Brimstone (Fae & Alchemy, #2)

by Callie Hart

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

He’d left the safety of Cahlish. For her. He’d climbed the mountain. For her. He’d snuck through Irrín and crossed the river. For her.

“Gods and fucking sinners.”

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

I thanked the gods, the stars, and all four winds because, for once in his life, Carrion Swift kept his mouth shut.

Breathe, Saeris.

“They haven’t denounced her. They have safeguarded her.”

Developing a relationship with somebody would have been a fool’s errand that would have distracted me from the business of survival. But this was nothing like that. This . . . was two stars colliding. The end of everything and the beginning at the same time.

“Do you like having fingernails, Carrion?”

You okay, Little Osha? You’ve gone red.

It’s hard to concentrate on camp logistics when I can smell you across the room, though, Osha.

“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?”

“Fine. But I swear to the gods, if you talk the entire time, I will kill you and leave your carcass for the crows, Carrion Swift.”

“Scorpions, Carrion. That is the sound of a million fucking scorpions.”

“Hate to be . . . a bother,” Carrion wheezed. “But if you’re not in a position to . . . save me right . . . now, then . . . could you possibly kill me instead? This . . . really sucks.”

“Until you learn how to be gentle, I will not teach you how to be violent.”

“Do you ever wake up sometimes . . . and think . . . ‘Gods, wouldn’t it be nice if I hadn’t just gone toe-to-toe with a scorpion demon from hell?’

You’ve been up here throwing yourself a fucking pity party for the better part of a millennium, complaining about how terrible it all is, when you could have left at any time.”

The gods and martyrs damn him all the way to the bottom circle of hell.

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

“Sorry? You nearly cut my nipples off.”

“That, my boy, is a dangerous amount of quicksilver.”

“Hey, Saeris.” He shot me a roguish wink. “I think this belongs to you.”

I was fucked. Royally so, it would seem.