Chapter Fourteen
C HAPTER F OURTEEN
“Are you positively certain that you don’t need me to stay?”
It was early afternoon of the following day, and out on Iantas’s sand-swept airship grid, Elagbi was peering at Talasyn with unabashed concern in the shadow of the diplomatic schooner that would bring him back to Eskaya. “I can, you know. Your grandmother will understand.”
“I don’t actually believe that she will.” Talasyn grinned to soften the quip. “But I’m going to be fine, Amya. There’s no call to neglect your responsibilities in the capital on my account.”
“I am simply worried. With your husband in such a foul mood …” Elagbi’s gaze darted to the castle windows, as though he expected Alaric to pop up at any moment like a dour wraith.
Talasyn scoffed. “The Night Emperor’s moods are always foul. I can handle him, I promise.”
Only after Elagbi had said his goodbyes and boarded the schooner, and after the schooner had become a palm-sized silhouette above the horizon, did Talasyn allow her shoulders to slump. It was going to be unbearable now that Elagbi had left. Alaric had slept in his study last night, and he’d barricaded himself in there most of today as well, emerging only for meals, where he glowered at his plate in lieu of saying a word.
Talasyn couldn’t even blame him. The situation got murkier and murkier whenever they were around each other. She was scared of all the things he made her feel, and he was clearly not happy caring about her well-being and her opinions. There was also this new aspect of their magic to consider: light and shadow feeding off each other even as they remained diametrical opposites, patching over the weakness that each one had inflicted on the other.
So tangled a web. Perhaps it was for the best that they kept at a distance for now.
The beginning of a new sennight brought the royal tailor to Iantas. His name was Belrok and he was in his mid-forties, slim, cocoa-skinned, and bedecked in what was quite possibly the flashiest getup Alaric had ever laid eyes on. Aside from the striped blue-and-pink trim on its sleeves, his moss-colored tunic was embellished with gecko patterns in silver thread that put even Urduja’s most ostentatious dress to shame. The crystal-studded gold sash around his waist glittered so copiously that Alaric couldn’t even look at it in direct sunlight for fear of going blind.
Like all Nenavarene men, Belrok loved jewelry. Several gem-encrusted rings sparkled as they moved through the air on the ridges of the fingers that he was tapping on the armrest of his chair after Alaric had submitted to the indignity of his measurements being taken by a couple of assistants, who were now flanking the tailor in his seat, jotting down notes on rolls of parchment.
“I am sorry, Emperor Alaric, but a plain formal jacket simply will not do,” Belrok was saying, having no qualms whatsoever about letting his exasperation show. “The Lachis’ka’s couturier has been gracious enough to send me her design and it is positively lavish . You would look like a butler next to your wife, Your Majesty. I am afraid that I simply cannot allow it.”
A nerve twitched under Alaric’s left eye. “Very well,” he stiffly conceded, “as long as it is within the bounds of good taste.”
“Of course .” The tailor sounded offended. “Now, let us discuss concept. Your masquerade costume must strike a delicate balance between complementing the Lachis’ka’s attire and not stealing her thunder, so to speak. Would you rather personify the resplendence of the peacock, the raw power of the tiger, the virility of the stag—”
“This was a mistake.”
“Perhaps the ill temper of the swamp buffalo?” Belrok fired back. “The obstinacy of the common ass?”
Alaric smirked. “I’ll have to abstain from those last two options, Belrok. I wouldn’t want to steal your thunder.”
The two men argued, sniped, and glared at each other for the remainder of the meeting. By the time they settled on a design and Belrok had exited in an icy huff, along with his assistants, Alaric was in the blackest of moods. He prowled the castle in search of Talasyn, fully prepared to rant about the tailor; after all the concessions she’d wrung out of him in the course of this damnable acquaintance, the least she could do was put up with it when he complained.
A servant directed him to the gardens in halting Sailor’s Common, and soon he was walking out into that place of bright light and hibiscus blossoms. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks. Talasyn had guests.
Beneath the graceful arched roof of a seashell-flecked pavilion, his wife was having tea with Jie and a gaggle of Dominion noblewomen. Alaric recognized Niamha Langsoune, the Daya of Catanduc, who had boarded his stormship armed with a proposal of marriage to the Nenavarene Lachis’ka months ago. The others’ names and titles escaped him, but their elaborately painted faces were familiar enough that he knew they’d either been guests at his wedding or spectators to the banquet duel with Surakwel Mantes. Most probably both.
