“It’s over,” the apparition said, the words drawn up from the deep well of the past, his voice so strangely soft. At the time, she had puzzled over that tone, unused to anything but lethal calculation from the Kesathese prince. Now she knew him better.
It’s over. He had been imploring her to surrender as the Allfold’s last bastion fell to the hurricanes.
But he had been wrong. It wasn’t over, yet. Not for Sardovia. Not for Nenavar. Not for her.
Show me, she thought. Teach me how to not strike first. I want to learn to take the blow. I want to protect everything I hold dear. I won’t let the Shadow fall.
Be it World-Eater or Night Empire.
And the Lightweave hummed and raged. It did as she commanded.
Light magic is evil, Alaric’s father had told him when he was a boy. It is the weapon of our enemies. It burns and it blinds. This is why we destroyed the Light Severs on the Continent; they fueled those who sought to steal our stormship technology and bend us to their will. The Lightweave cannot be gentled or appeased. It won’t be content until it has cast its harsh glare over everything.
Alaric had always believed that, and he could still see it here and now on Belian in the way that the Light Sever seared his skin and eyes even from across a distance. It was too sharp, too unforgiving. Nothing at all like the soft coolness of the Shadowgate.
He reviled this form of magic—he should revile it—but—
—when the Light Sever finally began collapsing in on itself, folding down from the heavens and back into the earth—
—when the girl in the middle of the fountain turned to him with golden eyes and golden veins running throughout her olive skin, the strands of chestnut hair escaping her braid suffused with light as well—
—when she held up her hand and conjured a solid, blazing shield, not teardrop-shaped like the ones of the Continent but long and rectangular and forked with prongs atop and at its base, like those the Nenavarene wielded—
—he could only think that she was beautiful. Every part of her was beautiful.
When Talasyn returned to the world of the overgrown stone courtyard on Belian, the high hum of the Lightweave was still pounding in her ears.
Alaric stood where she’d left him. The molten glow of her light-spun shield flickered over his silhouette, memory and reality juxtaposed like spots behind her eyes. His Shadowforged armor, his weapon, his father’s stormships, everything that had been lost.
She dropped her arm and the shield dispelled. The rush of the Light Sever went quiet, and the afterimages vanished.
Alaric became solid again. He was watching her closely, beads of sweat from the Sever’s heat glinting on his pale brow. This wasn’t the deadly specter from Lasthaven. Yet, she could only stare at him in dawning horror.
He was a few paces away, waiting for her to make the first move. He looked as if he wanted to ask her what had happened—but she couldn’t explain all that she had seen. Those memories belonged to her alone. And even more, they had reminded her of the horrible misstep she had just made.
What had she done?
There was no rational explanation for that kiss. None of it could be forgiven. She would have to return to Eskaya burdened by the knowledge that she’d had the Night Emperor’s tongue in her mouth. The next time she faced the Sardovian remnant, it would be with the memory of the Night Emperor’s hand on her ass.
And she’d liked it.
Gods, what had possessed her, what was possessing her, why had it turned out this way?
“I . . .” Talasyn scrambled for something to say to make him stop looking at her like that. “I made a shield.”
Alaric nodded, the corner of his mouth ticking downward. Almost as though he’d wanted her to say something else. “You did.”
“I’ll try to make one again.”
So she spent the rest of the afternoon coaxing the Lightweave into shields of various shapes and sizes. For the sheer joy of doing it, of finally being able to do it, yes—but also for the more than reasonable excuse it provided to not acknowledge Alaric’s presence.
For his part, he kept well to the other side of the courtyard, as far from her as possible. She thought she could feel his gaze burning against her back, but whenever she darted a glance his way, he was carefully occupied with something else. She surmised he was doing his best to ignore her existence as well. She even surreptitiously caught him trying to clear their campsite of fallen leaves with a stick. Eventually he gave up and left, vanishing into one of the shrine’s many half-collapsed corridors with some excuse about exploring the ruins further.
Once the sky had darkened, Talasyn crawled into her bedroll, hoping to fall asleep before Alaric returned. Her mind was a torrent of conflicting emotions, and her magic thrummed, restless in her veins, as she tossed and turned beneath a diamantine panorama of moons and stars.
As she lay there, a tantalizing possibility broke through the mire of her confusion and her guilt. If she went on communing with the Light Sever, would she be able to go even further back? Would she be able to access more memories of her mother, beyond the scent of berries and the echo of a lullaby? Would Hanan Ivralis spring to life in her mind? Would it be enough?
She was still wide awake when the sound of Alaric’s footsteps padded into the courtyard. She squeezed her eyes shut, pretending to be fast asleep, listening to the rustle of fabric as he slipped into his own bedroll.
Then his deep, mildly admonishing tone sliced through the silence. “I can hear you thinking over there.”
She rolled onto her side so that she could glare at him, only to jolt when she found him already facing her. His gray eyes gleamed starkly against his pale face in the moonlight.
Another memory washed over her, far more recent. The amphitheater. His teeth nipping at her bottom lip. Each caress of his hands.
The smart thing to do now was to stop looking at him, because looking at him and the way he was too big for his bedroll did nothing to ease her racing thoughts. Instead, Talasyn continued staring into Alaric’s eyes, over stone and night, until he asked, “What is it?”
He sounded defensive, as though he already knew what was on her mind.
Willing herself not to blush, she blurted out the first safe topic that she could conceive of. “Do you really think that we can stop the Voidfell?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “You know how to weave a shield and we have a few months to prepare. It will be all right. Otherwise, we’re all dead.”
“How inspirational, truly,” she sniped.
“I try.”
A fraught quiet seeped in once more, and she turned back onto her side, peering up into the silver-black night. The minutes stretched on, and just when Talasyn thought that sleep had claimed him, Alaric spoke again. “I remember being lonely.”
She went still. “What?”
“You asked me, back when we began aethermancing at the royal palace, what I remember from my childhood. That is what I remember. Loneliness.” She craned her neck toward him again and he flashed her a rueful half-smile. “I am my father’s only child, and he demanded that I apply myself to my studies and my training. I was the Night Emperor’s heir, and so my companions could not truly be friends. Even Sevraim knows where the lines are drawn.” He paused, weighing his next words. And when they finally came, they sounded as though they were being drawn up from the deep well of an old heartache. “My mother was kind but unhappy. I think that she found it difficult to look at me and see what was tying her to her marriage.”