Perhaps he had, at that.
“I don’t think we heard a peep out of you all morning, during the negotiations,” he explained. “And you usually have quite a lot to say when you’re around me.”
Talasyn sneered and opened her mouth, then stilled as though remembering something. Finally, she said, “Let’s focus on training.”
Her manner was that of someone who had been told to stand down—or perhaps told herself, as the way she treated everyone on the Nenavarene panel these days made it clear that she wasn’t on speaking terms with them. In any case, she was being cooperative, and Alaric wasn’t about to scorn a miracle when it was right in front of him.
“Very well,” he said. “We’re going back to the basics today. I’ll teach you some Shadowforged breathing meditations. The principle should be roughly the same.” He had no wish to admit to anything in common with Lightweavers, but there were some truths that couldn’t be denied. “Aethermancy comes from the center, the place in one’s soul that is similar to a nexus point, where the wall between the material realm and aetherspace is thin. The hidden, more stubborn aspects of one’s magic can be coaxed forth by mastering how to let it flow through your body in the correct way.”
For the next hour, Alaric took Talasyn through the seated meditations. He taught her how to hold air in her lungs and expel it slowly, rhythmically. How to gather it behind the navel, push it out through the nose, and tuck it into the tongue. How to let the Lightweave build up and swell on the crests of it, seeping into the spaces between blood and the soul.
She was a quick study in terms of mimicking his postures and the expansions and contractions of chest, abdomen, and spine—but it was as plain as day that she had trouble clearing her mind long enough for the practice to take full effect. She was a restless thing, her coltish frame thrumming with nervous energy, and he had half a mind to leave her alone for a bit, because maybe she would be able to focus better without him.
But he didn’t leave her alone. He stayed where he was. For once the blue-skied afternoon wasn’t beastly hot due to a pleasant breeze that stirred the plumeria blossoms. The gaps between the trees offered glimpses of the sweeping city of Eskaya miles below, with its golden towers and its bronze weathervanes. He could almost call it relaxing, sitting here in this place of leaves and earth, secluded from the rest of the palace at such a great height. There was no political maneuvering to worry about, no specter of wars past or future. It was just them, and breath and magic.
Could I have lived like this? Alaric found himself idly wondering. Without a throne to someday inherit, with the stormships remaining his grandfather’s impossible dream, would he have been content with this kind of life, his days passing slow and easy in some mundane pastoral setting?
Would he have been all right with never meeting her?
A strange thought, that. It stood to all reason that his life, whatever iteration of it, would be so much simpler without her in it. Talasyn—in all her prickliness, with that face that his gaze somehow always lingered on—was a ceramic shell hurled into his carefully laid plans.
She was currently squeezing her eyes shut, her freckled nose all scrunched up. Sunshine illuminated the golden undertones of her olive skin and her unkempt chestnut braid spilled over one shoulder. She looked fetching, and Alaric grimaced. What was it about her that reduced him to such nonsensical adjectives?
And then, because the gods had a twisted sense of humor, he was suddenly falling into the depths of Talasyn’s honeyed eyes as they flew open, too quickly for him to abolish the grimace on his face.
“What?” she muttered with deepest suspicion. “Am I doing it wrong?”
“No.” Alaric seized the first excuse that he could come up with. “I was just thinking.”
“About?”
Well, he certainly wasn’t going to reveal that he’d been ogling her. He grasped around wildly for a suitable evasion, and stumbled upon something that he had in fact been ruminating on earlier in the day. Something that had been revealed during the talks. “Your mother was from the Dawn.”
Talasyn blew out a measured breath that had nothing to do with the meditations he’d taught her. “Her name was Hanan Ivralis. My father met her on his travels and brought her with him when he went back to the Dominion. She died during the civil war.”
Alaric’s brow creased. “The people of the Dawn Isles are powerful warriors, by all accounts. What could kill a Lightweaver hailing from there?”
“It was a mysterious illness. And it was fast. She slipped away in only a sennight, before anyone could figure out what was wrong. I don’t—” Talasyn broke off sharply, her gaze flicking from him to the waterfall. “I don’t really like talking about it.”
“I apologize for bringing it up,” Alaric said, soft and solemn and far too sincere. Dangerously so. The defiant tilt of her chin and the way her fists clenched in her lap elicited a pang of guilt that he’d inadvertently forced her to relive her sorrow. It was a sorrow that had no root, for she would have been too young to have any clear memories of her mother. Communing with the Light Sever might be able to change that, but the Zahiya-lachis had declared Belian off-limits for now.
Talasyn’s pink lips quirked. “Never thought I’d live to see the day you apologized to me.”
“I know when I’ve overstepped,” Alaric stiffly replied. “While I’m at it, I would also like to apologize for losing my temper yesterday. I hope that you weren’t too—perturbed.”
“I wasn’t.” She was still avoiding his eyes, but some of the tension had drained from her form. “I was wrong, too. For yelling and storming off. We have a common goal now. We should be working together. So let’s just . . . do that.”
For several long moments, Alaric was so stunned that it defied all speech. Could it be that being nicer to the Lightweaver made her nicer to him as well? Could Sevraim, in fact, be a genius? He could never tell him he was right.
It was only when Talasyn turned to him with a slight frown that Alaric realized he’d been silent for too long. “Yes,” he said quickly. “Focusing on working together. I am amenable.”
Her frown transmuted into another upward twitch at the corner of her mouth. He had the distinct and unsettling impression that she found him amusing.