Page 37 of A Monsoon Rising

It was going to be all right. It had just been a passing spell. Some quirk of the amplifiers.

Sevraim eventually fell back, and Alaric and Talasyn locked into a precise, deadly dance of swirling darkness and shifting light. He drove her all the way to the waterline, where the ocean lapped at her toes as she blocked his furious strikes. He was relentless, forcing her to move faster and faster until her arms were sore and her breath emerged in harsh bursts and all she could see was him, windswept black hair and broad shoulders and shadows against gleaming sand and moon-razed saltwater.

Given their closeness, it was all too easy for her to spot the moment a glint of cunning sparked in the silver depths of his eyes. The sword in his hands melted into a bullhook on a chain, and with a flick of his wrist the darkly crackling coils wrapped around her shield, rendering her immobile as the hook’s lethally sharp arrowhead point flew at her face in one smooth thrust.

Talasyn’s desperation echoed in her magic, her shield doubling in size and bursting free of the inky chain. Her arm bearing the shield swung up wildly, and the edge of it smashed into Alaric’s cheek.

He reeled back, the Shadowgate vanishing as his blood spattered the shallows.

A hoarse shout rent the air. Talasyn barely even registered the fact that it had come from her; she was too busy banishing the Lightweave and hurrying over to Alaric, seawater sloshing at her ankles, alarm spreading through her like wildfire.

“Are you—” She clutched at the side of his neck, giving him no choice but to turn his face toward her, and her heart dropped into her stomach at the sight of the crimson gash that ran along the edge of his cheekbone.

But they had fought a war against each other. Why was it so different this time? What was this regret, this urge to call for a healer like he almost had when he cut her hip?

If we don’t want to hurt each other,she thought,then where does that leave us?

What is the way forward?

Alaric’s brow furrowed at her touch. His hand came to rest over hers where it clasped his neck. Talasyn’s pulse skipped a beat at skin on skin, at his fingers curling against hers.

He squeezed her wrist, and she had the impression that there was something compulsive about the gesture, something starved—but then he was peeling her hand away from his neck with an alacrity that made it clear that the gentle pressure of moments ago had been nothing more than an accident.

“An inventive maneuver,” he said, “but hardly the point of our exercise.”

She turned her nose up at him as much as she could given the several inches he lorded over her. “You cheated.”

Alaric wiped the back of his left hand over his cheek, pale knuckles coming away smeared red, but the worst of the bleeding had stopped, much to Talasyn’s relief. “I was testing you,” he rumbled. “I’d venture to say thatyoucheated, as a matter of fact—unless you really are planning on punching the Voidfell with your shield.”

Talasyn would have gladly continued their bickering, if not for the fact that she had finally noticed that the hand Alaric had used to pry hers away from his neck still hadn’t let go. Their fingers remained intertwined at her side. He realized it a beat after she did, and for one blistering second he looked enraged—at her? At himself? He tried to wrench his hand away.

But she tightened her own grip, refusing to release him. The prolonged contact seemed to break through his defenses, laying bare the fatigue that had finally caught up with him. With them both. All the fight left his broad frame, and inresponse something like surrender rippled through her as well. They were each other’s mirrors, beneath the seven moons.

“You were burning up earlier,” he whispered. “I reached out to you, and for a moment you were like the dragon. Nothing but flame against my skin.”

She saw the fear then, fear that he had tried to hide before—not for himself, but for her. She reached out and touched his shoulder, and he melted, as though she really were fire, sinking his head toward her hand.

“I’m all right. Because ofyou.” Talasyn dragged her fingers down the muscled cords of Alaric’s bare arm. “As soon as you touched me, it drew out the fever. It felt …”

Like someone stopping her fall. Like the end of a long journey home. She didn’t know how to put it into words, these emotions that were bigger than her body, that ran deeper than her magic, that soared higher than the Sky Above the Sky.

“I felt it, too.” Alaric reached for her fingers before she could lift them away from his arm. “The light inside you, it poured into me. Banishing the cold.”

Both her hands were held by him now. He was all that she could see, etched in moonlight against the surf.

“I’m not sure what this means for us. For our magic,” Talasyn said. “But I think—I think, maybe, we can protect each other.”

Alaric closed his eyes briefly, looking almost pained by this sentiment. “You don’t know how badly I want to believe that, Talasyn. But we can’t run from what we are. Our history was one of war long before you and I ever met. Look what happened tonight—look at the consequences of light and shadow working together.” His gaze darted away as though he couldn’t stand the sight of her. “The toll it takes.”

She wanted to argue with him. She wanted to bring up the sense of oneness they’d felt with the dragon, how it had showedthat even opposing forces could be connected. She wanted to remind him that he was the one who’d said they were stronger together.

But another war was on the horizon, unbeknownst to him. His doubts breathed life back into her own, her skin still crawling with the memory of the inferno from earlier—of how their combined magic had nearly destroyed them both.

She had to look at the bigger picture. She would have to give him up to the Allfold when the time came. There was no other way this could end.

They couldn’t protect each other. That had been Talasyn of the Great Steppe talking, the orphaned street rat who lived on dreams of what could be. She was Alunsina Ivralis now, and millions of lives were at stake.

Let him go,urged her sanity.

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