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“There is no help for it, I suppose,” said Urduja. “It is the trade-off for saving us from Dead Season.”

Like her father and husband, Talasyn felt a scowl tug at her lips. The Zahiya-lachis seemed rather cavalier about the prospect of her granddaughter accidentally forging a chronic connection with the enemy. Then again, having one more thing to hold over the Night Emperor’s head nicely suited Urduja’s plans.

Shouldn’t they be my plans as well?

Another wave of guilt turned the food to dust in Talasyn’s mouth. She and the Zahiya-lachis were supposed to be working together, pressing every advantage so that the Sardovian Allfold could take back the Continent before the year was out. It was the right thing to do, the only thing, and she still hadn’t made up her mind where Alaric fit into it. She still didn’t know if she could do what needed to be done when it came to him, when the time came for it.

“As for the injuries sustained during the casting,” said Ishan, “there is clearly a threshold to this type of aethermancy. Aktamasok’s crater is a little smaller than this island, but the amount of magic needed to repel the Void Sever will be tenfold. So I suggest … keep practicing.” Ishan looked down at her plate dejectedly. “That’s really all I’ve got.”

Alaric opened his mouth, no doubt to give the daya another piece of his mind, but Talasyn placed a hand on his thigh under the table. An unmistakable command to stand down.

“It’s too risky,” Elagbi declared. “We should think of another plan to stop Dead Season.”

“This is the best one we’ve got, Amya,” Talasyn countered. She held up her right palm. “See? The blisters are already gone. Emperor Alaric and I have magical resistance on our side. We’ll pull it off—especially now that we know what to prepare for.”

Despite her words, Talasyn was nervous. Alaric was leaving tomorrow, and she would have to figure this out without him.

An attendant scurried into the room with a bottle of fermented pearl-barley wine and poured out generous amounts for Urduja, Elagbi, and Ishan, decorously bypassing Talasyn since her aversion to liquor was well known among the castle staff. As he hovered at Alaric’s elbow and made to tip the bottle, however, gray eyes flickered in Talasyn’s direction. Alaric covered the glass with his hand.

“Water,” he told the attendant curtly. The latter bowed and went to fetch the jug from the other end of the table.

Some choices were cautious, arrived at after a lengthy weighing of pros and cons as meticulous as the dispersal of casongkâ stones. Other choices took hold with the fever of an impulse, unearthed like sparks that flew when a singular moment raked over the embers of the human heart.

Even if he hates me in the end—

The sparks swept through Talasyn as she sat there at the dining table, staring across at her husband long after he’d looked away, and channeling all her political training to not let an ounce of emotion show.

Even if they hang me for it—

There was fear, yes, but there was exhilaration, too. The defiant kind. The thrill of making a decision that was wholly her own.

I will save him.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

The next day the bright sun raged over a flurry of activity on Iantas’s landing grid as the Kesathese delegation’s bags were loaded onto the newly repaired shallop and its crew ran their usual preflight checks on ropes and sails and rudders and aether cores. The castle kitchens were busy, too, spitting out a parade of tall straw baskets stuffed with food that would soon join the larders of the stormship waiting at Port Samout.

“This is too much,” Alaric remarked. He and Talasyn were observing the bustling scene from the balcony of their chambers. “What are my men and I to do with fifty cured pork legs?”

“Eat them,” said his wife. “They’re good with the sun buffalo cheddar and the dried mangoes.”

“The twenty wheels of cheddar and the five sacks of dried mangoes, you mean.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “It’s a three-day voyage. A lot can happen in that time. What if the ship crashes and you’re marooned?”

“I’ll build a raft from the pork legs,” he deadpanned.

Talasyn clapped a hand over her mouth, transmuting a bark of laughter into an inelegant snort. Even as Alaric strugglednot to grin, something in his chest lifted at the fact that he was able to make her laugh.

The truth was, he’d been feeling out of sorts all morning. Her laughter offered only a temporary reprieve once he realized that he wouldn’t be hearing it—wouldn’t be seeingher—for at least a month.

He had to sail back to Kesath. There was no question of that. He had to oversee preparations for the series of mass evacuations that would ensue before the night of the Moonless Dark. He’d been gone long enough as it was; his officers were getting antsy, and their written questions about the estimated date of his return were becoming more pointed. He’d already received a skua from Commodore Mathire with a list of meetings that required his presence, meetings that could no longer be put on hold. And always there was his father tugging at the edges of the Shadowgate, beckoning from the In-Between.

Talasyn had gotten her mirth under control and was now scolding him for being ungracious—she’d only been seeing to it that he and his crew wouldn’t starve to death. She was wearing a dress that seemed chosen to punish him for leaving, with a bodice that clung to her trim figure like liquid bronze. Her chestnut hair was loose today, falling in soft waves over the metallic sheen of silk that Alaric’s fingers itched to crumple.

You could stay.The treacherous notion intruded upon his thoughts. His mind conjured a fantasy of living here for good, in this castle by the sea, spending the rest of his days being scolded by a fiery slip of a girl. He pushed away the ache of such wishful thinking and drawled responses calculated to incense her further as they made their way out of the royal suite.

Iantas’s corridors were deserted; most of its residents had gathered around the landing grid to see the Night Emperor off. Alaric found his and Talasyn’s voices unnaturally loud in the stillness, their footsteps echoing. He barely registered whatthey were bickering about this time, too busy drinking her in, committing the placement of every freckle to memory.