Quicksilver (The Fae & Alchemy Series Book 1)

The morning brought with it a series of revelations. It was dark when Everlayne came to fetch me, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. Even the poorest home in Zilvaren drew black-out curtains across the windows when it was time to sleep. But I realized there were no curtains at the windows in my room as Everlayne cajoled me into yet another ostentatious dress. The world was black outside of the window.

“The suns are always in the sky, then? And there are two of them?” Everlayne asked, pulling my corset stays so tight that I’d wheezed.

“Yes.”

“Well, things are a little different here.”

It took a monumental force of effort to grasp just how different they were. Yvelia had only one sun. And it went down at night, disappearing beyond the rim of the horizon. The prospect made me feel like I was hallucinating again—a concern that intensified when the scene beyond the palace’s windows began to lighten on our way to the library, and I saw what was out there.

“What do you mean, what is it? It’s snow!” Everlayne said, laughing.

I stood before the massive window in the hallway, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, struck dumb. The view beyond the pane of glass wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. There were mountains in the distance, huge jagged-peaked monstrosities that made my legs wobble just to look at them. And there were trees. So many trees. I’d only seen the skinny-limbed ones with the jaundiced leaves that lined the walkways of the Hub. These trees were tall and green, pressed tightly together to form a canopy that stretched for as far as the eye could see. Directly below the window, a sprawling city with buildings constructed out of dark stone swept down toward a shimmering blue-grey ribbon that I realized was a river only when I saw that its surface was rippling.

Everything was capped with a thick layer of white. Everything apart from the river. So much water, rushing and flowing and churning. I stared at it, unable to understand how such a large body of water could even exist.

“This is the Winter Palace,” Everlayne reminded me, trying to coerce me away from the window. “It snows year-round here. At least once a day. Come on, we’re going to be late.”

I moved through the palace as if walking through a dream. The colors were garishly bright, the sights and sounds of the place too surreal for words.

Yvelia.

It still hadn’t sunk in. Wherever I looked, beautiful Fae females regarded me with cold disdain. Males watched me pass, sneers on their mouths, eyes flashing with hate. I was not welcome here, that much was obvious, and yet they needed me for something. I was supposed to repeat whatever I’d done in the Hall of Mirrors to that silver pool. While I figured out how to do that, I enjoyed the king’s protection. But protection did not mean kindness, and it certainly didn’t mean respect.

The library was at the far end of the palace, up flight after flight of stairs that felt like they would never end. I was panting and had broken into a sweat by the time we arrived, even though the temperature seemed to plummet the higher we went. Through an enormous set of black, engraved doors, a huge space opened up with cathedral ceilings and twenty-foot-high stained-glass windows that would have made Elroy weep.

Before she’d died, my mother had worked in the library back in the Third for a while. The underground warren of tunnels and hollowed-out caves had resembled a tomb and had stunk worse than death. The tiny number of books it had boasted had been half-eaten by mold, but at least it had been cool down there. Fifteen to twenty degrees cooler on a good day. The residents of the Third had to petition to visit the stacks; they needed a token and a recommendation from their employer before they were granted entry. My mother’s position as a clerk there meant that she could come and go as she pleased, and that boon had been extended to me. I hadn’t appreciated the unfettered access to the library at first. But when Elroy had accepted me as his apprentice, I’d combed through the library’s information not on glass working as he thought I should have, but on metalwork. Reeking of forge smoke and covered in grease, I’d pored over the written work of Zilvaren’s old masters late into the night, daydreaming of what it would have been like to have access to so much metal.

Yvelia’s library was staggering in comparison. So many books all in one place. Stacks upon stacks upon stacks. So accustomed to hunkering down, peering at crumbling, mildew-covered scrolls by candlelight, I was unprepared for how the sight of so many bound, hardback books would affect me. This was a treasure beyond Madra’s hoard of gold. More precious than rubies and diamonds. The information inside a place like this was too vast to comprehend. And the light!

Thirty feet above our heads, a glass-domed ceiling showcased a crystalline, bright blue sky. Wisps of clouds, tinged pink, stretched from one side of the dome to the other as if placed there by an artist’s paintbrush. The early morning light bore a sharp quality that washed the walls of the library in hues of blue, green, and white rather than the warm yellows, oranges, and golds I was used to.

