Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)

by Callie Hart

stared down at the book I’d been… Huh. Wait. I held up the book, tilting my head, eyes narrowed at Rusarius. “How come I can read this?” “What do you mean?” he asked. “Well, I’m from another place. An entirely different realm. What are the chances that you and I even speak the same language? That we share a written language? It’s just… it’s impossible.” It was wild that this hadn’t occurred to me before. “Hmm, no. Not impossible. Not even improbable, actually,” said Rusarius. “You explain this one, sweet,” he said to Everlayne. “There’s one more book I want to find before you leave.” Everlayne seemed happy to be given the task. “Well,” she said, leaning across the table to take the book out of my hand. “Right now, you’re speaking Common Fae. This book was written in Common Fae, too. There are other languages in Yvelia. Other dialects. But Common Fae is spoken by all of the courts as a shared, well, common tongue. When the first Fae traveled to your realm, the humans there spoke a different language altogether. Over the years, our language and our written word became adopted by the humans. Even though we were cut off from the other realms, it seems as though our language has thrived. In Zilvaren, at least. Zilvaren had Madra, and your queen has always spoken Common Fae. She served as an anchor to our language. Perhaps in other realms, languages and alphabets have changed.”