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It was probably just the novelty of never having seen the lower half of his face before. Her gaze flitted upward to meet his, an act that brought her back to less unusual territory; his gray eyes were as hard as flint, regarding her with caustic dislike.

“How long was I out?” Talasyn demanded, matching Alaric’s glare as best as she could.

“I came to shortly before you did. However, our gracious hosts have not seen fit to grant us the luxury of a wall clock.” Unmuffled by the mask, Alaric’s voice was low and deep, with a hint of hoarseness around the edges. It shouldn’t have shocked her, but it did. It made her think of rough silk and honey mead in an oaken barrel.

Then he added, in a snippy tone that was quite effective in dismantling all her fanciful notions, “In any case, telling time is theleastof our problems.”

“Our problems?” Talasyn bristled. “You mean this mess thatyou’vegotten us into?”

“There were two people creating a ruckus in that courtyard,” he reminded her.

“One of whom shouldn’t have been there in the first place!”

Alaric smirked. “I missed the part where you received anengraved invitation from the Zahiya-lachis to make use of her Light Sever.”

Talasyn sprang to her feet, agitated, and crossed the distance between them. “You were the one who followed me all the way to Nenavar to pick a fight!” she yelled, looming over him. As much as she could loom, anyway. She had the advantage of barely an inch even though he was sitting down. “The shrine was abandoned. I could have easily gotten in and out with the Dominion none the wiser. But youinterfered!”

“I had to.” Alaric’s reply was pure ice. “You could not be allowed to access the nexus point. That would have put me at a severe tactical disadvantage.”

“And I suppose that getting captured in a foreign land by people with a documented loathing for outsiders who can somehow take away our powers and wield magic that we’ve never encountered before is theheightof strategy,” she sneered, jabbing a finger into his broad chest. It was... irritatingly solid. It had no give at all.

He grabbed her wrist before she could draw it back. “I liked you better when you were afraid of me,” he drawled.

“Well, I liked you better when you were unconscious. And I should never have been afraid of you at all,” she retorted, flushing at the reference to their first encounter. “You’re just your father’s dog. I bet you’ve never had an independent thought in your head—”

Alaric stood up, crowding Talasyn in the space that she refused to cede to him. She attempted to pull her hand out of his grip but he tightened it, nearly hard enough to bruise. He was so close that she couldsmellhim, the sweat and smoke of battle mingling with the lingering balsamic spice of sandalwood water. It was a heady combination and, coupled with the wrath in his star-cut eyes, she felt as though she was drowning, would drowninhim—but she held her ground, lifting her chin, baring her teeth.

“You’ll pay for that, Lightweaver,” he said. It was a raspy promise, rolling off his tongue on the fumes of a simmering, contained rage.

She balled her free hand into a fist and punched him square across the jaw.

Alaric reeled backward and Talasyn advanced. “Tell me who the traitor is.” She had some hazy idea of beating the information out of him if he didn’t cooperate. They were stuck in a cell, after all, and there was nowhere for him to run. “Be good for something, for once in yourmiserablelife—”

He pounced too fast for her to react. Before she knew it, he’d swept her onto her back on his mattress and he’d pinned her down, the cot groaning under their combined weight. He clasped her shoulders loosely as she lay sprawled beneath him. The clawed tip of one gauntleted finger dragged along the side of her neck, raking a path of heat and static across her skin. “Knowing the identity of some random informant won’t do you any good.” His eyes caught the moonlight, blazing silver like a knife’s edge. “The Sardovian Allfold is on the verge of being eradicated. Nothing you do can stop it, especially now that you’re so far away from home.” The corner of his lush mouth twitched in a sardonic half-smile. “It’s too late.”

She stared up at him. Was he hinting at an impending attack? She had to go back. She had to warn everyone.

The door to the cell creaked open, and the officer who had apprehended them at the ruins walked in. He stopped in his tracks, raising an eyebrow at the sight of Alaric frozen above Talasyn on the cot.

“It would seem that this is a habit for the two of you,” he commented wryly.

The prisoners were to be interrogated separately and Talasyn had the dubious honor of going first. Her wrists cuffed behind her back with steel restraints, she was escorted by no less thanfive Nenavarene soldiers, two of them gripping each of her arms and one nudging an iron tube—cannon—thingat her spine. The other two flanked the group, hemming her in, those birdcage-like contraptions strapped to their shoulders.

Talasyn snuck surreptitious glances as the officer led the way down a narrow corridor of split bamboo lashed together with rattan vine. One of these birdcages had also been hung outside her and Alaric’s cell and she suspected that whatever lay within was responsible for suppressing their ability to tap into aetherspace. She had never thought that such a thing would be possible, and she itched to know what lay within the cages, but they were covered with panels of opaqued metalglass shielding the contents from view.

Eventually, she was ushered into an austere lamplit chamber and made to sit at a table over which the pack that she’d brought with her from her coracle had been emptied, her supplies and navigational equipment arranged in neat rows. There was also water, a pewter cup full of it, outfitted with a wooden drinking straw. The soldiers placed the two birdcages in opposite corners of the room and filed out, leaving Talasyn alone with the officer, who took the chair across from hers and pushed the pewter cup closer to her.

The Nenavarene werebenevolentcaptors, at least. Or they just didn’t want her to drop dead of thirst before they finished their questioning. In any case, she was hardly going to refuse.

With her hands still bound behind her back, Talasyn leaned forward as best as she could and sealed her lips around the straw, drinking greedily. There was nothing subtle or polite about it. She drained the cup in seconds, not stopping until she was slurping loudly on air.

The officer observed her with a trace of amusement, but he didn’t say anything. In fact, the amusement soon vanished after she’d straightened up. His dark eyes raked over every inch of her face until she fidgeted from the intense scrutinyand he cleared his throat in a manner that could have been considered apologetic.

Talasyn decided that, if she had to sit with her hands bound in an interrogation chamber, she might as well let loose with some questions of her own. “Those tubes your men carry—”

“We call them muskets,” said the officer.

“All right, muskets,” she said flippantly, trying her very best to not stumble over the unfamiliar word. “What was that magic that they fired? Thatwasfrom aetherspace, wasn’t it?”