Page 49 of A Monsoon Rising

It was a diffident offering of comfort. Perhaps it was even entirely accidental. But her heart held on to it all the same.

I’m exhausted.The thought cut her in all its simplicity. She kept her eyes shut as his touch lingered, then drifted away. Briefly, she wondered what it would be like to live in a world where she was allowed to take his hand.

CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

Once she had gotten her emotions under control and they’d both retreated to their respective ends of the rock shelf, there wasn’t a whole lot to do in the flooded grotto. Alaric kept an eye on the waterline and dwelled on his grim thoughts. He occasionally caught Talasyn toying with the wedding band on her ring finger. Perhaps out of boredom, yes, but also perhaps wishing to be free of it. He couldn’t blame her. She wouldn’t be in this situation if not for him, if he hadn’t ignored Jie’s warnings in his eagerness to get away from a castle that had felt so empty.

The already wan daylight weakened even further when more rain poured into the cracks overhead, accompanied by the growls of thunder muted through stone. The lake sloshed worryingly within its banks, the cascade at the grotto entrance picking up speed. Alaric squinted at the ceiling, their only means of escape.

“If I bring it down,” he said, “would you be able to shield us both from the debris?”

“Yes,” Talasyn replied without an ounce of hesitation. “I suppose you’ll use the same technique as Gaheris when he destroyed the rebel stormship.”

“I’ve never actually tried,” Alaric admitted. “If the lake overflows, then we’ll see if I’m my father’s son.”

“You’re not, though.”

She said it so quietly beneath the faint susurrus of the gale whistling through the world above. When he turned his head to stare at her, she bit her lip, as though regretting her words, but she soon plowed ahead with the stubbornness that he knew so well by now.

“You’re nothing like him. You would never hurt your own child the way he hurts you.”

How deep such a simple statement cut. A blade through the heart. With the pain came the anger, and he opened his mouth to tell her off, but something about the way she was huddled against the wall, so small in his tunic, her brown eyes faintly luminous in their earnestness, even as she seemed to steel herself … but for what?

Alaric momentarily stopped breathing.

Talasynexpectedhim to retaliate. Every time she brought up the subject of his father, he only ever responded with rage and threats. The way she watched him carried echoes of the way his mother had watched Gaheris, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

I want to be better than the past,Alaric thought.In this, and in so many other ways.

He quirked a brow. “My own child?” he repeated dryly. “That’s in our cards then, Lachis’ka?”

This had the desired effect of reducing Talasyn to indignant sputters. Alaric blithely continued: “Come to think of it, our respective courtswouldappreciate some heirs. Shall we while away the hours picking out names?”

She stood up, her face pinched like she’d swallowed a whole calam-lime, no longer expecting to bear the brunt of his darkness. Her apprehension forgotten.

“On second thought,” he said, relieved, “I shall take charge of the names. No son of mine will be called ‘Watermelon Ossinast.’”

“That’s—that’snotwhat I meant, and you know it!” she snarled.

He cocked his head. “Were you planning on ‘Guava’?”

“Argh!”

She tackled him. The hotheaded little Lightweaver actuallytackledhim. Alaric let out a grunt as his back collided with the damp, hard ground. By contrast, he held a warm, soft armful, one that was proclaiming him the worst sort of scoundrel in a breathless screech.

Perplexed by the uncharacteristically refined insult, he gave Talasyn’s braid a light tug. She lifted her face from his chest and peered down at him, the dying light barely strong enough to reveal that her freckled cheeks were dark with embarrassment.

“Have you forgotten your Continental expletives?” he inquired.

“Oh, shut up.” Her blush deepened. “Youtry living in a foreign country with a different language for nearly a year. I already called you an asshole earlier and I couldn’t think of anything else—”

She broke off as it clearly occurred to her, at the same time that it did him, that there wasn’t an inch of space between them from the neck down. Her legs were locked around his hips, his chest rose and fell underneath hers. His hand curled around her bare thigh, fingers grazing the edge of the tunic—the tunic that he never should have lent her, because she was sprawled on top of him and she was wearing his clothes, and her lips were all that he could look at, and she was all that he could feel.

“You have me on my back.” Alaric was shocked by the hoarseness in his own voice. “Now what?”

“I don’t know,” Talasyn mumbled. Her gaze was also focused on his mouth. Her heart was beating a wild, violent rhythm in tandem with his. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

“Pity.” His fingers ventured higher up her thigh, caressing the silky flesh. She swallowed, her hand sliding down his abdomen in silent invitation.

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