It was beautiful.

So beautiful.

“You’ll make yourself dizzy, gawping up at the sky like that,” a cheery voice said. Bustling out from behind one of the far stacks, a portly male in a blue robe with wiry grey hair and warm, dark brown skin appeared. Hazel eyes dancing with mirth met mine as the male trundled across the library’s main floor toward us, clutching a tattered tome to his chest, limping ever so slightly. He was old, though how old was tough to guess. His hair was thinning on top and looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a month.

“Rusarius.” Everlayne’s smile shone from her eyes. I realized how disingenuous she’d just been when interacting with other members of the court. She beamed at the old male, then squealed as he swept her up in a one-armed hug and spun her around, lifting her off of her slippered feet.

“Put me down, you fool. You’ll throw your back out again!” she cried.

“Nonsense.” Rusarius did set her down again, though. He held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down with an unmistakable fondness. “Too long. Far too long. I can’t tell you how surprised I was when I woke up in the night to those rough-handed bastards dragging me out of my bed. I assumed they’d come to do me in. I’d stabbed one of them in the buttock by the time they told me I was being called back to court.”

Everlayne laughed. “The buttock? Hardly a fatal wound. Good thing you were brought back to your books. By the sounds of things, you need to brush up on your anatomy.”

Rusarius wagged a finger at her. “If I’d wanted the bastard dead, he’d already be in the ground. I only wanted to punish him for his bad manners. He’ll knock before battering down someone’s bedroom door in the future. Now…” He trailed off, his attention slipping back to me. “This is a most fascinating turn of events. Yes, most fascinating. A human, walking the hallowed halls of the Winter Palace for the first time in an age. I never thought I’d live to see the day. I am Rusarius, librarian, newly reappointed master of this domain. Who are you, and what name do you go by? I wasn’t told much before I was ordered back to work.”

Since I’d woken up yesterday, I’d been stared at, whispered about, threatened, and treated like a performing monkey. All of the attention had begun to chafe a little. Rusarius’s curiosity bore no malice, though. A childish inquisitiveness radiated from him as he circled around a table and came to stand on the other side of it, his gaze roaming over me with what seemed to be a purely academic interest.

Having decided that I didn’t mind these questions coming from him, I bowed deeply and laid it on thick. “I’m Saeris Fane, apprentice to the Undying Queen’s master glass worker. I hail from the third spoke in the blessed wheel of the sacred Silver City.”

Rusarius’s mouth turned down at the corners as he nodded. “The Silver City? Zilvaren, then. Is that so?”

“It’s true,” Everlayne said quietly.

The light in Rusarius’s twinkling eyes guttered out. “But…the quicksilver awoke? That’s not…” He seemed struck by an epiphany, his head whipping back to me. “Oh! So…so, this one’s an Alchemist, then?”

“Shh!” Everlayne flinched. “We don’t know what she is just yet. Kingfisher felt Solace calling, and he answered. He found it in Saeris’s hands.”

His lips parted slightly. “She was holding Solace?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but what’s an Alchemist? And what’s Solace?” I wasn’t used to being on the outside of conversations like this. It was zero fun. Neither of them bothered to answer me, though.

“Then I think it’s safe to assume that she is an Alchemist, wouldn’t you?” Rusarius said, raising his eyebrows at Everlayne.

“It’s—no! Well, it’s not that simple. The Alchemists were all Fae—”

“She must have a drop of Fae blood,” a deep voice murmured. “Enough to stop Solace from burning off her hands. But not enough to matter.” The owner of that voice was somewhere deep within the stacks. I’d only heard him speak briefly yesterday, but it was him all right. Kingfisher. Everlayne rolled her eyes, throwing her hands up in the air.

“You were supposed to wait for Ren to finish up in the bathhouse. You came up here by yourself?”

