Page 37 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

“Calm down, Boden, he’s not going to eat any villagers.”

“Unless someone’s offering,” Antal grumbled with the enthusiasm of a wet cat.

Fi shoved his antlers. Antal snarled.

Boden looked stunned. Not at the fang-flashing immortal, but at Fi .

She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want those tired, worry-creased eyes picking her to pieces.

She’d rather stare at her boots, watch the droplets of snow melt onto far less judgmental floorboards.

But she had to look at him. She had to stand tall like there wasn’t the weight of a village on her shoulders, tip her chin up as if she weren’t fighting to stop it quivering.

Because the moment she stopped pretending, she’d shatter.

“You want to fight Verne ?” Boden’s voice cracked with disapproval.

Fi’s fists clenched, tingling her energy burns. “We have to do something. We both heard Astrid’s demands. We both know Nyskya isn’t safe.”

“That’s no reason to fight a daeyari. We have to be smart. Patient. If we can wait for—”

Fi grabbed the severed antler from her table and thrust it into Boden’s hands. He paled, fingers cradling carved points.

“What is this?” he whispered.

“We visited Tyvo. Trying to find an ally. But we failed.” Fi loomed over Boden, hands on her hips, hair spilling in angry rainbow curls. “We’re on our own, Bodie. No waiting for someone else to fix this.”

He knew that. Everyone on this ever-frigid Plane knew if you got stranded in the snow, you didn’t sit down and resign to freeze. You got up, stoked a current, and kept walking.

Boden glared at Antal. “So you cut your neighbor’s antler off? How does that help?”

“ I didn’t.” Antal tipped his chin at Fi. “She did.”

The antler fell slack in Boden’s lap. A stillness came over him as he looked up, looked at his little sister with bafflement thinning his lips.

“Fi?” he whispered.

She felt minuscule. No different than when she’d been a little girl with scraped knees and puffed cheeks, holding back tears while Boden patched her back together.

The greater Fi’s doubt, the firmer her words. “I won’t wait until Verne comes for us. I won’t run away again. We need to do something, and with a daeyari willing to help—”

Fi waved at Antal, her star evidence, arrogant shirt buttons and all.

He returned a bland look, tail twitching.

“I agreed to maybe help one of you,” he said.

“Stop it , you moody housecat! We don’t have time for your aloof bullshit.

” Fi had found him charming moments ago.

He was still a little charming, lips curled to bare one canine of protest. She faced Boden.

“And we don’t have time to wait and second-guess.

We all want Verne gone. We stand the best chance if we work together. ”

Boden always went silent when he was thinking. His fingers strummed the severed antler, an appraising look that shifted to Antal. What frost had coated him on the journey up the cliffside had melted, glinting dew along his beard and the seams of his coat.

“You have a daeyari,” Boden said slowly.

“Yes,” Fi said. Still an alarming concept.

“You think we can trust him?”

Wait until Boden learned what else Fi had been thinking about this daeyari.

No. Scratch that. Boden would never learn that particular indiscretion, or Fi would have to throw herself into the Void.

“So far,” she said.

“And he’s agreed to help?”

They both looked to Antal.

“To our mutual interest,” the daeyari said begrudgingly. Fi would take it.

Boden rubbed a hand to his temple. “And you’ve been up here, planning to go against Verne. Just the two of you?”

“There’s only one of her,” Fi said.

Boden arced a brow.

“And Astrid,” Fi conceded. And a reincarnated Beast daeyari. She made the executive decision to save that logistical detail for a time when Boden looked less haggard.

“A small force is preferable.” Antal startled Fi with his contribution, muttered though it was. “We’ll be less likely to alert Verne. She won’t have time to prepare, or worse, to seek support from the Twilit Plane.”

“What about Tyvo?” Boden pressed.

Antal huffed. “He might have agreed to Verne’s bid. But fighting for her would be an act of aggression. He’ll stay out of this, or face repercussions from the Daey Celva.”

Boden fell quiet, weighing the arguments with a slump to his shoulders.

Then, he surprised Fi.

He straightened in his chair, meeting Antal’s gaze with the same resolve Fi had tried to master, as if the same instinct told him he couldn’t cower if he wanted this creature to take him seriously. This new man of resolve wasn’t Fi’s worry-prone Bodie. This was Boden Kolbeck, Mayor of Nyskya.

“Five years ago,” Boden told Antal, “when I became mayor. You visited me.”

Fi went stiff as a corpse. Her brain did that thing where it sort of… stopped working a moment, a fizzle between her ears as she reset.

When she and Boden had dragged themselves to Nyskya seven years ago, an evening of hard confessions and harder cider in a corner of Kashvi’s tavern, they’d forged a path forward under a pact of honesty.

No more lies. No evasions. Since then, Boden told her everything.

He told her which aurorabeasts were picky eaters.

He told her who in the village paid taxes late.

He told her when she was being a reckless idiot, letting deals turn too dicey.

He’d never told her about meeting a daeyari.

Antal’s tail swayed as he appraised Nyskya’s mayor.

“You offered me coffee,” the daeyari said.

“You told me you don’t drink coffee,” Boden returned.

“But humans don’t usually offer.”

“You promised me,” Boden said, “if I didn’t request aid from Thomaskweld, I’d never see you again. I’d never have to send a sacrifice.”

