Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)

by Callie Hart

particles of quartz in the sand began to vibrate, jittering in the air a millimeter above the sandstone as the gold came alive.

The gauntlet whispered, rocking rapidly as I brought myself up to straddle the wall. The particles of quartz rose up, up, up. She sees us. She feels us. She sees us. She feels us. She— I slammed my hand down on top of the

gauntlet, and the piece of stolen armor stilled. The glinting specks of quartz fell back into the sand.

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.

“Death is an open doorway that’s meant to be walked through. On the other side of it lies peace.

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.

“Ahh. Saeris. A pretty name. A Fae name.

Long hair is a sign of high-born status for Fae women. Others will be jealous of your dark coloring, too. Dark hair is a royal trait amongst the Yvelian Fae.”

“Superstition and sacrilege. Your queen is human. And even though the sand and the wind swept away the names of the gods, I assure you Madra knows them. That she’s chosen to let them vanish from her people’s history speaks volumes of her corruption.”

“Styx, god of shadows.”

“Kurin, god of secrets. Nicinnai, goddess of masks. Maleus, god of dawn and new beginnings. These two are often counted as one god,”

“Balmithin. Twin sisters. Goddesses of the sky. Legend says that they once were one god, but a mighty storm came, and Balmithin refused to take shelter as it raged across the land. The powerful spirit within the storm was furious that Balmithin didn’t cower before him, and so he lashed her with forks of lightning. Again and again, the lightning struck Balmithin, but she didn’t die. Instead, she cracked and split in two, becoming Bal and Mithin. Bal is the goddess of the sun, but goddess of the day in a looser sense. Mithin is the goddess of the moon, but again, she presides over all of the night.”

“That’s Zareth, god of chaos and change.”

“We Fae can also be a little superstitious sometimes,” Everlayne admitted. “To look upon Zareth’s face is to draw his focus. And very few people enjoy Zareth’s attention being focused on them. We respect and revere him, but we’d all rather he was paying attention to what other people were doing instead of us. We touch him on the foot to guide him away from us.”

“She must have a drop of Fae blood,”

“Enough to stop Solace from burning off her hands. But not enough to matter.”

Not to mention the fact that there are still rumors floating around that the Daianthus heir is in Zilvaren somewhere.

“Our ancestors were cursed millennia ago. As a result, we ended up with these,” he said, gesturing to his canines. “We used them to drink your kind dry. We drained you by the millions before the blood curse was lifted. This was long before our time, of course, but the Fae line still bears the marks of its past. We might not need blood to maintain our immortality anymore, but by the gods, do we still have the teeth for it.