“To your very great sorrow, I’m sure, Your Majesty.” Sevraim uttered this with enough sarcasm to make it sound like a joke, but not quite enough to disguise the shred of curiosity that lay within. He was studying Alaric with a look that verged on knowing, although Alaric didn’t have the slightest idea what Sevraim thought he knew. “I cannot believe that the Lightweaver and the Lachis’ka have turned out to be the same person. All those months spent looking for Talasyn and she was here all along. It’s—”
“A trick!” Mathire repeated hotly. “A ploy orchestrated by Ideth Vela!” She stopped pacing in front of Alaric, squaring her shoulders in determination. “Your Majesty, we are well within our rights to demand proof that there is no collusion going on. We cannot gamble the security of our empire, especially when the Nenavarene have a reputation for being less than forthright. All we have is the Lightweaver’s word that she fled here after the war, but that begs the question as to who else could have fled here with her. If I may be so bold as to insist—Kesath must be allowed to search Dominion territory, to determine for ourselves that they don’t have the Sardovian fleet tucked away somewhere within their shores.”
“We can make that request after we’ve hammered out the terms of the marriage contract,” Alaric conceded. “That way, the negotiations will be over and done with and it will be less critical to abstain from offending Nenavar.”
“And if we turn up no evidence of Sardovia, Your Majesty, do you mean to go through with it?” Sevraim asked. “Will you marry a sworn foe?”
Alaric would rather eat glass shards, but his father’s words were at the forefront of his mind. Of course, there was every chance that Gaheris would sing a different tune upon learning the identity of the Lachis’ka. As of now, though . . .
“I will do what I must,” was Alaric’s stoic reply, “for the sake of the Night Empire.”
Chapter Seventeen
Talasyn was in a terrible mood. She’d tried to sneak out of the palace, only to discover much to her chagrin that security measures had been tightened due to the Kesathese presence. Before any of the increased number of guards could notice the Lachis’ka skulking around, she crept back to her chambers and then into the garden beyond, frustration curling low in her gut. The Sardovians needed to be informed of this new development as soon as possible. She needed Vela’s advice on how best to proceed.
This particular garden section of the Roof of Heaven lay open to the sky, allowing copious amounts of moonlight to come spilling down over the grass and the orchids and the artificial waterfall that tumbled into a dark, rippling pool. The combined illumination of the stars and the seven moons was almost a soft, shadowed daytime.
Standing in the middle of the garden, Talasyn tipped her face up to the pulsating celestial mazes and took slow, deep breaths. Perhaps the perfumed scent of the flowers and the gentle burble of water and the cool evening air would help her regain inner peace.
As she watched, the night sky shimmered with a haze of deep amethyst light. The Voidfell’s lone nexus point, located in the crater of a dead volcano on the Dominion’s centermost island, was discharging.
Talasyn remained as curious about void magic as she’d been when she first encountered it. While she’d been briefed on most aspects of life here in Nenavar, she’d been told very little about this amethyst dimension of aetherspace. She knew only that it was more malleable than other dimensions, that it could be folded into small aether hearts and still retain its properties as a weapon. Hence, the muskets—and she could only be glad that Kesath didn’t appear to be producing those yet.
There were times when the Voidfell flared so intensely that the whole sky was set aflame, and it filled her with apprehension. It wasn’t normal for a nexus point to blaze that brightly from so far off. People at court assured her that there was no need to worry, that it was simply the way of the Voidfell. A part of her remained unconvinced, but she chalked it up to the general sense of not having yet found her footing in this wild land.
She wondered just how big the Void Sever was, to be visible not only from Eskaya but sometimes from the Sardovian Coast as well. The Fisherman’s Warning, Khaede had called it. Once every thousand years.
Thinking about Khaede made Talasyn’s chest hurt. Khaede hadn’t snuck into Nenavar with any of the convoys, and no one could remember seeing her during the Allfold’s retreat from Lasthaven.
It had been months. Khaede was either dead or languishing in a Night Empire prison. And Talasyn was about to marry the man responsible for either scenario.
“It is you, after all.”
Like clockwork, Talasyn thought sourly. As though she’d summoned him, because her luck was clearly just that abysmal as of late.
The distant Void Sever quieted as she turned to the source of those deep tones, rich like wine and oak. Only moonbeams and stardust illuminated Alaric’s sharp, pale features. The austerely cut black garb that he favored didn’t seem so out of place in Nenavar now that it was evening. He was spun from the shadows, a very extension of the night. His gloomy presence contrasted with his surroundings, a backdrop of orchids in all shapes and colors—some as frothy and white as seafoam, some as red and riotous as forest fire, some with speckled flute-shaped petals, and some iridescent like butterfly wings. Every flower released sighs of cool fragrance into the tropical night.
It would have been an idyllic scene if they were any other two people in the world. As it was, however, Talasyn felt all that old familiar anger rising up while Alaric took in the sight of the smock and breeches she had dearly cherished changing into after a long day at court, her face scrubbed clean and her hair tugged into its usual braid.
“And here I was harboring the faint suspicion that the Nenavarene were foisting some other girl off on me,” he continued. “You clean up very well, Your Grace.”
“What the hell are you doing in my garden?” Talasyn demanded.
“Ask whoever thought it would be a good idea to put me in the suite directly across from yours.” A smirk danced across Alaric’s full lips. “Also, it would technically be our garden after the wedding, wouldn’t it?”
He stepped forward, a man made of moonlight, bearing the undereye circles of someone unable to sleep. She’d been this close to him before, and even closer still, but always in the heat of battle, where there was no space to notice such things. He wasn’t wearing his usual leather gauntlets, and for some reason that thought leapt out at her—that she was seeing his hands for the first time. They were neatly kept, and so much larger than hers.
“Tell me,” he said, “how does the Lachis’ka of the Nenavar Dominion wind up a helmsman in the Sardovian regiments?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Talasyn scoffed.