C HAPTER T HIRTY -T HREE
“I have checked in with the Allfold as per your request,” Surakwel’s voice was soft in Talasyn’s ear as they waltzed. “The Amirante has bade me tell you that she sprouted a new white hair the Night of the World-Eater, but otherwise everyone is fine.”
“Thank the gods,” Talasyn muttered. The Sardovian remnant had not evacuated from the isles of Sigwad, purely because the risk of discovery by unallied Nenavarene was too great. She couldn’t even imagine the terror that they all must have felt.
“You’re in Nenavar, Lachis’ka. We thank the ancestors here.” Surakwel said it with only the barest hint of teasing. He’d been markedly cooler after witnessing her bargain for Alaric’s life. “I have your new orders, by the way.”
Talasyn’s skin crawled with dread. “And they are?”
“The Amirante wants you to go back to the Continent. Find out how Kesath is supplying their warships with the limited pool of void magic from the moth coracle that Ossinast stole.” Surakwel spun Talasyn around in time to the music, her skirts swirling over the marble, and then he brought her close again. “Vela has been discussing this with Daya Vaikar’s people. They think that all of Kesath’s void hearts are connected to a single power source that can somehow replenish itself. It would be very helpful if you could find a way to disable that source before Sardovia attacks.”
“And how is she proposing I do that?”
Surakwel shrugged. “You’re the Night Empress, and you’re a Lightweaver. Use that , and do it fast, because Midzul and the other allies are en route. I’m only an eagle away if you need my help.” He blinked at something over her shoulder. “I have to go now.”
“Not much for parties?” Talasyn acidly quipped.
“I have been known to enjoy them on occasion,” he said slowly, “but this hasty exit has more to do with the fact that your husband is approaching us with murder in his eyes.”
With that, he deposited her at the perimeter of the dance floor and disappeared into the crowd with one last courtly bow. Talasyn whirled around; sure enough, Alaric was bearing down upon her, paying no heed to the numerous guests who hailed him as he passed.
“My lord,” she said, through gritted teeth.
“My lady,” he replied in kind.
His fists were clenched and his gray eyes were dark with barely contained anger. An anger that hadn’t been there earlier. This wasn’t a continuation of their current spat, but something new.
And because she had just finished talking to Surakwel Mantes about the Sardovian remnant, Talasyn was plunged headlong into white-hot terror. Alaric knows. Someone overheard us and told him. Or one of Urduja’s allies has finally turned against her and told him. It was irrational, but she couldn’t let go of it, that piercing What if? She was numb all over save for the tightening in her chest.
“Lachis’ka!” Ito Wempuq of the Silklands materialized at her elbow. The rajan had opted for a goat costume on his ample frame, and the horns protruding from his mask nearly poked Talasyn’s eyes out when he bowed to her. He also bowed to Alaric, albeit with far less enthusiasm. Saving Nenavar from the World-Eater had clearly not endeared the Night Emperor to Wempuq in the slightest.
“I hear Oryal called on you a while back, with the other ladies,” Wempuq said to Talasyn. “I hope it wasn’t too much of a bother.”
“Your daughter is as charming as you are, Rajan,” Talasyn assured him.
Wempuq’s chest puffed up with pride. “May I say, Lachis’ka, that you look heavenly tonight, a vision of resplendent loveliness—”
“Er, thank you,” Talasyn said, more preoccupied with the wrathful way Alaric’s brows had knitted at this interruption.
“Your butterfly costume is divine , and so fitting for a creature of sunlight and summer and heavenly grace—”
“You used heavenly twice,” she couldn’t resist pointing out. It was easy to banter with Wempuq whenever he laid it on thick; he was one of her father’s oldest friends, and perhaps in a life where she’d grown up in Nenavar she might have considered him an uncle.
Wempuq slapped a palm against his forehead in mock chagrin. “So I did! Perhaps you could allow me to expand my vocabulary as we dance.”
“She’s already spoken for.” Alaric shouldered Wempuq aside, grabbing Talasyn’s arm.
Talasyn had enough presence of mind to glance back at the rajan with an apologetic smile as she was ferried away. And then she narrowed her eyes at her husband. “Harassing the guests at a party we’re hosting is shockingly poor form, even for you.”
