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Kingfisher stuck out a hand and flipped all seven of them off as he stormed by.
But, of all the beautiful things I had seen, Fisher was the most beautiful of all.
“There’s every way,” Fisher rumbled, his eyes darkening. “I’d know the smell of you anywhere. On anyone. I’d know it blind and in the dark. Across a fucking sea. I’d be able to scent you—”
Quickly, he took hold of my hand and placed it onto his chest, right in the center. Thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum.…
“She’s mine,” Fisher said.
He nodded. “Don’t share food with that prick again, Little Osha.”
“Because she is moonlight. The mist that shrouds the mountains. The bite of electricity in the air before a storm. The smoke that rolls across a battlefield before the killing starts. You have no idea what she is. What she could be. You should call her Majesty.”
When I’d picked up a pitcher at the Winter Palace and filled a glass for myself for the first time, I’d thought the sound of that rushing, free water would be my favorite sound until the day I died. I was wrong. The sound of Fisher’s genuine laughter was rarer than water had ever been back in Zilvaren; it almost brought tears to my eyes to hear it.
“Just not recently?” I whispered. “No. Not recently. Smiling has been pretty hard of late.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “It is getting easier, though.”
He flexed out his hands by his sides a couple of times before slipping them into his pockets—he didn’t seem to know what to do with them.
wave of hot emotion knifed me in the center of my chest. This was the kind of male I wanted to be with.
Fisher turned and held out the sword to me. “My father’s bones rest somewhere in Zilvaren. His sword spent the past millennia there, which…” He paused, considering the sword. “Which makes it more Zilvaren than Yvelian now, I think.”
The air was on fire, too hot to breathe. Fisher unhooked a leather scabbard from the wall of the tent and took it down, sliding Solace into it. Speechless, I lifted my arms as he wound the scabbard’s belt around my waist. His hands worked deftly, adjusting the belt to fit my much narrower waist, and it was all I could do not to burst into tears. His father’s sword?
Ren’s expression was one of deep satisfaction. It seemed to say, “Good. At last. This is as it was always meant to be, Saeris Fane.”
“Be unrelenting and unmerciful in the face of the wicked dead,” Fisher said. Ren laid a steadying hand on my shoulder. “And if you should find soul sundered from flesh, order a drink for us at the first tavern you come across in the afterlife. We’ll settle the tab when we get there.”
“She’s been kicking ass, Brother. She wields Solace almost as well as your father did.”
“I give you my blood in thanks, Saeris Fane.”
I’ve known for centuries that you were coming. That you were just going to show up one day and change everything. You’re the chink in my armor, Saeris. The soft spot where the knife slides in. You are the thing that Malcolm will hurt in order to hurt me, and I couldn’t… couldn’t fucking bear it!”
That’s what Oshellith means in Old Fae, Saeris. Most Sacred.”
I covered my face, and I gave in. I sobbed. The name he gave me, the name I hated, was a declaration of what I meant to him even then. For a long, long time, all I could do was cry through this monumental revelation.
“She said, when I needed you most, you’d come blazing into my life like a meteorite, riding on a wave of chaos that would turn my whole world upside down. That you’d shine so brilliantly that you’d light up hell itself and guide me out of the darkness. She had no idea what your name would be. Just that you’d have dark hair, and a beautiful smile. And that I’d love you with a fierceness despite myself.”
“She said she felt like she knew you. That you and she were friends, even though a thousand years stood between you. She… she drew you.” Fisher’s voice grew tighter as he fought to speak. Balancing on the edge of tears, he forced himself to laugh instead of cry. “And she captured you almost perfectly, too.”
“I’m in love with you, Saeris Fane,” he whispered quietly into my hair.
I well and truly broke when I saw what rested on the mantlepiece above the fire. Nimerelle.
Malcolm let go of him, shoving him away. Miraculously, Carrion managed to stay on his feet. “My name is Carrion Swift. But there was a time when I was known as Carrion Daianthus. Firstborn son to Rurik and Amelia Daianthus.”
The tips of my ears were pointed. They poked up through my mussed hair, as if they had always been this way. I opened my mouth to curse, saw the state of my teeth, and my heart set to racing. Canines. I had very long canines. And they looked sharp.
