Chapter Seventeen
C HAPTER S EVENTEEN
Saltwater rushed into Talasyn’s lungs and stung her eyes. She did not know how to swim. There hadn’t been so much as a pond on the Great Steppe. She was helpless in the face of the flood that carried her deeper and deeper into the Mouth, the world a rush of wet and ice and sparks of failing magic as she tried to conjure another grappling hook or anything else that could help her fight against the current.
But her aethermancy was no match for the fear and panic that gripped her, for the swift and violent waters that bore her. She was tumbled along the twists and turns of the cave and eventually down a brief cascade that deposited her into a deep, dark lake, where she kicked and flailed, desperately, to no avail. She was breathing water, she was sinking, she was fading, she was—
—being seized by an arm in a bruising grip and hauled up onto damp land.
Amidst rain-flecked shafts of wan daylight poking through cracks in the limestone ceiling high overhead, Talasyn barely had a moment to register Alaric’s irate chiseled features before she doubled over, retching out the briny ocean in her lungs. The sound of her every cough and heave was magnified within the grotto she’d ended up in. It was an age before she could breathe normally again, and by that point she was all but crumpled on the ground, with Alaric kneeling beside her, still holding on to her arm. Although he was quick to let go as soon as her gaze flickered to his bare hand on her skin.
He was also quick to start chastising her.
“This,” he said, the flash of silver in his irises a testament to the anger lurking behind his cool, clipped tones, “is the most asinine thing that you have ever done.”
“ M-me? ” Talasyn sputtered, sitting up. “You’re the one who flew off to the seaside even though Jie told you there was a weather warning! The storms here are not like the ones we get on the Continent—the natural ones, anyway—and you could have died—”
“Says the girl I had to fish out of the lake. Unless surviving drowning is one of your many talents?”
Her mouth twisted. Alaric had established a cozy campsite on a rock shelf, but … She glanced at the waterline, which was steadily rising as more of the Eversea flowed in. “We might both drown, come to think of it.”
“Hence, the most asinine thing you’ve ever done,” he repeated with an annoyed impatience that set her teeth on edge.
No—actually, her teeth were chattering. The adrenaline had worn off and a bone-gnawing chill took its place.
Talasyn crossed her arms over her chest in a futile bid for warmth. Every inch of her trembled in her wet clothes, in her flooded shoes. Alaric shuffled behind her and she tried to ask him what he was doing, but she was shaking too hard to speak. The only sound she could make was a strangled little squeak as he threw his arms around her, tugging her against him. Why was he always doing that, just grabbing her and settling her however he pleased, and why was she always letting him?
Her back was flush to his broad chest and his thighs bracketed hers, and she gradually became aware that her trusty leather pack wasn’t separating their bodies. She’d lost it in the river, along with rations and a firestarter and other essential supplies. In that moment, though, it seemed so fleeting a concern. She greedily clung to him, savoring the heat that he emitted despite the unwelcome rush of memories brought on by their close proximity.
Memories of how they’d melted against each other in a position almost exactly like this, in their bed the previous morning.
Memories of how she’d touched herself while imagining the feel of him, all alone in that tower room after watching him spar. How quickly she’d crested then, so unlike those fumbling climbs capped off by small, ultimately unsatisfying releases that she’d been accustomed to those rare times she took matters into her own hands in the years before they met.
As she continued to shiver, his large palms roamed briskly over her wrists, her arms, her abdomen, her sternum, her hips. Rubbing warmth everywhere he could reach. His warmth wasn’t anything like the burning that the Lightweave sent through her veins whenever she aethermanced; rather, it was a cozy kind of heat, like applewood smoke from a cheerful hearth in the depths of a Sardovian winter. Talasyn fought against the temptation to close her eyes because that would have made it too real. Because that would have made her savor it. Because the comfort that Alaric could give her was just as terrifying as the pleasure. Just as forbidden.
“You’ll catch a fever.” He sounded so, so grumpy that her traitorous heart gave a twinge. “We need to get you out of these clothes.”
