No progress was made that first afternoon, no matter how hard Talasyn concentrated and coaxed her magic forth. She then had to spend the night listening, racked with guilt, to the sounds of builders fixing the pillar that she’d accidentally broken.
Unlike aethermancy training, marriage negotiations the next day proceeded for the most part at a brisk pace. Not only did Talasyn hold her tongue for practically the entire morning, not wanting to interact with her grandmother and her father any more than was absolutely necessary, but the Dominion nobles—Lueve Rasmey, Niamha Langsoune, and Kai Gitab—were marginally friendlier toward the Kesathese contingent now that, thanks to Alaric, there was a chance that their archipelago wouldn’t be decimated by death magic before the year was out.
Shortly before the gongs throughout the Roof of Heaven tolled the noon hour, though, there was a minor crisis.
Commodore Mathire currently had the floor. “The wedding must be held in the Citadel,” she was railing. “It is the Night Empire’s seat of power and, as Alunsina Ivralis will be the Night Empress, she needs to be there to assume her role.”
“So conduct an official coronation in the Citadel,” Niamha retorted, “after the wedding, which needs to be held here in Eskaya. Her Grace may be Kesath’s future empress, but His Majesty will also be her consort. If you want the Nenavarene to accept him as such, then the nuptials simply must take place on Nenavarene soil.”
As the negotiators argued, Talasyn stiffened in her chair, hands fisting into her beaded skirt under the table, out of sight. She couldn’t get married in Kesath. She could never again set foot on the Northwest Continent, not until the Sardovians took it back.
It would hurt too much.
“It’s settled, then,” Alaric interrupted just when Mathire looked as if she was about to blow a gasket. “We will celebrate”—he couldn’t quite seem to contain his sarcasm—“the nuptials here in Nenavar, and then there will be a coronation in Kesath.”
Mathire scowled but dutifully made a note on one of her meticulously organized sheaves of parchment. Talasyn’s jaw throbbed from the strain of clenching it, and it wasn’t long before the dam broke and her words spilled out in a rush. “I don’t want to go to Kesath.”
Alaric’s gray eyes flickered to her from across the table. “As my wife, you will have to hold court at the Night Empire’s capital every once in a while,” he coolly informed her, and he didn’t know, he would never know, the way her heart skipped a beat as he referred to her as his wife. “We can discuss a schedule later. It doesn’t even have to be more than once every few months, if that’s what you prefer. What isn’t negotiable is your coronation.”
He was so remote, so different from the sullen yet patient man who had sat with her yesterday throughout all her fumbled attempts at shield-making. It occurred to her that this was another kind of mask he wore. Not wolf, but politician.
Or maybe—maybe the patient tutor was the mask. Talasyn had no idea. She couldn’t make sense out of this stranger who was to be her husband, and now the future was looming before her, a future where she would have to go into enemy territory as his bride, the spoils of war—
Her breathing shallowed. Alaric studied her warily, the beginnings of a frown tugging at his lips.
Urduja broke the regal silence with which she’d been presiding over the negotiations. “Emperor Alaric is correct, Alunsina. Your father and I will, of course, accompany you to Kesath for your coronation. As for your subsequent visits, I am sure that His Majesty will allow you to take whoever you wish to make your stays more . . . bearable.”
Alaric nodded. “Each and every one of Her Grace’s courtiers will always be welcome at the Citadel.”
I don’t want to go anywhere with you, Talasyn wished she could snap at her grandmother and her father, still smarting from their subterfuge. Nor with you, she wished she could hurl at her betrothed, still frustrated with his existence in general.
You have to do this, she reminded herself. She brought the faces of Vela and the other Sardovians to the forefront of her thoughts. She grasped for strength in her memories of Khaede and Sol and Blademaster Kasdar. She envisioned death’s amethyst light washing over the darkened shores of this land and its people who had welcomed her back and called her their own.
You have to do this.
