Page 87 of A Monsoon Rising

The thought bloomed through her in all its wistfulness. And then itscalded, and she pushed it away.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine with waiting.”

“As long as we’re agreed, then.”

Alaric looked around the garden. At the profusions of orange and red hibiscus flowers with their large petals draped like skirts, at the pebbled walkways snaking through green, green grass. It was picturesque. Idyllic.

Surreal.

“We reached this point, after all,” he mused, echoing Talasyn’s thoughts. “For the last five months, the Moonless Dark was the greatest thing on my mind. It was the foundation that our marriage treaty was built on. And now it’s over.”

And the treaty has served its purpose.The realization hit her like a blow. She gripped her cup tightly. The Sardovian remnant and the allies it had gathered would make their move. Alaric would find out that she’d always meant to betray him.

They would have to take him prisoner. That was the only way. Or perhaps exile—

“What’s wrong?” His gray eyes had gone soft with a concern that she didn’t deserve.

“I was just thinking about the seating chart.” What was one more lie?

“The wrinkles that Daya Langsoune mentioned?” Alaric prompted.

“Yes,” Talasyn said, over the cracks forming across her chest.

She continued telling him all about the problems that she and Niamha had pored over after council, such trivial things, and he listened attentively, injecting the odd wry remark here and there. The air was heavy with perfume and pollen, and the sky was as blue as his tea. There were moments, shards of moments, when she could almost let herself believe that these days would last forever. That there was no storm on the horizon, no tangled web to navigate. That it could always be like this.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO

Two hours before the masquerade, Alaric walked into his dressing room like a man en route to the gallows and submitted himself to Belrok’s cruel and unusual form of torture with far less grace than he would have normally allotted to the peccadilloes of life at court. Belrok pored over Alaric for a damnable eternity, tutting and mumbling to himself in Nenavarene as he arranged the Night Emperor’s hair and applied brushes dipped in various—worryinglyglittery—pigments to his face. How in the name of the gods did Talasyn put up with this almost every day?

A while later, Alaric heard his wife and her retinue enter the royal chambers as a gaggle of footsteps and feminine chatter reached his ears, muffled by the walls. He made to stand up, with a vague notion of saying hello to Talasyn, but Belrok let out what could only be called a shriek.

“Your Majesty, with all due respect, this is averydelicate undertaking! Please do not move!”

This outburst prompted a dark glare from Alaric, but Belrok only sniffed and resolutely continued with his work, snatching another brush from his complex array of tools. “In any case,it is better for you and the Lachis’ka to see each other once you’re both all done. To appreciate the full effect.”

Dusk had dimmed the sky when Belrok pronounced himself satisfied and held up a hand mirror for Alaric’s perusal. Alaric blinked at his reflection. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. True, hedidlook as though someone had dumped a bucket of glitter over his head, but most of it was concentrated in his hair, gold dust woven through elegantly tousled black locks. The glitter that had ended up on Alaric’s face was dusted along his temples and cheekbones and over the smokelike lines of his scar. His brows were flecked with tiny shards of gold, and midnight-hued kohl was smudged along the edges of his eyes. A strip of shimmering gold pigment ran down the middle of his lower lip.

“In traditional Dominion aesthetic, that is the mark of the consort, Emperor Alaric,” Belrok said, noting where the other man’s gaze had dropped to in the mirror. “It is meant to symbolize the Lachis’ka’s kiss. It shows that you have her favor.” The tailor cocked his head, bemused. “Astounding. His Majesty looks rather nice.”

“You’re merely congratulating yourself,” Alaric pointed out in the driest of tones.

“Oh, to be sure,” Belrok said loftily. “We must all take praise where we can get it. Otherwise, it would be a very sad life indeed.”

Fully costumed, Alaric waited in the bedchamber for Talasyn to emerge from her own dressing room. He elected to remain standing, because he was in danger of pitching Belrok right out the window if the tailor admonished him one more time to be careful not to sit on his cape. The mask that had been foisted on him was the inverse of his usual armor, covering his eyes, nose, and upper cheeks, but it was just as heavy, made of solid gold and weighed down with a plethora of jewels.

An attendant bustled in—one of the younger girls, wearing her best dress and a long-snouted mask with thin, shiny whiskers. “Everyone’s here!” she gushed in thickly accented Sailor’s Common. “It’s almost time, please do head downstairs when—” She did a double take once she got a closer view of Alaric. “Oh, His Majesty looks rather nice!”

She hastily dipped into a curtsy before scurrying off. Alaric scowled while Belrok seemed entirely too pleased with himself.

The door of Talasyn’s dressing room slid open and she stepped out. Alaric was robbed of words and breath. Jie and the Nenavarene couturier and her assistants were trailing behind, but he had eyes only for his wife. There was no possible way he could have looked at anyone else in that moment.

Talasyn’s chestnut hair was piled high atop her head and threaded through with delicate chains of mountain lilies wrought in gold, studded with tiny emeralds and diamonds—the same kind of gems that liberally embellished the ornate butterfly wings covering the upper half of her face. Her collarbones and shoulders had been left strikingly bare, but there was no need for necklaces, not when her costume bodice itself was one large piece of jewelry. It was nothing more than a skimpy band, made entirely of golden leaves, wrapped around her rib cage and barely covering the slight swell of her breasts. The leaves rested on graceful stems spaced apart to afford generous glimpses of her toned stomach before connecting to a lustrous green skirt, with a shorter hem in front, which showed shapely calves that ended in slim ankles surrounded by the diamonds dripping from the straps of her heeled shoes.

Alaric felt like his brain had turned to mush, not just because of the ethereal, sylvan silhouette that Talasyn cut, but also at the sight of so muchskin. Skin that glowed, as if subtly lit from within. Practically speaking, he knew that they must have bathed her in goat’s milk and pearl dust to achieve such aneffect, but Talasyn carried her own light, was made of it, and her radiance would envelop him …

And everyone else at the masquerade,whispered the inner voice that dwelt within the ugliest corners of his mind.

He’d seen her in revealing outfits before, but he’d never had to face the prospect of sharing that sight with a ballroom full of Dominion nobles until today. A tight, burning feeling grew in his chest as he thought of all the other men who would be staring at Talasyn from behind their masks, who would no doubt be lining up to kiss her hand and dance with her and put their hands on her body. Gods, he even wanted to kick Belrok out of the room just forlookingat her.

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