They both went still. His unfortunate choice of words hung in the air like the storm clouds in the world aboveground, and Talasyn was suffused with an entirely different kind of heat— she could have burnt an egg on her face with it and that would have been no great shock.
Alaric gently released her and stood up, then walked over to where the rock shelf met the grotto wall. He rooted around in his pack until he found a clean black tunic, which he tossed in her general direction. Talasyn caught the garment and saw that he was very markedly not moving even an inch, but facing away from her as though it was the most important thing he would ever do in this life.
Someone made of sterner stuff would have jumped back into the lake rather than disrobe with Alaric Ossinast only a few feet away. However, Talasyn was far too miserable in her soppingwet attire and she couldn’t change out of it fast enough.
The hem of his tunic ended a scant inch above her knees. She was swimming in it, but the fabric was luxuriously soft and above all dry . She rolled the sleeves up to her elbows—because the wide, silver-embroidered cuffs dangled well past her hands otherwise—and she pulled off her boots, shaking the water out of them. Then she worked on her hair, wringing the bedraggled braid between her fingers.
“You can turn around now,” she said.
Alaric was slow to do so, and even then he didn’t quite look directly at her. The lighting was abysmal, but Talasyn could almost swear that his sharp cheeks and the tips of his ears had darkened a shade, as though flushed.
Yet he was his usual infuriating self when he asked, “So, what exactly is the plan, oh great rescuer?”
“We could start with not being assholes, for one,” she hissed, “but I suspect that such restraint is far beyond your capabilities.”
He shrugged. “I do not believe it attainable for you, either.”
She flicked her braid at him, droplets of water streaking through the air like the most ineffectual throwing knives in the history of Lir. He smirked as he stepped aside to avoid them.
“Well, what was your plan before I arrived?” she groused.
“Wait it out.” He gestured to the lake. “This was all dry land and pathways to other caverns earlier this morning. I was communing with the Shadow Sever when the water rushed in. It should recede when the tide ebbs in a few hours.”
Talasyn shook her head. “This is a storm surge, not high tide. It can last days. And there’s no guarantee that the water won’t continue to rise.” When he didn’t say anything, she reiterated, annoyed, “Jie tried to tell you that it was dangerous, but you didn’t listen.”
“Neither did you, and now you’re here with me.”
While Talasyn was quietly seething at that retort, Alaric sat down, casting a skeptical gaze around their surroundings. “No small wonder the ancient Shadowforged left Nenavar, what with their lone nexus point flooding every time the weather acts up.”
“That and the sarimans.” She sat as far away from him as the rock shelf would allow. His features hardened at the mention of the birds, which she chalked up to the same general unease at the very concept of them that she, too, felt on occasion.
He changed the subject, looking up at the grotto ceiling and its cracks of daylight, its overhang of stalactites. “We can aethermance, smash through there, if the flood worsens. Or if we run out of food and water.”
“Do you have enough food and water? I lost my pack.” Would he even deign to share? She fought down the panic, a leftover from her childhood. Surely he wouldn’t let her starve, he needed her to face the Voidfell and to maintain Kesath’s foothold in Nenavar. But what if …
Talasyn’s stomach rumbled, an echo of her distress. Alaric clapped a hand over his mouth, a soft chuckle escaping him, and there was an undercurrent of regret to her mortification, regret because she had yet to see what he looked like when he was smiling and she was so unabashedly curious.
He nudged his pack toward her. “Help yourself.”
She inspected the food squirreled away in straw baskets, cushioned by banana leaves. Steamed rice cakes, slabs of creamy white sun buffalo cheese, smoked venison, and whole salted duck eggs, their shells dyed a bright magenta hue so that kitchens all over Nenavar could distinguish them from fresh ones that hadn’t spent sennights curing in clay and charcoal paste. Talasyn estimated that it would all last three days between her and Alaric, rivaling what she’d brought to Belian.
“You really were set on staying here a while,” she remarked.
“Communing with the Shadow Sever seemed a much better use of my time than sitting around waiting for you to come back.”
