Quicksilver (The Fae & Alchemy Series Book 1)

The next morning, Everlayne brought a breakfast of fresh fruits and yogurt—foreign delicacies I’d never tasted before. She sat with me and ate in my rooms, subdued and silent. I wanted to ask her about what she’d said back in the hallway yesterday. She’d called Kingfisher her brother, and not in the same way Kingfisher and Renfis called each other brother, like warriors who’d fought alongside each other. She’d meant it in a more literal sense, as if she and the evil bastard shared blood.

I didn’t bring it up, though. I’d made a choice when I’d decided to go with Kingfisher to the forge rather than chase after her to see if she was okay, and by the way Everlayne kept sniffing indignantly as she spooned her yogurt into her mouth, I’d hurt her feelings in the process.

She forced me into yet another dress with voluminous skirts—shimmering purple this time—and fashioned my hair, winding the thick braids she’d plaited so that they trailed down the center of my back.

When it was time to leave my room, she smoothed her hands down the lovely ivory gown she was wearing, then fiddled with the lace cuffs at her wrists, refusing to look at me. “If you want to come to the library with me, Rusarius and I collated all of the information we do have relating to the Alchemists and their processes yesterday. There isn’t much, but I believe it’s worth reading through—”

“I definitely want to join you,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t come yesterday. I know how badly you’re trying to help me, and I do want to learn.” How to get the hells out of here. How to find my way home. When I offered out my arm to her, she broke into a reluctant smile and slid her own through mine. And that, it seemed, was how long it took Everlayne De Barra to forgive a slight.

In the library, Rusarius was having a fit.

“Renfis, please! This is not a mess hall! There are precious works of art stored here, and—and—just—look! Look at all of that grease!”

I smelled Rusarius’s issue before I saw it. Something meaty and smokey hung in the air, the scent so mouthwatering that my stomach audibly snarled. What was that? It smelled divine.

“Gods, Fisher,” Everlayne muttered when she saw what he was doing.

The male sat at the head of the long clerk’s table, a plate on the polished wood in front of him. He speared a piece of ambiguous meat onto a fork, then popped it into his mouth.

Renfis was propped against the wall by the far window, arms folded over his chest, watching the proceedings with an air of resignation. “Sorry, Rusarius. I don’t know what you think I can do about it. The day I manage to make Kingfisher do anything is the day the Corcoran return.”

“Well, there’s no need for blasphemy!” the old librarian squawked.

“Where did your gods actually go?” I whispered to Everlayne. I’d been too overwhelmed to ask before.

“They set off on a pilgrimage thousands of—urgh! Another time. I’d better confiscate that food before Rusarius’s head explodes.”

Kingfisher remained focused on his breakfast. He didn’t say a word when Everlayne approached and stood next to him at the head of the table. He just growled.

“And you wonder why Belikon calls you a dog,” she said.

That got Kingfisher’s attention. Slowly, his head raised, the silver flashing brightly in his right eye as he turned a baleful gaze on the female. “I don’t wonder. I know why he calls me that.”

“It’s because of his deep loyalty to the crown,” Renfis said, biting back a smile.

Kingfisher’s eyes flashed, the quicksilver writhing amidst the green. He snapped his teeth at his sister. “It’s because I bite.” His hard expression could have made grown men turn tail and run scared into the night, but Everlayne arched an eyebrow at him and waited.

The male was once again dressed in black. He was armored up to the eyeballs this morning; the engraved chest piece he wore was black leather today instead of dark tan and bore a crest comprised of twin crossed swords wrapped in a tangle of vines, backed by the silhouette of a rearing stallion. He wore the same gorget at his throat, though—brilliantly polished silver with a snarling wolf etched into the metal. His thick dark hair was extra wavy, curling almost, not quite brushing the tops of his broad shoulders. When I realized how intensely I was studying the tips of the pointed ears poking through his hair, I quickly looked up at the glass-domed ceiling, clearing my throat, pretending to inspect the sky.

“Give me the plate.” Everlayne’s tone brooked no argument.

