39 Between a fang and a hard place #2
Fi’s heart jolted at the sound. Louder, at the sudden silence inside. She held still, eyed the patio door, vacillating for a second too long.
Static snapped her tongue.
Avroz shoved her to the wall, a clawed hand over her mouth, muffling her shouts. Bastard, skink, twig-headed cunt, all demoted to vicious mumbles. He pinned her wrist before she grabbed her sword hilt, pinned her other wrist when she tried again, her gagged curses berating the unfairness of tails.
His burgundy eyes sliced the dusk. These weren’t the eyes he’d worn when they’d met. Not when he’d cornered her in his study. Not even when Fi had held a blade to his throat. These eyes made every spat they’d had before seem like they’d been playing.
“What are you doing out here, vavraesa?” he whispered, fangs an inch from her face.
Fi spat another curse against his palm. She couldn’t Voidwalk while he held her, or she’d just pull them both in together. She couldn’t wriggle free of his claws.
She couldn’t help but wonder: was this the last thing Razik saw, before he’d died?
“You draw a sword on me in my own home,” Avroz growled. “Now you spy on my conversations. And what’s this?” He tilted her head, claws painful against her cheeks, until one of her gold-banded ears faced him. “Oh. Isn’t that cute.”
Fi tried to bite him. She couldn’t quite get her teeth around his thumb.
“What did you hear?” Avroz demanded.
She mumbled something that was, very clearly, not a confession. The daeyari snapped his fangs too close to her cheek.
“What. Did you. Hear?”
“Avroz, let her go.”
Yme stood upon the garden path.
Fi blinked once against pain-watered eyes. She blinked a second time in disbelief, because that was Yme standing on the path in her slinky party dress, hair a crown of dark braids and antlers festooned in silver.
Her glare could have sliced open a jugular.
Avroz tilted to look at his wife. His hand stayed clamped over Fi’s mouth. “Yme, this doesn’t concern you—”
“Let her go.”
She had Antal’s soft cheeks, his crimson eyes, but Fi had never heard Yme snarl like this.
Neither had she fully registered: Yme’s antlers, only two points shorter than Avroz.
The two ancient beasts squared off with teeth bared, startlingly equal footing when Yme didn’t cower.
Avroz weathered her glare for exactly eleven of Fi’s thudding heartbeats.
Fi gasped when he released her.
“You thorn-fingered son of a—”
She clamped her mouth shut when another hand grabbed her wrist. Yme pulled Fi behind her, a barrier of jasmine-smelling hair and lashing tail between her and Avroz. Fi had no Void-damned clue what was happening.
An effective shield, though. Yme retreated. Her vicelike grip on Fi’s wrist was tight enough to sever circulation, the hold of a parent leading a delinquent child. Rather than Fi’s usual spitting, she let herself be dragged away, never taking her eyes off the predator behind her.
Avroz didn’t follow. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink as he watched her go. The low twitch of his tail was like a cat gauging a wounded mouse.
Yme led them into the house. Her grip lightened once they had a wall between them and Avroz, lighter still as she pulled Fi into the empty kitchen and shut the door.
Fi yanked her hand free and backed to the far side of the room, ready with her sword hilt. This daeyari wasn’t a friend. At times, she’d barely been an ally.
“Foolish thing,” Yme hissed. “What were you thinking?”
Fi stood wary, her back to a cupboard. “What do you want?”
“You shouldn’t have been out there. Shouldn’t have been listening.” Yme paced the kitchen, a bundle of exasperation and gnashing teeth. “You should know what he’d do to you.”
“Yet you stepped in to help.” Fi hardened. “Why?”
“Why?”
Fi grabbed her sword when Yme stepped toward her.
She froze when two soft hands gripped hers, a snare of too-familiar crimson eyes.
“I’ve never seen Antal smile the way he does with you,” Yme whispered.
This was not the response Fi had anticipated.
“You aren’t what I envisioned for my son,” Yme said, not unkindly. “You aren’t what I assumed you’d be, when we first met. But I want him to be happy. And you make him happy. I see that, even if I don’t fully understand it.”
This was a truly baffling combination of insults and… acceptance? Yme sounded earnest, squeezing Fi’s hand with finger pads, not claws.
“Which is why,” Yme said, “whatever you heard, forget it. Pretend it never happened. Go back to Antal. Keep him smiling.”
The kitchen was quiet when Yme finished, just the agitated swish of her tail.
Just the hiss of Fi’s whisper.
“Yme, what did Avroz do?”
The daeyari’s tail lashed. “It’s better that you don’t know. It’s better that Antal doesn’t know.” Yme held Fi’s hands, pleading with soft words and bright eyes.
How unfortunate for her, that Fi had practice resisting those exact crimson eyes.
“Bullshit.”
Yme pulled back, her huff indignant. “Excuse me?”
Fi yanked her hands from Yme’s. Having Avroz’s claws at her throat? Again? Good for a rush of adrenaline. It swirled through her, hot as an energy current.
“You say you want what’s best for Antal?” Fi said. “Do you know what your biggest problem is, Yme? You’re actually clever, aren’t you? And that makes this worse. Because you understand what Avroz is doing.”
“I’ve tried to protect him,” Yme warned.
“And you’ve done a shit job of it. Avroz treats Antal like a tool. But you” —Fi levelled a finger—“you treat him like he can’t think for himself. How is that any better?”
Yme stammered. “I…”
“Antal is a person. Your son. He deserves to have his own opinions, even if they aren’t what you ‘envisioned’ for him. He deserves to be believed. And he deserves to be told the truth, if you really want what’s best for him.”
Yme’s tail drooped until it brushed the floor.
A snarl would have been easier than those fractured red irises, and for all Fi’s demands of the truth, a part of her didn’t want it.
A small, quaking piece of her heart wanted to do exactly as Yme said, to go back to Antal, to hug him and dream about eternity and pretend she’d never overheard anything.
Because whatever Avroz had done, they still needed him. They needed him to put Antal on the council, and to support their new system in Thomaskweld, and fuck, how had she felt like victory just moments ago?
When Yme finally spoke, it wasn’t a snap. It wasn’t an argument. It was cold, and quiet, and exactly the thing Fi was dreading to hear.
“If you tell Antal,” Yme said, “it will ruin everything you’ve worked for.”