Page 7 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

In appearance, they were ghostly reflections of their daeyari sires. Shorter antlers. No tail nor claws, no black sclera, but this woman’s ruby irises latched onto Fi with skin-peeling sharpness. A wildcat eyeing prey.

Fi tensed. Breathless. Uncertain who would strike first. Vavriter were as rare on the Season-Locked Planes as sun in Winter, far too close to an immortal carnivore for most humans’ comfort, and this one was…

“Oh, pardon me,” Milana greeted. “I didn’t realize you’d be joining us?”

“How could I miss meeting our esteemed partner?” The vavriter flashed Fi a bright grin—fangless, but still unsettling. “Astrid. Pleased to meet you.”

Fi’s shock snapped to confusion. She watched the woman recline in a chair beside Milana, arms languid upon the rests, her maroon blouse cut in a deep V that revealed an edge of pale breast. Confident. Taunting.

Astrid spoke to her fellow conspirators, but her ruby eyes never left Fi. “Rough around the edges, this one. But I assure you, she’s up to the task.”

Milana hummed. “She seems reluctant.”

Fi had yet to remember how to breathe. She was supposed to know the rules of these games, false bravado from always having a card up her sleeve—but the vavriter’s grin struck her like a knife to the ribs. A wildcat, wandered in through the lobby.

“Then offer better terms.”

Astrid set a metal box on the table, slender fingers skating the edge. “Consider this a show of good faith.”

Fi didn’t need to open the box to know what it contained. She cracked the lid open just to stop the room from spinning.

Inside, ten more daeyari energy chips glinted in velvet.

“She’s not agreed to help yet!” Erik protested.

“She will,” Astrid said with perfect confidence.

This was wrong. Something was wrong with this trio trying to sneak into the capitol—two wary-tongued humans, a vavriter who shouldn’t be here. Fi should argue, should push for a higher price. She was talented at arguing.

Just not now, with this chill through her chest. She couldn’t escape the snare of Astrid’s red eyes, her pantherine posture, an adrenaline-sharp memory of dark trees and…

Fi swallowed. Her throat, sandpaper. “Will you be helping us, vavriter?”

“I’m afraid I’m needed elsewhere. Though I trust in your abilities.”

Fi clenched the box until her knuckles whitened. Ten more energy chips was significant .

More urgently, she needed to end this conversation. Get back on solid footing.

“Just in and out?” she asked.

“Under an hour,” Milana assured.

“If it takes more than an hour, I’m leaving. With or without you.”

Milana and Erik exchanged a wary look.

“Agreed,” Astrid said for them.

Fi swallowed approximately a hundred questions splitting her tongue. A hundred curses, bottled into a glare. Astrid reciprocated, fingers light on the arms of her chair, face like granite.

Then, subtle enough for only Fi to see: a smirk that raked a chill down her neck.

After settling Aisinay into a Shard outside the city, Fi retreated to the hotel room her hosts insisted on paying for. She sprawled onto a down comforter, watching the glint of green aurora against window glass.

She wasn’t sure when to expect a knock on her door.

But the knock did come.

When Fi answered, Astrid stood in the hall.

The vavriter reclined against gold and teal wallpaper, armed with a smirk and sinfully tight pants, that silken shirt cut assaulting low down her pale chest. Her hair and antlers were black as Void.

Her eyes, glinting like faceted rubies in the sconce lights.

“I hoped we might discuss your job,” Astrid said. “If the esteemed smuggler can spare a moment for me?”

She spoke so light. So easy. Fi opened her mouth to say something very rude. And very loud . Guaranteed to upset the neighbors.

Instead, she barely mustered a whisper.

“It’s been ten years, Astrid.”

The smirk faltered, if only for a heartbeat. “Time flies, doesn’t it?”

Fi stared, as if this haunting visitor might disappear the moment she blinked. A familiar figment of her imagination. Astrid stared back.

“Are you going to invite me in?” Astrid said, low like a taunt.

Slamming the door in her face would be considered rude. Damn manners to the pit of the Void, Fi wasn’t ready for this—far too sober, for starters.

She huffed and beckoned Astrid inside.

