36 Who says I’m upset?
Fi picked a gravel path and set off walking, into the gardens that filled the dusk-lit cavern.
Yme truly had a talent, beds overflowing with plants that Fi had never seen, spindly blue ferns and spicy smelling bark and giant blooms that glistened silver at the tips, all thriving beneath strategically placed growing lights.
She wanted to scream at every leaf.
She didn’t. Only because that would feel uncharitable to the humans stuck here with her.
After the daeyari left, Geslam had busied himself in the study.
A groundskeeper raked leaves a couple beds away, watching Fi as if she might trample something by accident.
Or on purpose. She kept walking, pushing deeper into the garden.
Right now, Antal and Ixli were getting Sunsplitter bands put on their antlers. One of the greatest honors a daeyari could earn.
And she wasn’t even allowed to watch.
It wasn’t just Avroz this time. The entire Daey Celva stood against her, mortals not permitted in their chambers. What pricks. Fi had spoken to Antal of not being bound by old worlds, of seeking their own path.
But what was she supposed to do against walls this ingrained? Ignore them? Beat against the mortar until her fists turned raw?
She couldn’t let it get to her. She had to keep calm.
She couldn’t let Avroz win.
“It’s uncanny, really,” Syvr said behind her. “The way you both slink off to hide when you’re upset.”
Fi spun in a tornado of Void-and-crimson hair. Syvr stood in the path, a mild fancy meeting you here lean to their posture. She blinked. They grinned. How? When?
“Who says I’m upset?” Fi snapped.
“Well,” they drawled. “The way you said that, specifically. The thing your face is doing, more generally. The sound of you dragging your feet like a flustered aurorabeast—”
“You’re back,” she said. “Does that mean… it can’t be over already?”
She scanned the path for Antal. Her heart sank when she didn’t spot familiar crimson eyes. Just her and Syvr.
“Oh, that nonsense?” They batted a clawed hand. “The antler carving goes fast enough. The socializing will drag out all day.”
Fi’s heart sank deeper. Ridiculous.
“Then why are you here?” she accused.
Syvr grinned. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“Why would I be?”
“Hurtful. So you don’t have to sulk alone, of course. Unless you’d rather—”
“You should be there for Antal!” Fi snarled. “If I can’t be!”
The bristles were instinctive. They slipped on before Fi realized she was shouting, before she regretted saying something so sharp. So honest. That all she wanted was to know that Antal had the support he deserved, and it killed her that she couldn’t be there herself.
She braced for Syvr’s taunting. The daeyari appraised her with head tilted. Their eyes narrowed to azalea slivers.
Fi had never seen them so serious.
She’d never imagined they could be serious. Their tail dropped to a low swish. Their grin flat. Still a predator, beneath the act. Fi resisted the urge to back away.
“Walk with me,” Syvr said.
One shrill little voice in Fi’s head still shouted, daeyari bad, alone with daeyari worse.
A softer voice reminded her that she’d started liking this daeyari, that Antal trusted them. She followed but kept a wary distance.
Syvr led her down the gravel path, then a narrower trail, so overgrown she probably would have missed it. Fi pushed through several large shrubs, dew dripping onto her hair, one spiderweb she swatted a bit too vigorously before regaining composure.
They emerged in a clearing, hidden from the rest of the garden by dense foliage. A pond lay at the center, filmed with floating water plants. A tree arched overhead, gnarled branches weaving a ceiling, leaves dark blue with lilac edges.
“When Antal was younger,” Syvr said, “he was glued to his father’s heels. Always sitting at his side in the study, following him through the halls of the house, through the halls of the Dusk Council as he got older. Endlessly diligent. A little boring, if we’re honest.”
Fi listened with one brow arched, waiting for the point. Or the subterfuge.
“It was a slow thing,” Syvr went on. “When he started slipping away. Into the garden, at first. Quiet places.” Syvr pointed to a limb overhead. “I found him here, most often. Up on the branches. Is that scowl of yours a typical thing, or is my storytelling that lackluster?”
“Antal says you’re the smart one,” Fi said.
Syvr laughed. “Does he?”
“So I assume there’s a point to this?”
