Page 43 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)
As long as we’re making deals
Savo left quickly, pulling his daughter with him. She tugged at his grip, wide eyes seeking a final look at the monster looming behind.
Antal returned to work with a tight line to his mouth. The sound of claws against metal scraped uncomfortably loud in the empty room. Fi and Boden both stood silent. Both tense as iron. Tonight was about to get more difficult.
After giving Savo the allotted time, they headed into Nyskya.
The late hour left roads empty, windows dark, boots crunching on the skim of fresh snow still fluttering down in lazy puffs.
Antal kept out of sight, a shadow on the rooftops, until they reached the yard behind Kashvi’s tavern.
He dropped to the snow with a whisper-soft impact and tail flicking. Agitation. Fi felt the same.
She’d whittled out a workable relationship with Boden’s advisory council.
Fi gave them preferential treatment for contraband requests, and, in return, they pretended they’d never heard of her.
Thick-skinned people, cold-hardened to practicality.
Hopefully, that practicality would see the benefit of Antal’s partnership.
Boden faced the daeyari. “I serve my people. If they decide they don’t want you in Nyskya, you’ll have to leave.”
“I understand,” Antal returned.
“There’s… one particular person who might cause trouble—”
The back door of the tavern flew open.
Kashvi stepped out into the snow with black hair wild at her shoulders, red coat half buttoned. She marched past Fi without a glance. Swerved around Boden when he tried to step in her way. Her dark eyes glinted, cold as the crossbow in her hands.
She shoved the barrel against Antal’s chest. Straight over his heart.
“Kashvi, wait!” Boden said.
“That won’t kill him,” Fi added.
Kashvi snarled like a wolverine and pressed her crossbow harder, metal digging into the fabric of Antal’s shirt.
This meeting stood a snowball’s chance on Summer of going well, but Fi had hoped they’d last a full minute before weapons got involved.
She braced for the daeyari’s response, their plan doomed the moment blood hit the snow.
But Antal did nothing. Kashvi’s assault didn’t budge his stone stance.
“This is… an ally of yours?” Antal asked, a razored glare his only retaliation.
“I hardly believed it.” Kashvi started in a hiss. “I hardly believed it when Savo came by. What he claimed he’d seen.” Louder, lifting to a roar. “Boden. What is this beast doing here?”
“He can tell you himself,” Boden said. “Without weapons.”
Kashvi didn’t budge. “Offering to rip his own claws out, is he?”
“I come to aid,” Antal said.
She laughed like metal scraping stone. “Oh. That’s rich. Daeyari are always so helpful , aren’t you?”
Antal frowned. “I’ve… perhaps not always acted in your best interest…”
“You ate my sister, you fucker!”
Her words cracked like split ice, fracturing the common ground they’d hoped to stand on.
Tense as the stand-off was, neither Fi nor Boden intervened.
Not their place to do so. Fi had lived in Nyskya a full year before Kashvi, down half a bottle of whiskey, finally shared why she left home to settle in the middle of nowhere.
Why she still practiced with a crossbow, though it aggravated her illness—but again, Fi had hoped they’d have time for gentler introductions.
Antal fell deathly still. Maybe to the others he appeared the same unruffled creature. Maybe Fi was the only one who noticed his low tail, the stiff inhale.
When Antal didn’t speak, Kashvi snarled and shifted her crossbow to his throat, barrel raking soft flesh beneath his jaw. This caused more visible upset, a curling of claws at his sides.
“ Kashvi ,” Boden pleaded.
“Do you remember her?” Kashvi demanded. “From Sunip, a border town. Verne accused us of pushing her boundary, claimed we owed her a sacrifice. So my sister went to you .”
Antal hesitated. “She came willingly?”
“She had no choice! She sacrificed herself to save the rest of us. Do you remember her name ?”
A longer pause.
“I don’t… ask their names.”
Kashvi screamed. Antal shoved her arm aside as she loosed the bolt, a snap of silver energy striking a wall. Kashvi Shaped a current to her fingertips to reload.
The projectile dispersed when her arm spasmed. Kashvi warred against rage and failing body as her silver sickness shook her muscles, forcing her to her knees in the snow.
Boden knelt beside her, crossbow pushed aside, supporting Kashvi as she steadied her breath.
The tavern door opened again. Iliha stepped out in a hastily-shrugged coat, legs bare and feet stuffed into slippers.
Wide blue eyes snapped to the daeyari before she hurried to her wife’s side, gentle fingers drawing the hair away from Kashvi’s face.
Antal looked on. Ashen.
