Brimstone (Fae & Alchemy, #2)

by Callie Hart

“What do you think I’m doing?” I snarled. “I’m saving the fucking fox!”

🥹🥹🥹🥹

“And the day you save me on a battlefield, I’ll put on a dress and dance a fucking jig.”

“Never doubt your powers, sweet one,” she’d told me. “Each one of them is a gift. Each one will prove exactly enough when you have need of it. Have faith in yourself. You will always be enough.”

“I didn’t know you could heal!” I shrugged. “I can’t now. Not anymore, anyway. It wasn’t much, but I gave him what I had.”

“Don’t you know? There isn’t much I wouldn’t sacrifice to make you happy, Osha. A little healing magic is the least of it.”

“I still think he’d made a great hat.”

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

Lmao screams Carrion

“I am no child. My name is Saeris Fane, and I am your queen.”

I gravitated toward her anyway, but after what she’d just done—she had no idea what she’d done—my

“Far be it from me to come between a female and her fox.”

ANOTHER DRESS LAY over the back of the chair, untouched. I’d chosen it yesterday, pulling it from the garment bags safely tucked away at the back of my mother’s dressing chamber. They hadn’t belonged to my mother; I found the dresses there shortly after bringing Saeris to Cahlish for the first time. They weren’t my mother’s style or her colors at all. She had simply foreseen a day when Saeris would come and had left an entire wardrobe for her—a gift for the beloved female that she would never call daughter.

Stop 😭😭😭😭

“Why were you calling my mother’s name?”

I knew it

All libraries contained magic. Even libraries that didn’t specialize in such things. Because what was a book, if not a portal into another realm, another time, another life even.

“Are you in love with her?”

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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

“Don’t use the word rub and then refer to me in the same sentence, please,”

“Take this one,” I whispered, drawing forth a different memory. A morning, one much like any other, sitting in the loft of the Mirage. I had been counting money. I had been telling Hayden… Been telling Hayden… I gasped, a sudden, sharp, shooting pain at my temple. It was there and then gone again. Wait. What had I just been thinking about?

OMG WHAT WAS THE MEMORY?

“Every part. I love all of you.” He blew a dark curl out of his eyes. “I’d spend the fortunes of the universe to protect you. I’d drain the seas dry. Fell every tree. I would sacrifice the sun from the fucking sky and surrender the stars, too, if I could. But those things aren’t mine to give. All I have is my life. It isn’t much, but I’d spend it and consider the price small if it meant keeping you safe.”

When my husband says “love you” but Kingfisher says this

“You have one second to look away from that fox,” Fisher said flatly.

You tell him, bb

But you don’t have to be one thing here, Saeris. You can be many things. You can wear your leathers and fight every day of the year. I would never ask you not to. But sometimes, if you wanted to… you’re allowed to soften, Saeris. You’re allowed to stop baring your teeth at the world and take a breath. Because I’ve got you.”

Swoon

“Aren’t you tired? How the hell are you running on so little sleep?” Carrion waved off my concern. “Oh, y’know. Centuries of debauchery and general delinquency.

“I shouldn’t tell you this, since you seem blissfully unaware of the power you hold over me, but… I will give you whatever you want, Saeris Fane. Always. No matter what it costs me.”

“I’m yours to command, Queen Saeris,”

“Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate, I hereby call you by your true name. I declare all oaths you have sworn null and void. Rise, Khydan Graystar Finvarra, in honor of the name you were given at birth! Rise up and fight!”

In all my years alive and traveling this realm, I had never encountered anything so mighty and brave as this little fox with the heart of a wolf.

“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. You needed Onyx when you first got here, Saeris. He saw that perhaps, and he came. But now—”

“What does it feel like… to lose something that you love so dearly?”

“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.”

I FUCKING HATE dragons.

“I’ve come for a dragon, as is my right. Summon our father. Tell him I’ve come to make a trade.”

WHAT THE FUCK