“HUMAN’ had come first. Then ‘Oshellith,’ or ‘Osha,’ said with a hefty amount of disdain. Then ‘Little Osha,’ which had first been mocking but had then shifted to an endearment.
But Fisher had said my name. Finally. And it was…weird.
Lorreth rubbed his knuckles up and down his sternum, frowning. Ren laughed under his breath, ducking his head. Danya said something in Old Fae and spat on the ground, still cradling the smoking stump at the end of her right arm. But fuck Danya. Danya was the worst. And me? I just stood there like an idiot, not sure what to do or say, as the shock sank into my bones.
Fisher was immediately all business, opening up a shadow gate. I passed through first and found myself transported into the dining room, where I had first encountered the feeders. I sat at the table, impatiently rapping my fingernails against the wood as I waited for the others. Danya came next. She scowled when she saw me. Her thick blond war braid was spattered with blood. “Well, look at you. The jumped-up little Alchemist, sitting in pride of place at the family table. You’d better move before the others arrive, or you’re gonna find yourself very embarrassed.”
I was sitting where I always sat now, to the right of Fisher’s chair. But the way Danya sneered at me made me think I’d made a very grave social error. It wasn’t the first time someone had reacted to me sitting here. First, there had been the fire sprites. Archer had burst into flames when he’d seen me sitting in this seat. Then, there had been Ren, choking on his food. I looked up at the ceiling, leaning back into my seat.
“What’s the big deal? It’s just a chair.” I said it oh-so-flippantly. If she knew I was really interested in the answer, she probably wouldn’t tell me just to be difficult.
Danya kicked the legs of the chair opposite me, shoving it back so she could sit down. “That seat is reserved for the lady of the house, you stupid girl. Etiquette dictates that only Fisher’s wife is permitted to sit there. It’s a position of high honor meant for a Fae female born into one of the old houses, and you’re just sprawled out there like you own the damn seat. It’s offensive that he even lets a human sit at the same table as him. But this…” She waved at me with her remaining hand. “This is just too much. Like I said. You should move.”
While she spoke, Ren stepped through the swirling gate, carrying a pile of books, leather bags, and six or seven long, rolled-up scrolls under his arm. Danya smirked, as if I was in for it now and she couldn’t wait to watch me get dressed down. But Ren assessed the scene, shot me a wink, and said, “Don’t you worry, Saeris. You’re perfect right where you are.”
Danya’s mouth fell open. “What the fuck? You all treat her like some important foreign emissary. She’s just a human. What other rules will she be allowed to break?”
I hadn’t heard Fisher come through the gate. I felt his presence, though
—a pleasant warmth in the back of my mind. The scent of the forest enveloped me as strong, tattooed hands rested on top of my shoulders. “No rules have been broken, Danya. And even if they had, that wouldn’t be any of your business.”
Aghast, the female took him in, standing there behind me, his hands on my body. “You can’t be serious, Fisher. We all know you’ve fucked her. The whole camp can smell it on the two of you. But she’s a human—”
“And?” Ren dumped everything he was carrying down onto the ground with a snarl. “She’s honorable and brave, not to mention the most powerful Alchemist ever documented. She disarmed you in half a fucking second if you recall. Who the fuck are you to say she and Fisher don’t belong together?”
Whoa. Belong together? Behind me, I felt Fisher stiffen. Any moment now, he’d spit out some scathing remark, telling them not to be so fucking stupid. I would laugh off the sting of his contempt at Ren’s suggestion, and we’d all go back to worrying about the truly important matter at hand: Everlayne.
But Fisher said, in a very calm tone, “My personal life isn’t up for public discussion.”
“Holy fuck. Why is it so cold in here?” Carrion was carrying a sword and a potted plant under his arm, still wearing his thick coat with the coarse fur over its wide collar.
“I found him up at the forge,” Lorreth said, stepping through the gate behind him. “He was still asleep.”
“Hey, don’t say it like that!” Swift shot him a wounded look. “We had a very long night, y’know.”
“You slept through a battle,” Lorreth said. “And I’m a very heavy sleeper!”
“What’s with the plant?” Ren asked.
