Page 34 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)
No repressed feelings whatsoever
Daeyari energy felt like splinters beneath Fi’s nails. Like a pick of lightning through her arteries, charring from the inside out.
She liked it more than she ought to, this touch of power that could destroy her.
At the start of the week, Antal joined her in the clearing by her cottage, a capsule of daeyari energy scorching her palm.
Fi could Shape from her own capsules as easy as breathing.
Daeyari magic came to her like inhaling ice water.
A more powerful current, Antal explained—concentrated, when they became immortal, and their new bodies could withstand the fiercer energy.
Fi did listen. She picked through every damn word.
Still nearly burned a hand off the first time she tried to grasp the capsule’s current.
The danger didn’t deter her. Nor the pain of immortal power searing her lesser flesh. To stand any chance against Verne—against Astrid—Fi needed this edge.
Antal left again, surveying Verne’s tightening grip on his territory. Still no news from Boden. To maintain sanity, Fi wrestled into her boots and coat, out into the cold to practice.
She gripped a crimson energy capsule, perched on bare fingertips to limit skin contact. The current hummed through her nails. Oddly, she couldn’t decide if the energy felt scalding or freezing, or some other sensation she had no word to describe.
A deep breath. Then Fi reached for the energy inside the capsule.
The current exploded into her, surging that otherworldly hot-and-cold down her arm. Fi clamped her teeth as the foreign energy tightened her chest. She held her stance as it carved her stomach, dredging that fight-or-flight panic of a hare, an instinct to hurl the capsule at the ground.
It was terrible and delicious, how the energy tried to consume her. In that moment, Fi wasn’t some tiny thing cowering in the forest. Ozone burned her tongue, a taste of eternity plaquing her teeth.
She raised her sword hilt. Energy surged into the conductive metal, writhing as she Shaped it, until a crimson blade formed, too rough on the edges, but keener every day, crackling the cold air.
Fi envisioned Verne facing her across the clearing, those mocking eyes regarding her like a gnat.
She envisioned Astrid leant against a tree in too-tight pants, lips coiled to a sneer.
Ten years. Fi abandoned Astrid for ten years . Understandable, that Astrid would blame her, hate her, betray her. But to side with Verne? To hold a guillotine above Nyskya and Void knew how many other villages desperate to survive this shift in regime?
Energy fed off Fi’s ire, sparking crimson down the blade. Maybe this was what turned Astrid to that cold creature Fi had seen. This siren’s song of power. This sip of eternity. The current burned and froze through the marrow of her bones.
One slip, and…
Pain speared Fi’s arm. The daeyari energy bucked her control, searing muscles and snapping red tendrils through the air. Her shout rang across the clearing. Her fingers spasmed, dropping the capsule to the snow as she fell onto her ass.
She shuddered as the energy fled her system, leaving her cold.
“Fuck,” Fi said. Then, “ fuck ,” more emphatically. Then a shout for good measure.
She flexed each finger, tendons prickling.
In a few places, the sensation didn’t fade.
There was her problem pinkie, nerves fuzzy since a past overdraw.
The energy burns down her thumb and pointer finger were new: charred veins against pale flesh, heaviest at the fingertips, roots feathering her wrist. The biggest downside of human energy Shaping: destructible casting material.
Not a problem for daeyari and their “Void-woven” flesh, as Antal described it.
Across the clearing, Aisinay paused from hunting needlemice under the porch, lifting her head for a snort.
“I don’t want to hear it from you,” Fi said.
Astrid wielded daeyari energy just fine. Astrid had put Fi on the ground when they fought. Fi didn’t need a judgmental Void horse reminding her how much ground she had to make up.
But Aisinay’s finned ears didn’t perk toward her. The forest went quiet, squabbling jays and squirrels turned to silence, usually a sign of… Fi scanned the trees. Not the trunks, she was learning. Her chin tipped up to the dark canopy.
She spotted them faster each time, those red eyes staring down at her.
Antal perched upon the high bough of a shiverpine, still as a phantom, tail balanced against the branch. Not the first time she’d caught a daeyari watching from the woods this week. Her visitor had appeared once upon the shingles, another time within the drapery of a fir.
Fi disliked how her heart sped at the sight of him. She loathed the reason it did so, no longer purely out of fear.
She stood, tidying her coat with as much dignity as one could wipe snow off their ass.
“Listen, Antlers,” she called up. “I’ll give you permission to teleport straight to my doorstep, if it will stop you being a dick and lurking in trees.”
