“I’d have preferred to settle this amicably,” Verne said, her tone anything but.
Another growl joined the groaning wind. The sound shuddered through Fi, a memory of crumbling walls and dust-choked lungs. Of blood spilled over stone.
“If you refuse to abdicate,” Verne announced. “Then by the edicts of the Daey Celva, I deem you unfit. Iclaimyour territory.” Her voice lowered, slicing over teeth. “And if you won’t step down of your own volition, I will make you do it.”
Outside, claws scraped the walls of the chateau.
Fi remembered that sound. Remembered what came after.
Antal looked equally horrified. He scented the air, shuddering as he backed away from Verne.
A monstrous form dropped to the patio, landing with a screech of claws on tile.
The creature gathered itself in a hunch of tail and sickly pale skin, more a Beast than any other in the room, as much a nightmare as it had been in Thomaskweld. Just aswrong, the way its pantherine limbs bent at sharp angles. Twilight glinted off gnarled antlers, pooled shadows in the skeletal lines of its horse head. Another growl rumbled its throat, pupil-less red irises latching to prey, saliva thick on its teeth.
Fi froze, not daring to run. Not daring to take her gaze off the creature she’d half hoped was a nightmare.
“Veshri vavrae,” Antal breathed. “Verne. What have you done?”
Thatwas his best response to a fucking antlered-horse-panther dropping out of the sky?
Fi braced for the Beast to lunge. Energy leached from her arm and warmed her fingertips, hopefully enough for a shield. The creature came at the door in a single lurch, lean muscle shifting beneath its hide.
Then it bowed its head, heeling like a dog beside Verne. When the Beast tilted a blank red eye at her, she stroked a hand down its skeletal snout.
Fi made a sound she’d never recalled uttering in all her mortal life, some squeak between shock and outrage.
But Antal—his reaction was visceral. A hiss through fangs and breath visibly shallow.
“Have you ever seen one in person?” Verne cooed, hand resting upon the abomination’s muzzle. “Or did your travel years not take you far enough from the Twilit Plane? They’re not uncommon, out in the fiercer parts of the Planeverse.”
“Where it’ssupposedto be.” Was that a crack in Antal’s voice?
Graciously, Fi granted him this one. She’d seen this abomination rip humans to pieces, yet, somehow, Verne had it on a leash?
“Daeyari are meant to wander, as Veshri did,” Verne said. “Yet those of you from the Twilit Plane? Too rooted. Now you venture here, a child whose antlers have barely curled, one mere Plane cluster away from home. And you think you know enough to rule a territory?”
“It doesn’t belong here. Much less as a pet.”
“A pet?” Verne sneered. “Of course not. They can be feral, yet still intelligent. Amenable, even, given proper incentive.” Her palm shifted calmly to the Beast’s shoulder.
Not just calm. Verne was in control, leading every step of this duel. Fi realized too late: this wasn’t a negotiation.
This was an ultimatum. And Fi was caught between two immortals.
She had no sword. No energy capsules. Not even a damn coat. Panic soured her stomach—the instincts of a hare caught in a den of carnivores. She backed toward the door.
Only to find Astrid blocking her path. While the daeyari seemed to have forgotten about the lowly mortals in their midst, Verne’s Arbiter paced the foyer. Fi had known those ruby eyes for half her life, had seen a hundred emotions spark across them.
Never hatred. Not until now. Fi tried to keep her spine straight, tried to bristle back.
Except she knew, in her hollow core: she deserved every speck of Astrid’s ire.
“This is long overdue” Verne leveled at Antal. “My humans flee to you, children playing to the more spineless parent. But we know what mortals do when not dealt a strict hand. Petty things, too quick to forget what soft flesh they’re made of.”
Antal flexed his claws, glaring at her, at the Beast to her side. “Then guide your territory as you see fit. I won’t—”
“Did you see how easily they turned against you?” Verne snapped. “Even your loyal attendants, uncaring for how kind you’d been, crawling to my hand for a meager promise of power. Their lives are short. They only value immediate gains. And you’ve proven unfit to keep yours in line.”
