Antal pressed a palm to his ruined eye socket, trembling, breaths hissed, a creature in exquisite agony. Red energy sizzled at his touch, the smell wretched with ozone and burnt flesh. Every inch of him tensed. Shuddered. With a labored exhale, he hunched over the bathwater, hand slumping away from his face.
Revealing a reconstructed eye, where a gaping hole had been. Talk about a wicked party trick—suffering aside. No human flesh could regenerate like this.
He squinted, blinking as black blood caked his lashes.
Someone should clean him up. As Antal had to focus on literally putting himself together… Fi grabbed a puffy face towel, dipped it in water, then raised it to his gore-spattered shoulder.
Antal snatched her wrist a second time, pinning her arm against the tub. His growl spiked that instinctive fear in her belly.
Then, Fi wasso veryover it.
“Will you calm your cranky teeth? I’m trying to help!”
Antal bared his fangs. Fi didn’t budge. She had no time for this nonsense while he bled all over her house with a third of his Void-damned throat missing.
She set to work, Antal’s claws still threatening on her arm, but not stopping her. She’d met house cats less dramatic. Fi didtryto be gentle as she dabbed the cloth around the rent sinew of his neck, not enjoying his wince.
Softer, she wiped blood off the tapered edge of his ear. A careful brush over his cheek, along the tense line of his jaw. He had haironlyatop his head. Not a speck of stubble, more smooth planes across his chest. Fi dared not pry any lower, though damn if she wasn’t curious.
“If you’d died,” she said, “would you turn into one of those beasts?”
A red current ran up Antal’s neck, closing a section of flesh. He swallowed, the motion labored. “Not for decades. Centuries. Some take longer to return than others.”
“But they always come back… different?”
“It varies. Some derived daeyari return immediately as beasts. Some hold themselves together better, only a few features lost. But each iteration becomes more animalistic. Verne’s Beast has probably been through multiple rematerializations. A fate worse than death.”
Yet he’d risked his life by staying here in opposition to Verne. By confronting Tyvo.
By saving Fi.
He blinked again, his repaired eye half open against a crust of blood.
“Hold still,” Fi said. “Let me…”
She cupped Antal’s chin and raised the cloth to his face. When he refrained from biting any fingers off, Fi mustered her courage, leaning closer for a feather-soft wipe of the daeyari’s eye. Wary, at first. She didn’t know what to expect of immortal healing, whether the wound would be tender, but beneath the grime, his features seemed fully repaired.
His skin wasn’t steel, like the folktales said. Not stone or ice. Beneath the press of Fi’s fingers, this man-eating beast was alarmingly… soft, his eyelids pale, cheeks flushed with energy instead of blood. The daeyari were mortal, once. Chiseled anew by the Void. Just not as sharp as she’d expected, up close.
Antal’s fresh eye snapped open, pinning her with black sclera and a dim red iris.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked, low.
His exhale feathered her wrist. Fi scowled and focused on her work. “Tyvo would have eaten me. You stopped him.”
“He would have killed me,” Antal returned. “You stopped him.”
Fi scoffed. “You were my only way out of there. Of course I had to save you. Butyou. You could have left. Why didn’t you?”
A pause. Fi didn’t notice she was holding her breath until her chest began to ache.
“Would you have left me?” Antal asked, too quiet.
Yes. No. Fi didn’t know anymore. She scrubbed a stubborn crust of blood on his jaw. “It’s the least I could do. After all the trouble I’ve caused.”
Antal’s claws loosened on her arm, gripping with softer finger pads. “This isn’t your fault, Fionamara.”
“But you said—”
