24 Void Touched
Their prey had escaped.
Antal and Ixli retraced their path to the Summer Plane, less hurried than before, failure and reconciliation hanging quiet between them.
His first aedari was less monstrous than those in his childhood stories, as real life often was. The creature was still lethal. Those wings, searing-hot and made of pure energy. Its strength, amplified by magic. The blood on his claws smelled like… how to even describe it?
Like heat. Direct sunlight. Hot stone. On Antal’s lips, a hint of sweetness lingered. Aedari were no good as food to daeyari, their dust-woven flesh providing no sustenance, but he’d heard the taste was incomparable. The prize of a successful hunt.
Void and Veshri willing, he’d find out soon enough. Today, he added a new promise: ensuring Ixli got her bands. Antal had endured a lifetime of Avroz’s control, his manipulation. He’d not suffer that fate on anyone else.
When they returned to the farmhouse, Avroz and Syvr had arrived.
The two daeyari conferred near the porch. Avroz had opted to scout their flank, entrusting the main assault to Ixli. Now, one look from Antal’s father, and Ixli hung her head, tail lowered to an ashamed sway. Unwarranted. She’d fought well, had fended off the aedari despite—
Antal tensed. Sniffed. A scent of blood mixed with the soil, aedari and daeyari.
And human.
He scanned the yard. Empty. His glare fell on Avroz.
“Where’s Fionamara?” Antal demanded.
A weighted look passed between Avroz and Syvr. That moment of silence stretched a heartbeat, an eternity.
“Honestly?” his father returned. “I don’t know.”
Antal’s tail lashed. “Is she well?”
“Probably not. Last time I saw her, my claws were in her stomach.”
The words settled slow into Antal’s ether.
One shallow breath.
Another.
He’d left her alone again.
The tang of human blood filled his nose, again.
Again, again, again—
Antal lunged at his father.
No thought. No calculation. Just fangs bared, claws ready to shred—and that memory playing over and over, Razik’s throat spilling out on the floor, the smell of blood thick enough to choke.
He’d told himself Avroz wouldn’t do this again.
So much time had passed. His father wanted him back.
Antal was doing everything he asked, bending himself backward for this fragile peace.
And still, there was blood in his nose. Fionamara was gone.
His claws never landed. Ixli grabbed his arm, holding him back.
“Antal,” she hissed. “What are you doing?”
Antal thrashed against her. Syvr gripped his other shoulder, a lighter touch, entreating eyes to counter Ixli’s snarl. Antal heeded neither of them.
He only stared at Avroz: calm, cold, tail low but controlled. How was he always in control?
“Antal,” his father chided. “Be civil.”
“Where is she?” There was no body. Not enough blood. Antal told himself there wasn’t enough blood on the ground, but it was still hers, hinting her fiery scent.
“Stop shouting,” Avroz said. “And put your claws away.”
“Tell me where she is!” Antal fought Ixli’s grasp. “Tell me what you did to her!” He ignored Syvr’s silent plea for calm. “You won’t take another one from me!”
Then, behind him: “Antal. Stop.”
Her voice lanced his heart. His name, so perfectly vicious off her tongue.
Antal turned.
In two and a half centuries upon these vast and merciless Planes, he’d never known such nauseating relief as when he saw her standing there. Whole. Alive.
He’d never beheld a creature so ferocious, her Void-and-crimson hair battle mussed. A burn from an aedari wing marred her cheek, a smear of red blood on her jaw.
He’d never clamped his fangs with such fury, at the sight of her shredded silviamesh. Ten claw marks sliced the fabric of her stomach. By Veshri’s teeth, Avroz had tried to rip her open. Yet somehow, she stood upright, glaring like a spirit of vengeance.
Antal’s claws went slack, until Ixli released him.
“Fionamara—”
She held up a finger for silence, striding straight past him when he reached for her.
Straight to Avroz.
Fionamara planted herself in front of his father, just out of claw range. Still far too close. She looked the old daeyari in the eye without a scrap of compromise. Antal was one lunge away from grabbing her, asking what in the endless Void she was doing.
But Avroz met her without sneer. Without fangs. Antal puzzled over his father’s expression, eyes wider than they ought to be, almost like…
Shock.
Impossible. Avroz never betrayed such compromising emotion.
“How?” Avroz said at last, barely a hiss.
Fionamara spat at his feet.
She turned her back to him. The greatest insult to a predator, declaring how little his claws intimidated her. Even then, Avroz only stared.
This woman was a menace. An impossibility. Antal’s doom, in fierce dark eyes.
“Antal.” She held out her hand. “Might we have a word? In private.”
Antal had no space to argue. He grasped her hand, eager to be away, not trusting Avroz and his apparent bafflement.
