“I’m surprised,” she admitted.
“That I know music?”
“That you’d bother with such small things.” Surely, music solos must seem like trivialities to an immortal from the Void beyond Planes.
Fi watched the quirk of his mouth too closely. The scrape of a fang across his lips. He reclined against her sofa, entrancing, the way his toned torso shifted beneath his shirt. Inhumane, how tightly his trousers showed the spread of his thighs.
“Some daeyari lose interest in little things,” he said, “letting time become a haze. Others seek small moments that make each day different from the last. Each year, each century different from the last.”
Here was that abyss again, a view into something so beyond her. Fi couldn’t resist teetering on the edge.
“And you?” she asked.
“Immortality seems wasted, if every day becomes the same.”
A new song started, the roll of a horn into deeper bass. Antal set his metalwork aside. Let his eyes drift languid beneath his lashes. He was so much handsomer with that softness on his brow, that careless part of his mouth.
A flutter brushed Fi’s stomach, recalling the press of his forehead against hers in the tavern yard. His breath against her cheek.
“I snuck into the Thomaskweld music hall sometimes.” Antal spoke low, not overpowering the sound. “Listened to the symphonies, the ensembles. Up in the rafters, where no one could see me.”
Fi scowled over her coffee. “In the rafters? I know those box seats are hard to get, but, surely, when you rule over an entire city…”
“Most people aren’t comfortable around daeyari, Fionamara. I’d rather stay out of sight than cause a panic.”
So blunt. So defeated. Fi scowled deeper. “You don’t have to lurk all the time. Go out into your city. Let people get used to you.”
“And how would I do that? I offer a hand, and they flinch at the claws. A smile, and all they see is fangs.”
Fi strummed her nails against her mug. Hadn’t she been the same, when they first met? Before he saved her life. Before he pledged to save her home.
“You had a human friend before,” she said. “He wasn’t afraid of you, was he?”
Something sharp flicked over Antal’s eyes. A twitch of the tail almost too quick to spot.
“No. He wasn’t.”
“And I don’t think you’re so bad,” Fi said. Dismissive, lest it go to his head.
“You’re unusual,” he returned, frustration roughing the words.
“Am I?” she pushed, just to hear him sound like that again. To snack on how it stroked her ego. “Maybe you’re right, Antlers. Maybe you’re insufferable, and I’m just starved for company.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. Fi ruffled at the weight of it.
Then, a smirk. Alaugh. “Vicious woman. You can’t say anything nicely, can you?”
Maybe she could. Maybe it was the fight she enjoyed. She set her coffee aside, leaning back to match his aloof posture. Comparatively, she must look a hot mess in her day-old curls, no bra beneath her sweater.
Antal’s gaze scraped over her, a tug in his throat as he swallowed.
That look veered precariously close to hunger: whether for ripped clothes, or ripped flesh. Or some mix of the two? Fi still didn’t know exactly what game they were playing, staring at each other like this. Only that she was tired, after plotting rebellion all week.
And there came that treacherous whisper again:would it be so bad, to be devoured?
“What would you want to do?” she asked mildly, despite the pulse in her throat. “If you didn’t have to worry about people being afraid?”
Antal’s wicked grin heated her cheeks.