Carrion shrugged. “I don’t know, I liked the look of it. It was the only green thing for a mile amongst all that white. I figured it deserved an easy life if it had made it this far growing out of a snowbank. Plus, my tent was so bare. It needed a little cheering up.”
“For fuck’s sake. This is ridiculous.” Danya rose from her chair. “I can’t spend another minute in here with scatterbrained humans. Just because they’re…pretty…” She wobbled, her eyes glazing over. Tucking her chin, she reached for the edge of the table, but her fingers found nothing but air.
“Lorreth?” Fisher said quietly. “Fuck, do I have to?”
“Please?”
Lorreth grumbled as he crossed the dining room in four long strides and caught Danya right as she fainted. He did not look pleased to be holding the female in his arms, and I couldn’t say I blamed him.
“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Fisher sighed. “Come on. We’ll take her to the healer.”
“And what about us?” I asked. “We can’t just sit here. I need to do something.”
Fisher reached for me. I lifted my hand, just enough so that he could hook the tip of his index finger around mine for a second. “Go to the forge. Get to work on the relics. Make as many as you can, Saeris. I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”
Ren left with the others, saying he needed to check the grounds and let the guards know we were here. As soon as we were alone, Carrion threw off
his coat and pointed emphatically at the door, after the Fae who had just exited through it. “Did you hear that?” he said.
“What?”
“That smoking hot blonde said I was pretty.”
“Gods alive, Carrion. Do not tell me you have a thing for Danya. She’s fucking awful.”
“Eh.” He shot me a rakish grin. “I love a girl with a sharp tongue and a bad attitude. Kinda makes my dick hard.”
 |
The rain had stopped, thank the gods.
Onyx snuffled into the forge, his nose glued to the ground, following a trail; he squealed when he saw me, his whole body wiggling with excitement. I spent half an hour giving him pets and treats from the plate of food a timid fire sprite delivered for us, and then he happily headed out into the courtyard to sit in the dark, his little fluffy head tipped up towards the stars. It was already well past midnight. Had this been a normal day, we should have been thinking about going to bed, but we’d slept from dawn until dusk, when Ren had come to tell us the horde were at the river. And after fighting and ending so many feeders, and then the awful news of Everlayne’s capture, I was officially awake.
Good thing I had a mountain of work to keep me occupied.
The tiny orb of quicksilver rolled around in the bottom of the crucible in a languid anti-clockwise direction. Negotiating with this quicksilver had turned out to be tricker than when I’d forged Avisiéth. It insisted it didn’t want anything—that it had no interest in being a relic. It was bored of me poking and prodding at it, and it didn’t want to be bothered anymore.
“We’re wasting time. And I’m confused. You have the ability to command the stuff to do what you want it to do. Why don’t you just force it to comply?” Carrion asked.
“I’m not forcing it to do anything. It’s sentient, Carrion. It has a mind of its own. It thinks. It talks—” I really wished it didn’t, “—and I’m not going to make it do something it doesn’t want to do.”
Carrion knew about the bargain Fisher had tricked me into. He knew how I felt about being stripped of my free will. It was surprising that he’d even suggest this. He plucked one of the Fae rings out of the wooden trunk by the hearth and flicked it up into the air. A flare of silver flashed in an arc as it spun. Distractedly, he said, “I take it you’ve forgiven our benevolent kidnapper for his crimes, then? You and he seem very close.”
“I’m not talking about Fisher with you.” I set down the crucible so I could stoke the coals in the hearth.
“Why not? As you so forcefully reminded me recently, we’re not exes. We only slept together once. I assure you, you’re not going to hurt my feelings.” He leaned against the bench, waiting.
“I don’t want to talk to you about him because you’ll use whatever I say to taunt me. Come here and pump these bellows.”
He looked affronted. “What, am I your slave now?”
“If you insist on staying in here and annoying me, then you’re going to make yourself useful at the same time. Those are the rules.”
He made a face but still came, took hold of the bellows’ handles, and began to pump them. “Come on. We’re gonna be stuck in here for hours. You might as well tell me. I won’t taunt you, I promise.”
