Talasyn went as red as a beet. She ducked her head, her chestnut braid spilling over one slim shoulder as she hunched in on herself as though bracing for his derision.
It was a familiar posture. It brought him back to the early stages of his own training.
What do you remember? she had asked.
If you stay, his mother had whispered, there will be nothing left of you.
“It’s all right, Lachis’ka.” The gentleness that he heard in his voice surprised him. It was a gentleness that had no place in this situation, but it was too late to take it back. “We’ll try again. Close your eyes.”
“What was the first weapon you ever made?”
In the darkness behind Talasyn’s shut lids, the hoarse rich ness of Alaric’s voice was amplified. She fidgeted, trying not to be distracted by it.
“A knife,” she said. “It took me only a few hours to perfect one that looked like the knife I stole from the kitchens when I left the orphanage. I knew that I’d need something to defend myself with, living on the streets.”
There was no response for such a long time that she would have assumed he’d gotten up and left, if not for the familiar scent of sandalwood water lingering in the air. He must splash that on after shaving in the mornings, she thought idly.
And then it hit her—the only possible explanation as to why he was so quiet—and her natural defensiveness reared its head. “Are you pitying me?”
“No.”
Alaric paused, as though weighing his next words, and Talasyn’s hands curled into loose fists as she waited for the inevitable. She’d hardly gone around flaunting her past among the Sardovian regiments, but whenever people had asked and she told them, the first reaction had unfailingly been pity, followed by a pretty speech exalting her resilience.
“Going to talk about how strong I must have been, to bear all that?” she muttered, eyes still shut, that old bitterness rising. It fed on her defensiveness, and her defensiveness fed on it. An endless loop of the scars left by a small, ground-down life. “If so, don’t bother. I’ve heard it all before. It’s absurd, to be cold and half starved for fifteen years and then be praised for that suffering. As though—as though it’s admirable that I fought other bottom-dwellers for space at the watering troughs where the horses drank.”
Her tone had warped at the edges, becoming raw and ugly with all the things that she had never managed to outgrow. She labored to get her breathing back under control, to meditate, as she was supposed to be doing—why was he distracting her with this, anyway?
“You shouldn’t have had to live like that,” Alaric said quietly, and it was as though time itself stood still. “It’s not pity for you that I feel; rather, anger on your behalf. The city leaders failed you. The Allfold failed you. It’s reprehensible to expect people to endure their suffering when you have the means to put an end to it.”
It was just like when she’d been reeling from her family’s subterfuge regarding the Voidfell and he’d told her that she had deserved to know. It was the second time that he had said words that she needed to hear. She nearly opened her eyes, the desire to look upon his face as bright as burning, but at the last possible minute she kept them squeezed shut, her chest tight with some vague fear at what she might see.
She agreed with him. That was the horrific, maddening truth. She had recognized what he was pointing out long ago, but she’d buried it deep. She never would have made it through the war otherwise.
How could she fight for something she didn’t believe in? How could she not fight, when the alternative was bowing to the Night Empire?
“The Allfold wasn’t perfect, but it’s not like Kesath is any better,” Talasyn said stiffly. Before he could argue, she added, “Let’s just get on with things. We’re supposed to have declared a truce.”
Alaric said something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like Could have fooled me. But then he was clearing his throat and they were back to training, the time constraint hanging over their heads.
Chapter Twenty
No progress was made that first afternoon, no matter how hard Talasyn concentrated and coaxed her magic forth. She then had to spend the night listening, racked with guilt, to the sounds of builders fixing the pillar that she’d accidentally broken.
Unlike aethermancy training, marriage negotiations the next day proceeded for the most part at a brisk pace. Not only did Talasyn hold her tongue for practically the entire morning, not wanting to interact with her grandmother and her father any more than was absolutely necessary, but the Dominion nobles—Lueve Rasmey, Niamha Langsoune, and Kai Gitab—were marginally friendlier toward the Kesathese contingent now that, thanks to Alaric, there was a chance that their archipelago wouldn’t be decimated by death magic before the year was out.
Shortly before the gongs throughout the Roof of Heaven tolled the noon hour, though, there was a minor crisis.
Commodore Mathire currently had the floor. “The wedding must be held in the Citadel,” she was railing. “It is the Night Empire’s seat of power and, as Alunsina Ivralis will be the Night Empress, she needs to be there to assume her role.”
“So conduct an official coronation in the Citadel,” Niamha retorted, “after the wedding, which needs to be held here in Eskaya. Her Grace may be Kesath’s future empress, but His Majesty will also be her consort. If you want the Nenavarene to accept him as such, then the nuptials simply must take place on Nenavarene soil.”
As the negotiators argued, Talasyn stiffened in her chair, hands fisting into her beaded skirt under the table, out of sight. She couldn’t get married in Kesath. She could never again set foot on the Northwest Continent, not until the Sardovians took it back.
It would hurt too much.
“It’s settled, then,” Alaric interrupted just when Mathire looked as if she was about to blow a gasket. “We will celebrate”—he couldn’t quite seem to contain his sarcasm—“the nuptials here in Nenavar, and then there will be a coronation in Kesath.”
Mathire scowled but dutifully made a note on one of her meticulously organized sheaves of parchment. Talasyn’s jaw throbbed from the strain of clenching it, and it wasn’t long before the dam broke and her words spilled out in a rush. “I don’t want to go to Kesath.”
Alaric’s gray eyes flickered to her from across the table. “As my wife, you will have to hold court at the Night Empire’s capital every once in a while,” he coolly informed her, and he didn’t know, he would never know, the way her heart skipped a beat as he referred to her as his wife. “We can discuss a schedule later. It doesn’t even have to be more than once every few months, if that’s what you prefer. What isn’t negotiable is your coronation.”
He was so remote, so different from the sullen yet patient man who had sat with her yesterday throughout all her fumbled attempts at shield-making. It occurred to her that this was another kind of mask he wore. Not wolf, but politician.
Or maybe—maybe the patient tutor was the mask. Talasyn had no idea. She couldn’t make sense out of this stranger who was to be her husband, and now the future was looming before her, a future where she would have to go into enemy territory as his bride, the spoils of war—