9 More useful than the last one
The sun didn’t set on the Twilit Plane.
Fi became aware of this fun bit of trivia, owing to the fact that she slept like shit.
A comfortable bed. Pleasant climate. Yet she lay awake most of the night, imagining Avroz’s claws, or Ixli’s teeth, or Antal curled like a sad little animal a few rooms over.
The light through her windows dimmed then brightened again, perpetual dusk drawn out over hours.
She nearly shouted when someone knocked on her door.
“Breakfast in the kitchen,” came Geslam’s muffled voice. “If you care to join, Arbiter.”
Her growling stomach said she probably should.
Fi dressed for the balmier weather: hair tied into a tail, a long-sleeved maroon shirt with silver-embroidered collar. This complicated her game of how many weapons can I discretely hide on my person? She managed her sword hilt stuffed into her pants. Two energy chips in her pockets.
She emerged to a quiet house. The sitting room was empty, brushed in purple twilight. No speck of blood from the night before.
In the kitchen, she found a bowl of cooked grains, reminiscent of oats, a bit chewier. It came with tart berries. A decadent cream. Overall a pleasant meal, accompanied by a mug of coffee that looked far too black for her liking, but she attempted a polite sip—
Fi gagged, struggling not to spit it out on the table.
What was this? She typically drenched her coffee in sugar, but still expected the nutty undertone. This was bitter. Loamy. Savory, in an unsettling way.
Several alarmed looks snapped onto her. She shared a table with the vavriter, Geslam. Three human groundskeepers. An aurorabeast tender. Fi had trouble making eye contact with that last one.
“Sorry,” she rasped. “Too hot.” She set the “coffee” aside—never to be touched again.
Thankfully, the others returned to ignoring her.
Not a frightened quiet. There was enough comfort in their postures, enough small talk among themselves, they felt at ease with each other. Not with Fi. For the best, really. She didn’t want to risk interrogation, especially with the steward watching her so closely.
After eating, she found Antal.
He stood outside on the patio, surveying the more expansive gardens behind the house.
His dark jacket was slim-cut like all his clothing, back ornamented in Winter Plane pines, the silhouettes framed by sheer gauze teasing his lighter skin beneath—a cruelty, at a time when Fi couldn’t run her hands beneath every fold.
She paused beside him, a respectful distance.
His gaze lingered longer than it ought to. Crimson eyes slipped over her face, over the rest of her. Fi returned a nod. I’m safe. Nothing happened in the night.
Antal let out a breath and returned to studying flowers.
The gardens were breathtaking. The cavern was circular, the ceiling carved open to natural light, domed in tinted glass that Fi assumed prevented anyone from seeing inside. The house curved a semicircle around one edge. Plantings filled the rest.
Antal had described his mother as a cultivator of some renown, growing rare plants for private collections, creating floral arrangements.
Admittedly, Fi hadn’t grasped the scope of it until she saw the overflowing beds and trellises, blooms as dainty as a fingernail or larger than her head, varieties she couldn’t begin to name.
Some colors she wasn’t sure she could name.
“Good morning, Antal!”
Yme emerged on the patio in an airy dress of midnight fabric speckled with stars. She greeted her son by tapping her nose to his cheek. Not a glance at Fi.
“Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?” Yme asked. “The spindle jasmine are blooming, of course. Oh, and I have some lovely new proteas in the back beds.”
“What are your favorites, azaevi?” Antal returned, mild yet dutiful.
The pair set off down a gravel path lined with tangerine roses and white hibiscus. Arbiters probably weren’t supposed to trail their daeyari during personal moments like this. Fi stayed behind on the patio, a seat on a stone bench overlooking the grounds.
However harshly Antal had spoken of his mother, he at least seemed more at ease around her.
Yme led him to a trellis of those spindly jasmine flowers.
At her prodding, Antal leaned in for a sniff.
She smiled. He didn’t, though, his shoulders relaxed when Yme’s tail brushed his in that odd, affectionate way.
Fi had never felt so self-conscious about not having a tail. Now, and that moment last night when she’d seen the more intimate way Ixli twined her tail with Antal’s.
Oh boy. That had been some shit, hadn’t it?
Fi wouldn’t call herself jealous. Antal was two and a half centuries old. Of course he’d had many partners before her. Razik, she knew the most about. Antal had spoken of some others, political rivals he’d maneuvered behind closed doors. Not uncommon for daeyari, he claimed.
He’d never mentioned Ixli. If he said he had no more feelings for her, Fi trusted him.
