More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Sometimes, objects shook around me. Objects made of iron, tin, or gold.
She’d never seen snow, but that’s what I had been to her: her ice storm. Distant. Cold. Sharp.
I wasn’t going to be restrained. I wasn’t going to be bullied, or pinned down, or told to be quiet by these bastards. Not anymore.
“You say our ward’s locked down so tight because we’re quarantined. You say we’re afflicted with a sickness. That we’re contagious. But we aren’t, Captain. 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. Meanwhile, you and yours turn the handle, and fresh, clean water flows into your canisters. No one standing over you, looking over your shoulder, beating you and telling you enough.
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.”
Of course Death was beautiful. How else would anyone choose to go with him without putting up a fight?
Now I saw him properly for the first time, and a wave of shock rippled through me, down to the roots of my soul.
Alchemy, it turned out, was a form of magic. Forgotten, long-dead, old magic that was as much a myth to the Fae of Yvelia as they were to the people of Zilvaren.
I hadn’t seen many beautiful things in my short life. But, of all the beautiful things I had seen, Fisher was the most beautiful of all.
“There are billions of them. More than any mind can comprehend. Suns, like the two that hang in Zilvaren’s sky.” “So far away, though.” My voice conveyed my awe. “The quicksilver closes the gap. With it, we can travel to the realms that orbit those stars.”
It wasn’t just how he looked. There was something else there, too. Something that made my body come alive. His scent, and the way I knew that he’d entered a room before I saw him, and the melancholy tug at the root of my soul whenever he wasn’t in a room, and—
He didn’t say a word. He held my gaze, unblinking, and for once, the quicksilver that marked his eye was still. There was no arrogance in his features. No bravado. No smug smirk. The look he was giving me was deadly serious. Like it meant something. He swallowed, his chest rising and falling too fast, and then he nodded.
“What is it, then?” “There’s something… between us. You know there is.” “Sure you’re not imagining things? Plenty of women fall prey to their own desperate fantasies where I’m concerned.” “Just… stop, all right. Enough! The moment you fuck me, things are going to change between us.”
“You asked for this. When you’re sore from coming so hard and you can’t recall your own name, remember that, Little Osha.”
Are you going to scream for me like a good girl when I have you ride my face?”
But there was something else tying me to him. Pulling me in like I was trapped. A part of me knew that Fisher himself was the trap, and I was well and truly snared…
Fisher stood back a second, inspecting his handiwork, his lust-filled eyes blazing a trail up and down my body three times, as if once was nowhere near enough.
“I could probably use a sho—” “Do not fucking dare finish that sentence,” he snarled. “I don’t want a mouthful of soap and perfume. I want to taste you.
Cradled in Fisher’s power, I felt his hands tighten on my thighs as I bucked and writhed, but I felt his shadows bind tight to me, too. They slid over me, pooling in the hollow of my throat and pouring over my stomach, whispering over my heavy breasts—a level of ecstasy I’d never experienced before. It was as though I was breathing him in, taking a part of him inside me—
“Hold on tight, then. I hope you’re not afraid of the dark.”
His chest was warm and solid and perfect. Beneath my palms, the wolf tattoo emblazoned across his pecs came to life. The ink flowed beneath his skin, crossing from him to… to… sinners, it flowed along my fingertips, spreading over my skin, flowing just like his smoke over the backs of my hands. A delicate little bird took shape on the inside of my right forearm. It stretched its wings and took flight, its tiny body flitting over my stomach as its wings beat a thousand times a minute.
I screwed my eyes shut, crying out wordlessly. Right as I crested the wave of my second orgasm, the stars painted across Fisher’s bedroom ceiling ignited, flaring so brightly that their light burned my eyes even through my eyelids.
“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.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” he replied. “She has a mind and a mouth of her own. I am the keeper of neither.”
“It’s a sex thing. If a male drinks from someone, it’ll make his dick harder than it’s ever been in his life. It makes you euphoric. Both of you. While you’re fucking.” “Oh.” “Yeah. Oh,” he said.
Every warrior in Irrín will smell me on you, Fisher’s voice rumbled in my mind. I’m going to make you hoarse from screaming my fucking name. I’m going to mark you in every way imaginable, so that everyone knows you’re fucking mine.
