast who came hunting forme.” His voice shook as it rose. “Not an hour later, the other throws herself at a daeyari alone! Void and Veshri help me, Fi. What if you hadn’t come back?”
Fi felt cold again, knuckles white where she clenched the covers. Antal had teased her with teeth and sharpened words. He’d tasted her raw, held her in his bare arms and whispered shivers against her skin.
None of that, as intimate as the sincerity breaking him now. This anger, a mask for an ache that terrified Fi even more. He was angry…
Because he cared what happened to her.
Because that was hurt, brightening his eyes.
“Antal. I—”
He stood. A curt dismissal. “You need to rest.”
“But—”
“Rest, Fionamara. I’ll keep watch, make sure Verne doesn’t discover us here.”
He stepped out the door before she could speak, gone in a swirl of tail around the frame.
Fi tried to go after him. She managed to swing her legs off the bed before dizziness struck, pain in her shoulder as she slumped against the wall. Footsteps came down the hallway.
“Fi?”
Kashvi stormed into the room, hair a frizzed bob, tired eyes framed with darker circles than Fi had ever seen on her.
“What are you doing?” Kashvi demanded. “Get back in bed, you stubborn woman!”
“But Antal—”
