29 Just a normal, nonthreatening human
Fi was proud of her plan to act as aedari bait. She was determined to see this succeed. And she was definitely, absolutely, sure as permafrost on the Winter Plane, not terrified of dying an excruciating death skewered by energy feathers.
Aisinay huffed and nudged her shoulder.
“Ok, maybe a little,” Fi whispered. “Don’t tell the daeyari.”
She patted the horse’s snout. Aisinay flicked finned ears at the leaves of the Autumn Plane.
Syvr and Ixli had poured over the aedari’s path on Winter, Summer, and what they knew of Spring, deducing that Autumn had the fewest reports.
Which made Autumn the most likely place for the immortal to flee and skirt detection.
Fi had mapped the Curtain network, plotted the outlets, identified roads that would provide good hunting grounds.
It seemed fitting, didn’t it? Fi had begun her tangle with immortal schemes upon this bright, aggressively colorful swath of Autumn forest, hired to smuggle energy capsules for Verne’s coup. She’d been a pawn then. Now, she braced for battle.
Aisinay’s ears flicked sideways, a contented snort as Antal descended from his vantage point in the canopy. He landed with soft feet against loam.
His tail flicked the litter of orange and crimson leaves. As nervous as Fi.
“What are you worried about, Antlers?” she said in her best false bravado.
He growled, fangs snapping a chastising nip of her earlobe. Actually nipped her like a misbehaving kitten. Audacious beast.
“Point taken,” Fi grumbled.
“Just don’t try anything too reckless,” he entreated.
He pressed a kiss to her cheek. Fi ran her fingers across his jaw, eager to pull him in for something less chaste.
Until she spotted Avroz drop down from a tree. A mood killer, if Fi had ever met one.
The beast moved with the grace of a wraith, down the limb of a birch tree and a whisper-soft landing.
He was lithe in his traveling clothes, dark attire against pale skin, and Void, some parts of him looked so much like Antal.
More lethal than Antal. As if someone had taken her soft daeyari and honed him on a grinding stone for nine centuries.
“Antal,” he greeted as he joined them. Then, harder, “Vavraesa.”
He acted differently, since he’d carved her open. Since she’d held a blade to his throat.
The change was subtly skin-prickling. Not as dismissive as before, when his burgundy eyes had spared Fi only passing attention. He looked at her sharper now. Keener. A predator, eyeing not a hare, but a potential threat.
Fi hesitated to call it respect.
It was either that, or Avroz waiting for his chance to rip her throat open instead.
She felt Antal tense as his father neared. Not just concern for her. Avroz always made him this way, guarded and unsteady, an endless battle whittling him to the bone. Antal thought his father needed to be pacified, conflict avoided at any cost.
Fi saw no benefit in pacifying narcissistic assholes. She stood tall at Antal’s side, bold enough for both of them.
Avroz’s gaze slid down to her stomach, slow with curiosity. And a threat.
“You look well,” he said, not entirely a compliment. “Impressive work, for a vavraesa. Voidwalking. And healing. Did Antal teach you?”
“Nope!” she said with her most cheerful tone, her most fuck you smile.
The tip of Avroz’s tail gave a minute flick.
Will you be more useful to me than the last one?
Fi would rather carve Avroz’s antlers into little malformed dog whistles than be useful to him. Unfortunately, Antal would have abandoned this deal with his father, if not for her encouragement. An annoying stalemate.
When Antal’s tail brushed her palm, she wrapped her fingers around it. A reassurance.
“Humans can do incredible things,” Antal said. “When given a chance.”
Avroz narrowed his eyes, appraising Antal’s boldness, Fi’s uncompromising glower. Their united front. That was the threat she posed, weighed against her “usefulness.”
Avroz finally wanted to look at her like a threat? Good. She was one.
He’d give them everything they needed out of this deal.
And if he ever hurt Antal again, she’d cut off more than those antlers.
Static snapped her tongue as the rest of their party arrived. Syvr dressed in a light orange tunic, blending with the Autumn forest. Ixli wore her silver armor and dark silviamesh.
Fi had been hesitant about these daeyari.
