30 Honestly, who would be into teeth?
Fi burned from the inside out.
Every muscle turned molten, liquid fire coursing from her fingertips, through her chest, combusting at the spot the aedari’s mouth met the base of her neck.
No pierce of fangs. No ripping flesh. Just burning.
Fi needed to get his mouth off her. She needed to escape the hands digging bruises into her arms. She needed to fight and claw and snarl, but she couldn’t seem to move. Her useless muscles locked in place. She tried to Shape a current but found nothing to grasp.
Because this bastard aedari was ripping it out of her.
Energy drinkers. Fi rioted at the tearing sensation of energy forcibly pulled out of living tissue. She screamed at the burn of flesh exposed to too strong a current, energy shredded out of muscle and viscera, a scorching path, a fire brand where it concentrated at her throat.
Then, an equally wretched cold.
After the initial blaze came the slake of ice, like shards of glass beneath Fi’s skin. Energy depletion. Muscles exhausted of life-giving heat, weak and shivering. The numbing cold sliced through flesh and sank into her bones.
The aedari kept drinking. He sucked a deep draught of her energy. Swallowed, hot and revolting against her throat. Fi clawed useless nails against his arms, too weak, a helpless husk in this immortal’s hands.
She couldn’t die like this. She couldn’t leave Antal alone.
He’d have seen the aedari grab her. She’d promised they’d do this together, that he’d be there when she needed him—
Something yanked Fi backward, out of the aedari’s grasp.
She hit the ground like a sack of rocks. A stone split her shin. Loam dug beneath fingernails as she hunched. Gasped. Shivered, as if her insides had been carved out and replaced with permafrost, her energy-starved muscles screaming at her to collapse against the dirt.
But still alive.
Fi sucked in shallow breaths, struggling to think past the stinging skin of her throat. She fought her vision back into focus, blinking at leaves stuck to her palm, decomposing flakes of crimson and orange. An early star glinted in dusk- purpled sky.
She was still on the Autumn Plane. Fi had no idea where.
Which meant she had to stop her damn hands from shaking. She was still alive, which meant she had to fight. She had to get back to Antal. All her focus went into shifting onto her knees, into not screaming at the stab of cold through her muscles.
But when Fi glared up at the aedari, her blood chilled for another reason.
She blinked.
Her vision spun a little—but it was no hallucination. No figment of fractured thoughts struggling to piece themselves together after having energy siphoned out of her like a wineskin. Fi shrank, that prey animal hunch as the immortal glared down on her.
A woman stood beside him. She was taller than Fi by several inches, skin a deeper brown than his tan, dressed in an unassuming cream tunic and sturdy breeches. Black hair was tied back from her face, falling in slick sheets past her shoulders.
Her eyes glowed gold, bright as sunlight.
Fuck Fi in the Void.
There were two aedari?
They were arguing. The woman said something in a language Fi didn’t know, the syllables quick and melodic. The man’s energy wings folded against his back as he wiped a hand across his mouth, spattered with glowing silver—Fi’s energy, painting his lips like cheap liquor.
The woman shoved his chest. He rolled his eyes, feathered ears cocked dramatically low, and was Fi maybe hyperventilating a tiny bit? Or was it just her neck, burning like a son of a bitch? Fuck, this was not how the plan was supposed to go.
At the farmhouse, that aedari had acted strangely: disguised as a human, wandering the yard. The daeyari had hoped to catch the immortal while it slept.
Maybe they had—found one of the aedari asleep. The other, a damned lookout.
Fi was definitely hyperventilating. She couldn’t fight a single aedari alone, especially not with her muscles like chilled pudding.
The woman’s golden eyes snapped onto her.
Fi looked to her sword hilt, on the ground, several impossible feet away.
She lunged anyway, snarling when the woman grabbed her arm. Her fingers were slender, skin hot as sun-baked stone. When Fi swiped nails for her pretty golden eyes, the aedari reeled back and shouted something in that strange language.
She smacked her palm against Fi’s hand. Something tingled.
“Stop fighting!” the aedari commanded.
Fi froze, lips curled in a panting snarl, stunned that she’d… understood?
“Sit still.” The aedari’s feathered ears lowered like an angry cockatiel, grip tight on Fi’s wrist. “Or I’ll make you sit still.”
How did Fi understand? The words sounded strange, an accent she’d never heard, but more than that, something fuzzy that her brain couldn’t process.
Her hand itched. When she looked down, she startled at golden lines glowing on her skin, warm and prickly, some tiny pictogram of…
a double arrow? A mouth? A squiggle underneath?
“Careless,” the woman said, addressing the man behind her. “You could have drained her, before we learn what she knows. This one was with the daeyari?”
