Brimstone (Fae & Alchemy, #2)

by Callie Hart

“Your oath mark,” he sighed, shaking his head. Renfis nodded. “My oath mark. I was being called to serve. I didn’t have any choice but to go.”

“After we killed Old ’Shacry, the horde left Ajun, descending back down the mountain, and the people inside the city came out to bury their dead. Renfis’s sister was among their number. Merelle had always loved Ajun, so Ren asked the city elders if she could be buried here. They gave her a burial site at the very top of the mountain—a high honor, in thanks for the sacrifice she made to protect the Ajun Fae. “As soon as we were done laying Merelle to rest, Renfis felt a burning pain in his chest, much like the one he described just now. We were on our way back down into the city when he dropped down to his knees and let out a terrible roar.” “It wasn’t that bad,” Renfis cut in. “So loud it caused an avalanche,” Fisher said, attitude coloring his voice. “The other mourners who’d been burying their loved ones at the top of the mountain knelt with Ren and began to pray. None of us had any clue what was happening. But the Ajun Fae told us that, as soon as your blood was one with the mountain, you belonged to it in a way. That, because Ren had buried his blood relative here, and she was his twin, no less, he was now a member of the Ajun Fae.” “And only the Ajun can be called to join the knighthood who guard its gate,” Ren said quietly. “So… you were called back here to watch the gate?” “Not the gate that protects the city, Osha. The other gate.”

Lorreth had told me of the other gate in the square at Inishtar. I’d promised that I wouldn’t go off on some harebrained mission to secure the brimstone we needed to stop the rot without Fisher, and in return Lorreth had told me where brimstone came from. “There’s always been a city here,” Fisher said. “Because there’s always been a gate. A portal between this world and another.” “Like quicksilver but not,”

“Yes. In many ways, the same. But in others not. The original Alchemists could never control it. Not even the strongest of them. It sent most of them mad. The gate would open by itself, and it wouldn’t close. Foul creatures used it as a doorway into this realm. They caused chaos and terror throughout Yvelia. Since no one could close the portal, the Knights of Orrithian were created. They were imbued with an old line of magic. Powerful. Six of them stand watch over the gate at all times, channeling their magic into wards that prevent all manner of evil from spilling into this world. They take it in shifts to protect not just Ajun but all of Yvelia.” “When the quicksilver was stilled here, cutting us off from the other realms,” Renfis said, joining in the explanation despite himself, “the gate at Ajun remained open. Belikon declared it was a sign. He said that because it was the only gate left open, it would lead us to riches and glory. He brought a Faeling here to Ajun, to visit the gate. He was barely more than a boy. Belikon put a sword in his hand and declared that he should be the first to go through the gate and behold the paradise that waited for us on the other side.” “Since this pool was different from all the other pools, he said I wouldn’t need the relic my mother gave me,” Fisher whispered.

“I was Oath Bound to him. Eleven years old. He said that I was already a fully grown male in his eyes, that I was ready to become a vaunted warrior of Yvelia, held in high esteem in his court. My mother had been dead a week, and he planted me on my knees in front of that stone and made me promise. It was easy for him after that. He ordered me to give him the relic, and then he ordered me into the pool.”

This was where Kingfisher had entered the quicksilver. This was where it had infected him from the inside out and almost driven him mad. “I did as my king commanded. I stepped into the pool. As soon as my bare feet touched the tainted ore, I knew I was going to die. I was transported to another realm. A place…”

“The king and his men waited for two hours for the Faeling to return,” Ren said. “And when he didn’t come back, the king feigned the loss of his stepson, the only remaining link to his precious Edina. He’d already bequeathed Cahlish along with the title that accompanied the land to his seneschal when the pool erupted and spat the Faeling out. His eyes were rimmed silver like the stars.” “I didn’t know myself,” Fisher whispered. “It took me a long time to come back… mentally. Belikon was disappointed. He’d thought it a good way to dispose of me. One of the Orrithian Knights returned my relic to me, and Belikon sent me off to learn the trade of killing in his war camps.”

“Inexplicably, the Ajun pool closed that day,” he said. “It’s opened and closed three times since, without warning. The knights always remained to guard it, just in case. No one’s been called to replace any of them in centuries. Until now.”

The gate is open. It cannot be closed. The gate is open. The gate is open… “It opened again, didn’t it?” I whispered.

“It did. And the beast that crawled through it killed all six knights on watch and dragged their bodies back through with it when it left. I was summoned as a result. Since then, it’s opened every day, for a period of three hours each time. We’ve been recording the timings. We’ve been waiting.”

“For the wards to break once and for all,” Ren said, looking down at his boots. “For the monsters of old to return and wreak havoc anew o...

We need you to seal that brimstone rune. And brimstone only has one source.”

“But if you’re not ready—” “I have to be.”

Ren hadn’t had a choice. Neither had Fisher. They had duty. They had honor. They did what they needed to, because it was the right thing to do. I would do the same. “And you?” Ren asked, turning to his friend. “Are you sure about this? There’ll be consequences. More sacrifices to be made.”

He wasn’t Kingfisher anymore. He was Khydan. Undeniably, the name fit him. It was like discovering the long-lost, missing piece of a puzzle. Like snapping it into place to complete an image, and finally seeing and understanding it in its entirety. He could only ever be Khydan to me now. And he was ready to face whatever awaited us on the other side of this door.

Pronounced kai-dan.

The pool wasn’t like any of the others. There was no stone lintel surrounding it. No stone basin to contain it, either. It was organic, like… some sort of festering sore. And the roiling liquid inside it was black.

“It’s never been given an official name here. The pantheon of undergods and the dragons they breed there call it Diaxis. But personally… I’ve always called it hell.”

