8 Just a Visit
May Antal’s claws grow crooked in his next life.
May Veshri drag him to the deepest reaches of the Void.
Each time he thought this ill-fated visit couldn’t take any more from him, a new torment. That human who’d looked like Razik. This room like a time capsule to a life left behind. A vase of his mother’s spindle jasmine flowers, smelling as divinely sweet as he remembered.
Now, Ixli.
She mantled over him, charcoal-gray skin brushed blue in the dusk light, eyes orange-red like molten metal.
Her toned thighs pinned his hips, clad in scaled silviamesh.
A matching tunic clasped around her neck.
She’d woven her white hair into one plait over her crown, a loose bob below, the dividing line a stark contrast of black antlers. Three points each. The same as his.
“Antal,” she purred, soft and familiar. Wicked and barbed.
“Ixli.” He fell automatically into speaking daeyari. “What are you doing—”
She nuzzled her nose beneath his chin. And as her tail slipped into a deeper coil with his…
“Ixli. Stop.”
She pulled back. Still straddling him, just with a more flustered brow. At last, Ixli looked to her side.
At Fionamara standing by the door. Sword hilt drawn. By Void and Veshri, how was that woman ready to do battle with every dangerous creature that crossed her path?
As the silence dragged, Fionamara’s brows shifted from a stunned arch to a glare. One that landed on him. He was going to hear about this later, wasn’t he?
“One of yours, Antal? How distinguished you’ve become.” Ixli spoke imperiously, that practiced cadence of immortals speaking around their lessers. “You may leave, human. Your daeyari will have no more need of you tonight.”
“She can stay.” Antal pushed onto his elbows. “Why are you here?”
Ixli frowned. “You’re back. I thought you’d want to…”
Every tick of Ixli’s eyes was razor-keen. Her flinch so subtle, he might not have noticed, if they hadn’t been so close.
She leapt off him with pantherine grace, onto her feet and distance between them in one smooth motion.
Antal took several—a slow stand, a wary appraisal of the daeyari facing off against him.
Ixli stood without compromise, tail high.
She was all slim lines and sharp muscle, the honed stance of a huntress.
She was lethal in her light gray silviamesh, her warrior’s aptitude worn like a second skin.
She was a too-familiar smell of moonlight and steel mixing with the jasmine. A memory as crushing as everything else in this room.
“I thought you’d be at dinner,” Antal said numbly. He hadn’t wanted her there, but had braced for the worst.
“I thought you’d prefer privacy.”
Her words were too soft. Black claws curled at her sides, always ready to fight, even after the decades they’d spent together—or perhaps because of it. More sensibly, Ixli’s scowl was entirely because of all the nights they’d spent here.
In this room.
In his bed.
On the windowsills, and the floor, and the…
Antal severed this unproductive train of thought, before he ground his fangs flat.
“So what brings you here now?” he asked.
“Am I… intruding?” Ixli’s coral eyes narrowed on Fionamara.
Who still had her damn sword hilt out.
“Put it away,” Antal ordered—a plea in the undertone.
Fionamara huffed but did as he asked. Clearly, there was something wrong with him, lured to deadly creatures time and again. Antal shifted a subtle step between her and Ixli, just in case.
“Why are you here, Ixli?”
“I thought you’d be free. Avroz said you’d finished dinner.”
Of course his father had sent her. Never a hand left unplayed. Antal drew himself up, hardening that mask he’d let slip for Fionamara—that he’d let slip for Ixli, once.
“What does he want?” Antal said.
The arc of Ixli’s tail tightened. “What do you mean?”
“Avroz sent you. What does he want?”
“Avroz didn’t send me to do anything.”
“Why else would you be here?”
“Why? Because I missed you!”
Her fangs flashed. She paced closer, hard and bristling and… angry. It sounded genuine.
Antal wavered, too much to balance holding his mask, and keeping Fionamara in the corner of his eye, and debating whether Ixli was about to lunge for his throat. How was he meant to survive her, on top of every other torture?
But Avroz must have sent her. Too dangerous to wish otherwise.
