Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)

by Callie Hart

“Even in times of peace, the Fae are always at war. There are those among our ranks that might pretend to be your friend, but often they’re hiding knives behind their smiles, ready to sink them into your back. You’d do well to remember that.”

“This is the Winter Palace,” Everlayne reminded me, trying to coerce me away from the window. “It snows year-round here. At least once a day. Come on, we’re going to be late.”

Elroy had accepted me as his apprentice, I’d combed through the library’s information not on glass working as he thought I should have, but on metalwork. Reeking of forge smoke and covered in grease, I’d pored over the written work of Zilvaren’s old masters late into the night, daydreaming of what it would have been like to have access to so much metal.

Thirty feet above our heads, a glass-domed ceiling showcased a crystalline, bright blue sky. Wisps of clouds, tinged pink, stretched from one side of the dome to the other as if placed there by an artist’s paintbrush. The early morning light bore a sharp quality that washed the walls of the library in hues of blue, green, and white rather than the warm yellows, oranges, and golds I was used to. It was beautiful.

Kingfisher felt Solace calling, and he answered. He found it in Saeris’s hands.”

“She must have a drop of Fae blood,” a deep voice murmured. “Enough to stop Solace from burning off her hands. But not enough to matter.” The owner of that voice was somewhere deep within the stacks. I’d only heard him speak briefly yesterday, but it was him all right. Kingfisher.

“It’s rude to stare at a male’s hardware,”

“Humans are usually weak, fickle creatures, but I’ll admit, I admire this one’s loyalty. She values her family over everything else. There’s something to be said for that.”

I couldn’t stop staring at the silver plate he wore at his neck. It was beautifully engraved with elaborate lines, but it was the snarling wolf head at its center that captured my attention. The insignia was fierce and eye-catching. Prudent that he’d worn it to the library this morning, seeing as how Everlayne looked like she wanted to slit his throat.

“Have you ever channeled a metal’s energy before?” I narrowed my eyes at him, insides twisting. “What do you mean?” “If you’d done it, you wouldn’t need to ask. You’d already know,” he said flatly. I thought about it. All of the times I’d made Elroy’s tools hum. That spinning blade on my dead mother’s dining table. The guardian’s gauntlet, when I’d slammed it down on top of the wall—how its vibrations had made the grains of quartz in the sand dance. How I’d turned Harron’s dagger into a river of molten silver and steel. “All right, then.” I met Kingfisher’s steely gaze. I didn’t blink. “Yes. I have.”

“Why are you calling me that? Oshellith?”

“An Oshellith is a type of butterfly,” he called as he went. “Osha for short. They hatch, live, and die all in one day. The cold kills them very fast.

see why Clements has guarded this place so fiercely now.” “Who’s Clements?” “The king’s royal archivist. He’s been receiving a royal stipend for the past two hundred years or so, charged with figuring out how the Alchemists used to activate the quicksilver. A handsome stipend if I recall correctly. Looks to me like he pissed it all up a wall, though, ’cause this place is a fucking disaster.”

So, I ignored the plate and pointed to the chain hanging around his neck instead. “All right. What is that? What does it do? And why are you completely unhinged without it?” Kingfisher smiled a cold smile, pressing the tip of his tongue into the point of one of his sharp canines. “Straight for the jugular then, Little Osha? Ruthless. I like it.”

“Well, let’s start at the beginning, then. The quicksilver pools are pathways that connect different realms.

“The quicksilver itself is volatile. Some of our elders believe it possesses a low level of sentience. Whether this is true or not doesn’t really matter. The stuff is dangerous. If the quicksilver comes into contact with bare skin…” Kingfisher trailed off. “It was in Harron’s dagger, wasn’t it?” I asked. Kingfisher nodded. “It was an ancient blade. Alchemists used to forge quicksilver into weaponry for Fae warriors. Harron had no business touching that weapon, let alone claiming it.”

The quicksilver will push any living creature beyond the boundaries of sanity.”

“The male standing before you isn’t shy about using his gifts to complete mundane tasks.” I glowered at Kingfisher. “You monster.”

“He does deserve some grace, though. He has no rooms here. Nowhere to eat. Nowhere to sleep. No provisions. And a hundred and ten years, Layne. Can you imagine what a hundred and ten years would have been like in that place? Alone?”

“Madra?” Everlayne pursed her lips. “I suppose I know as much as anyone here. She was young when she ascended to the Zilvaren throne. Bloodthirsty and hungry for power.”

