Maybe that was what he waited for. Fleeing quarry must make for better entertainment.
“Wherever you can step on Plane or Shard, so can I.” He glanced to the open wall, the slice of wind and purple dusk. “Don’t linger in the wind. Your people don’t do well in cold.”
The beast spoke low and measured, his seasonspeak heavy with a Winter accent, though too sharp on several syllables. When he touched the wall, two metal lanterns embedded in stone lit the room in soft twilight blue.
The daeyari approached Fi with prowling strides.
Closer.
Tooclose.
She flinched as he passed, his long tail brushing her calf. A crass intimidation tactic. Fi scowled fierce enough to curdle icicles, baffled as to why he hadn’t butchered her yet.
The windwascold. Giving her host a wide berth, Fi retreated across a rug depicting a moonlit forest in black and silver, into a sheltered sitting area. Blue floor cushions circled a low table. A cabinet sat against the wall, topped by the shine of a… gramophone? Far be it from Fi to wonder what a monster did in his free time.
The daeyari stepped to the “window,” perched light upon the lip of rock, like a hawk in his eyrie. He was dressed simpler than before: no silver tips to his antlers, no embroidered jacket, just trousers and a dark shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbow despite the cold. Wind tousled the longer hair between his antlers into shards of blue-black.
“What’s your name?” he asked without looking at her.
Oh no. Fi didn’t likethisone bit. She searched the room for any exits she’d missed. As far as she could see, she was blocked by rock on three sides and a daeyari on the fourth.
When she didn’t answer, he turned on her with a skin-peeling glare.
“Isthiswhat you want to fight me on, human?”
Fi didn’t want to fight. She wanted to be a hundred miles away, never having to think of daeyari again. As that option didn’t currently sit on the table…
“Fionamara.”
His mouth quirked, as if tasting the name. “Do you know what they did,Fionamara?”
Another pressuring tactic. She’d already told him what she knew. “They blew up the capitol building.” She considered. “Yourcapitol building.”
“Not just in Thomaskweld.” He lowered to a growl. “Runeyska. Calvariz. Sunip. Every major city in my territory. Offices destroyed, administrators killed, energy conduits severed.”
No. Fi hadn’t known any of that.
When she was young, her father put her and Boden to sleep with old folktales. In the stories, daeyari were phantom beasts waiting to snatch mortals from the shadows, deviously difficult to fight. Skin like steel. Fast as a blink. Impossible to kill by mortal means, and any human foolish enough to try typically ended up skinned alive.
As Fi grew, school taught more practical lessons: the boons of energy conduits and cross-Plane trade, facilitated by workingwiththe predators, rather than against them. Centuries without warfare, their immortal overseers settling disputes amongst themselves before tensions escalated.
And quieter: histories of once-a-century rebellions by restless territories, crushed swiftly by their ruling Lord Daeyari, a feast for the creature they sought to unseat.
But aside from those rare, heavy-handed reminders of authority, most daeyari kept distant from their subjects. So long as they were fed, so long as their edicts were followed, they left their human governments to run the territories. If this creature spoke the truth, he’d just lost most of the people loyal to him.
Not many ways to misinterpret that.
“Who would try to overthrow a daeyari?” Fi asked.
“That,” he said, “is what you’re going to help me determine.”
“You want me tohelpyou?”
Fi’s retort came too fast—toosharp, speaking to a carnivorous beast. But brazen was the only shield she knew when her heart beat this fast, her cloak of bristles keeping her upright whenever her gut screamed to run and hide like a useless rabbit.
The carnivorous beast in question narrowed his eyes, two smoldering motes of red framed in Void black. His rolled sleeves displayed the lean lines of his forearms, the black claws at his fingertips.
“Are you arguing with me, Fionamara?”