The stream of dainty giggles and chatter tapered off when they caught sight of him. The nobles rose and curtsied, then wasted no time in whispering among themselves and casting speculative looks as Talasyn hurried to where he was hovering at the garden entrance, ill at ease over being the object of so much feminine scrutiny.
“Yes, what is it?” she inquired, politely enough, given that they’d spent the days since the eclipse avoiding each other whenever possible, aside from meals and training.
Alaric stared down at her, disconcerted. He could hardly bellyache about the tailor now . His mind raced until it stumbled on a viable excuse. “I was wondering if Sevraim and I might put the courtyard to use. With your permission.”
“Sparring? You don’t need my permission for that,” Talasyn said. “This is your residence as much as it is mine.”
“Still. I thought I should ask.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”
She looked thoroughly mystified, but changed the subject. “Before you go—Daya Vaikar sent word that she and her Enchanters still haven’t finished the new amplifier modifications. So you and I will have to make do by ourselves during tonight’s eclipse.”
“Very well,” said Alaric. “I will give Nenavar no cause to accuse Kesath of reneging on the treaty, despite their recent incompetence.”
“Your generosity is boundless and noted,” Talasyn sniped.
Alaric spun on his heel and left. He found Sevraim in the kitchens and all but dragged him to the courtyard.
“But, Your Majesty, why?” the legionnaire whined. “I was helping shell these lovely little pili nuts and the cooks promised I could sneak a bite here and there. It is also much too warm to spar. Where is this coming—”
“Shut up, Sevraim.”
The four nobles had ostensibly come to pay their respects, but Talasyn had lived in the Dominion long enough to know better. News of the Night Emperor finally taking up residence at Iantas had spread, and this courtesy visit was a thinly veiled excuse to gossip. Talasyn’s guests wasted no time in getting back to it once she returned to the pavilion after Alaric’s departure.
“Is black all the rage on the Continent, Your Grace?” inquired Bairung Matono, whose bronze skin was covered in the runic bottle-green tattoos that were the tradition of her island. “Emperor Alaric’s wardrobe is rather … dull.”
“Beyond Nenavarene waters, not all civilizations prioritize aesthetic as we do, Lady Bairung,” Talasyn replied carefully.
“Fashion sense or lack thereof aside,” said Harjanti of Sabtang, her plump frame draped in rich orange stitchwork fabrics with diamond-and-chevron patterns set in metallic silver thread, “His Majesty is not all that bad-looking, for an outsider.”
Jie shrieked with laughter, playfully shoving her cousin, who shoved her back in a moment of girlish camaraderie that completely belied their fine clothes and lofty status.
“You and your consort must visit the Silklands, Lachis’ka,” Oryal enthused. She was the only child of Ito Wempuq, the rajan who had given Alaric such a hard time during the engagement banquet. “The fire trees are currently showing their monsoon colors. It would be my honor to host you.”
Although she had her father’s rich umber hair, chopped to chin length in blunt waves, Oryal was as thin as Wempuq was portly, as soft-spoken as he was boisterous, and apparently as welcoming to the Night Empire as he was not. Talasyn flashed her a tentative smile. “That would be lovely, if time permits.”
“ Honestly , Oryal.” Niamha Langsoune rolled her eyes. “Did it ever occur to you that Her Grace and His Majesty might want some time to themselves? They did just get married.” She was being a good ally as always, slyly offering Talasyn an opportunity to wriggle out of any possible commitments, but the implication made Talasyn want to throw herself off a cliff.
Oryal huffed. “It was merely a suggestion, Daya Langsoune. Too much time alone together can be positively disastrous for a husband and wife. We can’t all be Harjanti and Praset.”
The other noblewomen tittered while Harjanti gasped in mock outrage. The blatant affection that the daya of Sabtang and her spouse showed for each other was a source of amusement among the Dominion court, whose marriages were usually strategic alliances rather than the natural outcome of anything so passé as feelings. Talasyn, however, couldn’t help but remember how happy and in tune Harjanti and Praset were at her engagement banquet, how they’d worked together to help smooth over an awkward situation.
