Brimstone (Fae & Alchemy, #2)

by Callie Hart

“An Alchemist must seal her runes,” she rasped. “You are a well that runs deep. When you were marked with your runes, their magic began pouring into you. It flows and it flows. It will not… stop…”

“You’ll come up with something, Fane. You always do. You’re very smart for a twenty-five-year-old.”

“Saeris. I’m going to let you off because you’re new to all of this, but a vampire can’t lie to its maker. A blue aura comes off you when you try. The stronger the aura, the bigger the lie, and right now, you’re lighting up my office like a torch. But even if you weren’t, I can feel that you’re in pain. A lot of pain. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Presiding over this place is beyond me. I have no experience of ruling over a court and no desire to learn, either. I need someone to cover for me and act on my behalf when I’m in Cahlish. In general, really. I need that to be you.” Taladaius was already shaking his head. “The optics—” “I don’t give a fuck about optics. You were Malcolm’s second in command. He trusted you with the position, so the court can hardly criticize me for doing the same.”

I knew that he had saved my life. I knew that he was sad. I knew that I believed him when he said this disavowment was for the best, and honestly, I had hated the idea of sharing such an intimate connection with anyone other than my mate since the second I had woken up. What Taladaius was offering me was a kindness.

“No more maker and made bullshit,” he agreed. “But how about… friends?” I grinned, because the vampire who had saved me, who was at least fifteen hundred years older than me and had half of Ammontraíeth pissing in their pants whenever he walked lest he turn their blood to smoke, actually seemed nervous. “I think I’d like that.” At that, he returned my grin. “In that case, you’d better call me Tal.”

I WAS READY for the bloodshed. Carrion Swift was not. Scores of iron-tipped arrows tinged off the heavy shield I held in front of us as we emerged from the quicksilver. The sliver of metal that still clung to the rim of my iris cackled with delight as Swift let out a panicked yelp and grabbed hold of my leather backplate, almost unbalancing both of us and sending us back into the pool.

“Fisher? Fisher. Are we nearly at the door? Ow, what the hell was that? Something hit my arm really hard.” “It was my fist. Now shut. The fuck. Up.”

She wore her favorite dress. Blue, with birds embroidered onto the skirt. I realized with a start that they were kingfishers. Their wings flashed metallic blue; their proud chests were painted umber. She looked as she had always looked: beautiful and sad. Her long black hair fell in waves to her waist, blowing on an invisible wind.

dark. But I wasn’t about to let that happen. 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.

Foley rounded on me, features drawn into a sneer. “I wasn’t talking to you.” It happened fast. The chair behind Foley flew into the air and then crashed down onto the reading table. The vampire was lifted off his feet and flung backward. A banner of black streamed across the library, and then Lorreth was holding the vampire out of the hole I had created in the library wall by the front of his shirt. “You’d be wise to adjust that attitude,” he said. In a flash, I was at his side. “Lorreth, it’s okay. Pull him back in.” But Lorreth didn’t obey. “She is a vampire. Half vampire. But she’s also half Fae. And she did not pry that blade from Fisher’s cold dead hand.”

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

When I’d found her, I’d been full of panic. How was this woman, this human, the person I was supposed to fall in love with? How was I going to protect her from the kind of life I lived? She had surprised me. Where I had thought her weak, she was strong. Her heart was bigger than the horizon half the time—too big for her own good. I’d misjudged her. She was incredible. For twenty-five years, she had survived this harsh place and still had fire enough in her soul to create the kind of art that would undoubtedly have cost her life were it to end up in the wrong hands.

I knocked back the shot and set the glass down carefully, still staring at it. 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.

“It’s not a simple thing, Fisher. She’s… well…” “Spectacular,” I whispered.

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.”

He pulled away, cupping my face in his hands, the beautiful green of his eyes almost glowing in the waning light as he took me in. “I’m sorry. Today’s just been…” He shook his head, sucking on his bottom lip. “I fucking hate your city, Osha. I really can’t overstate how much I really, really hate it. Gods, it’s good to see you.”

He studied the point where I held him, smiling softly as a tendril of black ink swirled down my fingers and pooled on his skin, twisting and turning as it chased around his ankle and then disappeared underneath the cuff of his wet pants. I looked up at my mate in amazement. “What the hell was that? Did I just give you a tattoo?” He smiled, arching a dark brow at me. “Looked like it.” “I thought… wait, so that doesn’t only happen when we’re having sex?”

“I’m not arrogant. I’m fucking proud. I hear how your pulse quickens when you touch my body, and it makes me feel fucking invincible. You can hear my pulse do the same when I touch you, can’t you?”