Talasyn subsided, leaning back in her seat, features composed in front of the Dominion nobles and the Kesathese. Her claws retracted.
This way, everyone gets to live.
She was dawdling, surely.
That was the only explanation. No one would take over an hour to eat lunch and change into training clothes unless they were doing it on purpose.
Alaric forced himself not to fidget where he sat on the grass. In truth, it came as no great shock that Talasyn was making him wait. Earlier in the council room, she’d turned quite pale when her return to the Continent became the subject of discussion. It made sense, he supposed, that she was in no hurry to see him again.
Or to go to Kesath, for that matter.
A distant roar like the sound of a stormship being torn apart pierced the afternoon stillness. Alaric looked up, and awe blossomed within him. A dragon was flying miles and miles above the Roof of Heaven, its mighty wings silhouetted against the hot sun. The green-scaled length of it snaked through the clear blue sky in an undulating ribbon, forming loops and whorls as it soared ever on.
When it disappeared from view, Alaric’s gaze fell back to earth—and landed squarely on Talasyn.
She had paused in her approach to track the movements of the great beast, but now that it had gone, her eyes met his, golden sunlight lancing through their depths to bring out the same wonder he felt. Scrubbed free of powders and pigments, her freckled features and the line of her pink mouth had gone soft. And for a brief moment, there amidst the orchids, by the waterfall, he forgot that they were anything other than two people who had just shared a marvelous sight.
Then she lifted her chin and stalked over to him in a huff, and the illusion dissipated. But perhaps a part of him was in it, still, because, once she had closed the distance between them and gracelessly settled into a meditation pose that mirrored his, he asked, “Do they truly exude flames?”
Talasyn subjected him to a penetrating stare, as though searching for the trick up his sleeve. Alaric had none, and she must have eventually realized it because she gave a stiff nod. “The orange seaweed that I’m sure you’ve been served here on more than one occasion, it’s called breath-of-fire. It grows only in Nenavarene waters, near where the dragons like to lair. The fire in their bodies heats up the current, making that particular variety of seaweed thrive.”
“The dish is rather good,” Alaric ventured. Breath-of-fire was silky with a hint of crunch, and had a briny flavor that the palace cooks enhanced with a piquant sauce of rice vinegar and chilies. “The same can be said for Dominion cuisine in general, I find.”
“Agreed. So much better than the food back home—”
Talasyn broke off abruptly, but it was too late. The word hung in the space between them, as ominous as a thundercloud.
Home.
“We were fighting a war.” In his haste to cover up the silence before it could turn awkward, Alaric blurted out what first came to mind. “Everything was rationed. It stands to reason that our food can’t compare to . . .”
He trailed off, realizing that he, too, had made a mistake.
The Continent that they both called home, the war that they’d both fought—on opposite sides. It all came rushing back, bringing with it echoes of the sore point in the negotiations earlier.
I don’t want to go to Kesath.
Alaric’s common sense screamed at him to direct the conversation to safer waters. To begin today’s training, which was what they were here for in the first place. But Talasyn had gone stiff with combativeness, a stubborn set to her olive-toned jaw, and she was going to be his empress and he needed to make her understand—
The glimpse into her early life had filled him with cold fury, as overwhelming as it was impotent. It was long in the past. Hornbill’s Head was gone, and, with it, all the squalor that had marked her early years.
Still, he was seized by the fanciful urge to resurrect Hornbill’s Head just for the pleasure of having his stormships flatten it again.
He had never before felt so wounded for someone else. The girl was bewitching him.
“I know that you had a hard childhood,” he told her. “But we are rebuilding. The Great Steppe, and the entirety of the land formerly known as Sardovia—it will all become better than it ever was.”
“At what cost?” she snarled.
