Page 71 of A Monsoon Rising

Talasyn couldn’t feel relief. Not yet. There was something the Amirante had wanted to say but for whatever reason hadn’t. And Surakwel was looking at them both in disbelief, shaking his head.

“Youdosee my point, don’t you?” Talasyn asked him.

He went still, his gaze growing cool. “No, I don’t,” he said flatly. “But I have thrown in my lot with the Allfold, and that means I must trust in their judgment.”

There was a creaking sound in the distance as one of theNautilus’s cannons swiveled into firing position. The shipwrights were conducting a weapons test, and Talasyn watched as a stream of pure lightning emerged, arcing up into the starry heavens.

“I will send you my instructions after the Moonless Dark,” Vela told Talasyn. “Everything should have been prepared by then.”

“You can count on me,” vowed Surakwel, looking only at Vela. “House Mantes’s private army is at the Sardovian Allfold’s disposal.”

Talasyn said nothing. The lightning cannon, freshly repaired, newly recharged, tore the night sky apart in fragments of white. Her eyes filled with tempest.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

When Alaric returned to the Nenavar Dominion a month later, he returned to a land of ghosts. After exiting an otherwise empty port and then leaving theDeliverance’s hangars, the black Kesathese shallop had sailed alone over still cities, quiet villages, and the empty roads in between that once bustled with merchants’ carts. The azure horizon was lined with the backs of ships, receding into the clouds, that carried the last wave of Nenavarene evacuees. They would journey on as far as they could before the Moonless Dark, their chances of survival measured by the distance they traversed through sky and over water as aether fumes bore them further and further away from the homeland that would spell their end should Alaric and Talasyn prove unsuccessful.

We’d be the first to die if that happens.The thought raked across Alaric’s mind as he stood on the wooden deck above sprawling vistas of rainforest and white sand. He tried to ignore it—fear being anathema to the Shadowforged—but it gnawed at his heart with icy teeth. Grotesque images ran rampant in his mind—standing at the edge of the Voidfell’s crater with Talasyn … being swallowed by the amethyst haze … themagic dissolving their two forms before spreading across their world …

Tonight. It all came down to tonight.

The spike of anxiety only served to worsen Alaric’s black mood of the past month. Rebel activity had died down in light of the Continent’s mass evacuations, but he would have preferred the simplicity of combat to the bureaucracy he’d had to endure. A month of squabbling with his officers, of dodging his father’s verbal blows, of wrangling with the sheer logistics of moving millions of people and the necessary supplies …

They hadn’t been able to move everyone in the end, not even all of those not on the exclusion list. There had simply not been enough ships.

A month of failures and dead ends, all while the sariman’s song had echoed within the walls of his bedroom.

Freed from constant blood extractions and the darkness of Gaheris’s private hall, the bird had regained its strength, as well as its fiery plumage. However, like most Nenavarene creatures, including Alaric’s wife, it seemed to take vicious delight in causing him trouble, forever chirping and trilling and beating its wings against the bars of its cage when all Alaric wanted was to rest.

He’d named it Guava in the privacy of his own head. A little joke that only Talasyn would understand.

Not that he could ever tell her about it.

They’d written to each other somewhat frequently, the bulk of the letters carried across the Eversea by Kesathese skuas, which were better suited to long-distance flights than Nenavarene eagles or House Ossinast’s ravens. Brief missives, formally worded, more argumentative than not, detailing little of consequence other than Talasyn’s progress reports on her aethermancy. But Alaric had savored every line from her, spending hours trying to read between them and imagining how thewords would sound in her voice, even as her horrid penmanship strained his eyes.

He couldn’t wait to see her. It was a very strange feeling. Anxious and excited all at once.

As the shallop glided lower over the Eversea and Iantas’s finer details came into view, Alaric spotted people on the landing grid waiting to receive him and others on the beach, either dragging fishing nets to shore or scaling the coconut palms to pick their woolly brown fruits. It could have been any normal day on the island, not the one with the potential to end everything.

Talasyn was conspicuously absent from the welcoming committee, though. Alaric felt a sliver of annoyance as he disembarked. This was a grave breach of protocol.

Jie stepped out from the throng to greet him, her dark curls bobbing.

“You’re all still here.” Alaric wasn’t quite able to keep the question out of his tone.

“Oh, Her Grace urged the entire household to leave,” Jie chirped. “The villagers’ children were sent away at her insistence, but as for the rest of us—we rather felt that our place was with her.” The lady-in-waiting’s demeanor was as sunny as these shores and her eyes were bright, belying the difficult choice that she’d made. “The kitchen staff was particularly concerned that she wouldn’t be able to eat her favorite meals in their absence. Prince Elagbi is here, too,” she added as they walked into the spiny castle while the servants boarded the shallop to handle his luggage, “but he is napping, and Her Grace is occupied as well, so if I may escort His Majesty to the royal chambers—”

“You may escort me to her instead,” said Alaric.

Jie turned her pert nose up at him. “The Lachis’ka is resolving a delicate matter in the aforementioned kitchens—”

“So take me to the kitchens.”

Jie opened her mouth to argue, but Alaric’s stern glare was an effective deterrent. There was a definite stomp in her gait while she led him to a wing of Iantas’s first level that he’d never been to before.

Whatever Alaric had been expecting when he entered the kitchens, it wasnotthe sight of his empress covered in thick, sticky pink liquid. Talasyn was standing, eyes squeezed shut, in front of a potbelly stove atop which perched an overflowing saucepan. Two similarly drenched cooks dabbed at her with hand towels while the rest hung back, looking terrified.

“Honestly, it’s fine,” Talasyn was attempting to soothe them, blindly gesturing in their direction, “it’s all my fault, I’m the one who suggested the recipe, but who knew salamander currants would be so volatile—”

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