A strange smell wrinkled her nose. As Fi gathered her senses, she startled at the claw marks shredding Antal’s shirt, his Void-black blood drenching the fabric—she’d never seen daeyari bleed, but that explained their grayscale complexion, no rosy hue like humans. Her cheek pressed a surprisingly warm chest. Shefeltenergy simmering beneath his immortal skin, as restless as his heaving sternum.
Around them, the silence of the forest returned.
“You promised I’d be safe,” Fi said.
Antal lay silent a long moment, gaze molten on the mortal hands clutching his antlers. His chest rose and fell at anindignant tempo beneath her, tail swishing the snow.
“I misjudged,” he said.
“Noshit. What just happened?”
“It would seem I’ve been deposed.”
An infuriatingly mild way to put it. Verne had orchestrated the Thomaskweld attack to overthrow him? Had a Beast at her command strong enough to fight a daeyari? In all Fi’s years of benefitting from this lax territory lord, she’d never considered how his immortal neighbors viewed his policies.
And Astrid helped make this happen. That parting look was seared onto Fi’s retinas, the kind of gut-twisting vision to keep her up at night. She should have seen it coming. She’d run away, abandoned Astrid with Verne.
Was it any surprise to find her friend had turned equally vicious?
Now, here was Fi, stuck in the middle of Void-knew-where with a daeyari.
She shifted her grip on his antlers. The lacquer black was slick beneath her fingers, roughened by carvings.
“You’re supposed toprotectthis territory from other daeyari,” Fi accused. Whether lax or strict, all daeyari territories demanded the same human sacrifices for their services. “So what are you going to—”
She yelped as Antal tried to buck her off. Fi barely held on as he flipped her sideways, rocks and snow digging into her shoulders. Sheheld on, even as the livid daeyari pinned her back against the ground, her legs locked around his hips, hands achingly tight on his antlers.
“Release me,” he hissed through clamped teeth.
Pine and ozone filled Fi’s lungs as the daeyari mantled over her, a cage of lean muscle, iron-taut forearms bracing her head and black claws splayed against the ground. Fangs bared aboveher throat. Any one of those weapons could dislodge her, if he used them.
But he didn’t.
“Take me home,” Fi countered. Never squander a chance to negotiate a better price. She had no idea if the same bartering tricks worked with immortals, but they were all she knew.
Antal’s eyes flared with fury. “You have thegallto ask another favor of me?”
Gallseemed a misleading word. Fi had been a coward since she’d abandoned Astrid, ran away from home, let her father wither in their old house without ever returning to say goodbye. But she could act tough for difficult clients.
“You can’t leave me here in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “Take me home.”
“You’ve no place givingmeorders.”
“Take me home. Then we never have to see each other again.”
“I could flay you alive!”
“Do it, then!”
They both fell silent. Antal stared at her, eyes wide with depthless black, back to his unnatural stillness. Daeyari were supposed to be sly. Vicious. Shadows who could rip a mortal throat out before their prey had time to gasp. Antalcouldkill her in a single snap of teeth.
But Fi had helped him escape Verne. He had no one else on his side.
Abluff? This, she could work with.
“That’s what I thought.” Fi fought the quiver in her voice, trying to bluff past her own racing heart. “Take me home.”
Antal gritted his canines. “Release me. And I’ll consider it.”
