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Emotions painted the blood.
“They’re going to… destroy her, you know? It has already… been seen. This court will… fall… with her inside it.”
I knew the hard defiance she wore on her like a shield, but I hadn’t met her grief yet.
Have faith in yourself. You will always be enough.”
There isn’t much I wouldn’t sacrifice to make you happy, Osha. A little healing magic is the least of it.”
We were of one another, bound to one another, in a way that felt strange and thrilling.
where my mate was all darkness and quiet brooding, Taladaius was light, his mood often easier than it had any reason to be.
My fool’s heart had craved him more than my lungs had craved air… and now that he was mine and I was his, my need for him had only intensified.
I was immune to the effects of both silver and iron.
“You should leave Nimerelle here. They’ll see you carrying a weapon as an act of aggression.” “Good.” My mate’s expression went dark with the promise of violence. “It is.”
The thread of quicksilver that lingered inside of me no longer made me feel like I was hanging on to my sanity by my fingernails. For the first time since it had infected me as a youth, I had begun to think of the quicksilver as more of a blessing than a curse.
“She is… anathema. Cursed,” he choked out. “The g-gods denounce… her.”
beautiful and terrible as a storm,
she decommissioned the fucking horde,
the tattoo on my inner left forearm tingled, the ink shivering beneath my skin. Sacrifice.
“They fed on our magic,”
I was drawn to him like a magnet. Like my body was trying to find its way home into his arms.
This… was two stars colliding. The end of everything and the beginning at the same time. The idea of forming a relationship with someone back in Zilvaren was trivial in comparison to this. Fisher was everything.
You are my mate. I’m in love with you.
“She isn’t my girlfriend. She’s my mate,” Fisher said quite amicably. “And if any part of your body, literally any part of it, comes into contact with hers, then I will remove it.”
I hadn’t had friends in Zilvaren. Friends were expensive. In the end, they always cost you. Your food. Your water. Your money. Your safety. Your life.
Be under no illusion, Little Osha. You are all I can smell.
Because I could smell him, too. Bruised herbs. Citrus. Smoke. Leather. Pine, and cold mountain air.
“I’m not.” His eyes were burning. “The marrying type. I never have been. Before, the very idea would have sent me running for the hills. I just… I could never imagine the kind of love I would need to feel to choose that path for myself. But now I don’t need to imagine. Now I can’t think of anything I want to do more. Marrying you would be…” He shook his head, his eyes searching my face.
If telling me your true name is impossible, then—” “I don’t know it,” he whispered. “I’ve never known it. We usually receive our true names on our fourteenth birthdays, and my mother—” He blinked. “Well, she died before I turned fourteen. And my father was already gone. So…”
We can’t get married because I don’t have a true name to trade.”
“I love you, and nothing else matters beyond that. Wherever you are, I’ll beg the gods and all the fates to let me be there, too,”
You smell like excitement. You smell like laughter. And peace. And love.”
“You forget that I’m a winter creature, Saeris,” Fisher murmured. “I don’t crave the attention of the sun. The snowcapped mountains, the forest, the frozen river… those places are my home. You are home.”
It was thrilling to be witnessed so thoroughly.
“I despise the gods, Saeris. I’m Oath Bound by this land and the blood of kings. I swore I would never offer up a word of gratitude to them again, but you have made a liar of me. You’re a gift that cannot be ignored. My heart…” He swallowed, giving a tiny shake of his head. “I’ve killed more people than I can count. I lost the parts of myself that knew how to feel anything other than pain and sorrow centuries ago. But for better or worse, you have brought me back to life.”
“You taste like the end of the fucking world,” he purred. “Just kill me and be done with it. Nothing will ever be better than this.”
“Come now, Osha. Where else would an acolyte kneel to worship but at the altar of his god?”
Fisher’s blood was an eternal song. It cleaved my soul from my body. The taste of him was more exquisite than fresh, clean water. His blood was holy, and I drank like I needed to be saved.
I couldn’t tell where his feelings ended and mine started.
“What did Zareth say?” “He said he was severing us from the tapestry of the universe. That the gods wouldn’t be able to see us anymore.”
He said that Fisher and I are an axis of some kind. A convergence in the threads of fate. He told me that none of the gods could see around us. He said that we had to find a way to fix this, otherwise everything was lost.
I didn’t know your name. I didn’t see your face. But I knew, Osha. My soul recognized a flicker of itself burning inside someone else and it knew.
that much magic being unmade by itself would probably trigger a chain reaction that would unmake all magic.
“But… how?” It didn’t seem possible. “They’re just paper
“Aren’t we just the same? Made from the same material as the sea and the dirt and the sky? Folded from the scraps of the gods and entrusted with a spark of magic that makes us real?”
“Not for blood, King Killer. For information. For home. For release
you should know by now that the cost for most things is always blood.”
“Alchemists required a lot of sleep to regulate their power. Their bodies needed rest in order to tap into their magic effectively.
an Alchemist’s magic can only be harnessed.”
I knew Merelle didn’t blame me for her death. She would have had every right to, but she hadn’t. She had chosen to bind her soul with my blade, to remain a part of the Lupo Proelia and stay close to those she loved.
“That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it?” my mother spat. “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?”
“No,” he said simply. And then, immediately, “Yes?”
“It’s not a simple thing, Fisher. She’s… well…” “Spectacular,” I whispered.
