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Talasyn smiled. “I’m glad to hear it, General.”

It really was too easy to loosen their tongues, but the nebulous dread in Talasyn’s gut refused to abate until the whole onerous affair came to an end and she and her delegation left the hall, accompanied only by their guards and Nordaye, Alaric’s aide. She recognized him as the one who had poured the wine on board the stormship during Kesath’s sweep of Nenavar.

Quietly mousing along ahead of the group, Nordaye had, in Alaric’s absence, been tasked with showing the Night Empress back to her quarters. The aide was short and skinny, with brown hair cut in the shape of an inverted winnowing basket and a perpetual downtrodden look on his face. He was the most forgettable young man Talasyn had ever encountered—a trait that apparently fixed him in Urduja’s mind as a spy, for the Zahiya-lachis kept her voice painstakingly low as she walked behind him with Talasyn and Elagbi, clutching their arms.

“It is odd that the Regent does not show himself to us,”Urduja mused in Nenavarene. “Quitting the business of governance does not render one incapable of greeting his new family, surely. A private audience, at the very least. Although I should think that he would have quite liked to celebrate his victory against the rebels with his people!”

“He is ill, I believe,” said Elagbi. “I overheard a few officers inquiring with one another after his health. No one seems to know the true state of things, and such secrecy is usually only employed to prevent causing a panic.”

“That might be why Alaric took the throne,” Talasyn ventured. “A nation postwar is vulnerable—even more so with an ailing leader.”

“You’re learning.” Urduja squeezed her arm. “But the simplest answer is often a ruse, is it not? Or the surface of a vast root system.”

Talasyn bit her lip, considering the situation. “Even if Gaherisisill, his influence has far from waned. We all saw how quickly Alaric left to answer his summons. I think the Regent has found a way to quell fears about the Kesathese sovereign’s physical condition while still ruling from the shadows.”

And that means I was right to call Alaric his father’s puppet, and to tell Vela that Gaheris is the real power in the Night Empire.

“I would certainly tire of my reign not being wholly my own.” Urduja’s tone was casual and yet not—an airiness grounded in intent. “One can only marvel at Emperor Alaric’s sense of filial piety.”

Talasyn didn’t have the patience to puzzle out her grandmother’s words. She knew only that she wanted to talk to Alaric. To demand where he’d gone off to and why he hadn’t come back.

There was a melodious giggle up ahead. Nordaye had gone as red as a ripe tomato, from the base of his neck to the rootsof his winnowing-basket hair. Jie, who appeared to have fully recovered from her earlier distress, was strolling beside him, fluttering her lashes and looking far too pleased with her handiwork.

“Lady Jie, stop torturing that poor boy,” Urduja barked. “Comehere, you silly siseng-goose.”

Nordaye recovered in enough time to direct them to their wing of the residential building. After bidding goodnight to Urduja, Elagbi, and Jie—when it was just her and Nordaye standing outside her chambers—Talasyn put her plan into motion.

She fixed Nordaye with her steeliest glare, one that she had learned from Urduja. The aide started shaking in his boots.

“Take me to my husband,” Talasyn commanded.

Nordaye was too much of a wilting flower to put up a fight. He escorted her deep into the heart of the fortress and then vanished so swiftly that he might as well have been a spectral. But Sevraim was a different story.

“Absolutely not, Empress.” The masked legionnaire stood, arms crossed and feet slightly apart, beneath the severe archway that led to Alaric’s suite of rooms.

“Who are you?” Talasyn asked waspishly.

There was a squawk from behind the obsidian helm. “It’s me! It’s Sevraim!”

She already knew that, but she hadn’t been able to resist. “Well, then, let me through.”

“Ican’t. His Majesty isn’t even in yet.”

“So I’ll wait.”

“You can’t just waltz into the Night Emperor’s bedroom unattended—”

She shoved past him. “You can abandon your post to keep watch over me in his chambers—where, as his wife, I haveevery right to be—or you can try and stop me from going in by raising your blade to your new empress. It’s your choice.”

“Have it your way,” Sevraim peevishly replied. “But I warn you, if His Majesty demands my head for this, Iwillbe seeking political asylum in Nenavar!”

“That’s a risk I’ll have to take,” Talasyn shot back.

There were five doors on each side of the hallway she’d marched into. She paused.

“Third one on the right,” Sevraim grunted.

And Talasyn stepped into an austerely furnished bedroom that was, very obviously, Alaric’s.