Page 16 of The Hurricane Wars

“Calm down, it was only one person,” she retorted even as she wondered with no small amount of alarm who it could be. Someone close to Bieshimma or the Amirante, no doubt, for them to know about her mission and to have acquired a copy of the map— but she would deal with that later. She had to finish this first. The fact that Alaric had allowed such information to slip meant that he didn’t intend for her to make it back to the Continent and alert her superiors. She was going toenjoyfoiling that particular plan of his.

Talasyn kneed Alaric in the stomach, taking advantage of his momentary falter to put some distance between them, couching her limbs into a two-handed guard with her blade held to the right side of her body.

“I must admit that I went too easy on you, back on the lake.” Alaric assumed an opening stance of his own, the hilt of the trident angled to the ground, his feet closely spaced. “You have proven to be far too much trouble. Consider my misplaced compassion formally rescinded.”

“You and I have very different definitions of compassion.”

When they crashed into each other again, it was vicious and relentless, both of them going straight for the kill with each strike. The shrine’s ancient stone foundations shook and the jungle was ablaze with sound and fury. When they skidded apart after another exchange of blows, Alaric’s gauntleted hand stretched out and unleashed tendrils of the Shadowgate to constrict around Talasyn’s waist, lifting her off her feet and hauling her toward the screeching edges of the trident. Summoning all of her strength, she twisted her body in midair so that she slammed intohiminstead; his weapon and the crackling tendrils vanished as he landed hard on the floor ofthe courtyard, flat on his back with her straddling his hips, her poleaxe transmuting into a dagger that she held to his throat.

“Who is the traitor?” she growled.

Alaric’s fingers twitched. With a mighty groan, the tree looming over them from one of the rooftops was ripped apart by splinters of shadow magic. What was left of the trunk came toppling down over their heads, and Talasyn instinctively made to get out of the way—but, the moment the dagger was lifted from his neck, Alaric surged upwards, rolling her over and to the side. The light-woven dagger disappeared from her grasp and the ground shook as the dislodged tree slammed into the spot where they had been a scant half-second ago.

Now the one on her back, Talasyn glared up at the impassive, half-shrouded face above her. “You could have killed us both!”

“Given our respective objectives, it would probably save a lot of time if we died together,” Alaric mused.

“You talk too much.” Her fingers scrabbled over the stone tiles as she readied to conjure another weapon, but he was having none of it. He pinned her wrists to the floor with heavy hands, the sharp points of his clawed gauntlets raking into her skin.

And then the Lightweave...left.It fled from Talasyn’s veins. That was the only way to describe it, the sudden absence akin to the immediate ringing stillness after a door had been slammed shut. Inside her there was—nothing.Absolutely nothing.

“What was that?” Alaric hissed, his body tense and strained on top of hers. “Why can’t I...?”

The ability to open the Shadowgate had apparently left him, too. Talasyn opened her mouth to issue some form of snappy retort, to rail at him for ruining everything and for being a blight on her existence and on the world at large. At that precise moment, however, a smattering of footsteps reverberated throughout the courtyard.

“On your feet!” a stern masculine voice commanded. “Slowly.Hands up where we can see them.”

The words were in Sailor’s Common, the trade language that the Continent had made its mother tongue centuries ago, but it was in a thick accent that Talasyn had never heard before. The light of the seven moons shone down on thirty armored figures that had, unnoticed by either Talasyn or Alaric, come swarming out of the ruins to surround them, taking careful aim with long iron tubes that had triangular handles and some form of trigger apparatus. More than a few soldiers were carrying what looked like metal birdcages on their backs, strapped to their shoulders and waists.

There was a gaping hole in Talasyn’s soul where the Lightweave used to be. She and Alaric extricated themselves from each other and stood up. She would have shoved him away from her in a fit of sheer pettiness if instinct hadn’t warned that any sudden movements would be ill-received. “If we manage to get out of this alive, I’m going to wring your neck,” she promised him.

“If,” he emphasized crisply.

Talasyn calculated the odds of her being able to fight her way out of this. She couldn’t aethermance for some reason, but she had her bare fists, her teeth. Eventually, she had to concede that there were too many soldiers and she didn’t know what those iron tubes did, what they were capable of. They reminded her of cannons, a little, but—handheldcannons?

The Nenavarene who’d ordered her and Alaric to their feet stepped forward, allowing Talasyn to get a closer look at his armor. It was a combination of brass plate and chainmail, the cuirass embellished with lotus blossoms wrought from what appeared to be genuine gold. Its wearer was lean, with the calm, authoritative demeanor of a distinguished officer, a graying undercut, and dark eyes that stared at Talasyn—

—at first with anger, and then with some combined shardof recognition and disbelief, and then with a sorrow that made her skin prickle.

The officer shook his head and muttered something to himself in a language that Talasyn could not parse but was unsettlingly familiar to her ears all the same. He raised his voice and issued a clipped order to his troops.

Streams of violet magic shot out of the iron tubes. The same magic that Talasyn had witnessed flaring from a nexus point earlier that day, but paler, more subdued. At the corner of her eye, she saw Alaric crumple to the ground and she moved to dodge, to fight back, but the barrage emanated from all sides. She felt lit from within by a rush of heat and static as several beams collided with her form, and then—

—darkness...

Chapter Seven

When Talasyn regained consciousness, her first thought was that she really ought to consult a healer as soon as possible. Getting knocked out twice in the span of two sennights couldnotbe good for anyone’s head.

Her second thought was that she was in a cell, somewhere.

She had been deposited onto a small cot that was only marginally softened by a thin mattress and a threadbare pillow, the battered frame creaking as she sat up and looked around. There was a lone window high up the far wall, outfitted with iron bars. They were too closely spaced to squeeze through, but they let in generous amounts of muggy tropical air and silvery illumination from the radiant night sky. Enough for her to see, without any problems, the hulking figure sitting on the cot opposite hers, his gauntleted fingers digging into the edge of the mattress and his booted feet planted firmly on the floor—right beside his obsidian mask. Talasyn assumed it had been removed by their captors as she couldn’t imagine one of the Legion willingly parting with his armor in this situation. The mask’s lupine fangs snarled up at her in the moonlight, but it was quick to fade from her awareness because the presence of its owner sucked all the air out of the room.

She swallowed nervously as she realized that she was looking at Alaric Ossinast’s bare face for the first time.

He wasn’t what she’d expected, although she wasn’t surewhatshe’d been expecting in the first place. Someone older, perhaps, given his fearsome reputation and his prowess in battle, but he appeared to be in his twenties. Waves of disheveled black hair framed pale angular features dotted with beauty marks. He had a long nose and a sharp jawline, the overall harshness alleviated by a pair of full, soft lips.

Talasyn found her stare lingering on those lips. They were—petulant, almost. Or maybepoutywas the correct term, and that wasnotan adjective that she would have ever guessed that she’d one day use to describe the heir to the Night Empire.

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