Page 35 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

“He tended aurorabeasts for my family on the Twilit Plane,” Antal said.

“There are humans on the Twilit Plane?”

“Fewer than here. Mostly daeyari and vavriter. But several mortal settlements remain as… sustenance, in addition to what the territories provide. Other humans find safety in service to the Old Houses.”

“So where is he now?”

“Now?”

Antal’s tone lost all inflection. His posture, stiff as ice.

“That was early in my second century,” he said. “A long time ago.”

A long time . Humans, no matter how their magic and technology grew, had always found an insurmountable enemy in time.

But that was no satisfying end. Fi was ravenous for more: how did they meet? Why did Antal speak with this human rather than devouring him? This daeyari, so guarded, yet full of surprises, like a shiny box Fi had to pry open.

He’d distracted her again.

Maybe this was his most dangerous weapon: not fangs or claws, but velvet words and that soft part to his mouth, dragging her to the precipice of sympathy. Lulling Fi to lower her guard. A treacherous creature, for more reasons than she’d expected.

She rolled the energy capsule in her palm, the current as alluring as it was dangerous.

The plan. Just stick to the plan .

“So how do we kill Verne?” Fi asked.

Antal responded with visible alarm. Annoyingly so.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Only if we have to kill her. Terrible reincarnated Beasts and all.” Antal seemed more distressed by the prospect of a dead Verne than Fi did, but until he offered a better option… “If necessary , how do I kill a daeyari?”

She brandished sword hilt in one hand, energy capsule in the other. Antal scowled at both.

“Is the sword crucial for this conversation?” he asked.

“I think it’s motivating.”

“I think I’d be more motivated to tell you something like that if you weren’t holding—”

The air cracked as Fi tapped the current, fighting red energy into a blade. Not just any energy. Antal’s energy. His magic burned through her, leaving ice and ozone on her tongue.

She couldn’t stop herself from wondering: would he taste the same?

With a shout, she charged.

Fi had deduced several things this week. The first: she’d defended herself against Tyvo for a short time, which worked overwhelmingly in her favor.

The second: teleportation was, indeed, utter bullshit.

She swung at Antal, but instead of blocking or parrying or anything reasonable, he vanished. Her sword cleaved empty air. Fi fought the shivering blade back into Shape with a tingle through her fingers.

Static struck her tongue. Antal reappeared beside her.

“You’ll never be fast enough if you only react,” he said.

“I hope moss grows on your antlers!”

Fi swung again. He vanished again.

Another prick of static, taunting on her tongue. Antal appeared behind her.

“Pay attention,” he chided. “ Taste it.”

“What in the endless black Void does that mean?”

This continued. Fi’s pride waffled with each fruitless swing, each zap of static in her mouth.

She tried to gauge trajectory. Tried to guess where he’d reappear.

In her frustration, her sword crackled. She reined the energy like a bucking horse, until a fresh prickle hit her mouth, concentrated at the tip of her tongue.

Antal appeared in front of her.

Fi froze. Blinked. When she didn’t swing, his head tilted.

“Do that again,” she ordered.

He vanished. Fi waited, chewing her cheek. She might have imagined it, but…

There came the static, sharp on her tongue, slightly stronger on her right side.

Antal appeared to her right.

Fi gasped. Taste it. She had to taste the energy?

When he disappeared again, she was ready. Alert to every scrape of tongue against her teeth. The prickle came near her throat, a little left. Fi spun, pointing at Antal as he appeared.

He grinned.

So did Fi.

It crept up on her. She’d thought his scowls were vicious, but his grin was a sharper thing entirely, bright fangs and brighter eyes, slicing past her bristled exterior.

She sparred back with a smirk. Maybe she shouldn’t trust him.

Maybe, the moment she lowered her guard in earnest, he’d go for her jugular.

But fuck, it felt good to hold her own against one of these nightmares she’d spent her life running from.

“You learn quickly, Fionamara.”

“Is that your best, daeyari? Better guard your antlers, or I’ll add another to—”

His tail cut a wide, swift arc. Not a common motion in Fi’s growing catalogue, but she did recognize it. A week ago. In her cottage. Right before he—

Antal pounced. In the shock of his weight hitting her, Fi’s sword extinguished in a snap of cold. She hit the ground with Antal on top of her. For the second time in too few days, fangs came for her throat.

