Page 183 of Sunsplitter

“We need to go home,” she said.

“What happened—”

“No, Antal.” She eyed the open windows. Nothing there. She didn’t relax, her pulse like a drum. “We need to leave.Now. Not Thomaskweld. Take us to Nyskya, my cabin. No one here knows about that.”

Her words came breathless. Her hands were cold, trembling, small details enough to spark panic. Antal had seen this woman annoyed. Furious. What couldfrightenher?

He didn’t argue.

Just gripped her hands and pulled them into black.

They emerged in darkness.

Night lay upon the Winter Plane, the curtains of Fionamara’s cabin shuttered against aurora light. She squinted. Her eyes couldn’t see in the dark. Antal skirted the colorless outline of a table and touched the wall panel, powering on lights in the rafters.

They’d not visited in weeks, absence filling the room with a smell of dusty wood and ice crusting the windows. The furnace had gone out. Fionamara shivered in her light clothes from the Twilit Plane.

As she pulled the rabbit fur blanket from the bed, Antal crouched beside the furnace. The energy capsule was empty. Heheld it in his fingers, Shaped red energy down his forearm and into the glass. Recharged, the furnace hummed to life with a pulse of heat.

Fionamara sat on the floor beside it, blanket pulled over her shoulders, still shivering.

A fleck of red marred her cheek.

Antal tipped her chin to look at him. Her eyes were dark, glassy, a haunted look that scraped him to the bone. He hovered his fingers over the marks on one cheek, his thumb over the other, the perfect shape for… ahandclamped over her mouth.

Avroz. Always Avroz.

“Why?” Antal seethed. Fresh gold glinted on her ears. “The bands?”

“Not that. Well, he wasn’thappyabout the bands.” Fionamara brushed a hand over one ear, the shell tender red.

But there was something else, something capable of rattlingher, this woman who’d stared Veshri in the eye not hours ago. Antal pressed to her side, tail encircling legs.

She spoke again. A whisper. “Would you want to know the truth, even if it might change everything?” Her cracked tone carved hollows in his ribs. “You would, right?”

“Fionamara…”

“Because it felt like things were going well.Right?Like this whole wretched deal was working out for us? But then…” She stared at the floor. “What if it would be better not to know?”

Antal tried to steady himself, for her. Internally, he quaked, a slick and too-familiar monologue whispering,of course this went wrong, something always goes wrong.

“Tell me.”

His tail tip settled in her palm. Fionamara took a deep breath.

“I overheard your parents arguing.”

An old pang shot through Antal. Familiar. Manageable. Hesighed in relief, if that was all this was. “Yme and Avroz have been arguing for… a long time.”

The sound of their shouting had carved into his skull. The sound of their silence carved deeper, cold looks and untwined tails for as long as he could remember. Always because of him. Fights over Avroz’s expectations, every time Antal failed to meet them. Yme’s insufferable attempts to pretend nothing was wrong.

“Not that,” Fionamara said. “They were talking about something that happened two months ago. When Avroz realized I’d overheard? I’ve never seen him so angry.” Her words sped, shaking with rage? Fear? “Yme got me away from him. She didn’t want to tell me what happened. But she did. She told meeverything, and…” Back to a hush. “What did Avroz tell you about how he lost that antler tip?”

Antal frowned. “He said he’d been called to the Contested Planes by a territory lord, because of an aedari sighting. He must have fought the aedari, and…”

“You assumed the rest? He never told you any details?”

Cold pricked Antal’s stomach. He shook his head.