Chapter Twenty-One
C HAPTER T WENTY -O NE
They made it to the coracle on the cliff eventually, once the rain had slowed. An hour later, a ship from House Matano arrived to ferry them to Iantas, while some of its crew stayed behind to retrieve the Kesathese shallop on the beach.
At the castle, Talasyn waved off the concerned twittering of Jie and the Lachis-dalo and fled to the royal suite of rooms, while Alaric was busy assuring Sevraim that he had not in fact drowned at sea and come back to haunt him. She bathed, meticulously scrubbing at their combined release that had leaked down her thighs, while her mind turned over with all the possible ramifications, all the doubts.
A restlessness was gathering in her soul. After bathing, she drifted into her study and leafed through the messages piled on her desk. There were the agricultural reports and breakdowns of the state budget that Urduja always made sure were copied and sent to Talasyn from the Roof of Heaven, as well as a slew of invitations from the other noble houses to various festivities.
“Your Grace.” A servant appeared in the doorway. “His Majesty requests your company for a late lunch. Or an early supper. ‘However the Lachis’ka prefers to think of it,’ he said.”
Talasyn was famished, but her courage failed her. She and Alaric hadn’t spoken a word to each other the whole journey home, and she didn’t think she could bear to face him over something as innocuous as a meal so soon after what they’d done on the beach. She couldn’t even meet the servant’s eyes. “Tell him I’m busy.”
The servant bowed and left. A long while later, Alaric strolled in, fresh from his own bath. He slouched against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, studying her with a quiet alertness. Talasyn very firmly cleared her throat and made a show of going through her files—even though the words on the parchments had lost all meaning—but he made no move to leave. Trust this man to be incapable of taking a hint.
“Ran from me again,” he observed.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she scoffed. “I have a lot to do, as it’s plain to see.” She held up one of the letters for his perusal, a boldly inked invitation to a parade that had been elegantly penned in Sailor’s Common as a courtesy to the Lachis’ka’s consort.
Not that said consort appreciated it. “Ah, yes, very important stuff. Not at all an excuse.”
A growl of frustration formed low in her throat. “It’s not an excuse, I—”
“Don’t want to finish what we started?” he suggested helpfully. “Fear this pull that exists between us?”
A growing tightness tugged in her belly like a thread on a spool. It was the anticipation and dread that one felt before a battle. She crumpled the letter in her fist. “I don’t have to listen to this.”
“You’re right. You don’t have to.” Alaric’s maddeningly full lips curved into a smirk. “Feel free to make your exit, then.”
The utter gall . He’d been the one who came barging in and he knew it, judging from how absolutely smarmy he looked and sounded right now. He was taunting her.
Talasyn dropped the hapless invitation to the parade and charged. There were too many emotions left over, too much had been building up, and she seized the first possible outlet for all of it by letting her temper spike in a sharp flare as she hurtled toward Alaric. “I was here first,” she seethed, “you unbelievably annoying man—”
His arms opened to receive her and she crashed into his wide, solid chest, and then they were kissing. A hot, openmouthed tangle of biting teeth and punishing tongues. There was no grace to it, but how could there be when they were both on edge, when he’d been spoiling for a fight and gotten this instead?
He spun her around and walked her backward, their lips still connected, out of the study and into their bedchamber. At some point over the last hour or so, the monsoon had regained strength. It lashed at the exterior walls of Iantas, a sonorous melody of raindrops pattering on wind-carved granite. The meager daylight spilling into the room veiled the angles of Alaric’s face in silver as he deposited her onto the bed, as she rolled on top of him.
Fumbling, grasping, they worked together to unbutton his tunic, a process impeded by how loath they were to stop exploring each other’s mouths. Once he was shirtless, he peered up at her through hooded eyes in something like challenge. She had no clue where to begin; there was just so much of him bared beneath her, his pale skin a fine contrast to the wine-colored sheets.
