44 Unforgiveable
Everything happened too swiftly. Antal was caught in the avalanche.
The aedari had ambushed them, a trap to lure whoever came for the antler. A fight they shouldn’t have been able to win.
Fionamara—with an arrow through her head.
That part, Antal recalled in a blur, thoughts slurred by panic. He’d held her in the Void. He’d watched the blood course down her cheek. Veshri’s high and sharpened antlers, he’d been so certain he was watching her die.
Then, with the ferocity of Veshri himself, she’d pulled the arrow from her skull.
She’d woven Void ether in front of him, repairing flesh and bone and sclera like a daeyari could. And the way her eye had reformed? He could hardly stop staring at the impossibility.
And then came Avroz.
The second aedari lay upon the ground, head severed, wings extinguished. His father stood over the corpse. A victory. At last, their quarry was defeated, Antal’s deal satisfied, all he’d bargained for now guaranteed. He ought to feel relief. He ought to feel happy.
Nausea churned his stomach as he grabbed Fionamara. Her hair was a mess from vanquishing another immortal, easy to pull the tangles so they covered half her face.
“Do not let him see your eye,” Antal whispered urgently. “Please, Fionamara.”
She returned a fierce, but questioning scowl.
Avroz extinguished his blades. True darkness sank over the clearing, only the aurora overhead, Fionamara’s lantern dim where it had been cast among burnt rubble. Avroz returned the hilt to his belt with chilling nonchalance, his traveling clothes like swaths of shadow.
He turned toward Antal, slow and deliberate. A challenge. Antal fought the urge to shrink away, to say nothing, to avoid the fight that always proved futile.
“How could you do this?” he said, hushed as the whispering aurora.
A long pause hung over the clearing.
“Do what, Antal?” Avroz returned. “Don’t be vague.”
“The aedari you fought on the Contested Planes.” Antal pushed his voice higher. “You didn’t kill them. You led them here?”
Avroz’s tail fell to a low swish. His expression was blank, eyes narrowed to calculated indifference. Weighing an adversary—Antal knew the look like the angles of his own teeth.
“How unfortunate,” Avroz said. “This would have been simpler, if you hadn’t known.”
“And simpler still,” Antal spat, “if you hadn’t faced those aedari alone by accident.”
Avroz stiffened minutely.
“By accident?” He dragged out the word in distaste.
The Plane fell still again. In that moment of quiet, as his father’s words sank in, Antal wondered how many times his chest could fracture, before there was nothing left. It wounded him enough, the thought that Avroz had led the aedari here by mistake.
But even that was na?ve, wasn’t it? Avroz would have been the first to know of any aedari sightings, from his seat on the Daey Celva. He knew their abilities, their tactics. He’d separated from Syvr and Ixli, even when she was hoping for her bands.
“You found the aedari on purpose?” Antal said, quiet again. “You led them here… on purpose?”
Avroz surveyed the dead aedari. “So single-minded, these scouts. It trailed me without hesitation. I’d planned to lead the brute most of the way back here before escaping.
” His tail betrayed an annoyed flick. “That tracker it tried to put on me did complicate things. And I only encountered the one. I ought to have guessed it would recruit a partner. All dealt with, now.”
Avroz spoke so easy. No denial, no deflection, no insistence that this was all some grave misunderstanding. Was Antal not even worthy of that much?
“But why?” Antal demanded, fangs flashing.
Avroz shrugged. “Some pieces move too slowly.”
“What pieces?”
That calm was an act, too. Meant to make Antal feel foolish for baring his teeth.
“I’ve been patient with you, Antal.” His father’s words turned chastising.
Another familiar tactic. Merciless Void, Antal knew every step of the dance, yet he could never seize the lead.
“I had to give you some way to catch the Daey Celva’s notice, content as you seemed to languish on this humble Plane.
Then you killed Verne. You put yourself into the spotlight. ”
“She tried to unseat me.”
“That sort of attention couldn’t be squandered. And when a seat on the council opened? It had to be now. You forced my hand.”
Antal’s fault. Somehow, it was always Antal’s fault.
He pushed closer. Fury made him bold. The thought of an arrow through Fionamara’s eye—how close she’d come to death. Avroz had done all this on purpose.
“How can you speak like it’s nothing?” Antal said. “You led the aedari to our doorstep. Put how many lives in danger?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Avroz scoffed. “I only brought them to the Season-Locked Planes, just close enough to raise alarm. The Twilit Plane was never in danger.”
Of course—because who cared about the human lives here?
“So you endangered my territory?” Antal pushed even closer. “You sacrificed my people to be hunted, killed, burned—”
Avroz slapped him hard across the cheek.
