35 Sunsplitter
Daeyari didn’t get hangovers, but Antal wondered if this must be what one felt like: nauseous, unsteady, a twinge in his head right between the eyes. Merciless Void, how did humans bear existing like this?
He had no alcohol to blame. Nor even aedari blood, the buzz worn off to crisp reality.
Today, he faced the Daey Celva.
Fionamara helped him dress. She paced around his old room, his past and present colliding. He’d woken to her nestled in his arms. Wearing his shirt. Someone praise his restraint for not taking her again right there, but regrettably, they didn’t have the time.
He wore his finest attire: black trousers embroidered with silver up the sides, a long jacket accented with vesper fabric stars and dahlias in midnight velvet, the emblem of his family.
Fionamara smoothed the sleeves. She buttoned the front, leaving a comfortable gap at his collar, her fingers a tease against his throat.
She smiled. It seemed… off.
“Are you well, Fionamara?”
“Fine. Just making sure my handsome Lord Daeyari looks his best.” Her mouth twisted, contemplative, as she poked his bare antlers. “What do we do with these?”
“No adornments today.” He’d be expected to arrive unembellished.
A knock sounded at his door. Antal called the guest to enter.
Ixli slipped inside. And Antal had worried he was overdressed.
Her undertunic and leggings were Void black vesper fabric glinting with silver-edged scales.
Her silver armor gleamed like hardened moonlight.
But most meticulous, her hair, woven into white plaits and silver clasps between her antlers, a loose fall of snow to her shoulders.
She greeted Fionamara with a nod. Antal, with a squint. Just like old times.
“Your hair’s a mess.” Ixli ran claws through the longer strands atop his head. “Too short to braid, but nearly there. We could try.”
He swatted her hand away. “This will have to be good enough.”
They moved to the sitting room, the house abuzz with activity.
Yme had gathered a pile of midnight dahlias on a windowsill, Geslam helping her sort the stems. Syvr lounged on a cushion, dressed more formally than usual, their shirt and jacket embroidered with ocean waves to match their sea salt scent.
But it was Avroz who looked the daeyari dignitary, waiting at the center of the room, multilayered robes an ombre in every shade of evening, a setting sun embroidered in peach across the bottom hem, silver stars across midnight fabric on his shoulders.
He looked to Antal, and there it was again, that heart-stilling moment where something like pride warmed his father’s face.
Then Avroz looked to Fionamara, scowling again.
“She stays here,” Avroz said. “Mortals aren’t permitted in the halls of the Daey Celva.”
“Surely you can make an exception.” Antal had thought. He’d hoped. “She killed an aedari, izaevi. She could at least sit in the gallery—”
“Mortals are not permitted.”
There was no reason to it. Only spite. Only the old way of doing things. Antal bared his teeth to argue—then stopped, when Fionamara touched his arm.
“It’s ok,” she said. “I’ll stay here.”
Antal stiffened in alarm. Fionamara, spitting and fighting? Expected. Fionamara giving in without protest? Unheard of. Suspicious. Possibly the most terrifying thing she could have said.
He pulled her aside, into the hall where they could whisper in privacy.
“Why are you staring at me like a frightened turtle?” Fionamara chided. “And stand up straight. We didn’t dress you up all nice just so you could slouch, daeyari.”
That was more in character. Something still felt off.
“I promised you, we’d do things together,” Antal said.
“And we will.” She smoothed his collar. “We fought an aedari together. We did a lot of things last night together. Today is for you, Antal.” Quieter. “I can let you go out on your own, when you need to. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“But—”
“Trust me.”
When she laid her fingers so softly on his cheeks, he couldn’t do anything else.
Avroz was the first to depart. Syvr lingered, waiting on Yme as she finished with her flowers—two garlands woven of dahlia blooms. She’d inherited the fields when she’d bonded with Avroz, had the emblems etched on her antlers. A better tender than he’d ever be.
Antal’s mother laid one garland over his neck. The second, over Ixli’s.
“You’ll do marvelously,” she told them. Then she and Syvr disappeared.
Ixli lifted a large silver box, ready to go.
Antal looked, one final time, to Fionamara.
“Make me proud,” she said.
The halls of the Daey Celva were even busier than Antal’s last visit. This time, they gathered because of him.
By Veshri’s high and sharpened antlers, he prayed this would be over swiftly.
He and Ixli arrived on the main balcony.
The cliff face loomed ahead, carved with its imposing archways, stone antlers mounted like sentinels.
Antal’s family legacy. Daeyari were ageless creatures.
Their society was one of the oldest in the Shattered Planes.
