CHAPTER THIRTY
Afterward, Talasyn lay in bed propped against a mountain of pillows the Iantas chambermaids had meticulously fluffed, studying the scars on her right palm and inner forearm.
The pain was gone, but the discoloration hadn't faded in the slightest. Every vein in that region of her arm, from the tips of her fingers to the inside of her elbow, was outlined in bright red, as though cut open to reveal the scarlet branches of a barren tree.
Her forearm looked grotesque. There was no other word for it. Talasyn had never cared much for her physical appearance, but the Nenavarene prized beauty above all, and she had liked to think her looks were tolerable enough by their standards.
Now, however…
The castle healer had given her a tin of salve that, if applied every night, might lighten the marks, but Talasyn wasn't optimistic, and neither was the healer. These were aethermanced scars, inflicted by a type of magic the world had never seen before—not until Alaric and Talasyn spun it into existence. There was nothing else the healer could do, because it didn't hurt.
Talasyn would just have to live with it.
It was stupid to be so bothered. She wouldn't have cared back when she was in the Sardovian regiments; everyone there had battle scars. But in the Dominion court, everyone was smooth-skinned and beautiful, and she'd been here long enough now that something had shifted in her mind.
Alaric emerged from the dressing room. Talasyn shoved her arm beneath the covers, self-consciousness tightening her chest almost to the point of pain.
He didn't approach right away. The fire lamps had been switched off, and only half of his face was starkly visible, palely etched in the moonlight streaming through the balcony's glass panels. The other half remained cast in darkness.
The scarred half.
In the chaos of the imperial couple's return to Iantas—on an Ahimsan airship provided by Daya Vaikar, because Bakun had apparently dashed the empty yacht against the crater's sides—Alaric had refused to let the healer see to him. He had vanished into his dressing room in full armor, his mask still on, and stayed there for a long while.
Talasyn thought about how he'd tried to flinch away from her back on the deck, after the Voidfell's initial wave had ceased. She imagined him looking at his reflection in the dressing room mirror, studying his scars the way she'd studied hers.
The Moonless Dark had irrevocably changed them both, but they didn't have to deal with it alone.
"Come lie down," Talasyn said. "You must be tired."
Alaric stayed where he was. "I can sleep in my study, if you—"
"I want you to sleep here."
Her tone allowed for no argument. He walked over to her stiffly, like a man on his way to the gallows. He ducked his head as he clambered onto the bed frame, keeping the left side of his face turned away from her as the mattress dipped beneath his weight.
Her heart caught in the crush of some uncaring fist. Talasyn took Alaric's face in both hands, forgetting all about her own marks. He resisted, but she managed to turn him toward her fully. And she saw, at last, the entirety of what had sprouted beneath his mask when that sliver of void magic hit him.
Whorls as black as midnight radiated from the base of his ear all the way across his cheek, a few strands spilling over the bridge of his nose and up to the outer corner of his eye. The overall shape was reminiscent of an oak leaf blowing in the wind; each inky line curled like a plume of smoke over the moon-kissed skin of his aristocratic features.
At first, his gaze was determinedly trained on the sheets, but after a while, his gray eyes met hers with sullen defiance.
"Does it hurt?" she asked hoarsely.
"No." His fingers curved around her right arm, barely touching the red marks there. "Does this?"
Talasyn shook her head. She smoothed Alaric's black hair away from his brow, then pressed a slow kiss to the scar at the corner of his eye. A shudder went through his powerful frame, his lashes fluttering against the edge of her cheekbone. She leaned into him, tracing the path of death magic with her lips.
"On second thought," he mumbled, "it does twinge a bit. You should—you should keep doing that."
The quip was so unexpected that she laughed. No, she giggled—a sound she was making in his presence with worrying frequency these days. She kissed her way down his scarred face, and then their lips caught somehow, her mirth tapering off into a sigh.
The relief that he'd made it through the Moonless Dark surged within her like a volley from a stormship cannon. She'd kept it at bay the last few hours, distracted by practical concerns in the aftermath of a catastrophe averted, but now she seized on every sound he made, each rise and fall of his chest, and held them up to the hand of death, which retreated like a shadow dwindling as the sun reached its zenith.
