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I don’t want to go to Kesath.

Alaric’s common sense screamed at him to direct the conversation to safer waters. To begin today’s training, which was what they were here for in the first place. But Talasyn had gone stiff with combativeness, a stubborn set to her olive-toned jaw, and she was going to be his empress and he needed to make her understand—

The glimpse into her early life had filled him with cold fury, as overwhelming as it was impotent. It was long in the past. Hornbill’s Head was gone, and, with it, all the squalor that had marked her early years.

Still, he was seized by the fanciful urge to resurrect Hornbill’s Head just for the pleasure of having his stormships flatten it again.

He had never before felt so wounded for someone else. The girl was bewitching him.

“I know that you had a hard childhood,” he told her. “But we are rebuilding. The Great Steppe, and the entirety of the land formerly known as Sardovia—it will all become better than it ever was.”

“At what cost?” she snarled.

Unbidden, the aftermath of Kesath’s final triumphant push into the Sardovian Heartland rose to the surface of the darkness behind Alaric’s eyes. The sea of debris, of corpses. He blinked those images away. “The Night Empire was forced to destroy the Allfold before they could destroy us,” he tersely explained, “but, under Kesathese stewardship, the Continent will improve. When you go back, you’ll see. You might disagree with Kesath’s methods, but in the end this conflict turned out to all be for a cause greater than any of our individual selves.”

To Alaric’s disbelief, his attempt to reason with Talasyn only made her angrier. “You and Commodore Mathire say that a lot, that you had to destroy the Allfold before they destroyed you. But sincewhendid the Allfold ever give any indication—”

“When Sunstead attacked,” Alaric interrupted, his grasp on his own temper slipping as past pain was excavated, laid bare beneath the tropical sun. “When Lightweavers killed my grandfather, the king. When the other Sardovian states did nothing to stop them.”

Talasyn’s brow furrowed at the reminder that her breed of aethermancer was responsible for his grandfather’s death. However, her unease didn’t last long, her shoulders soon squaring as she let loose with another retort. “The Lightweavers of Sunstead wanted to stop Ozalus from building the stormships. They knew, as well as everyone outside Kesath knows, that a weapon like that has no place in this world. But Ozalus wouldn’t listen to reason, and that’s why Sunstead did what they did. They had no choice!”

Rage erupted from within the depths of Alaric’s soul. It was startling how swiftly it built up, rising like the tide along with his magic. The air in the immediate vicinity darkened and Talasyn scooted back, planting her hands in the grass as though prepared to spring to her feet at any moment, and Alaric knew that his eyes were blazing silver, the Shadowgate wrapping around his heart.

But he didn’t care.

“Isthatwhat you were taught on your side of the Continent?” he sneered. “I suppose it’s to be expected that a self-serving government like the Allfold would revise history for their own ends. Shall I tell you the truth, Lachis’ka?” Talasyn watched him as one would a wounded, starving bear. As she would watch the monster that she’d grown up believing him and all the other Kesathese to be. He continued, in a low growl, “For all that you and your comrades professed to despise the stormships, you certainly had no problems using them when it benefited you. Nineteen years ago, before the Hurricane Wars, it was no different. From the moment the Lightweavers learned of the plans for the stormship, they spared no effort to take the technology for themselves. The prototype was being constructed in a valley under territorial dispute; Sunstead used this as a pretext to seize the shipyard. Kesath took it back, and we fought to make sure that nothing could be taken from us ever again.”

And, two months later, his grandfather was dead and his father had ascended, in blood, in battle, in the dark of night.

All around us are enemies.

They shall tremble in the Shadow that we cast.

“That’snotwhat happened!”

It was the strangest thing, how Talasyn, irate as she was, uncouth as she so often could be, managed to jolt Alaric back to the present, to pull him out of his clamoring head. The air lightened again and his magic fell back, as though the reminder of her presence was a sunbeam piercing through his storm of rage and grief.

“Before they did anything else, Sunstead sent emissaries to Kesath,” she said, “to sway Ozalus from his course.”

“They did not. They attacked without warning.” Alaric was calmer now, but not by much. Speaking through gritted teeth. “It’s Kesath’s word against Sardovia’s. It’s what I know versus what you know. If it’s all the same to you, I would rather believe that my family wasn’t keeping the truth from me. Unlike yours, who didn’t even see fit to tell you about something as important as the Night of the World-Eater.”

Talasyn stood up, her small frame trembling. She placed her hands on her hips and glared down at him. “Even if what you say is true, even if I’ve been told lies my whole life, that still doesn’t excuse what the Night Empire did to the rest of the Continent for ten years!” she shouted. “Vengeance isnotjustice. The Lightweavers of Sunstead were eradicated long before the Hurricane Wars began. Destroying the homes and killing the loved ones of innocent people didn’t make Sunstead anymoregone, did it?”

She spun on her heel and stalked away.

“Where are you going?” Alaric demanded.

“My chambers!” Talasyn yelled without looking back. “I don’t want to train anymore today. Stay away from me!”

The side door leading into her room slammed shut behind her.

“Trainanymoretoday?” Alaric scoffed under his breath. “We never even got started.”

But he was speaking to empty air.

Fifteen minutes later, Alaric was still in the orchid garden. He had moved from the grass by the pool to one of the stone benches next to the waterfall, seeking shade from the relentless mid-afternoon sun underneath a hanging profusion of butterfly-shaped sapphire-and-cream blossoms.

He stared unseeing at his verdant surroundings, turning every second of his and Talasyn’s heated quarrel over in his head. Finally, he called out, “Sevraim.”