Page 10 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

What. The fuck. Is that?

Across millennia, humans had endless names for the predators that hunted them. Boughstalkers. Nightmares. The beast from the forest , in that old rhyme Fi used to hum when she was a kid.

Then the monsters came down from their trees, offering peace—for a price.

They taught humans to call them by their proper name—daeyari.

His back faced them, antlered silhouette like a slip of shadow in the low light of the courtyard, unmoving aside from the sway of a long, slender tail.

Fi could have screamed. Could have filled that room with curses.

She bit her tongue just short of drawing blood, terrified the beast would smell it.

Milana promised he wouldn’t be here. But even distance meant less to an immortal, not bound by the same flesh and blood, able to flit across their territories even faster than Fi with her Shards.

It had been so long since she’d seen a daeyari in person.

“ What is he doing here? ” Panic quivered Milana’s whisper.

“He was gone this morning!” Erik returned. “No warning he’d be returning early.”

“Get rid of him.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”

The daeyari turned, a single eye snapping onto the humans cowering behind him. His irises glowed crimson like midnight coals, the energy inside him seeping out, rimmed by sclera the same depthless black as the Void he’d crawled out of.

Before Fi could bolt, Milana grabbed her wrist, nails digging into flesh.

“Don’t run,” Milana hissed. “You never run from a daeyari.”

Never run from any predator.

Fi willed her legs to hold as the daeyari approached.

There was savage elegance to the creature: lacquer black antlers carved with delicate designs and capped with beaten silver.

A midnight jacket of no mortal fashion, high-collared and cut low past his clavicle, far too thin for the cold.

Subtle panels of iridescence formed a silhouetted tree line along the hem, an aurora above.

Vesper fabric. From the Twilit Plane, the first home of the daeyari, before they spread their claws to the Season-Locked Planes and dozens more beyond.

His dark breeches ended at the calf, his ankle raised…

higher than mortals. The way a cat walked on its toes, made for predatory silence.

He moved on svelte strides, lithe with muscle, hands and bare feet tipped in claws.

Yet for every otherworldly feature, just as many looked uncannily like a young man.

A light blush colored his lips, mouth set in a perturbed line.

Blue-black hair swept back, longer strands over his crown, a shaved fade at the sides, antlers marking the line of separation.

There was a softness to his pale cheeks that bronze couldn’t capture, a stern jaw that cut fiercer in person. All lures to lull unwitting hares.

“Thank you for fetching me, Erik.” Milana’s voice came out level. She nudged Fi. “I was taking her to light candles. Would you mind?”

While Erik pulled Fi away, Milana folded her hands and bowed to the monster.

“Welcome, Lord Antal.”

The daeyari paused before her. His expression was granite smooth, skin-peeling eyes framed by slender brows. His tail swayed at his ankles.

“Milana.”

He spoke her name like a breeze through pines, low and steady with a ring of swallowed centuries. None of that sent the shock down Fi’s spine. Not the velvet of the daeyari’s voice, but the familiarity.

He knew her.

Erik guided Fi to the shelves of memorial candles and handed her a lighting stick. She took it in tight fingers but didn’t dip into a flame, glaring into his terror-wide eyes, weighing the clamp of his mouth. Milana did wear those silver robes too well.

Fuck Fi and hurl her dense ass into the Void.

Milana and Erik were attendants here. Attendants to the daeyari .

“We weren’t expecting you,” Milana said behind them.

“No,” the daeyari returned. “My apologies for the impromptu visit.”

“Forgive me for not meeting you sooner. We could have planned for your arrival—”

Milana froze as the daeyari’s head tilted. Subtler, a flare of nostrils and a soft inhale.

“Milana…” He frowned, one chip through the marble facade. “What’s upset you?”

He could smell her unease? Or maybe the beasts could sense their prey’s panicked heartbeats.

Fi’s hammered against her sternum. Erik slapped her fingers to urge her attention away from eavesdropping, back to the facade of lighting candles.

She dipped her stick into a flame and held it, trembling, to a cold wick.

Ten years, and still a coward. No better than a frantic hare.

“A busy day. That’s all.” Milana stepped back, masking the motion with another bow. “Please, how may I assist you, my Lord Daeyari?”

The daeyari studied her with an odd pinch to his brow. A tighter flick of his tail.

Milana’s shoulders eased when he stepped past her, striding to a window overlooking the capitol plaza.