Through the glass dome overhead, the sky was still a bright, crisp blue, but the library somehow seemed darker as Kingfisher’s tall frame emerged from the center of the stacks. Yesterday, he’d worn a simple black shirt and black pants. No armor. No weapons. Today, he was dressed as he had been when he came for me in the Hall of Mirrors. A leather protector that covered only half his chest and one shoulder, a strap fastening underneath his right arm and around his ribs. Black leather tassets over his thighs. Bracers over his forearms. A polished silver renegade’s gorget gleamed at his throat. His hair was wet, the ends of his ink-black waves dripping beads of water onto the pages of the open book that he was reading.

Aghast, Rusarius leaped, snatching the tome out of Kingfisher’s hands. “Give me that! What’s wrong with you? That book is a first edition.”

Kingfisher turned a blank gaze upon Rusarius. He towered over the librarian, but that didn’t seem to matter to the older Fae. It couldn’t have mattered to Kingfisher either because the warrior dipped his head and cast his eerie eyes briefly to the floor. “My apologies, Rusarius. I’ll be more careful in the future.”

“Where’s Ren?” Everlayne demanded.

Kingfisher’s expression hardened. “I assume he’s still scrubbing his balls,” he said dryly.

“If you’re trying to shock me by mentioning random parts of male anatomy, then you’re out of luck,” the blonde-haired female snapped. “I’ve seen Ren’s balls. I’ve seen yours, too. I’ve seen everything,” she said, pointedly glowering at Kingfisher’s crotch, “so I know exactly where to aim my knee if you continue to test me. You don’t seem to appreciate the level of danger you’re in right now, Fisher.”

The huge male glanced down at himself, then back up at Everlayne from beneath dark, drawn brows. “The amount of armor I strapped on this morning would indicate otherwise,” he said, his low voice deep and smooth as silk.

“Belikon’s assassins could be anywhere—”

“Sounds to me like you’re the one I should be watching out for, darling Layne. You’re the one who just threatened to knee me in the cock.” A hint of a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, though it never materialized. He was as serious as the grave when he said, “None of Belikon’s men would be stupid enough to try and assault me within the walls of this court now. Not when I have a sword strapped to my back and my head screwed on straight.”

Gods, he did have a sword strapped to his back. I hadn’t noticed right away. Only the sleek black hilt was visible over Kingfisher’s shoulder. Out of nowhere, his eyes flickered to me—the first time he’d even acknowledged that I was there—and again, the library grew yet another degree darker. Was he doing that?

“It’s rude to stare at a male’s hardware,” he said stiffly.

What had he called me back in the Hall of Mirrors? Pathetic? A fucking joke? I felt like both of those things under the cold weight of his gaze. I didn’t have it in me to look away, though. I wouldn’t be cowed by the likes of him. He was the reason I was in Yvelia, trapped here against my will in the first place. If he’d just left me where he found me…

If he’d left you where he found you, you’d be dead.

Gods, even the little voice in the back of my mind was turning against me. Well, I wasn’t thanking him. Not when he was being so openly hostile.

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on stealing it. It isn’t very impressive. Looks more like a toothpick to me.”

Everlayne stifled a bark of laughter with the back of her hand.

“Oh, ho ho! I think that one might have drawn blood!” Renfis stood in the library’s open doorway, shaking out his hair like a wet dog. His shirt was soaked through. By the looks of things, the male had barely bothered to dry himself off at all before he got dressed. He carried a bunch of leather armor under one arm and a sheathed sword bundled in a piece of black fabric under the other. Despite the wicked grin he wore (courtesy of my sharp tongue, it seemed), the general was pretty pissed; his annoyance burned in his eyes as he set his load down on the long clerk’s table with a clatter.

Kingfisher didn’t pay him a lick of attention. He was still glaring at me. “This sword has slain thousands,” he seethed.

“I wouldn’t have thought that was anything to brag about,” I replied. “You should probably get it looked at.”

“Hah!” Renfis stuffed his fist into his mouth, biting down on his knuckles as he tried to swallow down his laughter. Rusarius glanced at each of us, his warm brown eyes bouncing from me to Kingfisher, to Ren, and then to Everlayne, who had turned crimson and was making a show of looking through a stack of books resting on the table.

