24 Void Touched #2
“What am I supposed to tell you, Ixli?” Antal stood.
Each breath felt too tight. “It’s not enough to say I’m sorry I hurt you?
” An ache in his ribs. “How am I supposed to explain to you that I fell in love with a human?” His claws flexed, digging into his palms. “That I was afraid to tell you, in case I hurt you more?” A rise in his voice.
“That I was afraid of what you might do to him if you knew?”
Antal’s teeth clamped to aching. There was something in his chest, clawing and spitting, fighting its way out. Here was Ixli, this daeyari who used to know every piece of him, who’d left him on his own when everything had crumbled.
“And how do I possibly make you understand that none of it even mattered?” he snarled. “Because Avroz slit his throat in front of me.”
Ixli fell so Void-damned still. Antal could have used her antlers as a coat rack.
“He… what?” she breathed.
“I fell in love with a human, Ixli.” Antal pressed a hand to his chest, this worthless cage where his shredded heart lived.
“Avroz didn’t like that, so he killed him.
This made me unspeakably sad. Avroz didn’t like that either, so he banished me to the Winter Plane.
There, you’re caught up. Is that a satisfactory summary of what happened? ”
“But… you never…” Her tail snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
There it was. That parrying snarl, that warrior’s strike.
“And risk you running to Avroz again?” Antal said.
Ixli’s claws flexed. Antal was vaguely aware of Fionamara standing, quietly refastening her silviamesh. He could feel her glare.
Everyone. Always angry at him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ixli repeated quieter. Fiercer.
“Ixli, I can’t do this with you right now—”
“I could have been there for you, Antal. I could have helped. Syvr and me both!”
He blinked. “What—”
Ixli lunged for him.
Not with fangs. Not with claws. Her knuckles landed soft against his chest, forehead bowed to his shoulder. Her tail found his, the softest twine at the tips.
Antal went rigid. A shudder through every vertebra.
“You could have told us,” Ixli whispered into his shirt. “Not everyone is like your father, Antal. We aren’t like your father. Syvr and I care about you, but…” A pause. A crack. “But you pushed us away.”
Softness crushed Antal worse than spite, Ixli’s plea slicing deeper than claws. He cast around him, seeking rescue. Fionamara only offered two raised brows.
“She’s right, you know,” came a voice from above.
Three heads snapped up in unison.
To see Syvr lounging on a tree branch, tail swaying with stunning nonchalance, for someone eavesdropping on a conversation. They’d positioned their seafoam scent downwind. Didn’t teleport close enough to detect the static. Cunning daeyari.
They dropped to the ground, greeted by a swat and a snarl from Ixli, another guarded look from Antal. Syvr wasn’t a fighter, but with two daeyari closing in, he backed between them and Fionamara. If both kezri were here…
“Relax,” Syvr said. “Avroz has gone to report Jazst’s death to the council.”
“Jazst… is dead?” Antal snapped a look to Fionamara.
“Hey, there was a lot to catch up on,” she said. “We’d have gotten there eventually!”
Antal hadn’t seen Jazst during the fight. He’d assumed the coward was hiding, but no, so much worse. A daeyari dead. And Fionamara had been alone in that house with an aedari.
Then alone with Avroz.
Though, Syvr must have been there, also? They studied Fionamara with curious eyes, dissecting like a knife.
“What you did down there,” Syvr said, “when you disappeared. That was more than Shardwalking?”
Fionamara tipped her chin up. “I can Voidwalk.”
She hadn’t held back. Antal was proud of her and mortified in equal measure.
Ixli went steel straight. “She can do what?”
“And you healed yourself?” Syvr eyed her stomach.
“With Void ether,” Fionamara said.
Syvr arched a brow, ravenous with intrigue.
By contrast, their look to Antal was evisceratingly soft. Their words, too low. “You love her?”
Too much for a simple answer. Too desperately to bear the thought of what might have happened today, what end Antal could have led her to. He looked to Fionamara, drinking in her ferocity and ire in equal measure.
“Yes,” he said, to spare them all the time.
“Oh, little daeyari,” Syvr sighed, not unkindly. “You’ve always had too soft a heart for those claws. Avroz never told us what happened. Not the full story, at least.”
Ixli tore her stunned scowl off Fionamara, a hesitant tail flick for Antal. “Avroz said you were… fooling around with a human. Avoiding your responsibilities.”
Antal knew the story. “And you believed him. You never visited.”
“He told us to stay away from you!” Ixli said.
“And you listened?” Antal was shouting again. Where had her tenderness gone?
“Back then? I didn’t know any better. Avroz had me traveling constantly. Hardly a chance to see you. He made sure I was gone the day you left.”
“And you know better now?”
“Why do you think there’s no gold on my antlers?”
Ixli silenced Antal with her vitriol, pointing a claw to her still-black antlers.
“Once I have my bands?” she said. “I could teach at any academy. I could run a territory. I became Avroz’s kezri for his connections. But once I’m a Sunsplitter? I won’t need him anymore, and he knows it. That’s why he hasn’t sent me on a hunt.”
Ixli struck a hand to her chest.
Antal flinched at the impact. “I… didn’t realize…”
“I’m not an idiot, Antal. I know how scheming Avroz can be. It took me a while, but I figured it out. But I never realized he’d go so far as to… ugh, Syvr, did you know?”
Syvr listened in silence, tail swaying.
“Syvr?” Ixli snarled.
“I didn’t want to make things worse,” they said quietly. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Ixli. I figured Antal would come back when he was ready. I didn’t realize it would take so long.”
For Ixli, Syvr wore the look of a chastising mentor. For Antal, they softened, all raw and rib-rending.
“When Verne staged her coup,” they said, “I was working on another Plane, so far from here. By the time I’d heard the news, you’d already settled everything. As Veshri watches from the Void, I would have been there for you, Antal. No matter what Avroz said.”
Antal listened to his old friends confess their apologies. Their struggles. This quiet moment in a sunlit forest, so treacherously close to how things used to be.
And it hurt.
Because Antal wanted this.
He wanted to comfort Ixli, to hear how she’d grown, to see those softer moments when she let her guard down. He wanted to sit with Syvr for a long evening and just talk, share secrets and stories and laughter with no strings attached.
Antal wanted all this, so badly it ached. But it wasn’t worth the cost.
“I appreciate the kind words,” Antal said. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to continue your hunt without me. Fionamara and I are returning to the Winter Plane.”
He could have snapped his antlers off, and received less stunned looks.
Antal felt wretched enough. Minutes ago, he’d sat at Ixli’s side and vowed to help find her aedari. He’d felt emboldened. Optimistic.
Then he’d returned to Fionamara with claw marks in her stomach.
He had an older promise to uphold: protecting her. Antal had promised her. He’d promised her dying brother. He’d promised himself he’d never let another lover come to harm through his own hubris.
Even if it meant leaving everything else behind.
“What did you say?”
Of course, the most slicing words came from behind him. Fionamara, quicker to fangs than either daeyari. Antal faced her with what courage he could muster.
“This was a mistake,” he said. “I never should have brought you here.”
She stepped closer, teeth bared. All daeyari intimidation tactics. She wore them like a costume, a mortal play at immortality.
“You made a deal, Antal. We need this deal. For you. For Thomaskweld.”