Granted, he’d also called her an idiot in the same breath, but . . .
Talasyn turned around too late. Alaric’s wing of the palace was already silent and still in the moonlight, his chambers once more plunged in darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alaric found sleep difficult to come by that night. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Talasyn jumping in front of the shadow-spear and he saw himself veering it away almost too late, missing her heart by a hair’s breadth. He saw the spear grazing her upper arm as a shout caught in his throat. He saw her blood welling up, an accusation leaking through the sheen of her sleeve.
By the gods, he had cut her, he had nearly killed her, and his knees had buckled at the sledgehammer’s blow of horrified guilt, before he managed to compose himself and walk over to her to check that she was all right, while all those so-called lords and ladies gawked.
Why did it bother him so? It had been an accident. And he and Talasyn had certainly inflicted similar nicks on each other during their duels in time past. Hell, she’d concussed him the night they met.
Something had changed. Alaric didn’t like it.
And he especially didn’t like the fact that, whenever he closed his eyes, he could still see her pinned against the wardrobe, her slender frame too small for his hands, asking him to repeat his question in an uncharacteristically breathless, distracted voice, her brown eyes wide. He winced inwardly every time it came crashing back to him that he had slipped and called her beautiful to her face.
No doubt it was the blood loss that had led to such a grave error in judgment. Not to mention that the Nenavarene court in general was playing havoc with his senses, this gaudy world where it was growing increasingly difficult to separate pretense from reality. A world where the grubby, hot-headed soldier who had been his nemesis waltzed into his room in an elegant gown, spouting apologies, promising cooperation.
Talasyn had clearly been following her wily grandmother’s orders. It seemed that Urduja was training his little Lightweaver to become quite the politician.
His?
Alaric bolted upright in bed, a frustrated snarl escaping from his lips as the covers slid down to his bare waist. He didn’t know how long he sat there in the gloom of his quarters, its curtains drawn against the radiance of the seven moons, but eventually he felt it. Now that the sariman cages had been removed, a stern demand for entrance tugged and scratched at the corners of his magic like clawed fingers, a call that he was powerless to ignore.
You are the Night Emperor, a part of him mulishly insisted. You shouldn’t have to answer to anyone.
He shuddered. He took a deep, meditative breath, adopting a blank, calm facade right before he opened the Shadowgate. Right before he dove into the aether, where Gaheris was waiting.
The world shivered at the edges as Alaric walked into the In-Between. “Father.” He was already speaking as he approached the throne. Gaheris was no doubt displeased by the lengthy communications blackout, and he would be even more displeased by the identity of the Nenavarene Lachis’ka. Alaric was anxious to get it over with, so he explained the situation as quickly and as succinctly as possible. Gaheris’s eyes flickered, but his expression remained impassive for the most part. The only time it showed anything resembling genuine interest was when Alaric mentioned the upcoming Night of the World-Eater.
“I must admit to some . . . bewilderment,” Gaheris finally said, “regarding your failure to insist that you be able to contact me. Did you forget that we’ve had the upper hand all this time? When it turned out that your magic was crucial to saving them, did you not use this to your advantage?”
“The Nenavarene see me as the Night Empire’s figurehead, Father, and they would have questioned my authority to negotiate—”
“So it was your pride that got in the way,” Gaheris silkily interrupted. “Perhaps you did not want to lose face in front of the Lightweaver? Or perhaps you were afraid that I would disapprove of the union?”
Alaric remained silent. There was no defense left to him, not when Gaheris was talking in that deceptively gentle manner of his that almost always indicated a taste of pain in the near future. The air in the In-Between grew thinner, dark magic crackling in corners that did not exist in the material realm, strange shapes lurking in the shadows.
“Once again you have let the girl cloud your common sense,” the Regent growled. “A revelation of this magnitude—you know that you should have informed me right away, and yet you didn’t. You hid behind these sariman cages, a flimsy excuse, keeping it secret from me that you are marrying the Lightweaver that you should have killed months ago.”
“It’s better that I didn’t succeed in killing her, surely?” Alaric couldn’t stop himself from asking. “This treaty would never have been possible without her. The Night Empire would never have been able to stop the Voidfell once it reached our shores.”
His father stared at him for a long time, a searching, knowing gaze that left Alaric feeling small, fear and resentment and guilt hollowing out the inside of his chest.
“I am not so certain that you are up to this, boy,” Gaheris sneered. “The Nenavar Dominion will draw you in and they will strike at the first sign of weakness. That is their style and Urduja Silim has mastered it. How else do you think she has held on to her throne for so long? There is no doubt in my mind that she is training her granddaughter likewise. The Lightweaver will never return this bizarre infatuation that you have for her, but she will in time learn to wield it against you if you don’t nip it in the bud.”
“I’m not infatuated—” Alaric began to protest, but Gaheris interrupted him with a bitter laugh that echoed off the In-Between’s shivering boundaries.
“Shall we call it obsession, then?” the Regent demanded. “Shall we call it the fanciful notions of a weakling whom I have been entirely too lenient with? Who is in the end his mother’s son?”
Alaric looked down at his feet, humiliated. To hear someone else put it into words made him feel so unbearably stupid—and angry—that he’d let Talasyn get too close.
“Don’t think that I’ve forgotten,” Gaheris continued, “all those months ago, when she was still a nameless little Sardovian rat, how you put forward the notion that she be allowed to live. You told me that you were curious about the light-and-shadow barrier. But it wasn’t just curiosity, was it?”