Page 22 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Fi sidled to her kitchen, facing away to offer privacy. A stagnant moment passed before she heard the whisper of fabric hitting the floor. The lap of water in the tub.

A sigh of appeasement.

A stupid idea. What choice did Fi have? She steadied her elbows against the counter. Eyed the knife hilts in the kitchen block. No. That would be even stupider.

“You shouldn’t turn your back on a daeyari,” came a low voice behind her.

What a fucking prick.

Fi faced him, leant against the counter, pushing every inch of space between them. They’d confronted Verne together out of convenience. That didn’t mean she could trust this lethal creature.

“You’d rather look someone in the eye while peeling their skin off?” she returned, honey-sharp.

Antal reclined in the tub, arms draping the edges, claws strumming cedar.

“You have some sharp teeth of your own,” he muttered.

Hard to say, whether his tone was insult or compliment.

He returned to untangling his hair, easier amidst swaths of steam.

For a creature of ice and emptiness, he sank into the heat with surprising relish.

Fi would have preferred he stay rigid. The way his shoulders unknotted, the stream of his fingers through water-slick hair felt too intimate for the space they’d been forced to share.

She busied herself with the herbs on her counter, touching the charging panel to light the growing lamp, enough energy to last the day. Her furnace had greater demands. She popped the energy capsule into a slot. A clamping pin completed the circuit, sending a warming current through metal coils.

As she worked, Fi kept the daeyari in sight.

His eyes glowed calmer now, irises dimmed to old-coal crimson.

His ears pulled to a slight taper. The carvings on his antlers stood out in lighter blues and greens than the surface black, depictions of flowers and auroras and strange sigils divided into three bands.

Beyond those anomalies? The rest of him looked chillingly like a normal man, from the lean slope of his shoulders to the soft curves of his cheeks.

Fi resisted the urge to peek at what other ways he resembled a man.

Obviously, daeyari had cocks. They did when they’d been flesh and blood, or else there’d be no vavriter.

They did still, after returning from the Void in their immortal forms. Her father avoided telling those kinds of stories, though even as Fi grew, tales of tangled mortals and immortals circulated as rumors at best. She had to wonder how many survived the teeth.

“Why didn’t you barge in here last night?” Fi asked when she could bear the quiet no longer. She made sure to sound stern. No hint of the dread she’d stomached on his behalf.

“Had I done so, would you have treated me this amicably?” Antal picked at his claws. “Cast me as a beast all you wish. I’ve walked the Planes for two and a half centuries, enough to guess when patience will be more effective than pressure.”

Fi didn’t like that. Not one bit.

“And,” Antal said, lower, “I wanted to make sure Verne didn’t find you here.”

Fi liked that even less . Making her sound more indebted to him, as if he cared whether she was ripped to pieces in the night. “What more do you want from me?”

“I want to know what part you played in this.”

“I told you. Milana hired me. I didn’t know the plan.”

“So you claimed, Fionamara.” Her name lashed off his tongue. “Yet you come from Verne’s territory. You know her Arbiter.”

“I knew her Arbiter.” Fi slouched against her counter, shoulder aching. “Thomaskweld was the first time I spoke to Astrid in ten years. I agreed to help her for old times’ sake.” A grimace. “And apparently, she used me for old times’ sake.’

“That’s not very helpful.” If Antal noticed the angst in her confession, his flat tone said nothing of it.

“Look. I’m sorry for whatever part I played in this. Truly, I am. But I move contraband. Wine for rich snobs, energy capsules for rural settlements. Not blowing up buildings. Or do immortals not believe in coincidences?”

Antal huffed. “Only the rotten kind.”

He sank into the water until his nose rested above the surface, antlers hooked against the tub to keep afloat. The fiercest predator across a hundred Planes. A hunter made to stalk from trees and chase down human prey… sulking in her bathtub?

Fi decided a sulking daeyari as preferable to an angry daeyari, though both seemed perilous.

When Fi and her brother were little, one of their father’s bedtime tales told of a great hunter tracking pinecats through a forest thick as the Void.

As the man rested by his fire one night, his keen gaze spotted red eyes in the trees.

