Page 50 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Hello, darling, fancy seeing you here

The vavriter braced her hands on either wall of the aisle, willowy frame leaned into a posture of feigned ease.

But Fi saw the asp underneath, caging her in.

Astrid’s grin revealed too many teeth. She perched on the balls of her feet, coiled beneath the guise of tight trousers and a shirt of loose maroon silk.

Her eyes didn’t glow like Antal’s. The ruby irises pooled like blood fresh-spilled from an artery.

Astrid.

Her Astrid, wearing those eyes Fi had met at Verne’s chateau, that vengeful spark trying to burn her alive. The foreign look threatened to render her numb, but Astrid’s step forward snapped Fi back to her senses. She braced for attack.

Astrid slid to her side like a lover. Like what they used to be.

“Darling.” Astrid cooed, a brush of breath in Fi’s ear and a nostalgic song that raked down her spine. “You’re always running off too soon. Forgetting important things.”

Cruelty. Fi stiffened as Astrid snaked an arm around her waist, that easy fit that came to them so long ago. The same warmth of Astrid’s body seeping into Fi’s bones. Yet wrapped at her side like the snares of an old vine, Astrid felt different. Harder. Sharper.

Something cold pressed the small of Fi’s back. The hilt of an energy dagger, concealed in Astrid’s affectionate palm.

The ticket inspector backed off, caught off guard by the vavriter, staring rudely at the twin points of Astrid’s antlers. For his sake, Fi kept her grin.

“And yet you always seem to find your way back to me,” she said, mirroring Astrid’s sugary tone. The words were razors on her tongue.

“You must have gotten turned around.” Astrid pressed the dagger hilt to Fi’s spine. “Our seat’s back the other way.”

“Of course. Silly me.”

“Apologies,” she told the inspector. “I’ll keep a closer eye on her.”

He let them go, less concerned with their wanderings so long as they kept to the cheap section of the train. Astrid led Fi down the aisle with a hand too intimate on her back, into the rear passenger car.

They’d played games like this before. One time at a traveling fair, they’d come together beneath garlands of purple peatberry and string lights, spent the night pretending they didn’t know each other.

Astrid had slipped sweet whispers into Fi’s ear as they competed for carnival prizes.

Slipped hands into daring places. When no one was looking, they’d snuck away into the back room of the distillery.

Fi sank her mouth between Astrid’s legs and made her moan until she’d confessed to loving her.

A dagger hilt to the spine had never been a part of the act.

“Good to see you again, Fi,” Astrid whispered, thorns on every word. “Always getting yourself into trouble.”

“I seem to recall you being the one who always got us in trouble,” Fi hissed back.

“Sure, Fi. I got us grounded. I got us yelled at. I got you that scar down your thigh, the one across your knuckles.” Astrid hardened. “ You sent me to a daeyari.”

Fi couldn’t argue that.

They passed through the last passenger section, into the privacy of a cargo car. Fi scanned the darkness for Antal, but he must have moved on.

“How did you find me?” Fi asked.

Astrid punched her in the jaw.

The blow sent Fi staggering. She caught herself against a crate, fighting dizziness and an ache through her teeth. Copper bloomed on her gums. She spit blood, then Astrid had her by the coat collar, shoved her to the wall. Cold metal rattled Fi’s back.

“It was the strangest thing,” Astrid said. “A Voidwalker working for the rail line ran an inspection yesterday. He reported several new Curtains had appeared. On the tracks, no less.”

Fi hissed a curse. The rail company employed a small army of Voidwalkers—one of the more boring career options she’d considered after running away from home—but they typically worked at the stations, guiding passengers on and off the Plane. To have caught one out on line inspection was rotten luck.

Astrid’s eyes were black in the dark, a glint as she surveyed the rest of the train car. “Where’s the daeyari?”

“What daeyari?”

Astrid had her dagger out in a flash. No longer a bare hilt. A blade of mauve vavriter energy pressed Fi’s throat, casting cruel shadows across the crates.

“Oh, Fi.” Astrid spoke honeyed words as her dagger seared Fi’s neck. “We’ve been apart a long time. Don’t assume you still know how to push my buttons.”

Was it the harsh light, making Astrid’s face look so foreign?

The shadows under her eyes were too deep.

Her lips were too rough, chapped, marred by the silver slip of a new scar on her chin.

Fi had spent so long trying to bury this guilt, fleeing rather than facing the phantom holding her by the throat.

Fi did this to them. Fi was the coward who ran and never came back.

But.

A creeping, kindling but had been burrowing in her skull ever since Cardigan’s villa. Cardigan, who had a Voidwalker all along. One who could cut Curtains. Astrid must have known. But she’d still cornered Fi in Thomaskweld to make her a part of this.

Fi had abandoned Astrid, left her on her own for a decade, but Fi had every reason to believe Astrid would survive. In return, Astrid had put Fi in mortal danger. Multiple times.

It didn’t seem fair.

“Are you here to kill me?” Fi said. “Or just reminisce over old times?”

Astrid’s scowl was fierce, but after learning how to stand her ground with a daeyari, these teeth didn’t seem so vicious.

“Verne’s not happy with your skulking,” Astrid said. “You’re going to tell me what Antal is planning.”

What Antal was planning? As if Fi was some pawn.

A pent-up snarl finally slipped free, drawn out by scorching pain at her jugular and the red-hot audacity of this bitch she used to love. Fi felt sick at the thought of becoming Verne’s Arbiter, yet Astrid seemed to stomach the work just fine.

“I see.” Fi puffed air from her mouth, playing with a stray curl. “Counter offer?”

She struck a palm at Astrid’s arm, hoping the dagger wouldn’t strike lethal.

It didn’t.