There was a note of accusation in his voice despite his cool facade. Unwilling to explain, Talasyn busied herself with methodically peeling a salted egg, the beetroot dye staining her fingers.
The longer she said nothing, the more her silence appeared to irk her husband. He leaned back, crossing his arms. “You always were the type to run,” he drawled. “From me on the Highlands ice. Back to your quarters whenever we argued at the Roof of Heaven. In hindsight, I’ve no idea why I assumed we could discuss yesterday’s situation like adults.”
“There is nothing to discuss!” Talasyn snapped. “We were both half-asleep, and that’s all . We can just forget it.”
“Like all those other times?”
“ Yes. ”
“I fail to understand why you couldn’t have told me that to my face—”
“I’m telling you now, you dolt—”
“—instead of sailing off to the other end of the country after the fact, like a coward—”
“Why, did I hurt His Majesty’s feelings?”
Talasyn had spat it out with the thoughtlessness of reflex. Just pure venomous retaliation, just another volley in the never-ending war that they had been waging solely against each other since the night they met.
But the way Alaric’s shoulders went tense, as though she’d struck him, made her stomach drop.
“ Were your feelings really—” she started to ask, but he cut her off.
“It’s male pride,” he said coolly. “It’s not good for our egos when the lady flees after the tryst.”
Talasyn narrowed her eyes. An unpeeled portion of eggshell cracked in her fist. And just how many ladies have lingered in your bed? she nearly asked, before stopping herself in the nick of time. She shouldn’t care at all.
“Your ego could stand to be whittled down a bit,” she huffed, “so as far as I’m concerned, I’ve done humankind a service.”
“As you say.” He was uncaring, unaffected, as he casually leaned over to retrieve a salted egg from the pack.
She hated herself for wanting that encounter to have meant more to him, even though it was for the best that it didn’t. She hated the ugly thing that clawed at her chest as she thought about the women before her. His past shouldn’t matter; he should hardly even matter, outside of the role he would play in her endgame.
And yet Talasyn kept circling back to that night in his chambers, how he’d been so broken, how he’d asked her to be kind. How sweetly he’d kissed her.
But he didn’t even remember the kiss—and even if he did, it would still be of no consequence, like all else they’d done together.
It was just physical attraction. They were both just lonely.
After their meal, he offered her one of the four waterskins that he’d lugged from Iantas. She took a hearty swig, then set it under one of the leaks in the limestone ceiling to be replenished by the rain.
Then there was nothing left to do but wait.
The rock shelf where Alaric and Talasyn were encamped was the only spot of somewhat dry land left in the whole grotto. He should have been grateful for it, but he spent the next few hours cursing its very existence.
It was far too small. Only a little bigger than the bed at Iantas, it didn’t provide him with enough room to get away from her.
Come to think of it, a whole island’s worth of space wouldn’t have been enough. Because she was wearing his tunic.
He’d already known that the sight wouldn’t do him any favors, which was why he’d initially avoided letting his gaze linger on her. She had looked rumpled and adorable at first glance, and then, as time passed, he started noticing the finer details in the grotto’s dim light—how the sleeve slipped off her shoulder when she moved a certain way, revealing her graceful collarbone, and how the hem rode up her shapely thighs, exposing more and more of those long legs that would one day be his undoing.
Now she was more dangerous than adorable, and he didn’t know how much more he could take, torn between shaking her for putting herself in danger with some harebrained notion of rescuing him and kissing her senseless for … for being her . For being his exasperating wife who looked so good in his clothes.
The same wife that his father was expecting him to betray after the Moonless Dark.
“I have something to tell you,” he announced. Better now before they forgot yet again what they were supposed to be to each other.
She turned to him, giving him her full attention. It would have been easier to avert his gaze as he relayed the news about Khaede that Lisu had brought him, but that was the coward’s way out. He was the Night Emperor and this was on his hands. Difficult choices were made in wartime, and he was no rightful ruler if he didn’t own every single one.