While Fi sat stiffly on the edge of the bed, the vavriter paced the room. That curtain of black hair veiled half her face, slender brows tilted to appraise the flowery wall moldings. A ghost. A Void-damned ghost, strutting in front of her.

“You look… well,” Fi managed, just to break the silence.

Astrid stopped pacing. Ruby-red eyes stared at Fi a moment too long. Too hard.

“Do I?” Astrid said lowly.

Her smirk snapped back, dagger sharp.

“Of course, I look fabulous .” Astrid spread her arms, posture unnervingly easy. “You don’t look so awful yourself. For a Void smuggler.”

“You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”

“You thought I wouldn’t?”

Fi’s knuckles clenched. “Then what was that act downstairs?”

“Being careful.” Astrid spoke as if this were a disappointing question. How was she so damn calm ? “I assumed you wouldn’t want people knowing your personal life.”

She leaned against a dresser, sure and willowy. She’d always been willowy. And wild, Fi’s father had called her. A forest beast, as likely to snap as to purr.

Astrid’s family had moved to their childhood town to oversee the energy factory.

Vavriter were uncommon visitors on the Season-Locked Planes, almost only as administrative hands for daeyari, their human neighbors inclined to keep cautious distance from anything with antlers.

Fi’s father warned her to do the same—but she’d been old enough by then; any word from that selfish old man sent her sprinting in the other direction, even straight into fire.

Their friendship began as dares to race each other across icy riverbanks.

Next, competitions for who could snatch a hair from a heath boar, a game that ended with nine stitches in Fi’s arm.

Then Fi discovered how to step through Curtains.

Astrid was the first person she’d dragged with her, holding hands as they’d stared into the Void.

Astrid’s face had changed since then. The hardness seemed foreign, yet fitting for the svelte animal she’d become, the way she’d sculpted muscle and poise onto what once were spindly young limbs.

Fi wasn’t sure if she was glad to see her.

“Why are you here?” Here in Thomaskweld. Here in Fi’s room. Anything to loosen these thorns choking her since Astrid snapped back into her life in a hotel lobby.

Astrid’s grin hardened. “Making sure you don’t get cold feet.”

The cut sank deep, the work of a familiar blade. Fi hadn’t seen Astrid since she ran away from home.

Not since Astrid pledged herself to Verne, the daeyari who ruled their home territory.

To become an Arbiter was an honor without equal, the personal hand of an immortal, a position above even the territory’s governor.

And the boon to their families? For as long as an Arbiter served, a daeyari ordered no sacrifices from their town.

With vavriter lifespans ranging well over two hundred years, Astrid had gifted a blessing to their entire community.

The weight of it hung over her like a death shroud. Moonlight caught silver lines on her arms, scars she hadn’t worn ten years ago.

“Arbiter life is treating you well?” Fi said, dry.

Astrid shrugged. “Well enough.”

That explained where the daeyari energy chips came from, though Astrid’s involvement in this heist raised more questions. Why she’d enlist Fi raised even more.

“This isn’t your daeyari’s territory,” Fi said. “So why are you here?”

“Errands.”

“Stealing a vase?”

“A classic, I’m told.”

“In another daeyari’s capital?”

“Which is why my presence is best kept discreet.” Astrid spoke with the edge of a razor, but this tipped her mouth to a smirk. “So many questions, Fi. I thought you didn’t care about politics?” Her voice lowered. “So content with your carts and contra-band.”

Fi scoffed. “Seems I’ve been roped into some politics. By one particular person.”

“You’re upset I have faith in your abilities? Whatever your faults, you are good at what you do.”

What was this? A dance? A sparring match? Ten years. How had so much changed in ten years ? Once, Fi could weigh the slant of Astrid’s smirk and spot any lie, any scheme, any jest that would leave them giggling like idiots.

“Of course…” Astrid traced a finger along the dresser. “If you’re interested in doing more , you only have to ask. It’s never too late.”

The proposition soured Fi’s stomach. “I won’t work for a daeyari.”

Especially not a daeyari like Verne. Fi and Boden fled to Antal Territory to escape the sight of screaming criminals dragged before the hungry beast who ruled them. Of cold families begging for aid with sacrifices they couldn’t afford.

