Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)

by Callie Hart

“No, of course not. Like I said. Ask a question, and you’ll get sent to the Third. It isn’t disease that’s contagious in my ward, Captain. It’s 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. Except our fire hasn’t burned out the way she’d hoped it would. We’ve been reduced to embers, yes, but the coals that lie beneath the ash of my ward are still hot enough to burn. 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.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t react any worse than he did,” she said. “Oh?” I scoffed. “I thought his reaction was a little over the top.” Everlayne had been waiting for me when I returned to my room yesterday. She hadn’t banked on Kingfisher kicking in my bedroom door, me thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and wailing like a banshee. Nor had she expected his ultra-foul temper, his split bottom lip, or the thin line of blood trickling down his chin. She’d squawked when he’d thrown me unceremoniously down onto my bed and snarled, “Bad human,” at me.

“She’s mine,” Fisher said.

“You never wore the dresses I put out for you,” he murmured into my hair. “I don’t want to talk about dresses,” I whispered. “Fair enough. Let’s talk about food, then.” “Food?” He nodded. “Don’t share food with that prick again, Little Osha.” “What?” “Swift. Earlier. Back in the war room. You were trading that cake back and forth with him for ages.” “It wasn’t cake.” “I don’t care what it was. Just stop sharing food with him.”

“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.”

“Why haven’t you said anything?” he demanded, twisting to face me. “I was about to! I just… I was thinking it through!” “Not about that.” He exhaled sharply down his nose. “About the other night. What happened. With us.”

Fisher rested his chin on top of his forearms and sighed. “What?” I whispered. He thought for a moment, appearing to decide whether he’d answer the question. Then he said, “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. “Sleep a little. The water will stay warm. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve spoken to Ren.”

“Be unrelenting and unmerciful in the face of the wicked dead,” Fisher said. Ren laid a steadying hand on my shoulder. “And if you should find soul sundered from flesh, order a drink for us at the first tavern you come across in the afterlife. We’ll settle the tab when we get there.”

“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.”

“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?”

She gave him a chastising look, holding up both of her hands and showing him their backs. “I regret to inform you that I am still happily mated and married, Carrion Swift. And my husband isn’t the type to share.”

She has dual tattoos on her hands.. Like saeris... Our girl is mated to fisher <3

“So, they don’t just show up on their own? The marks? Like… out of the blue? Overnight? Or… while… y’know… you’re having sex with someone?” Te Léna laughed brightly. “Of course not. Don’t be silly.” The edge of panic rising inside me settled just a little. But then Te Léna spoke again. “Once upon a time, that was the case. Back when true mating bonds existed. Unions between true mates were blessed with marks from the Fates. That’s where the tradition of inking our hands originated from. But there’s no such thing as true mates anymore. When the gods left Yvelia, certain elements of our magic either died or waned over time. The god swords, for example. They were very slowly cut off from the source of the magic they channeled. Our ability to form mating bonds also died out over thousands of years, until it disappeared altogether.”

“Do people… get that sometimes? Going around… their wrists?” “Oh, no. Definitely not. You only see that kind of thing in storybooks,” Te Léna scoffed. “They called it a God Binding. A blessing from the gods themselves. They weren’t real, of course. The most important couples in Yvelian history were said to have had them, but it was all romantic rubbish. Just something storytellers embellished to make their tales more tragic. Plus, they looked impressive in the illuminated books.”

“Not you! Me!” He thumped himself in his chest, suddenly furious. “My weakness! My vulnerability! 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!”

That’s what Oshellith means in Old Fae, Saeris. Most Sacred.”

Out. Fucking. Loud.

“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?”

“Carrion Swift, if you don’t wake up right now, I’m going to tell all of your asshole friends back in the Third that you were a shitty lay.” Lorreth dealt another blow to his solar plexus. “I mean it!” I cried. Carrion jolted like he’d been struck by lightning. He rolled toward Lorreth and vomited up a lungful of lake water, hacking and sputtering. Oh, thank the gods. I fell back, landing heavily on my ass, trading a relieved look with Lorreth. When he was done puking, Carrion flopped onto his back and fixed me with narrowed eyes. “You wouldn’t… fucking… dare.”

“I play back,” Fisher spat. “It might not be today, but oh, I am coming to find you, Madra. Fear the shadows, bitch. I’m made of them. One night soon, I’ll climb out of one and slit your fucking throat.”

“You spayed my mate when she was a fucking child,” he seethed. “For that alone, I’ll make your undying existence an unending agony. An eternity of suffering the likes of which even your evil mind cannot comprehend. You’ll know no peace at my hands. I will destroy your empire and erase your name from the annals of time. When I am done with your legacy, Madra the Undying will never have existed. And you’ll live on at my behest, suffering for all of eternity. And no one will know. And no one will care.”

“I don’t like you, human. Something about you smells… off.” “That’s probably the weird… moss… these water sprites rubbed… all over me…” Carrion croaked. “It had a strange… funk… to it.”

Carrion was deathly pale, but he grinned up at Malcolm like a lunatic. “You really should have let me finish introducing myself earlier. It’s rude to interrupt people.”

“My name is Carrion Swift. But there was a time when I was known as Carrion Daianthus. Firstborn son to Rurik and Amelia Daianthus.”

A small favor, then, the whisper said. We will do it for a favor. And for a restoration of balance. And for love.

He is the storm. You are the peace that must come after it. Tell me, do you believe in the fates, Alchemist?

“Te Léna found a way to dampen the quicksilver’s effects. I’ve been seeing her for months, trying to get it under control, but her sessions were growing less and less effective. And then Iseabail said that she could help. Those two make a pretty good team. Te Léna helped to quiet the quicksilver, and Iseabail’s been teasing it out of me. I’ll have to have a million sessions. It’ll take a long time, but it should work.”