Talasyn was in a terrible mood. She’d tried to sneak out of the palace, only to discover much to her chagrin that security measures had been tightened due to the Kesathese presence. Before any of the increased number of guards could notice the Lachis’ka skulking around, she crept back to her chambers and then into the garden beyond, frustration curling low in her gut. The Sardovians needed to be informed of this new development as soon as possible. She needed Vela’s advice on how best to proceed.
This particular garden section of the Roof of Heaven lay open to the sky, allowing copious amounts of moonlight to come spilling down over the grass and the orchids and the artificial waterfall that tumbled into a dark, rippling pool. The combined illumination of the stars and the seven moons was almost a soft, shadowed daytime.
Standing in the middle of the garden, Talasyn tipped her face up to the pulsating celestial mazes and took slow, deep breaths. Perhaps the perfumed scent of the flowers and the gentle burble of water and the cool evening air would help her regain inner peace.
As she watched, the night sky shimmered with a haze of deep amethyst light. The Voidfell’s lone nexus point, located in the crater of a dead volcano on the Dominion’s centermost island, was discharging.
Talasyn remained as curious about void magic as she’d been when she first encountered it. While she’d been briefed on most aspects of life here in Nenavar, she’d been told very little about this amethyst dimension of aetherspace. She knew only that it was more malleable than other dimensions, that it could be folded into small aether hearts and still retain its properties as a weapon. Hence, the muskets—and she could only be glad that Kesath didn’t appear to be producing those yet.
There were times when the Voidfell flared so intensely that the whole sky was set aflame, and it filled her with apprehension. It wasn’t normal for a nexus point to blaze that brightly from so far off. People at court assured her that there was no need to worry, that it was simply the way of the Voidfell. A part of her remained unconvinced, but she chalked it up to the general sense of not having yet found her footing in this wild land.
She wondered just how big the Void Sever was, to be visible not only from Eskaya but sometimes from the Sardovian Coast as well. The Fisherman’s Warning, Khaede had called it. Once every thousand years.
Thinking about Khaede made Talasyn’s chest hurt. Khaede hadn’t snuck into Nenavar with any of the convoys, and no one could remember seeing her during the Allfold’s retreat from Lasthaven.
It had been months. Khaede was either dead or languishing in a Night Empire prison. And Talasyn was about to marry the man responsible for either scenario.
“It is you, after all.”
Like clockwork, Talasyn thought sourly. As though she’d summoned him, because her luck was clearly just that abysmal as of late.
The distant Void Sever quieted as she turned to the source of those deep tones, rich like wine and oak. Only moonbeams and stardust illuminated Alaric’s sharp, pale features. The austerely cut black garb that he favored didn’t seem so out of place in Nenavar now that it was evening. He was spun from the shadows, a very extension of the night. His gloomy presence contrasted with his surroundings, a backdrop of orchids in all shapes and colors—some as frothy and white as seafoam, some as red and riotous as forest fire, some with speckled flute-shaped petals, and some iridescent like butterfly wings. Every flower released sighs of cool fragrance into the tropical night.
It would have been an idyllic scene if they were any other two people in the world. As it was, however, Talasyn felt all that old familiar anger rising up while Alaric took in the sight of the smock and breeches she had dearly cherished changing into after a long day at court, her face scrubbed clean and her hair tugged into its usual braid.
“And here I was harboring the faint suspicion that the Nenavarene were foisting some other girl off on me,” he continued. “You clean up very well, Your Grace.”
“What the hell are you doing in my garden?” Talasyn demanded.
“Ask whoever thought it would be a good idea to put me in the suite directly across from yours.” A smirk danced across Alaric’s full lips. “Also, it would technically be our garden after the wedding, wouldn’t it?”
He stepped forward, a man made of moonlight, bearing the undereye circles of someone unable to sleep. She’d been this close to him before, and even closer still, but always in the heat of battle, where there was no space to notice such things. He wasn’t wearing his usual leather gauntlets, and for some reason that thought leapt out at her—that she was seeing his hands for the first time. They were neatly kept, and so much larger than hers.
“Tell me,” he said, “how does the Lachis’ka of the Nenavar Dominion wind up a helmsman in the Sardovian regiments?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Talasyn scoffed.
