More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Hello, Foley. It’s been too long. I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, brother.”
“Because the Fae and demon kind have one thing and one thing alone in common. We are both bound by our oaths, aren’t we, fiend?”
“Where there is light, there is always darkness, shadow weaver. To kill a queen, you will need to visit the darkest of all places. You will need to strike a deal far more costly than this one if you hope to succeed. And the beast who lies in wait for you there will not be so easy to trick as me. She will eat you whole, shadow weaver!” Joshin roared as I held the flickering torch to its body. “She will tear away your soul and feed on it for decades!”
“She’s my drinking partner. And since you’re the one who left that spot wide open, you don’t get to complain about someone else filling the role.”
Whatever phantoms were haunting Carrion, he chose not to share, and I chose not to pry. A male’s ghosts were his own business, and I was having enough problems with my own.
“That you’ll have to truly feel the weight of everything you’ve done if you really want to love her. The hate. The shame. The horror.”
“Are you in love with her?” He let his head drop, laughing quietly as he pulled out a chair at the table and sank down heavily in it. Stretching his legs out in front of himself, he rested his hands on his stomach, one on top of the other, and looked up to meet my gaze. “No,” he said simply. And then, immediately, “Yes?” Heat flared up inside me, making my throat close. “It’s not a simple thing, Fisher. She’s… well…” “Spectacular,” I whispered.
“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.”
“I could have loved her. Truly,” Carrion said softly. “But this place broke me centuries before Saeris was born. I made the mistake of letting myself fall for a human once, and believe me when I say that once was enough.
“I didn’t have much to go on when it came to my kind, but it always seemed to me that the Fae must experience grief differently from humans. Humans live for such a short time. It made sense that their pain visited them and left soon enough after. It would be cruel. Would swallow up their entire lives otherwise. But for me…” He shook his head, looking down at his hands. “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
...more
“What is this place?” I asked. “The huntsman’s cottage at the boundaries of Cahlish. My father brought me here a few times when I was young. I haven’t thought about this place in…” He looked up at the ceiling. “Years?”
“I don’t know. The damned thing’s been following me around in my dreams for a couple of weeks now. Even when he was back in Cahlish.”
Everlayne was in love with Taladaius once. They were betrothed. And the night before they were due to be married, Tal fled the Winter Palace, against his father’s wishes and his king’s command, and he knelt at the feet of Sanasroth’s throne.”
“Why does any male act recklessly, Saeris? He did it because he was in love with someone else. He did it for Zovena.”
I spent a full second feeling sorry for Carrion, knowing how uncomfortable he must be, but then I remembered how annoying he was, and my pity went away.
Amelia Daianthus. The former queen of the Yvelian Fae. Belikon had found her in the bathhouses in the lower levels of the Winter Palace. He’d been carrying her husband Rurik’s god sword, Bitterbane, in his hands.
It was all here. 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. It must have taken Carrion a long time to create all of this. Years.
It left its comments hanging there between us, the most worrying of which—“Does your mate need to be wary of new faces?”—causing all kinds of chaos to unfold inside me, but I did not give in to panic.
“Mine is the power to put out a sun, perhaps? The power to… untether gravity?”
“I am capable of many things. You just need to know how to ask,” the Hazrax said.
“Fine. You’re right. I’ve known about the Fae my whole life.” He nodded at Carrion. “I’ve always known about him, too.”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay. But I wasn’t supposed to tell you I knew, anyway. There were rules I was supposed to keep, and—”
The Swift family wasn’t the only bloodline that was charged with a task they handed down through the generations. Gracia and her lot watched over the boy. Me and mine were given a different job to do.”
Our traditions have lasted far longer than your kind did. Every soldier in the king’s army is equipped with a null blade on the day they complete their training. Good luck fending off five of those, Alchemist.”
“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.”
“Erromar means mercy,” he said, in a reverent voice. “Selanir means honor.”
“Irrellieth ka tintar shey an mé correshan dow.”
Correshan means lethal bliss. Death by pleasure, perhaps. Old Fae was a far more descriptive language.”
“I didn’t know that she was an Oracle. Not for a long time. Some Seers become distant as their gifts grow. They know too much. They see too much. But not Lady Edina. She remained exactly who she had always been. Even when that monster sent for her, and she had to go…”
You know, she used to love coming to this forge, too!” He brightened as if he had just remembered this fact. “She knew nothing about metalwork or the workings of a forge, but she would come and sit in that chair, yes, that one, the one next to yours, and she would say that she was visiting with a friend. I never understood what she meant, but… but!”
“Her favorite flowers always grew here, out in the courtyard, along the far wall. I used to pick them for her. She loved the smell. Wait right here! I’ll fetch you some.”
“IT’S CALLED BRIMSTONE. It isn’t like our blood, exactly. It is what keeps a fire sprite alive, though,” Lorreth said.
“It’s an element, really. Brimstone. A kind of magic all on its own. It gives the fire sprites life.” “And it kills the rot,” Carrion said.
Fire sprites don’t need recovery time after we’re injured. We’re either alive or we’re dead.”
My head snapped up, something troubling suddenly clicking into place in my head. Elroy believes you’re innocent. That’s what Hayden had said. Elroy believes and not we know.
“May she be the last monarch this court sees!” Tal shouted, snatching a glass up from a passing thrall’s tray. “May she overcome all, for the glory of this holy court. May she usher in a new era and a new beginning for the people of Sanasroth! To Queen Saeris!”
don’t want you to be anything other than what you already are, Saeris. The dresses are just…” His brow furrowed. “They’re an invitation. The life you lived in Zilvaren was hard. You had to do everything for yourself. I’m here now, and—no‚ wait. No, let me finish. I’m here now, and just because I am your mate and you are mine doesn’t mean that I expect you to sit around looking pretty, or… or put down your weapons and adopt a different way of life. I would never want that for you. But you don’t have to be one thing here, Saeris. You can be many things. You can wear your leathers and fight every
...more
It was the warriors from Irrín. They had abandoned their temporary camp and marched on Cahlish, ten thousand strong, and Lorreth of the Broken Spire rode at their head.
“And you won’t. It is blasphemy to record such things on paper, King Killer. The rune is my name. It does not grant you magic, the same way other runes do. The ability my rune grants you is complicated. It allows you to… undo. Or maybe…” It pulled a strange face that I could not decipher. “Break?” it offered.
“Zilvaren,” I said breathlessly. “The city, fashioned after the shape of a wheel. The walls form the wards, but they aren’t spokes. The whole thing…” My head was spinning. “It’s a sigil. This entire time, Madra has been using the city itself to siphon the magic of its inhabitants. Zilvaren is the biggest piece of spellwork ever created.”
“Tarsarinn,” he said. “It means… redemption.”
“I sentenced him to life imprisonment, of course. Here, in an oubliette.”
They were once a clan of dryads. Self-righteous and arrogant as they were, they took it upon themselves to stand up to one of the northern witch clans. No one really remembers why.
For the first time in Yvelian history, a god sword had entrusted itself into the hands of someone it wasn’t bonded to. Because Kingfisher loved me. I had come here to save him… and that was good enough for his sword.
“Names hold meaning in this place. There is no power in this realm or any other that can supersede an order given using someone’s true name. A true name can undo oaths.
“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!”
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.”
“So… you were called back here to watch the gate?” “Not the gate that protects the city, Osha. The other gate.”
“That sword could end worlds in the right hands. If it’s what I think it is, it is one of the forgotten blades of our ancestors… and you do not have the right to wield it.”
But you killed our father’s emissary, too. You severed his only thread of power in Yvelia. You weakened him—”