But Talasyn was never one to back down. Lightning flashed through the balcony doors in splinters of brilliant white as she lowered her lips to the curve of his jaw. She felt Alaric close his eyes, his lashes fluttering against her face, his hand stirring ever so slightly between her thighs in a way that spurred her on.
Soon she had embarked on the rather delightful journey of marking him up, biting and sucking, soothing the skin with her tongue as he bucked against her. Soon his neck and chest were littered with mottled red bruises that stood out like crushed rose petals against his skin.
There was a trace of desperation in the way he reached for her. And there was no small amount of mischief in the way she leaned back, out of his grasp.
His gaze darkened. “You know what I want, Talasyn.”
“Haven’t the slightest notion,” she chirped, putting on her best Lachis’ka airs.
He flipped her onto her back, and as her head hit the pillows she let out a sound that was almost a giggle, and he swallowed it with his mouth, curved into what was nearly a smile. He covered her with his body and proceeded to demonstrate exactly what he wanted as rain beat against the windows in a drowsy lullaby.
Reluctantly opening her eyes the next morning, Talasyn found herself in Alaric’s embrace— crushed in it. The man didn’t know his own strength: his arms were wrapped around her waist, keeping her back snugly tucked against his bare chest, and he was holding her as a child would a soft toy, so tightly that it was difficult to breathe. She wriggled around as best as she could in an attempt to loosen his grasp, but he was having none of it, muttering a faint, unintelligible protest into her hair.
Talasyn froze as her ineffectual movements brought her into contact with something hard that grazed the curve of her backside. Alaric might still be asleep, but there appeared to be at least one part of him that was ready to face the day. She nearly snickered, but cold realization crept up on her, bringing with it a twinge of pain that gathered in the bottom of her heart.
She forced Alaric’s arms away from her, panic giving her a surge of strength. She sat up, her legs dangling off the edge of the bed as she frantically scanned the room for her undergarments. Where had she tossed them last night—
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal, Talasyn.”
She looked over her shoulder. Alaric had also sat up and was regarding her with somber eyes, the blankets pooled at his waist. There were streaks of red across his defined chest, the marks left by her teeth and her nails. Whatever he saw on her face made something flicker across his—in the morning light, it was almost bitterness, almost resignation, but it was gone in a blink, before she could tell for certain. Replaced by his usual hauteur.
“This,” Alaric continued, “doesn’t have to be anything more than it is. There is obviously an attraction between us. While that does move our marriage beyond the merely political, I don’t believe there would be much harm in acting on it from time to time. Until the attraction runs its course.”
He held it out to her the way he’d held out the promise of a future where they worked together to build a better world.
But he’d meant his better world, not hers. Never hers. There could be no better world until the Night Empire fell—and when that day came, he was going to hate her.
So why not? came that inner voice, dark and treacherous. If he’s going to hate you anyway, why not take your pleasures while you can?
Talasyn’s head ached. She didn’t want to think anymore.
“I don’t know,” she muttered. “You might end up falling in love with me.”
It was a quip to distract him from waiting for an actual answer from her. It worked a little too well; he recoiled .
“That’s not going to happen,” Alaric said flatly. “Love is for poets and dreamers, not leaders of state. You and I have no such luxury.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t agree with him, but his remark still hurt a bit. As though she had a splinter in her lungs. She breathed it out slowly, frowning to herself. Where was that coming from?
“Well, as long as we’re clear,” she said.
“You need to see a healer,” he said at the same time.
They stared at each other.
“Your, ah …” He raked a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. “A preventive. Because I—” He swallowed. “You need to see a healer for a preventive.”
Talasyn almost screamed. It had completely slipped her mind.
She stood up—only to wince, then plop back down on the mattress. She turned to Alaric again, this time with a venomous glare that was pure accusation. “I’m sore .”
He blinked. The ghost of a smile spread across his lips and his gray eyes went glassy, faraway. “Really,” he hummed.
Talasyn grabbed the nearest pillow and hurled it at her husband’s head.
