“MOVE!”
I was going to throw up. Pain cut through me like a kni—
“Oh, gods. Is she alive?” Carrion’s face above me, pale and lined with worry.
BOOM!
The sky was falling.
Not the sky. The amphitheater.
A huge section of stone, sheering from the stand, toppling in slow motion.
BOOM!
“I swear to the gods, if she doesn’t make it through this—” Lorreth, fisting Carrion’s shirt, dragging him back.
Fire, everywhere. Flames roaring up to meet the splintering sky. Flames surging in my veins. In my neck.
Gods, my neck… “Form a shadow gate!”
Fisher’s voice, full of panic. “I’m fucking trying!” The world, on its side, crumbling apart.
All chaos. All pain. All doubt. All fear. All— Everything stopped.
I was lying in Fisher’s arms. The world went silent, but I could see my mate’s face above me, and the awful grief there, the tendons in his neck standing proud as he yelled something to Lorreth. He’d come for me. Even with the world ending all around us, he had me.
“The mountain that weathers all storms,” a voice said very clearly in my mind. I had no control over my body. No energy or care left to react to the voice. I was aware enough to realize that it was different now, though. Calm. Focused. Direct. I watched my mate, my vision drifting in and out of darkness as it spoke.
“He is the storm. You are the peace that must come after it. Tell me, do you believe in the fates, Alchemist?”
I closed my eyes, tears streaming from the corners of my eyes. Fisher was opening a gate. He was taking me home. I would die at Cahlish, in the comfort of his bed perhaps. I—
“Do not drift too far from the shore, Saeris Fane. Come back now.
Come back.”
I opened my eyes, my pulse suddenly careening away from me. Adrenalin soaked my blood, an electric current charging through my chest, jump-starting my heart. “Fuck!” I gasped. “Oh, gods. Fuck!”
“It’s starting.” Taladaius’s grim announcement came from behind me somewhere.
Fisher looked down at me, eyes swimming. “It’s going to be okay. Hold on, Saeris.”
The voice came again, clear and concise. “You stand before a door. Your hand is poised to knock. Are you ready to walk through it? Will you leave this place and see what lies beyond in the next?”
The next? Leave? I blinked slowly. “No. I don’t want to go. Not yet.”
The voice sounded gruff but also curious. “A shadow falls across Yvelia. It will alter all it touches. You would rather remain here, knowing that suffering and hardship looms on the horizon? That sacrifices will need to be made?”
I looked at Fisher. At the broad, beautiful wings that spanned the side of his neck. I felt his heart, racing in his chest, thrumming in time with my own, as he stretched out his hand, reaching for a shadow gate. I didn’t need to consider my answer. Whatever the cost would be for staying with him, I would pay it. “Yes,” I said.
“As you wish. Then we call in our favor, Saeris Fane. Will you honor your word and grant us our favor?”
Of course it was the quicksilver. And of course it was calling in my debt now, when I was a hair’s breadth from death. “What is it you want from me?”
The answer came immediately. “We require an audience with you, Saeris Fane.”
Fisher looked down at me, frowning. “Saeris?”
“Will you grant us our favor?”
An audience? They wanted to talk to me? That was indeed a small favor. One I could hardly refuse them. “Yes. I’ll grant it. As—” As soon as I’m well enough to have a conversation with you. That’s what I had been about to say, but the cord that had helped me find the quicksilver pool at the center of the labyrinth snapped taut out of nowhere. My body tugged, and Fisher nearly dropped me.
“What the fuck? Saeris?”
Fisher clutched hold of me tight. His shadow gate was open, less than three feet away. All he had to do was turn and walk us through it. I grabbed the strap of his chest protector, alarm bells ringing in my head. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I—”
I was ripped from his arms.
“SAERIS!”
An invisible rope yanked me through the air, pulling me across the labyrinth. My arms and legs streamed behind me as I was yanked backward. Air rushed past my ears. Lorreth and Carrion cried out, too. In a split second, my friends were gone, my mate was gone, and I was hurtling through the labyrinth at breakneck speed.