“When we fought,” he said. “But she was alone today. Riding along the road.”
Fi understood him, too. They both sounded strange. Some kind of echo, a delay between their mouths moving and the words registering. Her hand prickled every time they spoke.
Because they weren’t speaking daeyari. They were speaking their language, the purring undertone seeping through. This was different magic from energy Shaping.
“You’re sure?” the woman asked.
The man raised a brow. Pointed at Fi. “Look at her.”
The hair. It was always the hair. And maybe the feral snarl.
The aedari’s grip tightened on Fi’s wrist. She wore no wings like her partner, knelt on her knees in the loam, but there was a tautness to her, heat seeping off bare arms and nails digging into flesh.
Not the slender, carving claws of a daeyari.
Her fingertips tapered into short, triangular black talons, made for grasping prey.
Fi knew how to be bold with daeyari—because she’d learned how to deal with one on training wheels. Antal had been right: this was a different creature.
“You’re helping the beasts?” the aedari asked.
Fi wrinkled her nose at the taunt. As if they couldn’t smell Antal on her, the imprint of his mouth on her lips. The trace of hands in her hair. His touch, possessing every part of her.
Except… this aedari didn’t lean close. Didn’t flare her nostrils.
Fi’s heart skipped. These were different predators. Maybe they couldn’t smell Antal on her.
“You were with the daeyari?” the immortal pressed.
“Yes,” Fi said.
The aedari already knew as much. Beyond that, Fi scrambled, reevaluating her strategy.
“They sent you out on the road?” the aedari asked.
“Yes.” Honesty lowered guards. Created opportunity.
“For what purpose? A trap?”
What was Fi to them? What did this aedari see, grimacing beneath her grip?
Nothing. Just a weak little human, taken from a pack of immortal predators.
“They didn’t tell me,” Fi gasped, forcing her voice to a pitiful crack. “They made me do it.”
She hunched, shoulders shuddering. Just a human. Insignificant. Afraid.
It was the right thing to say.
The aedari fell quiet. Early after Fi had met Antal, the first time he’d spotted genuine fear in her eyes, he’d softened for her in an instant. This aedari didn’t soften. Those were the keen eyes of a beast scouring for weakness.
Fi could work with that.
The immortal leaned closer, heat wafting off her like sunbeams, a smell like sand and copper. The light from her ear feathers brushed her face in gold. Her skin glowed faintly, gilded blood beneath the surface, sun-kissed even in dusk.
“The daeyari made you do it?” Her voice turned honeyed.
A sharper heat blazed Fi’s cheeks. The other aedari stepped closer, golden wings blistering as he loomed over her, his scowl decidedly less sympathetic.
“She worked with them, Kressya. Arrived with one daeyari to the house. Fought with the other two. Swung a blade into my throat tonight.”
He pointed at his unblemished neck. Fi hadn’t even seen him heal it.
“I thought he’d kill me!” Fi whimpered. Which was not untrue. She shrank away from the aedari holding her. “Are you going to kill me?”
Merciless Void, she hated that simper, the vile taste it left in her mouth. Fi yearned to spit. To fight. To lash these immortals to pieces. Antal’s words growled in the back of her head.
Don’t try anything too reckless.
Her neck still burned. Her cowering made it ache.
“Easy now,” the aedari cooed. When she raised a hand, Fi fought every instinct to bite a finger off. “This looks painful. Sit still a moment…”
Fi recoiled when soft fingers touched the burned skin of her neck, grimaced at the bloom of heat. But then, an odd relief. The aedari swirled her finger, drawing across Fi’s skin.
The ache faded. Disappeared.
Healing? That worked on mortal flesh? These glyphs were very different magic.
“Better?” The aedari smiled, all rosy lips, no fangs. “What is your name, human?”
“Fi.” She forced her voice small. Meek. Disgraceful.
“Kressyalia.” The aedari pressed a hand to her chest. Then, a gesture to the man glowering overhead. “And Drekanmis.”
That was different. Fi had never heard a daeyari name longer than two syllables.
“Do you know what I am?” Kressyalia asked.
Fi swallowed. “Aedari.”
“Ah.” Her feathered ears lifted upward, a smirk on her lips. “But do you know what I am? Did the beasts tell you?”
“They said you’re dangerous. That you’d kill me.”
“Poor thing.” The aedari reached for Fi’s face, and her talons were gone—gentle fingers brushing Fi’s cheek. “We are your salvation. We’ve come to free you from these monsters.”
Fi deserved a medal for not breaking into laughter. She forced her eyes wide.
“Free us?” she breathed. “Impossible. The daeyari are ruthless.” And so fierce. And so scary. And there definitely wasn’t anything sexy about their teeth. Who would ever be into teeth?