KHYDAN GRAYSTAR FINVARRA I FUCKING HATE dragons.

Whatever the foul substance was that filled the pool at Ajun, it was nothing like quicksilver. It probed up my nose and coated my tongue, filling my mouth with the taste of rot. Passing through it felt like drowning.

I didn’t so much rise from the pool as find myself being spat out by it.

I’d never imagined anything could be hotter than the Third during reckoning… but this? This was unimaginable.

“You’ll need to pass through the gate at Ajun,” Lorreth had said. “You’ll need to bargain with the creatures there for access to their brimstone.”

A six-foot-wide sphere of light embraced us, but on the other side of it waited the unwavering darkness.

They were balls of living flame, those twin points of orange and red. Only they weren’t, because they were eyes, and they burned with hate. The ground shook beneath our feet as a booming voice spoke: “Bolddddd.”

When the beast ahead opened its maw, its giant jaws parting to reveal the glowing glands at the back of its raw, bleeding throat, the air buzzed with sulfur so badly that the stench nearly upended my stomach.

It was seventy feet tall from its huge, taloned feet to its withers.

it hadn’t translated, not truly: just how big the rest of the creature would have to be to warrant a head that monstrous. I understood now… and I was afraid.

“Two thousand yearrrrssss have I lived. Never has a meal walked straight into my mouth,” the dragon snarled.

“I hear the grindings of the gears that drive the universe toward destruction. I hear all. I know…” Its tongue probed between shattered teeth, flickering back and forth in the air. “… all.”

“You know nothing, name breaker. Your mind is too young to even know itself.”

“Styx. Lord of the charred aerie. King of dragons. He is your master. He is the one you must obey.”

“Who are you to speak his name?”

His whole life, Khydan had only known himself as Kingfisher. How much of a person’s identity resided in their name? How much of their soul? A strange thought. Khydan’s soul was the same as it had ever been. His personality, too. But… something fundamental had changed inside him. It was subtle. It was because he was free. “I am Khydan Graystar Finvarra. I walked these halls before, many years ago—” “Little more than a Faeling, you were then. You were tortured here, I remember. You have come to exact revenge upon this place, then? To destroy my kind, and all who call this place home?” “No. I come as an ambassador of my realm, as does my mate. We request an audience with Styx, per the rules of engagement between our realms. Etiquette—”

We weren’t allowed to die. There was too much riding on us. Khydan and I held the future of Yvelia in our hands. More than that. If Zareth was to be believed, we held the futures of millions of realms in our hands. Billions of lives. We stood at a nexus in the threads of fate. If we died, so did everything else. For a moment, I believed the dragon had seen that in our minds, and that was why it had redirected its fire. After all, if it killed us, chances were it would die soon, too.

The brimstone. My body was reacting to it. It drew me to it, but I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t reach it. And even if I’d been able to, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it once I had.

“I am Arissan, keeper of this gate,” the dragon boomed. “And I have not spared you out of mercy. That word does not exist in this place. Your lives are temporary. I have spared you for one reason, and one reason alone.”

“Your mate knows the answer to this question. Don’t you, Khydan Finvarra?”

“You’ve spared us so that I can be brought before your master for judgment.” “And your criiiiime?” Arissan’s tongue dripped blue-tinged flames as it flicked back and forth through the air like a switch. “I’ve committed no crime. I have done nothing more than defend my people and my lands. But you’ve seen my thoughts… and my past. You have seen me on the mountainside at Ajun. The undergods of Diaxis will charge me with murder—” “The murder of my offspring!”

Too hot. I was physically far stronger than I had ever been, but there were still limits to what my new body could endure. As my vision tunneled, Khydan’s voice echoed inside my head. Don’t speak. When you wake, for the love of all the gods, do not say a single word.

I was upside down! I was hanging over a hall ten times the size of the one at Ammontraíeth. I was fucking swinging…

Below, a thrumming mass jostled and shouted. Thousands of people were gathered beneath my head, and from their raised voices and the way they were throwing their fists in the air, they were celebrating something monumental.

I’d turned a fraction—just enough to see him hanging upside down in the air next to me.

A thick chain, pitted orange with flaking rust, looped around his ankles, suspending him. The same kind of chain cinched around my own feet, cutting off my circulation. Above, a huge statue of a robed figure clasped the ends of the lengths of chain in its huge stone hand.

The voice that had ordered silence spoke again, the sound reverberating and inhumane. No creature—human, Fae, or otherwise—had a voice that low.

There was no dais here. A circle had formed in the middle of the crowd, at the center of which stood two figures.

I dropped, agony exploding in my kneecaps as they struck stone. Khydan hissed as he, too, fell to his knees next to me. I couldn’t move. Invisible pressure encapsulated my body, rendering me immobile. My hands wouldn’t respond.

Are you calm? You just killed someone and disarmed someone else! Despite everything, Khydan’s mouth twitched. Disarmed? You’ve been spending too much time with Swift, Osha. You’re cracking jokes now?

Legs came into view. A torso. A tall, thin male with sunken black pits for eyes. A moment later, he was followed by another tall male, almost identical in features and stature, except that his eyes were glowing red coals. Long black hair hung down their backs, knotted into the most elaborate war braids I had ever seen. They were dressed for battle. On the right, the male with the black eyes spoke first, revealing himself as the owner of the deeper voice. “Look, Githrand. The old one has brought us some new toys to play with. Warm bloods. Yvelians.” The red-eyed male sniffed, his upper lip curling in disgust. “That one isn’t Yvelian.”

“I know not, Crave. But there’s a scent on her that I dislike.”

“Where did you get the sword, pet?”