C HAPTER T HIRTY -O NE
As one of the last Nenavarene to depart, Urduja was among the first to return. Talasyn saw this as a calculated act of statecraft: the Dominion needed to be assured that things were back to normal, and what better way than for them to find the Zahiya-lachis happily reigning from the Roof of Heaven when they got home?
But Talasyn was also of the opinion that things would never be normal again. Not when the Void Sever had turned out to be the breath of a gigantic dragon lying beneath the earth.
“Are all the Severs like that, I wonder?” mused Niamha Langsoune. “Wind and tempest and rain and the rest—have we been harvesting dragon breath all along?”
“I should hope not,” said Kai Gitab, the Rajan of Katau. “Else I’ve no idea what we’ll do if they wake up.”
Urduja’s council was in session, two days after the Moonless Dark. Talasyn had finally left her bed to attend, but she was still a bit drained. Alaric hadn’t even so much as stirred when it was time to sail from Iantas to the capital. She hadn’t had the heart to force him to accompany her to this debriefing, especially when he would need all his energy to deal with her court at the masquerade the next night.
“It’s a kind of estivation, what the World-Eater is doing, I believe,” said Ishan Vaikar. “A reduction in metabolic processes, perhaps to extend life span? Prior to this, the oldest dragon ever recorded fell just shy of nine hundred years … And I suppose that Bakun wakes once every millennium, only for an hour, but expelling more and more magical energy each time. Then the cycle begins anew. Although that wouldn’t account for all the other instances of the Void Sever activating before then.”
Ishan was trying her best to reconcile science with folklore. But Talasyn knew only what she’d seen in the World-Eater’s eyes. “It breathes out the Voidfell every time it dreams,” she said. “Of battle, and of her.”
The other people at the council table looked uneasy. Lueve Rasmey, Surakwel’s aunt and Urduja’s right hand, wrung the opal rings on her fingers. “If there truly was a battle, how did our ancestors manage to drive such a beast into the volcano?”
“We had other aethermancers in Nenavar then,” said Gitab. “Not just the Enchanters. That might be how.” He pushed his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose. “Perhaps we should just kill it.” He glanced at Talasyn, almost hopefully, in a way that reminded her of his promise of alliance back when they stood in that dim hall lined with portraits.
“Out of the question,” said Urduja. “We need the Void Sever. It is our greatest weapon, unique in all of Lir.”
“It is hardly unique anymore, Harlikaan,” Gitab argued. “May I remind you that Kesath has gotten their hands on it—”
“We still don’t know how they’re maintaining their limited supply,” Urduja countered. “What happens if the Void Sever disappears for good and Nenavar’s aether hearts run out? The Night Empire will then be the only nation in the world that has that technology. I refuse to give anyone that advantage over us, ally or otherwise.”
Especially since we’re planning to betray the aforementioned allies, Talasyn thought but didn’t say out loud. Gitab was the only noble present who didn’t know about Nenavar’s deal with Sardovia. It had to stay that way, or he and his faction of dissenters would use it against Urduja somehow.
The thought of the war to come hollowed out Talasyn’s stomach. But her conversation with Alaric on the bridge before the eclipse had made it clear that he wasn’t ready to consider peace with Sardovia, and it was likely that he never would be. The best she could hope for was to save his life.
A life that wouldn’t include her, not after what she was going to do. Would have to do.
Talasyn willed herself to put Alaric in a little box in her mind and seal it shut for now. The important thing was to keep moving forward. There was a council she needed to get through.
“We don’t have to kill anything,” she declared. “We’ve learned that Bakun can be reasoned with. We just need to keep that knowledge alive for … for next time.” Her voice wavered a little. A thousand years was so far away.
“But can it be reasoned with before it breathes on the night of the sevenfold eclipse?” Gitab asked, and it didn’t escape Talasyn’s notice that he addressed her more gently than he did Urduja. “Or will our descendants still need eclipse magic to stop Dead Season? There is no assurance that we will be in possession of that a thousand years from now.”
“There could be some assurance,” Ishan said tentatively. “Aethermancy is passed on through the blood. We don’t know if the properties conducive to eclipse magic are in the blood of House Ivralis or House Ossinast, but”—her gaze dropped to her lap, as though she’d suddenly found her folded hands of great interest—“we can preserve both if Her Grace and the Night Emperor’s line remains unbroken.”
There was a collective swift intake of breath from Lueve, Niamha, and Elagbi. The Zahiya-lachis was too canny to show much emotion, although she tensed just the slightest bit. But the prince, who had been holding his peace throughout the meeting—while looking, frankly, somewhat bored—now looked utterly horrified.
And Talasyn, or the girl that Talasyn had been before, would have been horrified as well. She would have turned red and stuttered, she would have railed against the very prospect of bearing an heir with Alaric Ossinast when she’d already had to marry him and would one day destroy his empire.
