Confident in her plan, she donned a pair of boots and a nondescript brown cloak, cinching her grappling hook around her waist. Excitement nipping at her heels, she hurried out into the orchid garden—
—only to collide with the broad chest of the tall figure standing just beyond her side door.
Talasyn released an outraged squeak, stepping back as quickly as though she’d been burned. Alaric’s gray eyes held hers captive in the moonlight, his pale face framed by waves of bed-rumpled black hair. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“That’s none of your concern,” she retorted through clenched teeth and a quickening pulse. She pushed aside her growing panic, forcing herself to remain calm as she searched for plausible excuses.
“On the contrary, Lachis’ka, I am well within my rights to wonder why my betrothed is sneaking out after I specifically ordered that she stay put.”
Color flooded her cheeks at the cavalier, offhand way that he referred to her as his betrothed. “Well, why were you standing outside my room?” she demanded, buying time.
“I was getting some fresh air.” He appeared disgruntled for a moment, as though the Nenavar Dominion was putting him to no small amount of inconvenience. “And you’re avoiding my question. How can I be sure that you’re not leaving in preparation for an attack?”
“You’re ridiculous.” She tossed him a look of utter contempt. “Are you my betrothed or my jailer?”
He lifted his shoulders. “You’re not exactly providing me with much incentive to see the difference between the two.”
Gods, she’d been so stupid, so reckless—but there was a way out of this. There had to be.
Think, think—
Inspiration struck.
Talasyn made a show of releasing an exasperated breath. “Fine. If you must know, I’m off to the night market. To get something to eat. I’m hungry and I don’t feel like interacting with anyone in the palace. I’ll be back before first light.”
She fell silent, praying to every Sardovian god she knew and every Nenavarene ancestor she didn’t that he would believe her.
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Alaric smirked, and, instead of being relieved, Talasyn saw red. Before she could formulate a comeback, he went on to say, “Very well, then. How are we to sneak out?”
She pointed a warning finger at him. “There is no we!”
“There is. It’s the only way I can confirm that you’re telling the truth. Besides, Your Grace”—his smirk widened—“I’m hungry, too.”
Shit.
Alaric rappelled down the battlements of the Roof of Heaven with climbing gear that he’d retrieved from his quarters along with a black hooded cloak. Talasyn was a speck dangling beneath him on her own fixed lines. There were certain stretches of the facade that lacked the structure or foliage to shield them from view, but she had timed their descent perfectly; the palace guards were changing shift, and no one noticed them.
It was cause for concern that Talasyn was so good at sneaking around and that Dominion security was so lax, but Alaric couldn’t bring himself to care overly much. Not at the moment, anyway. After all the tense negotiations, he relished the physical exertion, the sense of adventure and open space. And he hadn’t been lying when he told Talasyn that he was hungry. His stomach complained as he followed her down the limestone bluffs.
“Keep your hood on,” she instructed once they had dropped into the city proper. Her own hood was drawn over her face, revealing only her pink lips pursed in annoyance and the stubborn set of her jaw.
He gave in to the temptation to rile her up further. “As you say, dearest,” he drawled, watching with some vague, secret glee as that mouth of hers curled into a snarl.
But Talasyn had clearly learned a thing or two from her time at her grandmother’s court. “That didn’t sound quite as sarcastic as you probably intended it to be,” she snapped, shouldering past him. “Keep it up and I might start to think that you actually like being my betrothed.”
Alaric scowled at her slender back as he trailed after her, grudgingly awarding her a point in his mental tally.
It was his first time walking through a Nenavarene city, and his initial impression was chaos. Despite the late hour, the streets were filled with people setting off firecrackers, drinking at tables set out on the sidewalks, and dancing to the beat of drummers stationed on nearly every block. The curved rooftops were ablaze with paper lanterns. Colorful banners were strung between lampposts and clotheslines, boldly inked with the Dominion’s wavelike script.
“They’re congratulating the Lachis’ka on her betrothal,” Talasyn reluctantly translated for him.
Alaric raised an eyebrow. “Just the Lachis’ka?”
“Yes,” she confirmed with an air of smug satisfaction. “They don’t mention you at all.”
Well, he couldn’t say that he was surprised. Urduja had done her best to paint the upcoming marriage as a happy event, but people would have seen the Kesathese warships amassed beyond Port Samout. They would have drawn their own conclusions.
The crowd thickened the closer to the night market they got, the masses of exuberant humanity increasing until Alaric was well and truly being jostled on all sides, sweat dripping down his brow in the warm tropical night. Not keen on letting Talasyn give him the slip, should she be so inclined, he grabbed her by the arm. She stiffened but didn’t shrug him off, instead guiding him into a maze of brightly lit food stalls, where the air was replete with smoke and various mouthwatering aromas.
His head was spinning. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in the midst of such a throng when he wasn’t cutting his way through them or leading a charge. They shuffled past stalls where there were platters of fresh fish and plump crustaceans on display, as well as fruits that he had never seen before: small round red ones with spikes that made them look like sea urchins; dark purple ones with thick clover-like leaves at the stem; and ones vaguely in the shape of human hearts that, when split open, revealed snowy white flesh speckled with black seeds. Merchants were tossing gelatinous noodles around in deep pots, cooking skewered meat on charcoal embers, frying dumplings and omelets in bubbling oil, and rolling up thin pastry sheets filled with cream ice and crushed peanuts. While they waited, the customers gathered around each stall to chat with one another, the usual singsong tones of the Nenavarene language strained as they all shouted to be heard over the drumbeats and the general roar that came with hundreds of people packed into a jumble of narrow streets.
Alaric received an elbow to the ribs no less than four times. His foot was trod on twice that number. At least three strangers shouted in his ear while hailing their acquaintances at the next stall or further up the street.
Indignation rose with every passing moment. If these people knew who he was—
But they didn’t. That was the thing. He wore neither crown nor wolf’s-snarl mask, and his hood hid the gray eyes of House Ossinast. Not that the commonfolk on this isolated archipelago knew anything about House Ossinast to begin with. It felt strange, to be this anonymous, to be treated just like everyone else.
Talasyn, on the other hand, seemed right at home. She led him to a stall that boasted its own collection of small round tables and stools spilling into an alleyway. “Stay here.” She indicated a vacant table, speaking almost under her breath. So that no one would overhear her using Sailor’s Common, he realized. While the soldiers and Dominion nobles that he’d dealt with thus far were fluent in the trade language, there was no reason for it to be widely spoken throughout these islands.