CHAPTEREIGHT
There was a tea set on the desk, and Talasyn brewed some valerian root that she rummaged from the herb chest. Alaric would be pretty out of it, but it would help with the pain, and he drank from the cup that she held to his lips willingly enough—albeit with a somewhat disgruntled expression that spoke volumes about her tea-making abilities, or lack thereof. She also found bandages, washcloths, and a truly foul-smelling pot of herbal salve in the bathroom, and she lugged these into his chambers along with a bucket of hot, soapy water.
The next hour passed mostly in silence, in stillness, punctuated by faint ripples as she dipped the cloths into the bucket to clean his wounds, and by his harsh intakes of breath as she gingerly spread the salve over them.
She had done this before for many others during the war, in those grimy trenches and razed forests where the healers were too far away or all dead, but it was a new thing with him. It was almost an act of revelation, to be able to slowly map him out like this, unlike the frenzied touches of their wedding night. Her fingers pressed into his broad back, learning the strength of his sinews and where the hurt began.
When she turned him over to work on the injuries to his chest and abdomen, she found herself tracing the remnants of a much older wound—the pinkish, knotted line of skin right below the edge of his clavicle, all that was left from when she’d stabbed him the night they met.
Alaric wasn’t so dazed that he failed to notice where her attention had drifted. “Don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty after all this time,” he said flatly, and yet there was an edge of bitterness to his comment. He’d gone all stiff, the way she had when he fell silent after she told him about her early life in the slums. The way she had reacted when she assumed that he was pitying her.
It’s not pity for you that I feel,he’d said back then.Rather, anger on your behalf.
How she yearned to echo those words to the proud, broken man lying before her now. But to do so would mean acknowledging the part that he hadn’t said out loud. She had no idea how he would respond to her giving voice to the inconvenient truth that they were more alike than was sane to admit when it came to the things that they carried.
They were alike in another way, too. There was a long, faded line of white on her left arm from the only cut that had left an imprint out of the many shallow ones that his war scythe had inflicted during that first battle. It was hardly visible unless one knew to look for it, but it was her own permanent reminder of that night.
“Of course I don’t feel guilty for defending myself from you,” Talasyn muttered. She soaked another washcloth in the now-lukewarm water and resumed tending to him.
And it was—different—with him looking at her while she worked. More dangerous, with the rise and fall of his sculpted chest beneath her hands as she mopped up the blood and applied the dressings, cautiously navigating a labyrinth of wisteriabruises on moon-kissed skin. It was even worse when necessity dictated that her ministrations move lower down his body and his defined abdomen contracted slightly at her every touch.
It brought back memories of how her fingers had slipped under his shirt and skated along these same muscles while he kissed her neck. Memories of what she would find if she went even lower still, past that dusting of dark hair bracketed between his lean hips.
You horrible girl,some aghast inner voice chided.The man is covered in bandages and you’re thinking about his—
Cringing, Talasyn darted a furtive look at Alaric’s face. Her heart slammed against the bones of her rib cage when she saw that he was already peering down at her through half-lidded eyes.
Upon closer inspection, though, she saw that his gaze was unfocused, probably from the valerian root. She cursed inwardly, realizing that she should have treated his head injury first. She scooted further up the bed and dabbed at the gash on his brow.
“It’s not as deep as I feared,” she assessed, bandaging it as best as she could, “but if your head aches or you feel faint at any point over the next few days, you really should consult a healer.”
His charcoal gaze studied her drowsily from beneath the careful motions of her hand. “Is that a command, Empress?”
She lifted her chin stubbornly even as she flushed at her new title. At the raspy, teasing way in which it was drawled. “Yes, it is. I can’t hold back the Voidfell without you.”
“I’ve survived worse than this.”
She wiped away the bloodstains on his sharp cheeks and his long nose, and then the ones located lower still, at the side of his mouth. Her stomach roiled. “Why did your father do this?”
“I disappointed him.” It was a blunt, honest answer. One that Alaric would never have willingly given if he weren’t under the effect of anesthetic tea and dizzy from blood loss. His lips brushed whisper-soft against Talasyn’s thumb as he spoke. “The attack nearly succeeded because I was unprepared. I was weak. That rebel I didn’t kill … Someone saw and told my father.”
Talasyn listened, stricken. He’d only spared Hiras because she’d begged him to. No matter what she did, someone always got hurt. She was trapped in a labyrinth. She couldn’t see the way forward.
Alaric relinquished the last of his defenses with a sigh, the planes of his chest heaving slightly. “I’m—tired. I suppose it was naive to hope that the fighting would end after Lasthaven …”
The war isn’t over.Talasyn’s fingers twisted into the bloodstained washcloth.Not while there are things still left to fight for, and people to fight for them.
Against your father.
Against you.
A sense of wrongness ate at her for harboring these thoughts of her inevitable betrayal in this place of silk sheets and lamplight, when he was soft-eyed and vulnerable, laid up in linen bandages, confessions spilling from that usually stern mouth.
At a loss for how to react, Talasyn seized hold of the practical. She rose to her feet with the intention of putting away the used cloths and the bucket, but Alaric grabbed her elbow, despair surging from him in waves, and pulled her to him. She let out an indignant squeak as she found herself sprawled on top of his bare chest, her nose inches from his. She held still, careful not to disturb the bandages, and his hand darted from her elbow to her lower back, exposed by the cut of her blue dress, his warm fingers trailing static charges along the base of her spine. She hadn’t realized that she was so sensitive there.
“Don’t go,” he murmured hoarsely, fitfully, a man caught in a fever-dream. “I won’t bring up the rebels again. I won’t breathe another word. Just—don’t leave me, Tala.” The name he had first called her on their wedding night sent a mess of starlit recollections swirling through her at the same time that it caught in his throat, along with what he said next. “Please.”
Talasyn stared into the hollow desolation in Alaric’s gray eyes, the utter defeat. She knew this loneliness. She understood it in the marrow of her bones. “I was going to clean up, that’s all,” she whispered. “I’m not leaving. It’s just—the bucket and—”