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When I was little, Elroy had been a giant of a man. A legend amongst even the most dangerous criminals that ran the Third. Taller than most, broad, his back muscles straining beneath his sweat-stained shirt. He’d been a force of nature. A pillar of rock hewn out of a mountain. Immovable. Indestructible.
Noting for theory that Elroy is Finran.
“You were more fun three months ago, you know that? You’re so cruel. I haven’t stopped thinking about you.” “Oh, please. How many women have you slept with since then?” He narrowed his eyes, looking confused. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
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.”
“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!”
The sword was old. I felt its age on the air somehow—a prickle of energy that spoke of hidden, ancient places.
My vision was going at last. Blackness crept in, rolling before my eyes like a midnight fog. Only it wasn’t a fog. It was something else. It was… Death.
The bastard had come to claim me in person. Emerging from the silver, the huge figure rose up from the pool as if ascending from the very depths of hell itself. Broad shoulders. Wet, shoulder-length black hair. Tall. Taller than any other man I’d ever seen. His eyes shone an iridescent, shimmering green, the pupil of the right eye rimmed by the same shining metallic silver that ran in ribbons from the black leather armor that covered his chest and arms. He towered over me, his lips pulled back into a snarl, revealing gleaming white teeth and sharp canines. In his hand, he held a monstrous
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I had known Death’s voice to be a howling hot wind across the parched desert. A wet, hacking cough in the night. The urgent cry of a starving baby. I had never for one moment imagined his voice might also be the stroke of velvet in the ever-encroaching darkness.
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.
“Ahh. Saeris. A pretty name. A Fae name.
Death, dressed in midnight, taking a chain from his neck and looping it around mine. Death, scooping me up into his arms. The look of disappointment in his eyes. Death—
Now that it wasn’t hanging around my neck anymore, the chain felt like it was humming. The strangest energy fired up and down my arm, not painful but certainly not a pleasant sensation. And it was cold. So cold.
We’ve been waiting to retrieve that sword you drew for a very long time. But to have found you along with it…” She shook her head. “You have no idea how important you are, Saeris.
“My mother told me once that the people used to pray to gods in Zilvaren, but their names and their temples were eaten by the desert a long time ago. We say ‘gods’ to curse our luck or emphasize emotion. Other than that, Madra’s the closest thing we have to a god in Zilvaren. At least that’s how she fashions herself.
The skull of a giant beast loomed over the labradorite dais, the bone bleached white and ghostly. Its orbital sockets were six feet wide. Its horned brow plate jutted from the shadows like the mast of a sand skiff. And its teeth. Saints and martyrs, its teeth. They were stained and terrible, each one razor sharp and at least twelve feet long.
“A dragon. The last dragon,” she said meaningfully. “Its name was Omnamshacry. A legend amongst my people.”
told my guards that you were the one who reopened the portal. It seems highly unlikely that a human woke the quicksilver.” He grunted, displeased. “But after a thousand years of waiting, we can’t afford to dismiss this as heresy without checking first. Believe me when I say that we’re all praying such a holy position hasn’t fallen to such unholy blood.” He inhaled sharply. “But the fates are strange. And one way or another, I will have the portals restored.”
“You’re charged with awakening the quicksilver and reopening the pathways between this world and others. Your cooperation in that task will dictate how you spend your time in Yvelia. Rail against your purpose and life within the walls of this palace will become infinitely more uncomfortable for you. I have spoken.”
Amongst them, thrashing like a rabid animal, they dragged a male up the walkway toward the dais.
Eventually, the guards managed to wrangle the straining figure to the front of the throne room, where they forced him to his knees. Dark waves tumbled into the Fae male’s face. Dressed all in black, his shoulders were drawn up around his pointed ears. His chest rose and fell with the sawing of his breath. Tattoos writhed and shifted like smoke across every patch of visible skin, creeping up the back of his neck and swirling over the backs of his hands. It was Death.
“Living Curse.” “Bane of Gillethrye.” “Black knight.” “Kingfisher.” “Kingfisher.” “Kingfisher.”
Malwae croaked. “But the sword calls to me. I feel it. The last vestiges of the weapon’s power echo with prophecy. I’m half deaf with the blasted thing ringing in my ears.”
“The gods must be obeyed lest House De Barra fall!” Malwae cried. “The gods must be obeyed lest the Winter Palace fall!”
