Page 51 of A Monsoon Rising

“Memories. I assumed for a long time that they were solely mine, that it was my magic connecting me to my past, but lately …” She told him about the rushing ocean, the wizened hand, the snowy mountain ridge.

Alaric was quiet for a while. Talasyn could practically hear the gears whirring in his head.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that among the Shadowforged,” he finally said. “Visions might be a Lightweaver trait. There’s no way of knowing.”

Because your country killed them all.

Now they both went tense, as though the thought striking out from the darkness had assailed him, too.

No matter where they found themselves, the war was always waiting at every corner, dragging them back down. But perhaps these constant, bitter reminders were what Talasyn needed. Even as she lay here in Alaric’s arms, sharing in his warmth.

She closed her eyes and let herself be carried off to an uneasy slumber by the beating of his heart and the distant roar of the storm.

CHAPTERNINETEEN

Talasyn would never admit it to Alaric in a million years—not even if they lived long enough for all lands to sink beneath the Eversea—but she dozed off during her shift. One minute she was staring at the lake, and then the next she was jolted awake by a droplet of water that had most likely collected along the tip of a stalactite before splattering on her cheek.

Panic came first, a bright flare. Her limbs seized and she half expected to be neck-deep in the flood, but instead she opened her eyes to morning light and the absence of the lake.

She cautiously peeked over the edge of the rock shelf. The walls sloped down into a pit about ten feet deep; there was still water at the very bottom, but the rest had drained through the other tunnels that ringed the pit and flowed back out to sea with the retreat of the storm surge, on the inhale of low tide.

The lantern had burned all night. Its aether core was flickering, the magic close to spent. Talasyn turned to Alaric, who was fast asleep, half of his face hidden in the bedroll. A gentle shake to his shoulder was not enough to rouse him. Hehadbeen tired, despite last night’s proclamation. Stubborn man.

Granted, his profile looked more like that of a boy in this moment. His mouth was relaxed, rather than set in a perennial frown. A shock of black hair fell across his pale cheek, and her fingers twitched from how badly they yearned to brush it back.

I’m glad you’re alive.

The thought nudged at her heart so quietly, like a little thief hopping some garden fence. She was thankful that the storm hadn’t claimed him, thankful that the ocean hadn’t taken its due. She didn’t know what she would have done if …

He cracked one eye open.

Before Talasyn could back away, before she could come up with a plausible explanation for why she’d been staring at him all mooncalfed, Alaric smiled.

It was nothing more than a drowsy lifting of the corner of his mouth, offering only the briefest glimpse of a slightly crooked incisor.

It wasdevastating.

Talasyn was rooted to the spot. The sight of Alaric’s lazy grin went through her like thunder. It was a lesson in being careful what she wished for. She had been curious to see that smile, hadn’t she? And now her brain had stalled and her stomach was doing somersaults.

“Morning,” he murmured, his voice raspy from sleep. He lifted one hand toward her face, but it froze halfway, the bliss in his expression replaced by something not dissimilar to horror.

She was slower to recoil. And that, too, was its own kind of defeat.

“Had a pleasant dream, did you?” Talasyn opted for flippancy as she began packing up their campsite. It had to have been very good indeed for him to smile like that.

“My dreams are none of your concern.”

And who exactly had starred in them, eliciting such groggy tenderness from the fearsome Night Emperor? Who had he mistaken her for when he woke? Who had he wished her to be?

Because there was no possible way he’d been thinking of her when he smiled like that. She wasn’t that person to him.

Talasyn kicked a piece of eggshell into the pit. Alaric had sworn to her, on Belian, that he would be faithful despite the solely practical nature of their marriage, but that hardly meant that his affections didn’t lie elsewhere, even if he never acted on them. One of these days he was going to regret his vow. If he didn’t already.

She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t. But she couldn’t figure out how not to.

She made him turn around while she swapped his tunic for yesterday’s clothes. They were damp and somewhat stiff from all the salt, but they would do. She averted her gaze as he changed into a fresh black undershirt and kept it averted because the defined muscles of his bare arms and the way the fabric clung to his chest drove her to distraction.

“We ought to leave while the way’s clear,” Talasyn said, after she’d tossed Alaric’s tunic into the leather pack that he was now slinging over his shoulders. “No telling if the storm will pick up again.”

---