Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)

by Callie Hart

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.”

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.

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.

“All right, Oshellith. Layne isn’t going to let this go until you’ve been given the cliff notes, so listen close. I’m about to furnish you with the only information you really need to know. You have the distinct pleasure of being the only living human in all of Yvelia. You are not safe here.” He bared his teeth, flashing long, sharp canines that lengthened right before my eyes. “There was a time when this place teemed with your kind—”

“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.”

“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—” BOOM!

He shook his head emphatically, his eyes begging me not to speak. Quickly, he took hold of my hand and placed it onto his chest, right in the center. Thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum.… His heart was racing, the space between beats negligible. Nothing like the slow, steady beat he’d shown me back in the forge at the palace. I tried to pull my hand away, startled by the thundering rhythm, but Fisher held me there tight.

“I can’t have children, Fisher. I was cleansed when I was fourteen.” I expected to see relief on his face. But instead, his face drained of color. “What the fuck did you just say to me?” I stopped laughing. “I was cleansed. When I was fourteen. They do it to about seventy percent of the girls in my ward.” He came and stood very close to me, his head bowed over mine, nostrils flaring. “What do you mean… cleansed?”

“I mean… they sterilize us,” I whispered. I figured he’d known last night. I would have expected him to at least mention contraception otherwise. But from the look of shock he wore, he hadn’t had the first clue. “The Third Ward’s the poorest,” I told him. “Madra’s health advisors decided that we shouldn’t be allowed to procreate,

“Don’t call her Sunshine,” he commanded. “Why not?” If Carrion’s plan was to poke the bear, then he sure as hell knew how to go about it. But Kingfisher didn’t respond to the taunting note in his question. He just cocked his head a little, nostrils flaring, and spoke in a low rumble. “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.”

Placing his hand against my stomach, he drew me close so that my back was flush with his chest. The warmth from his body was divine. I could feel his heart beating against my back—slow and even, in time with the soft push and pull of his breath. Somewhere toward the foot of the small bed, Onyx groaned comfortably and nestled deeper into the blankets.

“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.”

“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.”

“You spayed my mate when she was a fucking child,” he seethed. “For that alone, I’ll make your undying existence an unending agony. An eternity of suffering the likes of which even your evil mind cannot comprehend. You’ll know no peace at my hands. I will destroy your empire and erase your name from the annals of time. When I am done with your legacy, Madra the Undying will never have existed. And you’ll live on at my behest, suffering for all of eternity. And no one will know. And no one will care.” His words rocked me. The pure, unadulterated hatred in them. I had no idea that it had affected him this badly. When I’d told him about what had been done to me, he’d reacted strangely, yes, but… to provoke a response from him like this?