Page 75 of A Monsoon Rising

Let’s tear it all down.

And let’s build a life together.

The words were on the tip of her tongue. She drew a breath to say it. She almost said it.

And then—

“We can stop all of this, this never-ending fight for power,” said Alaric. “We’ll crush the Sardovian resistance first, hunt down their leaders. Then we’ll deal with the Kesathese old guard, who are opposed to progress. Once all threats to the Continent are stamped out, we can rebuild it together and truly begin to change things.”

There was a horrendous, crushing pain in Talasyn’s chest. She breathed through it slowly, secretly. As secretly as she’d carried her hope.

He shifted closer, turning his broad body to her, removing his mask. Determination flashed across his pale face as he leaned in.

He’s going to kiss me,Talasyn thought.

She shouldn’t let him.

But she couldn’t will herself to move away. This might be the last time.

She stared at him as he bridged the distance. How the moonlight on the water caught in his gray eyes before he shut them, every hint of softness on his sharp features, every beauty mark—she committed it all to memory. There might never be an after.

Only when his lips met hers did she close her own eyes, surrendering to the feeling. Here and now, it felt like a glimpse of what could have been.

Halfway across the channel between Sedek-We and Vasiyas, there was a stirring in the water miles below. Talasyn cranked the lever that slowed the wind magic fueling the yacht, and sheand Alaric peered over starboard. And down into a strange, strange sight.

The dragons were surfacing. Dozens of them, their frilled heads jutting out from the Eversea’s dark depths on necks like rough-barked tree trunks, their serpentine bodies twisting amidst the waves. Their movements would have been reminiscent of the feeding frenzy of an eel farm if not for the fact that the dragons went still as soon as they saw the little yacht, only their jeweled eyes tracking its every movement.

“Simply another day in Nenavar?” Alaric ventured hopefully.

“No.” Talasyn spoke out of the corner of her mouth, as he did. The alertness of the leviathans was unsettling. Even the smallest one was big enough to swallow their ship in one gulp. “I don’t understand. I assumed they all started moving south last sennight, accompanying the evacuation vessels.” She’d watched several flank theW’taida, Urduja’s flagship, never leaving its side until the fleet disappeared into the horizon.

Alaric flexed his gauntleted fingers, preparing to aethermance. “Stay close to me.”

“They won’t attack anyone of Nenavarene blood,” said Talasyn. “If anything,youshould stay close tome.”

It was at that moment that no fewer than four dragons elected to take wing and surround the yacht, and Talasyn gulped. Would the last words she ever heard in this life be a sarcasticYou were saying?from Alaric Ossinast?

But no. The beasts slithered into a formation similar to that of their compatriots when they escorted theW’taidato safety. One flew overhead, one flew beneath the yacht, one flew on either side, and each took great care not to graze the vessel with their enormous wings. As Talasyn continued steering toward the shadowed ridge of the Vasiyas coastline, Alaric’s gaze was uncharacteristically soft with awe, transfixed by the swirl ofscales all around. The beating of leathery wings thundered in Talasyn’s ears, the gusts of breath from fire-warmed lungs as sibilant as a hard rain.

And it wasn’t long before this cacophony heightened, punctuated by the din of colossal bodies thrashing in the ocean, and she looked behind her to see the rest of the dragons rising from the Eversea. Trailing the yacht, keeping their distance as though in an effort to avoid colliding with it.

“Talasyn.” Alaric’s voice was raspy behind his mask. “What is this? What’s going on?”

“I …” She made eye contact with the dragon to her left. A black slit of a pupil set amidst a field of amber, glowing like the sun even this close to midnight. Something unfurled within her, something far older than her magic. The creature tossed back its head and let out a roar, exuding a cloud of bright orange flame that drowned the stars.

It was a greeting, not a warning. The dragon’s roar felt like her own heartbeat. She felt its fire as though it were the heat of the blood running through her veins.

The world had shifted yet again, as it did when she first stepped into the Light Sever. As it did when Alaric first kissed her and the air simmered with shadowed radiance.

Was it her fate to keep on changing, swapping one life for another like the coats of different seasons here in this land of eternal summer? Was she doomed to one day no longer recognize the girl from Hornbill’s Head, the same way no snowy winter carried a trace of the scarlet autumn that came before?

“I think,” Talasyn said, “that they’re watching over me.”

Not only did Ishan Vaikar agree with Talasyn’s assessment, but Alaric found the daya remarkably unfazed by the host of dragons that rolled in like the tide along with the Lachis’ka and the Night Emperor’s airship.

“Ithoughtsomething like this might happen!” Ishan crowed. “The dragons will always protect the Nenavarene people, but some of us stayed behind, so it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that some ofthemstayed behind as well? How did they decide who would migrate and who would remain? Fascinating beasts!”

Excited chatter came from the yacht’s transceiver—it was Ishan’s voice crossing the Tempestroad from her moth coracle. Each Ahimsan Enchanter present tonight, riding their own ghostly craft, was floating in a circle around the crater of Aktamasok.

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