Stillness seemed to be an innate daeyari trait, yet Fi had never seen this type of stillness fall over him. His eyes lost their glow, a hollow red like scuffed glass. As if he’d never had to face this side of his sacrifices before.
“Kashvi.” Boden held her shoulders.
“He took my sister,” Kashvi rasped.
“I know. And you have every right to be angry. But we need him, to fight Verne.”
“Those fuckers can both fall to pieces in the Void!”
Boden gripped her firmer. “Kashvi. I need you , too. You want to fight, don’t you? Well, we’re going to fight . We’re not sending any sacrifice to Verne.”
At last, Kashvi quieted.
Fi fell in and out of good graces with the woman, but they shared an understanding born of common pain.
A daeyari stole Fi’s life from her. Kashvi knew similar grief, even if she’d never made that walk to the forest shrine herself.
An aching kind of grief, the type that nested in the bones, waiting for a chance to shatter free.
Kashvi shoved Boden off her. When she stood, she spat at Antal’s feet.
“For Boden,” she told him. “Not for you. Walk into my tavern, and you’d better have something good to say, daeyari. I don’t guarantee you walking out.”
Kashvi grabbed her crossbow and marched inside, Iliha drifting at her heels like a worried wraith.
Boden slipped Antal a warning look before he followed.
Fi stayed behind.
She had to be careful, reading into Antal’s stillness. That shaken look seemed too close to remorse. He had to eat. But he’d spoken of grief, of not wanting to cause pain, enough that he must realize how many lives like Kashvi’s he’d shredded into pieces?
“You really don’t ask their names?” she whispered.
Antal took a slow breath. “It’s harder to eat someone with a name.”
Why should she believe him? Immortals were clever creatures. His penitence might be nothing more than an act to lure his human partners into sympathy, helping him reclaim his city.
Fi found herself pulled to him all the same. Wary steps, yet she drew close enough to draw a breath of ozone on cold air.
“Antal,” she said. “This is your chance to be different. To be better .”
A strange tension snapped over him, eyes sharp on her in shock. Then, down.
Fi had laid her hand on his arm.
She hardly registered reaching for him, some subconscious gesture of consolation or coercion. Now, she joined Antal in stunned silence, fingers light against pale skin.
Antal held still. As if waiting for her to realize her mistake. To flinch away.
Fi didn’t. It was… warm beside him, a narrow shelter from the cold. Something calming in his stillness, something raw in the hum of energy beneath his skin, barely detectable against her fingertips. That tang of pine and ozone, lulling with each breath.
Antal didn’t pull away, either. She stiffened as he leaned closer.
As he slowly, gently, pressed his forehead to hers.
“You’re too kind to me, Fionamara.”
His touch stunned her like a blow, crimson eyes soft beneath low lashes. His voice, not a growl, but a rasp, hesitant as the breath they shared. Since they’d first clashed, proximity meant bristles and claws, never this tender thing hanging whisper-quiet between them.
It locked Fi’s lungs. It pulled at her with velvet tethers.
It vanished, before she could grasp it.
Antal stepped away. His absence left Fi in a shock of cold, a swift moment of panic as she straightened her spine and clawed for composure.
As he moved to the tavern door, Antal straightened as well, tail smoothing from its restless sway. When he looked back at her, soft eyes had returned to coals, that slip of vulnerability buried beneath his stone facade.
Indifference didn’t suit him. Fi preferred him rougher. Raw.
“Shall we?” he asked.
Which was the act: the stone or the silk? If this was all a cunning trick, Fi might be out of her depth. She steadied her breath and followed him inside.
The floorboards hardly creaked beneath Antal’s steps. In the quiet, Fi’s ears pricked at murmured voices down the hall.
When Antal stepped into the room, all conversation ceased.
The tavern had closed for the night, lights dimmed except for the glow of the furnace, the dormant glass interior of the music box, a couple of copper fixtures closest to the bar.
Boden paced. Kashvi sat on a barstool, crossbow on her knee, Iliha watching from behind the counter while her flock of mechanical birds dozed beside the bottles on the shelves.
A table had been pulled into the light. Steaming mugs sat upon the beaten brass, filling the room with the smell of fresh coffee, accompanied by a platter of cinnamon buns and hardy Winter cranberries, untouched.
Savo leaned forward, a much slighter man with the bulk of his jacket draped over his chair, face drawn into a squint.
Beside him sat Mal, owner of Nyskya’s general store, his stature like several logs had grown a beard and stuffed themselves into flannel, skin light brown and eyes like tar. One of the most meticulously infuriating barterers Fi had ever met.