The barest hint of annoyance flickered over his face. “Perhaps you are unaware, but it is inadvisable for husbands and wives to keep secrets from each other. Quite a few marriages have come to grief because of such a thing.”
She nearly took the bait. Nearly screeched at him, I don’t want to marry you, you absolute dolt! However, she remembered what her tutors had said and her grandmother always exemplified, that losing one’s composure was as good as losing an argument. “The betrothal hasn’t even been finalized,” she managed to serenely point out. “But with all this talk of being husband and wife and our garden, I’m glad that you’re excited. That makes one of us, at least.”
“I wouldn’t go as far as to profess myself excited, but I am looking forward to peacefully welcoming the Nenavar Dominion into the Night Empire’s fold.”
“What would the Master of the Shadowforged Legion know of peace?” Talasyn challenged.
“Certainly more than the girl who looks like she would happily strangle me for asking a simple question,” Alaric retorted.
“I don’t—” She stopped, taking another deep, calming breath. At this rate, they would end up coming to blows and the treaty would be as good as null. She decided to change the topic by answering his question. “Civil war broke out when I was a year old,” she said, unable to keep the ice from her tone. “I was supposed to be evacuated to my mother’s homeland—she was the Lightweaver—but something happened. I don’t remember what. I ended up in Sardovia, instead.” She tossed back her head, deciding that it was high time she was the one asking questions. “And how does the heir to the Night Empire ascend to the throne when his father is still alive?”
Alaric didn’t hesitate; his answer clearly practiced. “Regent Gaheris is getting on in years. He elected to take on a less involved approach while he is still capable of enjoying the fruits of his labor.”
Talasyn didn’t believe that for a second—or, rather, she didn’t believe that there wasn’t anything more to it. Before she could quiz him further, though, Alaric suddenly turned himself directly toward her, capturing her in another one of his penetrating stares. His eyes were enigmatic, and as he bent his chin lower, his wavy black hair caught the moons’ glow, a shadow rimmed in silver.
“I was seven when the Nenavarene civil war took place,” he said at last, as mildly as though he were commenting on the state of the weather.
“What does that have to do with anything?” she snapped.
“You’re very young.” The corner of his lip ticked upward, as if he was enjoying a private joke at her expense.
“Perhaps that’s why I keep besting you in combat,” she huffed. “Because you’re old and slow.”
One moment she was standing a couple of feet across from him; the next, she was backed up against the very edge of the pool, one wrong move away from falling into it, and Alaric was all that she could see, the expanse of his broad shoulders, the dark of his pupils wide in the radiant night, the constellation of beauty marks on his pale skin. One of his large hands circled around her to press into the small of her back, holding her upright in a mockery of an embrace, and her own fingers flew to grasp at his shirtfront—a bid for either self-preservation or vengeance, she wasn’t quite sure yet. If she ended up going for a midnight swim, then she was taking him with her.
“Haven’t you learned to respect your elders, my lady?” It was obviously meant as a caustic quip, but his voice was too low. He said it too close to her ear.
“Do you mean to push me into the water, then?” she inquired with as much dignity as she could muster, tightening her grip on his shirt.
“Who said anything about pushing? All I have to do is let you go.” His bare fingers stirred at the base of her spine, the pressure burning and sparking through the fabric of her thin smock that separated her skin from his.
Talasyn couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t that she feared drowning—she doubted that the pool even went up to her neck. No, it was the adrenaline rush, that knife’s edge between staying upright and falling into the cold water, the imposing heat of Alaric’s body against hers. It was the predatory glint in his silver eyes, his husky drawl, the seven moons and the countless stars that she saw over his head when she lifted her chin to glare at him in defiance, despite her precarious position.
“I respect my elders,” she gritted out, “when they act their age—”
Her sentence cut off into a blistering expletive when he abruptly clamped both hands around her waist, hauling her off her feet and then swinging her around to deposit her further away from the pool. The instant she was on solid ground once more, she automatically widened the distance between them, her heart racing at how effortlessly he’d lifted her, as if she weighed nothing more than a feather.
“What are we doing?” Talasyn demanded. “This whole—thing. Surely you’re aware that this is a horrible idea.”
“It is,” Alaric conceded, “but it prevents a war.”
“You know what else would prevent a war? If you left Nenavar alone!”
His jaw hardened. “I cannot do that.”
