Fi bit her Void-damned tongue. She couldn’t. Sheshouldn’t.
“Come inside,” she blurted.
The daeyari cast her a barbed look. “What?”
“Come inside. I have a bath. As long as you’re still here… you might as well use it.”
His tail flicked like a panther appraising a trap—or calculating how fast his prey could flee. Fi hoped for the former as the daeyari climbed out of the creek, frigid water dripping down his bare torso, ice-drenched trousers molded to his thighs.
This was a stupid idea. A reckless idea. Fi’s thoughts blared chastisement as the daeyari trailed her, wary, back to her cottage. She held the door open as he stalked across the porch.
He paused on the threshold, scowling at every detail from floor to rafters—at Fi, keeping her distance, as she would for any feral animal that stumbled through her door. He padded inside on the balls of his feet, that inhuman rise to his ankle, soundless as a cat.
Maybe she could still salvage this. Maybe a show of hospitality would urge the beast on his way—since ignoring him hadn’t worked. Fi touched the heater beside the tub, Shaping energy out of the capsule in her pocket instead of tired muscle, warming the water cistern until it came out of the tap steaming. She guessed the pomegranate bubble bath on the shelf would push her luck.
Fi sidled to her kitchen, facing away to offer privacy. A stagnant moment passed before she heard the whisper of fabric hitting the floor. The lap of water in the tub.
A sigh of appeasement.
A stupid idea. What choice did Fi have? She steadied her elbows against the counter. Eyed the knife hilts in the kitchen block.No.That would be even stupider.
“You shouldn’t turn your back on a daeyari,” came a low voice behind her.
What a fucking prick.
Fi faced him, leant against the counter, pushing every inch of space between them. They’d confronted Verne together out of convenience. That didn’t mean she could trust this lethal creature.
“You’d rather look someone in the eye while peeling their skin off?” she returned, honey-sharp.
Antal reclined in the tub, arms draping the edges, claws strumming cedar.
“You have some sharp teeth of your own,” he muttered.
Hard to say, whether his tone was insult or compliment.
He returned to untangling his hair, easier amidst swaths of steam. For a creature of ice and emptiness, he sank into the heat with surprising relish. Fi would have preferred he stay rigid. The way his shoulders unknotted, the stream of his fingers through water-slick hair felt too intimate for the space they’d been forced to share.
She busied herself with the herbs on her counter, touching the charging panel to light the growing lamp, enough energy to last the day. Her furnace had greater demands. She popped the energy capsule into a slot. A clamping pin completed the circuit, sending a warming current through metal coils.
As she worked, Fi kept the daeyari in sight.
His eyes glowed calmer now, irises dimmed to old-coal crimson. His ears pulled to a slight taper. The carvings on his antlers stood out in lighter blues and greens than the surfaceblack, depictions of flowers and auroras and strange sigils divided into three bands. Beyond those anomalies? The rest of him looked chillingly like a normal man, from the lean slope of his shoulders to the soft curves of his cheeks.
Fi resisted the urge to peek at whatotherways he resembled a man. Obviously, daeyari had cocks. They did when they’d been flesh and blood, or else there’d be no vavriter. They did still, after returning from the Void in their immortal forms. Her father avoided tellingthosekinds of stories, though even as Fi grew, tales of tangled mortals and immortals circulated as rumors at best. She had to wonder how many survived the teeth.
“Why didn’t you barge in here last night?” Fi asked when she could bear the quiet no longer. She made sure to sound stern. No hint of the dread she’d stomached on his behalf.
“Had I done so, would you have treated me this amicably?” Antal picked at his claws. “Cast me as a beast all you wish. I’ve walked the Planes for two and a half centuries, enough to guess when patience will be more effective than pressure.”
Fi didn’t like that. Not one bit.
“And,” Antal said, lower, “I wanted to make sure Verne didn’t find you here.”
Fi liked that evenless. Making her sound more indebted to him, as if he cared whether she was ripped to pieces in the night. “What more do you want from me?”
“I want to know what part you played in this.”
“Itoldyou. Milana hired me. I didn’t know the plan.”
