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For those who live their nightmares so that others may have their dreams.
Dedication
“Lissa Fossick. Twenty-four. Single.” I winked at him, and the bastard squeezed harder. Dark hair and blue eyes weren’t common in the Silver City; he would remember me.
This bastard would shit himself if he realized he had the Saeris Fane in his grasp.
Madra’s pride was a hungry thing and quite insatiable. Her men not only had to be the best. They had to look the best, and a guardian’s armor was no light thing.
No, dropping this gauntlet would cost me something far more valuable than my life; it would cost me hope, and I wouldn’t surrender that.
Elroy
I’d upset the old man a million different times, a million different ways, but this disapproving look was new.
Elroy’s business was glass. With an abundance of sand at his fingertips, he’d made it his life’s work to become the best glassmaker and glazier in all of Zilvaren.
Elroy used to make illicit weapons for the rebel gangs who fought to overthrow Madra.
As a resident of the Third, if you weren’t dead or dying, then you were hungry, and there wasn’t much a starving person wouldn’t say to quell the ache of an empty belly.
Taller than most, broad, his back muscles straining beneath his sweat-stained shirt. He’d been a force of nature. A pillar of rock hewn out of a mountain. Immoveable. Indestructible. It was only recently that I’d begun to understand that he was in love with my mother. After she was killed, little by little, piece by piece, I’d watched him wither away, becoming less of himself. Becoming a shadow. The man that stood before me now was barely recognizable.
Saeris.”
that a man might either get lucky or be beaten unconscious depending on my mood when I sat my ass down at the bar.
Carrion Swift: the most notorious gambler, cheat, and smuggler in the entire city.
He was also uncommonly good in bed—the only man in Zilvaren who'd ever made me scream his name out of pleasure rather than frustration.
“No, Saeris. I broke them because he tried to stab me with one of your knives when I wouldn't play another round. Even your brother doesn't get away with that.”
Hayden refused to do what was asked of him, never paid attention, and then typically went and did the one thing you begged him not to.
The people I tore passed loved me because they'd loved my mother. They also hated me because I was a troublemaker and a thorn in their side. But even so, they hated the guardians more.
He winked at me over the top of his mask. And then he came. The rebels my mother had helped before her death had done more than hide in our attic. They had trained me. Taught me how to steal. How to survive. How to fight.
sometimes the cruel things we said served the kindest purpose.
We're being slowly and methodically poisoned because we don't matter. Because we ask questions. Because we say no. Because Madra sees us as a burden on the city. She feeds us foul, dirty water, and we die in droves because of it.
dissent. Anarchy and rebellion spread like a wildfire. And what do you do with a fire? You blockade it. Trap it behind a wall. Give it nowhere else to go until it burns itself out and dies a quiet death. That's what Madra's doing with my people.
Do you know much about metalwork, Captain? I do. It's under the most unbearable conditions that the sharpest, most dangerous weapons are forged. And we are dangerous, Captain. She’s turned us all into weapons. That is why she won’t suffer my people to live.”
“It was the Fae, wasn’t it?” she hissed. “They’ve found a way through. They’ve come for me at last?”
“The Fae were warmongers. Cannibals. Beastly creatures with no temperance, sense of morality, nor any notion of mercy. The eldest Immortals visited their wrath upon the land with an iron fist, leaving a path of chaos and destruction in their wake. The seven cities rejoiced when I cast them out. And now they have sent you to try and kill me?”
For the next one hundred years, anyone foolish enough to think twice about stealing from me will remember the black day Saeris Fane offended the Zilvaren crown and a hundred thousand people paid the price.”
“Saeris, no! Do not touch the sword. Do not…turn the key!” he panted. “Do not open the gate! You—you've no idea the hell you will unleash on this place!”
The darkness took me before the silver could.
“Master Eskin said you'd wake up today,” a female voice said. The same voice that had sung to me. That had reached out to me in the dark.
Everlayne.
He came because the sword called to him...”
“Ahh. Saeris. A pretty name. A Fae name.
“Then where are we?” “Yvelia.”
“Renfis!
The second my fingertips found the cool metal resting against my skin there, I remembered. Death, dressed in midnight, taking a chain from his neck and looping it around mine.
We've been waiting to retrieve that sword you drew for a very long time. But to have found you along with it...” She shook her head. “You have no idea how important you are, Saeris. I'm afraid my father isn't liable to give you up any time soon.
Belikon De Barra,”
Dark hair is a royal trait amongst the Yvelian Fae.”
But in secret, a lot of us pray that Zareth gets a little lost on his journey home.”
“A dragon. The last dragon,” she said meaningfully. “Its name was Omnamshacry. A legend amongst my people.”
It seems highly unlikely that a human woke the quicksilver.”
“Living
Curse.” “Bane of Gillethrye.” “Black knight.” “Kingfisher.”
You told me to win the war by any means necessary, so I came to claim the only tool that’ll win us back our advantage. I came for him.”
His jaw was defined, marked with dark stubble, his cheekbones high, his nose arrow straight and proud. There was a dark freckle just below his right eye. And...those eyes. Gods. Eyes were not that color. I'd never seen that shade of green before—a jade so bright and vibrant that it didn't look real.
But protection did not mean kindness, and it certainly didn't mean respect.
I am Rusarius, librarian, newly reappointed master of this domain.
“I'm Saeris Fane, apprentice to the Undying Queen's master glass worker. I hail from the third spoke in the blessed wheel of the sacred Silver City.”
“Oh! So…so, this one’s an Alchemist, then?”
“She must have a drop of Fae blood,” a deep voice murmured. “Enough to stop Solace from burning off her hands. But not enough to matter.”