Was that the source of this new hardness in Astrid’s eyes? The vavriter’s fingers ceased caressing the dresser and clamped the edge, no claws like her ancestors. Equally fierce.

“Sometimes, Fi,” she said, too quiet. “You do what you have to. The daeyari are the closest things to gods these Shattered Planes will ever see. They offer power to people like us.”

“They eat people like us.” People like Fi, at least. Daeyari could eat vavriter, but seemed to prefer not to, some deference for fellow antlers.

“Stubborn as ever.” Astrid scowled. “I suppose we’re finished, then.”

She rose off the dresser like a cat uncoiling. Fi frowned at the curt dismissal, anger sticking to her ribs as Astrid moved toward the door.

Then, a sharper surge of panic.

The shot of adrenaline pushed Fi to her feet, some slurry of frustration, and guilt, and… not yet. She couldn’t watch Astrid walk away again.

“Wait.”

Astrid paused.

When she turned, the light from the window cut sharp across her cheeks. Stark down the pale skin of her chest. Silver moonlight and aurora, tangling in dark hair and dark antlers.

“Why are we doing this?” Fi pleaded. “It’s been years , Astrid. It’s… good to see you.”

Every line of her face was a memory, the clamp of her jaw as stubborn as she’d always been. So unyielding.

So beautiful.

“Is it?” Astrid said.

“Of course.” By the endless Void, there were too many things Fi wanted to say. Needed to say. Nowhere to start. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. I didn’t know… if you’d want to see me again.”

It felt like an eternity, the time Astrid weighed that statement.

“I had to see you,” Astrid said, ice flat. “I had to know if anything has changed.”

“Has it?”

They’d both changed. Fi had to believe that. She wasn’t the frightened, flimsy girl who’d run away from home a decade ago. She’d been hardened by work, honed on Shards, steadied into someone who could finally face an old friend.

So why the fuck did her legs still threaten to give out when Astrid stepped closer? Why did her heart try to crack through her chest as Astrid raised a hand to Fi’s temple, brushing aside a rainbow curl with those long, cool fingers?

“The hair is new,” Astrid murmured.

That quickly, they were standing too close. As close as they used to be.

Fi moved to kiss her like an old instinct, a muscle trained and worn and never forgotten.

Astrid stiffened, every line of her as hard as the glares she’d been shooting since the lobby.

Then, she softened. Astrid cupped Fi’s cheeks and returned a bruising kiss, ending with a bite to the lip that made Fi gasp.

She tasted different, smelled different, the homemade honey lip balm and pine resin of their childhood replaced by satin lipstick and a tang of metal.

Fi’s heart hammered harder. This was the worst idea she’d ever had. She needed it like air in her lungs. She kissed Astrid fiercer, clawed her fingers into Astrid’s silken shirt, pulling her toward the bed.

Astrid pulled away.

The motion hit sharp as a recoil. She held Fi at arm’s length—eyes harder than before, mouth clamped and unreadable.

“An enticing invitation,” Astrid said. “But I have other work to do.”

That was what had changed.

The words stung with finality. A distance Fi didn’t know how to cross. For one horrifying moment, she wondered if they were finally going to talk about what happened between them.

“I… understand,” Fi said instead. Immediately, she knew it was wrong, watched Astrid’s eyes darken to scuffed ruby.

“Good luck tomorrow,” Astrid said.

The hitch in her voice was nearly undetectable, as she released Fi. Back to that unruffled posture, as she stepped into the hall.

When the door closed, Fi slid the deadbolt into place with a chest-splitting slank .

Ten years had been long enough to assume Astrid hadn’t forgiven her. To mull the possibility of reunion on nights when Fi found herself staring at the dark rafters of her cottage, haunted by the things she’d said that day. By the things she hadn’t.

But she was different now. She told herself she was stronger than ten years ago, even as she curled into an unfamiliar bed, huddled beneath a blanket thick with laundry starch.

Deep in her gut, survival instinct nagged Fi to cut her losses and run, flee this city and whatever strange business she’d been contracted for.

But she knew with equal certainty: she had to stay. Fi had to see things through this time.

She owed Astrid that much.