Brimstone (Fae & Alchemy, #2)

by Callie Hart

I had to pull the situation back, to take the proceedings in hand. My first instinct was to apologize for the interruption, but a queen did not apologize.

This… was two stars colliding. The end of everything and the beginning at the same time.

“If they procreate, I’m banishing them from Cahlish. A combination of the two of them would probably tear open some sort of hell gate and suck the entire estate through it.”

There was no stopping this. And why would I want to stop it? He was more than an addiction. He was life itself. We were separate beating chambers of the same heart now.

It was thrilling to be witnessed so thoroughly. A little frightening, too. I always found myself waiting for the moment, the slight twitch of his mouth, the shadow falling across his eyes, where he took in my flaws and realized that I wasn’t perfect. It was like waiting for an ax to fall… only the moment never came.

The Smart Mouth is not so smart now, it purred. The Smart Mouth sounds stupid.

point. I flashed my canines at the sunburnt woman, giving her a broad smile. “Apologies, madam. We had a little argument with gravity. Looks like gravity won.”

sharp. “I know I’m not very useful to anyone in Yvelia, Fisher. But I want to be. And I can be useful in this. I told Saeris I’d help. I told her I’d come back. So, no. I can’t just leave you.”

There was no sense regretting events that had helped form us as beings.

It made sense that even Carrion Swift—a seasoned thief and well versed in the art of duplicity, by all accounts—wanted to keep his word when he gave it to her. He was her friend, much as it irked me. And I would accept that.

“I’m only half sure of the steps we need to take, and I don’t know about you, but any situation I have entered into tired and uninformed has never gone well. So you should sleep, and I should read.

I love Saeris Fane, because she’s electric, and fierce, and loyal, and being around her brings the world back into focus. But I’m not in love with her, Fisher. I tried. But my heart was just too full of sorrow to make room for her.”

Feel the pain you’ve been given, Carrion. Don’t be fool enough to ask for more. It’s a curse I would spare you from, believe me.”

he whispered. “You’ve existed in my mother’s drawings for most of my life, but you were never real to me before. I didn’t believe…” His eyes were wide and full of awe.

I could be dead in the ground five thousand years and the frosts could have taken my bones, and still no other male will ever have loved another female the way that I love you.”

My heart tripped in my chest. Hearing him speak this way? To me? Having him love me like this? It healed me. I wouldn’t have been able to let anyone else do it. The intensity of the emotions I experienced whenever I was with him would have terrified the hell out of me. I would have run.

He was larger than life. Stronger. More powerful. He was bigger than the swell I felt in my chest whenever I heard him say those three words. I. Love. You. He could handle all the bullshit and the complications that came with loving me. He knew me. Saw me. Was capable of holding the both of us together if it all became too much. It was safe to love him back because, no matter what, he was never going to let me fall.

“So, right about the time I was punching a hole in the Third’s bell tower, you were blasting a hole in the side of the library in the Blood Court?” Kingfisher nodded, smiling at this, as if he found this symmetry between our days pleasing.

He gave me a pointed, very unimpressed look. “Your relationship status with Saeris Fane was the least important thing I just said, Kingfisher.”

I got changed quickly, pleased to note that Saeris’s blood had also healed the gaping wound in my leg and the other, smaller sting sites that had covered my body, too. I spent a full second feeling sorry for Carrion, knowing how uncomfortable he must be, but then I remembered how annoying he was, and my pity went away.

“I see a male longing for a place and a people he has never known,” I said simply. “That’s all.” I gave him the drawing as I passed him, leaving his room. “You should keep hold of that, Carrion,” I told him. “Bring it home with you.”

I didn’t need to shout at him, but gods, he was exhausting to be around. Tal might have felt bad about giving Foley this new life. He had let him skulk around up here, feeling sorry for himself, but I had no tolerance for this kind of defeatism. Zilvaren wrung that out of a person pretty quickly. Either that, or it killed you.

They had to get a little more creative when coining villainous names for me. There were only so many places I could butcher.

“He doesn’t mean that! He doesn’t mean that. Okay, whew, everybody just take a deep breath.” Carrion dragged his hands through his hair as he paced in front of the door. “You’re going to have to forgive my friend here. He hails from cooler climes. The heat makes him irritable.” “Don’t apologize for me!” I was going to open-palm slap him. “If he wanted cordiality, he shouldn’t have struck me, should he?”