He’d taken to ignoring the nickname, perhaps thinking this would dull her amusement, clearly not realizing the challenge would only stoke Fi’s determination.
He descended the tree in several agile hops, a scrape of claws against bark then a muffled footfall on snow.
Could have teleported down easier. Show-off.
“I didn’t wish to interrupt,” he greeted.
Within the dusk, he moved like another shadow, red eyes glowing, dark clothes contrasting bone-pale skin. A boughstalker, straight out of the trees. A hunter, who could rend her to pieces. She held her ground as the beast approached.
He paused at a polite distance, tail a low and docile sway.
How tenuous, this thing growing between them. Fi wouldn’t go so far as calling it trust . But partnership required concession, didn’t it? A mutual lowering of guards so they could focus on their common enemy. Antal had earned that much. A week passed, and he hadn’t pushed her against a wall again.
Would he, if she asked him to?
That thought.
That, right the fuck there, was a problem .
A new problem. A concerning problem. The bane of Fi’s entire week, as a matter of fact.
And that was saying something, wasn’t it?
She’d grown familiar with nightmares of Verne’s claws, of Astrid’s wretched glare.
She didn’t know where to begin untangling these ridiculous thoughts of teeth on her throat, simmering eyes beneath dark lashes, how it might feel if he held her down in earnest and—
“How long have you been watching?” Fi demanded.
Antal’s brow quirked. Little chips in the mask. “Careful, Fionamara. Cause too much disturbance, and someone in the village will notice.”
The words chided, but his gaze dropped to her hands.
Fi had been fidgeting, thumb tracing the tingling length of an energy burn.
Predators always searched for injuries on their prey.
That must be the reason for his furrowed brow.
Fi would be mad, an absolutely daft little rabbit if she weighed his reaction as anything like concern .
She retrieved the dropped energy capsule.
Never mind that they had to work together. Never mind how good his claws had felt in her hair, those enticing lines of his collarbone framed by an open shirt. He was a daeyari. He was a fucking daeyari , and he could rip Fi’s throat open if he wanted to.
“What’s it like out there?” The sooner they got rid of Verne, the sooner things could return to normal: Antal back in Thomas-kweld, Fi back to avoiding daeyari for the rest of her life.
Antal spoke low. “You’re sure you wish to know?”
“Why do people ask that? Of course I want to know.” Better than waiting for Boden’s automaton birds and their frustratingly brief messages.
“Verne is… feasting. A year’s worth of sacrifices, in two weeks.”
Fi’s stomach lurched. Boden’s messages hadn’t mentioned that .
“An aggressive strategy,” Antal said. “Verne will test the loyalty of her new supplicants, make them vie for her good will. Some offerings, she’ll gorge upon herself. The rest, she’ll send to the Twilit Plane, gifts to curry favor with the Old Houses.”
And daeyari were strongest when well fed. Verne was keeping herself in prime form. Meanwhile, Antal still hadn’t eaten. Fi hoped she was imagining the growing leanness of his cheeks, his eyes glowing dimmer each time she saw him.
“And Astrid?” she asked.
“Verne’s Arbiter?” Antal bared a fang. “She’s been traveling throughout the territory, making Verne’s demands known.”
Fi couldn’t reconcile this version of Astrid.
They’d pierced their ears together using sewing needles heated over her bedroom furnace.
They’d pilfered alcohol from their parents and snuck onto Shards, drinking and kissing themselves silly beneath the starless Void.
Astrid had always been a wild thing, a glint of cunning immortal ancestors in her eyes, but not this .
“You were never like this,” Fi told Antal, more accusing than gracious. “So what’s different? Why doesn’t Verne give a shit about humans, but you do?”
Antal chided, “I’ve probably known more humans than you.”
“And such diversity, no doubt. Sacrifices, come to be eaten? Cowering attendants? Obedient governors?”
“Not all of them.”
His quiet gave Fi pause. She’d braced for attack, some biting speech about how free-range livestock were more complacent. He scowled at the snow, a cold breeze tousling blue-black hair against his antlers.
“I’ve known many humans. Even as…” Antal’s mouth made a strange shape, a stutter into a frown. “A friend. One of the best friends I’ve ever had.”
Fi gaped wide enough, she could have gathered gnats on a warmer Plane.
He huffed. “You wound me, Fionamara. I told you, I see your kind as more than food.”
“Sure. But a friend ?” In the folktales, there were no happily ever afters with daeyari. The human protagonists ended up flayed alive. Hearts ripped from chests. Frozen in the woods.