45 An eye for an eye
Fi was rage incarnate. A creature of unfettered spite. Too much stubborn scorn confined to one paltry mortal body.
Avroz had slapped him.
That wretched excuse for Void ether had raked his claws across his own son, had hurt her daeyari.
Using his antlers as towel holders wouldn’t be insult enough.
Fi would turn them into candlesticks and let wax drip all over the carvings.
She’d toss them to some dog in Thomaskweld to gnaw.
She already had the image of the sitting room in her head, ready to give chase to the Twilit Plane.
She stopped herself. Angry Fi wanted to hunt Avroz down and separate him into a large number of meticulously carved pieces.
Responsible Fi attempted to throttle that rage.
What would she accomplish, chasing them now? A fight. Avroz would be ready for her, claws sharp and poised to strike.
What was his greatest weakness? Other than being a dick, of course. A shit father. A traitor to his entire species. Obnoxious fashion sense, if she put all the cards on the table.
But his biggest weakness, right at this moment?
He still didn’t think Fi was dangerous enough to be a threat.
A weight sat in her pocket. Fi dug out the piece of antler she’d snagged before everything went to shit. It lay cool in her palm, solid black, the golden glow of energy extinguished with its caster. Outlines of dead glyphs remained, etched into the lacquered surface.
Why in the endless Void had Avroz let her keep this?
Because he didn’t realize she had it. He must have thought the evidence lost, taken by the aedari, not left behind as a trap.
She’d told that crusty bastard, overconfidence would take him down.
Overconfident, when he lured those aedari.
Overconfident, that he could intimidate anyone into submission.
I’ve never been able to stop him, Antal had told her in agony. She could imagine him now, alone with his father, all they’d fought for on the line.
For his sake, she wouldn’t be reckless. For his sake, Fi clutched the severed antler in her fist, laying out her options, what she needed to make this work.
“Hold on a little longer, soft daeyari,” she whispered to the night.
They weren’t out of this game yet.
It was late in Thomaskweld.
Fi arrived to a capitol building with dark windows, all the sensible staff gone home for the night. But of course, when she Voidwalked into Kashvi’s office, the lights were on. The dutiful governor hunched over her desk, focused on paperwork.
Kashvi jumped at the sight of an intruder.
“Void alive,” she snarled, hand darting for the crossbow beneath her desk.
“Kashvi!” Fi greeted, no time for either pleasantries or crossbow bolts. “There have been developments. I need your help.”
“Fi?” Kashvi blinked, hands drifting back atop her desk. She got a good look at her visitor—then flinched again. “Fi?”
“I know it’s late.” Fi crossed the room. “Sorry, I don’t have a lot of time to explain.”
Kashvi rose from her desk. “Fi, what—”
“I need a box. Metal. Not very big, like those ones for storing energy chips—”
“What the fuck happened to your eye?”
Fi frowned and touched her face, fingers skimming cool Void-ether flesh around her eye.
“Well. I guess I… did almost die.”
Fi summarized swiftly: the antler and the aedari, the arrow through her head, repairing it with Void ether, Avroz confirming himself to be an even bigger dick than previously thought.
As she spoke, all the color drained from Kashvi’s face.
The normally unflappable governor leaned back against her desk, uncomfortably silent when Fi finished.
“So…” Fi said. “Can you get me a box?”
“Ok, ok.” Kashvi waved a hand. “You’ve been through a lot tonight. But to clarify.” She pointed. “Why does your eye look like that?”
Fi frowned again. “Like what?”
Dread rooted in her chest. What was wrong with her eye? Kashvi must be overreacting. Antal would have said something. Instead, he’d…
Stared. Repeatedly.
He’d told her not to let Avroz see it.
The aedari had asked what she was.
Oh, fuck Fi in the Void. What was wrong with her eye?
“I’ll get your damn box.” Kashvi pointed to the door. “Go clean yourself up. Look in a mirror while you’re at it.”
Fi complied with a huff.
Outside, the hall was dark. Fi headed for the bathroom, the capitol building too quiet in the middle of the night, the tiles too loud beneath her boots. Or was she just walking too fast?