“And shockingly enough, I don’t care.” Alaric led her to the antechamber through which they’d entered the ballroom. The orchestra struck up the opening notes of a popular, fast-paced jig, and as the younger nobles swarmed onto the dance floor, laughing gaily, Alaric and Talasyn were able to leave relatively unnoticed. It was a struggle for her to keep up with his long strides, and by the time the curtains swung shut behind them, she was quite put out. But at least a bit more rational than before.
There’s no way he knows. She took a deep, calming breath.
He leaned down and kissed her so savagely it made her head spin.
Oh.
It was always a shock, that initial press of his soft lips against hers. But Alaric didn’t give Talasyn time to luxuriate in the sensation—instead, he swept his tongue into her mouth again and again until it felt not so much like a kiss as a taking. She kissed him back, determined not to lose whatever new game this was, pouring into it all her grievances. Their heavy, elaborate masks were in the way, however, and it wasn’t long before she had to pull back because the butterfly’s gold filaments were digging into her cheek.
“What’s gotten into you?” she hissed as she adjusted her mask.
Her husband’s eyes flashed silver. “I don’t want to share.”
Now she was just hopelessly confused. “Share what?”
He frowned. “You really don’t know?”
“It’s not as if I can read your mind!” she cried, irate.
Alaric closed the distance between their faces again. Talasyn glared up at him. If he tried to kiss her again, now , after being so frustrating, she would kick him in the groin.
But he didn’t—at least, not on the mouth.
He went straight for her neck instead.
“I don’t want to share,” he repeated, nipping at a sensitive spot below her jaw. “Not with Mantes, not with any of them.” He held her by the waist, his fingers kneading at the exposed skin of her lower back. “I don’t give a damn what your court says. I don’t care if it’s par for the course that you take favorites. You swore yourself to me .”
“This …” She was having a difficult time stringing words together. It was the feel of his hand on her spine, the sharp shock of lips and teeth at her throat, the buckling of her traitorous knees. “This is all because I danced with—”
He tilted his head, all the better to lavish her neck with furious, biting kisses. The golden antler of his stag mask slid cool across the corner of her mouth. “I rather doubt dancing was all your suitors had in mind.”
It was the unfairness of the allegation more than anything else that finally gave her the strength to push him away. “If so, that’s their problem, not mine! What are you mad at me for?”
Alaric stumbled back. “I’m not mad at you—”
“Could’ve fooled me—”
“I’m jealous , Talasyn,” he snapped.
“Then you’re an idiot!” She stomped her foot, because that was what he had reduced her to. “Didn’t we promise each other on Belian that there would be no dishonor between us? Why does my word mean nothing to you?”
She stopped short, a hook catching at the pit of her stomach. Her word did mean nothing when it came to him. Just not in the way he thought.
I will raise my armies in your defense.
I will stand with you against your enemies.
Talasyn had sworn all that, at their wedding and at her coronation. But it could never come to pass.
Alaric swallowed, his wide frame tensing. After an age, he spoke. “I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry, too, she thought. For everything that has to happen.
And because she didn’t want to be sorry, because she felt petty and mean and selfish, because her duty had been so clear to her but he’d messed her up and she wasn’t sure if she could really save him, Talasyn took refuge in the lingering flames of her wrath, hoping that they would reignite his own. Hoping for another fight, because that was the language she understood.
“You should be sorry,” she said. “Honestly, those other men out there wouldn’t be such a pain in the—”
His mouth was on hers before she knew it. Punishing, possessive . Almost desperately so. Before she could make up her mind whether to return the kiss or follow through with kicking him, he pulled away, his gaze dark, a muscle working in his jaw. “Talk about other men again …”
“ You started it, Alaric! ”
And somehow she was shrieking that right in his face, somehow she was surging up on her toes and—
—the next series of kisses came hard and fast. It felt like a war in its own way. They kissed and bit and pulled until each was breathing harshly against the other’s mouth. Their masks clacked together, and the metalwork dug into her skin once more. She wrenched herself away from him to remove her mask altogether, but before she could do so he took advantage of the pause to walk her backward, his hands on her hips, guiding her to the antechamber’s sitting area, where he pushed her down onto the gilded chaise lounge until she was leaning against the cushioned backrest.
