“Fionamara—”
She dove inside and slammed the door on his face.
Fuck. What good would that do, against a teleporting immortal?
Back braced against the wall, Fi surveyed the dark interior of the cottage, cataloging weapons. A couple of energy capsules sat on her bedside table. Some knives in the kitchen. Nothing suited for heavy combat, much less against a daeyari.
She’d have to improvise. Fi snatched an energy capsule then waited for Antal to appear.
Nothing happened.
No red eyes by her bathtub. No footsteps on her porch. Fi glanced out a window, but spied no sight of her unwanted visitor.
Nothing happened, as she backed away from the door.
Nothing, as she circled her dining table, within reach of a kitchen knife.
A moan of wind against her shingles made Fi jump clear off the floor, slumping against her counter and hand pressed to her racing heart as she hissed an emphatic, “Shit, shit,shit…”
This was going to be a long night, wasn’t it?
11
As long as you’re still here
When Fi eventually collapsed into bed, she never expected to fall asleep. Alarming, how several consecutive brushes with death could exhaust a person. She woke in the morning to panic, jolting upright amidst her nest of rabbit and aurorabeast fur, scanning her home for red eyes.
A single room formed the interior, wooden panel walls and exposed rafters, no bother for divisions. Fi lived alone, and she had a strict policy of keeping intimate dalliances to hotel rooms or secluded bar corners, preserving the anonymity of her safe house.
Now, she’d broken that rule for a daeyari, of all things.
Yet she found no intruder lurking on her sofa, nor the dining table with legs of gnarled ironwood. Nothing amiss upon her slate kitchen counter, the cabinets closed, pots of herbs tidy beneath a growing light that had lost its charge in her absence. Her cedar bathtub sat empty. A screen stood beside it, pine panels carved into trees against a paper sky. Fi crept across the room, bare feet padding cold wood and fur rugs, wary as she peered behind the barrier.
Nothing.
She touched a metal plate on the wall. Energy leached from her forearm into a copper conduit, turning on the glass light panels beneath the rafters.
Still nothing.
Fi hissed as her shoulder throbbed.
She wrestled out of the crimson sweater she’d donned the night before, revealing a tattoo sleeve on her right arm, a matching swath down her left hip, flowers of several dozen varieties. The gash from Astrid’s sword clipped petals of a honeysuckle on her arm. Cauterized, thanks to the energy blade. Still angry red with inflammation. Her torso ached from collarbone to core, muscles fatigued from too much energy draw. An empty stomach didn’t help.
Fi Shaped energy from her healthier left bicep, accepting a muscle cramp as payment to feed the current into her injury, fuel to speed her body’s natural healing. With steady supplement, the slash could heal in a week.
Astrid did this to her. That wound would take longer to heal.
What other lows had the Arbiter sunk to in the decade they’d been separated? Leading sacrifices to Verne’s shrine? Silencing dissent to her Lord Daeyari’s rule? Astrid might be descended from daeyari, but she grew up alongside humans, ought to empathize with her fellow hares rather than sharpening the teeth of a lion.
If Fi had become an Arbiter, would she have done any better?
She had more immediate danger to settle, embers of fight or flight rekindling in her belly. Fi smeared numbing twilight sorel ointment onto her arm, fighting nausea at the familiar spiced scent. She donned her sweater and a wool coat. Stashed an energy capsule in a pocket. Mourned her sword, lost somewhere in Thomaskweld.
Warily, Fi peeked out her door, floorboards squeaking beneath slippers.
Fresh snow lay upon the clearing, pillowy upon the boughs of the firs and the shingles of her cottage. The purple dawn,normally calming, threatened beasts lurking in shadows. Fi appraised the distant trill of a lark, theslickthenthumpof snow sliding off a burdened limb. Nothing amiss. Void have mercy, maybe her rotten luck finally ran its course, and that wretched daeyari left during the night. Wrapped in her coat, she stepped onto her porch.
Contrary to the horrific folktales Fi’s father told to keep his rebellious child inside the house at night, she found no red eyes among the trees waiting to devour her.
