Page 66 of A Monsoon Rising

Talasyn bit her lip in the lamplight, arching back against the wall, and the sight of his come on her freckles was for Alaric a religious experience, was the taste of sugar, was peace after wartime. Ears ringing, senses cloudy, he held her thigh in place, fingers stroking soothingly as he wiped himself dry on it.

Her eyelids fluttered as the leather gauntlet roved over her skin. It was so interesting. It was another facet of their twisted dance that he was pathetically eager to explore.

But he couldn’t. Not for a month.

He had to go.

After their breathing had evened out and they’d fixed their clothes as best as they could, Alaric succumbed to his worst impulses and drew his prickly wife in for another embrace, burying his nose in her hair.

“Nowwhat are you doing?” Talasyn demanded, her words muffled into the front of his tunic. “Everyone’s probably wondering where we—”

“Shut up, Tala,” he said, without a trace of ire, with a foreign gentleness that was the most natural thing in the world where she was concerned.

And much to his surprise, she desisted, relaxing against him.

“I’ll write,” she mumbled. “But you’d better write me back.”

“I will.” His heart lurched inside his chest. “I promised, didn’t I?”

After her husband’s airship left, Talasyn went to the kitchens.

She hadn’t bothered to correct Alaric when he brought it up, but in the Dominion there was little need to consult a healer for a preventive. The tree called wisewoman’s lilac grew aplenty in the dense jungles, and every well-stocked kitchenhad jarfuls of its bark on hand—for grinding up to use as a piquant seasoning and for brewing into a morning-after tea.

The tea was also an efficient treatment for menstrual pains, and that was the excuse Talasyn gave to the cooks. She gulped it down as fast as she could and then retreated upstairs. To send a missive to the Sardovian encampment in the Storm God’s Eye.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE

She lasted all of four days before writing her first letter to him.

In her defense, she had important news to share.

Talasyn was communing with the Light Sever on Belian for the third day in a row, folded into a cross-legged sitting position at the heart of the pillar of golden magic that suspended her a few feet above the ground.

She had learned, through a great deal of trial and error, that the Sever could be somewhat responsive to her thoughts when she immersed herself in it long enough, and this was the longest that the Sever had flared yet. For the last several minutes, it had been showing Talasyn her memories of her mother from a time when she should have been too young to remember anything. Aetherspace flowed into her and excavated the scenes from her soul. Whenever one scene started to fade, she snatched the threads of light that shaped it, willing them to lead the way to the next. Her mother singing her to sleep. Her mother laughing at a joke made by a younger Elagbi while Talasyn—Alunsina—cooed in her arms. Her mother leaning over the cradle, spirals of golden magic dancing between her fingertips while the room echoed with a child’s squeals of delight.

Amidst all those idyllic memories, aetherspace kept spinning back to the conversation between Hanan and Sintan, and to Hanan in her gilded prison, knowing that she was about to die, holding her daughter for the last time. Perhaps that was the work of Talasyn’s will, too—a subconscious desire, despite the heartache, to stay as long as she could in those final moments between her and her mother.

I will always be with you. We will find—

The Light Sever deactivated. The column of magic collapsed back into the stone fountain and winked out of existence, and Talasyn fell to the ground. And Hanan was gone—gone again …

Talasyn screamed. The sound echoed through the ruins, startling the birds away from their roosts in the grandfather trees. As they took wing all around her, she reached deep into the aether in her soul, desperate for more time with her mother, desperate to cling to the love she’d never known.

Radiance filled her vision. At first, she thought that by some miracle the Sever had flared again. Then she realized it was coming fromher. The Lightweave was flowing from her fingertips, forming a golden dome around her about half the diameter of the Light Sever when it was active, but it was the largest magical summoning that Talasyn had ever managed to date that had a solid shape. It didn’t break, it didn’t burst, it didn’t flare wildly into the sky. It was controlled.Shewas controlling it.

She finally understood how to.

In her longing for her mother, she’d ridden the currents of aetherspace, drawing out the connection to the past. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but she could almost feel Hanan Ivralis guiding her hand—could almost hear a voice in her head that she thought might be Hanan’s.

This is how we build a wall.

This is how we save the things we love.

At Talasyn’s whim, the dome grew and shrank, brilliant and flickering. She kept it up for as long as her concentration and energy held, then allowed herself a moment’s breath before casting it again.

The first time hadn’t been a fluke. The second dome was just as solid, just as malleable, and Talasyn pushed herself to maintain it for an even longer period of time, as Ishan Vaikar had recommended.

She could do this. She would not let eclipse magic consume her.

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