Alaric sat down, careful to keep his hood drawn low over his features. Talasyn had deliberately chosen a secluded spot, and the people in their immediate vicinity seemed too drunk or too engrossed in their own conversations to notice him, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
She melted into the crowd, leaving him awkwardly sitting there by himself for what felt like ages. Just as he was starting to suspect that she’d abandoned him and this was all part of some nefarious Dominion ploy to get the Night Emperor to wind up dead in a ditch, she returned, gingerly carrying a bamboo tray laden with utensils, wooden bowls of fluffy white rice and some kind of grayish stew, and tankards filled with a mysterious saffron-colored liquid.
“What is this?” Alaric asked once she’d taken the seat across from him.
“Pork with peas and jackfruit. The drink is sugarcane juice,” she supplied. “This isn’t the best stall, but it’s quiet. If you want the best pork stew, you have to go a little further up the street, near the drummers.”
“You are a fixture, then, I take it?”
“Not as much as I would like to be.” She seemed somewhat regretful, and he arched a brow.
“Surely there is nothing stopping you from coming down here whenever the mood strikes.”
Talasyn mumbled something about lessons and duties before she dug into her bowl with a barely contained frenzy, chewing and swallowing nonstop while glaring a hole into the table. Alaric almost felt bad that he had forced his presence on her and it was no doubt sullying her enjoyment of the meal.
Eventually, he took his first tentative bite. And then another, and another. Perhaps he was just famished, but the soupy mess in his bowl was delicious, and the cold beverage that he washed it down with was sweet and refreshing.
Since his dining companion wasn’t in a particularly chatty mood, he let his attention drift to their surroundings. The table in front of theirs was especially lively, the burly men occupying it loud enough to be obnoxious, their ruddy faces flushed with alcohol. Alaric thought that he caught the word Kesath every once in a while.
“What are they saying?” he asked Talasyn, inclining his head toward the group.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m still learning Nenavarene, and they’re talking too fast.” She stabbed a chunk of meat with her fork and changed the subject. “You’re looking forward to sailing home after the wedding, I’ll wager.”
She sounded so especially prickly that Alaric gave in once again to the impulse to tease her. “Am I? We won’t see each other again until you come to Kesath for your coronation. Perhaps I shall miss you terribly.”
Talasyn rolled her eyes, a small quirk blossoming along one corner of her mouth. But then her expression flattened, reminding him of a shield being thrown up, and she ducked her head. “Let me finish my meal in peace,” she grunted.
Ever since she sat down to eat, the drunks at the next table had been planning to wage all-out war on the Night Empire. These plans had grown increasingly more outlandish, so much so that changing the subject with Alaric had no longer been enough. She’d had to stop talking to him altogether so that she could focus on keeping a straight face. It was almost worth her real plans for the evening being foiled.
Almost.
“Who does this bastard emperor think he is?” yelled the ringleader. “Waltzing in here, forcing our Lachis’ka to marry him—let’s storm the palace, I say! Let’s slaughter the Kesathese in their beds!”
Amidst impassioned rumblings of assent, a lone voice strove to get everyone to see reason. “We must trust in Queen Urduja’s judgment. She knows what’s best for Nenavar, and she’ll be furious if we storm her palace.”
“Not if it’s so we can rescue her granddaughter from the clutches of an outsider!” argued a third man. “Here’s what, some of us’ll take a bunch of firecrackers and sneak onboard that accursed lightning ship, blow it to smithereens, while the rest of us will lay siege to the Roof of Heaven—”
“And slaughter the Kesathese in their beds!” the group cheered, banging their tankards on the table.
“They’ll never know what hit ’em!”
“What’s an army to six determined patriots?”
“My hatchet thirsts for the Night Emperor’s blood!”
Talasyn fought down a snort, swallowing it along with her mouthful of rice and stew. She diligently avoided meeting Alaric’s gaze.
Then one of the men said, “Although—the Lachis’ka is an outsider, too, isn’t she? She didn’t grow up here, and Lady Hanan, rest her soul, was foreign.”
“That doesn’t mean that Alunsina isn’t ours!” gasped the voice of reason. “She is Elagbi’s daughter. She is She Who Will Come After.”
“Maybe it is for the best that Her Grace will marry the Night Emperor,” slurred the drunkest of the lot. “Outsiders deserve each other.”
Talasyn pushed her mostly empty bowl away. She no longer felt like laughing and she no longer wished to overhear another word of the men’s conversation. She grabbed Alaric by the arm and dragged him out of the alley. “Time to be heading back,” she said, in response to his quizzical look.
But they didn’t head back right away. Instead, once they left the marketplace, Talasyn took a circuitous route for reasons that weren’t entirely clear even to herself. She and Alaric wound up in the side street of a quiet residential neighborhood, where the festive drumbeats rolled only like distant thunder.
Unfortunately, Alaric’s sarcastic tones were not as far away. “Is this the part where you stick a knife into my ribs and dispose of my body?”
“You’re so paranoid.” And you should be, she fervently, if silently, conceded.
She realized that she was still holding on to his arm, her fingers digging into an unfathomably solid bicep, and she let go at once and widened the distance between them. He’d latched on to her like this earlier and she’d allowed it, not keen on explaining losing him to her grandmother. It had been a matter of practicality. But now she wondered if her touch burned into his skin like his did hers—if he, too, was befuddled by any form of physical contact between them that didn’t end in grievous bodily harm.
The memories of the plumeria grove and up against his wardrobe surged through her in a flash of white heat and phantom sensations. His soft lips all that she could see, his large hands all over her form.
Talasyn fled. That was the simplest way to describe what she did next—aiming her grappling hook at an upper railing on the nearest structure, embarking on the climb once it caught. Below her she heard metal clacking against brickwork and the stretch of rope as Alaric gave chase, but she didn’t look back, she didn’t stop until she’d scaled all six levels and hauled herself onto the rooftop.
She sat down, balancing precariously on one of the inclines, her legs dangling off the edge. From this vantage point the city was a tangled net of red and yellow lantern-light, glimmering against the dark, beneath the seven moons.
I don’t belong here. The thought pierced her in all its bleakness. I don’t belong anywhere.
Back in Sardovia, she’d grown up waiting for her family to come back. Now that she had found her family, it consisted of a grandmother who thought nothing of using her as a bargaining chip and a father who would never side with her over his queen, in a homeland where she was an outsider.