Only a suspicious mound of snow in her yard. Two black antlers poking out.
She shrieked as the shape stirred, a small avalanche uncovering pale skin and dark clothes. The daeyari had been coiled like a cat, blanketed by snowfall. He surveyed the clearing with slow blinks, eyes the smolder of old coals.
“The fuck,” Fi said. “Did yousleepout here?”
His slitted gaze snapped onto her. “Where else?”
A shake of antlers freed the final bits of snow, frozen crystals catching on his hair and tumbling down bare forearms. He appeared unphased.
“Butwhy?” Fi groaned, as much to the pitiless Planeverse as to him. He’d dragged her to a rival immortal, had their asses handed to them, barely escaped Verne’s nightmare creature with their lives. What more could he want?
Antal rose with feline grace, all svelte limbs and silent footfalls as he stalked the yard. Onto her porch. Fi backed away, but the hunter yielded no space, pushing until her back struck the wall and ozone teased her nose.
“I told you, Fionamara.” He spoke with the rumble of a storm. Flat ice in moonlight. “Our business isn’t finished. You still owe me a debt.”
Fi held excruciatingly still, wary of bolting like a startledrabbit andverydistracted by fangs lurking behind parted lips. His clean jaw tilted without compromise. He loomed over her like a midwinter chill, the most ageless thing she’d ever faced, the depthless Void framing his eyes and hands curled with claws that could rip her throat out.
“So…” she breathed, “you let me slam a door in your face?”
He huffed, but while Fi’s breath fogged against the morning chill, his left nothing. “Would you prefer I belessgracious?”
She appraised the warning snap of his tail. Despite their harrowing escape the night before, his wounds had healed, pale skin showing through ripped cloth and crusted black blood. That blood had no copper tang. He smelled of… emptiness. A night sky in winter.
Cowering hadn’t gotten Fi anywhere. And for all this daeyari’s honed exterior, he seemed alittleless imposing after watching Verne drag him across the floor.
In their standoff, Antal and Verne had bristled against each other, a contest of power as two daeyari pressed their personal space. Just as Antal pressed Fi’s now. In any Plane, any culture, no strategy gifted a greater edge than speaking the local dialect.
So Fi forced her chin up. She pushedcloser, the space between them dwindling to inches, his ice and ozone scent heady on every inhale.
The daeyari yielded no ground, only a furrow across his brow.
“Graciously,” she said, “you look like shit.”
He growled so deep, Fi assumed the next five seconds would involve her heart ripped from her chest. Claws, teeth—either tool would suit the task.
Instead, he turned away, tail nearly lashing her face as he stepped off the porch.
Fi spent a moment remembering how to breathe. Another, hissing several curses at the Void and the fickle immortals itspawned. Once her thoughts achieved a semblance of collection, she lurched forward, eyeing the daeyari as he crossed the clearing toward the river.
Aisinay waded in the current, silver scales shimmering as she snapped at trout for breakfast. The Void horse perked her ears, greeting the immortal with an intrigued snort. Useless guard horse hadn’t even warned Fi about their lingering visitor. Antal acknowledged the animal with a wary glance.
Fi’s mouth dropped open when he stepped, unflinching, into the water.
Wider still, as he gripped his tattered shirt, yanking it off his shoulders with a wince, fabric unsticking from skin.
The Season-Locked Planes had endless stories of these creatures: how they once stalked humans from shadowed treetops, how easily energy-laced claws sliced mortal arteries. Nothing that made daeyari seem so…tangibleas the sight before her: his scowling mouth, the flush of cold on his cheeks. He undressed to the waist, his shoulders and back all stark lines of lethal muscle, arms taut, a lean form built to pursue and carve. High-waisted trousers framed narrow hips. A belt of fabric buttoned over the root of his tail, long and swaying in the current.
Antal plunged beneath the water then rose with a sigh, nimble fingers sweeping over the shaved sides of his head, combing between antlers to dislodge blood from his longer hair.
Against all better judgment, Fi drifted closer, arms folded in her coat, gaping like a toad.
“Isn’t that…cold?” she asked. In this Plane’s perpetual winter, a single toe in that creek would leave her screaming.
The daeyari cut her a look dry enough to crack bone. Scalding as boiled oil.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
He dragged his shirt through the water then held it up, scowling at the ruined fabric. Clearly, immortal flesh was woven as differently as the stories said, to not succumb to hypothermia. But clearly, he stillnoticedthe cold, if his grumbling was any indicator.
