The more she took Alaric to task, the more color leached into his skin. She had presumed him incapable of anything as common as flushing, but his thick dark hair had been so disheveled by stormship winds and ground battles that the tips of his ears peeked out, and they were as red as the eclipse. The anger that she nursed for him and all his ilk didn’t recede, exactly, but it was somewhat dulled by confusion.
What was wrong with him?
“Never mind,” Alaric gritted out, abruptly vicious. “Forget I said anything.”
The clanging of gongs resounded through the air, dulled as it permeated the black-gold sphere but insistent, nonetheless. It was the signal for all Sardovian forces to retreat, leaving behind the dust and the rubble and the dead. Talasyn tugged at the threads of her magic and Alaric did the same, unraveling the tapestry that they had woven together. The barrier dissipated in the next instant, revealing the chaos that beset the street. The Sardovian soldiers who weren’t currently fleeing were covering their comrades’ escape with rattling streams of crossbow bolts and more ceramic shells, and Talasyn braced herself for Alaric’s next attack.
It never came.
“Until we meet again, Lightweaver.” His gray eyes were back to being hard and impassive. “In the meantime, do try not to let more falling rocks get the best of you when I’m not around to help.”
Talasyn shook with bewilderment and blinding rage. She couldn’t muster any sort of comeback, phantom snatches of words weighing heavy on her tongue and refusing to budge. She couldn’t re-engage him, either. She needed to help fend off the Kesathese troops while Sardovia pulled out.
Alaric was clearly well aware of it, too. The corners of his eyes lifted, as though he were sneering behind his fanged mask. And yet, something gnawed at her. There was something . . . off about the situation, some jarring thing that lurked beneath the veneer of this moment. Beneath his coldly regal tone and the unreadable flint of his gaze.
She didn’t realize what it was until he had turned around, clearly prepared to leave her standing there.
“You’re letting me go?” Talasyn blurted out.
Just like that?
Alaric froze. He didn’t look back at her, but one gauntleted fist clenched at his side.
“There is no use killing someone who has already lost.” His response was soft, but it sliced through her world like thunder. “It’s a waste of energy on my part, as you will probably die in the retreat soon enough.”
With that, he walked away, leaving her seething, leaving her to wonder why he did the things that he did. Even as Sardovia fell to pieces all around her.
Chapter Eleven
The Summerwind limped through the air above the Eversea, leaving the Continent behind. It had been so badly damaged that it leaned to one side, its wooden frame riddled with dents and cannonball holes and its once proud sails in tatters. Several of its Squallfast-infused hearts had imploded as well, with few empty crystals to spare, so that the airship could only crawl along in its journey south.
The other vessels accompanying it were in similar shape—and there weren’t a lot of them, either. There was only one other carrack in addition to the Summerwind, a heavy frigate, a dozen wasp coracles, and the Sardovian stormship Nautilus. The Nautilus plodded along behind the rest, a floundering leviathan, the glow of its aether hearts dim through the soot-stained metalglass layers of a battered hull.
Talasyn stood on the quarterdeck of the Summerwind, her arms folded over the railing, her eyes tracking the fluffy cotton-hued clouds without truly seeing them as they drifted past. A short distance away, white-cloaked Enchanters pored over the airship’s frantically whirring dashboard, scrambling identifiable aetherwave signatures and handling the transmissions that were being sent back and forth across encrypted channels as what was left of the Allfold tried to keep track of their comrades. The Summerwind and its convoy weren’t the only vessels that had made it out, but the evacuation had been hopelessly disorganized and, after several long days, the Sardovians were scattered throughout these reaches of the Eversea.
Every once in a while, an aetherwave signature would go dark, and Talasyn would determinedly suppress thoughts of what might have happened to the airship on the other end. That way lay madness. She had to focus on the present moment, on keeping everyone in her convoy alive.
But she was so worried about Khaede.
Khaede had been recalled from the front lines a sennight ago, when a particularly nasty bout of morning sickness finally forced her to reveal her condition. Talasyn had glimpsed her in the crowd shortly before the battle for Lasthaven started, manning an evacuation route for the cityfolk—and then never again.
In situations like this, the simplest explanation was often the correct one, but Talasyn refused to accept it. Any minute now, Khaede’s voice would crackle to life over the aetherwave, from an airship that she’d managed to escape Lasthaven on . . .
Bieshimma went over to Talasyn, resting the arm that wasn’t in a sling on the quarterdeck’s railing. He looked as though he’d aged a decade since the retreat.
He was in command while Vela recovered from her injuries, so Talasyn asked quietly, “What now, General?”
“Now?” Bieshimma peered at the shimmering ocean miles below their feet, as though searching for answers in its blue currents. “We need a place to hide. Somewhere to take stock of the situation and regroup with the others.”
“Where, though?” Talasyn asked, even though she already knew that Bieshimma didn’t have answers any more than she did. All of the Continent had been ripped out from under their feet, and the world was vast, but it was full of realms who had ignored Sardovia’s pleas for help for years, either disinterested or unwilling to risk the Night Empire’s wrath. There was nowhere left to run, but they couldn’t drift above the Eversea forever.
Her head spun with the weight of everything, the surreal cutting through the present like shards of glass. It felt as if it had only been hours ago when she was telling Khaede about the Nenavar mission, with the other woman torn between shock and amusement at the revelation of Talasyn’s heritage. And now Khaede was nowhere to be found and—
Talasyn went still as an idea began to take shape.
There was somewhere that they could go. It hadn’t been an option before, but things were different now.
Maybe—just maybe—it would work.
The convoy headed southeast. It was another two days of slow and arduous travel before they stopped, time that Talasyn spent helping tend to the injured and discussing the plan with General Bieshimma and a bedridden Vela, as well as monitoring the aetherwave for any sign of Khaede. Initially she didn’t have the stomach to assist with disposing of those who died from their wounds, but she eventually pitched in with that, too; the Summerwind was woefully shorthanded. She wrapped bodies in shrouds cobbled together from rags and spare scraps of canvas and she closed their sightless eyes before they were tossed overboard, disappearing into the Eversea in ripples of wave and foam.
So many died. If Kesath was giving chase, all the Night Empire would have to do was follow the trail of corpses in the water. The air was heavy with salt and grief.
The sun had just begun to set on the second day along their new course when Talasyn clambered up the mainmast of the Summerwind. It was 120 feet tall, which was nothing to her, nothing to someone who had grown up in Hornbill’s Head, where buildings sprouted on top of one another and everyone knew how to go higher. She had just helped wrap Mara Kasdar’s body in a makeshift shroud and drop it into the Eversea and she needed to be alone, away from the crowded cabins and the decks full of people wandering around in a shell-shocked haze.