Gods, he was nothing like her. Nothing like her at all. But when he met our gazes and I saw the resolution in his eyes, the way his jaw set, I saw the fleeting shadow of her there. A part of her I recognized. Something I could get behind. “It’s okay, Elroy,” he said. “I want to go.”

“You’re here? You’re really here?” Gods, my voice sounded so small. Slowly, Fisher nodded, and the tension rushed from my body. He was real. He was here. Everything was okay. I’m going to get you out of here in two minutes, he told me. But I need you to be here a little longer first. Is that okay? Can you do that? I nodded. Good girl. Come here, then. Stand with me.

I’d never seen a fire sprite pout before. I had now.

He bent and drew off one of his boots, his mouth forming a disapproving line as he upended it and a stream of sand poured out of it onto the floor. It kept coming and coming… I covered my mouth, trying not to laugh.

When Fisher lifted my hand again, he paused, turning it over so that my palm faced up. The quicksilver in his eye flared a little as he gently ran his fingers over the inside of my wrist. I’d noticed it, of course: the veins that had once been green-blue there now shone metallic silver through my skin.

Pulling both his lips into his mouth now, forcefully preventing himself from smiling, he rolled his head to face me. He couldn’t keep it from his eyes, though. “It’s okay, Osha. Many women have appreciated my posterior in a pair of leathers. I don’t let it go to my head.” I flicked the top of his pointed ear, and the Bane of Gillethrye yelped like a startled dog.

“You think I’m above tickling you?” he asked in a deadly serious tone. I looked him dead in the eye. “Go on. Do it. I’m not ticklish.” Squinting, he looked me over, trying to see if I was telling the truth. “Well, that’s no fun,” he said at last.

“You have no flaws, Saeris Fane. You are perfect in my eyes, imperfections and all. I’m in love with every part of you. Your stubbornness. Your wicked tongue. Your foul temper when you’re tired. Your inability to close any door quietly—”

He spoke so easily, but I would never be able to describe what his words meant to me. There was nothing in any dictionary, in any language, that could possibly come close to explaining what I was feeling right now. “There it is,” I whispered. “What?” “The way that you love me. Some would say that is your weakness.” The lines of his face softened. “Some would say that,” he agreed. “But they would be wrong. It’s my strength.”

Carrion squinted at Fisher, hand in the air. “Is it weird, knowing that people’s balls retract up into their bodies whenever you’re around?” He made a cupping motion of something being sucked upward.

Even as a fragile human, you were strong. Independent. It would have crushed your spirit if I had sheltered you from this world. Your choices had to be your own. I saw that in the end. I see it now, too. Every day. You have a right to walk the road that stretches out before you. I will not rob you of your path by insisting I carry you.”

“And what if there comes a day when all of this becomes too much, and I want to be carried? At least for a little while?” “Then it would be my honor and a privilege to do so, Saeris. Never doubt that. Whenever you need me to catch you, I am here, ready and willing.

“I was reminded recently that I was a wolf,” he said, smiling softly. “And wolves do not cower in dusty libraries, afraid of their own shadows. I swear myself to you, Saeris Fane. I will carry out your bidding so long as there is breath left in me. And when I pass from this place and move on to the next, I will carry your banners there and storm the gates of heaven in your name if you wish it.”

He knew that, to control his people, he had to control the information they had access to. Hide the truth from people, and you kept them in the dark. Burn the books, and you got to rewrite history and the future.

The satyrs held their breath when Carrion opened his mouth. He swung left, then right, eyebrows creeping higher and higher toward his hairline. “My name is Carrion,” he said. “Nice to meet you all. I really like your horns.”

“We believe that animals are too pure for this life. They are all ascended beings who live in the after. Everything is perfect there. No pain or misfortune or heartbreak. But sometimes, they peer beyond the veil between this life and the next, and they see us here in the depths of our suffering, and they choose someone. One soul they want to help over any other. They come to us as… dear friends”—he cleared his throat—“when we need them most.

“It feels like trying to make sand flow backward in an hourglass. It feels like being surrounded by people and being the only one who can’t find the air in the room. It’s drowning on dry land. It’s the hollow ache of something that you know, from that moment on, will always be missing. It is a pain so acute and incurable that poets, pirates, and politicians alike die from it. And it never ends.”

Maybe a little madness was what it would take to make it through this situation alive. Who knew. But trying to approach this from a sane person’s perspective was beyond me.