Page 27 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Too close again

The cold hit her first.

Nyskya endured standard cold, biting to cheeks and numbing to fingers, kept at bay by a thick coat. The cold here came sharper. Ravenous. It sliced Fi’s layers and crystallized in her lungs. She hunched to keep her core warm.

Antal breathed deep of the frigid air, sleeves still rolled to expose his lean forearms. He set off walking through calf-deep snow.

Fi followed. She followed a daeyari, to meet another daeyari, and that was the most ridiculous string of words her brain had ever assembled.

Get Tyvo’s help. Get Antal back in Thomaskweld. She could manage that, for Nyskya.

Black shiverpines loomed overhead, no sound but the crunch of ice beneath Fi’s boots and Antal’s upsettingly bare feet. Through needles, she spotted a waxing moon, some dagger-crisp stars in the dusk.

“Where are we?” Fi asked.

“Tyvo Territory.”

Void stop her from slapping him. “Why did you bring us to the middle of nowhere?”

“Daeyari prefer solitude.” Antal picked his way over a fallen trunk, agile as a panther. “Most don’t live in their cities. Tyvo keeps his residence here, in the forest.”

“Sure,” Fi said through chattering teeth. “Couldn’t you teleport us to his residence?”

“It’s not polite to appear in someone’s home without invitation, Fionamara. Among daeyari, walking is a show of respect.”

“How far?”

“A half mile should be more than gracious.”

Fi wrinkled her nose, half in annoyance, half to keep the blood flowing. She Shaped warm energy out of her abdomen, into aching extremities.

One of her father’s bedtime stories, The Selfish Herder , spoke of a human lost in the woods with his aurorabeasts.

When a daeyari found him, the man pleaded for his life, promising a meal of an aurorabeast and his neighbor should he escape the forest alive.

The daeyari agreed. Guided him out of the trees.

But when the man’s worried neighbor appeared to welcome him home, the daeyari dragged the herdsman into the forest screaming, leaving the neighbor with not only his life, but a bolstered aurorabeast herd.

Admittedly, the story didn’t exactly match Fi’s situation. She struggled to recall any cautionary tale pertinent to her predicament, beyond the recurring moral of, “never trust a daeyari.” And for the record, she didn’t. She kept her guard up so high it itched her nose.

“Why haven’t you eaten me yet?” Fi asked.

Antal’s tail flicked. “Why are you so fixated on that?”

“It’s a reasonable thing to fixate on. No one wants to be eaten.”

“Devouring mortals is far from my only priority.”

“Then why’d you demand a sacrifice after the capitol explosion?”

Antal cut her a sharp look. Fi couldn’t back down, couldn’t reveal an inch of vulnerable flesh to this beast.

“Milana and Erik were chatting about it,” she said. “While dragging me to my doom.”

“Hmm…” He turned up a snow-drifted slope with infuriating ease. Fi huffed to keep up. “Daeyari are strongest when well fed. I anticipated trouble. I needed the best edge I could.”

“So you would have been more useless against Verne, if you hadn’t eaten?”

Antal clamped his teeth. Sighed. “I am sorry. Milana shouldn’t have brought you against your will.”

Fi gave a bitter laugh.

She shouldn’t have. This daeyari had fangs, even if he’d yet to use them. But she had to stand her ground. It felt good to stand her ground against one of these wretched immortals she’d feared for a lifetime. This one betrayed a sliver of restraint, and she latched on like a leech.

“Thanks,” Fi said. “Do you apologize to all your meals?”

“That’s unfair. To both of us.”

“ Both of us? ” Fi tripped on a submerged root. Righted herself. Glowered. “Please. Tell me all about how feasting on humans is inconvenient for you.”

“Daeyari are carnivorous. We only take what we need to sustain ourselves. You wouldn’t fault a wolf for hunting a deer.”

Fi went rigid. She shouldn’t fight with him, shouldn’t sow more conflict with the man-eater who knew where she lived, but—

“But…” Antal said slowly. “The wolf has no choice. The deer doesn’t laugh, doesn’t write music. This has long been a dilemma for some daeyari, or the peace between our races wouldn’t exist. Vavriter wouldn’t exist.”

“ Peace .” Fi scoffed. “The pact gave your sheep a nicer looking pen, was all.”

His tone sharpened. “I need to eat—”

“So eat something else!” Fi shouted before common sense stopped her. But Void, she was so damn tired of these creatures and the prey-animal coil in her stomach. “Aurorabeasts were bred to feed daeyari. Better than culling humans.”

“What a brilliant idea. Why have I never thought of that?” Antal rolled his eyes, the gesture entirely too mortal. Another fissure in his ice-carved exterior.

“What’s wrong with it, smartass?”