“I don’t understand,” the librarian said. “Nimerelle is a formidable sword. Alchimeran. A much-lauded, storied weapon of the ancients. It’s an honor to even look upon—”

“Let’s get started, shall we?” Everlayne interrupted. “We’re wasting time, and we have a lot of information to cover. Fisher, sit down and stop scowling. It doesn’t suit you. Ren, you go down that end and make sure he stays in his seat. Saeris, you come and sit here.” She pointed to the chair at the very end of the long table—the furthest away from the seat she told Kingfisher to sit in.

Rusarius frowned, still confused, but then Everlayne shoved a book into his hands, and his face lit up. “Ahh, yes, wonderful! The Dawn Genesis of Yvelia. One of my favorites.”

I’d taken my seat, if only to end the staring contest Kingfisher was silently challenging me to, but I nearly leaped up out of it again in protest when I heard this title. “A history book?”

“One of the best,” Rusarius said, beaming. “Not just history, though. There are a number of chapters on Fae etiquette and politics that I think will be very useful in this particular situation.”

“I don’t care about Yvelian history. I don’t give a shit about etiquette, either.”

“Clearly,” Rusarius sputtered.

“Your politics and your courts are your business,” I pressed. “I want to figure out how to open up these quicksilver portals again, and then I want to do it and get the hell out of here. You all keep insisting that my brother and my friends are dead?” Even speaking the words out loud was tough. My throat ached as I forced myself to continue. “If they are dead, then I want to see their bodies with my own two eyes. I want to bury what’s left of them. They don’t deserve to be left out in the burning heat to be picked clean by the rats and the vultures.”

The library was silent. Ren hadn’t sat down yet. He quickly began donning the armor he’d carried in with him under his arm like he might have need of it any moment.

“Saeris, it’s been well over a week. I’m sure it’s already too late for that,” Everlayne said gently. “As hard as it may be, it’s better for you if you just accept that—”

“Do you have a brother, Everlayne?” I spat.

“I—” She blinked rapidly, flustered. Her eyes darted to Kingfisher for some reason, who kept his eyes fixed on a point on the other side of the library, his gaze steady and even. “Yes, I do,” she said.

“And do you love him?”

“Of course.”

“And wouldn’t you want to know for certain, one way or another, if he was dead or alive?”

She sat very still, her back straight, but it was as though a part of her was wilting inside. She glanced down at her hands clasped in her lap, saying in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Saeris, but it’s more complicated than that.”

“Is it?” Kingfisher asked abruptly. He was no longer staring into space. His eyes bored into Everlayne so intensely that I found myself thanking the gods that he wasn’t looking at me like that. “Humans are usually weak, fickle creatures, but I’ll admit, I admire this one’s loyalty. She values her family over everything else. There’s something to be said for that.”

“Fisher,” Ren said.

I started when Fisher looked away from Everlayne and turned his attention to me. “They won’t tell you this because they want you to behave. But there is a chance your people are still alive, human. A decent chance.”

A spark of white-hot hope flared to life in my chest. “How? What do you know?”

“Fisher!” Everlayne cried.

“Graceless gods.” Ren turned and walked away from the table, running his hands through the wet strands of his hair in frustration. Only Rusarius remained calm.

“Madra used Solace to seal the pathways a long time ago, but with the sword returned to us and an Alchemist in our midst, she knows she’ll have a war on her doorstep any day now—”

“She doesn’t know we have an Alchemist,” Everlayne argued.

“The pathway couldn’t have opened without one,” Kingfisher fired back. Undeterred, he asked me, “How many soldiers does Madra train and keep these days?”

“I don’t know. One, maybe two thousand.”

“Two thousand?” Kingfisher snorted. “Without a fresh army at her fingertips, she knows she’ll be swept away by a sea of Fae warriors thirty thousand deep once Belikon wedges the door into her world open. She lied to him. Tricked him. Cut off his trade lines to the other realms. Not to mention the fact that there are still rumors floating around that the Daianthus heir is in Zilvaren somewhere. The King will want a war and a bloody one at that. He’ll use it as an excuse to make sure there are none in the Silver City who might challenge him for the throne. Madra won’t have torched ten percent of her people to exact revenge against one silly girl. She’ll have conscripted them.”

