He might not have planned on it, but he had wanted it. So badly. He could admit it to himself now, now that her skin was heated and slick against his, now that she was returning his kiss with a clumsy, untutored desperation that mirrored his own.
The sun bore down upon them. It burned against his lids, long after he had closed his eyes. In obeisance to some age-old impulse, his tongue lapped at the seam of her lips and they parted for him in a gasp, allowing him to slide further into her mouth.
This, to him, was a continuation of their duel. It felt the same—angry and frenetic, blood roaring in his ears, passion blotting out all else. Talasyn tasted like iris petals and ginger tea. She was molten light in his hands, all slender planes and soft angles, her fingers tangling in his hair.
I never knew, Alaric thought, kissing her harder, holding her tighter. I never knew that it could feel like this.
It was not a sweet kiss. Talasyn would have been foolish to deem Alaric Ossinast capable of sweetness, but she’d heard that first kisses were supposed to be sweet. This was violent, almost brutal. His lips were as soft as they looked, but they were relentless. Furious. And she couldn’t help but give as good as she got, just as she’d done her whole life.
It was sloppy at first, their teeth clacking together, leading her to suspect that he probably also hadn’t done much of this before, if at all. But eventually they fell into a rhythm, they let instinct be their guide. After all, this was just another kind of war. His tongue tangled with hers and he nibbled at her bottom lip and a pair of hands so much larger than her own were wandering down her torso, fumbling and exploring.
Take off your gauntlets, she wanted to command, because she needed more of this skin-to-skin feeling, she needed everything, but words were impossible when his eager mouth was swallowing every sound she made. And perhaps there was something to be said for the leather, the roughness of it on her spine, on the jut of her hips. Another layer of sensation adding to the wicked onslaught. There was a dark thrill building up inside her; there was a dampness between her legs. His hand slid down her backside and cupped her there and she moaned against his lips; in response, he kissed her so deeply that she could no longer tell where she ended and where he began, and her heart was unfurling in her chest, opening itself up to the high dive, the free fall—
A sound like rolling thunder broke the stillness of the mountaintop.
She wrenched her mouth from his. At first, Talasyn believed that it was her pulse she was hearing, pounding in her ears as Alaric held her captive in his arms. But then she saw the splinters of gold reflected in the bright steel of his irises, and they both turned their heads in the direction of the cacophony.
From their campsite—from the courtyard—a pillar of molten radiance the color of the sun shot up to the azure heavens, gilding the treetops and the weathered stone. Filling the air with its raw hum for miles upon miles around.
The Light Sever was discharging.
Talasyn pulled away from him in an instant, and Alaric reeled at the sudden loss of her, his body impulsively bowing forward to find her again. But she was gone, racing back to the campsite, her eyes only on the soaring column of light. Alaric followed her on shaking legs that felt barely attached to his body. He felt as if he were floating—and not in a good way. He was disoriented from how quickly his blood had flowed south.
When they stepped into the courtyard, the whole place was ablaze, the pillar of golden magic at its center so bright that it hurt to look at, so tall that it disappeared into the clouds. However, its width at the base was precisely contained within the fountain, bright fumes spilling like water from the stone jaws of the dragonhead spouts.
The fountain’s structure was completely undamaged by the magic. It was nothing short of an architectural feat. The ancient Lightweavers of Nenavar had to have painstakingly mapped out every inch of where aetherspace tore into the material world, crafting the stone around it. They were the same people who had covered this shrine in intricate reliefs, lovingly telling the stories of their land in joyful detail.
It was difficult to believe that they were the same breed of aethermancer who had killed Alaric’s grandfather and nearly destroyed Kesath.
Alaric pushed these thoughts that bordered on treason to the back of his mind, but that only allowed more space to recall Talasyn’s body, how she had fit against him like a missing piece.
He stopped a few paces behind her as she approached the Light Sever slowly, so slowly, as though she were in a trance. If it was anything at all like a Shadow Sever, the magic would be tugging at her and her heart would be lifting like that of a mariner spying the gleaming shores of home.
But, only a breath away from the radiant pillar, she stopped. She looked back at him, her chestnut hair blowing in an unnatural breeze. She seemed unsure, almost frightened.
Her lips were still swollen from his kisses.
“It’s all right,” he said thickly over the roar of the Lightweave. How strange it was, to be sought out for reassurance. How new it was, to be looked at as anything other than a conqueror. “Just walk into it. You’ll know what to do once you get there.”
Talasyn nodded, holding Alaric’s gaze for a few moments before turning back to the Light Sever. But his gaze remained fixed on her until she vanished from sight, her slight figure swallowed up by magic.
To enter a Light Sever was to dive headfirst into an ocean of sunshine.
And it was—wonderful.
Talasyn was submerged in light. It warmed every inch of her skin and flowed into her veins. It bathed her soul in radiant splendor.
And yet it was also a rush to the head, magnified. It was her aethermancy in its purest form, the rapture that swirled through her so intense that she was almost terrified of it. Of how much her heart could hold.
But fear was a fleeting, paltry thing in this place. She felt as if she could do anything. She could do anything.
She understood.
From afar, the nexus point had looked like a solid column of light, threaded through with aetherspace’s silver fumes. Now that she was right in the thick of it, Talasyn saw that it was composed of thousands, millions, of fine golden strands. She touched them and they sang like harp strings. She coaxed them in any direction that she wished, all of it shifting and shining and dancing in luminous tapestries everywhere she turned.