Page 24 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Kashvi followed with two breakfast plates. “Careful, Fi. Never spite the woman who makes the food.” She leaned down to Iliha’s slighter stature, pressing a kiss to her wife’s scowling cheek. “Don’t fret yourself, dove. I’ll handle the vagabonds.”

Fi had been called worse. Her nose wrinkled at a stale smell—coming from her . First, she’d break the news, then she could worry about reclaiming her bathtub from a daeyari.

Iliha stalked across the room, muttering like an irate shrew as she brought on the rest of the lights, turned up the furnace, snapped the automaton birds to life. They fluttered awake with a click of gears, heads swiveling with copper crests.

Kashvi dropped into a chair, boots propped on the table. “Wondered when you’d pop up, Fi. Boden says you were in Thomaskweld?”

Fi nodded. Her ceramic plate held a flaky pastry, oozing cream cheese and honey glaze, almonds sliced on top. Despite feeling ravenous, she struggled to keep a bite down.

If Boden was the administrative head of Nyskya, Kashvi was its heart, curating every drunken rivalry and sliver of gossip that passed through her doors. Best to tell them both the foul news in one go.

“You should’ve seen this man.” Kashvi jerked a thumb at Boden. “Moping in here every morning, wondering when you’d be back.”

“For good reason.” Boden poked his pastry. “Everything we’ve heard from Thomaskweld is piecemeal. And Fi’s usually good about—”

“But you know what I said?” Kashvi grinned. “That Fi? She’s like a cockroach. Always crawls her way out of things.”

From the bar, Iliha muttered agreement. Kashvi smirked at her contribution, absently tapping a finger to her single earring, a dangling glass capsule glowing silver—a match to the pendant Iliha wore around her neck, both their energy combined as part of the marriage pact.

A dandelion wisp wedded to a lioness, both with ferocious temperaments.

“Thanks, Kashvi.” Fi flicked a pastry flake off her finger. “You must be the only person on all four Season-Locked Planes who uses cockroach as a compliment .”

“Well?” Kashvi said. “What’s the news?”

Iliha circled the table with mugs. Kashvi accepted her tea with a brush of Iliha’s thumb, then a huff when Iliha nudged her boots off the table. Boden took his coffee with a nod. Fi’s coffee was frothed to the rim, tan with cream and sugar. She clutched the ceramic. Breathed.

Maybe they’d understand. Maybe she could fix this.

“It was a bomb, Bodie,” Fi said in a hush. “All those energy capsules. The clients asked me to move them into the capitol building, then…”

Overhead, energy lights hummed. A flock of automaton birds ratcheted and clicked. But the people: silent. Iliha cast wide eyes from the bar. Boden paused with crumbs in his beard.

The table creaked as Kashvi crashed forward on her elbows. “Fuck me in the Void. That was you ?”

You.

The accusation sliced deep. You did this. You’re to blame, like always.

“Not just me,” Fi argued.

“You were there for the explosion?” Boden’s pastry lay forgotten. His brow, worry-creased tenfold. “Are you all right?”

“I—”

“What happened?” Kashvi demanded.

“Give her a moment,” Boden countered.

“A moment , Boden?” Kashvi slammed a hand to the table. “Your sister blew up the capitol building in a daeyari’s city. Who would do that?”

“They were working for Verne.”

Another silence. Iliha crossed the room like a wraith, settling a hand on the back of Kashvi’s chair. Three pairs of eyes locked on Fi.

“Verne?” Kashvi hissed. “The daeyari , Verne?”

“The governor’s dead.” Fi forced words through a sandpaper throat. “And Antal… removed. Verne plans to claim this territory for herself.”

More silence. Fi had to keep talking, had to rid herself of every wretched detail before they ate her insides. “I don’t know how much you’ve heard, whether Verne has announced her intentions yet. I wanted to warn you—”

Kashvi’s chair legs scraped as she stood. “Warn us what ? That you might have doomed us all?” She ran a hand through her hair, dark strands damp with melted ice. “Void have mercy, Fi. What have you done?”