“It is not too difficult a task, making a man fall in love. Husbands included,” Bairung said airily. “Daya Langsoune, show the Lachis’ka your favorite technique.”
Jie, Oryal, and Harjanti shrieked . Niamha shook a dainty fist at Bairung, but quickly straightened up in her seat and cleared her throat with aplomb. The merriment reached a fever pitch. Talasyn’s head was starting to hurt.
“It’s quite simple, really, Your Grace,” said Niamha. “First, a vague smile, like you have a secret, then you peer up at him through your lashes instead of directly meeting his gaze”—she demonstrated—“and you blink slowly, a bit exaggeratedly, and he melts at your feet with a flutter of your lashes—”
The others were doubled over, clutching one another in mirth. Talasyn, on the other hand, was at her wit’s end. “Pardon me, my lady, why are you teaching me how to ?irt ?” she burst out.
“Because men are so much more malleable when they follow their blood,” Niamha smoothly replied. “You don’t have to go around setting anyone afire with lust, but it’s amazing what a sprinkling of pretty manners can achieve.” She smirked. “Who knows, you might convince His Majesty to stop wearing black.”
Her last remark was said as a joke, and the other noblewomen treated it as such, but she held Talasyn’s gaze long enough to make it clear that this was nothing less than a lesson. They needed Alaric Ossinast to be as malleable as they could make him. In light of what was to come.
But Talasyn wasn’t about to go off seducing the Night Emperor anytime soon. “And what have you managed to convince Lord Surakwel of, Daya Langsoune?” she shot back, turning the tables on the other woman.
At the mention of Surakwel Mantes, Niamha paled while everyone else quite positively perished from laughter.
Oryal was the first to resurrect, wiping tears from her eyes. “Ah, Surakwel. The only man immune to Niamha’s powers.”
Talasyn wasn’t so sure about that. Surakwel had named his yacht after Niamha. And the look on his face when Talasyn asked him about it as they sailed to the Storm God’s Eye had spoken volumes.
Back when Talasyn had been fighting to survive Hornbill’s Head and then fighting to survive a war, there was precious little time to think about romance. But now that life was softer, easier , she was noticing much more often what she had never had. She’d never been the cause of an expression like Surakwel’s, and no one had ever looked at her the way Praset looked at Harjanti. Wistfulness rippled across the surface of her heart.
The echoes of that sentiment lingered long after her guests had taken their leave and Jie had run off to send letters back home. When a servant informed Talasyn that Alaric and Sevraim were still sparring, a mixture of curiosity and restlessness led her to ascend the stairs to a secluded tower room overlooking the courtyard.
She gingerly peered out the window. The open courtyard nestled within the granite walls of Iantas was ablaze with the Shadowgate as Alaric and Sevraim, coming at each other again and again, effortlessly switched from swords to daggers to spears. They’d both shed their heavier outer layers; Alaric was down to a sleeveless black undershirt and his usual trousers and boots. Talasyn had seen him wearing less, but she’d been too busy tending his wounds to pay much attention.
Now, however, there was nothing to stop her from looking to her heart’s content.
There was not an ounce of softness on him that she could see—or feel , her traitorous inner voice reminded her. He had been pure muscle every time he pressed against her, every inch of his body honed into a weapon. A weapon that he was putting to good use as he fended Sevraim off, ducking beneath the arcs of the legionnaire’s blows and retaliating with lethal grace.
It was only then that Talasyn realized how much Alaric held back whenever he sparred with her. This was nothing like their sessions. The two Shadowforged gave each other no quarter and fought like they were going for the kill. Sweat-damp strands of Alaric’s dark hair were plastered to his bare neck, his cheeks were flushed red, and there was a wildness in his silver eyes. The taut sinews cording his pale arms shifted with every thrust and parry, and his teeth were bared in a near-feral snarl as he came within an inch of slicing Sevraim’s head clean off his shoulders.
Talasyn swallowed. Her husband was a dangerous man. Watching him like this, it was so easy to revert to her old ways and think of him as a monster.
So what did it say about her , then, that a familiar heat was pooling low in her abdomen, seeping beneath her legs?