Unbidden, the aftermath of Kesath’s final triumphant push into the Sardovian Heartland rose to the surface of the darkness behind Alaric’s eyes. The sea of debris, of corpses. He blinked those images away. “The Night Empire was forced to destroy the Allfold before they could destroy us,” he tersely explained, “but, under Kesathese stewardship, the Continent will improve. When you go back, you’ll see. You might disagree with Kesath’s methods, but in the end this conflict turned out to all be for a cause greater than any of our individual selves.”
To Alaric’s disbelief, his attempt to reason with Talasyn only made her angrier. “You and Commodore Mathire say that a lot, that you had to destroy the Allfold before they destroyed you. But since when did the Allfold ever give any indication—”
“When Sunstead attacked,” Alaric interrupted, his grasp on his own temper slipping as past pain was excavated, laid bare beneath the tropical sun. “When Lightweavers killed my grandfather, the king. When the other Sardovian states did nothing to stop them.”
Talasyn’s brow furrowed at the reminder that her breed of aethermancer was responsible for his grandfather’s death. However, her unease didn’t last long, her shoulders soon squaring as she let loose with another retort. “The Lightweavers of Sunstead wanted to stop Ozalus from building the stormships. They knew, as well as everyone outside Kesath knows, that a weapon like that has no place in this world. But Ozalus wouldn’t listen to reason, and that’s why Sunstead did what they did. They had no choice!”
Rage erupted from within the depths of Alaric’s soul. It was startling how swiftly it built up, rising like the tide along with his magic. The air in the immediate vicinity darkened and Talasyn scooted back, planting her hands in the grass as though prepared to spring to her feet at any moment, and Alaric knew that his eyes were blazing silver, the Shadowgate wrapping around his heart.
But he didn’t care.
“Is that what you were taught on your side of the Continent?” he sneered. “I suppose it’s to be expected that a self-serving government like the Allfold would revise history for their own ends. Shall I tell you the truth, Lachis’ka?” Talasyn watched him as one would a wounded, starving bear. As she would watch the monster that she’d grown up believing him and all the other Kesathese to be. He continued, in a low growl, “For all that you and your comrades professed to despise the stormships, you certainly had no problems using them when it benefited you. Nineteen years ago, before the Hurricane Wars, it was no different. From the moment the Lightweavers learned of the plans for the stormship, they spared no effort to take the technology for themselves. The prototype was being constructed in a valley under territorial dispute; Sunstead used this as a pretext to seize the shipyard. Kesath took it back, and we fought to make sure that nothing could be taken from us ever again.”
And, two months later, his grandfather was dead and his father had ascended, in blood, in battle, in the dark of night.
All around us are enemies.
They shall tremble in the Shadow that we cast.
“That’s not what happened!”
It was the strangest thing, how Talasyn, irate as she was, uncouth as she so often could be, managed to jolt Alaric back to the present, to pull him out of his clamoring head. The air lightened again and his magic fell back, as though the reminder of her presence was a sunbeam piercing through his storm of rage and grief.
“Before they did anything else, Sunstead sent emissaries to Kesath,” she said, “to sway Ozalus from his course.”
“They did not. They attacked without warning.” Alaric was calmer now, but not by much. Speaking through gritted teeth. “It’s Kesath’s word against Sardovia’s. It’s what I know versus what you know. If it’s all the same to you, I would rather believe that my family wasn’t keeping the truth from me. Unlike yours, who didn’t even see fit to tell you about something as important as the Night of the World-Eater.”
Talasyn stood up, her small frame trembling. She placed her hands on her hips and glared down at him. “Even if what you say is true, even if I’ve been told lies my whole life, that still doesn’t excuse what the Night Empire did to the rest of the Continent for ten years!” she shouted. “Vengeance is not justice. The Lightweavers of Sunstead were eradicated long before the Hurricane Wars began. Destroying the homes and killing the loved ones of innocent people didn’t make Sunstead any more gone, did it?”
She spun on her heel and stalked away.
“Where are you going?” Alaric demanded.