“Certainly.” Kingfisher set down his fork, picked up the plate, and held it out to Everlayne. She took it. “By all means,” he said. “Put my food on the fucking ground, outside, by the stables. I’ll go eat with the other dogs presently.”

Everlayne’s shoulders sagged. “Fisher.”

“Scratch that.” His chair legs scraped loudly as he got up. Snatching his plate back, he strode away with it, heading for the door…and right for me. “I’ll save you the trouble and take it there myself,” he said. His eyes glittered as he passed me. “Enjoy your dusty books, human. I’ll be waiting for you in the forge this afternoon. Don’t make me come looking for you.”

“Fisher, you’re being ridiculous. Come back!” Everlayne called after him.

He ignored her, spine ramrod straight, the midnight sword strapped to his back leaving a trail of wispy shadows in its wake as he stalked out of the library.

“Well, I didn’t mean for him to leave again,” Rusarius grumbled. “But I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it again. No cooked food in the library. I, myself, only eat dry crackers while working here. And I’m here for days sometimes. And I lean out of a window to avoid crumbs!”

“It’s all right, Rusarius,” Everlayne said softly. “He’s not himself at the moment. It might be a while before he stops behaving like a spoiled brat.”

“I’ll go and train with him. Let him blow off some steam,” Renfis said, pushing away from the wall. He paused by the seat Kingfisher had been sitting in a moment ago and rested his hand on its carved wooden back, frowning down at it. “He does deserve some grace, though. He has no rooms here. Nowhere to eat. Nowhere to sleep. No provisions. And a hundred and ten years, Layne. Can you imagine what a hundred and ten years would have been like in that place? Alone?” Sorrow dripped from each word. The princess and the soldier traded a long look. Eventually, the tension in Everlayne’s ticking jaw muscle eased.

“I can, actually. I spent the first three decades imagining it in great detail every day. After that, I did my best not to think about it—or him—at all. My heart couldn’t take it. And now he’s back, and I don’t have to wonder what kind of hell he’s enduring. Now, I get to watch.”

Her voice was thick with emotion, but she didn’t cry. She picked up a book from the table and set it on top of a stack, then moved on to fussing and fiddling with a sheaf of loose papers.

It was hard to see her in pain like this. And she was in pain. You’d have to be blind not to see that she was suffering. I stood on the peripherals of this group, which gave me an excellent view of the dynamics between them all. There was so much hurt between them. So much time, and history, and so many secrets. From the outside looking in, it was impossible to unravel all of the threads that connected them.

Renfis sighed. “There’s a way to fix him. We just haven’t found it yet. In the meantime, I’m not going to give up on him. Are you?”

A long pause filled the silence. Rusarius coughed uncomfortably; he gathered up a set of writing quills, carrying them into the stacks and disappearing off to gods only knew where. I didn’t have a pile of quills to carry off, and this wasn’t my library to go poking around in, so I had no choice but to hover at the end of the clerk’s table and stare down at my feet. Or at the point where my feet should have been. I couldn’t see them beneath my cursed dress’s skirts.

“So that’s it, then? You have given up on him?” Renfis demanded.

“No! No, I haven’t. I just…I feel hopeless.”

“If I have enough hope for him, then I’ve enough for you, too.” Renfis sighed out a long, steady breath, tapping the table with his fingertips. “I’ll see you later. Good luck. And good luck to you, too, Saeris.” He smiled warmly at me as he passed, which made me feel slightly less like I was eavesdropping on a private conversation.

Once he was gone, Everlayne bustled around the table, rifling through more pieces of parchment, organizing, and then reorganizing them. “All right.” She sniffed. “Where should we begin? Hmm. I think, maybe, if you start by telling us what you know about alchemical practices and how they might be used—”

“Uh, I don’t even know what alchemical means.” I didn’t want to interrupt her, but I figured it was best to get that out of the way before she went any further.

