22 A Fruitless Chase
He heard Fionamara call out not to leave her.
He heard her scream in between his teleporting.
Carrying a human would slow him down. Antal hated that she’d slow him down, but the aedari was fleeing, and Ixli was moving so Void-damned fast.
It wasn’t easy to chase someone through teleports.
He spotted a flash of white hair far ahead.
He jumped to the spot. He searched again.
Spotted her again. Jumped again. Each move, he pushed as swiftly as possible, the shallowest dips into the Void, the outline of the Summer Plane almost visible as black blurred his vision. Still, it was a game of catch-up.
Tracking the aedari was even harder. It left a scant trail, hints of its burnt-sand and honey scent.
It passed through the house. Into the forest. Over the ridge.
The creature could only teleport in its sightline, but it was flinging itself as fast as it could, no pause between jumps.
At each step, Ixli had to scent, had to reorient her trajectory. Precious extra seconds.
She was never going to catch up. The stubborn daeyari kept running anyway.
The trail passed through a Curtain, off the Summer Plane and onto a Shard. The ground was loamy, strewn with gossamer leaves and trees of knotted silver bark. Dim light seeped from the nearby Plane, but no sun was visible overhead, only black Void sky.
“Ixli!” Antal shouted.
She kept moving. Another Curtain. Another Shard.
Dusk coated this sliver of reality, still no sun, but the ground was hued rose and purple. A rocky shore circled a lake, the water dark and glass smooth.
“Ixli, wait!”
When she still didn’t heed him, Antal tackled her. She fell snarling, claws scraping loose stones as they crashed together to the shore. He didn’t attempt the futile struggle of containing her. When Ixli slipped from his grasp, she staggered forward, stones skittering with each step.
Again, when she dropped to her knees.
Ixli tilted forward and shouted her defeat into the Void, bearing all her fangs.
Antal lay on his back, rocks sharp on his shoulders and clacking his antlers.
His lungs filled with the chilled scent of the Void, crisp as home and older than Veshri’s ether-spun bones.
The aedari’s smell was faint. Already fading.
From here, it could have bolted through a dozen different Shards, lost in the maze of fragments.
Antal pushed to his knees. He moved toward Ixli as if approaching a wild beast.
She hunched, head bowed, claws dug into the lakeshore.
“It got away,” she hissed.
“Ixli.” He tried for soft. She’d always liked soft, but would never admit it.
“I let it get away.”
“We’ll find it again. You’ll get another chance.”
Her head snapped up, fangs bared and eyes molten. “What does it matter to you?”
She’d never looked like this before. Always lethal, a little wild, but never strung so tight.
Antal had been scarcely over fifty when they’d met.
Avroz had taken him on a tour of several Planes, making introductions in preparation for his travel years.
And to see to Avroz’s interests, of course.
They’d visited one of the combat academies.
Antal had sat with his father in an observation box, watching the year’s applicants spar in the ring below.
One newcomer from the territories had upset all the rankings, a fearless beast with snowy hair braided to her waist.
Avroz had watched her matches with a coveting look. A look Antal wouldn’t learn until too late—evaluating something he wanted. Keep an eye on this one, he’d told his son.
Antal hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. The way she’d moved like flowing water. The way she’d held her head with unbroken confidence. Like she knew exactly what she was, born to hold a spear in her hand.
Born to wear gold on her antlers. The lengths were carved with the moonlit forest of her home Plane, the sigils of every academy she’d mastered, the dahlias of her pledge as Avroz’s kezri. But still no Sunsplitter bands.
“Avroz hasn’t let you on another aedari hunt?” Antal asked.
Ixli growled. “Syvr can mind their own damn business.”
“Why hasn’t he let you?”
“Avroz says I’m not ready.”
“That was not ready? What I just saw?” Ixli had held off an aedari on her own. She’d drawn first blood. “You saw how well I did against that creature.”
“Atrocious,” Ixli agreed a little too earnestly. “You’re still using your claws? Not a single weapon? I got you daggers!”
She had. Two beautiful silver hilts engraved with dahlias, an anniversary gift.
“I know,” Antal said. “I… don’t have them anymore.”
