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This bastard would shit himself if he realized he had the Saeris Fane in his grasp.
Sometimes, objects shook around me. Objects made of iron, tin, or gold. Once, I’d been able to move one of Elroy’s daggers without touching it so that it had spun around and around on my mother’s dining table, balancing on its cross guard.
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.” Harron was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Just walk.”
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.
“If you die before you can give this back, I’m not going to be happy,” he groused. The chain was warm against my skin as he looped it around my neck.
“Him? Righteous purposes?” Renfis stifled a cough that sounded a lot like laughter. “The male standing before you isn’t shy about using his gifts to complete mundane tasks.” I glowered at Kingfisher. “You monster.” There wasn’t a scrap of remorse to be found on the warrior’s face. He scooped up his armor and his sword, then paused beside me on his way toward the brand-new door that now hung in the doorway. “I just wanted to see if you knew what hard work was. I told you I was magic,” he whispered.
“Careful, human. We Fae have an excellent sense of smell. You’d be amazed what we can scent floating on the air.”
“You could at least say hello before you start eye-fucking me.” “I wasn’t eye-fucking you. I was trying to see through all of this… steam.” I wafted my hand for effect, but the air was clear, there was no steam, and Kingfisher did not look impressed.
“You definitely can’t kill it, then. Not if we destroyed its home.” “It’s going to bite you,” Kingfisher said. “No, it won’t. It—” It bit me. Its teeth were sharp as needles. With its jaws clamped around my forearm, the little fox chittered and squealed, making all kinds of strange sounds. It seemed like it wanted to run away and hide, but it couldn’t quite figure out how to stop biting me.
“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.”
Ours now, the quicksilver whispered. Our song. A song for us to keep. The others hadn’t heard the quicksilver this time, I could tell. That’s what you meant? That you’d take it, and it would disappear? That no one would remember it? Ours now, the quicksilver repeated. Ours. Ours. Ours. It seemed a shame that Lorreth’s song had been ripped out of the world, all memory of it erased. It had moved me in a way. It had explained so much. Why can I still remember it? I asked. We remember, so the Alchemist remembers.
“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.”
“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.
“Once upon a time, that was the case. 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. But there’s no such thing as true mates anymore. When the gods left Yvelia, certain elements of our magic either died or waned over time. The god swords, for example. They were very slowly cut off from the source of the magic they channeled. Our ability to form mating bonds also died out over thousands of years, until it disappeared altogether.”
“They called it a God Binding. A blessing from the gods themselves. They weren’t real, of course. The most important couples in Yvelian history were said to have had them, but it was all romantic rubbish. Just something storytellers embellished to make their tales more tragic. Plus, they looked impressive in the illuminated books.”
“All right. Fine. A husband turns to his wife one day and says, ‘Y’know, I bet you can’t think of something to tell me that will make me both happy and sad at the same time.’ The wife doesn’t even need to think about it. She turns to her husband and says, ‘Your cock is way bigger than your brother’s.’” The quicksilver, which hadn’t made a peep over my joke, started to chuckle.
“Only the gods are eternal,” I told him. And I cut off Malcolm’s head.
“We must make this quick, or you’ll die before you’ve been of use to me. I will be as concise as I can, given the circumstances. I’ve spent a great deal of time watching the threads of the universe, waiting for one such as you,” he said. “An Alchemist, at last, to reset the balance and clear the way for what is to come.”
to the very edge of the quicksilver and looked at me. “Here, we stand at the edge of the universe. The roots you see, growing down into the earth, into the quicksilver, are the anchors of fate.” He tipped his head back, his eyes traveling upward into the boughs of the tree. “The silver leaves above mark all the realms of our domain. My family are the stewards of all you see here. We water the roots of fate. We train the boughs and prune the leaves to prevent rot and decay. You see the bough there? The blackened one?”
“There is a rot spreading throughout my domain, Saeris,” he said. “Realms that are infected with that rot have to be summarily destroyed to protect the rest of the tree and prevent that rot from spreading. Do you understand?”
Those leaves had been realms. Whole worlds. Zareth had just… waved his hand and… wiped them out. I stared at them as they sank and disappeared below the surface of the quicksilver. Was it possible? Could he really just have done that? “How many people…” I couldn’t get the rest of the question out, but the god standing beside me knew exactly what I was asking him. “Billions.” He answered without the faintest hint of emotion.
“You were supposed to have been born Fae, in the same realm as your Kingfisher. So I separated you. Hundreds of years before you were born, I shifted the events around your birth. Moved the pieces on the board and placed you far away, in a realm that should never have come into contact with his. But I watched as the boughs of the universe grew against their nature and aligned in such a way that you would still meet. I foresaw then that no matter how the boughs and branches of this tree were manipulated, you and he would always collide. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”
“The best of luck to you, then, Saeris. Give Kingfisher my best.” And then he shoved me into the quicksilver.
“There are two kinds of forever, Alchemist. One is heaven. The other is hell. It doesn’t matter what I do. Make sure you choose your version of immortality wisely.”
“Tell them that. As far as the vampire court is concerned, you’re to be coronated. In two days’ time, you officially become the new queen of Sanasroth.”
