Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)

by Callie Hart

“Even filthy and tired, you’re still beautiful.”

“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?”

Boot-licking, flattering, fawning sycophant. The Harron I met in the streets of the Third was nowhere to be seen, nor was the man who dragged me up from the dungeons, kicking and screaming. This version of the captain was meek and diminished. Afraid for reasons I couldn’t discern.

Harron gasped as the dagger glowed white hot. The metal screeched in my ears—a horrific, awful sound that cleaved me to my soul. The sound of madness. Gritting my teeth, I answered the voice inside of me, commanding me to unmake the dagger, like such a thing was even possible. And it was. Almost as stunned as Harron, I watched as the knife liquified in the captain’s gloved hand and ran through his fingers in rivulets of rolling silver.

“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 sword was old. I felt its age on the air somehow—a prickle of energy that spoke of hidden, ancient places. “Do not touch that sword!” Harron repeated.

I sank back onto my heels and turned my back to the blade, resting my wrists against the ancient weapon’s edge. I expected it to be dull—I somehow knew that it hadn’t been touched by another living creature in centuries—but I hissed in surprise when I lifted upward, and the thing cut through the ties at my wrists like a hot knife through butter. “Saeris, no!

The ground that I had assumed was solid stone beneath my feet was nothing of the sort. Harron’s blade had melted into a respectable amount of liquid metal, but the ground at my feet… the pool at my feet… was more silver than I had ever seen in my life, and it was hissing and spitting like an angry cat. It hadn’t been like this a moment ago. It had been solid. Now it was softening by the second. The roiling mass of it was already up to my ankles.

My vision was going at last. Blackness crept in, rolling before my eyes like a midnight fog. Only it wasn’t a fog. It was something else. It was… Death. The bastard had come to claim me in person. Emerging from the silver, the huge figure rose up from the pool as if ascending from the very depths of hell itself. Broad shoulders. Wet, shoulder-length black hair. Tall. Taller than any other man I’d ever seen. His eyes shone an iridescent, shimmering green, the pupil of the right eye rimmed by the same shining metallic silver that ran in ribbons from the black leather armor that covered his chest and arms.

He towered over me, his lips pulled back into a snarl, revealing gleaming white teeth and sharp canines. In his hand, he held a monstrous sword forged out of a black metal that vibrated with a tempestuous energy that sang in the marrow of my bones. He raised the sword, about to bring it down and cleave me in two, but then his quick eyes landed on the ancient sword I was still holding and he froze, arm raised above his head.