Page 138 of Sunsplitter

She hit the ground like a sack of rocks. A stone split her shin. Loam dug beneath fingernails as she hunched. Gasped. Shivered, as if her insides had been carved out and replaced with permafrost, her energy-starved muscles screaming at her to collapse against the dirt.

But still alive.

Fi sucked in shallow breaths, struggling to think past the stinging skin of her throat. She fought her vision back into focus, blinking at leaves stuck to her palm, decomposing flakes of crimson and orange. An early star glinted in dusk- purpled sky.

She was still on the Autumn Plane. Fi had no idea where.

Which meant she had to stop her damn hands from shaking. She was still alive, which meant she had to fight. She had to get back to Antal. All her focus went into shifting onto her knees, into not screaming at the stab of cold through her muscles.

But when Fi glared up at the aedari, her blood chilled for another reason.

She blinked.

Her vision spun a little—but it was no hallucination. No figment of fractured thoughts struggling to piece themselves together after having energy siphoned out of her like a wineskin.Fi shrank, that prey animal hunch as the immortal glared down on her.

A woman stood beside him. She was taller than Fi by several inches, skin a deeper brown than his tan, dressed in an unassuming cream tunic and sturdy breeches. Black hair was tied back from her face, falling in slick sheets past her shoulders.

Her eyes glowed gold, bright as sunlight.

Fuck Fi in the Void.

There weretwoaedari?

They were arguing. The woman said something in a language Fi didn’t know, the syllables quick and melodic. The man’s energy wings folded against his back as he wiped a hand across his mouth, spattered with glowing silver—Fi’senergy, painting his lips like cheap liquor.

The woman shoved his chest. He rolled his eyes, feathered ears cocked dramatically low, and was Fi maybe hyperventilating a tiny bit? Or was it just her neck, burning like a son of a bitch? Fuck, this wasnothow the plan was supposed to go.

At the farmhouse, that aedari had acted strangely: disguised as a human, wandering the yard. The daeyari had hoped to catch the immortal while it slept.

Maybe they had—foundoneof the aedari asleep. The other, a damned lookout.

Fi was definitely hyperventilating. She couldn’t fight asingleaedari alone, especially not with her muscles like chilled pudding.

The woman’s golden eyes snapped onto her.

Fi looked to her sword hilt, on the ground, several impossible feet away.

She lunged anyway, snarling when the woman grabbed her arm. Her fingers were slender, skin hot as sun-baked stone. When Fi swiped nails for her pretty golden eyes, the aedarireeled back and shouted something in that strange language.

She smacked her palm against Fi’s hand. Something tingled.

“Stop fighting!” the aedari commanded.

Fi froze, lips curled in a panting snarl, stunned that she’d… understood?

“Sit still.” The aedari’s feathered ears lowered like an angry cockatiel, grip tight on Fi’s wrist. “Or I’llmakeyou sit still.”

How did Fi understand? The words sounded strange, an accent she’d never heard, but more than that, something fuzzy that her brain couldn’t process. Her hand itched. When she looked down, she startled at golden lines glowing on her skin, warm and prickly, some tiny pictogram of… a double arrow? A mouth? A squiggle underneath?

“Careless,” the woman said, addressing the man behind her. “You could have drained her, before we learn what she knows. This one was with the daeyari?”

“When we fought,” he said. “But she was alone today. Riding along the road.”

Fi understood him, too. They both sounded strange. Some kind of echo, a delay between their mouths moving and the words registering. Her hand prickled every time they spoke.

Because they weren’t speaking daeyari. They were speaking their language, the purring undertone seeping through. Thiswasdifferent magic from energy Shaping.

“You’re sure?” the woman asked.