The Hurricane Wars (The Hurricane Wars, #1)

by Thea Guanzon

become the light that guides us out of the shadows,

She’d been a frightened little rabbit at first and he’d put her through her paces on the ice, under the seven moons, studying the way she moved, the way she bared her teeth at him, the way the aether gilded her olive skin as her features twisted from fearful to murderous. The way her narrowed eyes shone golden with her magic, reflecting the distant fires of the battlefield.

“Do you make it a habit to compliment everyone who’s trying to kill you?”

Once more they waltzed, in flashes of gold and midnight, over the stone and the roots, through the warm moonlit evening.

It was a heady combination and, coupled with the wrath in his star-cut eyes, she felt as though she was drowning, would drown in him—but she held her ground, lifting her chin, baring her teeth.

For him she existed as a silhouette against the moons in their different phases, sliding along the crescent of the Second, vanishing briefly into the eclipse of the Sixth, coming at him from the shadows of the Third’s waxing gibbous.

The Zahiya-lachis is She Who Hung the Earth Upon the Waters, as good as a goddess.”

Whirlwind or not, be it a lightning bolt or a slow fall, I want you to someday have what your mother and I had.”

Of course, whoever it is will have to go through me first, and I shall have no qualms about telling them that they aren’t good enough for you.”

Alaric had the habit of eclipsing everything else, making her throw caution to the wind for the sake of crossing blades and wits with him on the battlefields they’d fought over.

While some traitorous part of Alaric had always found the Lightweaver magnificent in her defiance, gold and gemstones gave her a sharper edge, made her burn as if she were a vengeful goddess.

“You,” Alaric said, “are a beautiful little idiot.”

I would give anything, he thought, for this not to be the last time. For her to smile at me again, and laugh like the war never happened.

As though in the peeling off of his layers, some of hers had been removed as well.

“You look like you want to kill me.” “You look like you enjoy it,” she snapped.

For Alaric, it was a beautiful, terrible thing, he and Talasyn dancing around each other and meeting in the middle, again and again and again, fiery little charges of static exploding between them every time their bodies brushed.

They anticipated each other’s every move and they pushed each other to the limit,

“You’ve been fighting your whole life,” he rasped in a low, unsteady voice that sounded not quite like his own and also, somehow, like the truest version of him. “Your instinct is to strike first, before anyone can hurt you. But sometimes it’s the blow that molds us.”

The look on his face was winter storm and wolf song.

They moved at the same time, her dagger sliding against the flat of his sword, sending up a spray of static and aether sparks. He leaned down and she surged up and their lips met, in the glow of light and darkness, over the keening of their crossed blades.

This, to him, was a continuation of their duel. It felt the same—angry and frenetic, blood roaring in his ears, passion blotting out all else.

it was all starlight and confession; it was as though a hand were reaching out to hold hers across all the wasteland years.

That was what the war had done. It had turned people into statistics. It had taken away hope and turned it into something to be buried until there were only bones.

She saw the Night Emperor. She saw the boy who had shared her loneliness. She saw the Master of the Shadowforged Legion she had battled on the ice and amidst a ruined city through which the stormships raged. She saw the man who had chucked her under the chin, who had so patiently taught her how to make a shield, whose dry remarks had sometimes made her laugh. She saw her first kiss, the first time someone else’s hands had touched her and made her burn. She saw danger, in more ways than one.

“The stars guide me home to your heart.”

“I bring you the whole of my heart at the rising of the moon and the setting of the stars.”

They moved together like water and moonlight.

This was Alaric, her husband, her enemy, her dark mirror, and the Lightweave in her veins soared in triumph, recognizing him for what he was, calling out to his shadows, and everything was golden, was eclipse, was forever, was theirs alone.

He mumbled “Tala” into her skin over and over, the vibrations rippling through her in tremors like tiny earthquakes, and a bittersweet tear dripped from the corner of her eye because talliyezarin was a weed on the Great Steppe but tala was the Nenavarene word for star,

“Gods above.” Alaric pressed a fierce, smoldering kiss to her lips. “You’re soaked, beautiful girl,” he groaned into her mouth. “My wet little wife.”

“You’re always beautiful. Even when you want to string my guts up like paper lanterns.”