I snorted. Carrion’s promises weren’t worth the paper they were written on. He was notorious for swearing things left, right, and center and then not honoring his word. It would be very stupid of me to expect him to keep this promise…but I found myself starting to speak. “I’ve forgiven him, I suppose. Yes. He didn’t make me do anything that hurt me or anyone else. He compelled me because he thought it would keep me safe. And he knows what’ll happen if he ever does it again.”
This would earn a snide remark from Carrion, surely. But no. All five hells must have frozen over. He just nodded. “Y’know, I thought it was weird when he bribed me to take a bath with those boots. I asked one of the sprites who came to bathe me. Y’know, one of the water sprites with the giant…” He mimed cupping a pair of sizable breasts on his own chest. “I asked her why they were trying to flay three layers of my skin off with that weird moss, and they said it was special. They said Fae who liked to bedhop were fond of it ’cause it eradicated the scents of their other partners. I couldn’t think of why Fisher would care if I smelled like those triplets who just started working at Kala’s—”
“Gods, you’re incorrigible.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “But then, I realized that it was you. He didn’t want me smelling like you.”
I refrained from commenting. I had suspected that was why Fisher had made Carrion take that bath, but I’d never said it out loud. Not even to give him shit. I didn’t know how it made me feel back then. And I was too much of a coward to admit how it made me feel now.
I went and collected the crucible with a pair of tongs. On my way over to the hearth, Carrion flicked the ring he was fiddling with into the air again, and I snatched it mid-spin before he could, dropping it into the iron pot with the quicksilver.
“What? You have nothing to say about that?” he asked.
“Not really. Who knows why he did it. Maybe he just thought you stank.”
“Hey!”
“Look, Fisher has his secrets. I don’t stick my nose where—”
A secret…
I stopped talking, canting my head to one side. I had heard that, right?
The quicksilver had just spoken? “What?” I asked out loud.
“I said,” Carrion began, but I held my finger to my lips, glaring at him, then pointed to the crucible. He got it immediately and shut his mouth.
A secret, the quicksilver whispered. We like secrets. We’ll change for you if you tell us one.
Huh. So that’s what this quicksilver wanted. One secret? That, I could manage. I’d learned my lesson after giving that song to the quicksilver in Avisiéth, and it had ceased to exist, though. I was going to be smarter this time. “If I tell you a secret, will I still remember it afterward?” I asked aloud.
“Of course,” the voice replied. “And will it still be a secret?”
“You will know, and so will I. But I won’t tell, I swear it.”
All right. So it wouldn’t erase any information from my mind, nor would it spread the information around so that everybody knew it. Then there was nothing to worry about, I supposed. I didn’t say it out loud this time. I spoke only for the quicksilver.
“I don’t want to go back to Zilvaren anymore. Not forever, anyway. I want to go home, get Hayden and Elroy, and then bring them back here to Yyvelia.”
This wasn’t the most scintillating, realm-shattering gossip imaginable. But to admit to it was massive for me. I had spent every waking moment in this place fighting to get home so I could save my brother and my friend. But then I’d found out that they didn’t need saving. Not the way I’d thought they would. And I’d made friends here. Friends I cared about, who I had the ability to help win a war that had taken over their lives for hundreds of years.
And there was Fisher.
Things were uncertain on that front. Maybe I was fooling myself, and he would discard me after he’d had his fun. But either way…I didn’t want to leave him.
The quicksilver rippled in the crucible, geometric patterns forming and reforming over its surface. It was beautiful to look at, but strange—I hadn’t seen it behave like this before.
“Yes, a good secret. Very good. You want to stay. You want to save him.
You must. You must.”
I frowned, watching the quicksilver closely as it vibrated next to the ring in the bowl of the crucible. “Save him?” I thought. “Hayden? Yes, I want to bring him here.”
“Not the brother. The Kingggfisshhherrrr,” the quicksilver buzzed.
“Save him. Save the gates. Save Yyvelia.”
“I just love it when you disappear into tense conversations with creepy portal metal,” Carrion quipped, hoisting himself up to sit on the bench. “It’s fascinating watching you do all of those facial gymnastics.”