Alaric had never kissed her like this before, so gentle and searching. It frightened Talasyn in a way she couldn't name, but she let it happen, too caught up in the feeling of his heart beating at her fingertips as she slid her palms down his warm, solid chest. They'd clawed their way out of one danger, and many more lurked ahead, but tonight, beneath these silken tapestries, they were alive, and that was all that mattered.
She helped him yank his shirt over his head. It was tossed to the floor, soon joined by her own, which he peeled from her shoulders, kissing every inch of skin as soon as it was bared. By the time the rest of their clothes were in a pile, she was shivering all over, her toes curling. What was it about this slowness that made it so unbearable and delicious all at once? She fell back against the pillows, and he followed her down, their lips connected, his lean hips settling between her thighs. He was already hard, brushing against her in hot glides that made her clench with sheer need, but he acted as though they had an eternity of hours to draw from, mouthing at her throat, her collarbone, her breasts until she was squirming beneath him, flushed all over.
Talasyn's right arm collapsed against the pillow, over her head. Alaric glanced at it while he kissed the freckles on her chest, and that one glance was all it took for her self-consciousness to resurface, a cold and ugly thing cutting through the haze of desire.
He'd found her attractive. That had been the one thing stronger than their enmity, stronger than his hatred for Lightweavers. That had been the one hold she'd had over him.
And now it was gone.
She moved her arm, whether to tuck it against her side or shove it out of sight under the pillow, she wasn't quite certain, but he stopped her, clutching her wrist.
"You don't get to be ashamed of these, either." He pressed his lips to her arm. "They're battle scars. Wear them with pride." He kissed each scarlet etching of her veins in the same fierce, hungry manner with which he'd kissed her neck. "You held back the Voidfell. You saved our world."
"You saved it with me." She laced their fingers together. Her free hand traced the spiderweb of black scars on his face. "I fought the way you taught me to out there."
When he slanted his mouth over hers again, it was a raking of slowly burning embers, sending up sparks. She was so far gone, she didn't want to wait any longer; she wanted to feel something that wasn't terror, wasn't the World-Eater's grief, wasn't a labyrinth of conspiracy and artifice. She kissed him and kissed him, her fingers running over new scars and old, and then, wandering lower still, guiding him to her entrance.
Alaric slipped one arm between the mattress and her shoulder blades, his other hand coaxing her knee upward to get a better angle. In doing so, he broke their kiss, and Talasyn growled, startling a raspy scrape of laughter from him. His smile flashed in the moonlight before he brought his lips to her temple as he sank into her.
Skin to skin. Breath and magic. Alive, and no longer alone. She wrapped her legs around him, taking him deeper and deeper still, letting him open her up as he rolled his hips against hers, as he alternated between kissing her mouth and everywhere else he could reach.
"When you brought down your half of the sphere"—he sounded as shattered as she felt—"and when you leapt onto the dragon—I thought for sure—"
"It's all right," she said into his hair. "I'm all right, we're alive." How good it felt to say those words. How exhilarating it was to affirm that they'd cheated death that night. She could still see Bakun's amethyst breath pulsing in the darkness behind her shut lids every time she closed her eyes. "We're okay."
She clung to him as they moved together, as they brought each other higher, as death drew back its hand. It was so achingly gentle, so unlike anything they'd ever been to each other in the past. The metal of his wedding ring rubbed against her hip, and she pressed kisses to his temple, and it was so—
—so dangerous, that fluttering thing in her heart again, the swimminess in her stomach having nothing to do with arousal, or perhaps heightened by it—
I think I'm falling.
No. She couldn't.
She couldn't do this to everyone.
Talasyn didn't even realize that she'd gone tense until Alaric stilled above her. "What's wrong?" he grated out. He tucked wisps of hair behind her ear in a careful manner that belied the vibrating tension of his body, almost utterly wrecked by the effort of maintaining control. "Whatever it is, I'll fix it, I'll…"
He nuzzled into her neck, and it almost felt like love.
Something they didn't have a right to, he'd said so himself.
Something that she didn't deserve.
If he knew—when he finds out—
Scattered thoughts, howling through her mind like a whirlwind. And yet, through it all, refusing to so much as flicker, was the flame of how much she needed him. Of how much she needed this.
