Page 60 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Antal’s hand slowed. Not a push, but an obvious question.

“My father tried to give me to Verne,” Fi said. “And I still…”

She still wished she could speak to him one last time. That he could forgive her.

Where did that come from? When had Fi’s barbs abandoned her? She didn’t know where the line lay between her and Antal, but she wanted to give him something. She wanted him to know she understood.

“After I nearly died,” she said, “when I told my father I could see Curtains, I’d never seen him so grim. Then… so hopeful. He said when I got older, Verne would want me. Voidwalkers make prized Arbiters for daeyari.”

Antal huffed. He’d known she was a Voidwalker soon after they met, yet he’d never used that as the reason she was useful. He’d been more interested in… her.

“Everyone in town told me I should be honored.” Fi frowned, recalling their condescending smiles, the way they talked over her qualms like pine needles swept beneath a porch.

“But I was afraid. I knew I wouldn’t be good enough, that Verne wouldn’t spare me.

My father was afraid, too. He still handed me over when the time came. ”

She had nowhere to hide from the scrutiny of Antal’s eyes. Already, she lay naked beside him, yet baring herself like this felt more raw.

“Did you ever forgive him?” Antal asked.

“Forgive him? I’m the one who ran away. I didn’t even say goodbye. Not to him. Or Boden. Or Astrid.”

“You didn’t want to go to Verne,” he said, too calm.

“I should have been ready!” Fi flashed her teeth, a daeyari gesture, but it suited her needs.

“Our father put everything we had into making me an Arbiter. Said I needed to learn swordplay, but he couldn’t afford lessons, bartered a couple of useless sessions by making me and Boden scrub the blacksmith’s floors.

Made us listen to his stories every night as if they were sage wisdom.

” Her voice cracked. “He couldn’t scrounge enough energy chips to keep our furnace going some nights, but always enough to buy liquor, to slump into a chair and tell us how much better things would be if our mother was still there.

But we could have been a family without her.

We could have been… something … if he’d let us… ”

Fi had clung to these words so long, moldy and wretched. She clung to Antal now, her fingers so tight in his hair that it must hurt, but he didn’t flinch. Why was she telling him this? Because he’d told her about himself, a fair trade?

No. More than that. Because he looked at her like he understood, too.

“And then I ran,” she said, quieter. Smaller. “I thought I’d work up the courage to go back one day, but a few years later… he was gone. Boden’s the only family I have left.” She huffed. “Now here I am. Still a coward.”

Antal’s laugh made her flinch.

It came so sudden, so deep, echoing in her rafters and muffled against her bedsheets.

Fi drew herself up onto defensive elbows. “What?”

“You, a coward? Don’t be ridiculous, Fionamara.”

His flippant tone dispelled some tension, the cobwebs of old memories. Fi kept on guard.

“I ran away.”

“One moment of self-preservation. What about everything after? Since we met, I’ve seen not a scrap of cowardice.

A coward wouldn’t have stood her ground against me.

A coward wouldn’t seek revenge against an immortal who could rip her to pieces.

” His smirk sharpened, a wicked look that raked the length of her body and left a shiver in its wake.

“A coward wouldn’t have had so many demands last night. ”

Fi slumped to the bed, feigning annoyance. Pretending his praise didn’t stir her heart.

“Yeah, well,” she grumbled, “you aren’t a disappointment, either.”

Antal’s eyes took on a luminous glint.

Oh no. Fi was losing again, wasn’t she?

“Please,” he purred, “tell me all the ways I’ve failed to disappoint you.”

She couldn’t stop herself. Fi’s gaze drifted over the lean body stretched beside her, fully exposed.

Fully confident. A treacherous tension wound her belly at the very non-disappointing view of his chest, the muscles of his abdomen, the lines of hard thighs.

And between those legs? Definitely not disappointing.

“I fear that might go to your head,” Fi said, bland.

“Certainly, it will.”

Antal leaned over her, a blanket of Void, a tease of teeth at her lips.

“You would have been wasted on Verne,” he said.

Fi reached for him like a lifeline. “But not on you?”

“Have I wasted you yet?”

He shifted a leg between hers. A moan escaped her teeth, an ache beneath his pressure. Then, startled stillness as he nestled his nose to her throat, breathing her in with a relishing inhale.

Fi welcomed the touch. Their conversation hung heavy, but here he offered an escape. A comfort. A joining in their wrongs and how safe she felt beside him.

“You have an intriguing smell, Fionamara.” Antal’s words danced, a sparkly lure.

“How so?” she breathed, drawn to the hook.

“How to describe it…” He brushed his nose up her neck, breath warm on her skin. “Like crackling firewood. Hot on every inhale. But then, the slightest chill at the end. A kiss from the Void.”

Void-touched. “Like you?”

Antal considered. Grinned. “Like me.”

Maybe that was the unerring pull between them, two creatures who felt equally at home beyond the Plane.

Fi’s composure cracked, a needy sound in her throat as she surged to kiss him.

His lips met hers with a hungry press, his teeth tugging her mouth open, his tongue slipping into her.

She drank him in parched gulps. Antal kissed like he could devour her very essence, yet last night he’d employed this weapon surprisingly little during their wrestling.

“Daeyari aren’t big on kissing,” Fi asked, “are they?”

“Less common for us than for humans. But I can enjoy something different now and then.”

“Two can play that game, you know.”

Fi broke from his lips and bit into the soft beneath his jaw.

The sound Antal made verged on feral. Every muscle tightened against her, shaken by a moan in his chest, sharp with the claws curled against her ribs.

A dizzying heat bloomed between Fi’s legs, the delight of how desperately he reached for her.

The thrill of discovering these intimate pieces of him.

“Careful with that.” His voice came rough.

“Why?”

“It’s how daeyari give consent.”

Fi thrilled at this shiny new toy. At Antal, coiled against her.

“You mentioned a next time?” he rasped.

“I had conditions,” she returned, barely more composed.

“Please.” Antal pulled her against him and nipped her jaw—delicious, now that she knew what it meant. “Please, Fionamara. Let me taste you again.”

“You’ve started tasting me twice now, daeyari, and never finished the task.”

She returned a bite to his chin, hard enough to draw a hiss through his teeth, to tell him exactly what she wanted.

His mouth was on her neck. Her chest. Down the plane of her stomach then a drag of fangs across her thigh.

“Fast?” he asked with bewitching severity. “Or slow?”

“Slow,” she ordered on a shivering breath. “Make me beg for it.”

And he did.