When a moon was in its eclipse phase, it rose over the Continent already a blood-red or silver-gray orb, and it could take minutes to hours before it reverted to its normal state. Here on the Dominion archipelago, where they were several hours ahead of the Continent, they would bear witness to the whole process from beginning to end. Tonight would be an Eclipse of the First, the largest of the seven, and as she rose to her highest point above the panorama of her ghostly sisters the courtyard shone nearly as white as pristine snow.
Talasyn had never seemed as far away from Alaric as she did now, even though they stood within the circle side by side, almost close enough to touch.
“Shouldn’t be long,” said Ishan. She had brought six other Enchanters with her and they stationed themselves several paces away, each one standing parallel to a jar. “Let’s wait until the First is partially obscured.”
The next few minutes passed in silence, with everyone in the atrium looking up at the full moon. And then, slowly, a wash of inky darkness unfurled over its glistening white surface, and bit by bit it melted into the surrounding night sky. Nibbled at by the sun god’s peckish lion, or gradually engulfed by the reptilian jaws of Bakun mourning his lost love.
Perhaps it was all the same, in the end. Stories to tell around the fire and put children to bed the world over. Perhaps more than one thing could be true at the same time, when they were the folktales that made a nation. Perhaps the great lion still snarled down at Alaric even though he was in a land far away from his gods.
“Now,” said Ishan Vaikar.
In unison, Talasyn and Alaric stretched out their hands in front of them and ripped away the veil of aetherspace. She was his radiant mirror, a shield of light pouring forth from her fingertips while his shadowy creation sparked and hissed in response. Their eyes met and they brought their magic together, and underneath the Eclipse of the First that black-gold sphere bloomed to encase them.
Ishan and the other Enchanters moved in unison as well, arms and wrists flowing like water in arcane patterns. The cores of sariman blood and rain magic within the metalglass jars suddenly flared as bright as tiny suns, the glow filling up their containers and spilling out, running through the wires.
Before Alaric could even blink, the sphere that he and Talasyn had made expanded to cover the whole atrium.
Everything was aether. Everything was light and shadow and rain and blood. Alaric’s magic was screaming through the air, carried on weightless, jeweled wings, stronger than he ever thought possible. Amplified.
It was the signal that the palace guards on the surrounding battlements and balconies had been instructed to wait for. They took aim with their muskets and they fired down into the atrium in a conflagration of amethyst bolts. Each bolt was ineffectual. Each bolt crashed into the barrier and disappeared.
So this was what it was like when a country hadn’t spent the last decade at war. When their Enchanters weren’t focused on powering stormships. When metalworkers and glass-smiths weren’t kept busy creating and repairing frigates and coracles and weapons.
This was what could be achieved.
This was what the Continent had lost in its nation-states tearing one another apart.
“I know,” Talasyn murmured. Alaric couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when he’d turned to look at her, when they’d turned to look at each other. But they were doing so now, and her brown eyes were fiery with magic, with wonder, with regret.
“I didn’t say anything,” he protested.
“You didn’t have to,” she told him, under these black-gold nets, under this mottled eclipse. “It’s written all over your face.”
I could kill him, she thought. Here and now.
No one could penetrate the sphere. No one would be able to stop her.
If she managed to catch him by surprise, if she moved fast enough to slip a light-woven dagger between his ribs, she would be able to avenge Khaede and everyone else.
But there was the Night of the World-Eater to consider. There was the long game.
And, yet, that wasn’t all that stayed her hand.
Talasyn had cut the Belian sojourn short to stop things from becoming too complicated. Now, looking into Alaric’s silver eyes, looking at his moon-kissed face reflecting the molten panels of black and gold that were swirling all around them, she feared that it was already too late.
She saw the Night Emperor. She saw the boy who had shared her loneliness. She saw the Master of the Shadowforged Legion she had battled on the ice and amidst a ruined city through which the stormships raged. She saw the man who had chucked her under the chin, who had so patiently taught her how to make a shield, whose dry remarks had sometimes made her laugh. She saw her first kiss, the first time someone else’s hands had touched her and made her burn.
She saw danger, in more ways than one.
Eventually, the barrier vanished. Talasyn wasn’t sure whether it was Alaric or an Enchanter or her own self who had lost concentration first. It was just a good thing that the guards on the battlements had already stopped firing.
In any case, Ishan was pleased. “Almost six minutes, Your Grace!” She beamed at Talasyn while Sevraim rushed over to make certain that Alaric was all right. “Of course, on the Night of the World-Eater, the Void Sever will flare for an hour or so, and this entire courtyard is only a fraction of its range, but you will have almost five months to practice keeping up your shields and you may rest assured that we in Ahimsa will use this time to devise even bigger and better amplifying configurations.”
“If anyone can do it, it’s you and your people, Daya Vaikar,” Talasyn said sincerely.
Ishan ducked her head in a brief half-bow, which was how the Nenavarene tended to respond to praise. However, her excitement remained palpable. “I look forward to reporting these results to the Zahiya-lachis.”
Acting on a hunch, Talasyn searched the surrounding towers. There, in one of the highest windows, illuminated by a rectangle of warm lamplight, she caught a crowned silhouette in the act of moving away. “Something tells me,” she said wryly, “that Her Starlit Majesty might already have an idea.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The days flew by, everyone focused on the upcoming wedding. The remainder of the planning passed without incident, save for a minor wrinkle when the subject of the consummation night cropped up. Talasyn felt that she and Alaric would have handled it a lot worse if Prince Elagbi hadn’t warned them in advance that day on the stormship.
Of course, they would have handled it a lot better if they hadn’t gotten started on the consummation that day in the amphitheater on Belian.
“Our newlyweds will leave the feast first, and His Majesty will allot her sufficient time to prepare before following her to her chambers,” Lueve Rasmey was saying.
“Prepare,” Talasyn echoed blankly.
“Well, you will need your lady’s assistance, Lachis’ka,” Niamha Langsoune clarified, “for the fastenings of the wedding gown are difficult to navigate—”
“I get the picture,” Talasyn hastened to interrupt, willing herself not to flush scarlet. Alaric looked as though he’d been punched in the gut. “We can move on.” She didn’t say that they’d already agreed to share her quarters for the night and nothing more. Rajan Gitab was watching intently from behind his spectacles, and Talasyn didn’t want to give the opposition cause to question the validity of the marriage alliance.