They emerged from the teleport in a flail of limbs and snow.
Fi collapsed to the frozen ground, breathless and disorientated by whatever cold black sorcery immortals used to blink from one spot to another, vaguely aware of Antal sprawled nearby. Her arm throbbed where Astrid’s sword had struck.
The forest lay silent. Fi’s ears rang at the calm, the absence of snarls and crackling energy. For a long moment, she held still. Listened past whispering shiverpine needles for any signs of Verne. That Beast. Astrid.
Nothing followed them. A clean escape had never felt so hollow.
Fi curled into a ball in the snow. As adrenaline ebbed and the cold sank in, her breaths stayed shallow.
Astrid.
She’d left Astrid behind again.
Fi had spent ten years trying to forget that day. That harrowing walk to Verne’s forest shrine. That panic that stopped her from thinking straight. That moment when her cowardice betrayed not only her.
“I changed my mind!” she’d shouted. “I don’t want to go. Take someone else!”
She hadn’twantedVerne’s attendants to take Astrid in herplace.
But they did.
Astrid wasn’t a Voidwalker, but vavriter were equally prized as Arbiters by their immortal kin. And the best crossbow shot in town? Astrid was fiercer. Braver. Longer lived than a human. Far more likely to survive the encounter. She’d marched to Verne’s shrine with all the courage Fi lacked. And she wasn’t eaten. Verne had accepted her as Arbiter, earning Astrid the gratitude of their town. The power of a daeyari at her back.
But Fi couldn’t have known that would be the outcome. Not for sure.
The guilt had eaten her raw, until all she could do was run.
She ran away before she could tell Astrid she was sorry.
Fi had always meant to go back, once she was less broken. Then a year passed. Then two. Then five. Until no amount of “sorry” would ever be good enough.
Ten years later, Fi didn’t want to be that flimsy girl who ran away. Shewantedto be fierce. Shewantedto be unflinching. A decade as a Void smuggler had made her very good at pretending. A defense mechanism, masquerading as courage.
And Fi wasn’t safe yet.
Beside her, Antal shifted in the snow.
She forced herself to sit upright. Pulled on her bristles, bottling every insecurity where they’d fermented for ten years, burning a hole in her stomach. Fi couldn’t afford a slip of weakness with a predator nearby. She couldn’t wallow in this cold. Void be damned, how much longer would she have to limp by without proper clothing?
Fi mustered a silver energy current to warm her hands, rubbing them for good measure, idle motions to keep her fingers busy until they stopped trembling. Conifers loomed overhead, night sky beyond, a flicker of green aurora through darkneedles. No landmarks. This could be any forest on the Winter Plane.
Fi’s pulse picked up again. This could beanyforest on the Winter Plane. No telling where Antal had brought them, whether she could find a Curtain home before freezing in a ravine. Beside her, the daeyari rose into a crouch, eyes like late-night embers as he surveyed their surroundings.
He tensed, subtle.
“Don’t you dare!” Fi shouted.
She tackled him before he could teleport. He snarled as they hit the ground, a writhe of muscle and lashing tail. In what might prove to be Fi’s stupidest decision to date, she held on.
“Let go of me!” Antal said.
“No! You can’t leave me here!”
Fi locked her legs around his waist. After failing to find handholds on shoulders or arms, she grabbed the base of his antlers. He rolled like a crocodile thrashing snow, knocking the wind from Fi’s chest, but she flattened against him and held on for dear life.
Antal came to rest on his back, panting.
Fi lay atop him, breaths equally hard.
