9 More useful than the last one #2
That one sent alarms blaring in Fi’s head. She kept her jaw tight. Tone mild.
“I doubt we’ll have time,” she said. “Business to return to, back on the Winter Plane.”
Avroz studied her with the acuity of any predator.
His dark red irises, a smolder in the dim room.
His black sclera, cold as the Void. Fi knew how to endure those chilling attributes.
Something else unnerved her about him. Something wrong.
She appraised the confident tilt of his jaw, the relaxed sprawl against the cushions.
Down to his tail, curled beside him. It was completely motionless. Not a single twitch to tell intention, an even more expert mask than Antal’s.
That poor, soft-hearted fool. How had this place not eaten him alive?
“How did you meet my son?” Avroz asked, too mild.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to ask him?” she returned, equally mild.
“Antal is sparing with his stories. I’m hungry for details.” He drew the words over his fangs. Melodramatic asses, this entire species.
“Details? Nothing so interesting. I’m honored to serve.”
Avroz studied her longer this time. A slow narrowing of eyes.
“Ah, loyalty,” he said at last. “There’s one thing Antal got right.”
Fi kept her mouth shut. Only the twitch of a frown betrayed her.
“You don’t like when I speak poorly of him?” Avroz pressed.
Damn her uncooperative human face. “Should I not dislike when someone speaks poorly of my daeyari?”
Her daeyari. It was a fight to keep the term neutral, not dripping with the possessive claws Fi wished to draw. Her daeyari, and this beast had caused him so much torment.
“Mortals form pacts for many reasons.” Avroz traced a claw along a cushion. “Those seeking power. Those seeking a boon. What enticed you, vavraesa?”
This answer, Fi hadn’t practiced. Skirting the truth felt safest.
“My village,” she said. Simple. No need to give him the ammunition of what Nyskya meant to her, how Antal and her people found common purpose against the system that had broken them both.
“A selfless act?” Avroz quirked a grin. “Or selfish?”
“Selfish.” That answer came easier.
He laughed. “You make quite a pair, then.”
Fi held herself rigid. Every barb she’d ever honed, every steel splint she’d welded into her spine, pushed to their limit against this immortal.
His words struck too close to the truth she hid, fangs seeking flesh beneath her armor.
Did he suspect she was more than an Arbiter?
Would he disembowel her regardless, just to test how his son reacted?
Instead, Avroz sighed.
“You helped Antal reclaim his territory from Verne?”
Fi blinked at the sudden softening in his tone. The sudden softening of all of him, tail a slow sway across the pillows.
“I did,” she said. “Helped him. Antal was strong, cunning.”
It had been her plan that unseated Verne. And Antal would have been useless without her in the final fight. This wasn’t the time to split hairs.
“Then you have my thanks,” Avroz said.
He stood. Fi backed a step toward the door, but he didn’t lunge. The beast moved slow, unthreatening, a thoughtful pace across his study.
She dared a less bristled stance. “Your… thanks?”
“For helping my son reclaim what was his. For keeping him safe.”
For a moment, it sounded like Avroz cared.
Maybe he did, in his own twisted way. The same way Fi’s father had cared for her, yet had still volunteered her to the teeth of a daeyari, tried to sell her as Verne’s Arbiter.
The memory flashed cold and unbidden, all those years he’d told her the duty owed to their family.
How it hadn’t been until the attendants led her away that fear had finally shown in his eyes.
Had Avroz faltered the same, when he’d realized Antal might be in danger?
“I was worried,” Avroz confessed. “When I heard what Verne had done.”
He paced closer, tail brushing the floor. Fi didn’t know what to say.
“Verne came before the Dusk Council,” Avroz said. “I didn’t know what she’d done, couldn’t speak out once she’d stated her claim to the territory. Our laws come before personal grievance. She’d planned as much.”
“Did she?” Fi wasn’t sure she believed all of that, but Verne being a cocky bitch checked out.
Avroz hummed agreement. “Verne always thought herself too clever. I was confident Antal wouldn’t let her win so easily. Still, facing her must have been perilous.”
Easy for him to say, watching from a distance. “Thank you. It was my honor, to help my Lord Daeyari—”
Fi didn’t realize how much she’d lowered her guard until it was too late.
She didn’t realize how close Avroz had drifted, until he stepped between her and the door. That smooth-talking fucker.
Fi lurched toward the closest window.