Ixli fell dangerously still. Spoke low. “You really hate me that much?”
“No. That’s not…” Antal clamped his teeth, never able to say the right thing. “It’s not because of you, Ixli. I…”
He’d gotten rid of so many things after her. After Razik. Memories he couldn’t bear to hold any longer.
“They were a kind gift.” He attempted a grin, scraped for it with all he could. “I remember you teaching me to use them. Or, you tried teaching me.”
“Stop it,” Ixli said.
“I held the hilt too close to the blade. Burnt my fingers. You laughed for a solid minute.”
“Stop.”
“Why?”
Ixli’s eyes burned like hot steel. Her voice cracked, head bowed until snowy hair brushed her cheeks. “You have no idea how much I missed you after. How much I regretted it.”
She’d told him that a hundred times. How sorry she was.
It didn’t change what had happened, did it?
That Antal had trusted her with his most dangerous secret: his earliest doubt that, maybe, he didn’t want to join the Daey Celva.
Didn’t want to be what Avroz chose for him.
Maybe he could be a conduit engineer, or a musician, or anything more than his father’s shadow.
It didn’t change that Avroz had found out. Because of Ixli. That his father had dug his claws in so tight afterward, Antal couldn’t breathe for a century. Was still straining for air.
“I thought he knew,” she said, tail wrapped around her legs. “I assumed your father already knew, but by the time I realized he didn’t, it was too late, and he was angry, and…”
Ixli had told him all that, too.
After Antal had ended things between them, after he’d realized he couldn’t trust Ixli like he used to, he’d been disconsolate. He’d spent sleepless nights wondering if he’d made a mistake, missing her warmth in his bed, the twine of their tails.
But as with all things, those feelings had passed with time.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have pounced on you when you came home. I hadn’t seen you in so long, and I thought maybe after all this time, things between us could be… not good, I guess. Maybe that’s too much to hope for. But better than this.”
Antal heard the familiar notes in Ixli’s voice. Just an old ache, just a life that would never be. He no longer missed those intimate moments with her.
But he missed his friend.
Antal had told Fionamara that he’d lost connection to other daeyari, felt their absence like a hole in his chest. He didn’t miss the politics, or his father’s fangs.
He did miss the gentle brushes of his mother’s tail.
The way Syvr laughed at a good story. The gleam of Ixli’s eyes when she found a worthy challenge.
Forgiveness wasn’t easy. Not in this place that had skewered him every time he showed vulnerable flesh.
But this wound between them had happened so long ago. And Ixli was trying to mend it. He could try to make that count for something.
“You were marvelous,” he said. “Against that aedari.”
Ixli scoffed. “Not good enough.”
“You are good enough. You are now. You were fifty years ago. Avroz is wrong.”
Her tail flicked, wary. “He’s your father.”
“Which is how I know he’s wrong.”
That was another thing that had grown out of their parting: Antal’s deepening distrust for his father.
Avroz had brought them together. He’d encouraged Antal during their courtship.
How Ixli must have seemed the perfect match: a respectable daeyari, a partner Avroz could control.
Better that they’d separated, even if Antal had suffered for it.
He’d never wanted Ixli to suffer. Even in the aftermath, she’d remained dutiful, proud. No signs of Avroz tightening his leash.
Antal should have known better.
He slipped his tail across the stones, a testing brush against Ixli’s. For now, it was the best he could offer.
“We’ll get you that aedari,” he promised. “You deserve those bands.”
Ixli was, as always, a proud beast. It took a long moment of her staring at him, searching for the hidden fangs, before her gaze softened. A longer moment of disbelief, questions simmering behind her furrowed brow.
At last, she relented, twining the tip of her tail with his.
“Why are you here, Antal?” Ixli said. “You never cared about aedari hunting.”
“For the Daey Celva.” The easiest answer.
“You stopped caring about that, too.”
Antal laughed. Of course, she knew that better than anyone. Honesty, then? “For my territory. My people. I promised to keep them safe.”
Ixli considered. When she looked away, pink sunset glowed against her eyes. “Your human seemed angry.”
“She has a name,” Antal said.
“She’s brave.” Ixli spoke firm. No derision.
“She is.” He sighed. “That’s the problem.”