Twilight bathed the beast as the short-lived Winter sun skirted low over rooftops.

The contrast of light accentuated his slim silhouette, lean shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, calves cut of sharp muscle.

A hunter, built to chase prey through the forest.

“There are complaints in the city,” he said.

“We’ve heard,” Milana replied, hesitant.

“What do you know of them?”

“A heating failure in the southern district.”

The daeyari turned, scowling. “Those energy conduits were replaced last year.”

“You needn’t worry, Lord Antal. Your governor is handling the matter.”

“Is he here?”

“Of course. I’ll take you to him?”

Milana swept a hand to the hall. She played the act with confidence, words betraying only a subtle waver as she attempted to hurry the daeyari along. His eyes narrowed all the same, a smoldering red that chilled Fi to the marrow. And when that gaze flicked onto her and Erik…

She turned to the candles with more gusto than she’d shown her past few lovers.

Behind her, clawed footsteps padded stone. Crossing the room.

Then fainter, disappearing down the hall.

Once the room fell silent, Fi and Erik stood side-by-side, breaths shallow, lighting sticks burnt to ashes in their hands.

“ You lied to me ,” Fi said with all the venom of a frost asp.

“We may have… omitted some details,” Erik admitted.

Merciless Void, Fi could shake him for semantics later. “What are we going to do now?” There were any number of acceptable options: running, fleeing, cutting losses while they still had their throats.

“We wait for Milana,” Erik said.

“… Excuse me? ”

“There’s still time to—”

“There is a daeyari here!”

“Milana will get rid of him.”

“You’re out of your mind if you think—”

“One hour!” In Erik’s fingers, the lighting stick splintered. “That’s what you agreed to. There’s still time.”

Fi braced her hands on a shelf while he returned to the charade of candle lighting.

How had this gone to shit so fast? The daeyari saw her. He knew Milana and Erik. Even if the beast could be diverted, the capitol brimmed with supporters, people who could take notice of two attendants and their nervous behavior.

Fi wouldn’t go down with them. She could get through this. She had to get through this. She took this job because she was bold, unshakeable, the best damn smuggler across the Season-Locked Planes. She clutched the confidence like armor, this cloak of bristles she’d woven to keep herself safe.

To prove she was more now than she’d been on the worst day of her life.

She wouldn’t be dragged to a daeyari. Never again.

A small eternity passed before Milana returned, footsteps quick against the tile.

“He’s gone,” she reported, breathless. “Out of the city, back to the eastern border, but we’re severely behind schedule. We need to move.”

By the Void. Not her, too.

“Milana,” Fi said. “You’d be better off—”

“We have half an hour still! We’ll meet you here once our business is finished.”

They hurried off, leaving Fi alone in the reflection room. Cold drifted in from the courtyard, flickering the candles. She dropped onto a pillow with a snarl, reflecting on how little she wanted to be here.

Fi could run. She could very easily run right now and call this business finished, professional impropriety be damned to the deepest pit of the Void. This wasn’t an art heist. That much she’d bet her last rainbow-stranded hair on.

Then why did Milana and Erik need so many energy capsules—

A muffled BOOM shuddered the building.

Fi nearly jolted off her pillow. The impact rumbled stone and left the candle shelves rattling. On the high walls, windows groaned, glass cast purple in the growing dusk.

She held still as a startled rabbit in the aftermath.

An explosion. That was an explosion , from the neighboring wing of the capitol. Milana and Erik said they’d planned to break into a safe in the governor’s office, but…

A scent of stone dust itched Fi’s nose. Footsteps and frantic voices passed by the hall.

Slowly, she rose to her feet.

In ten years of Void smuggling, Fi had her fair share of jobs gone wrong.

How to describe that feeling, the moment before disaster hit?

That hot prickle down her arms. The churn of adrenaline in her gut.

Like the instinct of an animal caught before a storm, when the wind began to rustle, too late to run for shelter.

That explosion didn’t come from the governor’s office. It was too big for a safe, to have shaken the windows where Fi stood. Her ears perked at a sound like crumbling mortar.

Milana and Erik. Those lichen-mouthed liars. This wasn’t about a safe, it was—

A second explosion threw Fi off her feet.

She hit the floor on knees and elbows, curling into a ball as dust and snow billowed in from the courtyard, a cacophony of percussion and stone drowning out everything around her.

Her ears rang as the dust settled.