A momentary darkness. The lights flickered back on in swift order, conduits humming, but the damage was done. Nyskya was in no position to negotiate.
A long silence stretched.
Then, so quiet that Fi barely overheard, “It’s not worthfighting them, Boden. Send your sacrifice. Get the help you need. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
The door slammed shut.
Fi shriveled into a ball on the floor, head in her hands. Just a job. Just a few energy chips. Just a debt to an old friend she thought she could repay too easily.
Iliha slipped out the back door, knuckles white on her crossbow stock. Fi didn’t move for several minutes. When at last Boden appeared in the kitchen doorway, she crumbled at one look from those shadow-hung eyes.
Her barbs, useless against someone who’d seen her as a sniveling girl with scraped knees, who knew that was all she would ever be.
“I’m sorry, Bodie,” Fi whispered.
“You’re part of Nyskya. No one’s taking you.” He ran a hand through his hair, fingers tangling on frost-worn knots. “Can you get home without being seen?”
Fi nodded. A jaunt through a Curtain, and she’d be fine.
“Kashvi will make sure Astrid leaves,” Boden said. “Lay low for a few days. I’ll send along any news.”
Lay low. Don’t get in the way. Don’t make this worse than you already have. Every moment she sat here made Fi feel smaller.
Boden continued, “Anything else I should put an ear out for?”
Fi raked through the chaos of the last few days, searching for threads to grasp.
“Cardigan.”
Boden’s brow lifted.
“He gave me the energy capsules,” Fi said. “Then ran like a coward’s ass when we got jumped by trade wardens. Not sure if he’d know Verne’s plans.” But that was all she had.
Boden hummed. “Cardigan… swear I’ve heard that name. Somewhere in the energy conduit market? I’ll track him down.”
Another weight on his shoulders.
Fi snuck out the back door. Her heart raced all the way to the Curtain, but Nyskya’s streets stayed sleepy. She saw no one.
Astrid was hunting her. So long as Fi fled, Nyskya wouldn’t know peace.
She reached her cottage on heavy footfalls, kicked her boots clean on the porch. Fi paused at the door to collect herself. Astrid wasn’t the only one who’d followed her here.
But inside, her home was empty.
Lights glowed from the rafters, the furnace pumping heat from its energy capsule. The tub had been drained. Water droplets spattered the floor, but beyond that, nothing out of place. Only a scent of ozone on the air.
Good riddance. If Fi never saw that useless daeyari again, it would be too soon.
She poured herself a scalding bath and sank into pomegranate-scented bubbles, willing them to swallow her. Smother her. She soaked until her fingers shriveled and the lather dwindled to tepid skim.
For hundreds of years, all of the Winter Plane had been carved into daeyari territories.
All of Summer, Spring, and Autumn.
And beyond these Season-Locked Planes, dozens more. Hundreds more. Worlds Fi had never seen, but she knew they looked the same, more carnivorous immortals to appease. From their origin on the Twilit Plane, the daeyari had spread their hunting grounds throughout the Planeverse. How far would Fi have to run, to truly escape?
She didn’t want to run. Not this time. Nyskya was her home,Boden’s home, and she wouldn’t let Verne take it from them. Resolution burned into the marrow of her sternum.
