5 Crash course in interspecies affection
The Twilit Plane smelled weird.
Not unpleasant, but… Fi took a moment to place it. She couldn’t. That was the weird part. Like the smells were so close to things she knew, an entire world she’d never tasted before, having never ventured off the Season-Locked Planes. The breeze was cool. Sweet.
This was, one might say, an aggressively large number of flowers.
Antal had brought them through the final Curtain, emerging upon a stone platform.
A massive field of flowers surrounded them.
The blooms were as wide as Fi’s fists, dark blue petals in tight swirls, dusted in silver iridescence.
Midnight dahlias, she guessed. The same flowers were carved upon the base of Antal’s antlers.
Grown upon the lands of his home, he’d said.
A rock face bordered the field to one side. Distant trees lined the rest, aurorabeast silhouettes browsing underneath. Some daeyari kept the bison-like creatures as supplemental food, not a viable replacement for higher-energy humans, but a fallback in a pinch.
Perplexingly, what Fi didn’t see was a house.
Beside her, Antal’s breaths came heavy. He glanced at the aurorabeast herd, then away just as swiftly. Could daeyari hyperventilate, despite the not-necessary lungs?
He looked to her. One final flash of worried eyes.
Then he straightened. His expression settled into that mask he’d worn when they’d first met, before she’d learned how to make him laugh and moan. This guise was cold. Guarded.
Of course. This was the place where he’d created it.
Antal led them down a walkway, midnight blooms brushing the edges.
Among daeyari, walking was a sign of respect—even when returning to his family home, apparently.
Fi carried both their bags. She dropped her eyes to the ground like a good human servant, and if Antal knew what was good for him, his tongue had better pay her back for this later.
Still no buildings. The path led to the rock face, into a fissure she hadn’t noticed. And when they slipped inside…
Ok. Fi gasped a little.
The cavern stretched so high, she couldn’t make out the ceiling.
Silver energy lamps were staked along the path, others speckled through the surrounding garden.
More than dahlias this time. The beds overflowed with a stunning variety of blooms in silver, white, and cream, pale colors to contrast in the dim light.
The growing lanterns reminded Fi of those used in Winter Plane greenhouses, though these somehow fed the plants without blinding the space.
Weirdly pleasant, for a den of carnivores.
“So daeyari are obsessed with heights and… caves?” Fi observed.
Antal didn’t break stride, kept his tone curt. “Daeyari can only teleport where we’ve been before. Or where we can see.”
So they built their private spaces where no one could see into?
And probably weren’t overzealous in inviting house guests.
The walkway skirted a stone patio, furnished with sitting pillows and low tables—an entry hall for greeting visitors, still no glimpse into the main residence.
Fi considered Antal’s home upon the Thomaskweld cliffs in a new perspective, gauging the angles, no clear line of sight from below or above.
At the back of the cavern, a short staircase climbed to double doors of dark wood. Before they’d reached the base of the stairs, the doors opened. Fi braced.
It wasn’t a daeyari who greeted them: red irises, but no black sclera.
Antlers, but short, two-pronged points emerging from graying hair.
He wore a tunic of iridescent vesper fabric with dark breeches, no tail.
A vavriter—descended from when humans had lain with daeyari in ages past, before the latter achieved immortality and incompatible breeding biology.
Fi kept her guard up. Vavriter were the rarest of their three races, not as dangerous as daeyari—yet the last vavriter she’d known had been equal parts alluring and deadly.
This vavriter grinned, fangless.
“Antal.” He bowed and touched an antler tip. “Maelvasi kezros.” Welcome home.
Antal returned the gesture, spoke back in daeyari. “It’s good to see you, Geslam.”
Fi was, annoyingly, grateful for the language lessons this past year.
Inside the house, swift footsteps padded tile. Geslam stepped aside as a daeyari lurched onto the threshold, then froze just as swiftly.
Her mouth parted, eyes widening to pools of Void black and glowing red.
She had light gray skin, a face that could have been in her forties by human standards—despite seven points to each black antler, seven centuries old, the lengths carved in sunset hues and decorated in silver chains.
Slate hair wove three plaits between her antlers, fell loose to her shoulders below.
Her dress was dark purple with cascading flowers in silver thread and agate, slitted at the thighs, room for slim legs and tail as it cut a delighted swish.
She had the same soft cheeks.
Irises such an identical shade of crimson, Fi withheld a gasp.
“Antal?” she said, a hopeful whisper at odds with fangs.
Fi could have broken bricks on Antal’s spine.
“Yme,” he returned, uncomfortably formal. “Thank you for inviting me—”
She raced down the stairs in a flurry of skirt and tail, practically throwing herself onto him—but not with a hug. Fi was flummoxed as the daeyari, Yme, folded claws into her palms, pressing the backs of her hands fondly against Antal’s chest. She leaned in to touch her forehead to his.
“Yzir virso,” she said. My son, so soft, it was nearly inaudible. “It’s good to see you.”
Antal performed a flawless impression of petrified wood.
Yme’s tail brushed his in the oddest, lightest gesture Fi had ever gawked at, Antal’s meek inhale like something out of a stupor. Slowly, he wound his tail with hers. His shoulders softened almost imperceptibly.
“Good to see you too, azaevi.”
Mother. Antal spoke the word differently to her than when he’d taught Fi. Like it meant something. Like it had aged for centuries on his tongue.
Fi shouldn’t be staring. She ought to clamp her mouth shut, focus on her boots, but it was so strange.
She’d never seen affection between daeyari, only snapping teeth.
