43 A little more than a flesh wound
Well. This was a situation.
The timing must have been flawless, the kind of luck that would convince someone to camp out at a poker table for a week. Vaguely, Fi recalled the strange taste in her mouth just before she’d Voidwalked. That pressure hitting her head.
The arrow must have struck an instant before she’d stepped off the Plane. Now, the Void held the wound in stasis.
Or slowed it down, at least. Fi’s thoughts were still fuzzy.
Gingerly, she touched the metal shaft sticking through her left eye socket. She reached behind her head and—by the endless, merciless Void, it went all the way through.
Fi nearly laughed.
Only because the alternative was to scream, and that hardly seemed productive.
Antal was staring at her. Unblinking. Eyes wide enough to drown in.
She’d never Voidwalked with anyone, aside from Veshri, and this premier experience felt distinctly marred by the trembling hand Antal placed on her cheek.
He floated with her in the black abyss, hair weightless against his antlers, tail drifting a soft coil around her leg.
The terror in his crimson eyes could have sunken her to the depths.
He looked at the arrow. At her. Each dart of his gaze, more panicked.
Panic wasn’t necessary. Fi would be fine. She’d always been fine, had escaped from daeyari shrines, survived fangs, evaded scorching feathers, and… an arrow through the head was definitely a new extreme.
Fi lay a comforting hand on Antal’s chest—dismayed, to find herself shaking. He wound his fingers with hers. Sweet, soft daeyari. He shouldn’t have to see her like this. She didn’t want to hurt him, and if this was the last time he ever got to hold her—
Oh no.
There came her panic. It crept up on her as the initial shock wore off, as the throb in her eye grew more noticeable.
She had a fucking arrow through her head.
Fi tried to steady herself, despite the floating. Tried to ignore the pain, but that only made the throbbing worse somehow. Tried not to hyperventilate, with no air to fill her lungs.
She couldn’t go back to the Winter Plane, or she’d be dead the instant she stepped out of Void stasis.
She couldn’t stay here forever. A warm trickle of blood slipped down her cheek. Not stopped, just slowed, a final moment stretched out.
Antal’s mouth moved, trying to speak without sound. Fi thought hard at him: It’s ok. Calm down. We’ll figure this out.
He didn’t react. No thoughts returned to her. It made sense that the telepathy had been Veshri’s doing, that she couldn’t simply will herself mastery over such an obscure skill. Fi huffed all the same.
Antal held her cheeks, thumb brushing the blood that dripped from her eye. His mouth moved again, slower this time. More deliberate.
What do we do?
Fi didn’t know. She felt raw beneath the plea in his eyes, but by the endless reaches of the Void, she didn’t know. She couldn’t bluff or bristle her way out of an arrow through the head.
She considered pushing Antal away.
That would be kinder, wouldn’t it? To shove him back to the Plane, not force him to watch another lover die in front of him?
But Fi couldn’t let go. Her fists tightened in his shirt, gripping him like an anchor. She wanted to tell him she’d be fine. She’d fix this. She’d healed herself before with Void ether, but no wound like this. Mortals weren’t made to survive wounds like this.
They’d been so close to a happy ending.
Fi wanted to scream at how unfair it was, the consequences of her own stubbornness. They should have left well enough alone, shouldn’t have gone hunting secrets.
These aedari should never have been here in the first place. All Avroz’s doing. All a game they’d thought they were learning to play, only to find themselves pawns all along. Even so, they’d held up their end. Antal had been happy.
He’d asked her to marry him.
Fi fell as still as the Void around her. She’d never given him an answer. She’d thought she could have fun with it, plenty of time to tease him. Now she had a fucking arrow through her head.
She couldn’t leave him, without giving an answer.
Fi held Antal close. She looked him in the eye—with her one working eye.
Yes, she said, with all the emphasis silence could muster.
He cocked his head.
Yes, she said again, reaching to cup his chin. He was so warm and solid beneath her touch, the only real thing in this smothering emptiness.
Antal stared back at her, brow knitted with confusion.
He didn’t understand. Panic surged in Fi’s gut, cold as the Thomaskweld River.
Yes, I’d marry you, she mouthed.
Yes, I want to spend a hundred centuries with you, with increased fervor.
Yes, just please understand me, you useless immortal!
When he stared at her blankly, sorrow fracturing his features, something split in Fi’s chest. She might not have much time. She couldn’t die without telling him.
She couldn’t die.
