Page 120 of Sunsplitter

Then he cracked.

Antal pulled her against him, face buried in her neck. This vicious predator, fracturing in her arms. Fi cupped a hand behind his head, soothing fingers through his hair.

“Fionamara, I’m terrified.” He breathed the confession against her throat. “I’m so terrified of losing you. I don’t know what it would do to me to go through that again, if it wasmy faultagain. But I’m afraid. And stretched so thin. And it feels like every decision I make is wrong.”

Fi knew.

Sheknewthat was what this was. Fear. Doubt. The aches of lost love and a neglectful father, all these scars he’d carried in silence for so long. She held him tighter.

“You don’t have to carry all this alone, Antal. You’re trying to balance so many hard things, and I haven’t known how to give you the help you need, because… I’m afraid, too.” Her own confession. So long as they were holding each other. So long as a tear had already escaped down her cheek. “Afraid of not being enough for you.”

Antal pulled back, an incredulous head tilt. Void, how could he look at her like that, after all her shouting?

“Fionamara, I told you—”

“I know you said I’m enough.” She took his cheeks in her hands, and damn it, nowhervoice cracked. “But it doesn’t feel fair. I can’t give you what you deserve. I can’t be a daeyari for you.” She pressed a thumb to his lips when he tried to protest. “I know you love me. But it still bothers me.”

The words seeped out of Fi like blood from a cut, the deepest wound she’d suffered today. Alone in a Winter forest, both of them fully bared, Antal shifted her thumb off his mouth. When he brushed the tear from her cheek, his touch was soft. Apologetic.

“And I can’t be a human for you,” he said. “No matter how many concessions I make, the people of this territory—yourpeople—will always look at me as something other. A predator in their midst. You’ll always have to suffer that distance, that judgment.”

Both of them, afraid. Both trying to be things they never could be, pieces that didn’t fit their molds, rent apart as their worlds collided.

But that couldn’t be how this ended.

“You don’t have to be a human,” Fi said. “You just have to be… you. Both of us. Not just daeyari. Not just human. Something different.”

Not one world or the other, neither one big enough toencompass them both. A new path. One they could forge together.

Antal settled his forehead to hers. “For you, Fionamara? I’ll try. I’ll always try.” His grin was small, fragile. “Though, you don’t make a terrible daeyari.”

She laughed, just as small. Just as fragile. “I’m missing some pieces.”

“I can manage.”

His tail wrapped her ankle. Gentle. Possessive. He’d done this to Fi countless times, and she’d written it off as a curiosity. Then she’d seen him with Yme, Ixli, Syvr, the affectionate way they twined their tails.

Fi couldn’t be a daeyari. She could still bridge the gap.

“Your tail,” she said. “It’s like holding hands? For daeyari?”

Antal hummed. At her ankle, his tail twitched. “Similar enough.”

He fell still when Fi held out her hand.

A wordless moment. Something unreadable as his gaze ticked over her.

Slowly, his tail unwound from her leg. The tip lifted out of the water, settling in her palm, and all of Antal… softened. In a way Fi had never seen before. He pressed his nose to her temple, breath falling out in a long sigh.

Void, it felt strange.

But as Fi stroked her thumb along his tail, he shuddered in a way that made her want to do this for the rest of her life.

“What does it feel like?” she asked.

Antal’s tone came drowsy. Content. “Like…” He brushed a thumb across her hand.

It felt like comfort. Like safety. Fi could be that for him.