The light was dim through the canopy. Little gray moths flitted around the leaves.
“Eventually, Antal stopped coming here,” Syvr said. “He wandered farther when he disappeared. Out to the cliffs beyond the house. Out to the aurorabeast pastures.”
Fi stilled. She’d not seen any of the estate beyond the house. Antal hadn’t shown her, hadn’t mentioned a word about aurorabeasts. The place he’d met Razik.
“You knew?” she hissed.
“No. It would appear I didn’t.” Syvr’s tone took on an unusual melancholy.
“Shameful, considering my profession. I knew where he went. I knew who he was avoiding. I tried not to pry, to let him have space. The more time Antal spent away, the more I thought he just needed time away. Veshri’s teeth, it seems obvious in retrospect, doesn’t it?
Certainly, I should have pieced it together when he stopped coming home at night.
” Lower. “That was when Avroz noticed, too.”
Fi’s fists were clenched iron. Her stomach, coal-hot. It was like listening to someone describe an avalanche, knowing what end awaited, seeing every crack in the snow.
“I didn’t realize what Avroz would do,” Syvr said. “I didn’t realize what it would mean to Antal. He was different then. Kept everything about himself so guarded. But you”—azalea eyes caught Fi like snares—“Antal clearly cares a great deal about you.”
“Yeah, people keep saying that,” Fi said. “So sorry to be an inconvenience.”
“Inconvenience? Not at all.”
“What, then?”
Syvr held a hand flat, level with their hip.
“I met that little daeyari when he was this high. Velvet nubs for antlers. Most daeyari when they’re young? Terrors. Too much unrefined predator instinct. They’re like giant house cats at that age, pouncing on anything that moves.”
Fi mulled the insinuation that Antal had, at some point, ceased being a giant house cat. He sulked like a cat. Had practically lived in her rafters when they’d first met.
“But Antal was different,” Syvr said. “He’d lay on the windowsill, let the moths land on his arm and just watch them. Never hurt anything he didn’t need to.”
That sounded too much like him. Soft little creature. Fi watched the moths drift through the canopy, imagining the peace this place must have brought him. For a time.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Avroz didn’t like that, either? Something about daeyari needing to be fierce? Not giving in to their weaker urges?”
Syvr hummed, not in disagreement. Fi would have raked past Avroz over the coals.
“I’ve watched that daeyari grow up,” they said. “Watched him suffer through things he shouldn’t need to. I’ve not always been in a place to help as much as I’d have liked. As much as I should have. But despite all that, he’s family to me.” A pause. A pointed look. “So. What does he mean to you?”
Fi bristled, perceiving first an insult.
Then Syvr’s earnestness sank into her.
They’d brought her here to a place of memory. They called Antal family. They spoke of protecting him. Fi bristled anew.
Because this was what Avroz should have asked her. Not some insult of Antal’s taste. Not indifference at whether Fi loved him or was using him. Syvr was asking if Antal meant as much to her as she meant to him, everything his father should have cared about.
Fi considered giving the long answer. The mushy answer.
She could have told Syvr how she’d been taken to a daeyari shrine twice in her life, both times certain she’d die, eaten by an immortal beast. She could have tried to explain how long that fear had lived inside her.
She could have told them how Antal had terrified her at first. Then how his shell began to crack.
Then how he’d helped her see that vulnerability could be braver than her fiercest bristle.
But none of that answered the question, did it?
“I would cut the antlers off a hundred daeyari for him,” Fi said. “I would walk through the Void. I would stand with him through any fight, any obstacle… except the ones I can’t.”
These words weren’t shouts. No hard edges. Syvr weighed the confession.
“You both have that in common, too. So determined to look strong, even when everything’s gnawing away at you.”
“Bad habits,” she conceded. “But I promise, I’ll be there for him as best as I can. For as long as I…”
Fi balked before saying it, letting the words die on her lips.
It didn’t matter. Understanding crossed Syvr’s face.
“You humans,” they said. “You bind yourselves with lovers for a lifetime. For daeyari, such things are rare. Who can say what a century will bring? Or five? Daeyari speak their vows to express commitment, but if they grow apart, they go their separate ways, no harm done.” Syvr shrugged, not dismissive, almost sympathetic.
