Page 57 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Feast, fair beast

Silver energy snapped through Winter air. Then, a crack of crimson.

In a frosted field outside Nyskya, a baker’s son wielded an energy sword for the first time. The blade—more substantial than the kitchen knives he was accustomed to Shaping—rippled silver as he struggled to hold its form. He gathered his nerves. Charged.

Antal evaded the strike like a slash of shadow. The baker turned into another swing, parried by red-coated claws.

On the sidelines, Boden scowled, his beard coated in frost, eyes shadowed after a long day, and a lingering hangover.

“Maybe we should—”

“Not yet,” Fi said. “By all the Shattered Planes, and you say I’m impatient?”

Her crossed arms fought a shiver, cold seeping through her wool and ermine coat as twilight dimmed toward night.

For humans, the scant light of their energy weapons would let them continue only a little longer in the dark.

Fi would rather be moving, warmed by the swing of her sword, but others needed practice more than her.

The baker adjusted his stance. Antal hung back, waiting on his opponent. He moved slower than Fi knew he could, a cat batting the mouse between its paws, letting it test its swings against dulled claws.

“Do you think we stand a chance with this?” Boden asked quietly.

Fi had spent all day wondering that. They had weapons, they had determination, but most of their volunteers had never wielded anything more than a knife or hunting bow.

“They’re only support,” Fi said. “Antal and I will take the lead in combat. We only have to topple one daeyari. One Beast.”

“And Astrid,” Boden said.

Fi sucked in a breath, cold in her chest. “And Astrid.”

They could do it. They had to do it. Even as the baker’s sword sagged in his hands, swings failing to find their mark…

Boots thudded frozen ground. Antal spun, narrowly avoiding a second sword.

Yvette joined the fray, silver braid flying as they swung, a sword more familiar in their hands.

Antal deflected the strike, but his attention on the new opponent left his back open.

The baker charged with a shout. Antal blocked. Yvette gave no reprieve.

Their match ended with Antal holding the baker’s sword at bay, Yvette’s blade hovering at his neck.

They had numbers. They had a home to fight for.

From the sidelines, several trainees clapped at the completed match.

Across the clearing, the other volunteers practiced target-shooting with energy crossbows as Kashvi strolled the line, bellowing orders to brace stocks and fire on an exhale.

However slow, things were coming together.

In the sparring ring, the baker laughed in triumph. Yvette grinned, congratulating their partner with a pat on the back, then a lecture on better sword grips. The day began with most recruits too petrified to face Antal. It finished with nods to the daeyari, a grin from him in return.

“Is he still behaving for you?” Boden asked.

Fi would absolutely not blush. She was better than that.

“He behaves surprisingly well. Once you know how to ask.”

Boden laughed. “My sister, the daeyari tamer?”

She didn’t hate the sound of that.

Fi yelped when Boden snared an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his chest. He chuckled as she squirmed, followed by a kiss to her forehead.

“ Eww ,” she complained. “What are you doing?”

“I’m proud of you, Fi.”

She fell still.

Fi had spent so many years honing defenses. All bristles and barbs, all snarling in the face of any challenge. Her first instinct was to fight, at odds with the crushing comfort of her brother’s arm holding her to his coat. His familiar smell of hay and aurorabeasts.

“It’s the least I could do,” she muttered.

“What’s that mean?”

“I told you, Boden. I’m not leaving you this time.”

He shifted her in front of him, gloves heavy on either shoulder. Fi met his eyes with scrunched nose and puffed lips, a slippery defense against that too-earnest gaze.

“Fi-Fi,” he chided.

Her nose wrinkled fiercer.

“That’s all in the past,” Boden said. “You know that… don’t you?”

It wasn’t.

Just a few days ago, when he wasn’t padding his punches, he’d told her it wasn’t in the past, that she was still clinging to old ghosts. And he was right. Fi had spent seven years building walls around her coward’s heart, but never daring to inspect the cracked foundations.

“But I don’t want—” she began.

“We don’t need to talk about—” he said at the same time.

He stopped. Like he always did. A thousand words hung unsaid on the air between them, but he avoided every single one of them.

So did Fi.

She wanted everything to be fine between her and Boden.

But by the merciless Void, had she ever actually apologized?

Fi raked her memory, searching for a single time she’d swallowed her shattered-glass pride and said sorry for running, sorry for leaving him, sorry for making him wrangle her like a beast who’d broken out of pasture.