Instead of reaching for his crossbow, the hunter called out, “The night is cold. Join me by my fire.” Intrigued by such bold prey, the daeyari approached.

Sat across from him. They talked deep into the night, trading stories of their most impressive quarry.

Then, the daeyari ate him.

Fi heard variations on the ending. Some storytellers spun more optimistic conclusions, the daeyari impressed by a fellow hunter and his hospitality, enough to part amicably. Her father preferred the original ending. Don’t expect a beast to change its nature , the moral went.

The question remained: would Fi be rewarded for playing along? Or was she the witless prey, foolish to think she could earn civility from a predator?

“That Beast.” Fi spoke low. Testing. “The one Verne summoned. That’s what I saw in Thomaskweld.”

Antal slitted one eye open. Not to look at her. He studied the steam floating off the bath.

“What was it?” Fi asked.

“Why do you ask.” His reply came so flat, it was hardly a question.

“Why do I ask ? It nearly killed me in Thomaskweld. It nearly killed both of us at Verne’s chateau. You took one look at it and shit yourself.”

Antal growled. “I did nothing of the sort.”

“What was it?”

He bared his teeth at the rafters.

“Holy shit.” Fi straightened. “Is this… a secret ?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Damn me to the endless Void. It is a secret?”

“You enjoy hearing yourself talk far too much.”

“You useless immortal. Tell me .”

“That Beast is…” He gritted his teeth. “A daeyari.”

Fi blinked.

Sometimes, people lied to her about where their cargo came from.

Sometimes, they told her stupid things, like the latest trick their pet anteater could perform.

Or unbelievable things, like how to walk through the Void.

All to say: few statements had ever tripped Fi up as much as whatever nonsense Antal just spouted.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I understand.”

He slunk into the water with a world-weary sigh, as if all of this—all of her— was terribly inconvenient.

“Daeyari don’t die of age. That’s our gift of immortality.

But we can be slain, and there in lies our curse.

When a daeyari falls, their energy doesn’t pass to the Afterplane.

It lingers within the Void, eventually rematerializing upon the Planes. ”

Fi blinked again. Hard. “Literally. You’re telling me that Beast is literally a daeyari?”

“Yes.”

“Daeyari reincarnate ?” Each word brewed more hysterical. “As that ?”

“The greater the number of rematerializations, the cruder the form that returns.”

“ Cruder forms? That creature with a fucking horse skull and scrambling on four paws used to be…” Fi gestured over Antal’s decidedly—and she couldn’t believe she was thinking this—less monstrous appearance.

“A different form of daeyari. Derived. But they never come back… right. With each return, more sense slips away. Until only hunger remains.” His words seethed distaste. Claws gouged the soft wood of her tub.

Fi’s own nails dug into her arm. Daeyari could become even graver beasts. Daeyari could die in the first place, though she’d never heard such a feat in any of her father’s folktales. What could kill a daeyari? Another daeyari, maybe? No weapon of mortal make.

“If that’s true,” she said, “why have I never seen one? Never heard of one?”

“That Beast shouldn’t be here. They’re kept far away from the Twilit Plane.”

The daeyari’s Plane of origin, the closest world beyond Fi’s Season-Locked cluster.

If she were doomed to transform into a feral Beast upon death, she wouldn’t be keen on the creatures lurking close to home, either.

Endless Planes and Shards lay beyond the world she knew, yet she’d never dipped into that terrifying unknown.

Even less reason to, if other Planes lurked with reincarnated immortals.

“So what are you going to do?” Fi asked. Demanded, more like. This seemed a suitably dire scenario for demands.

Antal slouched, gloomy as a wet cat. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know . What’s your plan to get rid of Verne and take your territory back?”

“I don’t know.”

“She tried to kill you!”

He scoffed. “Killing me wasn’t Verne’s intention. Daeyari don’t plot each other’s demise lightly. She made her point that I’m outmatched, enough to assure herself I won’t return.”

“And you’re going to accept that? You don’t have some grand scheme to march in and take her head?”

“Even if I could kill her, I’d rather not have another derived beast after me in a century when she rematerializes.”

Fi had to admit, that was a shitty caveat to revenge: the most lethal race in the Shattered Planes, locked into nonlethal bickering for fear of horrid transformation.

