Page 154 of Voidwalker
The girl froze when she saw him looking. She stumbled back, but before she could retreat in earnest, Antal’s tail swayed toward her. Wide-eyed, her tiny fingers poked the tip, soft as if cradling a fragile bird. She smiled.
Was this how their world could be? Peace between their species, rather than terror? Fi saw glimpses of something larger than her or even Nyskya, almost close enough to grasp.
Boden hugged her goodnight. Kashvi parted with a glare for the daeyari, a sliver less vicious since their night in her tavern.
Then, Fi and Antal were alone again.
He didn’t offer his hand to teleport. As they set off walking through the snow, she honed her claws for a different kind of duel.
“I think you made some friends today,” Fi said.
“If by that you mean no one genuinely tried to take my head off.”
“You were the one playing nice with them.”
He hummed.
They reached the forest edge. The stone-faced daeyari at Fi’s side wound her with as much tension as their early meetings, though for a different reason now. A spark cracked the airbetween them, a promise made that morning before they were rudely interrupted.
Would the thought have lingered on Antal’s mind all day, as it had for Fi?
They passed through the gossamer cool of a Curtain. The golden lights of Nyskya vanished, replaced by the pale trees of a Shard, the silvered terrain and endless Void sky.
“Don’t play coy,” Fi teased. “I saw you grinning. You enjoyed your sparring matches?”
“It is… pleasant. Being amongst my people at last.”
“Not having humans flee from you in terror, you mean?” She swooned a dramatic hand across her forehead. “The fell ruler of Thomaskweld, gracing us rural folk with your tutelage. I told you they’d warm up.”
He grinned again, that disarmingly earnest gesture. “I suppose Iamenjoying this.” Then a rumbled, “Though, not as much as I’m going to enjoyyou.”
His gaze cut sharp enough to rend her open. Fi relished the promise.
As his tongue traced his lip, her own hunger fiercened, eager to have his mouth on her again. To finish what they’d started. Yet it wasn’t the beast that drew her breath short, so much as the man, the slow sweep of eyes and the softening of his features to something unguarded, something raw and reverent and just for her.
“You have your work cut out for you,” she said. An invitation.
He didn’t pounce. Just a wicked grin. He offered his elbow as if for a stroll.
Fi tipped her chin up. Her best defense was the long-honed act, pretending to be fierce, unruffled by the flash of fangs.
Except sometimes, with Antal… it didn’t feel like an act. Fi felt like another creature entirely, metal in her bones and anunbent spine. Perhaps she’d faked the facade so long, some had genuinely rubbed off on her.
“Do I look like the kind of woman who needs to be walked home?” she challenged.
“Would you rather I carry you again?”
Fi wouldn’t mind that so much. For the sake of pride, she wrapped her fingers around the crook of his arm.
And they walked.
Antal’s gait was glass, gliding over the frozen shale of the Shard, beneath gossamer leaves. Yet there was always a command to him, steady as the Void. What an odd shift, from once fearing the thought of this daeyari knowing where she lived, to him now leading her back home. Back to her bed. That would make a smoldering end to a story. Or a tragic one.
“Do you know any daeyari folktales?” Fi asked.
He cocked his head. “The kind my people tell? Or yours?”
“The kind my father told a misbehaving little girl to stop her wandering into the forest.”
