Page 4 of A Monsoon Rising

Alaric went in for the kill. Sevraim sprang to his feet, blocking with his remaining talon as he conjured a new one in his empty hand and tried to drive it between Alaric’s ribs. But his opponent had been expecting this, and he spun around, trapped Sevraim in a headlock, and fit a shadow-spun blade against his throat.

Sevraim was unfazed. “Will the children be Shadowforged or Lightweavers, do you think?” he asked brightly. “It warms the cockles of my cold, cold heart to picture a pint-sized prince brightening these gloomy halls. Then again, His Majesty’s firstborn could be a daughter, so you’ll need to keep trying—”

He broke off when the talon’s crescent-shaped edge was wordlessly pushed closer to his neck. “All right, I yield!” Sevraim called out, shoulders shaking with silent laughter, the black knives in his hands disappearing in wisps of smoke as he batted Alaric’s arms away. “So much for my new distraction technique.”

“I’d hardly call that atechnique.” Alaric banished his own weapons and strode over to one end of the hall. Grabbing a washcloth from the nearby rack, he dipped it into a barrel of rainwater before scrubbing the sweat from his brow.

Sevraim was soon beside him. “Well, you can’t blame mefor trying to rattle you. You’ve been in a mood since we returned. Even more so than usual.” Forgoing the washcloths entirely, he dunked his head into the barrel.

A vein at Alaric’s temple twitched. Not only was the water indubitably fouled, but hewasrattled, more than he would ever let on. Since sailing away from Nenavar, he’d been haunted by that last glimpse of Talasyn, standing on the front steps of the Roof of Heaven, watching him go. Right now, she was most likely preparing for the three-day airship voyage to Kesath, for her coronation as his empress. The prospect of seeing her again, not in the hot jungles of Nenavar but on the Continent, where the echoes of their war still hung in the air, made him feelstrange.

It certainly didn’t help that Sevraim had brought up the issue of progeny. Once, that notion would have repelled Alaric, but now it only elicited intrusive memories of his wedding night. How easy it would have been to hold Talasyn closer, to press deeper and …

We shouldn’t have done this,she’d told him then, her chestnut-brown hair a mess and her lips still swollen from his kisses. The faint, lush scent of her release lingering, and his spend on her slim fingers.

Jaw clenched, Alaric fought back the memory. Talasyn had made herself clear in that regard at least. He buried his tumultuous emotions before he could give name to them. There was a matter that he had to take care of before her ship made landfall.

“There’s something that we need to discuss,” he said when Sevraim resurfaced from the depths of the barrel.

For all his cavalier ways, Sevraim understood when his commander meant business. He ran a washcloth through his soaked hair, then waited, canny and alert.

“My father—” Alaric’s mouth snapped shut. They werealone in the training hall, but one could never be too careful within the walls of the Citadel. He lowered his voice. “My father has acquired a sariman from Nenavar. Commodore Mathire captured it without my knowledge while we were searching the archipelago for traces of the Sardovian remnant.”

“Those odd little birds that cut us off from the Shadowgate?” Sevraim scratched his head, perplexed. “Ihatethose birds. What does Regent Gaheris want with it?”

Alaric watched Sevraim’s face carefully. Ever since he’d walked out of his father’s hall that morning, Alaric had been gauging the situation, weighing the dangers. Revealing what he knew was treasonous, and it put them both at risk. If he’d underestimated the extent of Sevraim’s loyalty to Gaheris, then everything would come crashing down. Practically a lifetime of knowing each other, fighting side by side, defying death together—it would all be put to the test in this moment.

But he had no choice. Only two Kesathese had been in that atrium when Ishan Vaikar explained how Dominion Enchanters suspended sariman blood in the Rainspring so they could manipulate its effects. Alaric had to make sure that this knowledge never reached Gaheris’s ears.

Alaric still believed that the Night Empire was the way forward. It would restore order and stability to the Continent and keep the Shadowforged safe from all who would destroy them. When it came tothat, Alaric and his father were in accord.

But Gaheris looked to a better future from where he sat in the shackles of the past. He believed that war was the only option. And even though Alaric knew that he couldn’t trust Talasyn, he had to figure out a way to secure the Night Empire while not destroying her and the Dominion in the process.

He needed to buy time.

It took Alaric a worrying amount of effort to keep his expression neutral, his tone steady. “Regent Gaheris thinks the sariman could hold the key to removing Talasyn’s magic. Permanently.”

Sevraim arched a brow, but gave nothing away.

“It’s imprudent to antagonize the Nenavarene,” Alaric said quickly. “The trade agreement and the mutual defense treaty that come with the marriage alliance are far more beneficial to Kesath than anything that we can hope to gain from another conflict so soon after the Hurricane Wars. My father is a wise man, but in this case I believe that his hatred for Lightweavers has made him reckless. Understandably so, but reckless nonetheless.”

“And what ofyouropinion of Lightweavers?” Sevraim asked.

Alaric nearly blanched. He reined it in at the last possible second.

Upon closer inspection, he could see that the glint in Sevraim’s eyes was playful rather than malicious. Yet Alaric knew that, as a combatant, Sevraim had a knack for drawing the enemy out and striking hard when they slipped into complacency. It wouldn’t do to rest easy just yet.

“Light magic is a plague on the world,” Alaric replied, echoing the words his father had spoken so many times. “But Talasyn’s bloodline grants us access to Nenavar, and we need her power. For now. Until the Moonless Dark.”

The words were heavy on his tongue. He felt as though he were lying. He couldn’t tell Sevraim that, as abhorrent as he knew the Lightweave to be, it filled him with a bone-deep ache to imagine Talasyn permanently losing her connection to it. Losing the magic that set fire to her eyes and lit her skin from within and had come close to killing him on more thana few occasions, yet that had also merged with his to create something that had never before been seen in all of Lir.

Something that was theirs alone.

Sevraim studied him for an unsettlingly long while. At last, he shrugged, as though they’d been discussing nothing of importance. “I wish our esteemed Regent luck on his new project, but I have no idea how his Enchanters can pull it off, considering that the sarimans cancel aethermancy.”

The weight that Alaric had been carrying since he first heard lilting birdsong echoing through his father’s darkened hall finally began to lift. “You have no idea?” he repeated, hardly daring to believe it.

“Not in the slightest.” Sevraim smiled, brilliant and sharp. “The Nenavarene didn’t explain anything about those creatures to us, did they? They just keep them in cages as a safeguard against aethermancers.”

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