Page 62 of A Monsoon Rising

And perhaps that made her a monster, too.

What is one night of not caring about other people?Talasyn asked herself mutinously, stroking the pad of her thumb across her husband’s cheek. She had carried that burden ever since she was fifteen and the Lightweave first sprang forth. She was tired of forgiving the past.What is one night?

Tomorrow I’ll be good again.

She led him back to bed. Once she tucked him in, he lay perfectly still, as though nervous about making any sudden movements that might scare her again. She would have interpreted this as pity in the time before, and it would have rankled. But she knew him better now. Knew enough to tell the difference between his pity and his compassion.

He had offered to find Khaede, and he’d eventually brought Talasyn news and some much-needed hope on that front. He hadn’t hesitated to help the villagers who lost their homes and livelihoods to the Void Sever’s flare. He had stopped the torture of the apprehended rebels, when Vela could not save them.

Talasyn changed into her sleep clothes and then slipped beneath the covers on her own half of the mattress. The minutes crawled along while lace curtains fluttered in the evening breeze that poured through open windows, moonlight glinting on the tapestried canopy over the bed.

“Here is something no one else knows.” Alaric’s hoarse, liquor-glossed rasp broke the silence. “My mother spoke to me the night she left Kesath. She’d timed it perfectly; my father was away, and in the sennights leading up to her escape she’d made a habit of evening strolls so the guards wouldn’t think anything was amiss. There was a ship waiting for her at thedocks, but she took a detour to my room and begged me to come with her. I refused.”

“Why?” Talasyn asked in a near-whisper, afraid that too loud a voice might shatter the air of secrecy that hung around them.

“Because I was the heir to the throne. I had a duty, even if she would so willingly shirk hers. And because—” The sentence broke apart on his tongue and he tried again. “Because I thought that, if I didn’t go, she would stay.”

Talasyn’s hand inched toward him. Alaric must have heard the rustling silk, or he must have glanced down to see it moving in the moonlight. He met her hand with his own, whatever the case. The tips of their fingers touched, more tentative than anything that she had ever known before.

“When you left …”—his hand twitched against hers—“when you left, it brought me back there. That was why I needed to go somewhere else, to clear my head. It wasn’t your fault. But my mind makes associations, too.”

Talasyn’s heart squeezed within her chest, so bitingly that there was room for little else but a solemn, gray-eyed child, molded by loneliness and duty, who had still hoped enough to bet on his mother’s love and lost—and the guarded man that child had become, ruthless and terrifying in battle and yet capable of concession, too, and of gentle touch whenever it was just them and the starlight.

She laced her fingers through the gaps between his. He clasped her hand tightly, now without an ounce of tentativeness, his thumb tracing the inside of her wrist.

Somehow, such a simple act was more intimate than anything else they’d done to each other, their palms curling together there in the dark.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

Urduja Silim returned to Iantas in all her pomp and splendor four days later to observe the last practical demonstration of the shield amplifiers. Aside from the fact that Alaric was sailing back to Kesath tomorrow, there would be no more eclipses before the sevenfold one on the night of the Moonless Dark; this was the last chance to fine-tune, to get it right.

So, no pressure,Alaric thought wryly as he and Talasyn headed down to the shoreline after Urduja wished them luck. He could feel the Zahiya-lachis’s flinty stare boring into his nape from where she and Elagbi stood at the front of the crowd of spectators that had gathered on the castle steps.

Ishan Vaikar and her Enchanters, busy arranging the glowing metalglass jars on the smooth white sand, were all smiles for Talasyn when she approached. By contrast, they afforded Alaric the barest hint of acknowledgement, clearly still miffed by his outrage a fortnight prior.

Not that Alaric cared. As far as he was concerned, he’d been well within his rights. He greeted the Ahimsan Enchanters with frosty sarcasm, and he smirked when Talasyn shot him an admonishing look.

“This is really it this time,” Ishan proclaimed. “If it isn’t, I’ll cover myself in thornfruit and vanish into the woods.”

The daya’s resolve was commendable. And as darkness washed over most of Lir’s seventh moon, leaving behind only a glimmer of silver, and the shield went up, hope stirred within Alaric that it wasn’t out of place.

Light and shadow covered the whole island, stemming from where he and Talasyn stood. The newly modified aether cores groaned but the jars and wires held, and those glimmering nets of black and gold skirted around the shoreline, over the treetops, amidst that starry night.

The barrage began. The smattering of warships brought over from Eskaya for this purpose that were currently surrounding the island all fired at the same time. Streams of amethyst magic roared through the night air, one by one harmlessly vanishing the moment they crashed into the barrier.

Through the haze of combined Lightweave and Shadowgate, Alaric watched the void blasts spark and flare and fade, and he remembered fireworks blazing over Eskaya. He remembered that rooftop in the Dominion capital, the feel of Talasyn’s bony shoulders as he dug his fingers in, as he lowered himself enough to almost plead.

Whatever better world you think you’ll build,she’d told him then,it will always be built on blood.

If they pulled this off—if they saved Nenavar and the Continent from the Voidfell—would it be the same as wiping the slate clean? Once the waves of death magic receded, would people be able to blink in the light of a new world, safe for another thousand years, and believe that it was possible to start again?

Alaric had no answers for that, but he had never been more sure of one thing: he had to try to make it so. If they emerged unscathed out the other side of the Moonless Dark, Kesathwould not fight another war. It was a resolve that went beyond the awful pit in his stomach at the prospect of taking Talasyn’s magic away. It was an earnest desire to live, finally, in a time of peace. To preserve this beautiful, enigmatic place that was his wife’s nation—and to rebuild his own.

No more,Alaric vowed to himself from where he stood at Talasyn’s side, the two of them holding back the amethyst bolts, holding back the rot, keeping their island safe.I will go against my father to make it so. After the Sardovian rebels, no more.

It was around the forty-minute mark that Talasyn began to flag. The warships had long ceased their simultaneous barrage and were now taking turns firing a cannon each; the Dominion was rationing its aether cores since no new magic could be extracted from the Void Sever until it stabilized. On the Night of the World-Eater, though, the Voidfell wouldnotretreat, not until an hour had passed. She needed to hold on for that long.

Aethermancing nonstop for such an extended period of time was akin to climbing an endless flight of stairs. Effortless at first, the body going through rote motions of muscle memory. An action so intrinsic that the exact moment fatigue started sinking in was difficult to pinpoint, and before long limbs throbbed and lungs shrank, squeezing out air in splinters, a taste of rust in the back of the mouth, and there was no choice but to keep going because it was too late to turn around.

---