Page 88 of A Monsoon Rising

“You’re not wearing that,” Alaric growled.

Talasyn started, narrowing her eyes at him from within the gilded confines of her mask. “Whatdid you say?”

Jie and the other women moved fast—they grabbed Belrok and fled out the door. Once Alaric and Talasyn were alone, his hands balled into fists. “You heard me.”

“Then allow me to rephrase.” Talasyn placed her own hands on her hips—the universal sign, Alaric thought sardonically, that someone’s husband was in deep trouble. “What makes you think that you haveanyright to dictate what I wear?”

“It’s not that,” Alaric said, but he didn’t know how to explain that things were different now, that hefeltdifferent, that he didn’t want anyone else to eventhinkof doing the things that she’d let him do to her.

“So whatisit?” When he didn’t immediately respond, Talasyn pursed her lips and continued, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “I sincerely regret that my costume doesn’t meet your standards, but it’s rather too late to change into anything else.”

“You have entire wardrobes full of dresses,” Alaric shot back. “Surely there’s one that’s”—floundering for the rightwords, feeling put on the spot, he snatched the first word that came to mind and knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment he said it—“less obscene.”

A vein throbbed in his wife’s forehead. “I could march out there naked if I wanted to—”

“Please don’t,” he said, with feeling.

“—and no one would be able to stop me, least of allyou,” Talasyn snarled. “Now, we’re already running late, so you can escort me downstairs, or you can stay here and rot! I don’t care either way!”

She stomped out of the room, wrenching the door open to a chorus of startled cries from Jie and Belrok and all the other Nenavarene who had been pressed up against it, eavesdropping.

Alaric was rarely one for crude language, but today he cursed under his breath as he hurried after her. It was going to be a long night.

What is thematterwith him?

Talasyn fumed all the way out of the royal wing and down the staircase to the second level of the castle. She and Alaric ducked into the ballroom’s antechamber, where they were supposed to wait for the lights to dim before slipping into the crowd. Unlike other celebrations, there would be no grand entrance for any of the royal family, in order to preserve the illusion of a masquerade—the illusion that the Nenavarene would somehow fail to immediately recognize the Zahiyalachis, her heir, the Night Emperor, and the prince, just because their eyes and noses were covered. It was all a bit silly, but then again, the Dominion court thrived on artifices such as this.

Urduja and Elagbi had gone on ahead. In the quiet solace of the antechamber, where it was just Alaric and Talasyn, shecould practicallyfeelhim locked in some fierce internal battle with himself. She attempted to pay him no mind, but as always, he proved difficult to ignore.

She tried to see it from his point of view. She really did. Continental fashion required more layers, more parts covered up, owing to the climate. It therefore wasn’ttoooutlandish that Alaric would be scandalized by Nenavarene attire, although she felt that this issue really should have cropped up much sooner.

But Talasyn’s attempt to be understanding failed. All she felt was annoyance whenever she glanced at her husband. And what a pity it was, considering how he looked. Her heart had skipped a beat when she first saw him in costume earlier. Jutting out from the sides of Alaric’s mask, slightly above the eye-holes, was a pair of golden antlers, kingly and resplendent. His crisply tailored tunic was the same deep, iridescent green as her skirt, cinched at the waist with a belt of gold silk that matched the trim on the high collar and wide cuffs. Embroidered on the front of the tunic, in shimmering gold thread, was a stylized tree pattern, the slender trunk slanting up the right half of his rib cage, the bare branches fanning outward to streak across his chest in burnished rays. Belrok appeared to have taken pity on Alaric in constructing his trousers, which were simple in comparison—just plain black silk of various weights—but his formal boots were a dark mulberry hue, as was the cape that flowed from his wide shoulders.

The colors were striking against his pale skin and sable hair. And Talasyn had rather liked the poetry of being the butterfly to his stag—but then he’d opened his fat mouth.

The opaque burgundy curtains that hung at the threshold of the antechamber, separating it from the ballroom, were eventually drawn aside by an attendant dressed like a beetle. Knowing that they had to keep up appearances, Talasyn grabbed Alaric’s arm without a word, shoving her hand intothe crook of his elbow. He scowled, before flattening his mouth out into a—a smaller scowl.

Iantas’s dusty, little-used ballroom had been completely transformed. The air was sweet with the perfume of myriad rose-and-hibiscus arrangements, mounted on marble pedestals. The celestial patterns splashed over the hangings and tablecloths gave off a faint sparkle in the muted light shed by chandeliers of crystal and bronze. And the crowd itself was a thing of wonder, a sea of bejeweled masks and fantastical costumes. Some were helping themselves to the smorgasbord of finger foods and fine wines, others were conversing merrily in little groups, and others still were gliding with their partners over the marble dance floor to the airy strains of a string orchestra.

As they made their way through the glitzy throng, Talasyn could only hope that she and Alaric were doing a capable enough job pretending to tolerate each other.

They went over to Queen Urduja, who wasn’t too difficult to spot: she wore a silver dragon mask and a scale-pattern dress with an impressively frilled collar. The hummingbird-masked noblewoman she was talking to paled in comparison.

The Zahiya-lachis greeted Talasyn first, then studied Alaric over the rim of her champagne flute. “Emperor. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Apologies for missing council, Harlikaan,” Alaric tersely replied. “Holding back the Void Sever was more taxing than I had anticipated.”

“Completely understandable,” said Urduja. “I claim no knowledge of aethermancy and can’t even imagine.” She inclined her head toward the woman in the hummingbird mask, finally including her in the conversation. “You remember Daya Musal.”

“Of course.”

Alaric’s tone was so carefully blank because, Talasyn realized, he didnotin fact remember the noble who had led the charge in giving him a hard time at the engagement banquet. She jumped in, eager to avoid an awkward situation. “How good that the two of you can become acquainted in happier circumstances! Let us hope, shall we, Daya Musal, that there will be no duelsthisevening?”

Ralya Musal let out a melodious laugh, her brown eyes glinting over her mask’s needle-sharp bronze beak. “No one would have the audacity to duel the man who helped save Nenavar. Not even Lord Surakwel—and I’d wager he is hardly aching for another go after being so soundly trounced by His Majesty last time!”

You’d lose that bet, my lady,Talasyn thought.

As Ralya chattered away at Alaric, Queen Urduja took the opportunity to lean in closer to Talasyn and issue a whispered command in the Dominion tongue. “See to it that Mantes and His Majesty steer well clear of each other.”

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