“Oh! Right!” She smiled broadly, but it seemed as though there was a hint of hysteria to her. “Well. That’s okay. I suppose that might even be for the best. No bad habits that way. We’ll start from the beginning, just as soon as Rusarius—” She broke off, looking over her shoulder. “Rusarius? Where in the five hells did the man go?”

“Everlayne? Are you, uh, okay? You seem a little…”

“No, I’m fine. Fine. Really, I’m fine.” She pressed her fingers into her forehead, screwing her eyes shut for a moment, completely not fine. “I..” She let her hand fall, all pretension dropped. “He was the very best thing in my entire life,” she said. “The only good thing. And he’s gone. I knew he would be, but it’s hard…to see, and…to accept, and…”

“Speaking of crackers, I knew I had some somewhere. I found a whole tray of them on a shelf in the Seventh Era Land Records section. Must have left them there the other day.” Rusarius emerged from the stacks again, carrying a small silver platter of what indeed looked to be very dry crackers. Oblivious to the fact that Everlayne was dashing tears away with the back of her hand, he placed the platter down on the table with a flourish. “Help yourselves, my darlings. But, uh…yes, please. Make sure to keep the crumbs to a minimum.”

Alchemy, it turned out, was a form of magic. Forgotten, long-dead, old magic that was as much a myth to the Fae of Yvelia as they were to the people of Zilvaren. There had once been three branches of Alchemists—Fae who sought to discover the path to immortality, Fae who sought to create and invent by transmuting various metals and ores, and lastly, Fae who sought to cure illness and disease.

Everlayne and Rusarius thought I was somehow like the second type of Alchemist—the kind that transmuted metals. At the beginning of our first library session, I had no idea what the word ‘transmute’ even meant, and by the end I still wasn’t sure I understood.

Thousands of years ago, the Alchemists used their magical gifts to alter the state of compounds and transform them into precious metals. There was no record of which compounds were used, or what was done to them, but the Alchemists were successful. They found a way to transform elements into vast amounts of gold and silver, which was reportedly used to fill the royal coffers. At some point, the quicksilver was discovered along with the other realms its pathways connected, and all manner of chaos ensued afterward.

“None of this indicates how I’m replicating what the original Alchemists could do, though,” I said, snapping the book I’d been scanning closed. “How did they actually control the quicksilver?”

Everlayne shrugged. “It’s assumed that they activated and deactivated it—or opened and closed the pathways—by using their magic.”

“It’s hotly debated whether they controlled it all,” Rusarius said. “According to most documents from around that time, the second order of the Alchemists lived very short lives. They often went mad and killed themselves.”

“Oh, well, that’s just great.” Whatever the Alchemists of old had done to earn themselves that fate, I wanted to know so I could do the exact opposite. But…damn it. Burying my head in the sand wouldn’t help me activate the quicksilver again, and I had to work out how to do that if I wanted to know what had happened to Hayden. The idea that Hayden might have been conscripted into Madra’s army was preferable to imagining him dead, but I needed to know. If Hayden was gone, he needed to be buried, and I needed to stand the customary seventy-two-hour vigil over his grave. If he was trapped as a new recruit of Madra’s army, then I needed to save him and get him out of there.

Either way, I had to figure this out, no matter what it cost me.

I rubbed at my temples, trying to ease the tension headache that was forming there. What with all of the thieving and black-market trading just to survive, life back in the Silver City hadn’t left much room for reading. My eyes weren’t used to it. I stared down at the book I’d been…

Huh.

Wait.

I held up the book, tilting my head, eyes narrowed at Rusarius. “How come I can read this?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, I’m from another place. An entirely different realm. What are the chances that you and I even speak the same language? That we share a written language? It’s just…it’s impossible.” It was wild that this hadn’t occurred to me before.

“Hmm, no. Not impossible. Not even improbable, actually,” said Rusarius. “You explain this one, sweet,” he said to Everlayne. “There’s one more book I want to find before you leave.”