This was fine. Her eye was fine. Kashvi was being dramatic. Fi turned the corner, the next hall even darker without the light from Kashvi’s office.
Or, it should have been.
Fi stopped in the unlit passageway. The hall ahead was rendered in shades of gray, too dim for color, but she saw the outlines of the wall and floor, the landscape paintings in their frames, even the stairway at the far end.
She covered her old eye with one hand. Still, she saw the hall just fine.
She covered her new eye with one hand. The hall vanished, too dark to see.
Fi sprinted the rest of the way to the bathroom.
The chamber smelled of pine oil and clean linen. She touched the wall panel, then winced as the lights came on, too bright, sending a throb through her head. Smaller tiles covered the bathroom floor in a mosaic of snowflakes. Fi hurried to the counter, leaning to look in the mirror.
Her heart skipped into her throat.
She looked like shit, obviously. Dried blood matted her hair and face. Her lipstick was smeared, a cut puffing her mouth. That was definitely a feather-shaped burn down her chin. All of this, perfectly digestible.
Fi stared at her eye. She touched her face, timid in disbelief.
Void-ether flesh was more grayscale than mortal hues, snow pale against her flushed cheeks. The scar cut a crescent around her eye. Not the most alarming change. No, that breath-stealing honor went to the eye itself.
The sclera had gone pitch black. Woven of Void ether, deep as the abyss.
Her iris was bright silver.
Fi blinked. The figure in the mirror blinked back—one human eye with bloodshot white sclera and a tired brown iris, the other eye crisp black and silver. Fi poked around the lashes, feeling every reconstructed line. More than just silver, her new iris glowed faintly.
Daeyari eyes were red, like their magic. Aedari eyes were gold.
Now Fi’s was silver—the hue of her own energy, seeping out.
A sliver of immortality. One piece at a time.
Fi leaned on the counter. She breathed in and out, watching her eyes tick over themselves in the mirror. A grin twisted her battered lips.
“Isn’t that neat?” she whispered.
Fi returned to the governor’s office with face washed and hair damp, significantly more presentable. She earned another long stare from Kashvi all the same.
“The eye is weird,” Fi admitted.
“We’re in agreement, at least.” Kashvi gestured to her desk. She’d collected several small metal boxes, containers for holding energy chips.
Fi rummaged through the offerings, testing sizes and sturdiness. She was viscerally aware of the silence in the room. Of Kashvi watching her, that stoic front Fi knew too well. A subtle scowl betrayed her unease. That, and the way she kept staring at Fi’s eye.
“Do I need to hide you?” Kashvi asked. “In Nyskya, maybe?”
“Thanks, but I don’t think Avroz is coming back for me.”
“He’s tried to kill you before.”
“Sure, but he seems to have decided I’m more useful as collateral. His mistake, really. Because now I’m pissed.”
Fi selected a box large enough to fit Avroz’s antler tip. She latched it shut and stashed it in her coat pocket.
Kashvi was still frowning. “Fi, are you…”
“Alright?” Fi laughed. “No, not by a longshot. Look at my eye, Kashvi.” Fi pointed to what was, upsettingly, only in the top three weirdest things to happen to her today.
“Fought another bird immortal before this. Oh, and I chatted with a kinda-god this morning, might have learned the secret to immortality, that didn’t even make the list somehow.
But I think if I pause for even one second right now, I’m going to either scream or disintegrate. And I don’t have time for that.”
The words came out too raw. Fi braced her hands on the desk to stop from shaking.
“Antal is alone,” she said. “He needs me.”
Soft footsteps moved toward her.
“I know what you’ll say,” Fi continued. “Going against Avroz puts everyone at risk. But he hurt Antal, and he led a monster here, and he’s already put the people of this territory on a chopping block for his own gain.
So spare me the lecture on how I’m being reckless. On how Boden wouldn’t want this—”
Kashvi lay a hand on Fi’s.
“Oh, your brother would be shouting your ass up a wall.” Kashvi’s laugh was strained, but earnest. “But if you told him this was important? He’d let you go.”
Fi’s lip quivered. “You think so?”
