Page 108 of Sunsplitter

Impossible. Avroz never betrayed such compromising emotion.

“How?” Avroz said at last, barely a hiss.

Fionamara spat at his feet.

She turned her back to him. The greatest insult to a predator, declaring how little his claws intimidated her. Even then, Avroz only stared.

This woman was a menace. An impossibility. Antal’s doom, in fierce dark eyes.

“Antal.” She held out her hand. “Might we have a word? In private.”

Antal had no space to argue. He grasped her hand, eager to be away, not trusting Avroz and his apparent bafflement.

A teleport brought them to the ridgeline, back where this ill-fated venture began.

Fionamara moved stiffer than she had in front of the other daeyari. Gingerly, she sat on the loamy ground. Antal should have known better. A show of bravado, that brave face of hers—but at least she was alive. He knelt at her side.

She smelled… odd.

Antal wrinkled his nose. There was reassurance in her fiery scent, the sweet of her hair, but beneath it… cold. Sharp. More than usual.

“What happened?” he asked.

“So. I got into a little bit of an argument with your father.”

She was actively murdering him, dagger in hand, plunging it through his ribs with slicing nonchalance. “A little?”

“I threatened to kill him. He did the same.” She puffed a strand of hair off her cheek.

“Heput his claws in you,” Antal growled. “But where…”

There were no claw marks. Shredded fabric, blood crusted alarmingly thick to the cloth—but no wounds underneath.

“Bear with me,” Fionamara said. “Still wrapping my head around the bullshit myself.”

She unfastened the front of her bodysuit, teasing pale clavicle, the round edges of her breasts. If she was trying to distract him at a time like this—

“You know how daeyari are made of Void ether?” Fionamara said.

“Yes…”

“Well, I think I am, too. A little bit.”

Antal blinked at her. “What in the endless Void does that mean?”

He fell silent when she bared her stomach. Utterly still, at the sight of pale skin, the floral tattoo up her hip—and ten claw marks.Fully healed. The scars were starkly white, bereft of the rosy pigment that flushed the rest of her.

“Oh,” Fionamara breathed, staring at her stomach. “That’s unsettling. It will probably seem cool eventually, right? After a few drinks maybe?”

Antal could only stare. His mouth parted, that odd new scent of her resting cool on his tongue, the crisp of the Void. Stronger than the hint she’d always carried.

“What did you do?” he asked in a hush.

“I fixed myself,” she said. “With Void ether.”

Impossible. Humans couldn’t weave Void ether, much less bind it to their Plane-made bodies. Yet when Antal leaned for a closer sniff, she smelled like Void ether.

He licked her, one long stroke from hip to hip. Fionamara gasped and swatted him. He drew back, testing his tongue.