Everlayne seemed happy to be given the task. “Well,” she said, leaning across the table to take the book out of my hand. “Right now, you’re speaking Common Fae. This book was written in Common Fae, too. There are other languages in Yvelia. Other dialects. But Common Fae is spoken by all of the courts as a shared, well, common tongue. When the first Fae traveled to your realm, the humans there spoke a different language altogether. Over the years, our language and our written word became adopted by the humans. Even though we were cut off from the other realms, it seems as though our language has thrived. In Zilvaren, at least. Zilvaren had Madra, and your queen has always spoken Common Fae. She served as an anchor to our language. Perhaps in other realms, languages and alphabets have changed.”

Madra.

As ancient as the stone halls at the center of the universe.

I had to ask. I had to know. “You seem to know a fair bit about her,” I said.

“Madra?” Everlayne pursed her lips. “I suppose I know as much as anyone here. She was young when she ascended to the Zilvaren throne. Blood-thirsty and hungry for power.”

“But how can she be so old if she’s human? How has she managed to rein for over a thousand years? And how could she have closed all of the pathways with that sword if she wasn’t an Alchemist?”

“We don’t know how she did it, but yes, Madra should have died centuries ago. It must be some form of magic, but we have no clue who performed it for her or why. We don’t know how she discovered that the quicksilver could be stilled with an Alchimeran sword, either. That information was closely guarded by our kind for generations. But you don’t need to be Fae or possess any special gift in order to close the doors between our realms. The sword will do it for you. As far as we know, when one pool of quicksilver is activated, all quicksilver everywhere is activated. It’s joined by some kind of…” She frowned, searching for a way to explain. “A ribbon of energy, I suppose. If you take a sword like Solace and plunge it into the quicksilver, it severs that energy in a way that paralyzes it. Until Solace was removed, every entrance to the pathway became frozen. There were members of this court on scouting parties, exploring new pathways that had only recently opened up when Madra cut the cord. Friends. Family members. They became trapped wherever they were. They haven’t been seen since.”

“Is it…I mean, is there a chance that any of them are still alive? I know very little about Fae life expectancy. How long do your people even live for? How old are you?”

Everlayne choked on a huff of laughter, covering her mouth with a hand. Was it me, or did she seem a little embarrassed? “That’s…not something we really talk about. You’d know that, but we haven’t really covered court etiquette yet.”

“Sorry. Gods, I should mind my own business. I—”

“No, no, no, it’s okay.” She shook her head. “I know we’ve only known each other a few days, but I sat with you for a long time while you were recovering. I’d like to think that we’re friends.”

“Me, too.” It was the truth. I was starting to think of her as a friend, and I was glad she thought the same of me. Having a friend in a palace full of enemies could never be a bad thing.

“Right. Well, now that we’ve established that,” she said, grinning. “Let me start out by asking you how old you think I am?”

“If you were a human, I’d say you were a little older than me. Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight, perhaps?”

“Gods.” Her eyes went wide. “This will come as a bit of a shock, then.” She took a deep breath. “I was born at the very beginning of the tenth age. I’ve been alive for one thousand four hundred and eighty-six years.”

“One thou…?” I nearly swallowed my tongue. Everlayne was nearly fifteen hundred years old. I couldn’t force my mind to make sense of that. She looked so young. Did I dare ask my next question? The one that burned on the tip of my tongue? I shouldn’t even want to know, but I couldn’t help it. “And Kingfisher? How old is he?”

Everlayne regarded me, a small smile playing over her lips. She took a long second to answer, during which time I internally berated myself for giving in to my infernal curiosity, but then she said, “I’d say that you needed to ask him. It’s not really my place to share information like that. Often, we don’t even know how old other members of our court are. But I do know how old Kingfisher is and telling you to ask him directly is just cruel. He’d never tell you, and he’d mock you for asking besides. Kingfisher was born at the end of the ninth age. Does that help you form some sort of a guess?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. He looks like he’s about thirty. So, maybe I’d say he was…” Gods, convincing the words to come out of my mouth was impossible. This was madness.

“Go on,” Everlayne prompted.

“I don’t know, eighteen hundred years old?”

“Not bad. He’s one thousand seven hundred and thirty years old.”