And… those eyes. Gods. Eyes were not that color. I’d never seen that shade of green before—a jade so bright and vibrant that it didn’t look real. I’d noticed the filaments of silver threaded through his right iris back in Madra’s Hall of Mirrors, but I’d assumed I’d imagined them, being so close to death and all. The silver shone there, though, definitely real, forming a reflective, metallic corona around the black well of his pupil. The sight of it made me feel strange and off-balance.
Yvelia had only one sun. And it went down at night, disappearing beyond the rim of the horizon.
“But… the quicksilver awoke? That’s not…” He seemed struck by an epiphany, his head whipping back to me. “Oh! So… so, this one’s an Alchemist, then?”
“We don’t know what she is just yet. Kingfisher felt Solace calling, and he answered. He found it in Saeris’s hands.”
“It’s—no! Well, it’s not that simple. The Alchemists were all Fae—” “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.”
“Nimerelle is a formidable sword. Alchimeran. A much-lauded, storied weapon of the ancients. It’s an honor to even look upon—”
“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.”
“Madra used Solace to seal the pathways a long time ago, but with the sword returned to us and an Alchemist in our midst, she knows she’ll have a war on her doorstep any day now—”
“She was the one holding Solace,” Kingfisher said flatly. “There was no one else in that hall. Harron didn’t wake the quicksilver, and I sure as hell didn’t do it. If I were capable of activating it, I would have razed that infernal city to the ground a long, long time ago.”
“The real war with Sanasroth is killing members of our court, your court, every single day.” “The last time I fought in that war, a city burned to the ground. I think I’ve shed enough blood for Yvelia, Brother.”
“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. Our dirty little secret. Our awful, horrible shame—”
“You should be used to that by now, Layne. Or did you spend the last century forgetting what a shit I am? I’m the Bane of Gillethrye, remember? The Black Knight?”
“Being completely cut off from civilization and summarily forgotten about has a way of changing you after a while.” Renfis was already walking backward. “We didn’t forget about you. You have no idea what we went through to try and get you back.” “Oh, yeah. I’m sure my suffering paled in comparison to yours.”
“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. Isn’t that right, Renfis?”
“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…”
“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.”
“Oh, he saw things all right. The quicksilver will push any living creature beyond the boundaries of sanity.”
“My mother gave me this pendant, this relic,” he clarified, “when I was eleven. The night before we left for the Winter Palace. She knew I’d have need of it. Later, when I came of age and joined Belikon’s army, I was called upon to travel between Yvelia and the other realms because my pendant was one of the most powerful. To cut a very long and boring story short, I was forced to travel a pathway without it once. The quicksilver took me, just as it takes everyone. A healer managed to draw most of it from me once I made it back to the Winter Palace, but I was left with a few...lasting
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The filaments that marked his jade iris were actually remnants of quicksilver. Gods. It was inside him, always there, always whispering in his ear, pushing him toward madness. The relic really was the only thing keeping him sane.
“You think very highly of me, human. In a way, I suppose what you say is true. But don’t mistake me for some kind of saint. I don’t give a shit about Yvelia, and I don’t give a shit about Belikon’s war. You are a bargaining chip. I saw my only avenue to freedom, and I took it. Ask me what I would have done had I found you in that condition under any other circumstances.”
“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?”
“I can, actually. I spent the first three decades imagining it in great detail every day. After that, I did my best not to think about it—or him—at all. My heart couldn’t take it. And now he’s back, and I don’t have to wonder what kind of hell he’s enduring. Now I get to watch.”
There had once been three branches of Alchemists—Fae who sought to discover the path to immortality, Fae who sought to create and invent by transmuting various metals and ores, and lastly, Fae who sought to cure illness and disease.
Thousands of years ago, the Alchemists used their magical gifts to alter the state of compounds and transform them into precious metals. There was no record of which compounds were used, or what was done to them, but the Alchemists were successful. They found a way to transform elements into vast amounts of gold and silver, which was reportedly used to fill the royal coffers. At some point, the quicksilver was discovered along with the other realms its pathways connected, and all manner of chaos ensued afterward.
“Yes.” The word came out abruptly. Defiantly. “I did.” “Why?” “Because I didn’t have a choice.”
There was a voice. A million voices. Annorath mor! Annorath mor! Annorath mor! Annorath mor!
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.