Alaric forced himself to maintain eye contact, to watch as Talasyn’s expression shifted to shock and then to a slow-simmering anger. He watched her take a slow inhale, the Lightweave swirling in her irises in the same way that it must be moving beneath her skin, searching for a target.
He prepared to defend himself from her magic. He prepared for her to shout at him.
Instead, she burst into tears.
There was nothing gradual or delicate about it. Talasyn approached crying the way she did everything else—her whole heart in it, never halfway. She tucked her knees to her chest, sobs wracking her slim frame, and before Alaric was even fully aware of his actions he was beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders.
Compassion will be your downfall, whispered his father’s voice in his head.
She raised her head over her folded arms. Her wet freckles shone in the subterranean light. She looked so vulnerable that self-loathing roiled through him, sudden and acrid and harsh. In that moment he was starkly reminded of how young she was. Too young to have lost a war, too young to bear the fate of an entire civilization, too young to be burdened with his broken pieces.
Unable to stop himself, he lifted a hand to her jaw and brushed away the tears dripping from the curve of it like rain. He wasn’t wearing his gauntlets and he felt it all so keenly—the heat of her tears, the silkiness of her skin, the fragile structure of the bones beneath.
Suddenly her fingers dug into his wrist, and it hit him that she was crying not from sorrow but from pure, crushing relief.
“Khaede’s alive,” she croaked. “She’s—there was no better helmsman during the war. If she found a coracle, then she outflew your men and she’s alive. She and her baby are alive.”
Alaric couldn’t bear to tell her that the odds of that were minimal. He also didn’t know how he would feel if she were right. That would make Khaede one of the many enemies of the state still at large.
His conflict must have been blatant, or perhaps Talasyn could read him far too well these days. She clutched at his sleeves, but then, just as he thought she was going to pull him closer, she pushed him away.
“Don’t act like you care,” she bit out, still crying. “How dare you hold me while you think about how inconvenient it is that my friend survived—”
“Of course I care,” he snapped. “I bargained away command of one of the next generation of invincible warships in exchange for that information, so there is clearly some part of me that cares, Talasyn—”
She blew her nose on the sleeve of the borrowed tunic, cutting him off. “If she ever turns up,” she said sullenly, “what I want still stands. She and her child will stay here in Nenavar, under my protection.”
“That was already a given. But I’m glad that you’ve been so comfortable making demands of me as of late.”
Talasyn hiccupped. “Can I demand that you shut your mouth?”
Alaric frowned at her. “Only if you stop crying.”
She didn’t listen to him. She rarely had before, and she wasn’t about to start making a habit of it now.
Talasyn wept her heart out over the rippling black lake, the salt of her tears mingling with the raindrops that trickled in from the limestone ceiling. At some point after the war, she’d locked Khaede up in a corner room in her mind, peeking in only occasionally; a defense mechanism, so she could keep her focus, so she wouldn’t go mad with going over all the worst-case scenarios.
Now the door had been blown wide open, though, and Talasyn let it all out. All the guilt and the terror and the hope. Once she started crying, she couldn’t seem to stop. This was the wallowing. This was the breaking point she’d been so afraid to hit.
If Alaric had tried to reach for her again, she would have clawed his eyes out. At least he knew her well enough not to even try—and wasn’t that a sad thing? Wasn’t that another cause for crying, that no one in this new life understood her as much as her sworn enemy did? He was a wraith at the edges of her blurry vision, standing around awkwardly while she soaked his borrowed tunic in tears and snot. And finally, finally , she was collapsing against the wall of the rock shelf, spent and strangely at peace.
He was at her side in an instant, raising a waterskin to her parched lips. She took grudging sips from it, then closed her aching eyes. In the darkness behind them, she felt Alaric run his knuckles along the inside of her wrist as he lowered the waterskin.
It was a diffident offering of comfort. Perhaps it was even entirely accidental. But her heart held on to it all the same.
I’m exhausted. The thought cut her in all its simplicity. She kept her eyes shut as his touch lingered, then drifted away. Briefly, she wondered what it would be like to live in a world where she was allowed to take his hand.