Astrid snarled and slashed for Fi’s shoulder, a fraction off in the jostling train, lighting the space with mauve sparks as her blade dragged across the metal wall.

Fi drew her sword hilt. Silver light flooded the car as she cracked an energy capsule into the pommel.

Then, a warring scarlet as Astrid brandished a daeyari capsule and Shaped it into the blade of her broadsword.

Fi had a single daeyari capsule in her pocket.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to burn it yet.

“I waited for you,” Astrid said as she advanced. “I looked for you in your room. At the river. At that Curtain under the cedar grove where we always hid away for stargazing. You never. Came. Back!”

Astrid charged with a crushing strike at Fi’s shoulder. Another at her side. Incapacitating blows, not lethal, but Fi would rather keep her limbs. She parried, struggling for space to maneuver with cargo tight on either side.

“You’ve gotten better with that sword,” Fi observed grudgingly.

“I had to.” Astrid swung again.

Static pricked Fi’s tongue. Astrid tensed.

Antal appeared between them. He grabbed Astrid’s sword on the downswing, a coat of red energy shielding his palms from the blade.

Claws screeched down the length as Astrid shifted her stance.

Daeyari and vavriter locked gazes over their grapple, but the dance of red light across her face betrayed no fear.

Of course Astrid had learned how to face a daeyari properly. Another place she was miles ahead of Fi.

“Antal,” Astrid greeted through clamped teeth. “You ought to consider better company.”

Antal growled in reply.

Astrid twisted her blade free. Antal slashed with energy-coated claws, but a parry held him back in the tight space. Fi, trapped behind him, scoured the car for a way around.

Then came a slip in Astrid’s swing. Antal lunged.

Fi shocked herself when her arm shot out. When she had to clamp her teeth to keep from shouting at him to stop.

As the two combatants crashed to the floor of the train car, an unexpected terror spiked Fi’s chest. Terror for Astrid. She was still Astrid. She was still Fi’s friend, falling beneath the claws of a daeyari, ripping Fi’s heart in two directions.

Yet Astrid got her feet under her. She jabbed an elbow to Antal’s throat before his teeth found hers, then a kick to the ribs shoved him off. As the daeyari skidded, Astrid stood unscathed, sword ready.

An impact shook the train car.

Fi steadied herself as the tremor faded.

Another rumble of movement followed from the roof, accompanied by a scrape of metal and…

claws. The fighting paused as all eyes looked up.

Of the three of them, Fi had backed closest to the hatch she’d cut open for entry, a porthole view into Void sky and crimson aurora.

Then, one giant red eye.

“Fuck—”

Fi’s curse clipped to a shout as a massive white paw scooped into the train. The claws dug mostly into her silviamesh, yet the pressure knocked her breath away. The world spun as she was wrenched upward, back into the roaring wind outside the train.

Then down again.

The slam of Fi’s back atop the roof of the car left her aching for air. She found little, a paw pinning her in place.

The Beast—the daeyari— hunched over her, saliva dripping from sickle teeth.

Knowing what it was made the form even more grotesque: the way pale skin stretched this starved and pantherine body, the violent jerks of its tail, the gnarled antlers.

The creature tilted its horse head, shadows pooling in the skeletal hollows of its eye sockets as it looked at her.

Those pupil-less red irises burned with nothing but hunger.

Nothing like Antal’s.

Never in Fi’s life had she reached for an energy capsule faster. The daeyari magic seared her palm. She adjusted, pulling for a less painful current, condensing red energy into a projectile that hit the Beast’s jaw. It lurched off her, snarling.

Antal sprang out the train hatch. A heartbeat passed as he took in the scene—Fi on her back, a sizzle of red static, a derived daeyari reeling above her.

He threw himself at the creature’s throat with claws and teeth.

The Beast snarled deeper, gripping Antal’s smaller body in one rake of claws then hurling him against the train car with a crack .

He rolled to a kneel as the creature retreated, black blood staining his chin, a grimace as he spit out a mouthful.

Then, he was at Fi’s side.

Her thoughts spun circles, struggling to understand why Antal cupped her cheeks in both hands. Why his eyes went wide. Why he scoured her head to toe.

Worried. He was worried she’d been hurt.

“I’m fine, I’m fine ,” she said. Some bruises beneath her silviamesh, but thank the merciless Void for nothing worse than that.

Energy crackled through the wind. At the far end of the car, the Beast lifted its ravaged throat. Sinew and skin wove back together as threads of sewing red magic, healing, just as Antal had when they’d faced Tyvo. Only faster.

They could win a fight against Astrid. But a fight against Astrid and this abomination?

“Let’s go,” Fi said.

Antal snapped her a questioning look. An “ are you sure? ” look.

“We’ve done what we came for,” she said. “Let’s go .”

The Beast rose to full height, wounds nearly vanished, teeth bared in a snarl. Antal held out his hand. Fi reached for him.

“Fi!”

Astrid pulled herself through the hatch and found unsteady footing atop the train roof, wind cutting her short hair into obsidian shards. Her eyes burned ruby.

“Don’t you dare run away from me again!” Astrid shouted against the wind.

The words flew like spears, crafted to skewer Fi’s heart. To pin her down like guilt-laced hooks until she crumpled into another desperate decision.

What right did Astrid have to make such a demand?

Fi wasn’t sure anymore whether friend or enemy stared back at her. She wasn’t sure how much to blame her cowardice or Astrid’s loathing for this tangle snaring them both.

But she wasn’t running with that thoughtless abandon anymore. Fi was finally ready to fight—on her terms.

“Sorry, darling ,” she called back. “Catch you next time.”

Fi grabbed Antal’s hand. As the world lurched, the last thing she heard was a roar of wind, and Astrid screaming her name.