The words were in Sailor’s Common, the trade language that the Continent had made its mother tongue centuries ago, but it was in a thick accent that Talasyn had never heard before. The light of the seven moons shone down on thirty armored figures that had, unnoticed by either Talasyn or Alaric, come swarming out of the ruins to surround them, taking careful aim with long iron tubes that had triangular handles and some form of trigger apparatus. More than a few soldiers were carrying what looked like metal birdcages on their backs, strapped to their shoulders and waists.
There was a gaping hole in Talasyn’s soul where the Lightweave used to be. She and Alaric extricated themselves from each other and stood up. She would have shoved him away from her in a fit of sheer pettiness if instinct hadn’t warned that any sudden movements would be ill-received. “If we manage to get out of this alive, I’m going to wring your neck,” she promised him.
“If,” he emphasized crisply.
Talasyn calculated the odds of her being able to fight her way out of this. She couldn’t aethermance for some reason, but she had her bare fists, her teeth. Eventually, she had to concede that there were too many soldiers and she didn’t know what those iron tubes did, what they were capable of. They reminded her of cannons, a little, but—handheld cannons?
The Nenavarene who’d ordered her and Alaric to their feet stepped forward, allowing Talasyn to get a closer look at his armor. It was a combination of brass plate and chainmail, the cuirass embellished with lotus blossoms wrought from what appeared to be genuine gold. Its wearer was lean, with the calm, authoritative demeanor of a distinguished officer, a graying undercut, and dark eyes that stared at Talasyn—
—at first with anger, and then with some combined shard of recognition and disbelief, and then with a sorrow that made her skin prickle.
The officer shook his head and muttered something to himself in a language that Talasyn could not parse but was unsettlingly familiar to her ears all the same. He raised his voice and issued a clipped order to his troops.
Streams of violet magic shot out of the iron tubes. The same magic that Talasyn had witnessed flaring from a nexus point earlier that day, but paler, more subdued. At the corner of her eye, she saw Alaric crumple to the ground and she moved to dodge, to fight back, but the barrage emanated from all sides. She felt lit from within by a rush of heat and static as several beams collided with her form, and then—
—darkness . . .
Chapter Seven
When Talasyn regained consciousness, her first thought was that she really ought to consult a healer as soon as possible. Getting knocked out twice in the span of two sennights could not be good for anyone’s head.
Her second thought was that she was in a cell, somewhere.
She had been deposited onto a small cot that was only marginally softened by a thin mattress and a threadbare pillow, the battered frame creaking as she sat up and looked around. There was a lone window high up the far wall, outfitted with iron bars. They were too closely spaced to squeeze through, but they let in generous amounts of muggy tropical air and silvery illumination from the radiant night sky. Enough for her to see, without any problems, the hulking figure sitting on the cot opposite hers, his gauntleted fingers digging into the edge of the mattress and his booted feet planted firmly on the floor—right beside his obsidian mask. Talasyn assumed it had been removed by their captors as she couldn’t imagine one of the Legion willingly parting with his armor in this situation. The mask’s lupine fangs snarled up at her in the moonlight, but it was quick to fade from her awareness because the presence of its owner sucked all the air out of the room.
She swallowed nervously as she realized that she was looking at Alaric Ossinast’s bare face for the first time.
He wasn’t what she’d expected, although she wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting in the first place. Someone older, perhaps, given his fearsome reputation and his prowess in battle, but he appeared to be in his twenties. Waves of disheveled black hair framed pale angular features dotted with beauty marks. He had a long nose and a sharp jawline, the overall harshness alleviated by a pair of full, soft lips.
Talasyn found her stare lingering on those lips. They were—petulant, almost. Or maybe pouty was the correct term, and that was not an adjective that she would have ever guessed that she’d one day use to describe the heir to the Night Empire.
It was probably just the novelty of never having seen the lower half of his face before. Her gaze flitted upward to meet his, an act that brought her back to less unusual territory; his gray eyes were as hard as flint, regarding her with caustic dislike.
“How long was I out?” Talasyn demanded, matching Alaric’s glare as best as she could.
“I came to shortly before you did. However, our gracious hosts have not seen fit to grant us the luxury of a wall clock.” Unmuffled by the mask, Alaric’s voice was low and deep, with a hint of hoarseness around the edges. It shouldn’t have shocked her, but it did. It made her think of rough silk and honey mead in an oaken barrel.
Then he added, in a snippy tone that was quite effective in dismantling all her fanciful notions, “In any case, telling time is the least of our problems.”
“Our problems?” Talasyn bristled. “You mean this mess that you’ve gotten us into?”
“There were two people creating a ruckus in that courtyard,” he reminded her.
“One of whom shouldn’t have been there in the first place!”
Alaric smirked. “I missed the part where you received an engraved invitation from the Zahiya-lachis to make use of her Light Sever.”
Talasyn sprang to her feet, agitated, and crossed the distance between them. “You were the one who followed me all the way to Nenavar to pick a fight!” she yelled, looming over him. As much as she could loom, anyway. She had the advantage of barely an inch even though he was sitting down. “The shrine was abandoned. I could have easily gotten in and out with the Dominion none the wiser. But you interfered!”
“I had to.” Alaric’s reply was pure ice. “You could not be allowed to access the nexus point. That would have put me at a severe tactical disadvantage.”
“And I suppose that getting captured in a foreign land by people with a documented loathing for outsiders who can somehow take away our powers and wield magic that we’ve never encountered before is the height of strategy,” she sneered, jabbing a finger into his broad chest. It was . . . irritatingly solid. It had no give at all.
He grabbed her wrist before she could draw it back. “I liked you better when you were afraid of me,” he drawled.
“Well, I liked you better when you were unconscious. And I should never have been afraid of you at all,” she retorted, flushing at the reference to their first encounter. “You’re just your father’s dog. I bet you’ve never had an independent thought in your head—”