“Please!” I cried. “Don’t!” Whatever the quicksilver was doing, it had to stop.
My stomach hollowed out, a weightless sense of falling tugging at my belly. And then all I could see were coins. Thousands of them. A whole carpet of them, whipping by beneath my feet.
True panic claimed me when I understood where I was being drawn.
I barely saw the quicksilver pool underneath me before a wave of the liquid metal rose up and lashed me around my waist. I barely had time to scream as it cinched tight around my ribs and dragged me below its surface.
 |
“It’s dead.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it isn’t dead.” “How can you be so sure?”
“Because father willed it here, stupid. He doesn’t want it to be dead.
Therefore it isn’t.”
These voices were female. Young and playful. The first who had spoken made a dismissive sound and said, “Well, it looks dead.”
I opened my eyes and saw bright blue sky.
A bird chased across my field of vision, darting and swooping, singing at the top of its lungs; without thinking, I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, wanting to get a better look at it.
Too late, I braced for the pain…but none came. “Do you think it understands us?”
I squinted, turning my head, and blades of grass tickled the side of my face. I was lying in a vast field at the foot of a rolling hill. Atop the hill stood a lone oak tree so magnificent that it took my breath away. Its thick boughs rocked on the gentle breeze, its leaves shimmering, flaring with light when the sun hit them.
I dragged myself into a sitting position and immediately spied the two young women to my right. They looked eighteen, perhaps. Nineteen. And they were identical in every way. Dressed in loose, dark grey dresses, they wore nothing on their feet. Their black hair flowed in waves down to their waists. Two pairs of quick, royal blue eyes shot through with silver threads watched me with a keen interest as I got to my feet.
The girl on the right grabbed her sister’s hand, and the two of them came forward. “Tell us what it’s like,” she said in a clear, pleasant voice.
“I’m—” I cleared my throat. “Sorry. Tell you what what’s like?”
“Sex,” the other girl said, tilting her chin. “With that male. Our father’s champion.”
“With…Fisher?”
In unison, the girls nodded eagerly. “Uhhh…”
“We wanted to try him out for ourselves, but Father forbade it,” the twin on the right said. “He deems no living creature from any realm worthy of our touch. We’ve been waiting an eon for him to gift us with our own playmate, but thus far, no other of our kind has braved the journey to visit our Corcoran.”
Corcoran?
Holy…hells.
The Corcoran were…
“Which one of us do you worship more fervently?” The twin on the right asked. “Bal?” She gestured to herself. “Or Mithin?” She gestured to her counterpart. “We have such competitions over who is most popular.” A lightning storm raging in her eyes now. No sooner had I noticed it than I felt the sharp prickling of static in the air. The fine hairs all over my body stood up.
This…was really happening? They were gods? I swallowed down my nerves, then bowed my head respectfully, looking down at my feet. “How could anyone love Bal more than Mithin? Or treasure Mithin more than Bal? You’re worshipped equally by all those who know your names, my ladies.”
“My ladies!” the sun goddesses cried at the same time. They grinned at each other happily, still holding each other’s hands. “She speaks with such lovely manners.” The one who gave me their names held out her hand to me. “Come on. We should hurry. Father’s waiting for you, and he doesn’t have much patience for waiting these days. He’ll be annoyed if we delay much longer.”
I didn’t reach out my hand to her. One second, it was hanging by my side. The next, it was already in her cool grip. I took one step, and the field surrounding us stretched thin, becoming a green blur. When my heel struck the ground, the sloping hill was no longer in front of us. We were standing on top of it, beneath the boughs of the impressive oak tree.
My mind struggled to catch up with the change in location, my thoughts gluey.
Amidst the roots of the giant oak tree, a broad, eight-foot-wide ribbon of silver formed a moat. So much quicksilver. I started when I noticed beads of the shining metal spilling down the tree’s broad trunk like sap and rolling into the moat.
