Talasyn spoke with the clarity of memory that the Sever had granted her. That day had long been buried by the endless horror and violence of the Hurricane Wars, but it was now solid and vibrant in her recollections—the crowded and noisy mess hall, Khaede speaking with her mouth full, alight with rare excitement as she talked about the night no moons would rise after the going down of the sun. About how she and Talasyn would experience this once-in-several-generations occurrence together. That plan had later changed to include Sol, months after he and Khaede had shot down a wolf coracle and he sailed past a jessamine tree, plucking one of the blossoms and handing it to her as their ships passed each other while their fallen enemy spiraled toward the waiting valley below.
“We won’t be able to do that now, of course,” Talasyn continued in what was barely above a whisper. “After the battle of Lasthaven, I never saw Khaede again. She was the only friend I ever made, and now I don’t even know if she’s alive, if the baby she was carrying is all right. Probably not.” The words hitched in her throat. It was the first time that she’d ever given voice to this fear. “Your soldiers killed so many of us, after all.”
A heavy silence fell. It dragged on for a long time, the charged stillness following a peal of thunder frozen into eternity. A sharp ache sank its hooked barbs into Talasyn’s being as she realized that, the night Surakwel smuggled her out of the palace and into the Storm God’s eye, she hadn’t even thought to ask Vela if the aetherwave had picked up any sign of Khaede.
At some point, without her even being fully aware of it, she had already given up her friend for lost.
That was what the war had done. It had turned people into statistics. It had taken away hope and turned it into something to be buried until there were only bones.
“Talasyn.” Her name was low and stricken on Alaric’s tongue. “I—”
Time moved again.
“No.” A rush of unshed tears pricked at her eyes, but she refused to let them spill. She would never cry before him; she owed Khaede and everyone who had died that much. How could she have forgotten, even just for brief moments over the last few days, that Alaric was the face of Sardovia’s downfall? How did the memories of Khaede and Sol and Blademaster Kasdar not burn with her every breath? “Let’s just not talk at all.”
He sat up, narrowing his eyes at her. They weren’t filled with the cold, quiet kind of anger that she’d come to associate with him and only him. There was a wild glint in them, a recklessness. “What about what happened in the amphitheater? Don’t you think we should talk about that?”
“There’s no need to discuss it,” Talasyn said stiffly. “It was an aberration.”
“An aberration that you enjoyed, if I recall.”
“I rather think that you were enjoying it more!” Incensed, she rolled over onto her other side so that she wouldn’t have to be plagued by the sight of him. Still, his piercing scrutiny raked pinpricks along the back of her neck. “Daya Langsoune once told me that hate is another kind of passion. I was carried away by the duel. I got my wires crossed. That’s all.”
“It was the same for me as well,” Alaric spat without hesi tation, and, oh, how it hurt. Her chest rang with the blow. It was nothing more than an agreement with what she’d said, but she knew that there was one striking difference.
He was telling the truth. He didn’t even find her passing tolerable when she wasn’t dressed up.
Of the two of them, she was the only one who short-circuited every time the other drew breath. Or flashed a rare half-smile.
“Why did Daya Langsoune tell you that?” Alaric suddenly asked, his tone brimming with suspicion.
“She was teasing me,” Talasyn muttered. “About you.”
There was an elegant scoff from the silver-lit gloom behind her. It showed just how little he thought of that, and the ache inside her only heightened.
I am a traitor. Talasyn furtively, furiously scrubbed the welling tears from her eyes, before they could spill down her face and over the lips that still twinged with the memory of how Alaric’s had felt against them. Hanging is too good for me.
The too-bright sun of a Nenavarene morning pounded against his face, and Alaric woke up the same way he’d fallen asleep—bewildered, furious, and regretful.
Last night, he had allowed himself to get caught up in the moment, to fall under the sway of the false sense of closeness brought about by being alone with Talasyn amidst these isolated ruins. He had been lured into complacency by her lovely face, her sharp wit, her fire. By that searing kiss, and the scent of mangoes and promise jasmines. He hadn’t been thinking with his brain, as his father would have said. And thus he had lowered his guard, confessing harrowing truths to her that he had never told anyone else.
What had it all been for? What had been the point, if she couldn’t forget the past? If she saved it all up to confront him with it when he was at his most vulnerable?
Alaric was distantly aware that this line of thinking was nothing short of reprehensible in light of what Talasyn had gone through. He even understood, on some level, that he was hiding behind this smallness so that he wouldn’t have to confront the crushing guilt that she had brought out in him by giving the Hurricane Wars a human name. But he went ahead and thought these things anyway, because rulers of victorious nations did not grovel for forgiveness after the fact—and from former enemies whose side had been equally ruthless during a ten-year conflict, to boot.
He feared, though, that he would end up doing just that, or something similarly foolish, although few things could beat confiding to her about his parents and expressing sentiments that he had never voiced to another living soul—after he had kissed her until he was senseless. Alaric was genuinely worried as to what other acts of idiocy he would commit if he stayed any longer on this mountain, alone with his betrothed and her accursed freckles. Although surely there was nothing more idiotic than being attracted to someone who would, as he’d told Sevraim, never be able to separate him from the Hurricane Wars.
Thus, it was with some relief that Alaric watched Talasyn stash away her bedroll, the kettle, and all the camping supplies after their painfully silent breakfast and realized that she was packing up for good.
“We’re leaving?”
She jerked her head in a brusque nod. “We got what we came for. I see no reason to spend another day here.”
He ignored the flickering bloom of an ache that dug through him, as sharp as talons. “As you wish.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
There was a freshly drawn tub waiting in Talasyn’s bathroom at the Roof of Heaven. Jie—who had been quite aghast at the prospect of the Lachis’ka gallivanting about in the woods—had even sprinkled yellow custard-apple petals all over the surface of the water, and they gave off a sweet perfume in addition to the scented oils and herbal soaps.
Talasyn soaked in the marble tub until her skin pruned, brooding in a way that would have put Alaric to shame. They’d exchanged few words on the hike to the garrison, and fewer still on the airship voyage back to Eskaya. At least he had then promptly departed for his stormship with the excuse of having urgent matters to work on and she wouldn’t have to see him again until the eclipse, when they were to create the barrier so that the Dominion Enchanters could study it.
That gave her some time to firmly anchor him in her mind as someone around whom she couldn’t let her guard down. To forget everything that had happened between them on Belian.