But in Thomaskweld, they’d been different creatures, laughing and smiling, telling stories about young Antal that Fi would hoard as blackmail until her dying breath.
Even here, without the excuse of late hours and alcohol, Syvr greeted her with a conspirator’s smirk.
Ixli dipped her chin, stoic, but not murderous.
Avroz noted that as well.
His whole pack, turning against him. Fi devoured his fluster.
“There’s a trail,” Syvr announced. “Near the road. Faint. We didn’t want to risk getting too close, but the aedari has definitely passed through here.”
Fi berated her fluttering heart. Anticipation or fear, it didn’t matter. Just not in front of the carnivores.
“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s see if that aedari takes the bait.”
When Antal grumbled beside her, Fi squeezed his tail. She’d be fine. The moment the aedari showed himself, a team of daeyari would be ready to back her up.
“Don’t worry, Antal,” Avroz said in that low, skin-peeling tone. “Your vavraesa has proven herself nothing if not resourceful.”
Fi hoped the aedari knocked his fangs out.
Avroz and Syvr left together. He and Ixli had been deemed the strongest combatants, divided between their two groups in case one team encountered the aedari first. Fi felt relief, knowing Ixli would be looking after Antal. That snow-haired lioness would keep him safe.
Fi swung onto Aisinay’s bare back, scales cool against the fabric of her riding pants. A daeyari had, once again, ruined her silviamesh, leaving her waiting for a new set to be tailored. Plain traveling clothes would be more enticing to the aedari, anyway.
A clawed hand gripped Fi’s arm.
She tensed at Ixli staring up at her. Instinct made Fi reach for her sword hilt, but she didn’t draw.
Ixli stood with the calm of a brewing storm, orange and crimson leaves reflected in the polished plates of her armor, eyes keen with something like…
acknowledgment. A quiet understanding between two hunters.
“Swing hard,” Ixli said. “If it comes to that. Aedari reinforce their skin with energy currents, shield it with their glyphs. It takes a lot to push through. Aim to take the head off. Use your daeyari energy capsules. Don’t hesitate.”
“I won’t,” Fi promised.
Ixli released her with a nod.
Antal’s farewell came softer, a brush of his palm along her thigh. There were a thousand words in those cracked crimson eyes.
“Be safe, Fionamara.”
He and Ixli vanished in a snap of static. Fi straightened on her horse. Breathed deep of the tannin-laced air as she patted Aisinay’s neck.
Then she steered them toward the closest Curtain.
They emerged on a road.
A blanket of leaves obscured the path, only flat ground and a break in blackberry brambles marking its snaking course through the forest. Trees arched overhead, canopies a blaze of red and orange and gold in the afternoon sunlight.
It was a quiet road. Remote. Infrequently trodden, the closest settlement a few miles down the valley. Fi would have loved a route like this to slip goods off the Plane without notice.
But she wasn’t a smuggler right now.
And those damn leaves were the same gold as aedari wings.
She Shaped a whisper of energy against Aisinay’s neck, urging the horse forward at a walk. Fi forced herself to relax, not too stiff in her seat, not too visibly alert to every sound. Just a normal, nonthreatening human. An easy target.
She tensed each time the breeze passed, sending the forest swirling with leaves.
Squirrels became her nemeses, shouting and scurrying in the branches overhead.
Aisinay perked finned ears to the creatures, her snort a plea.
Fi kept them walking. No breaks for snacking on forest mammals.
Aisinay swished her tail in annoyance, but pressed on.
In her father’s folktales, the lone mortal in the woods made for easy prey. But those stories always happened after dark, arboreal predators lurking high in the trees.
Did aedari hunt in daylight? Did they swoop from the sky like eagles picking off sheep? Or was it the hillocks Fi ought to keep her eyes on? Behind the tree trunks? Her survival instincts were honed to beasts with red eyes.
She knew so little of these new hunters. There was a terror and a thrill to it.
The sun slanted as afternoon slipped toward dusk.
The Autumn Plane smelled like leaf tannin and cinnamon.
The air was always a perfect degree of crisp.
Fi followed the road through a meadow, across a brook.
