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“They tried tokillyou.” He said this so slowly, so deliberately, as though she were stupid, that heat came rushing to her cheeks.

“I know they tried to kill me, I was there,” she snapped. “But you said it yourself: they’re foot soldiers, and there’s nothing important they can tell you. Forcing them to give up information they don’t possess is just causing those people unnecessary suffering.”

Alaric got to his feet. He stalked over to the ship’s guardrail and gripped it so tightly with both hands that Talasyn suspected he was imagining taking her by the shoulders and giving her a good shake. “Why do you still care what happens to them? They may have been your comrades in the past, but that doesn’t excuse their present actions.”

“Because they were only following orders, as I did once,” Talasyn said. “Vengeance isn’t justice—I told you that before, didn’t I?”

“I remember.” Alaric stared down moodily at the waters below, rippling in the moonlight, reflecting the yacht’s Squallfast fumes in whorls of emerald green.

“Besides,” she added, struck by a burst of sudden inspiration, “it hardly endears you to your subjects. It’s no secret what Kesath does to Sardovian captives, but this could be an opportunity to show that your reign is different from your father’s, thatyouare capable of extending mercy.”

He scoffed. “If there is no punishment, thenmoreaspiring rebels will come out of the woodwork. If I relent on this matter of national security, people will see only that I am not as strong as my father, that I cannot defend our homeland as he did.”

“The same father who hurts you?”

Talasyn clapped a hand over her mouth as soon as these words spilled out, but of course it was too late to take them back. She hadn’t meant to say it like that, to bring it all out in the open so callously. She hadn’t meant to make her husband’s shoulders tense, as if he were warding off a low blow that had come out of nowhere. “Alaric, I’m s—”

“Don’t pity me,” he hissed before she could finish apologizing. “I refuse to be the scapegoat for your ignorance in the ways of Kesath. Pain is instructive, and what you call mercy is nothing more than weakness. And casting my father in this light amounts to treason—”

“T-treason?” she sputtered. “Against whom?Youare the Night Emperor.” She closed the distance between them, stepping into his space, forcing him to look at her. “You are the Night Emperor,” she repeated, her words unfolding with the sound of the waves below, “and you told me at my coronation that you wanted to change things for the better. So when do you start?”

He swallowed, and for a moment everything about him was a cornered animal. He seemed almost afraid of her. Or of what she could get him to do.

“Very well,” he finally said in clipped tones. “I’ll send a message to the Citadel to cease the interrogation process.” Andthen his expression darkened, showing her that the animal had teeth. “However, if this decision ends up compromising Kesath in any way—”

“Yes, yes, I know. I will take my former comrades’ place in the torture chambers.”

Talasyn was being sarcastic, and yet not. There was a very real possibility of that happening.

But Alaric blinked. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “I would never let—”

He broke off in abject frustration, then looked away.

In the act of sharply turning his neck, he grunted out an expletive and froze.

Alaric almost never cursed. Talasyn studied him intently. The tips of his ears were reddening, as though with embarrassment.

She put two and two together. He’d been sleeping in his study all this time, and that particular room of the castle didn’t even have a couch.

“Can you please just sleep in the bed tonight?” she demanded.

He shook his head. Slowly, determinedly, pushing the act out through obviously sore muscles.

“We need to be well rested and at our best for the third eclipse this month,” said Talasyn. “It’s the last one before the Moonless Dark. There will be no more opportunities to finetune the amplifiers. Imagine jeopardizing that on account of a stiff neck—”

“Fine.”

“And furthermore—oh.” She stopped short. “I’m not used to you actually agreeing with me.”

“And I’m not used to someone nagging me until I give in,” Alaric muttered. “But we must all make sacrifices.”

He insisted on steering the yacht to shore, and Talasyn had the feeling that it was his pride requiring him to prove that he could, that his stiff neck hadn’t put him completely out of commission.

She would have protested, but with Alaric, as with the Nenavarene court, it was all about picking one’s battles. Still, she couldn’t resist sticking her tongue out at him as soon as his back was turned to sail them home.

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

He dreamed of her.