Page 25 of A Monsoon Rising

Alaric was glad for the wolf’s-snarl mask that granted the illusion of armor to protect against Nenavarene gossip, but he also wondered if he would be better off without it. He wasn’t difficult to spot, even from this distance. Curiosityand apprehension colored the commonfolk’s faces while they tried to reconcile this monstrous image with their Lachis’ka’s consort.

And speaking of Talasyn …

Her face filtered into his thoughts like sunlight through a window. He frowned at the fluttering sensation in his chest. Though it had happened every time he thought of her in the last month, it remained odd to him all the same.

Alaric chalked up his discomfort to nerves. He was anxious, certainly, about his father’s plans. There was still time to dissuade Gaheris, especially since Kesathese experiments with the sariman had yet to yield any promising results, but Alaric was also worried about how Talasyn would react if she ever found out.

She would never believe that he’d had nothing to do with the experiments. And even if the gods smiled upon him and he managed to keep it from her, it was still an immense betrayal, stealing that sariman from its native shores and subjecting it to such cruelty. But there was a way to make amends. There had to be. He just had to find it.

So many things were up in the air. So many possible paths the future could take—most of them disastrous. But at the center of it all was the present moment, his nervousness at the prospect of seeing her again. The former enemy who had saved him on the battlefield. The first person to ever tend to him after his father’s lessons. The wife he kept dreaming about in a blurred vision of freckles and golden eyes and gentle hands.

After a while—after several more terrified looks from passing airships—Alaric came to a decision. He removed his mask and handed it to one of the crew, for storage with the rest of his personal effects. The mask was a lethal promise to the Sardovian Allfold, but a true alliance with the Nenavarene could not stem from fear.

Also, the rush of fresh air fanning over his newly bare face was a relief in the sweltering heat, although he would never admit it to Sevraim.

The moth coracles holding up the vanguard eventually pulled into a swift descent, with the rest of the convoy following, over Vasiyas, centermost of the seven main islands—and the island where the Void Sever was located. A sense of foreboding slowly began to prickle at Alaric’s spine. The Voidfell had flared up earlier that day, its amethyst glow illuminating the dawn. He had seen it as his stormship approached Nenavarene waters. Had something happened to Talasyn? Had she gotten caught up in the outburst somehow? Wasthatwhy his ship had been rerouted?

Alaric was numb by the time the convoy docked near a dense grove of coconut palms at the outskirts of a small village. The landing grid already contained several moth coracles but was mostly occupied by an outrigger warship that dwarfed the Kesathese shallop. A member of Talasyn’s royal guard—distinguishable from the other soldiers milling about by her bulky armor molded to resemble dragon bones—was waiting on the ground. Once Alaric had disembarked, she closed a spike-knuckled, gauntleted fist over her chest in the characteristic Dominion salute.

“Where is she?” Alaric demanded, fear constricting the inside of his chest.

The woman arched a brow at his tone—a subtle reminder that, for the Nenavarene, Alaric was a consort within their matriarchal systembeforehe was the Night Emperor of Kesath. She was almost his height, and her dark hair was pulled back severely from her square-jawed face. “The Lachis’ka has instructed me to bring you to her, Your Majesty. I am Nalam Gao, kaptan of Her Grace’s Lachis-dalo, at your service.”

Alaric and Sevraim followed Gao past the coconut palmsand into the village, which was little more than a collection of huts with tall, steeply pitched straw roofs and walls fashioned from geometric-patterned bamboo mats woven together. The village had looked rather ordinary from the landing grid, but as they ventured further in, past the first few dwellings, it soon became apparent that something had gone horribly wrong.

It was the smell that hit Alaric first. A pervading rankness of sulfur and infection, haunted by a sickly sweet undercurrent. He knew it immediately; it was the stench of battle’s aftermath, as pungent as though the dead were festering in the heat of a Continental summertime. Made much, much worse by Nenavar’s humidity.

However, no combat had taken place in this little village. Its inhabitants had been running away. Their remains littered the dirt road winding between the huts. Chickens, pigs, goats, and humans, all desiccated husks of their former selves, charred black as though they’d been rotting for sennights, fallen over one another in the grisly aftermath of a futile stampede. Not a single blade of green grass remained; not on the roadside, not in the fenced backyards where fruits had blackened on the vine and flowers had shriveled in their beds.

In the distance was the sound of wailing.

“The crater where the Voidfell is located lies only a few kilometers to the north,” Gao quietly explained. “It activated shortly before sunrise, roaring through the villagers’ fields and then their homes. The Lachis’ka sailed from Iantas as soon as we heard. No one was expecting it. The scale of this conflagration, this far off from the sevenfold lunar eclipse, is unprecedented. I’m afraid that it’s a sign of things to come.”

This year promises to be the worst one yet,Queen Urduja had told Alaric. Only two months from now, the Void Sever would have grown only more and more volatile, affecting awider and wider area, until it crossed the Eversea and subjected the Continent to the same fate as this village.

Trailing after Gao along a bend in the road, Alaric finally saw his wife. With the Lachis-dalo and other Dominion soldiers hanging back to form a secure perimeter, the survivors had gathered in the village square and Talasyn was in their midst, speaking softly to them as they wept and wrung their hands and tried in vain to console their crying children. Dressed in a cotton smock and breeches, her chestnut braid draped over one shoulder, she hardly looked the part of royalty, but there was no mistaking how the equally bedraggled people clustered around her, hanging on her every word, watching her every move with both hope and despair on their faces.

Those at the edge of the crowd noticed Alaric first. Word of his appearance then spread like a wave, the turning heads, the widened eyes, the harsh intakes of breath. He wanted to reassure them that … thatwhat? That he meant no harm? Wouldn’t his fleet have done this, and more, had Urduja Silim not offered up the heir to her throne in marriage? Hadn’t his father’s stormships already inflicted death and destruction on the many civilian settlements of the Continent?

What right did Alaric have to promise these people that they were safe with him around?

But when Talasyn spotted him across the sea of villagers, her countenance showed none of the anger, none of the fear. Something soft and tentative broke across her features, and he was walking toward her before he even realized it, caught in a waking dream. Somewhere at the edges, the Nenavarene scurried aside and tugged one another out of his way, as though he carried the plague, but he knew only her.

He came to a stop in front of her and had no idea what to do next. She stared up at him as though they hadn’t seen each other in years.

“How are—” he started to ask.

“I thought—” she said at the same time.

They faltered into silence. The tips of Alaric’s ears burned as he gestured for her to go ahead.

“I thought it would be better to have you brought here,” Talasyn mumbled, “rather than have you wait around in Iantas suspecting that you were going to get ambushed.”

He resolved never to let her find out what Sevraim had japed about earlier. He nodded instead.

Talasyn’s brow furrowed slightly at the villagers’ wary expressions. Then she squared her shoulders and looped her arm through Alaric’s.A show of unity, he realized, almost dazed by her sudden touch. By the feel of her tucked against his side.

She addressed the villagers in the Dominion tongue, all flowing syllables and lilt. Alaric caught his name, as well asIantas, but not much else. And he watched as the audience’s wariness transformed into cautious optimism that grew the more Talasyn spoke. A few even cheered.

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