Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)

by Callie Hart

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?

The darkness took me before the silver could.

A thrill of energy rocketed up my spine at these two words. Kingfisher’s voice was rough and pained, but it was also electricity. It made every hair on my body stand to attention.

Now I saw him properly for the first time, and a wave of shock rippled through me, down to the roots of my soul.

And… those eyes. Gods. Eyes were not that color.

“There is one thing I can tell you right now,” she said, striding out in front of me to guide the way. “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.” As I followed after her, rushing to keep up, I couldn’t help but wonder if she counted herself among that number.

Hmmm immediately don’t trust Everlayne

“It’s rude to stare at a male’s hardware,” he said stiffly.

Respectfully sir fisher we would all stare

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on stealing it. It isn’t very impressive. Looks more like a toothpick to me.”

Kingfisher didn’t pay him a lick of attention. He was still glaring at me. “This sword has slain thousands,” he seethed. “I wouldn’t have thought that was anything to brag about,” I replied. “You should probably get it looked at.”

It was as if there were a cord at the center of Kingfisher’s soul, and I could see it tugging him backward, further away from these people who so clearly cared about him. He was beyond their reach, it seemed. Nothing would draw him back to them.

And then I punched him square in the mouth.

As she should

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.

“It’s going to bite you,” Kingfisher said. “No, it won’t. It—” It bit me.

“I don’t hate your kind. I’m just disappointed by how breakable you are. If I held you down and fucked you the way I’m imagining fucking you right now, I doubt that you’d survive it.”

“That your body is betraying you in other ways. That I can smell you, Little Osha, and I’m thinking about drinking the sweet nectar you’re making for me straight from the fucking cup.”

“Stay in that bed, Little Osha.”

“For the record, I’d never use an injury as an excuse to sneak my way into a bed,” Fisher said. His voice was even closer now. I could almost feel the brush of his lips against the shell of my ear. “I’ve never had a problem securing myself an invite.”

Fuck me. That smile. Slightly open-mouthed, flashing the smallest hint of pointed teeth. I had to be so, so careful around that smile. It would wreck me if I let it.

“If I were evil and using your oath for my own purposes, I’d order you onto your knees for me,” he said, cutting me off. “I’d order you to part your legs for me. I’d order you to suck and fuck me until you passed out from exhaustion. Is that what you want, Little Osha?”

“So you are compliant sometimes,” he said softly.

It wasn’t just how he looked. There was something else there, too. Something that made my body come alive. His scent, and the way I knew that he’d entered a room before I saw him, and the melancholy tug at the root of my soul whenever he wasn’t in a room, and—

“You’re incorrigible!” “I don’t know what that means.” “Yes, you fucking do!” “All right. I do. What’s your point?”

With a crash, the table flipped, toppling to the floor, and then Fisher was on his feet, lifting me out of my chair, lifting me from the ground… crossing the tent. My back slammed up against something solid and hard—a bookcase?—but it wasn’t the shock of the pain that ripped the air from my lungs. It was Fisher’s mouth.

I definitely shouldn’t have told him that I wanted him. For the love of all the gods in all the heavens, why had I said that? I was going to throw up.

nothing could replace the scent of mint and midnight forest in my nose. He’d kissed me.

She looked like her head was going to explode. “We have a fucking Alchemist?” “She’s mine,” Fisher said.

He held out his hand to me and said, “Take it, or I carry you.”

Gently, he gathered the flyaway hair that had escaped my braid and carefully swept it behind my ear. “Breathe, Little Osha.”

“My, my. So worked up already? You’re slick as hell. What do you taste like, mm? Are you going to scream for me like a good girl when I have you ride my face?”

there was something else tying me to him. Pulling me in like I was trapped. A part of me knew that Fisher himself was the trap, and I was well and truly snared…

“When you take all of me, remember to breathe.”

Where’s my inhaler

“I can’t wait to hear what kind of sounds you make when I thrust into you for the first time,” he purred.

“I’m going to make you pant for me, Little Osha. And when we’re done, I’ll close my eyes and replay the sound of you moaning in my head every time I stroke myself to completion.”

“No arguments, Osha. I’ve driven myself half-crazy wondering what you look like. I need to fucking see. Put me out of my misery.”

“Perfect. You’re absolutely fucking perfect. If Danya does rip my head off tomorrow, at least now I’ll die happy.”

“Oh, no, Little Osha. You’re gonna be looking right at me for this,”

was pure, powerful male satisfaction. “Hold on tight, then. I hope you’re not afraid of the dark.” He thrust forward, slamming himself inside me, and I screamed.

“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.”

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.

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.

I became pieces of myself, and Fisher was the only thing that held me together.

And then the world ended. Existence blinked out into a blank void. The stars tumbled from the heavens, and hell rose up to meet them. Everything and nothing, here and gone. It was every ecstatic moment I’d ever experienced, condensed and multiplied one millionfold.

“I was wrong, y’know. You are a good thief.”

“HUMAN” had come first. Then “Oshellith,” or “Osha,” said with a hefty amount of disdain. Then “Little Osha,” which had first been mocking but had then shifted to an endearment. But Fisher had said my name. Finally. And it was… weird.

Back when true mating bonds existed. Unions between true mates were blessed with marks from the Fates. That’s where the tradition of inking our hands originated from.

“They called it a God Binding. A blessing from the gods themselves.

“My weakness! My vulnerability! 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.”

“All names hold power in this place. Every name means something. We have true names that we don’t share with anyone. Not our friends. Not our families. Our mothers are often the only people who actually know it. And even a mother might use her child’s name to her own advantage in the pursuit of power. This place—it’s fucked, okay. And you show up, and you have one fucking name, and everybody knows it. And I couldn’t say it because I was scared. Of what it would do to me when I did. It would be like acknowledging you were here after all this time. So I called you Osha instead. But it meant more, Saeris. To me, it meant more.”