10 Never Enough
He couldn’t see her.
Yme had turned them down a side path for only a moment, a corner of her garden planted with blue and silver lilies. When they returned to the main walkway, Antal had looked to the patio. Fionamara was gone, an empty stone bench where she’d been sitting.
She wouldn’t have vanished on her own. Something was wrong.
“Are you finished already?” Yme pouted. “We haven’t even seen the back beds.”
“Perhaps later, azaevi.”
Antal strode ahead, back to the house with dread burning his chest. He’d left her alone. Only a few minutes. What could have happened in a few minutes?
Antal’s feet flew up the steps to the patio, into the sitting room.
His Void-woven body had no need for a heart. He felt the jolt in his chest all the same when Fionamara stumbled out of his father’s study. Antal smelled the blood before he saw it. Scarlet dripped down her temple, tangled in the roots of her hair. Bright on her lips.
Avroz emerged behind her on calm strides, his scent of hoarfrost and old stone like a strike to Antal’s marrow.
“Should I have been clearer in my guidance, Antal? I sent you to the Winter Plane to learn how to govern mortals. Not to drag more of them into your bed.”
The world around Antal stilled. Only two thoughts that mattered.
Fionamara was bleeding.
And Avroz knew.
Antal moved without hesitation, stepping in front of Fionamara, a snarling barrier between his heart and his father’s teeth. He wrapped an arm around her waist to draw her close. This time, he’d not stand frozen. This time, no one would touch her.
But Avroz had already touched her. That blood, sharp in his nose. Not as overwhelming as Razik’s had been, his throat spilled out on this floor, but Antal clenched his teeth all the same. Beside him, Fionamara shook almost imperceptibly. What in the merciless Void could make this woman tremble?
“Antal,” she hissed. “What are you doing?”
Too late. Their game was over—if they’d ever stood a chance.
And what a spectacle: Antal, fangs bared in this place he once called home, holding another human to his side. Yme, circling on wary steps, looking from her son to her partner.
Avroz. Cold as ever. His frown twisted not with spite, but disappointment.
History repeated itself in bone-numbing detail.
Antal wanted this time to be different. He wanted to think he’d rip Avroz to pieces if his father dared step closer.
But in truth, Antal didn’t know what he’d do if this came to blows.
The last time he’d lunged for Avroz, the one time, he’d ended up on the floor with claws at his throat.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to speak on this later,” Avroz said.
A shallow breath shook Antal’s chest—half rage, half disbelief. “Later?”
“I’ve been summoned by the Daey Celva. An urgent matter.” Avroz nodded to Yme, a claw touched to his highest antler point. “Apologies. I’ll return when I can.”
He vanished in a snap of static.
Antal stared at the empty place his father had stood. Impossible. Another trick. Another deception to make the strike ache fiercer. He pulled Fionamara against him until she hissed in protest. All of him, braced for the attack.
Nothing came.
The room was quiet. His father, gone.
Antal’s tail lashed fiercer.
“Antal?” Yme’s entreaty broke the silence. She looked at Fionamara—actually looked at her for the first time, not the careless glances she’d passed over his human servant.
There was no sympathy in the appraisal. Only confusion knitting Yme’s brow, concern in the low sway of her tail. A pleading look to Antal of, how could you do this again? Shouldn’t you know better?
Antal grabbed Fionamara’s hand. “We’re leaving.”
“Leaving?” Yme said, eyes wide. “But you’ve only just arrived. You said three days.”
“I don’t care what I said!” Antal bared his teeth.
He’d never bared his teeth at her.
But Fionamara was hurt. Avroz knew. Antal couldn’t be here when his father returned.
Yme stepped closer. Another confused glance at Fionamara, bright eyes for Antal. “Stay. Please. We can talk about this.”
After all this time, how could she be so na?ve? He had to leave this place before it drowned him.
“No. We can’t, azaevi. We never have.”
“Antal—”
He left before she could argue. Before the crack in her voice broke anything more in him. Fionamara at his side, Antal pulled them both into the black of a teleport.
He ran.
A snap back to the field of midnight dahlias beyond the cliffs. Straight through the Curtain. Antal fled the Twilit Plane without a backward glance.
He should have done this last time. He should have taken Razik’s hand and run as far as possible, into the endless reaches of the Shattered Planes. He’d been too much of a coward then. Maybe he was still a coward now.
Shards and Curtains flicked by. Again. Again. Again. Distance between him and that house, fragments of reality piled as barriers. Antal didn’t slow until the smell of his home Plane receded to a subtle tickle in his nose. The conifers of Winter spiced the air.
They came to rest upon a Shard. Soft peat lay beneath his feet, skirting shallow pools dusted in ice. A crimson aurora drifted overhead, snapping and sighing with each wave. Beyond it, the endless black of the Void. Starless. Moonless. Still not enough room to breathe.
He turned to Fionamara.
Her face was ashen, cheeks flushed from the sudden cold. She looked at him with hard eyes. Blood on her lips.
“He hurt you.” Antal’s thumb shook as he touched her mouth, wiping away smears of crimson. No visible cuts. She’d bitten her tongue.
“I’m fine,” she breathed.
“He hurt you.” Antal’s voice shook. All of him shook. “I shouldn’t have left you. I shouldn’t have—”
He pictured her against the black tile floor. Cheeks even paler. Eyes glassy and blood spilled out in a pool. Avroz, standing over his work. They don’t last. You have bigger things to accomplish.
“Hey! Antlers!”
Fionamara seized his face in her hands. “Look at me.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Look at me. I’m ok.” Her thumb brushed his cheek. “I’m ok, Antal.”
She was ok. Bleeding, but ok. Antal wrapped an arm around her waist, tail twined around her calves. He pulled her tight against him, breathing in the ember smell of her hair. Warm. Alive.
