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Even if I hadn’t seen how badly it had spread across his eye, I’d have known from the chanting I could hear in the back of my mind all of the time now. Annorath mor!
“My father died when I was two. I don’t even remember him. My mother was four months pregnant with Hayden when it happened. A sand dune came down on a trader’s outpost on the glass flats. He was either crushed or suffocated to death, one of the two. And when we lost his income, my mother became a prostitute,”
“Because the punishment for carrying a weapon in the Third is death,” Fisher whispered.
“I watched them slit her throat,” I said. “No arrest. No trial. They love carrying out their sentencing on the spot.
I didn’t want the door to close.
I wanted him. More than I wanted to go home.
How to explain the feeling of a male like Kingfisher breathing heavily into your ear.
It raged so hot that it created a vortex of energy, lust, and need that spun around inside me so fast that I felt like I had to jump up from the bed and scream or fucking hit something.
It had irrevocably altered the dynamic between us, and I didn’t think either of us was ready to face that yet.
When he coaxed me open and dipped his fingers between my slick folds, he discovered how wet I was and growled deep.
Time well spent as far as I was concerned.
I’ll make you beg, Little Osha. I’ll fill every one of those pretty little holes. I’ll fuck you so hard, you’ll never want another male ever again.
Unlike the last time we were together, he didn’t slam himself up inside of me immediately. This time, I felt the swell of his head pressing against me, then the overwhelming, ground-shattering moment when he slid past my entrance and began to push up.
Oh. My. Fucking. Gods.
Every warrior in Irrín will smell me on you, Fisher’s voice rumbled in my mind. I’m going to make you hoarse from screaming my fucking name. I’m going to mark you in every way imaginable, so that everyone knows you’re fucking mine.
A bliss like no other overloaded my senses—lightning coursing through my veins.
I was crushed by it. It broke me and made my soul fucking sing. It was better than any drug I’d ever experienced before.
The moment Fisher slid into me again, drinking a little deeper, I lost any sense of pride I possessed and reached back, grabbing his head and pushing him down onto my neck as hard as I damn well could. Ruin me.
He mindlessly slammed himself into me, grunting, and then he ripped his mouth away from my skin and roared like he was dying. No. Not like he was dying. Like he was being reborn.
Just as he had done when I woke up, Fisher lay behind me, still as the dead, not breathing. Only this time, he was holding on to me for dear life. He didn’t let go.
For now, all I knew was that I’d wanted it. I’d asked for it, and, sidenote, Fisher and I were now randomly capable of speaking into each other’s minds.
He seemed lost in thought. At ease, even. A part of me didn’t want to make my presence known. After how troubled he’d been of late, I wanted him to savor the moment of peace.
He smiled sadly. “I always know where you are, Little Osha.”
“When I imagine you, Little Osha, you’re very rarely wearing clothes.”
One of the runes wasn’t even black, but a dark, iridescent blue-green color that flashed metallically when it caught the light.
“No, I can’t read your thoughts,” he said, eyes darting up to mine for a split second. “I can hear you when you speak to me directly, though.
“I don’t know. You look constipated.”
Outside, the sky was lit up with an explosion of green and pink light. My breath caught at the sight of it. “What is that?” “The aurora,” Fisher answered softly. “A blessing.” “Holy fuck.” Lorreth dropped to his knees in the snow, staring up at the sky, his mouth wide open. “It’s… beautiful. The aurora hasn’t been seen in… in…”
“Well over a thousand years,” Fisher said.
Not Danya’s sword, the quicksilver hissed. We are reforged. New unto this place. You do not claim us, Lorreth of the Broken Spires. We claim you.
“You deserve it, Lorreth. You carved the wolf for the pommel. You helped to cast it. And it was your song that sealed the bargain with the quicksilver.”
We remember, so the Alchemist remembers.
“I name you Avisiéth. The Unsung Song. Redemption’s Dawn.”
“With you?” It was a challenge. I was done tiptoeing around this now. Fisher’s brow dipped for a second. He seemed frustrated, but he nodded. “I need to go and talk to Ren first. But yes. I’ll be sleeping here. With you.”
“I was wrong, y’know. You are a good thief.” “What have I stolen?”
His heart??? Hehehehe
I woke to hands built for violence gently soaping my scalp.
We know who she is, the quicksilver hissed. She is the dawn. She is the moon. She is the sky. She is oxygen in our lungs.
“We cannot leave him. We are him.”
“Weapon,” the quicksilver said. “The best. We are him. He is us. We cannot leave. We will die.”
“We are him. He is us. We all suffer, Alchemist. There is nothing to be done.”
“Then swear, Little Osha, and I’ll trust you.” A wave of hot emotion knifed me in the center of my chest. This was the kind of male I wanted to be with. “I swear it.”
Not just any sword. The sword that had started all of this. The one I’d pulled from the pool of frozen quicksilver in Madra’s palace. Solace’s hilt flashed in the firelight, bright silver now, the tarnish of age that had dulled its edge nowhere to be seen. It was a breathtaking weapon.
His father’s sword?
“Be unrelenting and unmerciful in the face of the wicked dead,” Fisher said.
And anyway, our magic doesn’t work on Sanasrothian soil.
Fae magic needs light and life to survive. And there’s nothing on their side of the river but death, darkness, and decay. Our lands are divided directly down the centerline of the Darn. But the second these fuckers cross over…”
“Don’t you dare die on my watch, Saeris Fane! Fisher will never forgive me if his sole reason for living is torn to pieces on her first fucking battlefield.”
Time slowed down, and the strangest thing happened. My heart rate dipped. A sense of peace washed over me. Acceptance and understanding.
He would drop down and try to tackle me to the ground; I could see the mindless, animal plan of attack already causing his knees to bend and his shoulders to hunch.
“She’s been kicking ass, Brother. She wields Solace almost as well as your father did.”