A teleport brought them to the ridgeline, back where this ill-fated venture began.
Fionamara moved stiffer than she had in front of the other daeyari. Gingerly, she sat on the loamy ground. Antal should have known better. A show of bravado, that brave face of hers—but at least she was alive. He knelt at her side.
She smelled… odd.
Antal wrinkled his nose. There was reassurance in her fiery scent, the sweet of her hair, but beneath it… cold. Sharp. More than usual.
“What happened?” he asked.
“So. I got into a little bit of an argument with your father.”
She was actively murdering him, dagger in hand, plunging it through his ribs with slicing nonchalance. “A little?”
“I threatened to kill him. He did the same.” She puffed a strand of hair off her cheek.
“He put his claws in you,” Antal growled. “But where…”
There were no claw marks. Shredded fabric, blood crusted alarmingly thick to the cloth—but no wounds underneath.
“Bear with me,” Fionamara said. “Still wrapping my head around the bullshit myself.”
She unfastened the front of her bodysuit, teasing pale clavicle, the round edges of her breasts. If she was trying to distract him at a time like this—
“You know how daeyari are made of Void ether?” Fionamara said.
“Yes…”
“Well, I think I am, too. A little bit.”
Antal blinked at her. “What in the endless Void does that mean?”
He fell silent when she bared her stomach. Utterly still, at the sight of pale skin, the floral tattoo up her hip—and ten claw marks. Fully healed. The scars were starkly white, bereft of the rosy pigment that flushed the rest of her.
“Oh,” Fionamara breathed, staring at her stomach. “That’s unsettling. It will probably seem cool eventually, right? After a few drinks maybe?”
Antal could only stare. His mouth parted, that odd new scent of her resting cool on his tongue, the crisp of the Void. Stronger than the hint she’d always carried.
“What did you do?” he asked in a hush.
“I fixed myself,” she said. “With Void ether.”
Impossible. Humans couldn’t weave Void ether, much less bind it to their Plane-made bodies. Yet when Antal leaned for a closer sniff, she smelled like Void ether.
He licked her, one long stroke from hip to hip. Fionamara gasped and swatted him. He drew back, testing his tongue.
She even tasted like Void.
“How?” he demanded.
“Well, I figured out what raw Void ether feels like. Very strange. Very flimsy. But then I held it to my stomach and…” She scrunched her mouth. “Visualized what I wanted? Like Voidwalking. Only this time, I was visualizing my stomach not shredded to ribbons.”
“That shouldn’t be possible.”
Fionamara bristled. “It was that, or dying!”
She’d said the same thing when she’d first Voidwalked. A last resort, alone against Verne, flinging herself into the Void on a gamble. Antal couldn’t take her with him. He couldn’t leave her behind. What was he supposed to do to keep this woman safe?
“Fionamara, this is…”
“I think it’s impressive,” she said. “Not like you can complain. You left me behind!”
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“You could have taken me with you.”
“So you fought Avroz instead?”
She scoffed. “That bastard can suck a prickly cock—”
A flick of static silenced them both.
Ixli appeared on the ridgeline.
Fionamara pulled her bodysuit over her chest, sword hilt already in hand. Ixli kept her distance, dappled sun on her cheeks, an unusual wariness to her posture. No spear drawn. That was a good start.
When she looked at Fionamara, Antal growled in warning.
“How is your…” Ixli paused. Considered. “Fi. Are you alright?”
Fionamara considered her with equal bristles. “I’m alive.”
“Yes. That seems to be causing Avroz quite some consternation.” Ixli looked to Antal.
“We’re fine,” he said, still guarded. “Thank you for checking.”
Ixli’s tail flicked. She spoke too low.
“Antal, when you told Avroz… not another one. What did you mean?”
Antal’s breath came out in a hiss. He’d moved against his father without thinking, had shouted things he shouldn’t have. Only claws. Only fury. Only the possibility of Fionamara hurt.
Now, Ixli’s stare was piercing. He looked away—
And found Fionamara staring as well. Her lips parted, brow drawn to that lethal furrow.
“They don’t know?” she whispered.
Of course Antal hadn’t told Ixli. After Razik’s death, he’d taken months to remember how to function, barely eating, unable to look at a meal without desperate eyes staring back. And even once the fog began to clear? He hadn’t known who to trust. They all belonged to Avroz.
They still did.
Ixli stepped closer. “You had another human? Before this one?”
Antal said nothing.
“Is that why Avroz sent you away?” She pushed another step.
His tail lashed, low to the ground. Every breath was too tight in his chest.
“Antal, say something.”
“What do you want me to say?” he snapped.
“What happened? You vanished. You changed so much.”
They all kept saying that. As if this was such a mystery. As if his splintered heart was an impossible puzzle, rent by the fissures they’d put there.