Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)

by Callie Hart

For those who live their nightmares so that others may have their dreams.

A huff of laughter escaped me. “The forgotten gods and all four fucking winds know that I’m not. Not after everything I went through to get it.

Twenty-four years. That's all the time I'd been given in this cursed existence. Despite how hard, and miserable, and hot, and frustrating it had all proven to be, I’d bizarrely hoped for more of it.

Even though he scowled at me, his dark brows tugging together to form a dark, unhappy line, he was still the most savagely beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

“I have to say, I was expecting that to go differently,” he mused. And then I punched him square in the mouth.

“I don't hate your kind. I'm just disappointed by how breakable you are. If I held you down and fucked you the way I'm imagining fucking you right now, I doubt that you’d survive it.”

To me, Kingfisher was a surly, foul-mouthed bastard who I wouldn't piss on even if he was on fire. To everyone inside this tavern, he was a living fucking god.

“Don’t call her Sunshine,” he commanded. “Why not?” If Carrion’s plan was to poke the bear, then he sure as hell knew how to go about it. But Kingfisher didn’t respond to the taunting note in his question. He just cocked his head a little, nostrils flaring, and spoke in a low rumble. “Because she is moonlight. The mist that shrouds the mountains. The bite of electricity in the air before a storm. The smoke that rolls across a battlefield before the killing starts. You have no idea what she is. What she could be. You should call her Majesty.”

“No, we won't. Because every day, our numbers decline, and Malcolm's horde grows larger. There’s no game left to hunt here. Belikon isn't sending supplies to the front anymore. We have no wood for our fires. No food to fuel the troops. No clothes to keep them warm. No weapons to fucking arm them. So yes, I'll support a plan where a human magically shows up and helps us turn the tide of this thing, because without her, we'll all be drowned soon enough. And I'm not talking about in another hundred years, or even fifty, or even ten. We have one year, Danya. Twelve months. If we don't figure this thing out, by this time next year, Malcolm will have won.”