Memories of her wedding night flooded through Talasyn’s system, each one so strong that the phantom sensations whispered across her skin. Alaric’s lips crushed to hers, his large hand palming her breast, his hardness rubbing against her thigh. She remembered, too, the burning intensity in his gaze, the husky timbre of his voice.
My wet little wife.
Talasyn stepped back from the window, knees knocking together beneath her skirts. Slowly, unsteadily, she made her way to a chaise lounge in the corner and sat down, no longer able to remain upright. Hot. She felt too hot, too consumed by thoughts of Alaric Ossinast, her nerve endings scraped raw by the ghosts of touch. She closed her eyes in an attempt to meditate, to calm and center herself, but the darkness only brought him into sharper relief. She could almost smell him, all sandalwood and juniper and smoke. She could almost hear his harsh, ragged pants in her ear. As though he were there with her.
It was an act of surrender, this hiking up of her skirts. Talasyn couldn’t believe what she was about to do. But her body was on edge, crying out for relief, and it was best not to think about it. She was so tired of thinking. Of living on her constant refrain of I can’t and her fears for the future.
I’m so lonely. She whispered it into the secret universe of her mind, where no one else would ever know. A lone tear of burning shame welled up in the corner of her eye and she blinked it away as her fingers slipped beneath the band of her undergarments. And began to move.
The eclipse came and the light-and-shadow shield went up over the Eversea. It had been Sevraim’s brilliant idea to have Iantas’s warship fire one void cannon after another at Alaric and Talasyn while they stood on the deck of one of the castle fleet’s smaller vessels. The pleasure yacht was currently encased in a glimmering sphere of black and gold against which amethyst bolts slammed in vain as it hovered in the air, the conflagration reflected like flickering fireworks in the dark and restless waters below.
It was a good exercise. The threat of getting zapped with death magic was all it took for Talasyn to never let her concentration wane, even as she aethermanced by the side of the man she’d fantasized about while touching herself earlier that afternoon.
However, it was still taxing, especially without the help of the amplifiers. Once the last void cannon had been fired and summarily repelled, her legs refused to hold her up any longer, and she collapsed flat on her back, on a cold bed of teak and nails.
Alaric landed beside her with a groan. The two of them lay panting, bathed in sweat. The Eclipse of the Third filled Talasyn’s eyes with its scarlet glow.
When the burning came, she met it with dread but no surprise. Her body had been expecting it, even though her mind had hoped it wouldn’t happen. It spread through her, this heat like needles, and she knew without a doubt that this was how they’d all felt when they died—everyone she’d ever killed. This was her punishment. Her reckoning.
She reached for Alaric, because she was a coward. His icecold fingers laced with hers, soothing the inferno at the same time that his skin gradually warmed.
“It happened again. Even without the amplifiers,” Talasyn said when she was well enough to speak. “Is it—does this mean that it will always happen from now on?”
“I don’t know.” Alaric sounded as confused as she was. Defeated. Tired. “Perhaps it happens only in the aftermath of casting the light-and-shadow shield. Or perhaps it’s caused by the eclipse. Either way, it’s certainly an effect of the amplifiers. And if it’s permanent …”
“I hope not. We can’t be with each other every eclipse from now on.”
And after I betray you, you will probably rather die than touch me again, she added silently, pain stabbing at her heart anew.
The warship returned to the docks, leaving them alone above the open sea. Talasyn hadn’t wanted to risk anyone else, so she’d steered the yacht away from the island herself. Now it was time to head back.
She sat up, fully intending to sail for shore, but something about the look on Alaric’s face as he glanced over at her made her pause. Even if he was still carrying a grudge against the Dominion, and consequently her , for messing with his aethermancy—
He cares what you think.
There it was again. That dark inner voice. She couldn’t put it aside as she’d done before. There might never be another opportunity like this, when it was just the two of them with no distractions, with no one around to interrupt.
She couldn’t break out Hiras and the other prisoners, but she could still try to help them.
“About the rebels who were captured after the Citadel attack—” It was such a risky subject that she nearly lost her nerve at the clenching of his sharp jaw. “Have you been able to get any information out of them?”
“Nothing particularly useful.” Alaric regarded her warily. “They’re all low-ranking foot soldiers, which I believe was an intentional strategy, given that they never intended to escape. It’s guerrilla warfare, with a lot of different groups at different bases that move around.”