“Daeyari must consume flesh infused with energy. Only humans offer sufficient quantities of both. Aurorabeasts can supplement our diet, not sustain us indefinitely.”

“So I should feel bad for you? There’s no better option than dragging humans to your shrine?”

“They come willingly.”

“No one dies willingly, Antal. They come because someone has to. Because their villages and families need protection you only sell for blood.”

Fi’s blood, almost. Nyskya’s blood, if she couldn’t fix this.

His teeth clenched, a flash of canines and sharp premolars. “This was the system given to me. Daeyari society has lasted this long thanks to tactful division of resources.”

“Resources? Is that all we are to you?”

“ No . You aren’t .”

He stopped in front of her. Fi’s breath billowed steam. In this wretched cold, even Antal’s exhale blushed into fog. Static pricked her tongue, energy simmering beneath his skin, too close.

Always too close.

“Would you rather I treat you like a beast, Fionamara?” His words skated a growl, low enough to rumble her arteries. “I could flay your skin instead of trading words. Enjoy the crack of your marrow. Would that be more amenable to your conception of me?”

Fi didn’t want to be this close to him, that swell of ozone in her nose. The heat of his Void-rimmed eyes. She held her ground.

“How am I supposed to know your plans, daeyari? Maybe you want to keep me around, a convenient meal for later.”

Antal scoffed. “I could find less nagging dinner options.”

“You’d be so lucky.”

Fi couldn’t say where the courage came to shove him. Like two drunks arguing in a tavern alley. She’d survived brawls with only the occasional concussion or fractured finger.

This time she never made contact.

Too fast, Antal caught her wrists.

He pinned her arms between them, pulling her chest flush to his.

Fi’s fluster snapped to a cold sweat. Antal held her against him, faces level and far too close, not an inch to breathe without sharing the ice-and-ozone air. Fangs, one lunge away from her throat. That was how all her father’s stories ended.

What was she thinking, yelling at a daeyari? Once again, Fi braced for teeth.

Once again, his claws gripped alarmingly soft, even as he restrained her.

“Why are you here?” Antal asked. And that cut deeper than fangs.

“Your attendants dragged me into this.”

Fi tried to pull away, but he locked her arms against his chest, alarmingly strong despite his lean frame. A shock of heat in the cold, too close to escape the flint of his glare. There came that flutter in her stomach, that rabbit’s urge to run even when she knew it was the stupidest option.

“I gave you an out,” Antal said. “If you find me so unpalatable.”

“How unpalatable I find you has nothing to do with it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because this is my fault!”

Bravado wasn’t Fi’s only weapon. Those little surprises, the things the daeyari didn’t expect her to say seemed equally effective at breaking his guard. His grip slackened. Not enough for Fi to escape when she yanked against his claws. She pressed her assault.

“Is that what you want me to say, daeyari?” she spat into the scant space between them.

“It’s. My. Fucking. Fault. I got a stupid, mushy heart for Astrid.

I transported that bomb. I was as useless as you against Verne.

I can’t have that weight on my shoulders.

I can’t…” Fi swallowed all she couldn’t say out loud, memories of cold shrines and her father’s haunted eyes she couldn’t speak in front of him .

“I won’t let Verne tear my life apart a second time. ”

Fi braced for his taunt. The clash of her words against his teeth.

Antal’s silence left her reeling. His grip loosened to a whisper of claws, crimson eyes piercing too deep. Why was he looking at her like that? Why didn’t he say something?

“Why are you here?” she snarled.

Antal kept her pinned for one long, too-quiet breath.

“Because this is my fault.”

He released her.

Fi staggered away, his words rattling her balance. His sincerity, a splinter in her skin. His fault? Why would a daeyari say something like that? Another snare. Another game.

“I could be back on the Twilit Plane by now,” Antal said, low.

As if the forest might overhear. “Not trudging through snow with an ungrateful human, risking my neck to fix this. Verne’s counting on me slinking away with my tail between my legs.

But I don’t want to leave my people to her, either. You deserve… better.”

Fi didn’t know what to say.

Antal resumed his disgruntled walk while she stood in the snow, arms crossed into the cuffs of her coat, shivering.

Daeyari weren’t supposed to be like this.

They were supposed to be cold. Monsters in stories told to make children behave. Vicious, ravenous creatures, like Verne’s hollow-eyed Beast.

What was Antal, if not the monster she’d expected?

Easy for him to say he didn’t relish playing the wolf. He took sacrifices, but no younger than thirty, old enough to understand the choice. That said nothing of whether their choice was coerced. He’d left Nyskya untouched. He’d spared Fi.

He still ate people.

Because he needed to eat. No different than Fi gutting rabbits.