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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 whatdoyou 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,youreye 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.