They would thrive for longer still, because of the Daey Celva. Because of this legacy.
Antal nearly bit his tongue off in surprise, when Syvr tackled him from behind. One arm over his shoulder, one over Ixli’s, Syvr hugged them together like a beaming parent.
“Antal, Ixli, my dearest friends,” they said, magnanimous and loud. Then, quieter, “Stop looking so Void-damned morbid, you pair of frozen sticks. Just follow along. Nod when you’re supposed to.”
They slipped something into Antal’s hand, too subtle for Avroz to spot. A folded scrap of paper. Discreetly, Antal flicked it open, read the message.
Syvr was already gone, greeting another group of daeyari heading for the gallery. Antal slipped the note to Ixli.
They shared a grin, both a little less grim.
The halls beyond the balcony were dark, quiet. Even more so, when they left the path to the gallery, down a staircase spiraling into stone. They reached a staging room on the bottom level, where council members and guests could gather before proceeding onto the main floor.
It was a comfortable space, sitting areas deeply cushioned, a station set up for coffee. Antal had rarely enjoyed the amenities, despite spending hours in this cloistered chamber, readying notes and visitors at his father’s behest.
Most of the council members were out on the floor already. Antal and Ixli settled on the floor pillows as the sounds of the meeting being called to order drifted down the hall. Waiting to be summoned.
Ixli’s tail twitched, her posture rigid in that way that signified either something was about to be speared, or she was viscerally uncomfortable. Neither of them had ever enjoyed the pomp and circumstance.
She set the metal box between them. They both stared at it.
“You should carry it,” Antal said.
She looked at him, eyes glowing coral. “You’re sure?”
“This matters to you, Ixli.”
“It matters to you, too. You did this to get onto the Daey Celva. To protect your territory… to protect Fi.”
A silence passed between them. Comforting, to sense Ixli was equally perturbed at Fionamara’s absence, the warrior who’d helped them claim this victory.
“I’ll get what I want,” Antal said. “So long as Avroz holds up his end. This?” He nudged the box toward her. “Is your moment.”
Ixli accepted with a soft smile.
From the hall, a steward called them to face the council.
The walk down the corridor was brief. For Antal, it felt like an eternity. He’d viewed countless meetings from the gallery. He’d faced dignitaries in the staging room. But the main floor? Reserved for council members and their invited guests.
He’d only been invited once—the day he’d been assigned his territory on the Winter Plane, the whole ordeal such a blur of shame, he could hardly recall any details.
Now, he stepped through the final archway, and the entire world seemed to open for him.
The circular tiers of the gallery seemed impossibly high from this vantage point, the highest stone balconies scraping dawn-lit sky, filled with easily a thousand spectators. On the main floor, light glowed beneath Antal’s feet, the inlaid map of the daeyari-controlled Planes.
Twenty members of the Daey Celva sat in a circle, perched upon their cushions. Eyes in every shade of red tracked Antal and Ixli as they walked to the center. Cunning daeyari. Old daeyari. Hard faces that Antal knew too well, smirks he knew even better.
And Avroz. Antal’s father watched him enter this new arena, the barest grin on his lips. The long-lost son, finally returning to his proper place.
Antal knelt in the center of the circle, facing the council’s speaker. Qirza sat as imperious as ever, her silver shawls contrasting ebony skin, seven-pointed antlers decorated with dangling metal stars.
Her firm presence was calming, in a way. Antal liked dreadfully few of the council members—but Qirza had achieved her role as speaker for good reason. Commanding, but fair. A tendency to listen, rather than snarl. She lifted a hand, silencing the gallery.
Ixli approached, laying the box in front of Qirza.
Antal felt the quiet of the gallery like needles. The weight of all those immortal eyes, crushing.
But there in the third tier: Syvr’s encouraging grin. His mother beside them. Antal breathed the soft sweet of the dahlias around his neck, settled by the familiar scent.
“A gift for the Daey Celva,” Ixli recited. “We bring the head of the daeyari’s greatest foe, slain for the good of all.”
Ixli returned to Antal, kneeling beside him. A murmur of anticipation rolled through the gallery as Qirza opened the box.
Snarls of approval, when she held up the aedari’s severed head.
She gripped its hair in her claws, a sniff at the unmistakable scent, holding it high for the inspection of the council members. As she did so, she recited.
“The daeyari were gifted immortal life by the wisdom of Veshri. We embraced our calling, venturing beyond our Twilit Plane to discover the farther reaches of the Void, as was the path of the first Voidwalker. We found other Planes. Other civilizations. We found the aedari.”