Page 2 of A Monsoon Rising

“Remember your mother,” Gaheris murmured. “Remember how she left us when the work got hard. When what she wanted didn’t align with what Kesath needed in order to survive.”

I will still work with you, Talasyn had said on the rooftop, her eyes blazing.But you won’teverconvince me that the Night Empire saved Sardovia from itself … Whatever better world you think you’ll build, it willalwaysbe built on blood.

“Yes,” Alaric said hoarsely. “I remember.”

“Good. Don’t let your wife out of the Legion’s sight during this upcoming visit,” Gaheris warned. “She will help the resistance fighters the first chance she gets. Of that I am certain.”

The eternal mountains of the Nenavar Dominion’s Belian range carried the start of wet season on their craggy shoulders, iron-gray clouds heavy with the promise of rain looming overthe viridian jungles that carpeted the lofty peaks. From the tallest summit, though, a colossal pillar of golden light shot up, breaking through the ashen skies, filling the misty air for miles around with a thunderous hymn like glass bells.

At the heart of that radiant column, amidst all the golden light and pulsing power, stood a woman. The brilliant glow distorted her features, but two things were sharply etched: the beads of fired clay adorning her smooth brow, and the sobbing infant in her arms, swaddled in embroidered cloths.

The magic flashed and then focused, revealing impressions of buildings, ladders, bridges—all of it carved out of cracked ochre dirt. All of it gathered close to form an arid city packed upon itself until it soared over the Great Steppe’s sea of tallgrass and rabbitbrush.

The woman walked down a mudbrick path, slipping unnoticed through the apathetic crowds, holding the child tightly against her chest. She stopped in front of a building as drab and rust-hued as all the others and set her squirming burden down on its front steps.

“Everything will be all right,” she whispered, stroking the back of the child’s head. “You have to be strong, Alunsina.”

Talasyn leaned forward for a closer look at the woman’s face, but this scene was woven only from aether and memory. It vanished when the Lightweave did, and Talasyn stumbled backward, out of the sandstone fountain, no longer buffeted by the waves of her magic’s nexus point. When she hit the rocky ground ass-first, she shouted a crude expletive at the pain that jolted through her hips and spine—an expletive that was quickly followed by a splinter of lightning that silhouetted the gnarled tops of the grandfather trees, a peal of thunder from the heavens, and then rain.

She got to her feet with a groan. The drizzle sluiced downher braided hair and into her eyes as she tried to make sense of what she’d seen. Of what aetherspace had shown her.

That had been the day she was abandoned at the orphanage in the rammed-earth city of Hornbill’s Head. That woman—those beads had marked her as a servant of the Nenavarene court. The words she’d spoken had been carried to Talasyn in a dream before, in the hollow of a grandfather tree.

Indusa, Talasyn remembered, was the name of the nursemaid tasked with accompanying her to the Dawn Isles, where they were supposed to wait out the Nenavarene civil war, safe with Talasyn’s mother’s people.

Yet Indusa had taken Talasyn in the completely opposite direction. Northwest, to the Continent, to the Sardovian Allfold’s most impoverished state.

Why?Had they gotten lost? Talasyn had been told that two royal guards also boarded the airship that ferried them away from the Dominion capital while civil war raged below—where had they been in that memory? And why had Indusa left the heir to the Dragon Throne in such a desolate place?

Talasyn glared at the empty fountain in the middle of the Belian shrine’s overgrown courtyard, willing the Light Sever to flow from its dragon-shaped spouts once again. She was desperate to chase this new lead, this thread in the enigmatic tapestry that was her past. But the fountain was still, save for the patter of rain darkening its stone.

After Alaric’s fleet had faded out of sight in the Dominion skies, Talasyn had waited only a few days before scampering off to the Lightweaver shrine, reveling in the newfound freedom she’d gained from standing up to Urduja. She’d been encamped here for almost a sennight, aethermancing and exploring and fielding concerned messenger eagles from her father back in Eskaya. This was the first time that the nexus point haddischarged since she’d arrived. It did not look likely to do so again before she had to leave, and it was frustrating.

At least the Light Sever had shown her somethinguseful, instead of all the memories that she’d spent her waking hours trying to banish to no avail. Hazy images and phantom sensations from her wedding night, hungry lips on her bare skin, clothing shoved out of the way, a flush to the column of a pale throat, a hoarse voice in the dark of her bedroom, strong hands urging her higher, holding her closer—

A twig snapped behind her.

She whirled around. Months ago, something like this had happened, someone sneaking up on her as she stared at the fountain, under cover of late evening, and she’d flown at Alaric in a blinding rage. They’d fought, light against shadow, his silver eyes gleaming in the aether sparks.

But the Night Emperor was in Kesath. The man looking at her now, from across a respectful distance, was Yanme Rapat, the border patrol officer who had apprehended her and Alaric the first time she’d stepped foot in these ruins. What felt like a lifetime had passed since then.

Rapat saluted. The gilded lotus blossoms embedded in his brass-plate cuirass caught rivulets of rain. “Your Grace.” He hesitated, then corrected himself. “Your Majesty.”

Talasyn’s skin crawled, but she waved off his unspoken apology. “I was the Lachis’ka before I was the Night Empress.” Was she even already the Night Empress? Technically, her husband had to crown her first, didn’t he?

Her husband.Gods. Of all the ways to think of Alaric Ossinast.

“Before you were either of those things, you were my prisoner.” The kaptan’s tone was rueful. “I’m truly—”

“You were doing your duty,” Talasyn hastened to assure him. It was because of this man that she’d been reunited withher remaining family, after all. “But what are you doinghere?” Suspicion crept in, along with the same old anger at Urduja for never leaving her well enough alone. “Did my grandmother send you?”

“Not today.” Rapat gestured vaguely in the direction of the sandstone fountain. “Your mother, the Lady Hanan, visited this place frequently, Lachis’ka. I sometimes come here to remember, and to mourn.”

While Talasyn feltsomechagrin for jumping to unflattering conclusions about his motives, this was swiftly replaced by the nervous excitement bubbling through her veins. “Did you know my mother well? Were you friends?”

“Her late highness was very lonely in Eskaya,” said Rapat. “She detested politics and had no patience for … all the formalities and maneuvering. I was one of her few confidants.”

Talasyn hung on Rapat’s every word. At her grandmother’s court in the Roof of Heaven, Hanan Ivralis’s very name seemed to be taboo. Whenever Talasyn attempted to bring up the past in conversation, nobles changed the subject and servants ran away. Talking to Elagbi about it was out of the question as well—her father was haunted by the civil war and his wife’s death. The mere mention of any of it brought such pain to his kind eyes, and Talasyn had no wish to distress him. Not when they’d only so recently found each other.

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