The daeyari moved faster.
His claws sank into her shirt, heedless of flesh beneath. His other palm struck her temple. Magic hit her like an icepick, a surge of burning, freezing energy through her head. She tried to claw for her own current, but every muscle locked in place, too flooded with foreign energy.
All an act. He’d lulled her with sympathy, striking the one soft spot in her guard: Antal.
“Yes, you two managed quite well, didn’t you?” Avroz said, low through his fangs. “He does know how to find the pretty ones.”
Fi knew this magic. This trick daeyari played to scramble mortal thoughts to putty. She had barely enough muscle control to grab Avroz’s arm, barely enough strength to stay upright as he leaned close.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” he said. “The way Antal lingers every time he looks at you. The way he flinches every time I look at you. So tell me, vavraesa. How long has my son been fucking you?”
His energy buzzed her skull. Melted thoughts. Lost in fog, the words dangled too easy on her lips: how much Fi longed to touch Antal. How hard it had been to leave his room last night.
But she wasn’t the weak human she used to be.
Fi warred against the haze, biting her tongue until she tasted blood. No words came out.
Avroz tilted his head. “Stubborn?”
She’d been called that before. Never to her opponent’s advantage.
A stronger current sliced into her. Fi gasped, her sight blackening as energy snapped her teeth.
It tasted like ozone.
Fi knew this current. It had been foreign once, cold burning through arteries, heat freezing flesh. Then, she’d practiced with capsules of Antal’s energy. She tasted a hint of him now, that static prickling her skin. Enough to focus.
Enough to seize. She grasped at the foreign energy running through her body, grabbed it and Shaped it. Crimson sparked off her fingertips, enough to gain control of her muscles.
Voidwalk, if you need to escape, rang taunting in her head. Fi couldn’t, as long as Avroz touched her, not to mention the precious seconds it would take to cut a Curtain off the Plane.
She reached for her sword instead.
A second hand hit her skull. Two palms caged her temples, twice the current, locking her joints once more. Fi’s hand stalled halfway to her weapon.
Avroz studied her with a mild frown.
“Impressive.” His grip tightened, claws digging into Fi’s scalp. Blood trickled down her cheek. “How long? Since Verne?”
Her hand spasmed, latching onto his sleeve.
Again, words dangled on her lips. I love him. I’d do anything for him.
“You… can… fuck off,” she spat.
“My son seems quite fond of you,” Avroz said. “Has he told you what happened to his last human pet?”
Fi bared her teeth, blood on her gums from biting her tongue.
“Ah. Of course he has. Brave, aren’t you?” He leaned in until their faces nearly touched. Fangs bared, close enough to bury into her throat. “So let’s be honest with each other, vavraesa. Because I only care about one thing: will you be more useful to me than the last one?”
A knock sounded at the door.
The current flickered with Avroz’s attention, space enough for Fi to gasp, to unclench her hand from his shirt.
The door opened without invitation. The vavriter steward, Geslam, leaned in.
“Apologies,” he said, head bowed.
A growl rumbled Avroz’s chest. “Yes, Geslam?”
“A telegram from the Dusk Council. Marked as urgent.”
Avroz’s grip tightened on Fi’s skull. One long stretch of consideration.
He released her, claws and current severing swift enough to leave her reeling. Fi caught herself against the desk. She bent double as her muscles shook, errant curls slipping free against her cheeks.
“What is it?” Avroz demanded.
“Another emergency meeting.”
“When?”
“Now.”
Geslam handed over a slip of paper. Avroz read it with insulting focus, as if he hadn’t just been threatening Fi’s life. As if his claws weren’t specked in her blood.
Fi reached a trembling hand to her sword hilt. She wasn’t free yet. Avroz stood between her and the door. At the threshold, Geslam slipped her a subtle glance, the crease of his brow almost worried. Maybe she’d misjudged him. His timing was impeccable.
Burgundy irises snapped onto Fi. She met Avroz’s glare, hand on her sword. Ready to run. Ready to put a blade through this bastard’s throat.
He cocked his head to the drift of voices from the patio. Yme and Antal, returning from the garden. Avroz folded the paper and ran his claws along the edge, a long and focused silence, staring at Fi with some calculation she couldn’t begin to parse.
Especially when he stepped aside, a chilling calm as he gestured out the door.
“Your daeyari has returned,” he said. “You should go to him.”