The storm’s final burst of vindictiveness before it dissipated had left the first level of the castle flooded overnight. Alaric and Talasyn both spent the morning dealing with it, helping the staff move what supplies and priceless artifacts could be salvaged to the upper levels. Once the water had finished receding, his wife had thrust a mop into his hands, saying that it was all hands on deck.
Alaric had never held a mop in his life, but he liked to think that he’d done a capable enough job. He then spent the afternoon in his study, attending to the pile of messages that had accumulated during his sojourn to Chal—a pile that, now that the weather was clear, only grew as skua after skua glided in through the window. Through it all, he could think only of Talasyn, of how tight and soft she’d been, of the pretty sounds she’d made for him.
The woman was a blight on his peace. Alaric held out for as long as he could—which wasn’t very long at all, only a few hours—and then left his study at dusk, in search of her. The servants directed him to the northern wing of the castle, to the library at its topmost level.
Iantas’s library was a treasure trove of ancient tomes, beautifully bound and inscribed, arranged with precision on the towering shelves that lined the walls. As Alaric stepped through the arched doorway, he abruptly stumbled and almost lost his footing; the inside of his head reeled with a summons from Gaheris. Cold, dark fingers reached for him, pulling him into the In-Between.
Or trying to, at least. Talasyn poked her head out from behind a row of shelves, and the sight of her sent a surge of warmth through him.
Alaric went over to her, shrugging off the summons. His father could wait. Everything else could wait.
It seemed that Jie had been successful in taking sponge and soap to her mistress. Talasyn’s complexion was still rosy from the heated bathwater, which Alaric realized as he drew near had been scented with the candied-lemon tang of elemi oil. She wore a dress of opalescent lavender and silver brocade, with geometric cutouts that exposed the willowy curves of her torso, tantalizing stretches of olive skin that he longed to dig his fingers into as soon as possible.
The neckline was revealing as well, dipping almost to her navel, and Alaric promptly cast all his previous grievances with that accursed tailor aside and thanked the benevolent universe for the gift of Nenavarene fashion.
“Finished with your work?” Talasyn inquired, returning the book she’d been reading to its shelf.
Alaric nodded, not trusting himself to speak just yet. He stepped closer and something gleamed in her lovely brown eyes—his own heightening anticipation, reflected back at him in the twilight.
“What about you?” His voice came out too low for such harmless small talk, and talking was indeed the absolute last thing he wanted to be doing right now, but the sense of propriety that had been drilled into him from an early age insisted that one did not simply attack one’s spouse in a library.
“The Lachis’ka’s work is never done,” she dryly replied. “Particularly when the first floor still smells like sewage.”
“I don’t understand why your ancestors built a castle in a flood-prone area.”
“It’s a summerhouse, so of course it has to be by the beach.”
“Madness.” He took another step toward her. She tilted her chin upward, pink lips shaped to receive his kiss.
It was a sudden spark of mischief that prompted Alaric to go straight for Talasyn’s neck instead. When he nipped at the sensitive spot below her ear, she laughed in both surprise and delight, and the sweet, unexpectedly sultry sound made him smile as he worked his way down. He longed to use his teeth but he doubted she would appreciate that. Unlike the high collar of his tunic, which hid the marks she’d inflicted on him yesterday, her dress left little room for subterfuge.
Her breathing grew unsteady as he lavished the valley between her breasts with feather-light kisses, his hands tightening around her waist. The air had become very warm, and the fragrance of promise jasmines wafting from Talasyn’s chestnut hair drowned out the scents of ink and parchment and old wood.
Alaric became faintly aware of a faraway noise, like a creak, as though the door was being pushed open, but it failed to penetrate the desire clouding his senses. His mind, whittled down to nothing but the basest of instincts, instantly dismissed the sound as unworthy of concern while he kissed his way to the freckles atop his wife’s left breast.
A throat was cleared. Loudly.
They froze as their eyes whipped to the library entrance. Prince Elagbi was standing there, arms crossed, a thunderous expression on his face.
Alaric Ossinast, the Night Emperor of Kesath, saw his life flash before his eyes.