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There was something very galling about being lectured by the likes of Carrion. He was one of the most selfish, most arrogant men alive. He loved for the world to believe that he didn’t care about anyone or anything. But it seemed that he did care, and I had done something so selfish that he couldn’t stand by and watch it happen? Gods.
“Good. Oh, and, Saeris?” The guy just didn’t know when to quit. I spun around, scowling at him. “What!” “Even filthy and tired, you’re still beautiful.” “Gods and martyrs,” I whispered.
Ahead on the right, however, another trader had set up shop. Vorath Shah peddled snake oil: tiny fragments of metal that he claimed contained traces of arcane magic; the stuffed, stinking feet of sand rabbits that were said to ward off disease; glass vials full of cloudy liquids that were supposed to bestow gifts upon you if you drank them.
Madra was human, so why didn’t she die? He claimed to have access to the fount of her eternal youth and peddled that in bottles, too.
Again, he didn’t say anything. A spark of amusement flickered in his eyes, though. Slowly, he shook his head, his meaning clear as day. If you’re gonna fight any of us, you’re gonna fight me.
sometimes the cruel things we said served the kindest purpose.
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.”
She paced around me in a circle, those quick blue eyes drinking all of me in. “I apologize for the shackles, but I’m not overly fond of low-born rats from the Third, either. You never know where their hands have been. In the very least, they’re always dirty, and it’s so hard to get stains out of satin.” Low-born rats.
Well, this bish...
“It was the Fae, wasn’t it?” she hissed. “They’ve found a way through. They’ve come for me at last?”
“What isn’t there to understand?” The queen’s sharp words dripping with ice. “I’ve heard stories. But…” I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Was she mad? Did she believe in unicorns, too? Lost lands that existed millennia ago, swallowed by the desert? Ghosts, and the forgotten gods? None of it was real.
Fuck this city and fuck this world. My family was already doomed, and what did I care for anyone else? If Harron was telling the truth, then I’d be doing the rest of the people in the Third a favor.
“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!”
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.
“Let’s be done with it, then,” a small voice whispered in the back of my quieting mind. I grabbed the old sword by the hilt, a bolt of energy firing up both arms as I drew it from the stone and turned it on Harron.
I wheezed out eight words, knowing they’d be my last, enjoying the stupidity of them. “This is the part where… you scream… Captain.” And then I swung with all my might.
Of course Death was beautiful. How else would anyone choose to go with him without putting up a fight? 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 braced against the workbench and said, “Elroy swears that a man will lie about the size of his cock every time a woman asks him.” Kingfisher stilled. “Are you asking me how big my cock is, Osha?” “I don’t care how big it is. I care about the way you answer.” A slow, terrifying smirk spread across his face. “It’s big enough to make you scream and then some.”
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.
It would have been wrong to think of the men I’d encountered back in Zilvaren in that way. Some of them had been attractive. Some of them had even been hot enough to make my toes curl. But Fisher was the epitome of everything that was strong, and male, and powerful. He was so much more than anything I’d experienced before. He was beautiful. Looking at him made me feel like I couldn’t catch my breath. “If you want it, come here and touch it,” he rumbled. Holy. Fucking. Gods.
“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.”
And I’m not the type of person who keeps throwing herself at the things that hurt her.
I’d thought the sound of that rushing, free water would be my favorite sound until the day I died. I was wrong. The sound of Fisher’s genuine laughter was rarer than water had ever been back in Zilvaren; it almost brought tears to my eyes to hear it.
He’d come for me. Even with the world ending all around us, he had me.
“With that male. Our father’s champion.”
Everlayne had barely been able to utter his name without shivering. She’d warned in no uncertain terms that a person should never let this god look upon them. Not even a statue of him.
“An Alchemist, at last, to reset the balance and clear the way for what is to come.”
I should have been born Fae. The God of Chaos had simply interfered. “Why?” I asked. “Why would you want to keep us apart? What does it matter to you if we love each other and live our lives together?”
“In nature, there is a counterweight to everything, child. Light has darkness. Life has death. Joy has sorrow. And good has evil. That law applies, no matter which realm you exist in,”
The energy the two of you draw together attracts an equal and opposite counterweight. Every possible future where the two of you are together ends with the vast majority of this tree dying. None of us can foresee any other way.”
If you truly accept Fisher as your mate, then you must agree for the thread of your life to be severed from the tapestry of the universe.
“By transforming you into something that has never been seen before,” he answered cryptically. “The universe cannot focus on that which it does not recognize.” “But how?” “I’m not just the God of Chaos, Alchemist. I’m also the God of Change. I will it, and it is done.”
I was born and died a hundred times. And then I saw something that shouldn’t have been. A bird. It flitted around me in the void, its beautiful wings flashing blue-green. It sang a song so sweet that I remembered what it was like to have a heart, if only so I could feel it ache. And oh, it ached.
“There are two kinds of forever, Alchemist. One is heaven. The other is hell. It doesn’t matter what I do. Make sure you choose your version of immortality wisely.”
“All right. I’m sorry I didn’t disclose to you that I was a magic-wielding political asylum seeker, posing as a human when I slept with you. Does that make you feel better?”
“I’ll come and tell you everything I remember about them later, but for now, I want to be alone with my mate.” He said it with such pride. My mate.
“Human, Fae, or vampire. It doesn’t matter how long you live, Saeris; you will always be most sacred to me.”
“Tell them that. As far as the vampire court is concerned, you’re to be coronated. In two days’ time, you officially become the new queen of Sanasroth.”