“We don’t know how she did it, but yes, Madra should have died centuries ago. It must be some form of magic, but we have no clue who performed it for her or why. We don’t know how she discovered that the quicksilver could be stilled with an Alchimeran sword, either. That information was closely guarded by our kind for generations. But you don’t need to be Fae or possess any special gift in order to close the doors between our realms. The sword will do it for you. As far as we know, when one pool of quicksilver is activated, all quicksilver everywhere is activated. It’s joined by some kind of…” She frowned, searching for a way to explain. “A ribbon of energy, I suppose. If you take a sword like Solace and plunge it into the quicksilver, it severs that energy in a way that paralyzes it. Until Solace was removed, every entrance to the pathway became frozen. There were members of this court on scouting parties, exploring new pathways that had only recently opened up when Madra cut the cord. Friends. Family members. They became trapped wherever they were. They haven’t been seen since.”

“I was born at the very beginning of the tenth age. I’ve been alive for one thousand four hundred and eighty-six years.” “One thou…?” I nearly swallowed my tongue. Everlayne was nearly fifteen hundred years old. I couldn’t force my mind to make sense of that. She looked so young. Did I dare ask my next question? The one that burned on the tip of my tongue? I shouldn’t even want to know, but I couldn’t help it. “And Kingfisher? How old is he?”

“I don’t know, eighteen hundred years old?” “Not bad. He’s one thousand seven hundred and thirty years old.”

“One thousand seven hundred and thirty-three,” came a deep voice. Adrenaline exploded through my veins, shocking my system so badly that I nearly toppled sideways out of my seat. I twisted around, and there stood Kingfisher in a recessed reading alcove, bathed in shadows. Half of his body was concealed by a pool of darkness that was very out of place in the well-lit library. He studied his fingernails, that metal wolf-head gorget glinting at his throat. “What’s three years between family, though?” he said, shoving away from the wall and out into the light. “I’m sure it’s hard to keep track of time when you’re so distracted by the comings and goings of court life.” He gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Glad to see you’re finally sharing some truths with your new pet, Layne. I have to say, I’m a little scandalized to discover that they’re mine, though.”

“Next time you’re curious about me, feel free to ask me,”

“Maybe the issue is that you asked me a question about my cock like a hungry little bitch in heat and didn’t ask me something that mattered.”

I tensed when I saw the tiny ball of silver liquid rolling around in the well of my palm. Quicksilver. Not much. Little more than the size of a pinkie fingernail. But quicksilver all the same. And it was in a liquid state.

This time, it obeyed. The weight lifted from my mind, disappearing until I felt almost back to normal. Almost, because Fisher was still holding my hands. When I opened my eyes, he was looking at the solid bead of matte, inert metal in my hands, a look of wry amusement on his irritatingly handsome face. “I have to say, I was expecting that to go differently,” he mused. And then I punched him square in the mouth.

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.

“Admittedly, I do enjoy when a female kneels for me, but in this particular case…”

“I’m hungover,” he announced. “The sun is trying to crack my skull open, which is making me very unfriendly. But please. Feel free to open the curtains.”

“Careful, human. We Fae have an excellent sense of smell. You’d be amazed what we can scent floating on the air.”

“Yes. Just now, actually. I’m going to keep it as a souvenir.” “A reminder of the time a weak human girl landed a hit on you and drew blood? You want your friends knowing about that?” Fuck, this cheese had the consistency of glue. I kept chewing, but my mouth was so dry that it was turning into a thick paste. “I like being surprised,” Fisher said, spinning his fork over in his hand. “I’m also a fan of aggressive foreplay. It’ll be a fun reminder.”

I breathed in sharply, inhaling cheese. Choking and spluttering, I tried desperately to get rid of it, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Kingfisher leaned forward, his tongue running over his teeth again. He smiled suggestively as he said, “Swallow.”

If you’re going to spend the night out whoring and drinking, the least you could do is wash the smell of sex off you before showing up for breakfast.” Kingfisher looked like he was about to explode with laughter. The monstrous bastard was enjoying this. I braced for the cruel jibe—he was seconds from telling his sister that whatever she could smell was courtesy of me and not him. But when he spoke, he took me by surprise. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Layne. That was inconsiderate. I’ll take my breakfast and leave you both in peace. If Ren shows up, let him know I’m down in the bathhouse, washing away my sins. I’ll see you this afternoon, Osha. Be ready to practice more of what we learned yesterday.” Wait… I watched him go. He took the fall for me. Why would he do that? Would Layne know that I was the source of the scent of arousal in the air the moment he left? I didn’t think so. I wasn’t thinking about Fisher’s tongue trailing up my neck anymore. I was thinking about him forcing me to hold that quicksilver in my palm again and how much it was going to hurt.

Annorath mor!

“Knowledge of the courts will be vital when you start to travel outside of Yvelia. I do think this is worth going over,” Layne said, placing a hand on top of the daunting stack of books she’d set out for the day’s session. “I don’t know. Maybe Saeris is right.” Rusarius’s white hair was more cloud-like than ever, puffing out in every direction. “If we can’t demonstrate that Saeris is capable of activating the quicksilver, there’ll be trouble for Kingfisher, I think. He’s the one who brought her here. The king gave him a week to teach our new friend here how to navigate this whole thing. If she fails…”

Oh, Fisher wasn’t messing around with lesser alchemical compounds. He’d thrown me in at the deep end and slapped raw quicksilver in my hand without so much as a by-your-leave. Again, I made the decision not to spill that little tidbit of information. “I was wondering whether there were any references relating to how the Alchemists used the pathways to travel from one place to another specifically. As in, how they made sure they would wind up where they wanted to go,” I clarified. “Was there a panel, or some incantation, or…” I shrugged, channeling as much nonchalance as I could muster. “Did they have to say a place’s name out loud or something?”