“I don’t know what this is right now,” he said, gesturing to the cottage around us, “but it feels like a gift. We’re alone. It feels safe. It’s snowing out there. We have the fire, and food is cooking, and the fox is chasing insects. This is all I need, Saeris. Something simple. And you. I’m claiming you, Osha. Come on. You’re coming with me.”

Thank the gods, I chanted in my head. Thank the fucking gods. Don’t thank them, came Fisher’s low, resonant reply. Thank me.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” 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 had no idea what you would mean to me. I had no idea what I would do to keep you safe. When I close my eyes, you are all I fucking see, Saeris Fane.

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.”

Hearing him speak this way? To me? Having him love me like this? It healed me. I wouldn’t have been a...

“The injustice! You dream of your girlfriend, you’re healed by her, get laid, and wake up brand-spanking-new. Meanwhile, I dream that I’d been turned into a goat, and I wake up with a mouth drier than the glass flats, covered in suspect pox marks!”

Pieces of Yvelia, caught on paper like insects trapped in amber. There were so many drawings, layered one on top of the other on top of the other.

“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.”

A flurry of paper stargazers greeted me when I entered the library. Their wings rustled as they flitted around my head, darting this way and that, inspecting the newcomer who had entered their sanctuary. One of them hovered in front of my face, its tiny paper head tilting left and right as it took me in, waiting to see if I posed a threat. “Good evening,” I told the paper bird. “Are you friendly?”

“The stargazers might seem harmless, but interacting with them can be quite hazardous.”

A hope that you might escape—” “Then why haven’t you?” Foley’s jaw snapped closed. “If you hate it here, then why haven’t you left? Why didn’t you just go back to your friends, where you belonged? You’ve been up here throwing yourself a fucking pity party for the better part of a millennium, complaining about how terrible it all is, when you could have left at any time.”

“You’re misinformed. There were no letters. They left me to my fate here, and I can’t condemn them for it.” “Fool. Are you seriously that stupid?” I was getting better at sensing Lorreth.

And all of us have told you the same thing: It might be tricky, sure, but we would find a way to make it work. For you to have a place in Cahlish, with your family.”

“Remarkable. Truly. I’ve never seen an Alchimeran shield this intricate before.” “Alchimeran shield?” “Yes. This,” he said impatiently, tapping the back of my hand. “This is your shield. All Alchemists had them.” “You don’t need to talk to me like I’m stupid. Magic hasn’t existed in Zilvaren for a very, very long time. How am I supposed to know any of this?”

unorthodox Tria Prima, the basis of which is always the same: Salt. Quicksilver. Brimstone. The uses for all three are varied and wide. Combined, they…

Would you build a house on top of shifting sand, Saeris Fane? Willingly? Knowing that it will come crashing down around your ears?” If he had used any other analogy, literally any other, I wouldn’t have had any qualms about ignoring him. But he had used that one, and it tore at a buried hurt deep inside me that still woke me, sweating, from my dreams sometimes.

As we stalked the boy’s movements through the streets of the Second Ward, I studied the slope of his shoulders, his gait, the way he left his hands in his pockets, like he had no idea they should be out and free, ready to hold a knife, and I couldn’t do it. I could not find a scrap of his sister in him.

buildings to

His eyes were brown, not blue. Saeris’s chin was elfin and almost sharp, but Hayden’s was cleft. There was a similarity in the shape of their eyes, though. The overall structure of the rest of his face was much like hers. And the way he tipped his head to one side and scowled at me was suspiciously familiar.

“Sorry? You nearly cut my nipples off.”

They’d heard the stories of cruelty Belikon had spread about me. But Hayden Fane had lived his whole life here in Zilvaren, and he had no right to look so offended by my presence.

“Oh, I know you,” Hayden spat. “You’re him, aren’t you? Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate, whatever that is. Look, there! I can see it on your face. I’m right, aren’t I?” Hayden barked.

Below the drawing were the words THE BUTCHER OF ZILVAREN.

He looked exhausted. Ready to give up. 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.

Hayden’s eyes rolled back into his head. He passed out. “Perfect.” Carrion sounded unfazed by the turn of events. “You scared him unconscious. That’s just… perfect.” “At least he’ll be quiet for a moment.”

I survived here for over a thousand years. Do you really think I’d have been able to do that if I couldn’t pull myself out of a fucking hole? If at any point, you underestimate me…” He smirked, arching a dark copper eyebrow. “Then I’d say that was your mistake rather than mine. Wouldn’t you?”

“It must be cleansing day,” he answered. “Once a month, they come and round up the marked girls who’ve turned fourteen. Seven out of every ten. They’ll sedate them and take them up to the palace.” My blood ran cold. Cleansing day.

These fuckers had rounded up Saeris and brought her here, too, once. I knew her. She would have stared them down and spat in their faces, just like that girl had a moment ago.

When I drew on my power and set it free, I didn’t make shadows. I made knives.

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.