But she had learned a thing or two from her grandmother. She was watching Rajan Gitab, who was studying the other council members’ reactions with the faintest crease in his brow.
“One might hear a pin drop,” Gitab remarked idly. “The Lachis’ka and the Night Emperor are already bound by matrimonial duty to preserve the bloodline. Surely this new objective isn’t too far off from that?”
Talasyn forced her lips to stretch into a smile, vaguely amused, serene. “You will have to forgive my father, Rajan Gitab. He can’t take this kind of talk when it comes to his only child.”
Elagbi coughed. “I truly can’t.” He sagged against the backrest of his chair.
Urduja made a show of checking the wall clock. “Let us reconvene to discuss this further at a later date,” she said. “Alunsina has her hands full preparing Iantas for tomorrow’s festivities.”
But the way she briefly held Talasyn’s gaze made it clear: the next time they spoke on this matter, it would be without Kai Gitab in attendance.
It wasn’t that Alaric expected or wanted the Nenavarene to prostrate themselves at his feet for saving them from the grim specter of Dead Season, but some gratitude from the royal tailor would have been nice.
However, when said tailor barged into Iantas in the afternoon, Alaric had to endure several minutes of little indignities, as usual. He would probably have handled it a lot better had he gotten enough sleep, rather than having been unceremoniously woken by the incessant screeching of a skua at his bedroom window, bearing the news that his stormship had returned to Port Samout after fleeing the Voidfell along with the Nenavarene vessels.
In addition, Belrok had turned quite pale upon first catching sight of Alaric’s scar, and although the tailor had quickly composed himself, this reaction hadn’t endeared him to Alaric in the slightest.
“I believe this concludes our last fitting, Your Majesty,” Belrok told Alaric as an assistant carefully tucked the masquerade getup into a chest. “I shall conduct some final alterations and deliver the completed ensemble tomorrow.”
“You mean it’s not yet done ?” Alaric snapped.
“I take pride,” Belrok said with icy hauteur, “in the flawless quality of every garment that leaves my shop. There are a few minor details that could be improved upon. Of course, these are easily missed by all but the trained eye—”
Alaric knew exactly where Belrok could shove his trained eye, but he was eager to put this unpleasant encounter behind him as soon as possible. They left his study and were forced to walk together in awkward silence because they were both headed downstairs, Belrok’s assistants trailing behind them.
As sheer luck would have it, they encountered Talasyn and Niamha in the foyer. Once the greetings were over and done with, Belrok turned to Niamha with an enthusiastic cry. “Daya Langsoune! My light, my muse!”
“Come off it, Belrok,” said Niamha, but she didn’t hesitate to take his arm with an enchanting smile. “Her Grace and I have just finished smoothing out the wrinkles in the masquerade’s seating chart.”
“You nobles are no fun,” Belrok chided. “What’s life without a diplomatic crisis every now and then?”
“Honestly, I doubt Daya Rasmey can take much more at this point,” Niamha quipped, and Belrok burst into hearty laughter. “Although she was relatively refreshed at council earlier. The miracles that avoiding Dead Season can achieve!” She turned to Alaric. If the scar on his face bothered her, she didn’t show it. “Incidentally, thank you for that, Your Majesty—”
“How are you?” Alaric blurted out, staring at Talasyn. Asked as though they hadn’t seen each other in ages, as though they didn’t live together.
Before he could take back his inane question, she said, “I’m fine.” Her gaze was glued to her shoes.
“That’s good,” he said.
“And yourself?”
“I’m … good.”
Alaric was dimly aware that Belrok was looking between him and Talasyn with horrified fascination.
“Shall we have tea, Master Belrok?” Niamha suddenly chirped, dragging the tailor away without waiting for an answer. “I shall see you at the masquerade, Your Grace, Your Majesty!”
“But—” Belrok was still protesting as Niamha ferried him out the castle doors. His assistants bowed to Alaric and Talasyn and then they, too, left.
“I actually did have tea prepared,” Talasyn muttered, casting a somewhat forlorn glance at the empty spot where Daya Langsoune had been standing. “I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?”
It took Alaric a beat and a half to realize that his wife was talking to him. “Let’s.” He hoped he didn’t sound too eager.
Talasyn led Alaric to the same seashell-studded pavilion in the hibiscus garden where he’d once interrupted her and the other Dominion ladies. Today’s tea was a vivid cerulean color, brewed from pigeonwing petals. Niamha’s favorite, but it was all the same to Talasyn.
Alaric poured the tea and they drank. As always, Talasyn tried not to furrow her brow or wrinkle her nose.
He cocked his head at her from across the table. “You don’t care for tea at all.”
