Brimstone (Fae & Alchemy, #2)

by Callie Hart

The sand from Yvelia that

Zivaran

kingfisher bird. Its left wing was chipped. Its blue and orange glaze was a little faded, thanks to the many years it had sat on this shelf, but otherwise it was perfect. I saw what had been placed underneath the figurine immediately: a small, crumpled piece of paper.

Merelle came to him there. Her spirit, that is. She bound her soul to that blade, so she would always be with her friends. That’s why he named the sword that. Ni’ Merelle. For Merelle, in Old Fae.”

“Impossible,” Belikon whispered. But of course it would seem impossible to him. A heart ruled by hatred and fear could not experience miracles. You had to know love, joy, and trust for that, and those concepts were as foreign to him as the idea of Yvelia had been to me not too long ago.

“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

“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.

The Hazrax made that perturbing clicking sound at the back of its throat. “What does it feel like… to lose something that you love so dearly?” The strangest question. Had it never known loss before? Had it been so sheltered its entire existence that it had never lost anyone that it cared about? The odds seemed impossible, especially when you considered how old the creature was. I was well equipped to answer it, though. I’d experienced more than my fair share of loss in my lifetime. My mother. My father. The few friends I’d been stupid enough to make when I was younger, back in the Third. There were bodies piled high in the mausoleum of my memory. “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.”

51 THE OBVIOUS… KHYDAN GRAYSTAR FINVARRA I FUCKING HATE dragons.