“One thousand seven hundred and thirty-three,” came a deep voice. Adrenalin exploded through my veins, shocking my system so badly that I nearly toppled sideways out of my seat. I twisted around, and there stood Kingfisher in a recessed reading alcove, bathed in shadows. Half of his body was concealed by a pool of darkness that was very out of place in the well-lit library. He studied his fingernails, that metal wolf-head gorget glinting at his throat. “What’s three years between family, though?” he said, shoving away from the wall and out into the light. “I’m sure it’s hard to keep track of time when you’re so distracted by the comings and goings of court life.” He gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Glad to see you’re finally sharing some truths with your new pet, Layne. I have to say, I’m a little scandalized to discover that they’re mine, though.”

“You wouldn’t have discovered anything if you weren’t eavesdropping.”

“Forgive me. I was bored. I decided to come and fetch the human after all, and you two seemed to be having such an interesting conversation.”

Everlayne rolled her eyes. She placed her hand on my forearm. “Never mind him. In answer to your other question, technically the Fae who found themselves trapped when the quicksilver was stilled could still be alive, yes. But the realm they were visiting was a volatile and dangerous place. It’s unlikely that old age killed any of them. But the local clans probably did.”

“Next time you’re curious about me, feel free to ask me,” Kingfisher said as he laid his hand on the forge’s brand-new door. This was the first time he’d spoken since we left the library, preferring to march through the Winter Palace in stony silence.

The door swung open, and he went inside.

I hovered on the threshold, trying to decide if I wanted to go in after him or if I wanted to run in the opposite direction, back to my room, where he wouldn’t be able to give me any grief. The palace was a winding nightmare of hallways, staircases, and corridors, but I thought I could find my way if I really tried.

My legs were as heavy as hewn stone as I followed him into the forge. “If I’d asked you something, you wouldn’t have answered me. And if you had, it wouldn’t have been the truth.”

“Incorrect. If you asked me something worthy of a reply, then I’d answer. If I answered, then it would be the truth.” Just as he’d done yesterday, he began stripping out of his armor, again starting by removing his sword. This time I was prepared and didn’t flinch when he drew the weapon.

“Right. Sure.” Humans and Fae were different in many ways, but sarcasm was universal.

His hands worked deftly on the strap that went around his side, unfastening his chest protector. “Try me, human.”

“All right. Fine.” Thanks to Kingfisher’s little clean-up trick last night, the forge was spotless today. The workbench was free of debris, the floor immaculate. All of the tools were good as new, hanging on hooks on the wall opposite the hearth. I maneuvered myself around the other side of the workbench, putting the biggest, heaviest obstacle that I could between us as he continued to remove his armor, just in case he didn’t like my questioning and came for me. Because I planned on riling him. Annoying him. Baiting him the same way he baited me, with his constant Osha name calling, and his open derision.

Screw him.

Kingfisher dropped his chest protector to the floor.

I braced against the workbench and said, “Elroy swears that a man will lie about the size of his cock every time a woman asks him.”

Kingfisher stilled. “Are you asking me how big my cock is, Osha?”

“I don’t care how big it is. I care about the way you answer.”

A slow, terrifying smirk spread across his face. “It’s big enough to make you scream and then some.”

“See.” I jabbed a finger at him. “You’re not going to be honest.”

He looked around the forge, feigning confusion. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure that I understand your meaning.”

“Ask a man how big his dick is, and he’ll show you that he’s full of shit.”

“Maybe. But I’m not a man. I’m a Fae male.” He paused. “And maybe I’m just well-endowed.”

“Or maybe you’re just wasting my time, and we should get on with whatever you’re going to attempt to teach me here,” I snapped.

Kingfisher’s hands moved to the back of his neck. It took him all of four seconds to unfasten his gorget and slide the silver plate free. “Maybe the issue is that you asked me a question about my cock like a hungry little bitch in heat and didn’t ask me something that mattered.”

