Milana’s accomplice, Erik, hurried across the room. He, too, wore silver attendant robes with Void-embroidered sleeves.
The ashen look on his face had Fi reaching into a pocket for her sword hilt.
“We have a problem,” he hissed. “Abigproblem!”
Milana raised a calming hand. “Slow down. What’s happened?”
“Look.”
Across the reflection hall, two glass-paned doors stood open, letting in a creep of cold. Outside lay a courtyard, shade from the building preserving a coat of frost upon stone banisters and pots of winter-blooming azaleas.
And there upon the white-dusted steps…
Stood a fucking daeyari.
5
What. The fuck. Is that?
Across millennia, humans had endless names for the predators that hunted them. Boughstalkers. Nightmares.The beast from the forest, in that old rhyme Fi used to hum when she was a kid.
Then the monsters came down from their trees, offering peace—for a price.
They taught humans to call them by their proper name—daeyari.
His back faced them, antlered silhouette like a slip of shadow in the low light of the courtyard, unmoving aside from the sway of a long, slender tail.
Fi could have screamed. Could have filled that room with curses. She bit her tongue just short of drawing blood, terrified the beast would smell it. Milana promised he wouldn’t be here. But even distance meant less to an immortal, not bound by the same flesh and blood, able to flit across their territories even faster than Fi with her Shards.
It had been so long since she’d seen a daeyari in person.
“What is he doing here?” Panic quivered Milana’s whisper.
“He was gone this morning!” Erik returned. “No warning he’d be returning early.”
“Get rid of him.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”
The daeyari turned, a single eye snapping onto the humans cowering behind him. His irises glowed crimson like midnight coals, the energy inside him seeping out, rimmed by sclera the same depthless black as the Void he’d crawled out of.
Before Fi could bolt, Milana grabbed her wrist, nails digging into flesh.
“Don’t run,” Milana hissed. “Younever runfrom a daeyari.”
Never run from any predator.
Fi willed her legs to hold as the daeyari approached.
There was savage elegance to the creature: lacquer black antlers carved with delicate designs and capped with beaten silver. A midnight jacket of no mortal fashion, high-collared and cut low past his clavicle, far too thin for the cold. Subtle panels of iridescence formed a silhouetted tree line along the hem, an aurora above. Vesper fabric. From the Twilit Plane, the first home of the daeyari, before they spread their claws to the Season-Locked Planes and dozens more beyond. His dark breeches ended at the calf, his ankle raised… higher than mortals. The way a cat walked on its toes, made for predatory silence.
He moved on svelte strides, lithe with muscle, hands and bare feet tipped in claws.
Yet for every otherworldly feature, just as many looked uncannily like a young man. A light blush colored his lips, mouth set in a perturbed line. Blue-black hair swept back, longer strands over his crown, a shaved fade at the sides, antlers marking the line of separation. There was a softness to his pale cheeks that bronze couldn’t capture, a stern jaw that cut fiercer in person. All lures to lull unwitting hares.
“Thank you for fetching me, Erik.” Milana’s voice came out level. She nudged Fi. “I was taking her to light candles. Would you mind?”
While Erik pulled Fi away, Milana folded her hands andbowed to the monster.
