Brimstone (Fae & Alchemy, #2)

by Callie Hart

“Well, I suppose if no one else is going to say it, then I will. You look downright fuckable, Saeris Fane.”

“Can you—look, can you just behave yourself out there?” I murmured under my breath. He looked bemused, the faintest hint of a dimple forming in his right cheek. “I can,” he answered. “I can’t promise that I will.” As we walked past him and out of the chamber, Taladaius advised, “You should leave Nimerelle here. They’ll see you carrying a weapon as an act of aggression.” “Good.” My mate’s expression went dark with the promise of violence. “It is.”

Need him biblically

“Please stop talking.” It was entirely unreasonable—the sudden urge I had to wrap my hands around Lorreth’s neck and squeeze until he stopped breathing. But a mated Fae didn’t like another male talking about his mate at the best of times. And I was newly mated. Hearing that he’d spoken to Saeris about the blood trade at all made me want to turn feral and burn down the fucking war tent.

And I will never come at you with everything I’ve got. You are my mate. I’m in love with you. I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. Which… he added softly, I do not.

Read this and screamed

Before anyone had a chance to answer, he leaned close to me and whispered, “I heard from Lorreth that you got yourself a new sex tattoo at your coronation. Can I see it?”

AHA

“I don’t know it,” he whispered. “I’ve never known it. We usually receive our true names on our fourteenth birthdays, and my mother—” He blinked. “Well, she died before I turned fourteen. And my father was already gone. So…”

The snowcapped mountains, the forest, the frozen river… those places are my home. You are home.”

“Three nights. That’s how long I’ve paced this room, fantasizing about fucking you raw, Saeris Fane.”

“Come now, Osha. Where else would an acolyte kneel to worship but at the altar of his god?”

Modern men need to step it up

barely heard Fisher’s satisfied drawl over the explosions going off in my head. “Thaaat’s it. Good girl. Ride it out.”

“It’s hidden,” she rasped, “among the stars.”

Noted

“You kiss my commander with that mouth?” “I’ve done far worse than kiss him with it.” His mouth pulled down at the corners, his eyes going wide. “Okay. I don’t need to hear about that, thank you very much.”

Sixty feet from the ground, I reached for my secondary magic and prayed that it answered. It was fickle and often off wandering when I called.

Love how Callie writes about magic

I had Swift’s ass in my face for at least thirty seconds, which were thirty seconds I would have to remember to blot from my memory once all of this was done.

Because what was a book, if not a portal into another realm, another time, another life even. But

Correct

Whoever had painted the night sky on the roof of Ammontraíeth’s library was a master of their craft. It was remarkable, what they’d accomplished with some paint and some gold leaf. It was so real. If I just reached up—

THE STARS

I didn’t love this realm, but it had produced someone I loved with a fierceness that took my breath away, and I was not going to leave this place worse off than when I had found it. For Saeris’s sake, I would protect it.

“Then tell me, Joshin. You filled me with enough venom to take down three horses… but do you scent any fear on me? Do you think I am afraid to face my demons? I’ve faced them before. I know them all by name. I’ve conquered them and bent them to my will more times than the sun has risen over Yvelia in my lifetime. I’ll face your nightmares if I have to, and I will still be the most frightening thing prowling around in the dark.”

“Until you learn how to be gentle, I will not teach you how to be violent.”

That part.

“Umm. Yeah, I kinda need my tongue.” He took a deep breath and then sighed it back out. “People do seem to like it.” I almost laughed. Almost. Gods, I was losing my mind. The male was ridiculous. “Just keep searching for the still, Swift.”

“Is a dead person talking to you right now?” Carrion asked. He was bent over by the door with his hands on his knees again; it was probably the only position that helped with his nausea. “Yes,” I told him. “Oh, good,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “I thought that was just me.”

Her hands had touched it. Her hands had made it. That made me feel… Fuck, I just ached for her. I wanted her here, next to me. I wanted to hold her; the fact that she wasn’t in my arms right now felt like the greatest injustice that had ever been inflicted upon me. There was no breathing my way past it.

This is yearning.

