It’s for the best, Alaric thought. She could channel those emotions into their duel, maybe even successfully shield because of it. This was all working out according to plan.
What Alaric hadn’t planned on was Talasyn shucking off her tunic, revealing her breastband and the upper half of those infernal tight breeches. His gaze flickered over the hard plane of her bare midriff and the slight flare of her hips and all that lustrous olive skin, slicked with the beginnings of sweat in the merciless sunlight.
He was well aware that she only meant to move more freely in the tropical heat.
But there was a part of him that couldn’t help but think that she was tormenting him on purpose.
He opened the Shadowgate, shaping it into a curved sword in one gauntleted hand, a shield in the other. She spun her usual two daggers with a glare that dared him to say something about it.
“You’re free to do whatever you wish, but at least try to transmute that”—he gestured at the blade in her left hand—“into a shield when you can. And keep it up. Now, since it has been a while, shall I go easy on you, Your Grace?”
He’d added that last part for no reason other than to make her mad, and he would have felt vaguely ashamed of himself if she hadn’t risen to his challenge, sweeping her right foot back, arcing one dagger over her head and lifting the other in front of her, one side crackling toward him with lethal promise.
“Have at it, old man,” she spat.
He fought back a grin.
They lunged at the same time, Alaric swinging his sword to meet Talasyn’s dagger as she brought it down in an overhead strike. She turned on her left heel and he sprang away just in time to avoid her right leg smashing into his ribs, countering with a thrust that she blocked with her other dagger.
“Bit rusty,” he quipped, meeting her gaze through the sheen of light and shadow.
“Yes, you are,” she loftily agreed without missing a beat. She used their blade-lock as leverage to launch away and then assaulted him with a barrage of strikes so quick and ferocious that he was soon left with no other option but to shove her from him with a shapeless blast of shadow magic.
She skidded backwards several feet.
“You could have fended that off with a shield,” he smugly informed her.
“Noted,” she said through clenched teeth, before charging at him once more.
For Alaric, it was a beautiful, terrible thing, he and Talasyn dancing around each other and meeting in the middle, again and again and again, fiery little charges of static exploding between them every time their bodies brushed. His veins were alight with a wild exhilaration that he saw mirrored on her face beneath the brilliant sun of afternoon. They anticipated each other’s every move and they pushed each other to the limit, the ancient amphitheater reverberating with the roar of magic, the raw power that came bursting in from aetherspace.
Now he understood why she fought as she did—after the life she’d had. In his mind’s eye she was a child, scrappy and defiant, stealing out the door with a kitchen knife under her threadbare coat that offered poor protection from the howling ice-winds of the Great Steppe. Here and now, amidst the ruins, she was a war goddess, moving to the beat of a primal hymn.
You’re just like me, Alaric thought, uncertain whether the revelation soothed or unsettled him. We’re both hungry.
We both want to prove ourselves.
Talasyn felt happy.
No—happy couldn’t even begin to describe it. This was ecstasy, pure and unbridled, light screaming against shadow, her body falling into all the old forms as she was pitted against another aethermancer after so, so long.
At some point down the line, she and Alaric had abandoned chasing each other all over the amphitheater. Now they were fighting in close quarters, loath to separate, the combined heat from their magic within millimeters of singeing her skin. His gray eyes blazed silver and his smirk was wicked; he was taking a twisted delight in this, just as she was. She knew that she should at least attempt to shield, but what if it faltered again and the shadows hurt her? And besides, there was some yawning abyss in her soul that insisted she could overpower him if she just moved a little faster, struck a little harder—
But there was such a thing as striking too hard.
Her dagger slammed into his shield and he stepped away faster than she expected. She’d put all of her strength into the blow and so she stumbled, one of her two blades disappearing at the loss in concentration. Alaric had stretched out his blade arm just behind her in preparation for his next attack, and she ended up turning into the crook of his elbow.
Talasyn’s waist was suddenly encased in the steely curve of Alaric’s arm, her side pressed up against his hard chest, her dagger humming at his neck, his sword almost cradling her chin. The two of them were flushed and panting. His skin was hot and sweat-damp against hers. This is what it’s like to burn, she thought, listening to the growl of the Shadowgate, the high hum of the Lightweave, the skittering rhythm of Alaric’s ragged breath above her ear.
“You’ve been fighting your whole life,” he rasped in a low, unsteady voice that sounded not quite like his own and also, somehow, like the truest version of him. “Your instinct is to strike first, before anyone can hurt you. But sometimes it’s the blow that molds us.” The words were traced in vibrations of air that fanned against her temple as his sword inched up, narrowing the distance between its serrated shadowy edge and the line of her jaw. “Taking it. Letting it ring against our defenses, until we are assured in the knowledge that, when it’s over, we will still be standing.”
Her toes curled. She shifted her dagger closer to his throat, the motion echoed by her hip sliding against his groin. The shield in his left hand disappeared—why, after all that talk of defenses?—and then he was touching her, the leather of his gauntlet splayed out on her stomach, his thumb grazing the edge of her breastband.
What if he removed his gauntlets?
How would his bare fingers feel, spanning her like this?
Talasyn couldn’t think clearly. The thrill of combat had morphed into something infinitely more dangerous. She was so aware of Alaric, of how his frame engulfed hers, of how tense his sinews were next to her own.
He exhaled. She turned her head to peer up at him, and the sight stopped her heart.
The look on his face was winter storm and wolf song.
“Your move, Lachis’ka,” he murmured, his silver eyes flickering to her mouth.
“You first, Your Majesty,” she whispered, without knowing why she was whispering or even why she’d whispered that, and in the end—
In the end, it didn’t matter. They moved at the same time, her dagger sliding against the flat of his sword, sending up a spray of static and aether sparks. He leaned down and she surged up and their lips met, in the glow of light and darkness, over the keening of their crossed blades.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alaric had never kissed anyone before and he certainly hadn’t planned on kissing Talasyn. There was an entire host of reasons not to.
But all logic, any reservations that he might have had—they vanished into the aether the moment that he slanted his mouth over hers. The shadow-sword in his hand was extinguished at the same time as her golden dagger, and she turned fully into his arms and he tugged her close.