“The Night Empire already controls all of Sardovia,” she argued. “You have the entire Continent at your disposal—”
“And who on the Continent will respect the might of Kesath once word spreads that we took one look at Nenavar’s forces and turned around?” He was so calm that it was infuriating. “We did not crush the Sardovian Allfold by doing things in half-measure. You should know. You were there.”
I’m going to kill him. She wasn’t so enraged by his flippant remark that some part of her couldn’t marvel at this epiphany. One of these days, I am actually going to kill him. “So you’re saying that it’s all worth marrying me for. Me, Ossinast. Think about it.” Perhaps she could prevail upon their mutual loathing to sway him from this course of action—and if that meant that she sounded as if she was disparaging herself, so be it. “You can’t tell me that I’m anywhere near the kind of person you’d take for a spouse.”
Alaric’s gaze dropped to the pool that he’d almost dunked her in. “I came here to marry the Nenavarene Lachis’ka,” he said with hollow resolution. “That she happens to be you is . . . immaterial. I suggest that you resign yourself to that fact.”
It was honestly a kind of talent, how he knew exactly what to say and how to say it in order to get a rise out of her. “On second thought, your lack of objection to this marriage makes sense,” she jeered. “We’ll finally have the opportunity to study together, as you seemed so keen on.”
Talasyn didn’t know what to expect when she threw Alaric’s words from their last battle in his face. She’d puzzled over that absurd and uncharacteristic offer all these months. She braced for his anger, or his annoyance. Perhaps even his embarrassment.
Instead, he flinched. Then a blank expression slammed over his features, as inscrutable as any mask. Talasyn recognized the reaction; it was the same prideful rigidity that she had once adopted whenever the orphanage keepers struck her, because she refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing how much it had hurt, how much her ears were ringing, even as the bruises blossomed across her skin.
Back in Lasthaven, hadn’t Alaric asked her to come with him as part of some greater ploy? Why was he acting, now, almost as if—as if he’d meant it? And why did she feel as though she’d crushed something fragile with a clumsy misstep, something that never stood a chance to begin with?
An uneasy silence descended. Her eyes tracked the jut in the elegant column of his throat as it bobbed.
“I was curious about how our magic fused together. Nothing more,” Alaric finally said, every word laced with a careful, steely precision that Talasyn could never hope to match. “You getting yourself killed before I got to the bottom of it—that was my sole concern. However, if you insist on continuing to be this difficult, then it’s not worth it. Moving forward, let us focus only on this”—his mouth twisted—“political alliance.”
It was a knife between her ribs, this reminder that she was about to wed someone who truly despised her. It wasn’t that she craved Alaric’s approval—no, his was the last in the world that she wanted—but a cavernous space had been hollowed out in her heart over the years, and his words echoed there beside older ones: that she wasn’t worth it; that she was too difficult for anyone to bother with. An orphan who was too mouthy. A soldier with only one friend. A Lightweaver who could barely master the basics. A Lachis’ka who was too coarse-mannered. And now a bride who would never be loved.
Talasyn once again sought refuge in the welcome and familiar surge of her fury, which was never far away when Alaric was concerned. “All right,” she snapped. “Keep this in mind, then, moving forward.” This time she was the one who stepped into his personal space, glaring daggers up at him. She couldn’t tell him to his face but she promised him silently, without him knowing it, with venom rising up her throat, that the Hurricane Wars weren’t over. That someday the Night Empire would fall.
“I was Sardovia’s Lightweaver,” Talasyn growled. “I have held my own against you and your Legion. I am also Alunsina Ivralis of the Nenavar Dominion, Elagbi’s daughter and the Dragon Queen’s heir. I am She Who Will Come After, and I have power here. The next time that you manhandle me, you will regret it. Do you understand?”
Alaric’s fingers twitched and then curled back into his palms. He was regarding her as if she were some wild creature, but also a cypher that he was trying to decode. The seven moons shone down upon them, and, as the silence stretched, the trickling of the water and the heady scent of orchids reached her awareness once more.
Finally, he offered her a stiff nod. “I understand.” The words should have been a surrender, but he delivered them more like a tactical retreat. “Until the morning, then, Your Grace.”
Talasyn did not give him the opportunity to leave first. She turned on her heel and stomped off to her chambers, fuming, struggling against the urge to turn her head even as she felt Alaric’s gaze on her back.
So much for regaining inner peace.
