“There’s not much worshipping involved,” she muttered. “Here in Nenavar the Zahiya-lachis is sovereign because she is the vessel of the ancestors who watch over the land from the spirit world. There are no . . . prayers or rituals, or anything. People just have to do whatever she says.”
“As the would-be consort of a future Zahiya-lachis, I’ll already be expected to do just that, won’t I?” He sounded faintly amused. “Husbands defer to their wives here, from what I’ve gathered.”
There was a fluttering in the pit of her stomach. There was a skip to her pulse, a shortness of breath. The way he spoke so casually of their impending marriage, when he looked like he did now—
Logically, Talasyn had always known that Alaric had a body hiding somewhere under all the black fabric and leather armor. She had even been taken aback by the sheer size of it on numerous occasions. It shouldn’t have come as such a shock.
But he had emerged from behind the tall reeds in an undershirt that bared his sharp collarbones and broad shoulders, that clung to his defined chest. Paired with trousers that were hung low on his lean hips and emphasized the considerable length of his legs, and black armguards hinting at the solid muscle beneath them . . . the effect had been quite dizzying. It still was.
At least his hair had long since dried and he wasn’t raking his fingers through it with a casual, smarmy elegance, and she’d stopped feeling as if she was on the brink of combusting. Sort of. Maybe.
“There you go again, talking about being married to me,” she scoffed with a bravado that she hoped he wouldn’t see through. “You are excited.”
“Given your proclivity for pointing it out,” Alaric countered, “I’d hazard a guess that you’re excited that I’m excited.”
“You,” she hissed, “are the most ornery man that I’ve ever—”
“Been betrothed to?” he suggested helpfully.
“Will you stop talking about that!”
“No. Annoying you is in my ornery nature, Lachis’ka.” His tone was even. Perfectly calculated, she thought, to rile her.
And it worked.
Glowering, she made her way into the complex. So did he, this time keeping pace with her instead of trailing behind. They both knew the way to the Light Sever, after all.
Talasyn was no stranger to handsome men with excellent physiques. There had been plenty in Sardovia and there were plenty here in the Dominion. But she had never before experienced this . . . pull in the company of anyone else. Her eyes kept flickering to Alaric, mapping him out. Her every nerve ending sparked at his nearness.
In truth, it was the same set of reactions she’d had to him ever since they met, but amplified, somehow. As though in the peeling off of his layers, some of hers had been removed as well.
It scared her, this epiphany that he wasn’t unattractive. Or perhaps epiphany wasn’t the right term. Perhaps it had been something that she’d always known, deep down, and it had been lying in wait for the right moment to surface and wallop her over the head.
The right moment being Alaric wet from the stream, all tousled sable mane and sun-flushed skin stretched over sculpted muscle, drops of water tangled in his long lashes.
Talasyn’s face grew hot, and she was exceedingly grateful for the gloom that shrouded the dusty, crumbled corridors they were traversing. Gods, there seemed to be nothing more humiliating than being attracted to someone who didn’t feel the same. Alaric had told her, in such a cruel and biting manner, that she cleaned up well. There was no mistaking his implication; the only times he ever found her tolerable to look at was when her face was painted and she was draped in silk and precious gems. Without these trappings, he obviously had no impetus to view a former wartime enemy as anything other than a cave troll.
A shrewish cave troll, at that.
She felt nauseated. Was this what attraction normally entailed—suddenly caring if the other person found one pleasing to the eye?
The Dominion court was influencing her in the worst of ways, Talasyn decided. The emphasis that the Nenavarene placed on fashion and cosmetics had cultivated in her a vanity that had been absent for twenty years. She resolved to work on that, on quashing this new and highly frivolous aspect of herself.
The reliefs that lined the shrine’s interior walls almost appeared to move in the half-light, their stone eyes following the intruders. Through it all Talasyn’s veins hummed with the golden strings of the Lightweave, beckoning to her as it strained against the veils of aetherspace. However, when they reached the courtyard, all was still, the Light Sever dormant.
The tree that Alaric’s magic had felled a little over four months ago was still there, gnarled trunk cracked like an egg over the stonework. Alaric and Talasyn stared at it, and then at each other.
“They’re called lelak’lete—grandfather trees,” she said, more out of a desire to avoid any discussion of their shared rancorous past, which would undoubtedly lead to another ferocious argument, than a pressing need to tutor him in the finer points of Nenavarene botany. “They’re believed to house the spirits of the dead who weren’t given proper burials.”
Alaric’s silvery gaze wandered to the stone rooftops surrounding the courtyard, chipped and slumped beneath the weight of the grandfather trees that had grown over them in profusions of twisted trunks and gray-green leaves and ropelike aerial roots. “A lot of restless souls around here, then.”
Talasyn cocked her head. “Scared?”
“Not of them. The animals will probably get me first.”
His delivery was so perfectly wry, so patently long-suffering, that she had to bite back a grin, thrown once again by the rare flash of his subtle humor.
They set up camp, which involved little more than dropping their packs and unfolding bedrolls near the sandstone fountain. Supper was a silent affair and Talasyn’s eyes were heavy by the end of it, the shadows of early evening pressing down on her lids, the fatigue that she’d been reining in since morning now let loose, washing over her bones.
She barely managed to stumble to her bedroll, to crawl into it. The last thing she saw before she sank into a deep sleep was Alaric standing by the fountain, head tilted to gaze at the darkening sky above the grandfather trees. At the pale beginnings of the seven moons, and the faint glimmer of the first stars.
“Wake up.”
Talasyn’s eyes shot open. The sky was a bright powder-blue and copious amounts of sunlight were pouring into the courtyard. She squinted against the glare, perplexed. Hadn’t it been evening mere minutes ago?
The fog of sleep cleared. She sat upright, her body groaning in protest, having become happily accustomed to nights ensconced in fluffy pillows and silk sheets atop an eiderdown mattress. There was no one to blame but herself for getting soft, but it made her feel better to scowl at the man who had roused her, anyway.
Alaric’s expression was impassive as he crouched beside her, his shadow sharp on the ancient stone floor. “We have to get started. I let you sleep in a bit because you seemed tired, but we can’t afford to waste any more time.”