Yme brushed her knuckles over Antal’s cheek, claws still folded into her palm.
Avoiding the claws made sense, if one were being polite.
Was that why Antal sometimes looked at Fi so strangely when she brushed her fingers over him?
“Look at this!” Yme inspected an antler, arcing back over Antal’s head, then a short curve upward. Hers curved far higher. “They’re branching beautifully.”
“I suppose,” Antal said.
“And another point coming in already?”
“That’s how antlers grow, azaevi. What else did you expect—”
Another shadow appeared in the doorway.
A silent arrival. The smooth gait of a predator, despite his ornate attire: several shades of dark blue, layered tight for his tunic, loose in a shawl draping one shoulder and pooling midnight at his calves.
Every hem was stamped in silver and dangling beads, yet not a rustle as he paused upon the threshold, observing his guests.
Antal went deathly still. As tense as the prey animal Fi had once been around daeyari.
She appraised the creature. Her first impression? He was old. Absurdly old. Mortals weakened with age, but daeyari only seemed to sharpen.
His eyes were darker than Antal’s, burgundy like wine.
His skin was the same bone pale. The same knife-cut brow.
The same uncompromising jaw. His blue-black hair was braided into a bun, framing nine-pointed antlers, the older tips wickedly sharp.
Carvings covered the length with dahlias, constellations, foreign sigils in blue and green.
And something Fi had never seen before: a golden band on either antler, brighter than the other markings. Almost luminous.
The daeyari’s lips curled a slow, fanged grin.
“Antal,” his father greeted with spine-chilling fondness.
If Fi weren’t on best behavior, she’d knock it out of his teeth.
Antal hesitated a heartbeat too long.
“Izaevi,” he said. “Thank you for inviting me.”
That one sounded the same, as sharp as Antal had always spat the word father.
Avroz descended the stairs, tail a slow sway behind him. Antal held his arms out, palms up, the more formal daeyari greeting Fi had seen. Avroz laid his arms atop Antal’s.
When he leaned in to press their foreheads together, Fi thought Antal might snap apart.
She’d snap this bastard into pieces for him, if he only said the word. Rip out those smirking fangs. Add another antler to the collection above her mantle.
It was agony to say nothing. That she had to watch Antal fight to keep his tail from lashing, couldn’t even risk a hand on his, some small gesture to remind him that she was here. They’d survive this together.
Avroz stepped back. “It’s our pleasure to have you, virso. It’s been too long.”
“Much too long,” Yme agreed, beaming.
Burgundy eyes snapped to Fi.
She felt them land like teeth on her throat—and not the good kind.
“But what’s this?” Avroz clicked his tongue. “Antal. You’re our guest, you should know we’ll provide dinner.”
Fi could force her face blank. She could keep her chin up. She couldn’t stop her treacherous heart clawing her throat.
“My Arbiter,” Antal said firmly. “And I’d rather not have to replace her.”
“Ah. Of course.” Avroz’s slicing gaze lingered on Fi a moment too long. A moment to contemplate how swiftly he could put his claws in her neck. He gestured to the vavriter waiting by the door. “Geslam, would you show my son’s Arbiter to a room?”
“Of course.” The vavriter bowed to Avroz. Beckoned to Fi.
She didn’t want to go. Plan or not, Fi didn’t want to leave Antal on his own with this beast.
She forced herself to lift their bags and walk past, not a glance at Antal to betray her.
The house was equally stunning inside. She entered a large sitting room, glassless windows on the far wall and strip lights forming aurora swirls across the ceiling. More sitting pillows circled in the center. The tiles were dark stone with chips of quartz.
She was ushered by the vavriter into a curving hallway, doors only on one side. He opened one.
“Antal’s room. If you wish to leave his bag?”
Fi already had a foot through the door when he said it. She nearly tripped.
Antal’s room? The room where a little baby daeyari had teethed on bones, had shed his antler velvet during puberty? She dropped his bag onto the bed and inhaled the space, not enough time to gawk at the satin sheets, the dusk-lit windowsills, the dressers with—
Geslam steered her out the door. Fi withheld a scream of protest. Later. She’d find time later to pick and pry at Antal’s room.
Their next stop was at the end of the hall, a smaller chamber.
“Hopefully, these qetsae are sufficient?”
Qetsae was a fancy world for room, she guessed. Quarters? Abode?
The space was small, but comfortable. Fi set her bag beside the bed, a sweet of flowers drifting through the open window. Like the sitting room, like Antal’s room, this one looked out on another garden, larger than the entry courtyard.
The vavriter waited in the doorway. His gaze didn’t peel her alive like Avroz’s did, but the probing eyes kept Fi on guard.
“You’re a vavraesa?” he said. “Unusual. Vavriter are more common as Arbiters.”
Fi didn’t know that word, either. Vavraesa. But the components…
Vavrae… antlers.
Sa… without.
She withheld her curse. Was that the daeyari word for humans? Fucking antler-less?
“I’m a Shardwalker,” she returned. That was the word Antal used, scoffing at how Fi’s people used “Voidwalker” to describe anyone who could see Curtains—before she’d learned real Voidwalking.
“Ah! A useful skill.” Geslam grinned, appeased for now. “We have a kitchen for staff use. If you’d like dinner?”
“Thanks. I already ate.”
A nod. “The daeyari will take their meal in the sitting room. Would you prefer to stay here, or be on hand?”
Fi hated both those options pretty fiercely, but she’d come here so Antal wouldn’t be alone.
“Lead the way.”