It could only lead to his ruin, that soft piece of Antal that couldn’t help but notice, in fifty years apart, Ixli had added another curve to her antlers as well. That she’d tempered her viciousness from the last time they’d argued. That her hair was shorter than he remembered.
“You… cut your hair,” Antal observed awkwardly.
“You fucking ass!”
Well, maybe not all tempered.
“That’s all you have to say?” Ixli’s imperious air vanished, replaced by something raw. Almost cracked. “You wretched piece of Void ether! You come home for the first time in fifty years, and that’s it? No good to see you? No sorry for vanishing off the Plane?”
Not just angry. She sounded hurt.
Antal had never wanted to hurt her. He’d wanted a friend, a haven from Avroz’s schemes and the way this house drained him to the marrow. Even now, even with her fangs bared, there was a memory of comfort in her face. Her familiar smell of metal and moonbeams.
That was what put his guard back up.
Who could Antal rely on in this place? A face he used to trust, sent at too convenient a time. Words to lull. To disarm. The reason he’d built this mask to begin with.
And Antal was hurt, too. For decades before his banishment to the Winter Plane, he’d been broken over Razik’s death.
Fighting his father tooth and claw. Where had Ixli been?
Gone. Traveling distant Planes. Still distant whenever she’d returned, always carrying the weight of what had ended between them.
“I never vanished anywhere,” Antal snapped. “You knew exactly where I was. You weren’t even here the day I left.”
“I was a dozen Planes away! You knew how much I’d been traveling.”
“And I’ve been running a territory. One single territory. It’s not hard to find, Ixli.”
“Yet you never sent a single word.”
“Neither did you!”
Antal bared every tooth, long canines to jagged molars.
Ixli hid hers. Here was a new blow, her quiet inhale, the way her tail drooped.
“I didn’t think you wanted…” She spoke softly again. Hesitant. “It’s been so long, Antal. But when Avroz said you were finally coming back, I thought… maybe we could…”
As she softened, Antal went rigid. “What do you mean?”
“I thought maybe we’d finally talk again, you ass! After all this time and—”
“No, Ixli. What do you mean, Avroz said I was coming back?” Innocuous words on their own, but the emphasis she’d placed on them enough to stoke panic. “I’m visiting. Three days. Then I’m going back to the Winter Plane.”
Ixli’s wide eyes confirmed it. A move Antal hadn’t foreseen. Shit. Shit. What could Avroz hope to gain by telling her—
“You’re not staying?” Ixli’s voice turned small. His fault. Always his fault, everything broken, this whole wretched place trying to shred him alive.
“Why would I ever want to stay here?” he snarled.
It was like a switch. Ixli, soft one moment. Molten-eyed the next.
“I don’t know, Antal. I thought you might be able to think of something.”
Angry again, hurt again. His fault again. Antal risked a step toward her.
“Ixli, that’s not what I—”
“Enjoy your visit.”
She vanished in a snap of static.
That wasn’t the right thing to say. Nothing was ever the right thing to say, and Antal couldn’t decide if he was more furious at himself, or his father, or this house closing in on him like a cage.
He tried to draw a level breath. Ended up shaking anyway.
The room felt emptier with Ixli gone, cold and quiet in the twilight.
But there, one figure remained with him among the shadows.
Fionamara.
She studied him, guarded at first. Then, a rise to her brows, until they hit their maximum arc. An ember of life in this place. Some small warmth to cling to.
Antal sat on the edge of his bed, tail draping the floor. All the progress he thought he’d made. All the strength he thought he’d built. Useless, the moment he was back here.
Fionamara’s footsteps weren’t as silent as a daeyari. The scuff of her boots on stone moved her closer, yet not close enough. A cautious distance.
“Yzu krajel vin eg Voz waev,” she mused. Then in seasonspeak, “Means ‘you wretched piece of Void’…”
“Ether,” Antal supplied. He felt like a wretched piece of Void ether.
“And yzu oyzenen lek. ‘You fucking ass’?”
He returned a morose hum, face buried in his hands.