“Yes?” Heat flared up inside me, making my throat close. “It’s not a simple thing, Fisher. She’s… well…” “Spectacular,” I whispered. The smile that spread across his face was sad. “Right. Exactly. She always has been. When other people are full of the kind of fire that burns inside her, it eats them alive. It hollows them out until there’s nothing left inside them but the fire. They burn everyone around them with it, until all that remains is scorched earth. But not Saeris. Her fire keeps others warm in the cold dark. It is her strength, not her weakness. Being around her reminds you that you’re alive.”

“Every year that I live, it seems the magnitude of my loss eclipses the last. So yes. 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.”

Carrion 🩷

“Will you show me?” “Show you?” “How to close it off. To shut it all down, so I don’t have to feel it anymore?”

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.”

I never felt more seen than when he looked at me.

“I could fuck you and feast on you until the ages turned and the suns all died and burned out in the skies, and I still wouldn’t have had enough of you.”

Don’t thank them, came Fisher’s low, resonant reply. Thank me. I’m the one who’s about to make you scream.

😶

It was here in the quiet and the dark with me that he surrendered.

“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.”

He nodded, breathing deep, indicating that he could stand on his own, but rather than letting him go, I pulled him into a hug. Saeris wasn’t here. But if she was, this is what she would have done for him.

He sagged, burying a single, choked cry into my chest, and that was all I heard out of him. His body rocked with silent sobs for a minute, and I held him. And then he stopped, and it was over.

They had brought Saeris here. My mate. They’d hurt her. They’d taken something sacred from her here, in this awful place. Not her right to have children. But her right to make such an important decision for herself.

My magic encompassed all Zilvaren. For the first time in history, the shining banner in the north fell into darkness.

“You do not need to be afraid, child queen.”

Love the Hazarax

“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?”

but an Alchemist couldn’t only manipulate quicksilver. I was an element worker. All metals were at my command.

Not Solace’s power, halved to accommodate the new split weapons. This was twice the power, and it was electrifying.

“No, mistress. You don’t understand. That ornament is how Kingfisher got his name! Lady Edina saw it in a market in Ballard when she was pregnant with the master. She wasn’t usually taken by things like that. She didn’t own many knickknacks, but she said she had to have it. She was so taken by it that on his first birthday, she announced people should call her son Kingfisher. She set that ornament there herself, on that shelf, when the master was just a Faeling. She didn’t like anyone to touch it.”

Fisher angled his head, frowning as he read the inscriptions on both swords. He nodded, smiling softly. “Erromar means mercy,” he said, in a reverent voice. “Selanir means honor.” “Huh. Mercy and Honor. The gods named my swords for me, then.”

My prince of shadows. I had been born into the light, but my salvation had been waiting for me in the dark.

What a great quote.

He was the making of me and my ruin.

“The good comes with the bad. The pleasure comes with the pain. I’m going to make this hurt so good for you, Osha. Are you ready?”

Yes.

He drew in a deep breath. When he exhaled, smoke rippled from his shoulders downward, leaving a full set of leathers in its wake. At his throat: a silver, shining gorget stamped with the wolf’s head of the Lupo Proelia. Nimerelle’s hilt was visible over his shoulder, her black hilt snapping with energy and drawing in the light. A moment ago, Fisher had looked like he had come undone. The Fisher standing before me was ready to go to war.

It was a pine cone. One of the smallest—and most perfectly formed—I had ever seen. Onyx nudged it with his nose, huffing, then looked up at me expectantly. I stared down at the fox and the pine cone, hand still on the doorknob, not sure what to do. “Is that… for me?” Onyx nudged the little spiked pine cone, butting it with his nose again, until it rolled and hit the toe of my boot. It was for me. A gift. I bent and collected it, tucking the memento into the inside pocket of my leathers. Before I turned and left, I scratched the little fox between his black-tipped ears, trying and failing to pretend that I was unmoved by the gesture. “Thank you, little one.”

I had always made it a rule to follow a cat. Particularly a black cat. This one was the darkest shade of midnight there was—an absence of light I knew all too well.

Love this damn cat and that damn fox.

Above, the stars rioted, blistering and brilliant.

IM TELLING YOU THIS MEANS SOMETHING.

She plucked and pulled at the threads of the spell, unraveling them as fast as she could.

AGAIN with the way she describes magic.

“It seems very simple to me. Wouldn’t you want to come and spend the afterlife with me if I died?” “Of course I would!” “Then let my love be equal to yours.”