Alaric was a forest god as he fell to his knees before her, golden antlers gleaming in the light. He hooked her left leg over one broad shoulder, dotting a hurried kiss on the ankle peeking out from amidst the straps of her shoe. Then he littered more feverish kisses along her bare calf as his hand slipped under her right buttock to angle her center toward his wandering mouth.
Once he’d gone past her knee, Talasyn was shuddering, her undergarments soaked through. His first nip to her inner thigh caused her to cry out, and gods, if it wasn’t the most exquisite form of torture as he took his sweet time sucking bruises into her flesh, the pain and pleasure forming a heady cocktail that made everything else melt away. She needed relief—needed it so badly that she felt as though she were back on the Great Steppe in high summer, craving water to slake the thirst parching her throat. She closed her eyes and the Sardovian sun burned in the darkness to the sound of string instruments emanating from the ballroom.
As the orchestra segued into the tawindalen , a dance tune as fluid as quicksilver and as light as air, his large fingers latched onto the sides of her undergarments and tugged so frantically that she was surprised he didn’t rip them. She wiggled her hips to help, probably looking more comical than not, but it got the job done.
Alaric was impatient, though—he’d only just managed to wrestle the scrap of silk off one leg when he gave up and returned to the apex of her thighs. He afforded Talasyn no opportunity to be self-conscious, immediately sealing his lips over her—
—and it was firelight, it was music, it was static, it was open sky—
She’d often wondered what this would be like ever since she’d first heard of such an act, back in the Allfold regiments. Her imagination had fallen pathetically short of the real thing. His nose bumped against her bundle of nerves as he licked away at her, long and deep, his lips pressing together at the end of every stroke so that it felt like yet another little kiss, each sensation sending out rivers of delight that rippled through her until she was delirious, yanking at his hair, grinding against his lush mouth. Sometimes it was too much and sometimes it wasn’t enough, but she didn’t care, urging him on with whimpers of there and yes and slower and more .
Her husband was blessedly quick on the uptake. When he worked out the rhythm that made her tick and set to it with a ruthless determination, Talasyn all but shouted , her spine arching, her head tipping back. She saw herself in the antechamber’s mirrored ceiling, her emerald skirts glittering against velvet burgundy cushions, her lips parted and Alaric’s dark head between her thighs, their figures bathed in gold. The masks, butterfly and stag, added to the illusion of depraved glamour, and she looked and felt like a goddess being worshipped, her hips writhing in time to the tawindalen as the orchestra played on in the next room.
“We shouldn’t,” she panted out, “… anyone can … walk in—”
“So?” Alaric pulled off her with an obscenely loud smack. He stared up at her with blazing, hungry eyes, the gold pigment running down his swollen bottom lip slightly smudged. “Let the Nenavarene see their Lachis’ka ride the Night Emperor’s face.” There was a ragged edge to his deep voice. His breath was hot against her wetness. “Let them see me make my wife scream. Let them know, beyond the Shadow and the turning of the stars, that you are mine .”
He bent his head over her again, lapping at her with his wicked tongue. Her body was caught between twisting away from him and chasing the bliss, and it decided on the latter when he began to suck . Her thighs clamped around his neck, the heels of her shoes digging into his back, and he groaned and redoubled his efforts. The tawindalen soared to its crescendo and so did she, her scream drowned out by the crashing symphony, her eyes flashing gold in the overhead reflection as she tipped over the edge and into the fiercest, most glorious climax of her life.
Still on his knees, Alaric reached up to hold her through the aftershocks, the unmasked lower half of his face buried in the crook where her neck met her shoulder. “Have I made my point?” he asked gruffly.
“You should stop talking so much,” Talasyn replied, breathless. Dazed. “That mouth of yours can be put to far better use.”
She felt him smirk against her skin. She moved one hazy hand to punch him on the arm, but instead her fingers carded through the waves of his hair.
A question occurred to her, lazily, in the pleasant drowsiness of afterglow. “Where did you get the fool idea that I’d take favorites?”
He had the grace to appear embarrassed as he relayed what Lueve had told him.
Talasyn was puzzled. “Daya Rasmey can usually be relied on for her discretion. It’s odd that she would gossip about Queen Urduja’s past.”
“The wine loosened her lips, probably. You should scold her.” Alaric nuzzled at her collarbone. “But—later?”
“Yes.” Later seemed like a good idea. He was warm and she was content, and she wanted this moment to last just a little bit longer.