“Do you want to talk about… any of that?” she said in her dry cadence.
“Not particularly.” A pointless struggle. If she wanted, he’d spill his heart for her.
Antal had never wanted her to see any of this.
His broken family. His broken home. Ixli.
The life he and Fionamara had begun to build together was a haven from all this, a single year working to erase the wounds of two centuries.
But she’d shared her own ghosts with him.
She’d broken down in his arms at times when she hadn’t felt strong.
Antal had never felt strong, either. Impressive, how they could pretend for each other.
“Ixli and I,” he said. “We were… together.”
Fionamara’s brows had not, in fact, reached their highest point. They did now, ruthlessly askew. “Yes, Antal. I picked up on that. Thank you.”
“We were intended to be Void-bonded.”
A pause. A weighted “Oh” that pursed her mouth.
“But that was a long time ago. Before Razik. I haven’t felt that way about Ixli in over a century.
” Antal wasn’t sure why he needed to explain.
Fionamara had never struck him as prone to jealousy.
He’d fear for anyone who challenged her claim, this human as bold as a daeyari despite her blunt teeth and soft fingers.
But she deserved to know that these were old faces. That what he’d shown her was genuine, not another mask.
“Do I want to know what happened?” Fionamara asked.
Where to begin? Antal no longer thought of Ixli in those intimate ways, but she’d been a friend once. That loss cut deeper now.
“Ixli was born in the territories. She came to the Twilit Plane for her travel years. A skilled warrior. Avroz accepted her as one of his kezri.”
Fionamara, shrewd as ever, considered his words with narrowed eyes. “She’s more loyal to your father than to you?”
“I was never sure.” In the end, that divide had been too much. Tonight, Ixli had seemed genuine. But Avroz had a hand in everything. Antal could never lower his guard.
And still, he’d been outplayed.
Antal had assumed Avroz summoned him here because of Verne. Or because of his refusal to approve a new daeyari for Verne’s old territory. Or, worst of all cases, the Daey Celva had learned of Antal’s new governing edicts, his softer hand for humans.
“He told Ixli I was coming back,” Antal said. “Why would Avroz say that? Why would he send me away for five decades, not a single word in all that time, then drag me back here without telling me what he wants?”
“He can’t make you stay,” Fionamara whispered. Like she wasn’t sure who might overhear. Antal wasn’t, either.
He hesitated.
“He can’t make you stay, Antal. If that’s not what you want.”
“No. He can’t make me.” Antal hoped that was true with every shred of claw and antler.
Fionamara took another step toward him. Stopped herself.
He wanted to touch her. By the merciless Void, he wanted to pull her into his bed and hold her against him, drown the memories of this place in her firewood smell.
“Just three days,” she said with resolve. The strength he didn’t have. The strength they both needed to survive this.
“Three days,” he mustered. He could endure Avroz for that long. “Yme will wish to show me her garden in the morning. A reprieve from my father, at least.”
Fionamara’s lips twisted. A dangerous thing to study when he couldn’t claim them, couldn’t use his tongue to melt her scowl into moans.
“Your mother,” she said. “You don’t talk about her much. You’ve said it was Avroz who killed Razik. But did she…”
Antal’s tail flicked. “She didn’t stop him.”
Yme had stood to the side as Razik bled out. Eyes wide as Avroz had pinned Antal beneath his claws. Doing nothing. That was the day Antal learned he couldn’t rely on her to protect him.
Ixli, too, had drifted away. He’d had no one.
Until Fionamara. He wouldn’t lose her now.
“You should go,” he said. “The longer you stay, the more likely to draw suspicion.”
She kept her chin up as she reached for the door—an ache, only betrayed by the glint in her eyes. “Of course. Until the morning, my Lord Daeyari.”
She mouthed a silent “I love you.”
Then she was gone.
Antal sat a long time with the quiet. He watched moths flit beyond his windows, studied how the dusk light fell across his floor. When at last he curled into his bed, he thought of how much he hated this house. He hated the empty space beside him.
He hated how much he’d missed the twilight through his windows, the smell of jasmine lulling him to sleep.