Page 62 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

No one invited you

Let Fi stay in that dawn-lit training field outside of Nyskya. Let her worst worries be Boden’s critique of her love life. Let her be back home in bed, wrapped in arms and furs, the cruel world kept at a safe distance a little longer.

But she recognized the roar that went up from the village. It sank into her chest like a Void-deep chill.

Fi emerged from a teleport with a gasp, Antal’s hand clasping hers, boots slipping against snow in disorientation and haste.

He’d brought them near the center of town, a pathway between residences.

Cold hung sharp in the alley. Frost curling Fi’s breath.

She and Antal pressed themselves to the closest wall of snow-chaffed timber to watch and listen.

The roar didn’t come again. Nyskya lay silent.

Too silent.

Like a forest gone quiet in the wake of a predator.

Antal sniffed the air. Here was another side of him Fi rarely saw: the hunter stalking prey. He dropped to a crouch, all tense muscles and swaying tail as he peered around the corner. At his nod, Fi followed.

She didn’t have a daeyari’s phantom footfalls, but she’d spent a decade avoiding sight when needed, careful steps to skirt trade warden patrols.

They slunk behind the dark windows of the general store, into a yard hectic with ice-crusted scrap barrels and tarped firewood.

Fi crouched behind a fence and peered through the slats.

The village “square” was a generous name for an avenue at the heart of Nyskya, cut a couple of strides wider than other roads in town and kept better shoveled.

A staging area for visiting merchants or drunken revelry during the sunless months.

Even at this early hour, some residents ought to be trudging the path, off to open shops or check traps. Yet the expanse was empty.

Nearly.

Through the gap in the fence, Fi caught a heart-stopping glimpse of white skin against snow. Black antlers more twisted than wind-wracked pine boughs. A hairless, pantherine body.

Venom pooled in her stomach.

It was here. Verne’s Beast was here .

The derived daeyari was a nightmare in any setting, yet to see the creature stalking Nyskya’s main avenue, to watch its hollow red eyes sweep familiar windows and silent doorsteps, speared panic through Fi’s sternum. Not here. Not now , when all their preparations had been going so well.

“ Oyzen ,” Antal cursed, snarling at the sight of his deformed kin.

The creature didn’t come alone.

Astrid led the march, a crossbow propped on her shoulder, slow strides entirely too insolent for someone with an immortal Beast at her back. Yet the creature heeled to her like a trained hound: skeletal head hung low, steps measured to her pace.

“What’s this bullshit?” Fi craned her neck, trying to get a better view. “Both of them? Working together again? How’s that fair?”

“An insult,” Antal said. “Commanding that Beast like a trained animal.”

Fi quirked a brow. “I thought you hated that thing?”

“An abomination, but it deserves dignity. It was a daeyari once. An immortal child of Veshri, lost to the Void.”

Fi didn’t care what it was. She wanted both interlopers out of her home.

Astrid paused in the square, between the general store and Kashvi’s tavern.

While the Beast loitered at her heels, she surveyed silent streets, hair a black curtain down one side of her face, antlers frost-kissed.

A long-sleeved blouse tucked into her trousers, hanging from her willowed frame like sheets of silken blood.

Fi and Antal stayed hidden. Astrid wouldn’t find her quarry. She’d have to leave empty-handed, like last time.

“Fionamara,” Astrid called.

Her own name struck Fi like an ice pick through the chest. Of course, a friendly visit was too much to ask, considering the crossbow. And the deranged horse demon.

“I know you’re here,” Astrid said. “It’s time to stop hiding.”

How dare she. Fi was a runner, not a hider. Bitch could at least get her insults right.

“She can’t know we’re here,” Fi hissed at Antal. “Right?”

Fi adored his grimace when her teasing was the cause. She hated it now, the way Antal tipped his head to scent the air again. In the square, the Beast did the same, saliva glistening against curved teeth as it huffed.

“You’ve got to be kidding…” Fi said.

“Fionamara. If I can—”

“Yes, Antlers. I realize that if you can smell it, it can smell you. Thanks.”

The panic in Fi’s chest carved deeper, splintering her ribs.

Panic was the enemy. When decisions needed to come swift, panic dug into the brain with hazy fingers. When hands needed to fly to weapons, panic locked the joints and shivered the grip. Fi knew she couldn’t give in to those bitter pangs.

But looking at that Beast daeyari. At Astrid and her granite-cut jaw.

“Don’t do this, Fi.” Astrid spoke in a warning low. “No one else needs to get hurt because of you. Not again.”

Fi noticed it then: the village not entirely silent. Across the square, a wide-eyed face spied out a window. From the path behind the general store, Fi heard a tramp of snow, a hushed voice, someone hurrying to the shelter of home.