“So what about allies?” Surely, this immortal, this creature who’d walked the Planes for centuries, must know someone who could help. “You don’t have an Arbiter?”

“Correct,” Antal muttered.

“What about attendants? Other than Milana and Erik?”

“All dead or missing. I checked.”

Fucking ouch . Bitch or not, Verne had been thorough.

The territories had no armies. Local guards kept the peace, but the daeyari settled larger conflicts. That was supposed to be an advantage of their rule. Not so helpful, when daeyari were the ones fighting.

“You and Verne kept mentioning the… Daey… Celva?”

Antal sank deeper into the water. “Our administrative body, on the Twilit Plane.”

“So could they—?”

“No. Verne declared me unfit. And I retreated. By daeyari law, her claim to the territory is valid.”

“But Verne also said you’re from an”—Fi made air quotes—“ esteemed Old House . Does that mean someone you could ask for—”

A single look from Antal silenced her. No words. No twitch of his tail draped over the tub. Two slicing red irises warned her not to speak another word.

So daeyari could be as touchy as humans when it came to family.

Not that Fi had any idea what a daeyari family looked like. A pair of proud parents watching their toddler teethe on bones? She didn’t know what the daeyari Plane looked like. Didn’t know they could die. Didn’t know they returned as monstrosities.

Fi knew nothing of these creatures, except that they were meant to be feared.

And she wanted nothing to do with this one.

“What about your mortal government?” she said. “Verne can’t replace them with people loyal to her overnight.”

Antal unwound from his withering glare. “Depends how long she’s been planning. She’s been distant since I took power.”

“Fifty years?” Fi gaped. “You think Verne’s been planning this for fifty years ?”

“A short time,” he muttered. “Relatively.”

Thomaskweld would be no help. With half the capitol collapsed, the governor dead, the bureaucracy would be in shambles.

And whoever remained? Every government was bound to obey the daeyari in charge.

No human in their right mind would back an ousted immortal—she elected to disregard, for the moment, what that said about her .

Fi buried her face in her hands. She needed breakfast. Or a drink. “Verne did hand your ass to you. I thought daeyari were supposed to be powerful Shapers?”

Antal straightened, water shifting with the indignant swish of his tail. “My apologies. Daeyari don’t pop into existence with flawless knowledge of Shaping.”

“I’m just saying, it would help.”

“I’m still a better Shaper than you.”

“I’ve got an energy sword to argue that.”

“Do you?” Antal swept a clawed hand around her home. “Where is it?”

Fi pushed off the counter, bristling to full height, haggard with unruly curls of Void-and-rainbow hair because someone was using her bath before she’d had a chance. Her sword, taken from her in Thomaskweld by his traitorous attendants. A snarling retort sizzled her tongue.

She stopped herself, realizing how much her guard had slipped.

Of course a daeyari would know how to lull his prey, how to disarm Fi by lounging in her tub with water slicking the smooth plane of his chest.

She shut her mouth and weighed her miserable options.

“I need to go to town.” Fi pulled a fur-lined hat over her hair, heaved on her snow boots. “Enjoy my amenities, Lord Daeyari . Someone needs to warn the common folk that a man-eating tyrant and her pet man-eating Beast have claimed this territory.”

She braced for rebuttal, but Antal fell still again. Guarded again. Back to that statue of marble skin and obsidian claws.

“It would be best if you didn’t tell anyone I was here,” he said. “For both of us.”

“I’m not an idiot. I don’t want Verne tearing this place apart looking for you.” Fi yanked the door open. A gust of cold hit her cheeks. “Don’t fight with Aisinay while I’m gone.”

Antal’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“My horse.”

A deeper furrow. “You named your Void horse… Icy Neigh ?”

“A brilliant pun, I know.”

Fi left with confident strides, an act crafted to convince this daeyari she was unflustered. Unafraid. Unintimidated by the visitor in her home and whatever fallout lay ahead.

All of it, lies. Beneath false bravado, Fi’s stomach knotted as if she walked the edge of the Void, one misstep from tumbling into oblivion.

And she had no idea which direction would tip her in.