Page 111 of Sunsplitter

“Relax,” Syvr said. “Avroz has gone to report Jazst’s death to the council.”

“Jazst… isdead?” Antal snapped a look to Fionamara.

“Hey, there was a lotto catch up on,” she said. “We’d have gotten there eventually!”

Antal hadn’t seen Jazst during the fight. He’d assumed the coward was hiding, but no, so much worse. A daeyari dead. And Fionamara had been alone in that house with an aedari.

Then alone with Avroz.

Though, Syvr must have been there, also? They studied Fionamara with curious eyes, dissecting like a knife.

“What you did down there,” Syvr said, “when you disappeared. That was more than Shardwalking?”

Fionamara tipped her chin up. “I can Voidwalk.”

She hadn’t held back. Antal was proud of her and mortified in equal measure.

Ixli went steel straight. “She can dowhat?”

“And you healed yourself?” Syvr eyed her stomach.

“With Void ether,” Fionamara said.

Syvr arched a brow, ravenous with intrigue.

By contrast, their look to Antal was evisceratingly soft. Their words, too low. “You love her?”

Too much for a simple answer. Too desperately to bear the thought of what might have happened today, what end Antal could have led her to. He looked to Fionamara, drinking in her ferocity and ire in equal measure.

“Yes,” he said, to spare them all the time.

“Oh, little daeyari,” Syvr sighed, not unkindly. “You’ve always had too soft a heart for those claws. Avroz never told us what happened. Not the full story, at least.”

Ixli tore her stunned scowl off Fionamara, a hesitant tail flick for Antal. “Avroz said you were…fooling aroundwith a human. Avoiding your responsibilities.”

Antal knew the story. “And you believed him. You never visited.”

“He told us to stay away from you!” Ixli said.

“And you listened?” Antal was shouting again. Where had her tenderness gone?

“Back then? I didn’t know any better. Avroz had me traveling constantly. Hardly a chance to see you. He made sure I was gone the day you left.”

“And you know better now?”

“Why do you think there’s no gold on my antlers?”

Ixli silenced Antal with her vitriol, pointing a claw to her still-black antlers.

“Once I have my bands?” she said. “I could teach at any academy. I could run a territory. I became Avroz’s kezri for his connections. But once I’m a Sunsplitter? I won’t need him anymore, and he knows it.That’swhy he hasn’t sent me on a hunt.”

Ixli struck a hand to her chest.

Antal flinched at the impact. “I… didn’t realize…”

“I’m not an idiot, Antal. I know how scheming Avroz can be. It took me a while, but I figured it out. But I never realized he’d go so far as to…ugh, Syvr, did you know?”

Syvr listened in silence, tail swaying.