30 Honestly, who would be into teeth? #3
Kressyalia’s tongue tracing across her lips would have been threat enough. The memory was fresh and nauseating, how Fi had burned when the other aedari had drunk from her, how her muscles still ached with energy depletion.
The aedari’s grip tightened.
Fi shrieked, when talons carved into her cheek.
She writhed, but Kressyalia held firm, her expression chillingly nonchalant as she dragged her fingers down Fi’s face, talons flayed deep into flesh. A scrape against bone as she neared Fi’s teeth. So deep, Fi was a scream away from blacking out.
Then, just as swiftly, a brush of heat.
Fi’s skin squirmed, mending beneath the aedari’s magic. Skin flayed then repaired in a matter of seconds, the pain gone—Fi was still gasping.
Softer, Kressyalia patted Fi’s cheek. Back to honeyed words as she said, “Poor thing. Show us the way to the Twilit Plane, and you don’t have to fear those beasts any longer.”
Fi was too shaken to laugh. What had she told herself not long ago? She’d been roped into a fight that wasn’t hers, a war of immortals she had no stake in?
How fucking wrong she’d been.
Fi couldn’t let these creatures have her home, her Plane.
Drekanmis picked her sword hilt off the ground, inspecting it with a head tilt. Fi hunched, gathering her breath. Maybe that was what they expected, a human on her knees.
“Take me back… to where you found me,” Fi panted. A bold play. Her shaking tone had to count for something.
Drekanmis scowled. “The daeyari may still be there.”
“I have no idea where I am,” Fi said. “I can’t show you the way to the Twilit Plane if I don’t know where I am.”
The aedari exchanged a long look. Then, Kressyalia took her by the arm.
The teleports were as awful as before, but Fi already felt an obscene amount of awful. What were more degrees of awful? When they emerged, she waged a swift war against not throwing up, not passing out, not groaning to the depths of the Void as her skin stopped buzzing.
Fi snuck a hand into her pocket, palming a daeyari energy capsule. She drew a small current. Not enough to replenish her fully, but the buzz through starved muscles took the edge off, a comfort of ozone on her tongue.
Leaves crunched beneath her boots. Fireflies flickering among the trees. The aedari had returned her to the road, not exactly where they’d taken her. A few miles back, maybe.
“Is this close enough?” Kressyalia asked.
Best not to press her luck. “Sure. There’s a Curtain not far from here.”
Both aedari had hidden their wings, only golden eyes glowing in the dusk. Kressyalia watched the tree line like a hawk.
“I’ll stay back,” she said. “To keep an eye out.”
Drekanmis nodded.
Her fingers brushed his for a split second, before she vanished in a pop of heat.
Fi couldn’t say she was thrilled with the company, but one aedari was better than two.
She eyed the stoic man beside her, shamelessly intrigued as he blinked, and his eyes snapped from gold to brown.
Then Fi blinked, and his entire face shifted.
Still tan skin and strong cheeks, but the tips of his ears rounded, his gilded complexion mellowing. Human, by all appearances.
He beckoned her to lead. Fi squinted at the gesture—and a glint in her peripheral, her sword hilt stuffed beneath his belt.
They set off walking.
He wasn’t as silent as a daeyari, his boots crunching against the loam.
Fi had zero clue where she was taking him. Her trip to and from the Twilight Plane had passed so swiftly, she couldn’t begin to retrace the route. She guessed she had a few minutes before he figured that out.
The aedari hadn’t batted an eye when she’d mentioned Curtains. How odd to think that, even on the far side of the Shattered Planes, there might be humans like her, able to step through to other realities.
“You mentioned Avarglais,” she said. “Your home?”
Normally, conversation lowered people’s guards. The aedari stared at her, suspicious.
“What’s it like?” Fi pressed.
“Warmer,” he said, his breath fogging the Autumn evening.
And more sun, Fi guessed from his tan, his partner’s deep brown skin.
“You have humans there? Like me?”
“They’re cared for,” he said, a stiff tone that raised several acute doubts on Fi’s end. “There are many boons offered to those who serve the divine.”
“Oh, right. Of course. And those marks on your arms, those are glyphs?”
They were subtle. Fi had noticed the tattoos glowing during their fight, five of those little pictograms inked in black inside his wrist.
When she pointed, he grabbed her arm.
“Prove yourself first,” the aedari warned. “Then, you may be rewarded with—”
A whinny interrupted him.
Under better circumstances, it would have been comical to watch an immortal’s brow furrow, the baffled head tilt as a scaled horse trotted out of the trees. She pranced in the road, ears flattened, a snort as she scented the aedari.
“Aisinay,” Fi breathed, a grin ghosting her lips.
What a wonderful beast. A stubborn burr at her side, always able to smell her out.
Fi cried out as the aedari gripped her wrist tighter.
“What is this?” He tensed, scanning the trees. “What have you—”
Static snapped Fi’s tongue, and her grin turned devious.