43 A little more than a flesh wound #2
It was the fiercest kiss of her life. Her fingers clawed into his collar, lips bruising, claiming every inch of him she could snare between her teeth.
Then, the slower roll of a tongue, soft and savoring and eternal as the emptiness around them.
It was a kiss that said more than I love you.
More than I’ll never leave you behind. More than a thousand words could say, none of them sufficient compared to the press of her mouth against his.
And if this was the last time she ever kissed him, she wanted it to be memorable.
Moment of truth.
Fi held him tight and visualized the snow.
The burnt beams. The ash. Were a few wisps of ether enough to fix an arrow through her head?
If she’d healed it wrong, would she die the moment she left the Void?
Would it hurt? She didn’t want to leave Antal behind, but oh, soft daeyari, if she got this wrong, she was so, so sorry—
They fell together.
Fi toppled back onto the Winter Plane.
Freed of Void stasis, sensation slammed into her. Knees hitting the ground. Head spinning. Her stomach spun worse, hunching her into a dry retch. She sucked in a breath and held it, waiting to collapse, waiting for pain and the surge of hot blood down her face.
Nothing happened.
Fi breathed again. She steadied her hands on her knees, sitting up slowly.
Still nothing.
Veshri’s fucking flashy teeth, she wasn’t dead?
She felt like Void-dragged shit. Aches everywhere. A little dizzy. When she blinked, her vision focused at a delay, her healed eye not matching the acuity of the old one. Warmth bloomed on her cheek, not blood, translation glyphs still intact.
The aedari stood not three yards in front of her.
The immortal’s wings drooped, melting the snow at her feet. She’d retrieved her severed arm, golden ligaments attempting to reattach it—answering part of Fi’s regeneration question. With Fi on her knees, the magician could have attacked.
But there was that split-second delay. The aedari stood stunned, feathered ears flat, eyes wide and bewildered upon the not-dead human who’d taken an arrow through the skull.
Fi would never let that opening go to waste.
She lunged at the immortal. Her sword was in the snow somewhere, lost before they’d tumbled into the Void. But Ixli’s gifted claws were deliciously heavy on her fingers, metal hungry for energy, devouring the silver current she Shaped to fiercen the tips.
Her slash raked the aedari’s uninjured arm, marring as many glyph tattoos as possible.
A flash of black and crimson followed. Antal’s natural claws slashed the aedari’s chest. The immortal reeled. Gold energy glowed in her hand, but none of her remaining tattoos lighted.
She swiped a finger in front of her instead, manually drawing a glyph on the air.
Too slow.
Fi pulled a dagger hilt from her belt and buried the energy blade in the aedari’s heart.
Gold flared alongside the shriek. This time, Antal grabbed Fi fast enough. The blur of a teleport stole her breath. They emerged several yards back, avoiding the molten wings.
The aedari collapsed to trembling knees. Head bowed, feathers fully splayed across the snow—choking on golden blood. If these immortals were like daeyari, a dagger to the heart wouldn’t kill. But it would fuck her up until she managed to heal.
Aedari needed glyphs to wield their magic. The magician hunched with ragged breaths, one arm severed, the tattoos on the other shredded. When she tried to raise a hand to the puncture in her chest, her fingers trembled, then slumped at her side.
She raised her eyes to Fi, shimmering with pain. Blazing with immortal fury.
“What are you?” the aedari rasped.
A valid question. Fi was still processing: not dead, claws on her fingers, blood matting her hair and crusting too much of her face. But not dead. Her eye felt weird. Cold settled around the socket, not the bite of Winter air, but the prickle of Void ether.
Antal stared at her. At her reconstructed eye. A long, hard stare, both relief and shock, as if he also couldn’t process what he saw in front of him.
Did his eyes seem… brighter? Crisper? Fi’s vision swayed—because her new eye was sharper, the old one straining to match it.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I’ll marry you. You useless, wonderful daeyari.”
She’d have him however he liked, a giant wedding with guests and dancing, a private ceremony with just the two of them.
She’d have him right here, if they’d had the time, swift oaths and whatever vessels they could find to bind their energy to.
Anything to tell him she’d stand at his side for as long as he stood at hers.
Fi barely got to savor his dumfounded expression, the ridiculous way his brows creased before—
“That’s what you were trying to say?” he shouted. “You absurd woman! You were dying.”
“I can’t die. I have to marry you first.”
“That’s not how… we’ll discuss this later.”
Fair. They still had an aedari to deal with.
The magician was incapacitated, but Fi was wary of getting close to those flickering energy wings. In the reprieve, the aedari had managed to lift a hand, shakily attempting to scribe a glyph across her chest as the wound seeped golden blood. Antal stood, ready to lunge at the rival immortal—
Fi grabbed his arm to stop him.
It was always humbling, seeing her enemy laid out on the ground. For Verne, it had felt like vindication. For Avroz, retribution. This aedari—Kressyalia—glared with fury-bright eyes, hunched like a cornered beast ready to fight whatever got too close.
Fi couldn’t blame her. She hated that part the most.
The way daeyari spoke of their immortal enemies, called them beasts and hung them by the ankles to drain their blood, Fi couldn’t blame the aedari for fighting tooth and talon.
The way this magician had lost someone dear to her, a partner cut down in battle, Fi couldn’t blame her seeking vengeance.
These immortals and their millennia-old war had seemed impossibly big at first, yet it all boiled down to such simple things: fighting for survival, fighting for those they loved.
And a common enemy who’d brought them here.
“Could we use her?” Fi hissed at Antal. “A witness against Avroz?”
Before, he’d stared at her in astonishment. Now he looked like she’d lost her mind. “No daeyari would trust the claims of an aedari. And against a council member?”
“We hurt her, Antal.”
“It killed our people.”
“Because Avroz led her here!” Fi raised her voice, shouting to the wounded aedari. “The daeyari you followed. Where did you run into him? Would you recognize him?”
The aedari returned a cruel, choking laugh.
“How does it feel, sold out by your fellow beast? We found him alone, near the Contested Planes. Na?ve fool wasn’t even trying to hide his tracks.”
That didn’t sound like Avroz. Wasn’t he supposed to be an experienced aedari hunter? Beside Fi, Antal’s tail dropped to a low swish, equally perturbed.
“He hardly fought,” the aedari taunted. “Didn’t even notice when I put the marker on.
As soon as he could, he ran. Led me straight here.
” Her wings flared, lighting the clearing in golden fury.
“I nearly had him, when that fucker cut his antler off and dropped it here. Close enough. I’ll still find your wretched nest on the Twilit Plane—”
She fell silent, feathered ears perked high.
Fi tensed at the snap of static on her tongue.
The aedari twisted, golden wings arced over herself in defense. A shadow darted past the barrier. Red energy flashed into the Shape of a sword, too fast for Fi or Antal to move.
Avroz buried the blade in the aedari’s neck.
There was a moment for her to gasp. For her eyes to widen in furious recognition.
Avroz twisted the hilt and yanked it into two separate blades, severing the aedari’s head. A shockwave of golden energy struck the clearing, blindingly bright, shaking the shiverpines.
Then quiet.
The glow of golden wings extinguished. Without them, the forest fell dark, only a faint aurora overhead—and a smolder of energy swords, red light stark against snow. Avroz appraised the corpse at his feet, the aedari’s head rolling to rest several feet away.
“Well,” he said, “that’s enough of that.”