But if not jealousy, then insecurity, maybe? Something itchy about seeing another daeyari pin Antal to the floor, the way Ixli had dragged real fangs across his throat, the tangle of their tails—
“You don’t enjoy flowers, vavraesa?”
This time, Fi did jump.
Behind her, Avroz stood with a soft grin and those skin-peeling eyes.
Holy fuck. He was quiet.
He’d crept up on her, close enough to brush a finger through her hair if he wished. To dig claws into her throat. Fi dared a glance at Antal, farther out in the garden now, his attention drawn down to a fishpond. Too far to hear unless she cried out. Fuck.
She kept her hands calmly folded in her lap. Most of what she knew of Avroz, she’d learned from Antal’s descriptions—proud, confident. Always in control. Never to be taken at face value.
“Good morning.” Fi bowed her head, plastering on a demure mortal grin. “It’s a beautiful garden, but I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“Ah, you do speak daeyari. I wasn’t sure.”
His clothes were simpler today, a tunic belted at the waist, loose trousers, all fringed in dark velvet and iridescent vesper fabric. His antlers were banded in silver at each point, thin rings, not as eye-catching as the inlaid bands of gold.
A Sunsplitter, Antal had said. A capable fighter, on top of everything else. Avroz tilted his head, that look of a panther studying prey, uncannily like when Antal did it.
“But you must be terribly bored,” he said. “Sitting here all alone. And they’ll be preoccupied for some time, touring all the gardens. Come, why don’t we speak?”
Well no, actually, that sounded like the worst of all possible options. Fi kept her smile bright.
“A kind offer, but I should be on hand, in case…” She looked again to the garden.
Antal was nowhere in sight. Neither was Yme. They must have stepped around a bend in the path, hidden behind lush vegetation.
“… in case Antal needs me.”
Oh. This bastard. This piece of trash daeyari.
Of course Avroz had waited to corner her the moment she and Antal were separated. Fi fought a little harder to keep her breath steady, to speak past her quickening pulse. This close, the daeyari must be able to sense it.
“How dutiful.” He circled around, tail arcing behind him, until he stood between her and the garden. Between her and any hope of salvation. His grin, like hers, never faltered. “If Antal needs, he can find you easily enough. Come.”
Avroz held out a clawed hand, gesturing to the house.
Fi had dealt with few daeyari beyond Antal. There’d been Verne, with her haughtiness of six centuries, cunning but fatally sure of herself. There’d been Tyvo’s more ice-honed eight centuries, quick to anger, feral as any beast.
Avroz was a more patient creature. One look at him, and she knew he was used to getting everything he wanted. That was an unsettling trait in a human. Terrifying on an immortal.
Fi weighed her options.
She could keep deflecting. He wasn’t going to let her off that easily.
She could shout for help. He’d have claws in her throat before her second breath.
She could reach for her sword. Again, that whole claws-in-the-throat dilemma.
Only one option, then. He knew it. So did she.
“I suppose you’re right.” Fi stood, armed with her complacent grin, contemplating how pleasant it would feel to crack his antlers off his skull.
Avroz waited to let her go first—let her turn her back to him.
Still no sight of Antal. Fi kept her chin up and walked toward the house. Clawed footsteps tapped behind her, an intimidation tactic she knew well.
The sitting room had a door to the kitchen on one side, a second door opposite. Avroz opened it and, once again, gestured Fi to step through first. She, once again, smiled and did as the filthy bastard asked. Like a wolf herding a sheep. She itched to show him her teeth.
The room was a study. A desk sat to one side, dark wood stacked with tidy paperwork, the shelves behind filled with books.
The rest of the space was a sitting area, blue and silver cushions arranged into a lounge against the windows.
These weren’t open-air, like the others.
Tinted glass created a barrier to the outside world.
Strips of light lined the windows, the shelves. Like the rest of the house, there were few visible energy conduits to carry the current, all subtle mechanisms incorporated into the building itself. It was sleeker technology than anything on the Winter Plane.
How simple her kind must seem to these creatures.
The door closed. Avroz prowled around Fi, that same appraising tilt to his head. He settled in the center of the lounge, arms spread comfortably across the pillows, tail curled at his side.
Fi stayed standing, thanks. The door was maybe three paces behind her. She could sprint for it if this turned sour.
“Is this your first visit to the Twilit Plane?” he asked.
Fi paused. Considered. Found nothing dangerous in the question. “Yes.”
“How are you finding it so far?”
“I haven’t seen much.”
“Of course.” His grin curved slow, revealing a fang. “Perhaps Antal can show you more, if you ask him.”