Gods, but he kept surprising me. Every time I thought I’d reached the limit of how much one living being could detest another, he went and proved to me that I was capable of so much more. “All right. Okay. Fine. I will ask you something that matters. You were banished from the Yvelian Court because you did something bad. Belikon said you razed an entire city to the ground.”

He crooked a dark eyebrow at me. “That was a question?”

“Did you do it?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I’m sharing a very small space with you right now. Because we’re alone. Because I want to know if I’m breathing the same air as a mass murderer. And don’t dodge a question by asking me a question. Did you do it?”

He surveyed me intensely. Even from a distance, I could see the trapped quicksilver swirling in amongst that sea of vivid green. “Yes.” The word came out abruptly. Defiantly. “I did.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t have a choice.”

I slapped my hands against the workbench, my anger a clenched iron fist in my chest. “Why?”

“You’re not ready for that information. You’ll never be ready.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re human, and humans are weak,” he snarled. “Because it’s none of your business. Because it doesn’t matter why I did it. Because no matter what reason I give to you, it won’t be good enough. Now ask me something else.”

My voice shook when I spoke. “Renfis said that you’ve been suffering for the past century years because you were banished after you destroyed that city. Where did they send you?”

Kingfisher prowled toward the workbench. All of the armor was gone now. He was dressed in a simple loose black shirt and black pants again. At his throat, the silver chain hanging around his neck—the one he’d loaned to me when I was dying—glinted, catching my attention. I tried not to pull back as he drew closer, but he was huge. He towered over me, taking up so much room, invading my space, blotting out the damn light. He was all I could see. All I could smell. He was cold morning air, and smoke, and fresh-turned earth, and a thousand other complex scents I didn’t even have names for.

Canines bared, he leaned in so close that barely an inch separated the tips of our noses. And he snarled, “Hell.”

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He was so close. So angry. It was as if he was on the verge of breaking and only being held back by the thinnest of threads.

Out of nowhere, his composure snapped back into place, his canines disappearing in a flash. “Pray you never have to experience it firsthand, human,” he whispered. “Hold out your hand.”

“Hold out my…?”

“Yes, hold out your hand.”

Up this close, he could take my hand and the arm it was attached to if he wanted to. He could tear me limb from limb and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it. Numb and trembling, I held out my hand, praying wholeheartedly that he wasn’t about to start breaking my fingers for upsetting him. Something cool and smooth pressed into the center of my palm. Kingfisher closed my grip around it, then cupped his huge, tattooed hands tightly around mine. At first, I didn’t feel it. I was too aware of his proximity and the wild array of different scents that kept rolling off of him and slamming into me.

Wood, and leather, and spices, and something green, and faint musk, and—

“Ow.”

Kingfisher narrowed his eyes. “What is it?”

“Ow! That hurts!” I tried to pull my hand free, but Kingfisher’s grip tightened. He held on, grasping my hand tighter and tighter in his, and the burning sensation in the center of my palm really started to sting. “Kingfisher,” I said in a warning tone. He didn’t release me, only stood there, staring down at me, watching me, the metallic threads of silver shifting wildly in his right eye. “Fisher, what are you doing?”

“Tell me what it is,” he demanded.

“It’s hurting me, is what it is!” I cried, really pulling on my hand now. I wrenched and yanked, putting my whole bodyweight behind the motion, desperate to free myself, but Kingfisher held fast.

“Is it hot? Cold? Sharp? Soft?”

“Cold! It’s cold! It’s burning, it’s so cold!” That made no sense, but it was true. Ice crawled inside me, leeching into my bones. “It hurts! Let go, Fisher! Please! Make it stop!”

“You make it stop,” he commanded.

“I can’t! I can’t!”

Resolve flickered in his eyes. “You can.”

“Let go!”

“You want to prove me right, is that it? You’re weak? You’re a human, so you’re weak and useless and pathetic? Is that it?”

“FISHER!”

He spun us around so that my back was to the workbench. I felt the edge of the wood digging into the small of my back, but the pressure was nothing compared to the awful ball of pain he had trapped between our hands. “Listen to it,” he commanded.

“What?” He wasn’t making any sense.

