“Or of me?”
Fi meant it as a tease. Antal refused to look at her, tail twitching against her ankle.
“One time, maybe,” he said. “Not… this.”
He didn’t say whatthisreferred to. Fi could only infer: the way he’d purred against her last night, waking up tangled in her bed. She wanted to live in blissful simplicity a little longer, concerned only with how her heart raced when Antal’s claw swirled her hip, not the deeper question of what this meant.
The plan had always been to set things right. Antal back in Thomaskweld. Fi here with Boden. A simple plan, growing blurrier. The line between them, somewhere buried in snow.
His claw circled her stomach, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. “It doesn’t matter. I stopped caring what my father thinks of me long ago.”
“Sure.” Fi traced the tattoos down her arm, focusing on her own dahlias and bellflowers so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “Except parents… you always care alittleabout what they think. Right?”
Antal’s hand slowed. Not a push, but an obvious question.
“My father tried to give me to Verne,” Fi said. “And I still…”
She still wished she could speak to him one last time. That he could forgive her.
Where didthatcome from? When had Fi’s barbs abandoned her? She didn’t know where the line lay between her and Antal, but she wanted to give him something. She wanted him to know she understood.
“After I nearly died,” she said, “when I told my father I could see Curtains, I’d never seen him so grim. Then… so hopeful. He said when I got older, Verne would want me. Voidwalkers make prized Arbiters for daeyari.”
Antal huffed. He’d known she was a Voidwalker soon after they met, yet he’d never used that as the reason she was useful. He’d been more interested in… her.
“Everyone in town told me I should be honored.” Fi frowned, recalling their condescending smiles, the way they talked over her qualms like pine needles swept beneath a porch. “But I was afraid. I knew I wouldn’t be good enough, that Verne wouldn’t spare me. My father was afraid, too. He still handed me over when the time came.”
She had nowhere to hide from the scrutiny of Antal’s eyes. Already, she lay naked beside him, yet baring herself like this felt more raw.
“Did you ever forgive him?” Antal asked.
“Forgive him? I’m the one who ran away. I didn’t even say goodbye. Not to him. Or Boden. Or Astrid.”
“You didn’t want to go to Verne,” he said, too calm.
“I should have been ready!” Fi flashed her teeth, a daeyari gesture, but it suited her needs. “Our father put everything we had into making me an Arbiter. Said I needed to learn swordplay, but he couldn’t afford lessons, bartered a couple of useless sessions by making me and Boden scrub the blacksmith’s floors. Made us listen to his stories every night as if they were sage wisdom.” Her voice cracked. “He couldn’t scrounge enough energy chips to keep our furnace going some nights, but always enough to buy liquor, to slump into a chair and tell us how much better things would be if our mother was still there. But we could have been a family without her. We could have been…something… if he’d let us…”
Fi had clung to these words so long, moldy and wretched. She clung to Antal now, her fingers so tight in his hair that it must hurt, but he didn’t flinch. Why was she telling him this? Because he’d told her about himself, a fair trade?
No. More than that. Because he looked at her like he understood, too.
“And then I ran,” she said, quieter. Smaller. “I thought I’d work up the courage to go back one day, but a few years later… he was gone. Boden’s the only family I have left.” She huffed. “Now here I am. Still a coward.”
Antal’s laugh made her flinch.
It came so sudden, so deep, echoing in her rafters and muffled against her bedsheets.
Fi drew herself up onto defensive elbows. “What?”
“You, a coward? Don’t be ridiculous, Fionamara.”
His flippant tone dispelled some tension, the cobwebs of old memories. Fi kept on guard.
“I ran away.”
“One moment of self-preservation. What about everything after? Since we met, I’ve seen not a scrap of cowardice. A coward wouldn’t have stood her ground against me. A coward wouldn’t seek revenge against an immortal who could rip her to pieces.” His smirk sharpened, a wicked look that raked the length of her body and left a shiver in its wake. “A coward wouldn’t have had so manydemandslast night.”
Fi slumped to the bed, feigning annoyance. Pretending his praise didn’t stir her heart.
