20 A smile is worth a thousand teeth #2
“Yeah. I’ve got no clue what a current regulator is.” She grabbed a metal cylinder from the pile. “Will any of these do?”
“That’s a relay condenser,” Antal said, flat.
“Hm. Disappointing.” Fi grabbed another item. “What about this?”
“That’s a copper pipe.”
“This?”
“That’s just a spool of wire. Did you pick that off the floor?”
“Are you sure?” She squinted at the mess of wiring. “I think it could be what you’re looking for.”
Antal glared. Fi returned a challenging brow.
They broke into laughter at the same time. There was his smile, soft as sunshine and just as warming. Antal leaned in, nose pressed to her cheek. For a moment, everything was fine again, just the two of them sheltered from the world.
He handed her the broken part, an odd-looking tube with a wider center.
“Ah,” Fi said. “This does look like something.” She pecked a kiss to his cheek then went to retrieve the proper part.
Machinery had never been her strong suit. Her school had taught the basics of storing energy capsules, replacing simple conduits. After some searching, she found a part that resembled the one Antal had put in her hand.
“How did you do that?” Yme asked—way too close to Fi’s side.
Fi wasn’t proud that she jumped. Even less so, the undignified squeak of surprise.
“Fuck,” she hissed. “Not ok! Sneaking up on people, not considered ok in this part of the Planeverse!”
Yme, still standing uncomfortably close, looked only more perplexed.
“Noted.”
Not at all how Fi had envisioned her first real words with Antal’s mother. Fi had hoped for zero words, in fact, but here they were. The daeyari stared her down with eyes the same black and crimson as her son’s, a scent of ozone and something floral, an imperious swish to her tail.
“What do you mean, what did I do?” Fi asked.
“Antal. He smiled. I haven’t seen him smile in a century.”
“You haven’t… Well. Shit. That’s all kinds of depressing.”
“What did you do?”
“Antal smiles plenty.”
“For you?” Yme pressed, tail lowering. “Why not for me?”
She stood too close. Eyes too sharp. Brow creased too tragically earnest.
Fi almost cared.
“Well,” Fi said. “You did kill the man he loved. And ate him.”
“What?” Yme pulled back, indignant. “That? That wasn’t… love.”
“Ohhh, ok. Yeah.” Fi circled a finger between them. “You might want to start by dissecting that, in particular.”
Yme scoffed. “I’d know if my son was in love.”
Fi knew Antal loved her. She’d seen it in his eyes that very morning, the slow way he’d taken her in as they woke, the trace of his thumb across her cheek.
But damn her to the Void. Yme’s words still hurt.
Yme pressed closer. “And what are you to him, vavraesa? You think you know him better than I do?”
Fi didn’t need fangs. Just a flat, “All I know is, he smiles a lot more here.”
She grabbed the part and walked it back to Antal.
The whisper of clawed feet behind her told Fi that this conversation, unfortunately, wasn’t over.
“Antal,” Yme entreated as they neared the transformer.
Fi watched the weight of his mother hit him, his smile vanishing. A tired, “I’m nearly finished, azaevi. Then we can talk—”
“What’s wrong, yzir virso?”
Antal stared at her. Fi could have written an essay on the length of that pause.
She knew that silence down to her marrow.
The same silence Fi had wielded at her father every time he’d spoken of her becoming Verne’s Arbiter, every time he’d told her to be grateful for her duty, every time he’d ranted about their absent mother with liquor in hand.
Because he was the adult. He should have seen the things breaking their family apart, not her.
Fi knew that haunt in Antal’s eyes, the anticipation of a pointless fight, weighed against the ache of holding it all inside.
“What do you mean,” Antal said. Not a question. Flat.
“You seem distant,” Yme said. “We talked about visiting more, but even when I’m here, you don’t seem to want—”
“No.” Antal sharpened. “What do you mean, what’s wrong? You know what’s wrong.”
“I don’t!” To Yme’s credit, the crack in her voice sounded genuine. “I know we haven’t spoken for… too long. But you didn’t come to dinner, when we offered. I came here to visit instead, but you try to send me away. It feels like I hardly know you anymore.”
Antal laughed.
Not the low, confiding laugh he’d shared with Fi. This was all fangs. Guilt twisted her stomach. She shouldn’t have antagonized Yme, shouldn’t have made this worse for Antal. But before she could lay a comforting hand on him—
“Azaevi,” Antal said. “You haven’t known me for ages.”
Antal chose his weapon. Yme flinched.