When he fell to his knees, she fell with him, sinking together into the peat.
“I’m ok.” She nestled her nose to his. “A little shaken up, that’s all. I’ve had worse bar fights, honestly.”
She combed her fingers through his hair, around the base of his antlers. Enough to calm his tremors. Not enough to quench the nervous energy prickling his sternum. He could have lost her. He never should have brought her to the Twilit Plane.
Gently, he brushed back her hair. Claw marks sprinkled her scalp, all shallow. Thank Veshri and the endless Void.
“What happened?” Antal asked.
Fionamara bared her teeth. “Avroz knew. That bastard cornered me. I should have taken his head off.”
Fresh panic scraped Antal’s chest. “Fionamara.”
“I will. I have room for more antlers.”
“Fionamara. Please.”
Antal hugged her. Too fierce, this woman. Her temper would be the death of him.
Fionamara flexed her fingers like claws. Then, a calming inhale.
“Are you ok?” she asked.
Antal didn’t know where to begin answering that. He’d put her in danger. He’d earned his father’s ire once again. He’d snapped fangs at his mother.
“I left,” he whispered.
“You did.” Fionamara cupped his cheeks again. A devious grin twisted her lips. “I’m proud of you, Antlers. Standing up for yourself?”
“Avroz will be angry.”
“Of course he will.”
“How will I ever go back?”
“You don’t have to, Antal. You never have to go back.”
“And how is that any kinder?”
The weight hit him unexpectedly. All the rage of walking those blood-stained halls, of stomaching his father’s sneers, of keeping his face drawn into a perfect mask.
But equally crushing, the prospect of never seeing that twilight again. Never smelling his mother’s flowers. Never brushing tails with an old friend. Holes in his being, leaks he hadn’t known needed patching. Now, he might never do so.
Fi frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I hate that place, Fionamara. I hate the person I have to be in that place. But…” His tail tightened around her ankle. “It’s been so long since I’ve spent time with other daeyari.”
“There are daeyari on the Winter Plane. Tyvo. And Verne. And… others?”
“All politics,” he said. “I speak with my neighbors when we have disputes to settle. Nothing more. No daeyari who care about me.”
“Antal.” Fionamara wound her fingers with his. “The humans in your territory care about you. I care about you.”
“Those aren’t my people.”
“They are your people.”
“It’s not the same. They aren’t daeyari.”
Thomaskweld was Antal’s home. Bright and humming and beautiful. He loved every scrap of it. He loved the growing warmth of its citizens, as hard as their trust was to earn.
But no human city could replace his favorite dusk-lit hours and bitter coffee. The twitch of tails in time with conversation. The comfort of his own language. Surely, Fionamara could understand that?
So why did she flinch when he said it?
“You said this was enough for you.” Her voice, too small. “That I was enough for you.”
The quiver on her lips struck Antal to his core. A velvet blade. Sharpest when she softened. He slipped his claws into her hair, cradled her in his palms like the treasure she was.
“Of course you are… enough.” The word hitched on his teeth, insufficient.
“You’re so much more than enough, Fionamara.
You’re the fiercest creature I’ve ever known.
The gentlest hands I’ve ever given my heart to.
You salvaged the pieces of me, helped me return to a person I’m proud to be.
Helped build a home I’m eager to return to. ”
She held him with glistening eyes. Unblinking. Uncompromising.
“But?”
Her demand made Antal pause. Made him dig, dredging for thoughts he’d hidden away.
“But you deserve so much more than what I can give you,” he said. “My family will never accept you.”
“I can’t offer you my family, either,” Fi countered. “Unless you dig up their ashes.”
“The rest of my kind will look down on you, simply for what you are.”
“Fuck them. I’m serious about that antler hat. That’s bound to shut up a few of them.”
Antal’s tail twitched in frustration. “We can’t be properly bonded.”
“A wedding?” Fionamara gave a caustic laugh. “You’re worried about a wedding, of all things? If that’s what you want…” She sobered, a snap to earnestness that seemed to startle even her.
“I would,” she whispered. “In a heartbeat, I would.”
Like a blade through his heart. Antal wanted nothing more than to have all of her. Smiles and scowls. Laughs and long, soft traces of fingers over lips.
But…
“It would be a human wedding,” he said. “Not a daeyari one.”
“What’s the difference?” she pressed, frustration or anger edging the words.
“Daeyari are bonded with their partners in the Void,” Antal explained. “Parents stand as witness to the union. But Avroz will never agree to bond me to a human.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. We can do things our way.”
“Your way.”
Fionamara recoiled fully this time.
He’d hurt her. Antal hadn’t meant to hurt her. She was a flame, both guiding beacon and warmth to thaw a decades-chilled heart. It was he who didn’t know how to balance all these weights caving his shoulders.
Fionamara shivered. She wrapped her arms over her chest, dressed in the thin shirt she’d worn on the Twilit Plane. Antal hadn’t noticed. Daeyari weren’t susceptible to cold.
“Can we go home?” she said. “I didn’t grab my coat.”
“Of course.” He offered his hand, and an apologetic, “Fionamara…”
“It’s fine. Let’s go home. We’ll figure this out.”
She took his hand.
Antal begged his restless energy to settle, focused on what parts of his life weren’t shattering into tiny splinters.
Avroz knew—but he’d allowed them to leave.
Yme had begged Antal to stay—but she’d brush it off like every argument, would disappear into her garden until the sting molded over.
He’d upset Fionamara—but they’d survive this. He’d swallow all these unexpected wounds, bury the pieces of his life that he couldn’t afford to yearn for any longer, focus on keeping this new life safe. Here. With her.
Even if she wouldn’t look at him.
Even if, as he pulled them into the teleport home, the brush of her fingers felt more strained than usual.