If Astrid set that Beast loose on Nyskya, no one would be safe.

She wouldn’t. Would she? Fi rocked on her heels, anxious energy leaching heat from her arms and pricking her fingertips. “What do we do?”

Antal had the audacity to sigh. “They’re your people.”

“They’re your people too, Antal!”

“They… they are. I know they are.” His eyes closed, a slump as he rested his antlers against the fence. “If we fight, people will be harmed. Those who didn’t want to fight.”

And those lives would be on Fi’s hands. She’d chosen to stay in Nyskya. She’d convinced the people here to fight for Antal.

Astrid shifted in impatience. She set a hand on the Beast’s shoulder, stilling its pacing.

“Navek,” she told the creature. “Vu yzu lavary?”

The words tumbled off Astrid’s tongue stiffer than Antal’s, but equally breath-stealing. Since when did she speak daeyari?

Of course she spoke daeyari. Such a useful Arbiter, whatever her mistress needed.

“What did she say?” Fi asked.

Antal made a low growl.

“ Antal .”

“She asked the Beast if it’s hungry.”

Fi gaped in horror. Astrid wouldn’t do such a thing. Her Astrid would never do such a heinous thing. Whatever their quarrel with each other, the people of Nyskya were innocent.

But no matter what move came next, innocent people were in danger. Fi watched their plans breaking apart, weeks of sneaking and plotting and cobbling weapons together. They were supposed to have more time than this. Nyskya wasn’t ready.

She sucked in a breath, cold against her teeth. They had to be ready. No other choice.

“I need to go out there,” she said.

“Those two didn’t come for a pleasant chat,” Antal warned. “The moment we show ourselves, there’ll be no going back.”

“Not both of us. Just me.”

He snapped her a bone-peeling look. When Fi didn’t back down, his lips flashed fangs.

“That isn’t funny, Fionamara.”

She sure as the endless Void didn’t think so. Panic climbed acrid up her throat. She swallowed it, willing herself to be level as ice. She knew how to negotiate. She knew how to stall a buyer out when the stakes turned dicey.

And she wasn’t running anymore.

“We need more time for Boden and Kashvi to warn everyone,” Fi said.

They’d split up at the training field, her and Antal to track the Beast, Boden and Kashvi to alert the waking village.

“Astrid knows we’re here. And believe me, she’s every bit as stubborn as I am.

We can’t let her get desperate, or who knows what that Beast will do.

” She smacked a hand to her chest. “If I go out there, I might be able to talk her out of the village. At the very least, I can stall her.”

“ Alone? ”

“If Astrid sees you, she’ll come out swinging! I’m less of a threat. And I was practically crafted by the Void to distract that woman.”

“Or you could be ripped open by a derived daeyari.”

Antal seized her cheeks in his hands, too quick a motion… his eyes too wide. Fear. The same as that moment on the train, that panicked gaze sweeping over her when he’d thought she might be hurt. Fi fought a lump in her throat. A Void-born immortal shouldn’t be capable of such terror-hollowed eyes.

Much less for her.

He was afraid. Afraid to send her out alone. That made sense, didn’t it? From a logical standpoint: they were partners, their fates hinging on each other’s survival. Yet logic didn’t fit the fierce crease of his brow. Desperation whispered in the brush of his thumb across her cheek.

Fi placed her hands over his, fingers soft against claws.

“Stop looking at me like that, daeyari.” She forced a grin. “I’ll think you’ve started caring what happens to me.”

Too long a pause. Too still, his breath. “Would that be such a terrible thing?”

No. And yes. For all the same reasons.

“You won’t let me get hurt,” she said. “I trust you. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be at my side in a blink.”

Antal’s tail formed a tense curl. “I can only move so fast.”

Not faster than a crossbow bolt. Maybe not faster than a Beast’s lunge.

“Astrid could have blazed in here full force,” Fi reasoned. “She didn’t. She wants me alive.” Fi hoped that was true with every strain of her shredded heart. “Stay here. I’ll buy us more time.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Antal released her. “I’ll be ready.”

“But, you know,” Fi added in a nervous pitch, “if it looks like it’s going bad, you don’t have to wait for the dramatic entrance. I can handle myself. Sure I can. But if it’s a choice between my stupid pride or getting my ass eaten, I trust your judgment to—”

Her breath hitched as Antal pulled her into a kiss. The heat of his mouth snared her, an ache in her chest that lulled away panic, if only for an exhale. With a parting brush of fangs against her lip, he rested his forehead to hers.

“And you call yourself a coward?” he said. “Your teeth are as sharp as any daeyari.”