On a smooth rock, ten feet away, a male sat alone with his back to us. His robe was the same dark grey as the sun goddesses’ clothes, his long, brown hair tied back into war braids. Giggling, Bal and Mithin waved me forward, indicating that I should go to him.
A ball of anxiety clenched into a fist at the center of my ribcage. If these two giddy girls were indeed goddesses, then I could hazard a guess as to who their father was just from looking at the back of his head.
Everlayne had barely been able to utter his name without shivering. She’d warned in no uncertain terms that a person should never let this God look upon them. Not even a statue of him. And here he was—the physical embodiment of him, anyway—sitting on a rock, waiting to have a chat with me.
Fuck.
“Come forward, Alchemist,” he commanded. His was the voice that had asked me if I wanted to pass through the door or stay in Yvelia with Fisher; I had a feeling that it was his voice I had been speaking to for a long time now. I stepped forward, holding my breath, and moved around the rock. Facing the God, I angled my jaw and met his cool, blue eyes. I had expected some terrible visage. A hideous, twisted face with madness in its gaze, but no. If he’d been human, I would have judged him in his middle years. His face was lightly lined and had a kindness and wisdom that took me by surprise.
He looked up at me, his hands resting on his knees, and said, “You know who I am?”
I bowed my head a little, again looking down at my boots. “Zareth. God of Chaos.”
Zareth grunted. “And you are Saeris. Sister to Hayden. Daughter to no one.” He nodded to the inkwork on my hands. “Also, mate to my champion.”
I glanced down at the marks, still a little surprised to see them there, staining my skin. “Yes,” I said. “I am.”
Zareth rose from his seat on the rock, and my legs trembled. He was no taller than Fisher. No broader or more God-like in appearance, but the sheer well of power that swelled from him as he took me in made me want to drop to my knees and throw myself at his feet. He could blink and eradicate me from existence. I knew that with certainty. If he wanted me to, I would vanish, never to have even been born in the first place.
“We must make this quick, or you’ll die before you’ve been of use to me. I will be as concise as I can, given the circumstances. I’ve spent a great deal of time watching the threads of the universe, waiting for one such as you,” he said. “An Alchemist, at last, to reset the balance and clear the way for what is to come.” Turning, he went to the edge of the quicksilver pool that surrounded the great tree, and I followed, drawn along by the pull of him.
He stepped to the very edge of the quicksilver and looked at me. “Here, we stand at the edge of the universe. The roots you see, growing down into the earth, into the quicksilver, are the anchors of fate.” He tipped his head back, his eyes traveling upward into the boughs of the tree. “The silver leaves above mark all the realms of our domain. My family are the stewards of all you see here. We water the roots of fate. We train the boughs and prune the leaves to prevent rot and decay. You see the bough there? The blackened one?”
I looked where he was pointing and did notice one particular branch of the tree. Its bark was darker than the rest, shriveled, with fewer silver leaves sprouting from it. “Yes, I see it.”
Zareth nodded. Lifting his hand, he swept his fingers through the air, and as I watched, three of the bough’s leaves dislodged and fell. They floated down, fluttering and spinning, to land on the surface of the quicksilver. “There is a rot spreading throughout my domain, Saeris,” he said. “Realms that are infected with that rot have to be summarily destroyed to protect the rest of the tree and prevent that rot from spreading. Do you understand?”
Those leaves had been realms. Whole worlds. Zareth had just…waved his hand and…wiped them out. I stared at them as they sank and disappeared below the surface of the quicksilver. Was it possible? Could he really just have done that? “How many people…” I couldn’t get the rest of the question out, but the God standing beside me knew exactly what I was asking him.
