Page 76 of The Hurricane Wars

“No homeland should allow its people to drink in the troughs with the horses,” Alaric said coldly. “The Allfold did not deserve your loyalty, nor anyone else’s.”

Talasyn stood up and took the couple of steps that would bring her toe to toe with him, walking swiftly and surely over the rooftop tiles, too preoccupied with ridding him of his self-righteousness to worry about falling. And maybe there was a part of her that was scared, too, to let his words sink in too deep.

“If I could go anywhere in the world right now,” Talasyn told Alaric, looking up at him with narrowed eyes, her voice low and deadly, “I would take you to the Wildermarch, where we buried everyone who died at Frostplum. I would take you to every battlefield where I saw my comrades fall. I would take you to every village flattened by Kesathese stormships,to every town ransacked by your legionnaires.Thatwas where my loyalties lay. That was why I fought for as long as I did.”

That’s why I’m still fighting. That’s why one day I will see Sardovian banners fly over the Continent once more, and I will gaze down on your father’s corpse and smile.

Alaric’s hands dropped onto her shoulders. It was a gentle pressure, but it went through her heart like a shockwave. He leaned in, so close that their foreheads were almost touching. “I wasn’t—I didn’t mean—” He took a deep breath. He looked, she thought, very tired. It had been a long day for them, and the ones that would follow promised to be just as grueling.

“My allegiance is to my nation,” Alaric finally said, “and I also dislike thinking about what you went through. Surely those two things can both be true at the same time.”

“Theycanbe, but I’m allowed to call you a hypocrite,” Talasyn retorted, even as some tiny corner of her soul reached out with greedy arms to the siren song of someone being angry on her behalf, angry about what she’d suffered. The people in her life who actually gave a damn about her—Vela and Khaede and Elagbi—had been spared the gritty details.

Why had she told Alaric about the troughs, about the knife? In the end, he’d only used it as ammunition against her, provoking her to question the acceptance with which she’d played her part in the war.

His jaw clenched. His hands slid from the tops of her shoulders to curl around her upper arms in a loose grip. “It was for nothing, then. The accord that we found over the last few days, while aethermancing.”

“I will still work with you,” Talasyn said, hating how she couldn’t bring herself to so much as squirm away from his grasp. “But you won’teverconvince me that the Night Empire saved Sardovia from itself. I told you once that vengeance isn’t justice, and I hold to that. Whatever better world you think you’ll build, it willalwaysbe built on blood.”

His hands fell to his sides, and every inch of her that he had touched cried out at the loss. Fuming, she made her way back down the building while he followed without another word. She navigated a moonlit path to the limestone bluffs of the Roof of Heaven, and he trailed after her in silence, through city streets that resounded with a merry mood that neither of them could take part in.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

In the moment, Talasyn had hoped that setting her anger loose on Alaric might provide some catharsis. But it had only done the opposite. She kept replaying their conversation in her mind, the reckless insults paired with hesitant confessions. She had come far too close to exposing the truths that lay at the center of her heart. Truths that protected not only herself, but the people she cared about. Alaric had a way of getting past her guard, even when she knew that one wrong step could prove fatal. Her determination to speak with Vela only became more urgent.

She hadn’t seen Alaric since they returned from the night market, but a steady stream of Kesathese officers had marched in and out of the guest wing well into the afternoon, wearing on Urduja’s last nerves. Talasyn knew that she couldn’t risk sneaking out via the garden path between her and Alaric’s rooms again—but, then,how—

She heard voices from around the corner. A man’s, light and teasing, mingled with a woman’s throaty murmur. Surreptitiously peeking into the corridor that ran perpendicular to the one she was in, Talasyn saw Surakwel Mantes and Niamha Langsoune in the act of bidding farewell to each other. He bowed and she curtsied, and he watched her walk away.

A new idea seized her. As Niamha disappeared around the opposite corner, Talasyn checked to ascertain that no guards were in sight. Then she hurried over to Surakwel.

He smiled when he noticed her approach, but it had a wary edge to it. “Your Grace,” he said with another quick bow. “As I understand it, congratulations are in order.”

“Spare me.” Talasyn had quite had her fill of sarcastic young men.

Surakwel quirked an eyebrow but wisely changed the subject. “I’m off to Viyayin. Queen Urduja has made it clear that I’ve outstayed my welcome—and that me being Lueve Rasmey’s nephew was the only thing that prevented her from chopping me up into tiny pieces and feeding me to the dragons. I suppose that the next time I see you will be at your wedding.”

Talasyn knew that all the noble houses had to send a representative, but she’d half expected him to boycott the event on principle. He must have deciphered the bemused look on her face because he went on to explain, “My mother is too ill. I must attend in her stead. I’ve already sworn to the Zahiya-lachis that I shall do nothing to disrupt the ceremony and I reiterate the same to you. You have my word.”

“And how good is your word?” Talasyn carefully asked. “How true is your honor?”

One could hardly be a Dominion aristocrat without the ability to recognize certain cues. Surakwel’s walnut-brown gaze assessed her shrewdly from beneath a mess of shaggy hair. “Is there something that you require of me, Lachis’ka?”

“Yes.” Talasyn’s heart was pounding. “I’m calling in your debt of the self. There are two parts of this payment. First, what I’m about to tell you... You can’t breathe a word of it to another living soul.”

“And the second part?”

“I need you to take me somewhere.”

Surakwel’s airship was a small pleasure yacht, customized to accommodate far more void cannons than such vessels usually possessed. The hull was painted a frosted green color, a white serpent emblazoned on the aft end—the insignia of Viyayin’s ruling house. It was docked on a grid outside the palace, with the vessels of other guests. Surakwel distracted the guards with meaningless chatter while Talasyn clambered out the window of an adjacent hallway and slipped up the ramp.

Even though she’d sworn Surakwel to secrecy under the terms of the debt of the self, she was all too aware that he was a wild card, reckless and unpredictable. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to be hell-bent on rallying the Sardovian remnant into an all-out attack on the Kesathese fleet, but hewasexcited. He’d quite lost his aristocratic poise earlier in the hallway, hissing, “The Sardovian Allfold is here?” with his eyes almost bugging out of his head. Talasyn had slapped him on the arm, warning him that he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that he knew. She doubted that Urduja would appreciate her making an ally out of this man.

“This is a nice ship,” Talasyn observed once he’d joined her and the yacht had launched into the air. She made herself comfortable in the open well on deck where the cockpit was located, leaning back against a frame of glossy wood. “What’s she called?”

Surakwel hesitated, one gauntleted hand hovering over the controls. “Serenity,” he replied at last, in an uncharacteristically soft voice.

“Oh,” was all that Talasyn could manage. Niamha’s name translated tothe serene one.Talasyn had been aware that Surakwel and the daya were close, but...

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