Without telling him.
The cold in her chest churned to something new. Hotter. Fiercer.
Fi couldn’t die here. She couldn’t leave Antal alone. For thirty-three years, she’d stockpiled bristles, steeled her spine, defenses to tackle anything that made her feel small.
Now, she turned her time-honed ire upon a new enemy: death itself.
Upon the endless Void trying to swallow her, as it had failed to do so many times.
Upon this stupid arrow in her head, this single stroke of rotten luck. But never once in Fi’s stubborn, overconfident life had she stopped fighting.
She was going to get out of here.
And she was going to marry this soft, son-of-a-bitch daeyari.
She grabbed the front of the arrow with her left hand, fingers still reinforced in metal claws. With her right, she pointed to the nuisance projectile, miming a command to help her pull.
Antal balked, blinking in alarm. Absolutely useless.
Fi gripped the arrow and pulled on her own.
The first yank dragged metal against bone, not enough to dislodge. Thank the merciless Void, Fi wasn’t squeamish—and thank the merciful Void for dulled pain receptors. She adjusted her grip to pull again, fingers slippery against blood-coated metal.
This time, Antal joined her. He looked fit to crumble, to dissociate back into Void ether from agony alone, but he managed to wrap two hands alongside Fi’s. They pulled together.
The arrow slipped free of Fi’s skull with a stomach-turning sensation she never wanted to experience again, much less describe.
Gingerly, she inspected the damage. Her left eye was… gone. Cracked bone and an empty socket. Her vision blurred, thoughts growing foggier, blood flowing faster down her cheek. Obviously, she was in the process of dying. Not the ideal state for a calm mind.
She clawed for focus, reaching out a hand to touch the Void.
Fi had done this before. She could do it again.
Granted, this was more complicated than healing a clawed-up stomach, simple layers of flesh and muscle. An eye. A skull. Brains. How did she begin mending brains?
She had to trust what Veshri had said: her body would remember how to mend itself, if she provided material.
Concentrating was the hard part. Cold emptiness danced at her fingertips, the feeling of something almost there—drowned by the throb in her skull. Veshri had made it look easy.
She kept reaching. The thinnest wisp brushed her finger, light as gossamer. Nearly too thin to grasp. She gathered the strand like a silken lifeline. Then another. Another. A painstaking process, collecting what she could scarcely touch.
When a clump of ether finally dangled at her fingers, she pressed it to her eye.
Cold sank into the wound. Tingling.
Fi gritted her teeth, the sensation like eating ice cream too fast. Ozone plaqued her tongue. Antal floated at her side, aghast at any number of things: the hole through her head, the blood on her jacket, the ether writhing at her fingertips.
But he never let her go. He wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her steady as she worked, the warm press of his body helping to fight off the chill.
These structures are ingrained, Veshri had said. The body knows how to repair itself.
Immortal wisdom notwithstanding, Fi did try to visualize what her intact head looked like. That seemed to help with Voidwalking. The inside bits were harder to visualize, but she had a basic picture. The tingle shifted to a squirm. A stretch.
She felt flesh weaving back together. That was the easier part. Fi gathered more ether, heart thudding despite the crush of the Void. A different pressure built inside her head. A crack and a snap of bone.
An eye. What made up an eye? She scrambled back to her school lessons, never a stellar student at anatomy, but she recalled sclera. Iris. Lens. Retina. Nerves to tie it all together.
All woven from immortal ether. Veshri had told her she might rebuild herself, though Fi hadn’t imagined it would be this dramatic.
Antal watched, black sclera impossibly dark in the Void, the glow of crimson eyes impossibly bright.
He never looked away from her—though worry quivered on his mouth, though he ought to never have to watch someone he loved bleed out in front of him again.
He looked at her as if there was nothing in all the Void and Planes more important to look at.
To be with someone I loved, Veshri had said. A fitting reason to seek immortality. To choose life, however she emerged on the other side.
The prickling stopped.
Fi never felt wholly right in the Void, cold and air-starved, but she did feel steadier. She lowered her palm, stained with blood and ether. When she blinked, she felt something in her eye socket that could blink. A promising sign. Another blink settled Antal into sharper focus.
He wasn’t blinking.
He stared at her wide-eyed, mouth parted. His thumb skimmed her temple, the ridge of her eye, testing the new flesh with stunned slowness. Fi recognized the shape of her name on his lips, soft in disbelief.
She pulled him into a kiss.