His mouth snapped shut above her, teeth striking empty air with a dramatized clack .

A daeyari middle finger. Antal’s insufferable smirk said as much. “ Look , I could eat you if I wanted to ,” danced goading in his gaze.

Fi went rigid. She wished she could blame the teeth. In some part, it was indignation that he’d gotten the best of her again. But indignation, she knew how to fight.

Antal had pinned her arms above her head. Firm thighs caged her hips, his weight holding her down as Fi lay breathless beneath him. All of her , exposed, splayed to stillness by ozone and his fang-laced smirk.

She shuddered. Why in the merciless Void did Fi shudder ?

Antal’s smirk vanished. He released her, sitting swiftly upright.

“Apologies. I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t apologize to me!” She pushed onto her elbows, trapped beneath him, upsettingly warm as he sat on her hips. “Verne won’t hold back her teeth. Why should you?”

Fi bellowed bravado. She needed it, to hide how breathless he’d made her. A daeyari. He was a daeyari , and her stupid brain hadn’t figured out how to counter him yet, and that was all .

Atop her, Antal blinked. “You want me… to go harder on you?”

To Fi’s abject horror, a blush heated her cheeks. “Well, not when you put it like that .”

“How should I put it?”

He mantled over her. Fi tensed as he braced a hand beside her head. A snarl pulled her lips as he closed the space between them.

“You’d prefer I try to rip you open in earnest?” he said. The threat came out different this time. Somehow softer and rougher and far more dangerous.

Fi scoffed. “I thought we were playing nice.”

“You came at me with a sword.”

“Don’t be dramatic, daeyari. You’re more useful to me alive. For now.”

“Am I?”

The way he stared at her felt like being ripped open.

Then he laughed.

For the second time, Fi startled at that genuine laugh, this intimate thing she didn’t know how to parry.

The gesture was so insultingly soft, so wretchedly disarming, it must be some cunning new tactic.

The daeyari’s snarls hadn’t cowed her, so he resorted to this trickery?

She mustered every barb, just to stop herself smiling back.

Instead, Fi stared at his mouth. When he laughed, when his lips curved into that grin again, even fangs didn’t seem as vicious. They hadn’t been, when they were on her throat.

“You can let me go now.” Fi squirmed beneath him. A mistake. His weight against her hips made her cheeks burn hotter.

“I thought you didn’t want me to go easy on you?” Antal sat upright again, pinning her firmer, arms held taunting at his sides. “Shouldn’t I let you thwart me on your own?”

This was, Fi decided, far more insufferable than if he’d just try to eat her and be done with it.

“You’re enjoying this,” she accused. “You prefer your prey cowering? Is that it?”

“Hardly,” he purred. “I prefer the ones who stand their ground.”

His words rumbled Fi’s chest, through the soft of her belly, down into…

She couldn’t sit still. With a growl of her own, Fi gripped Antal’s shirt for an anchor. She pulled herself up. Surprise lit his eyes as she held their faces an inch apart.

“Careful what you ask for, daeyari.”

She grabbed an antler.

Pulling him off balance was easy, with the leverage.

Flipping him was harder. Antal’s build was lean, but Fi felt every muscle tense against her.

She heaved, throwing him to the snow, her thighs pinning his waist just as he’d done to her.

Then, she perched atop this immortal. She held him down by his antlers.

The bastard’s smirk made her want to carve him alive.

“So fierce ,” Antal taunted. “For someone who smells like pomegranates.”

His grin cut through her, even on the ground— especially on the ground, his dark hair mussed by their scuffle.

Absolutely not. Fi could not have this kind of reaction to a daeyari, of all things. He had fangs… which scraped surprisingly soft. Claws… that had tangled in her hair.

And this wouldn’t be the first time she’d fallen for antlers.

Fi snarled and pressed her sword hilt to his chest, an angle that would have skewered his heart had the blade been Shaped.

“I’m afraid that won’t do much good,” he said, unflustered.

“Daeyari don’t have hearts?” she snapped back.