“Just a moment, Carrion,” I whispered. Then to the quicksilver, I said, “What do you mean, save Kingfisher? He’s here. He’s okay.”
I watched the quicksilver roll over the ring, enveloping its surface, coating it, sinking inside it. It said, “We are token. Key. Relic. Shield.” The words overlapped like layers of cloth, one on top of the other, but I still heard each one perfectly. “Seal us with blood, Alchemist,” the relic demanded.
Blood. It always came down to blood in the end. Sighing, I took out the dagger that Fisher had given me back in the Winter Palace and used it to prick the tip of my index finger. A tiny bead of glossy red blood welled there.
“Urgh, I think I’m gonna be sick,” Carrion groaned, looking up at the ceiling. “I am not good with blood.”
I rolled my eyes, squeezing my finger and holding it over the crucible. The tiny bead formed a teardrop, wobbling, and then it fell, hitting the ring. Wild. My blood didn’t roll off the band of the ring. It was absorbed into it, just like the quicksilver was.
Complete. We are complete.
Picking up the ring, I held it up to the light, and I felt that it was indeed complete. Both the key and the lock. Whole. I couldn’t explain how I knew the process had worked, but I was sure. The silver band was beautiful, still marked with its original engravings; whoever this ring belonged to would be pleased that it still bore their family’s crest. “But what did you mean about saving Fisher?” I pressed. “He’s safe here. Why does he need saving?”
The ring said nothing. Nothing at all.
Frustration welled up in me, and I didn’t know why I did it, but I was compelled to act. I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing as I slipped the newly made relic onto my middle finger.
The forge went dark.
An icy wind lanced through me, whipping my soul. And the sound. Gods, the sound. A million different voices chanting with a deafening might.
ANNORATH MOR! ANNORATH MOR! ANNORATH MOR!
ANNORATH MOR! ANNORATH MOR! ANNORATH MOR!
“Saeris?”
The roaring cut off dead. The candles in the forge strengthened, the flames leaping up the back of the hearth, licking over the blackened brickwork. And then, just had it been only moments before, everything was normal again.
I tore the ring off my finger, panting. My heart pounded, a terrible sense of hopelessness solidifying in my gut. I wouldn’t be doing that again.
Te Léna was at the open doorway, technically standing inside Cahlish. Ren’s magic still overlayed the doorway to one of the guest bedrooms back in the manor house with the entrance to the forge outside, located by the stable, ensuring the house would be safe should I accidentally blow myself up. The healer wrung her hands, eyeing the doorway with surprising suspicion. As always, her jet-black hair was tied into long braids that went all the way down to the small of her back. The tips of her pointed ears
poked out between them. Complimenting her flawless umber-bronze skin, she wore a gown made of iridescent blue material that flowed around her as she shifted from one foot to the other.
“I just wanted to come and see how you were. I heard you fought earlier,” she said. “Do you have any cuts or scrapes that need attention?”
I didn’t get a chance to reply. Carrion, dog that he was, jumped in before I could get a word out. He hopped off the bench, crossed the forge, and leaned against the wall by the doorway in that practiced, careless way of his. “You look stunning this evening, Te Léna. You’re literally the only good thing about being back here,”
She laughed. “Aside from the running hot water, you mean? And the soft feather beds? And the endless supply of delicious hot food?”
“No. I hate every single one of those things,” he said theatrically. “You remain the only bright star in a sea of darkness here. Tell me you’ve changed your mind about having dinner with me.”
She gave him a chastising look, holding up both of her hands and showing him their backs. “I regret to inform you that I am still happily mated and married, Carrion Swift. And my husband isn’t the type to share.”
“Is he handsome?” Carrion arched his eyebrow suggestively. “I do love a husband-and-wife team. Maybe he’ll let me join you both if he…”
A high-pitched ringing sound filled my ears. It blocked out Carrion’s overt attempts at seduction and Te Léna’s very polite rebuff. The Fae healer had lowered her hands again, but I was staring at them, eyes fixed on them. They were marked with runes. Some of her fingers bore one or two runes. Others had none. There was an elegant design on the back of her right hand, but the other was bare. Louder, the ringing in my ears intensified. I hadn’t even realized that I was crossing the forge until I was standing in front of Te Léna and I was gesturing to her hands.