“It’s leaf water,” she said defensively.
His lips quirked. “Then why serve it?”
“Because the lords and ladies expect me to serve it.”
“But what do you like?”
Talasyn chewed on her bottom lip as she contemplated her answer. “Cocoa, I suppose.”
It was Alaric’s turn to make a face, but he beckoned one of the attendants over and issued clipped instructions for a pot of cocoa to be prepared. Talasyn decided not to inform him that it wasn’t the done thing among Dominion nobility to have cocoa at this hour; in truth, she liked the show of consideration. She could bask in it. And she brightened up significantly when the steaming pot of sweet, rich liquid arrived.
“You’re the heir to the Nenavarene throne,” Alaric remarked as he drank his tea and Talasyn drank her cocoa. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. In fact, you could set a new trend.”
“Not one that you’d care for, judging from the face you made earlier.”
“Ah.” He smirked in a way that somehow made the sunlight brighter. “You caught me.”
“You caught me first,” she said. “I thought I was getting better at hiding my distaste.”
“It’s this little thing you do. You sort of …” He scratched at his jaw, as though somewhat abashed. “You lift your chin a certain way when you’re forging ahead through circumstances you don’t like.”
“Well, your eye twitches.” She felt a shiver of unease at being known in such a small yet intimate way. She was unsure whether it made things better or worse that she knew him like that, too.
Today, in this moment, there was no eye twitching. Instead, there was a crinkling at the corners as he flashed a grin. She didn’t understand why that would make the breath catch in her throat. As though he’d kissed her.
“Would my eye have twitched if I’d gone to council?” he asked. “What did—are you all right?”
Talasyn had choked on her cocoa. Before Alaric could fully rise from his chair to check on her, she held up a hand to indicate that she was fine.
“Both your eyes would have twitched,” she said, voice strained, wiping her mouth on her sleeve—then wanted to smack herself when she remembered that was what table napkins were for.
She told him about Ishan Vaikar’s suggestion that the Ossinast and Ivralis bloodlines be preserved in order to stop the next Dead Season. She told him even though it was awkward. She told him because he would have found out eventually.
And she told him because a part of her felt that this was the one thing she could be honest about, without risking anybody’s life or safety.
Alaric received the news with a straight face. Neither of his eyes twitched.
“Today is the first I’ve heard of it,” she hurried to add. “It never crossed my mind before. I took the preventive, all those times—”
“Talasyn.” His tone was far too calm, in her opinion, but it served to put a stop to her rambling. He drew a measured breath. “In the back of my mind, I always knew that we would have to, eventually. Both our realms need heirs. As we get older, that need will only become more imperative to our respective courts. This new plan doesn’t change what was already implied when we joined hands.”
Her world tilted, grew parchment-thin. Children. With Alaric. A son for Kesath and a daughter for Nenavar. Such a future swam before her eyes in nebulous, faceless shapes.
“All I ask,” he said, “is that we wait until the situation on the Continent has stabilized. If there is to be a child, I do not wish for them to grow up in wartime.”
Like we did.
The unspoken words hung heavy in the air.
Talasyn wasn’t looking at the Night Emperor in that moment. She saw only a boy who’d been sent to the front too soon, like her, and who understood what that entailed. She saw only a man who was determined to be better than the past.
It would be so easy to love you in a different life.
The thought bloomed through her in all its wistfulness. And then it scalded , and she pushed it away.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine with waiting.”
“As long as we’re agreed, then.”
Alaric looked around the garden. At the profusions of orange and red hibiscus flowers with their large petals draped like skirts, at the pebbled walkways snaking through green, green grass. It was picturesque. Idyllic.
Surreal.
“We reached this point, after all,” he mused, echoing Talasyn’s thoughts. “For the last five months, the Moonless Dark was the greatest thing on my mind. It was the foundation that our marriage treaty was built on. And now it’s over.”
And the treaty has served its purpose. The realization hit her like a blow. She gripped her cup tightly. The Sardovian remnant and the allies it had gathered would make their move. Alaric would find out that she’d always meant to betray him.
They would have to take him prisoner. That was the only way. Or perhaps exile—
“What’s wrong?” His gray eyes had gone soft with a concern that she didn’t deserve.
“I was just thinking about the seating chart.” What was one more lie?
“The wrinkles that Daya Langsoune mentioned?” Alaric prompted.
“Yes,” Talasyn said, over the cracks forming across her chest.
She continued telling him all about the problems that she and Niamha had pored over after council, such trivial things, and he listened attentively, injecting the odd wry remark here and there. The air was heavy with perfume and pollen, and the sky was as blue as his tea. There were moments, shards of moments, when she could almost let herself believe that these days would last forever. That there was no storm on the horizon, no tangled web to navigate. That it could always be like this.