Static prickled her tongue.
The daeyari struck her back.
Fi hit the ground. Stone scraped her arms as she twisted to Shape a shield, but when that failed, she resorted to kicking. A woefully ineffective strategy. Gone was any gentleness the immortal had shown at his shrine. His weight pinned her down like a lame hare. Claws raked her skull as he pressed her head against the ground, cheek crunching gravel.
A stupid plan, in retrospect. The Void was more this creature’s home than any forest. He hunched over her, resolute from claws to tail as Fi shook with ragged breaths beneath him. He smelled of blood. A red smear marred his cheek, and when heextended a long black tongue to lick it clean, some frantic part of Fi threatened to laugh. A strange relief, knowing he probably wasn’t hungry anymore.
Or maybe it was the cruel irony of dying by daeyari teeth after all this time. After all the lives she’d ruined through her cowardice.
He glanced at the starless sky. The black of the Void had never seemed so depthless as it did now, contrasted against his eyes.
“You can see Curtains,” he said. “How convenient.”
At the moment, that hardly seemed the case.
Fi gasped as a current of energy pushed into her temple. Not sharp. A dull creep of heat flooded her skull, clouding already muddied thoughts, the same as he’d done to Milana.
“What part did you play in this?” The daeyari’s question brushed her ear, cold as ice.
“I smuggled a bomb into the Capitol.”
The words escaped without Fi’s permission. Panic followed, a distant flutter in her chest as she drifted beneath the daeyari’s magic. She couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t lie.
“Why?” he pressed.
“They… hired me…” Her words fell to mumbles. The lull of his touch, the remnants of twilight sorel combined to make her eyes heavy. Sleep sounded blissful. A quiet nap beneath the Void…
“Speak, human.”
“I think… I might have a concussion,” Fi slurred.
The daeyari gave an aggravated huff.
His energy severed. Clarity snapped back like a slap to the face, the bite of cold on Fi’s arms and stones digging into her cheek. The daeyari pressed harder against her head, urging her with claws rather than magic.
Claws were pretty damn convincing.
“I’ve heard Milana’s side,” he said. “Now, I’ll have yours.”
Fi was supposed to be good at this: haggling, standing her ground, wearing that confounding cape of confidence. All useless now, when she couldn’t piece together a single reasonable argument to stop this daeyari from splitting her open.
“I didn’t know their plan,” she said. The truth, but a flimsy excuse.
“You smuggled a bomb for them.”
“They told me they were stealing a vase!” Fi wasn’t normally one to beg. This seemed a fine time to try—not that it did Milana any good. “Please. I never meant to cross you. You’ve caught the ones who did.”
Fi’s heart thundered hard enough to chisel the stone beneath her. She assumed the daeyari sensed it, that his long silence was intended to strain the muscle to its breaking point. He leaned closer, knee digging into her back, breath raising the hairs on her neck.
“Our business isn’t finished, mortal. I honored your request. You owe me payment.”
The demand settled over Fi like a noose of thorns.
She’d asked the daeyari to kill Milana and Erik. He’d ripped them to pieces. For centuries since the pact, their races had agreed upon the price for such an exchange.
“You already have plenty to eat!” She hoped. Shebegged.
“There are other ways to pay a debt.”