“My chambers!” Talasyn yelled without looking back. “I don’t want to train anymore today. Stay away from me!”
The side door leading into her room slammed shut behind her.
“Train anymore today?” Alaric scoffed under his breath. “We never even got started.”
But he was speaking to empty air.
Fifteen minutes later, Alaric was still in the orchid garden. He had moved from the grass by the pool to one of the stone benches next to the waterfall, seeking shade from the relentless mid-afternoon sun underneath a hanging profusion of butterfly-shaped sapphire-and-cream blossoms.
He stared unseeing at his verdant surroundings, turning every second of his and Talasyn’s heated quarrel over in his head. Finally, he called out, “Sevraim.”
The unmasked legionnaire emerged from where he had been lurking behind a marble wall along the adjacent open hallway. He sauntered into the garden, flashing Alaric a cheerful grin. “How did you know that I was here?”
“You’re my only protection on Nenavarene soil. I would be quite displeased if you weren’t here.”
“And allow your feisty wife to beat you to death with her bare hands? Never,” Sevraim vowed with a chuckle. “Granted, she sounded moments away from doing just that. I was about to intervene.”
“She’s not my wife yet,” Alaric grunted. “I assume you overheard everything, then.”
“I did.” Sevraim dropped down onto the stone bench, a carelessness to his movements that no one else would have dared show around Gaheris Ossinast’s son. “There are two sides to each story, I suppose. But we know that we are in the right, so what does it matter what anyone else thinks?”
Alaric shrugged.
For the next several minutes, the splashing of the miniature waterfall was the only sound in the garden. And then Sevraim asked, “Is there something that His Majesty wishes to discuss with this humble servant?”
The words were teasing but the sentiment behind them was genuine, as only a lifelong companionship could engender. Alaric rolled his eyes and glanced at the languidly confident legionnaire who had charmed his way into almost every bed in the Kesathese court, and he scraped out, “How do I . . . talk to her?”
Sevraim’s lips quirked, as though he were suppressing a guffaw. Alaric felt the tips of his ears turning scarlet. He regretted his impulsive question, but it was too late to turn back.
“It’s understandable that she detests me,” he said. “I don’t believe that can ever be fixed. There’s too much bad blood. But I would like to make the situation more . . .” He gestured limply at Talasyn’s closed door across the garden. “Peaceful. Relatively speaking. However, no matter what I say or do, it sets her off.”
Sevraim propped his chin up on one curled fist. “Your father trained you to be a warrior and to one day be emperor—not to be the Nenavarene Lachis’ka’s consort. Least of all a Lachis’ka who wouldn’t throw water on you if you were on fire.”
“Indeed. She would be the one to set me ablaze,” Alaric muttered. “With a dragon.”
Sevraim snickered but didn’t deny it. He nodded. “There is so much more to life than war and politics, Your Majesty. Ask her about her interests.”
“Her interests,” Alaric repeated blankly.
“What she likes,” Sevraim clarified. “See if the two of you, maybe, like some of the same things, and go from there.”
Alaric was sure Talasyn’s interests consisted of his grisly demise, but Sevraim’s suggestion seemed doable enough. “Very well. What else?”
“Compliment her,” said Sevraim.
Alaric stared at him. “Compliment her on what?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve spoken approximately ten words to her, and that was to say we were going to kill her.” Sevraim scratched his head, deep in thought. “You could stand to look a little less forbidding, at least. You could perhaps even attempt to smile at her every once in a while.”
Alaric didn’t bother to dignify that with a response.
“All right, smiling might be too much,” Sevraim conceded. “Just . . . You have to understand that the Lightweaver is doing this to save herself and her newfound people, just as you are doing it to prevent Kesath from becoming embroiled in another war while we recover from the previous one. She lashes out because she’s anxious, as anyone in her situation would be. Don’t rise to the bait she sets all the time. Mark my words, Your Majesty, you’ll thank me for it.”
