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He heard the girl before he saw her, a high and golden hum that cut through the chaos of battle like the first flare of sunrise.
coltish
energetic but awkward in one's movements or behavior.
A surfeit of vague images rushed through her head as she stepped away: from nowhere, so sudden, in the space of only a moment’s breath. She could barely make sense of them before they darted out of reach. A coil of slick scales undulating in the sunlight, and maybe a crown as sharp as diamond, as clear as ice. Something inside her, awakened by the soldiers’ conversation, tried to fight its way out.
A yearning for somewhere she could belong, and for someone she could belong to. What would it be like,
“I keep thinking that this is a nightmare I’ll wake up from at any moment. And then there are times when it hits me that I’ll never see him again, and I start missing him so much that it hurts to breathe.”
“They are no longer Sardovian. They are Kesathese, like us.” Alaric frowned behind his half-mask. “And I am not my father. The decision is mine to make, not his. I’m the one leading this mission.”
sufferance.
absence ofobjectionrather than genuine approval;toleration.
missive
a formal, written message or letter, often official in nature.
sardonically,
in a bitter, mocking, or scornful way.
Still, there was no other choice. In all his twenty-six years, Alaric had never seen the Sardovian Lightweaver’s ilk before. She was a slip of a thing who bulldozed her way through combat with willpower like iron, besting him and one of his deadliest legionnaires even though she had neither legitimate training nor regular access to a nexus point. With the latter, there was a very real possibility that she would be unstoppable.
He really should have just finished her that night on the outskirts of Frostplum. But Alaric had been . . . fascinated.
Then she’d cracked her skull against his and stabbed him in the shoulder, and he’d spent the next few days concussed and unable to use his right arm.
archipelago
a group of islands clustered together in a body of water, such as an ocean, lake, or river.
mellifluous
of a voice or words) sweet or musical; pleasant to hear.
I’m sitting in a tree in the middle of the jungle and sobbing, she thought mournfully. I am the most ridiculous person alive.
“Do you make it a habit to compliment everyone who’s trying to kill you?”
“Not everyone.” His eyes flashed with a hint of amusement. “Just you. And that was hardly a compliment—I’m merely relieved that you’re much more interesting to duel now.”
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.
flippantly,
in a way that is not serious, especially when you are trying to be funny or appear smart when you should be serious.
“I know you, you see. You were such a mischievous, tiny thing, always trying to yank this”—he motioned to the circlet that he wore—“off of my head every time I carried you. But I could never stay mad for long because you’d blink up at me with your mother’s eyes and smile her smile . . . I would know you anywhere. Another nineteen years could have passed before we found each other again and my heart would still tell me that you were mine. Do you not remember your amya at all, even if only a little bit?”
Necrotic,
affected with, characterized by, or producing death of a usually localized area of living tissue:
arduous
involving or requiring strenuous effort; difficult andtiring.
When will it end? Talasyn asked herself at this great height, her vision afire at the edges with the crimson sunset that gilded the empty horizon and the shifting waves. The Hurricane Wars took and took, but there was still so much left to lose.
facsimile
an exact copy, especially of written or printed material
contention
anassertion, especially one maintained in argument.
flighty,
ingenuity.
The Hurricane Wars had taught her that these moments of grace were few and far between and she had to take what she could get. When she could get it.
“Many empires have come and gone since the first Zahiya-lachis took the throne. Nenavar has watched them rise and she has watched them fall, and she will outlast this one, too. The Night Empire will not destroy us, and neither will they destroy you, for you are of our blood. Now—save us all.”
“Amicable relationship?” Talasyn hissed, with narrowed eyes and a feral flash of teeth, and Alaric’s heart all but stopped beating in his chest. “Not fucking likely.”
castigate
perturbed.”
dulcet
It was only when she smacked her lips together, the pink fullness of them glistening from the ginger tea, that some instinct—some sense of self-preservation—made him decide to abruptly become very interested in the grass, the nearby stream, the moss on the rocks, anything that wasn’t her.
Tucking a loose strand of chestnut hair behind her ear, she licked her lips nervously, and he really wished that she hadn’t, his gaze lingering on her pink tongue as it ran over the swell of her bottom lip. “You, um . . .” She trailed off. Licked her lips again, because she’d been put on this earth to torture him.
These hands of his could never do any of the things that the officiant had mentioned, not when they were so irrevocably stained in blood.