Conscripted?

Kingfisher thought Madra would have put a sword in Hayden’s hand rather than kill him? Could that be true? There hadn’t been any kind of war in Zilvaren for centuries. The desert took a hefty tithe when an armed force attempted to cross it. By the time an army reached Zilvaren, it was half as big as it had been when it had set out, and extremely dehydrated. They could never win against her without access to a water source, so eventually, they stopped coming. Madra no longer kept an army the way she had done centuries ago. She didn’t need one. But if Kingfisher was right and she was worried about an army rising up out of the quicksilver, maybe she would conscript people from the wards. While I didn’t relish the prospect of war between this realm and my own, the possibility did present me with some time. I was grasping at straws, but it was something.

“So only one of these Alchemists can open these pathways between Yvelia and Zilvaren, right?” I asked.

Everlayne paled. “It’s a dangerous process, Saeris. And we don’t even know if it was you who activated the quicksilver the last time.”

“She was the one holding Solace,” Kingfisher said flatly. “There was no one else in that hall. Harron didn’t wake the quicksilver, and I sure as hell didn’t do it. If I were capable of activating it, I would have razed that infernal city to the ground a long, long time ago.”

He said it without any emotion at all. It was just a straight fact. He’d snuff out a million lives in the blink of an eye, just like that. I could see it now. He wouldn’t feel a thing at all.

“You shouldn’t have given her the pendant when you came through,” Everlayne whispered.

Kingfisher held up his left hand, which he’d clenched tight into a fist. “I still had the ring.” Sure enough, a plain silver ring flashed on his middle finger, catching at the light.

Everlayne shook her head, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “It wasn’t enough. You took more in, didn’t you?”

Kingfisher looked away, up at the sky, and the bank of thick clouds that were amassing overhead. “What does it even matter? I got the sword. I even got a new pet for you. One capable of performing fancy magic tricks that’ll make all of our lives better. So let’s just get on with this, shall we?”

I couldn’t stop staring at the silver plate he wore at his neck. It was beautifully engraved with elaborate lines, but it was the snarling wolf head at its center that captured my attention. The insignia was fierce and eye-catching. Prudent that he’d worn it to the library this morning, seeing as how Everlayne looked like she wanted to slit his throat.

“We’re going to fix this,” she murmured under her breath.

The silver in Kingfisher’s eye seemed to flare at her promise. “But there’s nothing to fix,” he said. “Only a human to teach and a queen to put in the ground. Once that’s out of the way, we can all get on with our lives. The girl can go back to her city and what’s left of her people, and Belikon can chew his way through yet another realm for all I care. My work will be done.”

“Don’t say that. Please.”

“You forget we’re already fighting a war.” Ren leaned against the back of one of the wooden chairs, his knuckles turning white. “The real war with Sanasroth is killing members of our court, your court, every single day.”

“The last time I fought in that war, a city burned to the ground. I think I’ve shed enough blood for Yvelia, brother.”

“Then shed it for your friends! Put all of this Madra business aside. Let Belikon deal with her and help me!”

It was as if there were a cord at the center of Kingfisher’s soul, and I could see it tugging him backward, further away from these people who so clearly cared about him. He was beyond their reach, it seemed. Nothing would draw him back to them. He blinked, leaving Ren’s plea unanswered. “I have two questions for you, human.”

I was the only human in the room. Clearly, he was talking to me. “Okay,” I said.

“Have you ever channeled a metal’s energy before?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, insides twisting. “What do you mean?”

“If you’d done it, you wouldn’t need to ask. You’d already know,” he said flatly.

I thought about it. All of the times I’d made Elroy’s tools hum. That spinning blade on my dead mother’s dining table. The guardian’s gauntlet, when I’d slammed it down on top of the wall—how its vibrations had made the grains of quartz in the sand dance. How I’d turned Harron’s dagger into a river of molten silver and steel.

“All right, then.” I met Kingfisher’s steely gaze. I didn’t blink. “Yes. I have.”

“Good. And my second question. Do you have any experience working in a forge?”

Laughter burst up my throat and out of my mouth. “In a forge? Yeah. You could say that I know my way around a forge.”