Page 44 of A Monsoon Rising

Thank the gods for small mercies.

Alaric couldn’t dismiss Lisu fast enough. However, once he was alone again in his study, neither could he sit still or focus on work or reading.

Talasyn wouldn’t be back for six more days. He could use that time to get his head on straight and figure out next steps, but he also needed to not behere, where her absence hauntedthe hallways. Where he wouldn’t be consumed by the feeling of being left.

Alaric set down the stylus that had been hovering aimlessly over a pile of documents for the last several minutes as an idea occurred to him.

He knew where to go. Where to find the strength, peace, and resolve that he had been missing of late.

He needed a Shadow Sever.

CHAPTERSIXTEEN

Amidst the spiraling stone of the Belian ruins, within the jungle’s dense green embrace, a man took shape, spun into existence by the Light Sever’s golden threads. He had Urduja Silim’s jet-black eyes, shrewd and intent beneath the dragon circlet adorning his thick brown hair. He walked into a room woven from aether and memory, giving a curt nod to the woman who was already inside, rocking a gilded cradle.

“The warships sail for the Northwest Continent tomorrow. At sunrise, as you requested,” he told her. “Will you really be able to hold off any pursuers?”

“Yes.” The woman looked like Talasyn, but she spoke with a confidence that Talasyn could never hope to match. Her Nenavarene was rough, heavily accented. Her eyes flashed gold, and even though this was only a memory, the Light Sever’s threads gathered around her. Recognizing her for what she was. “Sunrise is my time. I can contain the Grand Magindam’s fleet within Port Samout.”

“If you hurt anyone, even accidentally,” the man warned, “the dragons might attack.”

“You were very clear about the risks when you first approached me.” She gazed down at the cradle. “All I ask, Sintan, is that if anything happens to me, you keep my daughter safe.”

Prince Sintan’s eyes softened. “I’ll protect Alunsina with my life. I swear it, my sister.” He paused. “Of course, she would be much safer if she were officially Queen Urduja’s heir.”

“I want her to choose for herself,” said Hanan Ivralis, with a stubbornness that this time Talasyn knew all too well.

Talasyn watched as her mother reached into the cradle. She felt a hand pat her own cheek, through the veil of years.

The scene shifted. It was the same room, but war raged outside the windows in flashes of amethyst and plumes of smoke. Hanan lay in bed, much thinner than in the previous memory, her sallow face slick with perspiration.

“Let me hold her,” she croaked.

The nursemaid with the clay beads on her brow—Indusa—silently held out a squirming bundle wrapped in embroidered cloths. Hanan took her daughter in her arms and pressed their foreheads together.

“I will always be with you,” she whispered fiercely. The same words that Talasyn had once heard in a dream. “We will find each other again.”

The Light Sever vanished as quickly as it had flared to life. Talasyn clung to the golden threads as hard as she could, hungry for more of the past, but in the end she was left alone, kneeling in the middle of the empty fountain, tears streaming down her face.

Afternoon found her in the amphitheater, with ribbons of light magic spilling from the tips of her fingers as she stretched out an arm beneath the iron-gray sky.

She’d gotten all her crying out of the way as quickly as she could. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she suspected thatit would be nice to wallow, even just once, but that was a luxury better reserved for those who didn’t have everyone else’s fate in their hands. Now she was focused only on aethermancing again.

The Light Sever had flared last night as well. It had actually been doing so rather frequently in the past month, as though aetherspace itself was restless in the lead-up to the Voidfell’s great eruption. Talasyn had communed with it several times before Alaric arrived at Iantas; she’d refined her shielding—if not her focus, apparently—and had even managed to craft the light-woven version of the black whips that he employed in combat so often. Since then she’d moved on to attempting to mirror another Shadowforged technique, but she was turning out to be far less successful at it.

As she stood in the middle of this sunken, ancient sparring ground the day after leaving Iantas in a panic, she was thinking about Gaheris’s chimeras, how they had filled the world. She was trying for what felt like the thousandth time to coax a counter to that out of herself.

But, as always, her magic thinned and flickered and was unsteady. It didn’t know what she wanted, and she herself was at a loss. A great wave? A towering wall, like the ones Hanan Ivralis had reportedly used to cage the Dominion fleet until its breakaway ships had fled from sight? Anytime she pushed herself and created a surge of light bigger than her body, she lost control of it.

It hardly helped matters that she was training in the very spot where she and Alaric had first kissed. Talasyn had come out to the amphitheater for a change of pace, but this had clearly been a bad idea. Thoughts of her gloomy husband intruded with every other breath that she took. He was the one who’d taught her how to breathe, for meditation and for aethermancing, and thus not even this act was free of him.

But at least he wasn’t around this time, and that meant she could avoid doing anything stupid. At least for a few more days.

Talasyn brought her arm down and began ascending the stone steps that led out of the amphitheater. Her plan was to retreat to the courtyard where the Light Sever was located, back beneath the roof of the grandfather trees. Halfway up, however, she stopped in her tracks at the sound of wings.

A messenger eagle landed a couple of steps above her, holding out one leg bearing a roll of parchment as it issued a high-pitched, whistling call.

“Hello to you, too.” Talasyn rubbed the sweet spot on Pakwan’s head, between its frill of brown-and-white feathers. There was blood on the raptor’s beak, the remnants of a grisly meal that it had probably hunted on the way to Talasyn’s location, but it leaned into her touch with puppylike affection before she drew her hand back to extricate the rolled-up message.

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