“Do you…I’m sorry, I, uhh, I’ve never seen such pretty tattoos before.
Would you mind showing them to me?”
“You sound weird,” Carrion said. “And I’m trying to help her forget the tattoos, not make a big deal out of them. Gods, you sure know how to ruin a guy’s chance of getting laid.”
Te Léna laughed again. “Carrion, let me put this as plainly as I possibly can. So long as the sun still rises and sets every night, I am never going to sleep with you.” To me, she said, “Of course. Thank you, Saeris. I think they’re pretty, too. My husband and I designed them together.”
She had beautiful hands. Graceful and slender, with long fingers. Three out of the five fingers on her left hand bore runes. Two on her index finger, two on her middle finger, and only one on her little finger. On her right hand, there was a single rune on her index finger and another on her ring finger, and that was it.
She traced her fingers over the ink on the back of her right hand, beaming as she extended it out for me to see properly. “It’s a Fae custom to mark our skin on our fifth wedding anniversaries. We tattoo the blessings we pray for onto our hands in the hopes that they become manifest. Yaz and I decided on a harmony mark, a longevity mark, and two child marks. Greedy I know, to wish for two children. One would be blessing enough, but…” She shrugged. “No point in holding back when it comes to these things, right?”
“I’m sorry, I…” Fuck, why was it so hard to breathe? “I’m not sure I understand. So you design these tattoos yourselves? And someone inks them into your skin?”
Te Léna nodded. “Yes. We wait until the fifth anniversary to do it, because some marriages fail in the early years. It can happen. We’re advised to be cautious and wait until we’re sure of each other before binding our skin. Yaz and I wanted to get our marks after just two years, but the elders said we should wait.”
My mind was racing, a million miles a minute. “So, they don’t just show up on their own? The marks? Like…out of the blue? Overnight? Or… while…y’know…you’re having sex with someone?”
Te Léna laughed brightly. “Of course not. Don’t be silly.” The edge of panic rising inside me settled just a little. But then Te Léna spoke again. “Once upon a time, that was the case. Back when true mating bonds existed. Unions between true mates were blessed with marks from the Fates. That’s where the tradition of inking our hands originated from. But there’s no such thing as true mates anymore. When the gods left Yvelia, certain elements of our magic either died or waned over time. The God Swords, for example. They were very slowly cut off from the source of the magic they channeled. Our ability to form mating bonds also died out over thousands of years, until it disappeared altogether.”
“Right…” Oh, Gods, I needed to sit down. “So it’s just a tradition now.
People cover their hands in runes…for luck.”
“I wouldn’t say we cover ourselves in them,” Te Lèna answered. “I knew a couple who decided on seven runes once. Seven is an auspicious number, after all. But there are those who considered that a little greedy.” From the tone of her voice, Te Lèna herself was amongst that number.
Seven? Seven runes.
My mind scrambled to try and remember how many runes had marked my fingers. How many runes had interlocked on the back of my right hand. I had no idea, but there had been a lot of them. So, so many. “And what about script? You know. Writing?” I could only get a few words out at a time. “Do people…get that sometimes? Going around…their wrists?”
“Oh, no. Definitely not. You only see that kind of thing in storybooks,” Te Léna scoffed. “They called it a God Binding. A blessing from the gods themselves. They weren’t real, of course. The most important couples in Yvelian history were said to have had them, but it was all romantic rubbish. Just something storytellers embellished to make their tales more tragic. Plus, they looked impressive in the illuminated books.”
I met her eyes, but I was looking right through her. “Tragic?”
“The lovers in those stories always suffered terribly. One of them
always died. They were beautiful tales, but they ended with heartbreak.” “Sounds…awful.” I tried to laugh but couldn’t find the breath for it.
Worry flitted across Te Léna’s face at last. “Are you okay? You’re looking a little pale.”
“Yes. Yeah, I’m fine. I…do you happen to know where Fisher is?” “He asked me to tell you that he’d be waiting for you in his room.”
“Oh, great. Thanks. I think I might go and find him, actually. There’s something I want to talk to him about.”
