Fi had to take a chance. Certain death with Verne, versus a possibility of escape.
“Tell me where Antal is!” Verne loomed over her, blood painting her mouth, no mercy in her Void-and-scarlet eyes. “Or I’ll show you what your insides look like—”
Fi drew a current into her fingertips and slashed the air.
Verne’s eyes widened as the gossamer of a new Curtain rippled behind Fi’s hand.
She could do this. There would be a Shard on the other side. Fi would hit the ground running, find another Curtain or keep cutting, flee until the daeyari lost her trail.
She’d made her life as a Voidwalker, stepping fearless into the unknown.
It wouldn’t fail her now.
Fi swallowed her terror and pushed through the Curtain.
Straight into black.
Everywhere, black.
Black, and thethud thud thudof Fi’s heart.
Fuck.
41
Just a girl, no horse, and the endless Void
Fi saw no stars. No sky.
No rocky Shard landscape, nor sigh of shiverpines. An odd light fell upon her, dim like moonlight but without a source, barely enough to see her own outline. She flexed her fingers, relieved to find them intact. Beyond her body she saw nothing but black. And she was…
Floating.
Fi floated on weightless limbs, hair drifting around her face and nothing solid beneath her boots, as if she’d plunged into a dark ocean.
A cold dread curled through her marrow. She’d made her life as a Voidwalker, traversing Shards and Bridges like a second home beyond her Plane, always with the black of the Void looming overhead. She’d walked the edges of solid ground, had stood on the lip of reality and gazed into the nothingness beyond.
But what had Antal told her once? She wasn’t arealVoidwalker, if she couldn’t traverse the Void itself?
There was no Shard waiting on the other side of the Curtain she’d cut.
In her desperation to escape, she’d stepped off the Winter Plane and into the abyss.
Fi gulped a breath, but found no air. She flailed, that taste ofVoid emptiness sharp on her tongue. Was suffocating to death any better than being eaten alive by Verne?
Yet lightheadedness never came. No fire in her fighting lungs. Fi couldn’t breathe, but… for the moment, she didn’t seem to need air. Her entire body hung in stasis. Compressed. Cold and creaking at the joints. She’d never heard anyone describe how the Voidfelt.
She’d never heard of any human surviving a fall into it.
The plus side: no Verne. Either the daeyari couldn’t follow here, or wasn’t stupid enough to try. Antal had spoken like even immortals were hesitant to step fully into the Void, after escaping it millennia ago. Fi craned her neck to view the hideous bite on her shoulder. The throbbing had stopped, as if that, too, was frozen in time. Her heart thudded slower with each beat. That might not be a good sign. One life-threatening danger traded for another.
No need to panic. Just relax. Breathe—metaphorically.
Shards peppered the Void. Fi only had to find one and drag herself out.
How was she supposed to findanything, within an endless liminal space?
Ignoring that metaphysical headache for a moment, she tried to move, as a starting point. She floated, but unlike water, there was no mass to paddle against, no ground to push off. Fi thrashed in place, but couldn’t tell if she was moving in any direction.
