With the unerring instinct of a spider sensing that its trapped prey could struggle no more, Urduja pounced. “All that is required of you, Lachis’ka, is to hold up your end of the deal. Keep your head down and be a dutiful heir and don’t be distracted by the Night Emperor’s pretty face. You can’t personally contact the Sardovians anymore, it’s too risky. You will stay here in Eskaya and diligently attend to your lessons and your public appearances—”
The more that Urduja spoke, the more it became apparent that this was what she had been leading up to all along. This whole conversation had just been another way to make sure that her granddaughter remained firmly under her control, and the resentment that Talasyn had been harboring all these months hit its zenith, magnified by her guilt that she had in fact gotten distracted by the Night Emperor’s pretty face. She’d accused Alaric of being his father’s dog, but he had been right about her, too. She was being manipulated as well, and she kept going along with it because she had no choice.
What Vela had said amidst the mangroves came back to her in this moment.
You aren’t alone.
She had Alaric, if only in the sense that she was married to him. And because she was married to him, that gave her more influence than she’d ever had in the Dominion court.
It was something like an epiphany, what dawned on Talasyn just then, and she squared her shoulders and held her head high.
You’re too afraid to do anything for yourself, Alaric had sneered last night.
It was time to prove him wrong.
“I’m not just the Lachis’ka,” Talasyn reminded her grandmother. “Soon I will also be crowned the Night Empress. Because of me, Nenavar is going to have more power than it’s ever known. We will become a major player on the world stage. I’m your one chance for this to happen under your reign, and I’m also the only chance you have to make sure that your reign remains stable at all. You have no more female heirs, Harlikaan, and no more Lightweavers to help stop the Voidfell. It’s just me.” Talasyn’s words were weighty and deliberate over a fast-racing heartbeat. “And you need me just as much as I need you.”
She watched Urduja like a hawk, searching for the slightest crack in that icy facade. The stern, thin line of the Dragon Queen’s lips twitched, and it felt like a victory, but Talasyn couldn’t be certain of that until—
“What do you want?” Urduja asked, as cold as the Eversea in winter.
It took every ounce of Talasyn’s self-control to refrain from collapsing in sheer relief. It wasn’t over yet. She had to see this through.
“I agree that it’s too dangerous for me to keep going to the Storm God’s Eye. So I won’t. But . . .” And here she laid down her terms, feeling rather out of her body, that this moment was hardly real, as though she was listening to someone else speak, buoyed by nerves and adrenaline. “I want to be able to go everywhere else in Nenavar. I want to learn more about the technology that’s coming out of Ahimsa. And I want unfettered access to the Belian nexus point.” Urduja’s dark eyes flashed but Talasyn stubbornly persisted. “I’ll attend every lesson on politics and etiquette that you throw at me. I’ll work hard. But in return I want freedom. I want to continue honing my aethermancy; I will need the Lightweave for what’s to come. The Shadowforged are unpredictable, and I’m no use to you if I’m dead.”
And I will learn more about my mother, Talasyn vowed fiercely, silently. She had let her fear of the many ways that the Zahiya-lachis could destroy the Sardovian remnant keep her from delving into the events that had led to Hanan helping send Nenavarene warships to the Northwest Continent, but no more. She would acquire new memories from the Light Sever and she would start asking questions, just as she had with Kai Gitab. She had power now.
She waited for Urduja’s response with bated breath. Even now, there was some small part of her that wished for a semblance of warmth from this domineering woman. That wished for Urduja to assure her that she was her granddaughter, first and foremost.
Instead, the Dragon Queen merely nodded. “Very well.” Her expression was as impassive as the tone of her voice. “So be it.”
It was a small victory. Talasyn left the salon with a strange mix of triumph, vindication, and the unsettling feeling that she had just thrown her hat into the ring of a game that she could barely understand.
Alaric remained in a black mood all throughout breakfast, a mood that only worsened every time he failed to stop himself from glancing over at the girl beside him. His new empress. Her hair had still been braided when she’d so unceremoniously woken him up, but now it hung loose past her shoulders, framing her face in neat curls. She was so beautiful. And he couldn’t get out of Nenavar fast enough.
Talasyn’s obvious discomfort in wearing lingerie had led Alaric to deduce that she was no seductress, despite what his father claimed about the slyness of the women in the Dominion court. But now he wasn’t so sure. She’d left him reeling.
Perhaps she had been seducing him to bend him to her will.
Even as that thought filtered into his head, Alaric’s instincts warned him that it was spoken in Gaheris’s voice. Last night had felt honest and raw. It had to have been real.
But since when had his father ever been wrong? Who was Alaric, with all his shortcomings, with all the traits inherited from a weak and long-vanished mother, to contest the man who had brought Kesath back from the brink of destruction?
When the last of the dishes had been cleared, Alaric bade his painfully polite farewells to a frosty-looking Urduja and an only slightly less frosty-looking Elagbi, and Talasyn reluctantly walked with him out the front doors of the palace, Jie and Sevraim and the Lachis-dalo trailing behind. The shallop that would take him back to the Deliverance gleamed in the morning sun, and at first it was only Alaric and Talasyn who moved toward it.
He turned back to their companions, puzzled. They had all stopped walking, maintaining a courteous distance with expectant looks on their faces.
“They’re giving us privacy,” Talasyn explained with a long-suffering demeanor. “To say our goodbyes.”
Alaric’s gaze strayed to the upper levels of the white palace. A host of servants were huddled at the windows, their noses pressed to the glass, avidly watching.
“You should probably shed a few tears and beg me not to leave, Lachis’ka,” Alaric wryly remarked. “Else the blacksmith’s washerwoman three cities over will be disappointed.”
A smirk fought its way across Talasyn’s painted lips, but she was quick to suppress it. “Listen, about last night—”
“I know,” he interrupted, alarmed and trying not to show it, which translated into a churlishness that must have surprised her, because she jerked her head back. “There is no need to spare my feelings.” He cursed inwardly as he heard himself make a conscious effort to gentle his tone. He was a fool. She had twisted him into knots. “I am well aware that you hold no affection for me, and I’m not so green as to believe that all acts of that nature have to mean something. Our emotions were simply running high and there was no other outlet.”