“How long have you known I was here?” He smiled sadly. “I always know where you are, Little Osha.”
“I was wrong, y’know. You are a good thief.” “What have I stolen?” But he smiled a small, sad smile, slowly shaking his head.
I woke to hands built for violence gently soaping my scalp. No one had ever washed my hair before. It was an experience I wanted again and again. But only from him. Only from Fisher.
We know who she is, the quicksilver hissed. She is the dawn. She is the moon. She is the sky. She is oxygen in our lungs.
That was it. Final. I was sick of being told to wait, told to stay, told to hide where it was safe.
“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.”
My cheeks were burning, a thousand degrees and climbing, when Fisher quietly came forward and knelt at my feet. His halo of dark hair was all over the place, his skin pale in the flickering torchlight. His eyes were steady, though. They ran me through as he withdrew Nimerelle and closed his fist around her edge. When he placed his hand against my chest, he tapped his index finger and middle finger against my sternum, in time with my racing heart. Giving me a very tired, very sad smile, he said, “I give you my blood in thanks, Saeris Fane.”
“That seat is reserved for the lady of the house, you stupid girl. Etiquette dictates that only Fisher’s wife is permitted to sit there. It’s a position of high honor meant for a Fae female born into one of the old houses,
“And?” Ren dumped everything he was carrying down onto the ground with a snarl. “She’s honorable and brave, not to mention the most powerful Alchemist ever documented. She disarmed you in half a fucking second if you recall. Who the fuck are you to say she and Fisher don’t belong together?”
“The lovers in those stories always suffered terribly. One of them always died. They were beautiful tales, but they ended with heartbreak.”
He sat there, his bare, inked chest not moving, his black waves tumbling into his face, so perfect, so handsome, and that cursed fucking thing deep down in the basement of my soul ached and said mine.
I’ve known for centuries that you were coming. That you were just going to show up one day and change everything. You’re the chink in my armor, Saeris. The soft spot where the knife slides in. You are the thing that Malcolm will hurt in order to hurt me, and I couldn’t… couldn’t fucking bear it!”
“She said, when I needed you most, you’d come blazing into my life like a meteorite, riding on a wave of chaos that would turn my whole world upside down. That you’d shine so brilliantly that you’d light up hell itself and guide me out of the darkness. She had no idea what your name would be. Just that you’d have dark hair, and a beautiful smile. And that I’d love you with a fierceness despite myself.”
“My mother never said anything about a mating bond. They haven’t existed for so long. The thought never even crossed my mind. But when I found you lying in that pool of blood, I felt it, like a band snapping into place. I smelled it on you, too. And I… I was so fucking angry.”
“Angry that the fates had sealed us that way, when no one else in living memory had been affected by a bond. Angry that it had happened before either of us had even had a chance to get to know each other. I had no idea the marks would show up like that. Without any fucking warning. Without us being married, or even… even… deciding for ourselves that we wanted to be together.
“I didn’t know if you’d want me in your bed,” I told him. “If it were up to me, we wouldn’t spend another night without each other again.”
And for me, too. I am selfish, Saeris. I wanted something quiet and small and special for the both of us. Something we could keep.
My soul was on fire, and I didn’t care if I burned for all eternity. So long as I was burning with him, then so be it.
God-bound. We were God-bound. Mates. I could feel it now—a bright thread of energy drawing us together as he wrapped himself around me. If I wanted it, all I needed to do was reach out and claim it.
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.
“Nobody will ever fuck you the way I’m about to fuck you, Saeris Fane. I’m about to introduce you to all seven gods. When you meet them, don’t forget to tell them I’m the one you worship on your knees.”
“I accepted the bond. Earlier. When I was inside you. When my soul was wrapped around yours.”
“I’ll be grateful for every second that I can say that I belong to you, Saeris Fane. Eighty years or eighteen hours. It doesn’t matter to me. It’ll still be the highest honor of my life.
“I’m in love with you, Saeris Fane,” he whispered quietly into my hair. “And I’m already half-mad, anyway. What’s a little complicated thrown into the mix?”
