“It was the same for me as well,” Alaric spat without hesi tation, and, oh, how it hurt. Her chest rang with the blow. It was nothing more than an agreement with what she’d said, but she knew that there was one striking difference.
He was telling the truth. He didn’t even find her passing tolerable when she wasn’t dressed up.
Of the two of them, she was the only one who short-circuited every time the other drew breath. Or flashed a rare half-smile.
“Why did Daya Langsoune tell you that?” Alaric suddenly asked, his tone brimming with suspicion.
“She was teasing me,” Talasyn muttered. “About you.”
There was an elegant scoff from the silver-lit gloom behind her. It showed just how little he thought of that, and the ache inside her only heightened.
I am a traitor. Talasyn furtively, furiously scrubbed the welling tears from her eyes, before they could spill down her face and over the lips that still twinged with the memory of how Alaric’s had felt against them. Hanging is too good for me.
The too-bright sun of a Nenavarene morning pounded against his face, and Alaric woke up the same way he’d fallen asleep—bewildered, furious, and regretful.
Last night, he had allowed himself to get caught up in the moment, to fall under the sway of the false sense of closeness brought about by being alone with Talasyn amidst these isolated ruins. He had been lured into complacency by her lovely face, her sharp wit, her fire. By that searing kiss, and the scent of mangoes and promise jasmines. He hadn’t been thinking with his brain, as his father would have said. And thus he had lowered his guard, confessing harrowing truths to her that he had never told anyone else.
What had it all been for? What had been the point, if she couldn’t forget the past? If she saved it all up to confront him with it when he was at his most vulnerable?
Alaric was distantly aware that this line of thinking was nothing short of reprehensible in light of what Talasyn had gone through. He even understood, on some level, that he was hiding behind this smallness so that he wouldn’t have to confront the crushing guilt that she had brought out in him by giving the Hurricane Wars a human name. But he went ahead and thought these things anyway, because rulers of victorious nations did not grovel for forgiveness after the fact—and from former enemies whose side had been equally ruthless during a ten-year conflict, to boot.
He feared, though, that he would end up doing just that, or something similarly foolish, although few things could beat confiding to her about his parents and expressing sentiments that he had never voiced to another living soul—after he had kissed her until he was senseless. Alaric was genuinely worried as to what other acts of idiocy he would commit if he stayed any longer on this mountain, alone with his betrothed and her accursed freckles. Although surely there was nothing more idiotic than being attracted to someone who would, as he’d told Sevraim, never be able to separate him from the Hurricane Wars.
Thus, it was with some relief that Alaric watched Talasyn stash away her bedroll, the kettle, and all the camping supplies after their painfully silent breakfast and realized that she was packing up for good.
“We’re leaving?”
She jerked her head in a brusque nod. “We got what we came for. I see no reason to spend another day here.”
He ignored the flickering bloom of an ache that dug through him, as sharp as talons. “As you wish.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
There was a freshly drawn tub waiting in Talasyn’s bathroom at the Roof of Heaven. Jie—who had been quite aghast at the prospect of the Lachis’ka gallivanting about in the woods—had even sprinkled yellow custard-apple petals all over the surface of the water, and they gave off a sweet perfume in addition to the scented oils and herbal soaps.
Talasyn soaked in the marble tub until her skin pruned, brooding in a way that would have put Alaric to shame. They’d exchanged few words on the hike to the garrison, and fewer still on the airship voyage back to Eskaya. At least he had then promptly departed for his stormship with the excuse of having urgent matters to work on and she wouldn’t have to see him again until the eclipse, when they were to create the barrier so that the Dominion Enchanters could study it.
That gave her some time to firmly anchor him in her mind as someone around whom she couldn’t let her guard down. To forget everything that had happened between them on Belian.
I’m sorry, she told Khaede. The Khaede who lived in her head, who might be dead now, for all that Talasyn knew.
There was no response—she was too overwrought even to dream up what kind of response her friend would give—and there in the safety of the perfumed water she finally let a few tears fall.
With Commodore Mathire attending to business on her flagship, Alaric and Sevraim comprised the entirety of the Kesathese contingent who, on the night of the eclipse, strode out into the same atrium that had been the site of a failed barrier demonstration—and would soon hopefully be the site of a successful one—to find that the Dominion’s Enchanters had been hard at work on . . . something.
Ishan Vaikar cheerfully explained the mechanics of the amplifying configuration to him as she and her people arranged the wires and shifted the metalglass jars to form a perfect circle big enough for two people to step into.
Sevraim went to take a closer look; then he returned to Alaric’s side with a shrug. “It’s probably not a murder device, but I say that we let them try it out on your lovely wife-to-be first—”
“Try what out on me?”
Sevraim snapped to attention and Alaric went rigid. Talasyn had snuck up on them, as quiet as a cat. Jaw clenched, Alaric turned to look at her for the first time since they had returned from the Belian range.
The wild soldier with the unkempt braid and the mud-spattered breeches had been banished. In her place, trailed by her taciturn guards, stood the Nenavarene Lachis’ka in a crown of hummingbirds and rose mallows wrought from gold.
Alaric cast around for a suitably wry remark, but Talasyn’s brown eyes slid away from him to some point over his shoulder. A throb of disappointment sliced through him, nauseating in its ferocity.
Talasyn didn’t seem to be all that surprised by the amplifying configuration, but she was probably used to Nenavarene ingenuity by now. She went over to Ishan and they spoke quietly, and, after a while, Alaric joined them.
“Sariman blood, Daya Vaikar?” he queried, glancing at one of the shimmering molten sapphire-and-scarlet cores in the jars. “Do you kill them?”
“Absolutely not!” Ishan looked scandalized by the mere prospect. “The blood is extracted from young and healthy specimens by only the most well trained of handlers. It’s against Nenavarene law to kill an aether-touched creature for any purpose other than self-defense.”
Alaric found himself thinking about the chimera on Kesath’s imperial seal. Once plentiful on the Continent, the beast had been hunted in droves for its leonine fur and the medicinal properties of its antelope hooves and eel scales, as well as the sheer glory of slaying one. The last chimera sighting had been a century ago. It had always seemed like a shame to him, and he wondered if he could introduce a law similar to what Ishan had just described.
Surveying the amplifying configuration one last time, Ishan gave a satisfied nod and gestured for Talasyn and Alaric to step into the circle of jars and filaments.