“And I kept that promise.” Antal flashed a grimace. “To the best of my ability.”

Fi couldn’t believe this. They’d met before, and Boden never told her?

Of course he hadn’t told her. She was rash. Jumpy around daeyari. Not to be trusted with political intricacy. The slight didn’t have to sting, if she saw the rationale behind it.

But it did sting a little.

“Do you promise me now.” Boden leaned forward his chair. “My people will be safe while you stay here?”

Antal weighed the request.

“I swear.” The daeyari dipped his head, tapping a claw to the highest point of his antlers. “As Veshri watches from the Void.”

Veshri. The first immortal daeyari, Antal had called him, though he spoke the name with the hush Fi’s people once used for their old gods. Only, her gods turned out to be make-believe. Was a daeyari deity more likely to be real?

She shuddered at the thought. One of the comforts of the Void was its emptiness. Fi didn’t like the idea of something out there watching her.

Antal’s oath stripped some tension from the room. Boden leaned back in his chair, letting out a long breath. “Ok.” He looked to Fi. “Confronting Verne. Do you have a plan?”

They kept coming back to that, didn’t they?

“Working on it.” Fi flicked a glance at Antal. “He… hasn’t eaten in a while. If you can spare an aurorabeast, I’ll buy one off you.”

Boden’s scowl, Fi expected. He loved those big, dumb creatures. But if the choice came down to an aurorabeast or a villager to keep Antal from going feral?

Boden stared at his boots, fingers combed in contemplation through the frizz of his beard. “What if… I could do you one better?”

Fi had no clue what that meant.

“I’ve been fishing for information,” Boden explained. “About Cardigan?”

She groaned at the name. Amidst two weeks of chaos, Cardigan’s sour attitude and abandoning her to trade wardens on the Autumn Plane made for smaller concerns. That didn’t stop the reminder from ticking her off.

“Cardigan Rothmauk ?” Antal said.

Fi and Boden shared a startled look.

“Yeah…” she said, slow in confusion. “Cardigan’s the asshole who gave me that cart of energy capsules to blow up your capitol building.”

“He did what ?”

She’d only seen Antal this livid when facing Verne, claws curled, tail lashing. His clenched fangs looked ready to rip a throat out.

“How do you know him?” Fi asked.

“Cardigan Rothmauk oversaw the most recent energy conduit renovations in Thomaskweld. Milana recommended him.”

On the morning of the explosion, Fi had passed a crowd at the gate to the capitol complex—citizens of Thomaskweld demanding audience with their governor, complaining of faulty conduits.

Cardigan. That turncoat bastard.

“Cardigan’s name pops up for several questionable energy projects,” Boden said, grim. “Faulty equipment. Crates of energy capsules missing from smaller communities. I’d guess that’s where your contraband came from. He’s a conman. A thief. Whatever you want to call it.”

Antal perched on the sofa, a picture of rage.

His tail coiled a tight circle. His eyes glowed the red of hot steel.

If Cardigan had sabotaged the energy conduits in Thomaskweld, that would make Antal’s citizens more desperate, more willing to accept a new ruler so long as Verne promised to save them from freezing.

How many died to the cold anyway? How many lost in the capitol explosion?

“If Cardigan’s working for Verne,” Fi said, “he might be able to tell us more about her coup plan. Maybe even her next moves.” If nothing else, she’d relish punching his teeth in. “But what does that have to do with getting Antal a meal…”

The pieces clicked as she spoke. Then, a blink of surprise. Fi was far enough removed from a noble paragon, she felt little qualm tossing a double-crossing traitor to a daeyari. But Boden? He’d condone a plan like that?

“You know the type, Fi.” Boden spoke quietly. “If we confront Cardigan, I don’t imagine he’ll cooperate. If it comes to blows and he ends up dead?” He mustered a shrug. “I don’t care what happens to the body.”

Fi was so fucking proud, she could have hugged him.

At last, the gloomy raccoon on her sofa perked up. Antal’s eyes glowed brighter. A black tongue flicked hungry over his teeth.

Fi had made it ten whole minutes without staring at that mouth. A noble milestone.

“What price do you ask for this?” Antal said.

Boden’s brow knit. “Price?”

“You offer me a meal. I must repay you. This is the pact between our people.”

“This isn’t a barter, daeyari. I won’t ask you for anything— fmi mtma fwk .”

Boden shouted angry gibberish against Fi’s hand clapped over his mouth. Apparently, her pride in him was short-lived. Passing up an opportunity for a deal? Not a desperate deal, either, like the rushed words she’d muttered at Antal’s shrine. A true favor from an immortal.

Sometimes, she was ashamed they were related.

Especially now, when Nyskya needed every advantage. Fi considered the energy capsules Antal had charged for her, the times she’d caught him poking at her machinery.

“Can you fix energy conduits?” she asked. “Nyskya has a few acting up.”

Boden fell silent. Fi released him, grimacing at the slobber on her palm. A low blow.

“I can,” Antal said. “Depending on what materials you have available.”

Better than the town going dark. Fi, the intermediary, looked to her brother. “Mayor Boden? How do you find these terms?”

Boden nodded, slow with trepidation. But when his village stood to benefit?

“Deal,” he said. “I’ll get you Cardigan. You get my conduits running again.”