“This is big. You’ve got that look in your eyes.” Kashvi frowned. “Well, your normal eye. Don’t know what’s going on with…” She gestured, vaguely, to the left half of Fi’s face.
Fi squeezed Kashvi’s hand. “We were worried all of this might be too big for us? Well, we were wrong. And those daeyari are going to regret ever thinking we couldn’t hold our own.”
Kashvi returned a lethal grin. “He’d be proud of you. Terrified, but proud.”
Fi coveted every word, stored away in a safe, warm place—and to use as blackmail, the next time Kashvi was mean to her.
“I should go.” Quickly. Before Fi ended up sobbing in the governor’s office. “If anyone comes looking for me, especially any dickbag daeyari…”
“I haven’t seen you,” Kashvi agreed. “Just like old times?”
“Thanks, Kashvi.”
Fi hugged her. One moment of calm. A heartbeat of gratitude before—
Kashvi shoved her off.
“Fionamara Kolbeck,” she spoke hard, though her smirk betrayed her. “Get out of here. Go make a nuisance of yourself.”
Fi would. She was a professional nuisance.
A slice of her hand, and she stepped into the Void.
Avroz thought she’d take this sitting down? That he could cast her aside as nothing more than a bartering chip? He was about to learn how much of a nuisance one human could be.
Fi closed her eyes and imagined sea salt. A cliff of pale stone, a carved doorframe and patio. Friends, reunited. Laughter and the chant of seabirds…
She emerged on the Twilit Plane. Waves rumbled against the cliff below, stars above, a tousle of wind in her hair.
Fi jogged up the steps to the porch.
“Syvr!” she shouted above the surf, the wind, the kek of an irritated gull perched on the banister. She banged a fist to the door. “Syvr, get out here!”
“Fi?”
Azalea eyes peered over the railing of a rooftop patio. Syvr wore more relaxed attire than usual, a seafoam shirt with rolled sleeves and open chest, their hair pulled into a loose bun rather than braids.
They swung off the roof, landing beside Fi with an easy swish of their tail. Their grin was a sight for sore eyes.
Followed swiftly by the exact progression of emotions Fi had witnessed on Kashvi’s face: confusion, then alarm. Instead of the standard “what in the merciless Void are you doing here so late?” came stunned stillness, wide eyes.
“Yes, the eye is weird,” Fi said. “I’m aware.”
Where Kashvi had recoiled, Syvr leaned closer, inspecting Fi’s eye with ravenous scrutiny.
“We saw each other… what… three hours ago?” Syvr counted the time on their claws. “What in Veshri’s teeth happened to you—”
“Smell this.” Fi waved the metal box beneath Syvr’s nose. “Can you smell what’s inside?”
They indulged a sniff. “Not a clue. Fi, what happened—”
“Avroz tricked all of us. He led the aedari here on purpose, just to get Antal on the Dusk Council. That fucker slapped Antal across the face and took him back home. He thinks he can get away with it. We can’t leave Antal on his own.” Fi balled her fists. Held her breath.
Syvr went perfectly still, eyes sharpening with uncomfortable focus.
She knew the gamble, coming here. Before her stood a daeyari who’d served Avroz for several of her lifetimes. His spymaster. His kezri. Syvr could end her plan on the spot, drag her to Avroz and expose her scheme.
But she didn’t have to bet on Syvr’s loyalty to her. She bet on their loyalty to Antal.
Their tail swished, brushing the patio.
“Avroz… led the aedari here?” they asked.
“When you lost him on the Contested Planes. When he lost part of his antler—”
As Fi sped through the details of Avroz’s scheme, she shoved the box into Syvr’s hands. They flicked it open. Stared. Sniffed the antler, then turned it to inspect the remnant glyphs.
“Avroz volunteered to lead the aedari hunt,” Syvr observed.
“But he never fought with us. He never let the aedari see him again.”
Their tail flicked sharper. “He… hurt Antal?”
“And that soft, scared daeyari is convinced he’ll never beat his father. We can’t let him do this alone, Syvr.”
Slowly, Syvr closed the box.
As they handed it back to Fi, all their levity vanished, eyes narrowed to simmering slivers of azalea red, a bone-chilling low to their growl.
“I’ll get Ixli,” they said.