“Where?” Nisene asked in deeply suspicious tones.
“That’s classified.”
“Ooh, a secret mission,” Sevraim gushed as Alaric began climbing back up the cliff. “Do you need a partner, Your Highness?”
Alaric rolled his eyes at Sevraim’s transparent attempt to escape the current tedium. “Negative. The three of you will stay here and finish dismantling the Sever; then you will proceed to the Citadel for the meeting with Emperor Gaheris.”
“Without you?” Ileis prodded. “How are we to explain your absence to His Majesty?”
“What makes you think I’m not off to do his bidding?” Alaric challenged, scrambling onto another ledge without looking back.
“You aren’t,” Nisene called out.
He smirked to himself as he climbed higher. “Just tell him that I have an urgent matter to take care of.”
Upon reaching the summit, Alaric headed straight to where their four wolves were docked on a large, partially collapsed platform that rose up from the sea of temple ruins. So named for their pointed snouts, the coracles gleamed jet-black in the early-afternoon sun, their barrel-chested hulls bearing the Kesathese chimera in silver paint. Alaric slid into the well of his coracle, raised its black sails, and took off, the wolf’s prow slicing through the air like a scimitar, its aether hearts spitting out iridescent fumes of emerald green as it soared over the cliffs. Toward the Eversea.
Here is a token of good faith, the message had begun. Exchanged for the hope of clemency.
It could only have been a matter of time before a Sardovian officer switched sides, Alaric supposed, but the turncoat really couldn’t have picked a better moment. If they could get information on the Allfold’s defenses, it would assure the success of the Night Empire’s upcoming attack—one that would be launched on such a scale as had never been seen before on the Continent, and thus bore the equivalent amount of risk.
And as for the information that the turncoat had already shared . . .
Alaric dug into his pocket for the map that the pigeon had brought him and perused it, mentally charting the most expedient route. The Lightweaver had over half a day’s lead on him but he was confident that he would be able to catch up. If not in the air, then on land, within the borders of Nenavar. He had to stop her before she reached the Dominion’s Light Sever.
Alaric did his best to ignore the cynical inner voice telling him that if he had just cut her down on the frozen lake a fortnight ago, he wouldn’t have had to abandon all his other responsibilities for this wild chase that already had the makings of a diplomatic crisis stamped all over it. No matter what, Gaheris would be furious once he learned that Alaric had acted on new intelligence without consulting him. After all, what if this was a trap? And if it wasn’t, and the worst-case scenario happened, the Night Emperor would find out that his heir had angered the Zahiya-lachis by trespassing on her realm. Either way, the consequences were going to be severe.
It would be far kinder, Alaric thought sardonically, for the Nenavarene to execute him instead of handing him back to his father.
Still, there was no other choice. In all his twenty-six years, Alaric had never seen the Sardovian Lightweaver’s ilk before. She was a slip of a thing who bulldozed her way through combat with willpower like iron, besting him and one of his deadliest legionnaires even though she had neither legitimate training nor regular access to a nexus point. With the latter, there was a very real possibility that she would be unstoppable.
He really should have just finished her that night on the outskirts of Frostplum. But Alaric had been . . . fascinated. Perhaps it was too generous a term, but that was honestly how he’d felt. They’d been surrounded by a plethora of dark barriers, each one strong enough to shred her into a million pieces despite her built-in resistance, but he hadn’t let that happen. He’d followed some impulse and waved the barriers aside. She’d been a frightened little rabbit at first and he’d put her through her paces on the ice, under the seven moons, studying the way she moved, the way she bared her teeth at him, the way the aether gilded her olive skin as her features twisted from fearful to murderous. The way her narrowed eyes shone golden with her magic, reflecting the distant fires of the battlefield.
Then she’d cracked her skull against his and stabbed him in the shoulder, and he’d spent the next few days concussed and unable to use his right arm. Once he was more or less recovered, his father had meted out the necessary punishment for allowing the first Lightweaver to crop up in nineteen years to escape, and Alaric had been unable to get to his feet or do much of anything for another few days.
He had let his guard down and he had let the girl go, and now everything that Kesath had achieved—had toiled and risen above the fray to become—was in jeopardy.
The end of the Hurricane Wars was in sight. Sardovia was cornered, and cornered animals were the most dangerous. Affording them any sort of advantage at this point could spell disaster for the Night Empire.
All around us are enemies.
Sunstead had attacked Kesath when they learned about the stormship prototype that his grandfather King Ozalus’s Enchanters were building. The Lightweavers had wanted to steal the technology for themselves. They had killed thousands of Kesathese, including Alaric’s grandfather, to do it. And the rest of the Sardovian Allfold had simply stood by and watched.
If not for the Lightweavers, Ozalus might still be alive and Gaheris wouldn’t have been thrust into power ill-prepared and in mourning, his country already at war.
If not for the Lightweavers, Gaheris wouldn’t have become what he was today and Alaric’s mother wouldn’t have fled the Continent.
Alaric’s jaw clenched. His mind was once again going down a treacherous path. As he steered his airship over an expanse of barren gorges and waterfalls sluggish from the cold, so too did he steer his thoughts in a direction more befitting the crown prince of the Night Empire and the Master of the Shadowforged Legion.
Gaheris had the strength and courage to do what was necessary, even if all of Lir itself were against him. Alaric was proud to be his son.
And he needed to focus on what he had to do: get into Nenavar; kill the girl.
Talasyn, Alaric thought, the name summoned from the turncoat’s message as his wolf glided over the rocky southeastern coastline. Her name is Talasyn.
Chapter Six
On first approach, the Nenavar Dominion was exactly as the map suggested: an endless array of islands. What it hadn’t shown was how verdant they were, embedded in deep blue waters, like beads of jade scattered carelessly on a bed of sapphire silk. They glowed in the fiery light of the rising sun, beckoning Talasyn closer.
The sheer beauty of it took her breath away.
Growing up on the landlocked Great Steppe, Talasyn had often dreamed of seeing the ocean and had always been hungry for tales of water in such mind-boggling amounts, and fighting for Sardovia had taken her everywhere on the Continent but the coasts, it seemed. When the azure waves first stretched out below her tiny airship in the daylight, completely unimpeded by any form of land whatsoever, it had been a welcome thrill. However, at some point around the ten-hour mark, she’d started to consider that perhaps there was such a thing as too much water.