Page 153 of Sunsplitter

Avroz huffed, glaring at the cavern ceiling—not his son.

“Oh, let it rest, Avroz,” Syvr practically whined. “He’s two and a half centuries old. What do you care where he puts his tongue?”

Avroz wouldn’t care, Fi assumed, if she were a daeyari. When he met her gaze, there was no fluster, just that calculated cold.Will you be more useful to me than the last one?Today, she’d helped Antal slay an aedari.

Avroz kept his mouth shut.

Antal stood and offered a hand. When Fi took it, he pulled her to her feet with too much gusto, swaying them off balance. She caught herself against his chest, laughing.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Antal bid the others.

He touched an antler tip to his mother. She sat silent, not derisive, a quiet curiosity in the tilt of her head.

Next, a nod to his father. Avroz was granite, distaste etched into a subtle frown.

“You’ll report to the Dusk Council early tomorrow,” he said. “Be ready.”

Fi marked it as a victory.

She gasped when Antal scooped her into his arms. He staggered. Caught himself. Fi chuckled, wrapping her hands around his neck as he carried her into the house. Before they’d left the patio, he was kissing her, heedless of Syvr’s jeers behind them.

Herdaeyari.

That was the victory she cared for more than anything else.

He hadn’t known how it would feel to come home this time.

Antal’s last visit had ended in shouts, threats. He’d fled, the last of his family falling to pieces behind him, unsure if he’d ever return.

This time, he’d crossed the threshold with a dead aedari on his shoulders. And everything felt different. His mother, there to welcome him. His friends, laughing at his side. His father, simmered to tolerable distaste. That part might never be fully mended. The tiles of the sitting room would never be clean of Razik’s blood.

Maybe this was good enough.

Anything was good enough, so long as he had Fionamara.

He carried her away like a prize, steps swaying as his focus drifted to more pressing matters—his hardening cock foremost among them. And her, so maddeningly soft and warm in his arms. He kissed her. She leaned into him, arms around his neck, her pleased hum fit to ruin. As she teased her fingers through his hair, he tugged at her shirt, aching for bare skin, for every place he wanted to put his mouth.

Aedari blood heated his core, left his head full of softlyswirling snowdrifts, but through the haze he knew one certainty: he wanted her.

An early morning, Avroz had said. Antal didn’t bother navigating to the Winter Plane, didn’t fully trust himself to manage the journey. He carried Fionamara into the back hallway, to his old room.

He stumbled on the threshold. Fuzzy thoughts, but the whole world felt marvelous, Fionamara’s snicker a song. He laid her on his bed. Fell upon her, his knees caging her hips, hands buried in the sweet embers of her hair. Merciless Void, Antal could devour every part of her. He had all night.

She stopped him with light fingers on his cheeks.

Her eyes were pools of Void, somehow slicing and soft as she gazed up at him. She lay on her back, at his mercy. Yet he stilled, awaiting her command.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Hm?” Antal’s hum was half confusion, half desperate need to have these clothes off her.

“Antal. You appear to be drunk. And I appear to belessdrunk.” She softened, a debilitating blow, the brush of fingers across his lips making him shiver. “I’d never take advantage. Never anything you don’t want.”

Antal laughed at the absurdity. At the depth of this woman, the gentleness she masked behind her fangs and bristle.

“Fionamara.” He cupped her cheeks in return, pressing foreheads together. “I trust all of me with you, always. I want all of you. Always.”

She hummed, thumb tracing his jaw. “If you change your mind…”