“Kashvi,” Boden chided. “There’s no need—”

“Smuggling capsules into a government building?” Kashvi continued. “What did you think they were for? A birthday party?”

“I didn’t know!” Fi clawed her hands against the table.

Kashvi was right. Every damn word was right, and Fi hadn’t thought this through, and she couldn’t roll over like a coward again.

She was supposed to be better now. “I did what they hired me for. To earn a shit ton of energy chips for this village.”

“Energy chips? What good will those do us, when a daeyari comes…”

Kashvi hunched into a rasping breath, silver-veined hands bracing the table.

Iliha was at her side in an instant, urging Kashvi back into her seat, gentle hands nudging the tea mug closer. Kashvi brushed a tender hand down Iliha’s arm then breathed in the steam.

Boden stared at his hands. At Fi.

His incessant worry, she could stomach. This struck every fear she’d had about telling him—that hard look that told Fi he was the older sibling.

He was the responsible one holding their lives together.

And she was the batty, reality-skipping sister who’d unleashed a man-eating monster upon their home.

“I’m glad you aren’t hurt,” Boden said. “Are you sure , Fi? About Verne being behind this?”

“I saw her, Bodie.” Fi’s voice came out too small. “Barely got away alive.”

“This is absolute shit ,” Kashvi groaned.

Boden slumped in his chair. “I’ll… try to get more information. Reach out to contacts in Thomaskweld. For now, we should be cautious. Iliha? Could you send a telegram to Yvette and their metalworkers, suggest they delay any trips they might have planned to the capital?”

Iliha appraised her wife. Only after a nod from Kashvi and another press of the mug into her hands did Iliha glide away into the hall.

A temporary solution. Nyskya could avoid sourcing supplies from Thomaskweld, for now. They shouldn’t have to. They should be able to ask their capital city for aide, without fear of repercussions.

“What are we going to do?” Fi asked. Something to fix this. Anything to not have ruined another home.

“Nyskya will ride it out,” Boden said. “We’re remote enough, we can let politics run their course in Thomaskweld. No need to panic until we see where the pieces land.”

“I came here to get away from daeyari,” Kashvi rasped. “We all did. That man-eating monster in charge of this territory was bad enough. Now we have to survive a new one?”

Fi frowned at the description of Antal. She shouldn’t have. Just… strange, to reconcile “man-eating monster” with the gloomy cat slumped in her bathtub.

“What else do you want us to do?” Boden asked. “Write a petition?”

“I’ve got a crossbow,” Kashvi said. “If one of those bastards tries to come here.”

“We aren’t fighting a daeyari, Kashvi. I’m not sure we even can .”

“Energy bolt through the skull would be a good start.”

Fi pictured Verne coiling a whip of red energy, a Beast at her side. She pictured Antal, how easily he’d dispatched his traitorous attendants, how swiftly he’d healed wounds that would have leveled a human.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Fi said.

Kashvi scoffed. “And you’re a fountain of good ideas today? When did you get back? Did anyone follow you?”

Fi bit her lip. Void help her if they knew she’d invited a daeyari to her cottage.

“Give her a rest,” Boden said.

“ We’ll be lucky to get any rest!” Kashvi snapped. “We should be prepared for—”

She hunched into another rasping breath.

This spasm didn’t let up.

Fi and Boden waited several seconds before Kashvi gave in. She marched to the front door, letting in a spike of cold as she stepped outside for fresh air.

Only Fi and Boden remained.

Funny, how it always came to that.

“I didn’t mean it,” Fi said. “I swear on the endless Void, Bodie, I didn’t know this would happen.” Kashvi’s derision, Fi could bear. She needed Boden to understand.

He rubbed a hand over his brow. “Don’t let Kashvi get to you. You know she’s… had a rough past with daeyari.”

“So have we.”

He sighed. “So have we.”

Fi played with the crumbs on her plate. As kids, Boden had been the one who kept a straight face when she skinned her knees on river rocks, calmly cleaning the scrapes while she wallowed and sniffed.

