Page 101 of The Hurricane Wars

“If you’re uncomfortable wearing”—he waved vaguely at the barely-there silk that hugged her form while trying to keep his gaze chastely on her face as much as possible—“things like that, why not tell your lady-in-waiting?”

“Jie is very sweet,” Talasyn said slowly, “but she’s also very chatty and she has certain fixed notions of what married life is like. If I were to do anything that ran contrary to those notions, even the blacksmith’s washerwoman three cities overwould have heard about it by tomorrow afternoon. Sometimes it’s just easier to take the path of least resistance.”

I wish that you could take it with me, just the once,Alaric thought. Out loud, he continued, “With all due respect to her giggly young ladyship, she hasnoidea what our married life is like.”

“Not even the tiniest bit,” Talasyn agreed. “Anyway, this is hardly the most onerous of the things I have done for the sake of everyone else.”

She unleashed that last bit pointedly enough that her meaning—their marriage—was clear.

“Are your lessons as the Lachis’kaonerous?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow at her. “Or is it just telling me about them that you find so dreadful a task?”

“If you reallymustknow, my lessons concern politics,” she snapped. The belligerence in her expression deepened. “The Zahiya-lachis’s brand of politics, anyway.”

“You disagree with Queen Urduja’s methods? They’re efficient.” Some of his residual annoyance leaked into his next words. “You have certainly been content to go along with whatever she commands thus far.”

Talasyn twisted the section of duvet on her lap between her fingers, as though imagining it was his neck. “And what are you implying by that?”

“You knowexactlywhat I’m implying,” Alaric bit out, and it was as though some dam had broken, the thread of tension strung through him since the Belian amphitheater finally stretched taut enough to snap.Come on, darling,some darkly wicked, impulsive part of him thought,one last fight before I leave you.“You wear dresses you hate, you don’t commune with your magic’s nexus point because Her Starlit Majesty forbids it, you behave according to her specifications, you let this court keep secrets from you, you stay in this palace like a songbird in a gilded cage. Even before that, you ignored youryearning to be with your family because it was what Ideth Vela asked. Do you know, Lachis’ka,” he concluded with a sneer at her rapidly paling face, “it occurs to me that you’re the sort of person whoneedsto be told what to do. You’re too afraid to do anything for yourself.”

Her brown eyes flashed. She bared her teeth at him in the moonlight. “Youdaresay these things to me,” she snarled, “when you’ve lived your whole life under your father’s thumb? Studying and training to be the perfect heir, swallowing all the lies he and your grandfather spouted about the true cause of the Cataclysm—”

“They aren’t lies,” Alaric hissed. “It’sSardoviathat lied to you—”

“Oh, I’m sure! If Gaheris says so, then itmustbe true.” She lifted her chin. “Did you even decide to treat with Nenavar for a marriage alliance by yourself, or did you have to ask his permission? Shall I send him a token of my gratitude?”

Alaric stiffened as the barb hit home. He made to turn away from Talasyn, perhaps to even scramble out of the bed, but her hand clamped around his bare wrist and he was frozen in place.

“You wouldn’t let me sleep, so let’s talk,” she growled. “Let’s talk about how you castigate me for doing what my family tells me to do whenIhave never participated in the invasion of entire nation-states at their behest!”

His temper spiked, but he tried his best to keep his tone calm. “I do not expect you to understand my father’s vision—”

“Gaheris’svision,” she mocked. “You accused me of parroting my grandmother’s words, the night of the duel without bounds, but you’re just as bad, if not even worse! You’re a parrotanda puppet on a stringanda dog on a leash—”

Alaric’s self-control slipped. He inched his face closer tohers. “I’m not the only one who married the enemy at the behest of a superior, Lachis’ka.”

She surged closer to him as well, a vicious triumph blazing in her eyes. “So you admit that Gaherisisyour superior. What are you, then? Night Emperor in name alone?”

Alaric couldn’t believe that he’d let such a sentiment slip. He had always prided himself on his ability to play word games with the best of them, but Talasyn rendered his mind blank whenever she wasn’t driving him out of it entirely.

In this moment, it was the way that their faces were a heartbeat apart. It was her accursed nightdress. It was the burning of her fingertips around his wrist.

“We’re done discussing this,” he said curtly.

She bristled. “You are my consort. You don’t get to order me around.”

“You aremyempress,” he shot back. “You answer tome.”

“As long as we are in the Nenavar Dominion, where husbands obey their wives, it’smyword that’s your law! How sad for you, to havetwomasters.”

“Lachis’ka.” Blinding fury guided him further over her side of the bed. The tip of his nose grazed hers. “Shut up.”

“Or what?” the insufferable woman shouted, right in his face. “What will you do,Your Majesty?”

Alaric lunged forward, without having any idea as to what would happen when he got there. He moved with instinct, with the dark rage of the Shadowforged set free at long last. In the mood that he was in, he thought that he just might go for Talasyn’s jugular—

—but, instead, he kissed her.

Although Talasyn had known that there would be consequences to letting her temper get the better of her yet again, she had let it happen, because it felt good to have a justifiable target for all of her anxious fury. She had wanted Alaric tobe the flint that she struck against; she would have said anything to make it so. She had gladly tempted fate, come what may.

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