“Then maybe it would be all right to stop the interrogations,” Talasyn said. The torture was what she really meant.
“They tried to kill you.” He said this so slowly, so deliberately, as though she were stupid, that heat came rushing to her cheeks.
“I know they tried to kill me, I was there,” she snapped. “But you said it yourself: they’re foot soldiers, and there’s nothing important they can tell you. Forcing them to give up information they don’t possess is just causing those people unnecessary suffering.”
Alaric got to his feet. He stalked over to the ship’s guardrail and gripped it so tightly with both hands that Talasyn suspected he was imagining taking her by the shoulders and giving her a good shake. “Why do you still care what happens to them? They may have been your comrades in the past, but that doesn’t excuse their present actions.”
“Because they were only following orders, as I did once,” Talasyn said. “Vengeance isn’t justice—I told you that before, didn’t I?”
“I remember.” Alaric stared down moodily at the waters below, rippling in the moonlight, reflecting the yacht’s Squallfast fumes in whorls of emerald green.
“Besides,” she added, struck by a burst of sudden inspiration, “it hardly endears you to your subjects. It’s no secret what Kesath does to Sardovian captives, but this could be an opportunity to show that your reign is different from your father’s, that you are capable of extending mercy.”
He scoffed. “If there is no punishment, then more aspiring rebels will come out of the woodwork. If I relent on this matter of national security, people will see only that I am not as strong as my father, that I cannot defend our homeland as he did.”
“The same father who hurts you?”
Talasyn clapped a hand over her mouth as soon as these words spilled out, but of course it was too late to take them back. She hadn’t meant to say it like that, to bring it all out in the open so callously. She hadn’t meant to make her husband’s shoulders tense, as if he were warding off a low blow that had come out of nowhere. “Alaric, I’m s—”
“Don’t pity me,” he hissed before she could finish apologizing. “I refuse to be the scapegoat for your ignorance in the ways of Kesath. Pain is instructive, and what you call mercy is nothing more than weakness. And casting my father in this light amounts to treason—”
“T-treason?” she sputtered. “Against whom? You are the Night Emperor.” She closed the distance between them, stepping into his space, forcing him to look at her. “You are the Night Emperor,” she repeated, her words unfolding with the sound of the waves below, “and you told me at my coronation that you wanted to change things for the better. So when do you start?”
He swallowed, and for a moment everything about him was a cornered animal. He seemed almost afraid of her. Or of what she could get him to do.
“Very well,” he finally said in clipped tones. “I’ll send a message to the Citadel to cease the interrogation process.” And then his expression darkened, showing her that the animal had teeth. “However, if this decision ends up compromising Kesath in any way—”
“Yes, yes, I know. I will take my former comrades’ place in the torture chambers.”
Talasyn was being sarcastic, and yet not. There was a very real possibility of that happening.
But Alaric blinked. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “I would never let—”
He broke off in abject frustration, then looked away.
In the act of sharply turning his neck, he grunted out an expletive and froze.
Alaric almost never cursed. Talasyn studied him intently. The tips of his ears were reddening, as though with embarrassment.
She put two and two together. He’d been sleeping in his study all this time, and that particular room of the castle didn’t even have a couch.
“Can you please just sleep in the bed tonight?” she demanded.
He shook his head. Slowly, determinedly, pushing the act out through obviously sore muscles.
“We need to be well rested and at our best for the third eclipse this month,” said Talasyn. “It’s the last one before the Moonless Dark. There will be no more opportunities to finetune the amplifiers. Imagine jeopardizing that on account of a stiff neck—”
“Fine.”
“And furthermore—oh.” She stopped short. “I’m not used to you actually agreeing with me.”
“And I’m not used to someone nagging me until I give in,” Alaric muttered. “But we must all make sacrifices.”
He insisted on steering the yacht to shore, and Talasyn had the feeling that it was his pride requiring him to prove that he could, that his stiff neck hadn’t put him completely out of commission.
She would have protested, but with Alaric, as with the Nenavarene court, it was all about picking one’s battles. Still, she couldn’t resist sticking her tongue out at him as soon as his back was turned to sail them home.