The Gilarian, the Fae in the mountains to the east, kept their pool in a hall perched upon the highest peak of their domain. It was reported that the pool belonging to the Lìssians, the seafaring Fae who lived upon a southern island, was located deep in a sea cave and was almost as large as the Yvelian pool, though that had never been confirmed, the Lìssians regarding it as their most sacred place of worship.

I barely noticed the pot—the crucible—that Kingfisher set down on the anvil by the workbench. My gaze was locked onto the bead of sweat that was hanging from Fisher’s chin; for the life of me, I could see nothing else. It glistened there for a second and then fell, sizzling when it hit the iron crucible and turned to smoke. Fisher’s normally loose black shirt was plastered to his chest. He drew in a deep breath, his shoulders rising, and— I jerked when he snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You could at least say hello before you start eye-fucking me.”

“I wasn’t eye-fucking you. I was trying to see through all of this… steam.”

“It’s always confounded me. Humans aren’t restricted by the same laws as the Oath Bound Fae. You creatures can lie whenever you want. You do it all of the time. And yet you’re all so fucking bad at it.”

His cheeks were flushed from the heat, slick with perspiration. Not a hair on his head was dry. From root to tip, his waves were dripping wet, some of them plastered to the side of his face. As if suddenly conscious of this, he shook his head like a dog, showering sweat everywhere.

I held my hand up in front of my face, blocking the sp...

Fisher laughed silently as he peered into the crucible, peeling his shirt free of his chest as he inspected what was inside. “There you go again, lying your little he...

“Are your kind supposed to nap in the afternoons? You’re really grumpy. I’m the one with the hangover, y’know.” “What did you even do last night?” “Wouldn’t you like to know.” “Actually, forget it. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know.” “Ren and I went to The Blind Pig. We gambled away half his savings and drank the bar dry. I’ll invite you next time.” I pulled a face. “Please don’t.” Kingfisher grabbed me, his hand closing around my wrist. I’d been about to poke the powder inside the crucible with my fingertip, but… “Where you come from, does a smith poke a finger into a crucible right after it comes out of a blazing furnace, Osha?”

“The bone was Fae,” he said after a moment. “For centuries, our kind has tried to understand how the relics that allow us to travel through the quicksilver were made. There have been many theories over the years, but that’s all they’ve ever been. Theories. With the quicksilver sleeping, we haven’t been able to experiment or put any of those theories to the test. But now that you’re here…” “You want me to wake the quicksilver so you can try and bind things to it and see if you can make a relic out of it.”

It was the first real, full smile I’d seen from him and it was terrifying. Not because of how evil it made him look. Far from it. He looked so much younger than he did when he was scowling. He looked happy, and that was what really fucked with me. It was easy hating Kingfisher when he was being a bastard, but in this moment, he appeared very un-bastard-like, and that was… confusing.

“What is that?” I stabbed my finger at the hideous thing crouching next to the hearth. It hissed at me, baring its teeth, showing the whites of its eyes. Kingfisher took one look at the creature and straightened out of his defensive stand, cursing in a language I didn’t understand. “What’s wrong with you? It’s a fox! Gods, I thought you were about to get your face torn off.” “Fox? What’s a fox?” Kingfisher muttered darkly under his breath as he went and stood over the strange animal. It had a thick, furry coat, white as the snow out of the window, and glassy black eyes the color of jet. It cowered, pressing its body against the stone floor, small, black-tipped ears pinned back against its tiny skull as it watched Kingfisher raise his sword over its head. “Just so you know,” the warrior growled, “transporting like that when you have a headache is the worst.” He brought the blade swinging down. “NO! STOP! What are you doing?” He drew the weapon to one side just in the nick of time. “Graceless fucking gods, human! Stop fucking yelling!” “I don’t want you to kill it! It just surprised me, that’s all!” “It’s a fox! A pest! This is probably what was living in the hearth before we ripped that den out. They steal food from the kitchens.” The creature wasn’t nearly as hideous as I’d first thought. I darted forward, stooping low, covering the little thing with my body, gripped by a sudden remorse. “You definitely can’t kill it, then. Not if we destroyed its home.” “It’s going to bit...

Kingfisher set the tip of his sword against the stone at his feet and casually leaned his weight against it, watching the scene play out with no obvious feeling one way or another. “They carry all kinds of diseases. Lung rot,” he said. “A flaky