“We have hearts. Not like yours. Daeyari are energy, at our core. The body is a shell, created so we could walk the Planes again, crafted as a memory of what our mortal bodies looked like. Not all necessary to function. A blade through the heart will slow a daeyari, but won’t kill.”

Well, there was one thing the stories got right: that old cautionary tale of the “nameless warrior” who managed to put a sword through a daeyari’s chest, only for the beast to laugh.

Fi spun her sword hilt, jabbing it to the soft hollow of Antal’s throat.

He stilled. Fi’s stomach warmed at the weight of him between her legs, the subtle shift of his waist as his tail swished the snow. But even more, at how his eyes sharpened. Like she could surprise him, too. His exhale feathered the exposed skin of her wrist.

“That will do it,” he said, soft as a secret between them. “Taking off the head breaks the body, sends a daeyari’s energy back to the Void. If you can get a blade through. The capsules will help. Next time, try it without letting your guard down.”

Fi scoffed. “How have I—”

She wasn’t wearing her silviamesh. This came to Fi’s attention when claws slipped beneath her coat. Antal’s warm palms splayed across her abdomen, cool clawtips poised to disembowel. The sensation should have turned her stomach. She should have recoiled like a startled hare.

She sucked in a sharp breath.

Oh no.

No. No. This wasn’t right at all .

But Fi had no other explanation for the heat blooming beneath his touch. A slow, treacherous ache sank between her legs, countering every rational survival instinct that screamed at her to pull away.

Instead, she fought an urge to lean in. To surrender.

Maybe something was wrong with her. Maybe her dumb brain got a circuit crossed, confusing terror with lust.

Antal stared up at her. Fi feared she might fully combust as the beast’s head tilted, crimson eyes narrowed on her traitorously flushed cheeks.

“Mine would kill faster,” she argued, pressing her hilt against his throat. It took all her willpower to sit tall, chin up.

“Questionable,” he returned. “You’ve neglected an important variable.”

A pressure closed on Fi’s neck.

This made no sense. She felt both his hands beneath her shirt. His legs were pinned beneath her.

But his tail.

Fi snarled as the noose yanked her sideways. Her hands swiped air as she was pulled off him, twisting, falling.

Antal caught her before her head cracked the ground.

Her back thumped ice with his palm cradling her skull, claws slipping through the rainbow snarls of her hair.

Always softer than expected. He leaned over her, knee pinning her waist. So close, every breath was ozone.

So close, she watched the flare of his nose, his eyes lidded as he breathed her in.

“Careful, Fionamara. You’re more useful to me alive, as well.”

Her full name rolled off his tongue, slow like a purr. Warm like embers. Fi fisted her hands into the fabric of his shirt collar, unyielding.

Antal’s smile had gone. A heavy pause furrowed his brow, parted his mouth. Void have mercy, Fi had to stop staring at that mouth.

“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked.

Shit . “Like what, daeyari?”

“Like you aren’t afraid.”

Fi didn’t expect that. She didn’t understand how his words came so soft. Such a challenge ought to snap like fangs, not the whisper-quiet thing that passed his lips.

“I already said, I’m not afraid of you.”

“You were afraid of me. When we met. But now…”

Fi watched every flick of crimson irises, scouring her raw. As if she, too, were a difficult box to pry open, all rusted latches and hidden seams.

Maybe this flutter in her pulse was curiosity. Fi had spent so many years cowering, of course she’d find allure in something forbidden, something dangerous. As tempting as that energy capsule and its kiss of soul-searing power.

But why had Antal fallen so still? Why was his palm still cradling her head above the snow, claws tightening in her hair? Some strategy to disarm her. Or a wicked game to play with his prey. He was more than a box. A puzzle.

Fi wanted to tear him apart and understand what made him tick. She wanted to—

Antal’s head snapped up. His nostrils flared, scenting the air. Wordless, he released her, vanishing the moment they no longer touched.

Fi sat alone in the snow, blinking. Heart like thunder in her ears.

She pushed to her feet. A moment passed before she recalled how to breathe , another before she gathered the sense to scan the trees.

The daeyari was nowhere in sight, but she soon detected what he had: the crack of a branch, a crunch of snow.

Heading closer. Who in their right mind would trek all the way up here…

“Fi-Fi?” Boden called out.

Fuck.