“Your separation may be harder. It may come before you’re ready.
But that’s the choice, isn’t it? Whether a few decades of happiness are worth the grief at the end, better than never having that happiness at all?
Knowing Antal, it doesn’t surprise me that he’s the type of daeyari who’d make that choice. ”
The words weren’t a cure. They didn’t heal that hollow spot rooted within Fi’s ribs. But Syvr’s reassurance lessened the ache. She wrapped her arms over her chest, a moment to breathe.
“I’ll do my best,” Fi said. “To make him happy.”
Syvr smiled, and it felt different from those flitting faces they usually donned, warmer. “I can see that already.”
Their demeanor shifted like a tide, subtle in how their grin curved from solemn back to mischievous, a glint in their eye as they held out a hand.
“Come with me,” Syvr said.
Fi blinked at the gesture.
She squinted at Syvr.
Their audacity, she had to commend, as a fellow audacity aficionado herself.
“Sorry,” she said. “My dad always told me never to go anywhere with strangers. Especially strangers with fangs and carnivorous diets. Like, he didn’t say that specifically, but I feel like it’s a pretty easy extension of logic.”
Syvr laughed. “I’m not a stranger. After all we’ve been through together?”
“The fangs and carnivorous diet part, then.”
“Fair.”
This spot in the garden was quiet, calm, a wonderful place to think. Fi could have lingered longer—if not for Syvr still holding out their hand.
“Enough dour moods,” they said. “We’ve better things to do. Trust me.”
Fi had granted a thimble of trust, and this daeyari wanted to sprint away with it.
“Where?” she asked.
Syvr’s grin widened. “That would ruin the surprise.”
“Syvr. The last time a daeyari surprised me, I ended up with ten claws in my stomach.”
“I would never.”
Fi stared at their proffered hand, curiosity creeping under her skin like a wood splinter. Curiosity had always done her in with these creatures.
With a huff, Fi grabbed Syvr’s hand. “Fine. But this had better not—”
They lurched into a teleport.
Fi jolted through black, words dead on her tongue, no air in her chest. Just as fast, she staggered out the other side, gasping, formulating several strongly-worded complaints about giving a person some Void-damned warning before jumping across reality.
Instead, she inhaled ocean air.
Syvr had brought her to a cliff. A dull roar of surf sounded below, seabirds drifting beneath a lilac sky. On the Winter Plane, the wind on the coast was cold and slicing. Here, it whispered against her cheeks, filled her nose with salt.
A staircase was carved into the cliffside. A railing. A patio. Planted pots around a door.
Syvr always smelled faintly of salt.
“You live here?” Fi asked.
Syvr nodded, and she let the weight of this sink into her. Daeyari were protective of their homes. Syvr knew she could Voidwalk, what they risked by showing her this place.
“Antal trusts you,” Syvr replied to her squint. That simple. Then a sniff. “Speaking of…”
They led her up the stairs. The patio and door were carved of light stone, surprisingly quaint, compared to the daeyari residences she’d seen.
“So why did you bring me here—”
The door swung open, Antal and Ixli emerging on the threshold.
Fi’s heart did this little thing—embarrassing, really—like a flip in her chest. An untrained trick, triggered the moment Antal’s eyes landed on her, when they widened, as if beholding nothing else but her.
His antlers bore two crisp golden bands.
“What are you doing here?” Fi said. “Syvr said you’d be gone all day—”
Antal interrupted by cupping her chin, his nose tapped to her cheek. She dragged a suspicious squint from him, to Ixli, to Syvr leaning smugly against the patio rail.
“Did your father see you leave?” Syvr asked.
“No,” Antal said. “We should still be quick.”
“He’ll be livid when he finds out,” Ixli added.
“Let him,” Antal said. “Here?”
Syvr tsked. “Of course not. I’ve got a better place in mind.”
“What are you talking about?” Fi demanded.
Three daeyari shared a conspiring smirk. Was this stomach squirm what Antal felt, every time Fi forged alliances with his friends?
He took her hand. “Come with us. We’ll show you.”