Kingfisher removed one hand, but it made no difference—he only needed one hand to hold both of mine. With the hand he now had free, he grabbed me firmly by the chin, forcing me to be still. To look at him. “Listen,” he repeated. “What is it saying?”

“It’s saying that you’re an—evil—piece of—shit,” I ground out.

He didn’t react to that. “The sooner you do as I say, the sooner this all ends, Human.”

My jaw was screaming, I was clenching my teeth so hard. “Fuck—you—”

“There you go again. Hungry, needy little bitch in heat, begging to be fucked…” he taunted.

“Let. Go!”

“LIIIIISTENNN!!” Kingfisher’s roar snatched my breath away. It snatched the light, too. The whole forge went black as pitch in an instant, and the pain in my hand, traveling up my arm, turned into a rope of fire. “There is you, and there is the pain. Nothing else,” he whispered. “Move past it. Move through it. Let it roll over you.”

This was cruel. This was torture. I was burning alive. He was going to kill me. “I can’t,” I sobbed.

“You can. Show me that I’m wrong. Show me that you’re tougher than I think you are.”

Of all the things he’d said to me, it was this that somehow reached me. I sucked in a stuttering breath and tried to calm my mind. The thrumming, throbbing, panicking, desperate part of me calmed the tiniest fraction. An infinitesimal amount. It made the pain flicker for a second—not long enough to provide any real kind of relief—but it was long enough.

There was a voice.

A million voices.

Annorath mor!

Annorath mor!

Annorath mor!

Annorath mor!

The sound was deafening. I screamed around it, shaking my head, trying to get it out, but it blazed through every part of my mind, consuming me, eradicating every memory, every thought, every feeling…

“Annorath…MOR!” I screamed.

The pain blinked out.

The light rushed back in.

The voices fell silent, and the quiet they left behind was deafening.

Kingfisher stood frozen, still far too close for comfort, his hand loose around mine now. For once, that cold arrogance he always wore was nowhere to be found. With wide eyes, he looked down at our joined hands, his breath catching slightly in his throat.

I tensed when I saw the tiny ball of silver liquid rolling around in the well of my palm. Quicksilver. Not much. Little more than the size of a pinkie fingernail. But quicksilver all the same. And it was in a liquid state.

I panicked, trying to fling it away, but Fisher gripped hold of my wrist, shaking his head. “So long as I’m touching you, you’re safe. I’m wearing the pendant. It won’t harm us.”

“What are you talking about? It’ll definitely harm us! It just nearly froze me from the inside out!”

“That was nothing. A test. It’s over now. You passed.”

Incredulous, I gaped up at him. “What would have happened if I hadn’t?”

“That’s academic. You did.”

“Get it off me, Fisher!”

“Make it still,” he said.

“How the fuck—I don’t know how!”

“Close your eyes. Feel it in your mind. Reach for it…”

I did as he said, closing my eyes, trying to remember how to breathe around the knowledge that this tiny bit of quicksilver pooling in my hand was enough to rip apart my mind. I’d seen what it had done to Harron. I was about to curse Kingfisher again, to tell him that I couldn’t feel the cursed silver, but then…I could feel it.

It was a solid weight, resting there, right in the center of my mind. It was nothing. Not hot. Not cold. Not sharp. Not soft. It just was. And it was waiting.

“I feel it,” I whispered.

“Okay. Now tell it what you want. Tell it to sleep.”

I told it exactly that. In my mind, I willed it to still, to go to sleep. The solid little weight seemed to roll over restlessly.

“No, not sleep. Not now. Slept for too long,” it hissed, an innumerable number of voices all layering over one another.

‘Sleep,’ I ordered more firmly.

This time, it obeyed.

The weight lifted from my mind, disappearing until I felt almost back to normal. Almost, because Fisher was still holding my hands. When I opened my eyes, he was looking at the solid bead of matte, inert metal in my hands, a look of rye amusement on his irritatingly handsome face.

“I have to say, I was expecting that to go differently,” he mused.

And then I punched him square in the mouth.