Page 48 of A Monsoon Rising

The rock shelf where Alaric and Talasyn were encamped was the only spot of somewhat dry land left in the whole grotto. He should have been grateful for it, but he spent the next few hours cursing its very existence.

It was far too small. Only a little bigger than the bed at Iantas, it didn’t provide him with enough room to get away from her.

Come to think of it, a whole island’s worth of space wouldn’t have been enough. Because she was wearing his tunic.

He’d already known that the sight wouldn’t do him any favors, which was why he’d initially avoided letting his gaze linger on her. She had looked rumpled and adorable at first glance, and then, as time passed, he started noticing the finer details in the grotto’s dim light—how the sleeve slipped off her shoulder when she moved a certain way, revealing her graceful collarbone, and how the hem rode up her shapely thighs, exposing more and more of those long legs that would one day be his undoing.

Now she was more dangerous than adorable, and he didn’t know how much more he could take, torn between shaking her for putting herself in danger with some harebrained notion of rescuing him and kissing her senseless for … for beingher. For being his exasperating wife who looked so good in his clothes.

The same wife that his father was expecting him to betray after the Moonless Dark.

“I have something to tell you,” he announced. Better nowbefore they forgot yet again what they were supposed to be to each other.

She turned to him, giving him her full attention. It would have been easier to avert his gaze as he relayed the news about Khaede that Lisu had brought him, but that was the coward’s way out. He was the Night Emperor and this was on his hands. Difficult choices were made in wartime, and he was no rightful ruler if he didn’t own every single one.

Alaric forced himself to maintain eye contact, to watch as Talasyn’s expression shifted to shock and then to a slow-simmering anger. He watched her take a slow inhale, the Lightweave swirling in her irises in the same way that it must be moving beneath her skin, searching for a target.

He prepared to defend himself from her magic. He prepared for her to shout at him.

Instead, she burst into tears.

There was nothing gradual or delicate about it. Talasyn approached crying the way she did everything else—her whole heart in it, never halfway. She tucked her knees to her chest, sobs wracking her slim frame, and before Alaric was even fully aware of his actions he was beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

Compassion will be your downfall,whispered his father’s voice in his head.

She raised her head over her folded arms. Her wet freckles shone in the subterranean light. She looked so vulnerable that self-loathing roiled through him, sudden and acrid and harsh. In that moment he was starkly reminded of how young she was. Too young to have lost a war, too young to bear the fate of an entire civilization, too young to be burdened with his broken pieces.

Unable to stop himself, he lifted a hand to her jaw and brushed away the tears dripping from the curve of it like rain.He wasn’t wearing his gauntlets and he felt it all so keenly—the heat of her tears, the silkiness of her skin, the fragile structure of the bones beneath.

Suddenly her fingers dug into his wrist, and it hit him that she was crying not from sorrow but from pure, crushing relief.

“Khaede’s alive,” she croaked. “She’s—there was no better helmsman during the war. If she found a coracle, then she outflew your men and she’s alive. She and her baby are alive.”

Alaric couldn’t bear to tell her that the odds of that were minimal. He also didn’t know how he would feel if she were right. That would make Khaede one of the many enemies of the state still at large.

His conflict must have been blatant, or perhaps Talasyn could read him far too well these days. She clutched at his sleeves, but then, just as he thought she was going to pull him closer, she pushed him away.

“Don’t act like you care,” she bit out, still crying. “How dare you hold me while you think about how inconvenient it is that my friend survived—”

“Of course I care,” he snapped. “I bargained away command of one of the next generation of invincible warships in exchange for that information, so there isclearlysome part of me that cares, Talasyn—”

She blew her nose on the sleeve of the borrowed tunic, cutting him off. “If she ever turns up,” she said sullenly, “what I want still stands. She and her child will stay here in Nenavar, under my protection.”

“That was already a given. But I’m glad that you’ve been so comfortable making demands of me as of late.”

Talasyn hiccupped. “Can I demand that you shut your mouth?”

Alaric frowned at her. “Only if you stop crying.”

She didn’t listen to him. She rarely had before, and she wasn’t about to start making a habit of it now.

Talasyn wept her heart out over the rippling black lake, the salt of her tears mingling with the raindrops that trickled in from the limestone ceiling. At some point after the war, she’d locked Khaede up in a corner room in her mind, peeking in only occasionally; a defense mechanism, so she could keep her focus, so she wouldn’t go mad with going over all the worst-case scenarios.

Now the door had been blown wide open, though, and Talasyn let it all out. All the guilt and the terror and the hope. Once she started crying, she couldn’t seem to stop. This was the wallowing. This was the breaking point she’d been so afraid to hit.

If Alaric had tried to reach for her again, she would have clawed his eyes out. At least he knew her well enough not to even try—and wasn’t that a sad thing? Wasn’t that another cause for crying, that no one in this new life understood her as much as her sworn enemy did? He was a wraith at the edges of her blurry vision, standing around awkwardly while she soaked his borrowed tunic in tears and snot. And finally,finally, she was collapsing against the wall of the rock shelf, spent and strangely at peace.

He was at her side in an instant, raising a waterskin to her parched lips. She took grudging sips from it, then closed her aching eyes. In the darkness behind them, she felt Alaric run his knuckles along the inside of her wrist as he lowered the waterskin.

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