But he didn’t care.
“Is that what you were taught on your side of the Continent?” he sneered. “I suppose it’s to be expected that a self-serving government like the Allfold would revise history for their own ends. Shall I tell you the truth, Lachis’ka?” Talasyn watched him as one would a wounded, starving bear. As she would watch the monster that she’d grown up believing him and all the other Kesathese to be. He continued, in a low growl, “For all that you and your comrades professed to despise the stormships, you certainly had no problems using them when it benefited you. Nineteen years ago, before the Hurricane Wars, it was no different. From the moment the Lightweavers learned of the plans for the stormship, they spared no effort to take the technology for themselves. The prototype was being constructed in a valley under territorial dispute; Sunstead used this as a pretext to seize the shipyard. Kesath took it back, and we fought to make sure that nothing could be taken from us ever again.”
And, two months later, his grandfather was dead and his father had ascended, in blood, in battle, in the dark of night.
All around us are enemies.
They shall tremble in the Shadow that we cast.
“That’s not what happened!”
It was the strangest thing, how Talasyn, irate as she was, uncouth as she so often could be, managed to jolt Alaric back to the present, to pull him out of his clamoring head. The air lightened again and his magic fell back, as though the reminder of her presence was a sunbeam piercing through his storm of rage and grief.
“Before they did anything else, Sunstead sent emissaries to Kesath,” she said, “to sway Ozalus from his course.”
“They did not. They attacked without warning.” Alaric was calmer now, but not by much. Speaking through gritted teeth. “It’s Kesath’s word against Sardovia’s. It’s what I know versus what you know. If it’s all the same to you, I would rather believe that my family wasn’t keeping the truth from me. Unlike yours, who didn’t even see fit to tell you about something as important as the Night of the World-Eater.”
Talasyn stood up, her small frame trembling. She placed her hands on her hips and glared down at him. “Even if what you say is true, even if I’ve been told lies my whole life, that still doesn’t excuse what the Night Empire did to the rest of the Continent for ten years!” she shouted. “Vengeance is not justice. The Lightweavers of Sunstead were eradicated long before the Hurricane Wars began. Destroying the homes and killing the loved ones of innocent people didn’t make Sunstead any more gone, did it?”
She spun on her heel and stalked away.
“Where are you going?” Alaric demanded.
“My chambers!” Talasyn yelled without looking back. “I don’t want to train anymore today. Stay away from me!”
The side door leading into her room slammed shut behind her.
“Train anymore today?” Alaric scoffed under his breath. “We never even got started.”
But he was speaking to empty air.
Fifteen minutes later, Alaric was still in the orchid garden. He had moved from the grass by the pool to one of the stone benches next to the waterfall, seeking shade from the relentless mid-afternoon sun underneath a hanging profusion of butterfly-shaped sapphire-and-cream blossoms.
He stared unseeing at his verdant surroundings, turning every second of his and Talasyn’s heated quarrel over in his head. Finally, he called out, “Sevraim.”
The unmasked legionnaire emerged from where he had been lurking behind a marble wall along the adjacent open hallway. He sauntered into the garden, flashing Alaric a cheerful grin. “How did you know that I was here?”
“You’re my only protection on Nenavarene soil. I would be quite displeased if you weren’t here.”
“And allow your feisty wife to beat you to death with her bare hands? Never,” Sevraim vowed with a chuckle. “Granted, she sounded moments away from doing just that. I was about to intervene.”
“She’s not my wife yet,” Alaric grunted. “I assume you overheard everything, then.”
“I did.” Sevraim dropped down onto the stone bench, a carelessness to his movements that no one else would have dared show around Gaheris Ossinast’s son. “There are two sides to each story, I suppose. But we know that we are in the right, so what does it matter what anyone else thinks?”
Alaric shrugged.
For the next several minutes, the splashing of the miniature waterfall was the only sound in the garden. And then Sevraim asked, “Is there something that His Majesty wishes to discuss with this humble servant?”
The words were teasing but the sentiment behind them was genuine, as only a lifelong companionship could engender. Alaric rolled his eyes and glanced at the languidly confident legionnaire who had charmed his way into almost every bed in the Kesathese court, and he scraped out, “How do I . . . talk to her?”
Sevraim’s lips quirked, as though he were suppressing a guffaw. Alaric felt the tips of his ears turning scarlet. He regretted his impulsive question, but it was too late to turn back.
“It’s understandable that she detests me,” he said. “I don’t believe that can ever be fixed. There’s too much bad blood. But I would like to make the situation more . . .” He gestured limply at Talasyn’s closed door across the garden. “Peaceful. Relatively speaking. However, no matter what I say or do, it sets her off.”
Sevraim propped his chin up on one curled fist. “Your father trained you to be a warrior and to one day be emperor—not to be the Nenavarene Lachis’ka’s consort. Least of all a Lachis’ka who wouldn’t throw water on you if you were on fire.”
“Indeed. She would be the one to set me ablaze,” Alaric muttered. “With a dragon.”
Sevraim snickered but didn’t deny it. He nodded. “There is so much more to life than war and politics, Your Majesty. Ask her about her interests.”
“Her interests,” Alaric repeated blankly.
“What she likes,” Sevraim clarified. “See if the two of you, maybe, like some of the same things, and go from there.”
Alaric was sure Talasyn’s interests consisted of his grisly demise, but Sevraim’s suggestion seemed doable enough. “Very well. What else?”
“Compliment her,” said Sevraim.
Alaric stared at him. “Compliment her on what?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve spoken approximately ten words to her, and that was to say we were going to kill her.” Sevraim scratched his head, deep in thought. “You could stand to look a little less forbidding, at least. You could perhaps even attempt to smile at her every once in a while.”
Alaric didn’t bother to dignify that with a response.
“All right, smiling might be too much,” Sevraim conceded. “Just . . . You have to understand that the Lightweaver is doing this to save herself and her newfound people, just as you are doing it to prevent Kesath from becoming embroiled in another war while we recover from the previous one. She lashes out because she’s anxious, as anyone in her situation would be. Don’t rise to the bait she sets all the time. Mark my words, Your Majesty, you’ll thank me for it.”