He’d nearly punched a boy from school who’d tried to kiss Fi without asking— nearly , but only because Fi punched the boy first.

But Boden was also the one she’d catch caring for sparrows who’d gotten their wings caught in rat traps. Who’d hardly spoken for a month after their mother left.

“We left to get away from Verne,” she said. “If she comes here… what do we do?”

“We wait. See what happens.”

“We can’t wait for everything, Bodie.”

“Sometimes, it’s the best we can do. Maybe things won’t be as bad as you think.”

Fi ground her teeth. “Easy for you to say. You didn’t almost get eaten by her.”

“She wouldn’t have.”

“You don’t know that. You didn’t know that. I remember you yelling, Bodie. Trying to stop them from taking me. Unlike…”

Unlike their father. Fi’s memories flashed with night-shrouded forest, attendants leading her away from home. The hollow look in her father’s eyes—yet he’d let them take her anyway. His own daughter.

“He didn’t want them to take you.” Boden turned defensive. For who ?

“Of course he wanted them to take me. He proposed it. He wanted the prestige of an Arbiter daughter.” Always telling her how daeyari prized Voidwalkers—a prize for him to hand over.

Fi was his ticket to respect, recognition, even while he wasted his days barely sober enough to hold down a job, barely bringing home enough energy capsules to keep their furnace running.

“He believed you’d be ok,” Boden said, “that Verne would spare you.”

“He didn’t know.”

“And then you left. So call it even.”

Fi’s nails raked the copper tabletop, finding every dent and scrape of old beer mugs.

She reached for her coat of barbs, her bristles and bravado.

All desperate defenses to hide the fragile creature she kept inside.

That terrified girl who ran from home ten years ago, her father shouting behind her that she’d be back—she’d better come back, if she cared about her family.

“You weren’t there with him in the end.” Boden kept his voice low, eyes on his breakfast. “He asked about you, when his mind started going. Every Void-damned day, he asked about you. Where’s my little girl? Doesn’t she want her bedtime story? ”

Fi’s nails pressed close to cracking. “I couldn’t stay in that place.”

“I know. You don’t have to…” Another sigh. “Forget it. That doesn’t matter now.”

Of course it mattered.

Fi hadn’t just left Astrid to Verne ten years ago. Hadn’t just left their father to die.

She’d left Boden. Left her only brother to care for their ailing father alone, to build his funeral pyre when he passed.

They’d found their way back together after that—Boden had found her flitting across Planes like kelp ripped from its roots, had convinced her to settle in Nyskya.

For seven years, she’d helped him build a home here.

Seven years, hoping to redeem herself with the only family she had left.

Only to drop this latest burden on him.

He looked so tired. His eyes, shadowed by worry for his reckless sister. His shoulders, weighed by the news she’d brought. She hadn’t even told him all of it.

“I saw Astrid,” Fi said. “In Thomaskweld.”

Boden straightened. Not the ghost-stricken pale Fi had suffered upon reuniting with her oldest phantom, but still surprised. Still cautious.

“Astrid?” he said.

“She’s helping Verne. Astrid is the reason I—”

The door slammed open. Kashvi stormed inside, a billow of cold at her back.

“Kashvi?” Boden stood in alarm. “What are you—”

Fi snarled as Kashvi grabbed her arm.

“You!” Kashvi pointed at Boden. “Stay. You”—she pulled Fi out of her chair—“with me.”

Subtle as a charging aurorabeast. But Kashvi’s voice didn’t hit that warning low without reason.

Fi followed into a hall that smelled of timber and yeast, iced air warring against the heat of Iliha’s cooking.

Kashvi shoved her into the kitchen. After catching herself against a wire cooling rack full of scones, Fi swiveled with a scowl, but her assailant had already vanished.

She peered down a narrow sightline into the common room as Kashvi took Fi’s chair at the table, hunched over the plate of breakfast crumbs.

The tavern door opened.