Her second greatest challenge of the day was holding Aisinay back from plunging into a pool in search of trout.
Her number one challenge was boredom.
No aedari lurked in the trees. None prowled the roadside. Fi could have guessed this would take time, that her plan might not bear fruit on the first attempt. She still slumped like mildewed tree bark.
If Avroz heckled her for wasting their time, she’d slip mud into his coffee.
Fireflies flicked on in the dimming light.
Fi’s breath curled into fog, not the sharp cold she’d grown up in, but enough that she fastened the buttons of her jacket.
She didn’t know how much farther this road went on.
She didn’t know how long the daeyari would leave her out here before calling quits and trying somewhere else—
Aisinay jerked to a halt, ears alert.
Fi snapped to attention with her. The road was quiet. An owl hooted in distant trees. She stroked a calming hand to her horse’s neck.
Aisinay threw her head back and pranced, nostrils flaring to scent the air. Fi’s hand drifted to the hilt at her belt. She scanned the trees for golden eyes, red eyes, shifting shapes of any kind. She saw nothing.
A chill snaked down her neck, when the static of a daeyari teleport laced her tongue. Then again. Still nothing in sight, but they were moving nearby. Why?
It happened in an instant.
A flare of gold so sudden, so bright, it left Fi blinded.
The force slammed her out of her saddle.
Fi hit the ground with several curses. Her thoughts caught up with frustrating delay. There was loam beneath her boots. Heat on her cheeks. An arm locked around her waist. No, no, no, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way! She flailed for her weapon.
Too late, as the aedari lurched into a teleport, dragging her with him.
Daeyari teleportation was dark. Cold. Unnerving on the first run, but Fi had acclimated to the smoothness of it, that quiet slip along the edge of the Void.
Aedari teleportation was not that. Near instantaneous—next to her horse in one heartbeat, snapping to an unfamiliar swath of forest the next.
And it fucking hurt.
Another teleport. Another. Another. Fi’s insides were melting. She recognized the skin-scalding, viscera-singeing sensation of dematerialization, just like how her transport stones worked. One jump was a strain on fragile mortal flesh. After several in a row…
When they finally stopped, Fi collapsed into a dry retch.
Her stomach was on a mission to crawl out of her throat.
It took several ragged breaths, down on her knees, before her skin stopped writhing like a coat of fire ants.
What a wretched method of transportation.
Tears blurred her eyes as she finally forced the motor function to look up.
Glowing golden irises stared back.
The aedari loomed over her, as tall and otherworldly as their first encounter, despite his simple human shirt and trousers.
His long ears were tipped in golden plumes.
They also moved, flattening against his head in what Fi interpreted as bird-person angry.
Wings spread from his back, layers of energy feathers as bright as sunlight.
They were alone.
No snap of static on her tongue. The aedari had struck too quickly, must have teleported away faster than the daeyari could track.
So much for the plan.
When the aedari reached for her, Fi struck back like an angry mongoose.
He’d taken her sword, tossed to the ground out of reach. Fi Shaped raw energy into her palm instead. The daeyari capsule in her pocket was too strong for bare flesh, so she dragged energy from her own muscles, condensed into a silver dagger blade in her hand.
Strike hard, Ixli had said. Fi swung for the aedari’s throat.
Gold snapped against silver. The creature’s flesh was like metal, the resistance absurd. Energy burned the skin of Fi’s palm as she drove her blade in a meager inch. Maybe two. She’d known a dagger wouldn’t decapitate, but she’d hoped to slow him down at least.
The aedari snarled and batted her arm like a gnat. Her dagger vanished as he grabbed her wrist, pressure so tight, Fi swore she heard something crack. Through the pain, she lashed with her free hand, clawing at his cheek with energy searing her fingertips.
He pinned her other arm. Fi writhed as he held her in place.
How odd, when he opened his mouth. Not the flesh-rending maw of a daeyari. This creature’s teeth were mostly flat, only his canines longer than hers.
Fi still flinched when he lurched for her.
She shouted as teeth clamped her neck, his mouth scorching hot.
Then, an explosion of pain that turned her vision white.