The impact hurt. The claws hurt more. Antal hunched, feeling a trickle of blood from the slashes, all of him… stunned.
The wound was superficial. Already, energy prickled his skin, weaving flesh back together, moments before the evidence vanished. But Antal’s breath shook. His insides writhed with something sharp, squirming.
His father had never slapped him. Not in two and a half centuries.
Antal strained to look up, as small as the child he’d always been.
Avroz looked down on him, cold and composed as ever.
“You’re a daeyari,” he growled. “Act like one.”
The command dripped derision—his own father, speaking to the useless son he’d been burdened with. Not family. Using you. Antal had no time to process how deep the wound cut.
A flicker at his side was his only warning.
He grabbed Fionamara as she hurled herself at Avroz, metal claws bared, snarling like a panther. Antal barely held her back, a wriggling mass of rage and crimson hair.
“Don’t touch him!” she shouted. “I’ll kill you! Worthless cunt of a daeyari, I’ll carve your antlers into towel holders!”
“Fionamara, please.” Antal urged her to still, begging her to not make this worse—all his strength focused on holding her head against his chest, keeping that eye hidden. Her fingers clawed the air, promising to rip Avroz apart.
Antal couldn’t blame her.
Yet the thought of confronting his father froze him in place.
He didn’t know what to do. Even with that ghost of a slap on his cheek, he didn’t know what he could do. Two and a half centuries of submission and compliance, rooted so deep in his ether, he couldn’t even shake them off when Avroz fucking slapped him.
“Heed your daeyari, vavraesa,” Avroz warned with a condescending flash of fangs. “Or I’ll remind you what real claws feel like.”
Antal growled at the threat.
“Don’t bare your teeth at me, yzir virso,” Avroz growled back. “You enable this. You humor the whims of this creature, who has no sense for where her kind belongs.”
“Where I belong,” Fionamara shouted, muffled against Antal’s chest, “is with my foot so far up your ass, it will make your antlers itch!”
“Enough.” Avroz returned to calm, addressing Antal, as if a human wasn’t shouting death threats from his arms. “You’ve tracked down the truth. Now, you’ll never speak of this. You’ll return with me to the Twilit Plane, accept your nomination to the Daey Celva. As we agreed.”
“Never speak of this?” Fionamara’s laugh split the air like an axe. “Rot in the Void, daeyari. You think we’re going to ignore what you did—”
A clawed hand closed on Antal’s wrist.
Avroz yanked him away from her, Antal’s steps stumbling through the snow.
“I’ve had enough of both of you,” Avroz said. “Stay here, vavraesa. Behave. Your Lord Daeyari will return once he’s done his duty.”
She tensed. Ready to rage. Ready to hurl herself at another immortal she shouldn’t have to fight, her fury a sword Antal’s coward heart didn’t deserve, all his desperation focused on meeting her gaze and shaking his head in silent entreaty.
Please, don’t.
Please, this wasn’t worth another fight.
Please, he’d watched her nearly die in his arms, he couldn’t survive that again.
Fionamara froze, hair messy over one eye, the other wide in… confusion? Worry? Anger? Antal couldn’t say.
The Winter Plane vanished, as Avroz pulled him into black.
Antal didn’t fight the teleport. He let his father drag him along, Curtains and Shards flitting by too fast for numbed thoughts to register.
It was late, on the Twilit Plane.
Purple dusk seeped through the windows of the sitting room. All was quiet. Calm. Almost welcoming.
Apart from Avroz’s claws around Antal’s wrist.
They’d left Fionamara on the Winter Plane. Antal tensed, waiting for her to appear, to Voidwalk after them and lunge at his father with all her reckless vengeance. Subtler, Avroz did the same, watching the corners of the room with a low tail flick.
Seconds dragged.
She didn’t come.
Relief settled over Antal like hoarfrost. He’d heard the threat when Avroz had ordered her to stay behind, saw a lethal glint in his father’s eyes.
When no snarling human appeared, Avroz released Antal’s wrist.
“I’ve spoken with the Daey Celva,” Avroz said. “While you disappeared from your own ceremony, to dress up your pet with false Sunsplitter bands. They’re prepared to receive your nomination. We’ll meet in two days’ time.’
He spoke calmly again. As if nothing had happened.
“That’s it?” Antal growled. “You expect me to just go along with all this?”
“As we agreed, Antal. You’ll join the Daey Celva. I’ll overlook your lapse in judgment tonight, and support your system of corpse eating.”
“Or I could tell the Daey Celva what you did.”
Antal’s threat hung in the space between them. He tried to stand firm, as ferocious as Fionamara would be—still cracked at the edges.