The black was more familiar now.
So was the stasis, cold pressure creaking Fi’s joints as she floated, weightless.
Still terrifying, to feel the nothingness around her. No air to draw into her lungs.
She wondered if time flowed differently in the Void, the same way distance could bend on Shards. She hoped so. Antal was fighting alone. Last time he’d faced Verne on his own, she’d scraped the floor with him. Fi had to get there, had to help him.
Veshri!
She shouted the name of the first immortal in her mind, willing it to echo through every corner of the Void.
Veshri! Can you hear me?
What had summoned him before? Her panic? Her desperation? This time, she reached out with bristled resolve.
Veshri! You cryptic ass! I need you!
No shiver ran down her neck. No spark of static.
Only black.
Of course, nothing could be so easy. Fi had been stupendously lucky when the wandering daeyari paid her any attention the first time, too much to ask for a second salvation.
She hadn’t charged into the maw of liminal space just to gamble on the whims of a fickle immortal. Antal needed her.
In cataloging her last journey through the Void, one detail stoked Fi’s confidence. Veshri had come to her call. He’d drifted circles around her, had grasped her hand and woven solid ground out of nothing beneath her feet.
Then, he’d made her think of where she wanted to be.
Veshri comes to those who seek knowledge, Antal had told her.
Surely, the esteemed first immortal could have pulled Fi out of the Void himself. Instead, he’d made her do it on her own. She just had to remember how.
Fi closed her eyes. No sound around her, but it took a moment to focus past the weight of that silence, the drag of black nothingness against her joints. She thought of Antal and Verne tangled in a writhe of claws, what he’d risked to stay and fight his usurper alongside a band of humans. Not a detailed anchor. Motivation, rather than method.
More specific.
Fi pictured Verne’s reception room, how the black stone raked a chill down her spine. She pictured the firepit down the center, logs aglow with red energy rather than flame.
Antal had saved her life. And she’d saved his. More than a trade of debts—a partnership. She couldn’t fail him now.
She pictured half-moon windows overlooking a valley, views of conifers and a silver lake. She felt frigid air. Smelled that snap of ozone.
Her lungs ached without breath. Her fingertips sizzled, a pulse of cold.
She pictured rafters carved with folktale beasts and glowing eyes. Marble tiles beneath her boots. A crack in the stone, one she’d noted when Astrid threw her to the ground.
Cold brushed her skin and wound through her ribs, tangled in the enamel of her teeth.
Then, Fi was falling.
She plummeted through nothing, a roar of blood in her ears and no air to gasp. Terror and thrill raced through her as she tumbled through the endless space between realities.
Her first brush with the Void was a misstep on a frozen riverbank.
Her second, dumb luck.
The third made her a Voidwalker—arealone. Antal could never claim otherwise.