Talasyn raked her nails across her husband's spine. Alaric hissed, twitching inside her, the mouth at her neck biting down in retaliation. But it was nothing more than a nip, mildly chastising, more playful than anything else.
"Harder," was all she said.
He raised his head, a slight frown on his kiss-stung lips. She bucked against him, a show of impatience that disguised the growing tightness in her chest. His eyes flashed silver amidst pale skin and black scars, and she bit back a whine as he rose to his knees, slipping out of her.
The separation should have cleared her head, but all she felt was loss. Alaric didn't keep her waiting long, however; he notched into her again, then lifted her up by the hips and slammed all the way in with a single forceful thrust, knocking an undignified squeak from her lungs.
Too much, was her first thought, her head lolling back, shoulders flat against the mattress. It's too much, I can't—He withdrew by a few inches, only to bottom out again with another jarring stroke that had her clawing at the sheets. Her mouth dropped open to form a tattered groan, and the look he gave her was feral and heated. The seven moons gleamed on every rippling muscle of his bare torso as he set a harsh pace, just as she'd told him to. He always gave her everything she wanted when they were like this—it was a bittersweet epiphany that tumbled in along with the rush of blood to her head.
A part of Alaric was clearly still there in the crater. His anger resurfaced, the lid he kept on his emotions loosening with each thrust. "Never put your life on the line like that again, Tala," he muttered as he took her roughly. "I'll govern your impulses if you refuse to. Your safety matters, as difficult as it may be for you to believe."
"You can't tell me what to do," Talasyn retorted between pants.
His scarred features darkened with frustration. And there was something of frustration, too, in the way he slammed into her next, hitting that spot, the one that made her back arch. A treacherous corner of her heart cried out for the softness of earlier, but she knew that this was the better option in a never-ending series of bad decisions. The brutal physicality of it, a refuge.
Soon enough, she couldn't speak anymore, all shattered gasps whenever he sped up, lewdly drawn-out moans whenever he slowed down, his fingers digging bruises into her hips. Soon enough, she had retreated into an intense space where there was only her and her husband and the war between them. The orgasm was building up inside her core, and Talasyn snaked a hand down her body in a frantic bid for more stimulation, for that one final nudge that would send her over the brink.
Alaric's pace faltered as he watched her touch herself. His eyes burned like starlight, fixated on her ring finger sliding against the bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs, the sheen of her wedding band's vulana stone reflected on his face like sunbeams on lake water, like phantom traces of the World-Eater's tears.
And it was almost that same light, constellations of it, that exploded across Talasyn's vision when she came, her body twisting in fierce undulations before she collapsed, boneless, over the sheets. The bed creaked obscenely as Alaric bent to close the distance between them, capturing her lips in a filthy kiss, folding her in half as he chased his own release, his large fingers tangling in her hair.
Too close. Too much. She should have shied away. She very nearly did, but then his hips stuttered and he was saying her name in a quiet grunt, the shape of it muffled into her neck. There was a rush of warmth as he spent inside her, followed by the full weight of him, briefly, making it impossible to breathe.
He rolled onto his back, and for a while, the two of them did nothing but stare up at the tapestried canopy, shoulder to shoulder, their racing hearts calming and perspiration cooling on their bodies.
Eventually, his hand found hers. She was too tired to pull it away. At least, that was what she told herself.
His voice broke the silence, gruff at the edges, low with melancholy. "Sometimes I wish—"
He hesitated, and that in turn made her own courage falter. She'd faced down Bakun without batting an eyelash, but she was a coward when it came to this, when it came to what achingly tender kisses and caresses had unearthed.
She didn't want him to say any of it. Not when her judgment was clouded by near-miss and nearness.
Not when they'd both agreed that there was a certain point where they could go no further.
Talasyn turned on her side, flinging an arm and leg over Alaric's body. She'd banked on this move to surprise him enough to shut him up, and it worked a little too well. He shifted so that she could use his bicep as a pillow, gathering her close.
"Goodnight," she muttered against his skin.
He didn't say anything in response, but his fingers danced along her bare shoulder, tracing drowsy patterns, until she fell asleep breathing him in.