“I… know you didn’t want to come to the Winter Plane,” she said. “That you wanted to join the Dusk Council.”
Antal laughed harder. “Avroz wants me to join the council, but nothing I’ve ever done has been good enough for him.”
“That isn’t true—”
“It isn’t?” Antal pulled away from the transformer.
The factory fell quiet, humans watching two daeyari argue in a language they didn’t understand.
Body language said enough. “Don’t pretend, azaevi.
I spent my entire life trying to be what he wants me to be.
Putting on a mask to hide everything I’ve ever felt.
Even that wasn’t enough to make him love me. ”
Fi was cursing inside. Not sure if she should intervene.
Yme looked similarly ashen. “Antal…”
“Putting me on the council was Avroz’s choice, never mine!”
“Then why are you doing this now?”
“For this!” Antal swept an arm over the factory, the people—over Fi. “For my city. For my life, the one I built. You let Avroz send me here as punishment. But it was freedom. Finally, away from you.”
Yme shrank. A meek, “You don’t mean that, Antal. Every family has its faults. But we’re still family. We still care about you—”
“Did you care about me when you didn’t visit for fifty years?” Louder. “Did you care about me, when you let Avroz kill the person I loved?”
“… Loved?” Yme said. So small.
“I loved him, azaevi!” Antal’s shout rang across the factory. “You let Avroz slit his throat in front of me!”
Yme didn’t speak. Didn’t seem to breathe.
“You ignored me in your own house for fifty years,” Antal went on, quieter, but no softer. “You ignored me for another fifty years here. I could have died during Verne’s coup.”
Yme shook her head. “Verne wouldn’t have—”
“Tyvo had me on the ground. His teeth in my throat. I’d be dead.” Yme flinched at every word. Antal pointed at Fi. “She saved me. Not you. Not Avroz. Her.” He went quieter. “But that never mattered, did it? They’re only human.”
Antal took the replacement part from Fi and passed it to the foreman.
His hands were shaking.
In seasonspeak, he said, “This should get us by. I’ll send a stronger alloy as soon as possible. Now please, excuse me.”
Antal strode out of the room with tail lashing. Yme didn’t follow, staring after her son with hollowed eyes.
She had the audacity to look to Fi. This time, not with spite. A silent plea.
Fi huffed and turned her back, following Antal.
She found him on the roof. Of course.
A stiff wind blew through the valley, buffeting Antal as he crouched on the building ledge, his shoulders bowed as he looked out over Thomaskweld. At Fi’s approach, he turned.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing he said.
She might have slapped him, if he didn’t look so defeated already.
“Sorry?” Fi demanded. “For what?”
“It’s been a century. I shouldn’t let her get under my skin.”
“Family… does that.”
There was so much to him. That was the reason Fi had first tumbled for this beast, his complexity, every stunning layer laid bare beneath her lips.
But now, he was hers. And the depth to him was also terrifying.
Layers of dreams and scars splayed out on the table, all this trust in her to hold the scalpel, the responsibility of helping to keep him whole.
Maybe this was love—tumbling over and over, taking turns catching each other.
“Hey,” Fi said. “Come here.”
She beckoned him away from the ledge, out of the wind and into the shelter of a metal structure on the roof.
Antal complied. He fell into her immediately, his nose burying against her neck, fingers plunging into her hair.
For the space of that moment, they weren’t human and daeyari, straining to balance colliding worlds. They were just them.
Why couldn’t it always be so simple?
Fi tipped his chin, lifting his eyes to hers. “I’m proud of you for saying something.”
“It doesn’t feel good,” he grumbled.
“I know. And that’s why I’m proud. You had every right to say what you did.”
“I feel like I’m barely managing all this. I feel like…” He sighed and cupped her cheek. “I know you’ve been angry at me.”
“Not angry, just annoyed because…” Fi stumbled.
Annoyed at his stubbornness, yes. But also afraid.
Afraid she couldn’t walk fully at his side the way he deserved.
Afraid he’d never let her. Afraid to admit the core of her weakness, the shiver of her human skin against cold wind, something no amount of bravado could fix.
“Because I hate seeing you like this. I prefer you smiling.” Softer, “Yme said you never smiled.”
“In that house? No.”
“So why do you smile now?”
Antal tilted his head, perplexed.
Then he kissed her. His mouth was all the heat she needed. His teeth snared her lip, possessive, flooding sweet ozone across her tongue. Fi swallowed him down like a cure.
“Oh,” was all she could muster.