She’d been too terrified of what he’d say.

She’d survived this long by deflecting, never strong enough to ask the true depth of his disappointment in her.

That wasn’t enough.

She’d never told Astrid she was sorry, either. Fi saw now how that hurt had swollen. Festered to something irreparable.

Boden deserved better. She wanted to do better.

She almost fucking said it.

“We’re going to fight,” she told him. “We’re going to win.” A shrug. “That, or we all end up Void ghosts and have to haunt Antal when he reincarnates as a dumb little antler seal.”

Boden laughed. Too easy.

Could she tell him sorry, if she hadn’t earned it yet?

All Fi had now were promises made, none yet fulfilled. But she would. Once Verne was gone, and they had their home back, and she’d unknotted this mess she’d helped create, Fi would finally have a victory to hold up and say, “look, I’m better now, I didn’t run away this time.”

Boden hugged her. She was glad for his silence, space for her to wrap her arms around his back and smile into his sleeve, a tiny thing, safe and hidden from the cold, the prospect of finally working toward a future rather than merely fleeing the past.

As night fell in earnest, Kashvi dismissed her archers.

Volunteer fighters trickled back toward the windows and hearths of Nyskya.

Savo, the energy foreman, stopped by to update Boden on conduit repairs.

While they spoke, his daughter swayed at his heels, her hair a puff of black against the fur ruff of her coat.

When her father wasn’t looking, she inched closer to Antal.

Stealthy, an inquisitive hand reached for his tail.

When the tail flicked away, she puffed her cheeks. Fi stifled a laugh, noting Antal’s sly grin as he watched the small human with one eye.

The girl froze when she saw him looking. She stumbled back, but before she could retreat in earnest, Antal’s tail swayed toward her. Wide-eyed, her tiny fingers poked the tip, soft as if cradling a fragile bird. She smiled.

Was this how their world could be? Peace between their species, rather than terror? Fi saw glimpses of something larger than her or even Nyskya, almost close enough to grasp.

Boden hugged her goodnight. Kashvi parted with a glare for the daeyari, a sliver less vicious since their night in her tavern.

Then, Fi and Antal were alone again.

He didn’t offer his hand to teleport. As they set off walking through the snow, she honed her claws for a different kind of duel.

“I think you made some friends today,” Fi said.

“If by that you mean no one genuinely tried to take my head off.”

“You were the one playing nice with them.”

He hummed.

They reached the forest edge. The stone-faced daeyari at Fi’s side wound her with as much tension as their early meetings, though for a different reason now. A spark cracked the air between them, a promise made that morning before they were rudely interrupted.

Would the thought have lingered on Antal’s mind all day, as it had for Fi?

They passed through the gossamer cool of a Curtain. The golden lights of Nyskya vanished, replaced by the pale trees of a Shard, the silvered terrain and endless Void sky.

“Don’t play coy,” Fi teased. “I saw you grinning. You enjoyed your sparring matches?”

“It is… pleasant. Being amongst my people at last.”

“Not having humans flee from you in terror, you mean?” She swooned a dramatic hand across her forehead. “The fell ruler of Thomaskweld, gracing us rural folk with your tutelage. I told you they’d warm up.”

He grinned again, that disarmingly earnest gesture. “I suppose I am enjoying this.” Then a rumbled, “Though, not as much as I’m going to enjoy you .”

His gaze cut sharp enough to rend her open. Fi relished the promise.

As his tongue traced his lip, her own hunger fiercened, eager to have his mouth on her again.

To finish what they’d started. Yet it wasn’t the beast that drew her breath short, so much as the man, the slow sweep of eyes and the softening of his features to something unguarded, something raw and reverent and just for her.

“You have your work cut out for you,” she said. An invitation.

He didn’t pounce. Just a wicked grin. He offered his elbow as if for a stroll.

Fi tipped her chin up. Her best defense was the long-honed act, pretending to be fierce, unruffled by the flash of fangs.

Except sometimes, with Antal… it didn’t feel like an act. Fi felt like another creature entirely, metal in her bones and an unbent spine. Perhaps she’d faked the facade so long, some had genuinely rubbed off on her.

“Do I look like the kind of woman who needs to be walked home?” she challenged.

“Would you rather I carry you again?”

Fi wouldn’t mind that so much. For the sake of pride, she wrapped her fingers around the crook of his arm.

And they walked.