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“Y’KNOW, there’s really no need for all this violence.”
“What if they track you down and realize what you can do? The way you can affect metal—” “It’s a parlor trick, Elroy. Nothing more. It doesn’t mean anything.” Even as I spoke, I knew I was lying. It did mean something. Sometimes, objects shook around me. Objects made of iron, tin, or gold. Once, I’d been able to move one of Elroy’s daggers without touching it so that it had spun around and around on my mother’s dining table, balancing on its cross guard.
spoke, I knew I was lying. It did mean something. Sometimes, objects shook around me. Objects made of iron, tin, or gold. Once, I’d been able to move one of Elroy’s daggers without touching it so that it had spun around and around on my mother’s dining table, balancing on its cross guard.
Carrion Swift: the most notorious gambler, cheat, and smuggler in the entire city.
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.”
“I wouldn’t fuck you—if you were the last living—” “Don’t bother.” The words held bite. “Lying is pointless with your heart betraying you so loudly.” “It’s beating fast because I’m afraid,” I snapped. “Of me?” Kingfisher huffed a blast of laughter down his nose. “No, you’re not. You should be, but you’re not. That’s one of the things I like most about you.”
“This is not my brother, Fisher. This is Carrion fucking Swift!”
“There’s every way,” Fisher rumbled, his eyes darkening. “I’d know the smell of you anywhere. On anyone. I’d know it blind and in the dark. Across a fucking sea. I’d be able to scent you—”
“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.”
“Stubborn girl,” he growled. “Don’t you dare die on my watch, Saeris Fane! Fisher will never forgive me if his sole reason for living is torn to pieces on her first fucking battlefield.”
He was a part of me. I sensed that in my bones. If I wanted him to be, he would be the axis around which I revolved. I would be his. Two counterparts, independent of one another. Already whole, but together stronger than we could ever be apart.
“You’re right. I apologize. I’m just a little on edge right now. I’m not my best self.”
“You were supposed to have been born Fae, in the same realm as your Kingfisher. So I separated you. Hundreds of years before you were born, I shifted the events around your birth. Moved the pieces on the board and placed you far away, in a realm that should never have come into contact with his. But I watched as the boughs of the universe grew against their nature and aligned in such a way that you would still meet. I foresaw then that no matter how the boughs and branches of this tree were manipulated, you and he would always collide. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”