“Billions.” He answered without the faintest hint of emotion. Yes, then. I had just witnessed genocide on a scale I couldn’t comprehend, And Zareth just smiled. “You aren’t the only Alchemist in the universe, of course,” he said. “There are millions of you out there. Even in your realm, even in the city you once called your home, there are hundreds of elemental magic wielders who can command the quicksilver. But when I consulted the fates long ago, I was very intrigued when I saw you, Saeris Fane. Not just you. Kingfisher, too. I saw an axis in the flow of things. A burning knot in the tapestry of all that would come to be. When I focused and saw the strength of the bond that connected the two of you together, I admit I attempted to sway the fates.”
“What do you mean, sway the fates?” I whispered.
Zareth glanced down the gently rolling slope to the field where his daughters had returned and were laughing raucously, hands grasped, spinning each other around in the tall grass. “You were supposed to have been born Fae, in the same realm as your Kingfisher. So I separated you. Hundreds of years before you were born, I shifted the events around your birth. Moved the pieces on the board and placed you far away, in a realm that should never have come into contact with his. But I watched as the boughs of the universe grew against their nature and aligned in such a way that you would still meet. I foresaw then that no matter how the boughs and branches of this tree were manipulated, you and he would always collide. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”
Fisher had said his mother was wrong sometimes, about small things that had big consequences. When she had predicted me rushing into her son’s life, she had seen me with sloped ears and canines like her son. It turned out she hadn’t been wrong after all. I should have been born Fae. The God of Chaos had simply interfered.
“Why?” I asked. “Why would you want to keep us apart? What does it matter to you if we love each other and live our lives together?”
Zareth considered me for a moment. Inhaling sharply, he rushed past me, around the tree, to a point on the bank of the moat where the grass was pressed flat against the earth…and the boughs of the tree were twisted into bare, blackened knots. I hadn’t noticed it from our vantage point just now, but from here, it was plain to see that a huge chunk of the tree was dying.
“In nature, there is a counterweight to everything, child. Light has darkness. Life has death. Joy has sorrow. And good has evil. That law applies, no matter which realm you exist in,” he said with a broad stroke of his arm that encompassed the many, many leaves on the tree. “Threads like you and Kingfisher, that are drawn together and cross on an axis create a well of power. The energy the two of you draw together attracts an equal and opposite counterweight. Every possible future where the two of you are together ends with the vast majority of this tree dying. None of us can foresee any other way.”
“So…you’re saying that Fisher and I are responsible for the end of the entire universe?”
Zareth shook his head. “Not you personally. But the moment where you meet, along with the moment you become mates, is a spark. The flame in the dark that draws the moth. It was incumbent upon me to try and stop that
spark from taking place, but as you’ve already learned, the fates themselves would not be guided down that path.”
I felt my heart beating all over my body. “Does Fisher know any of this?”
Zareth snorted. “No. I orchestrated events so that he would be brought here as a young male. His mother had just died, and his disposition wasn’t very polite.” Zareth frowned, as if the memory were troubling even now. “He made an enemy of my family. He was only allowed to live because I demanded it. I’d spent a great deal of time studying the various outcomes and paths of this universe once you and Kingfisher met, and while I never found a balance that meant good prevailed, there were pathways that led into…uncertainty.”
“Uncertainty?”
“Pathways that lead down roads, where both the way and the destination are blocked to even my sight. And in all of these veiled futures, where a chance still exists for life, there is one common factor.” I didn’t want to know. Couldn’t hear it. This was way too much pressure. Zareth knew this, I was sure, but he plowed ahead. “You and Kingfisher fought at each other’s side, and you were God-Bound.” He pointed to the script writing that wrapped around my wrists. “These oaths mark you as my ward. They protect both you and Fisher from the unwanted attentions of my brothers and my sister.”
“Protection from them?”
“They would rather kill Fisher and roll the dice on what comes next. They would prefer to weather the storm on the horizon and replant our tree once the slate has been wiped clean. I don’t want that to happen. It would break my daughters’ hearts.” He broke off, watching the girls dance down in the field, mimicking the grasses as they swayed in the wind. Their laughter rose up to us like sweet music. “For them, I’m willing to take a chance. If you truly accept Fisher as your mate, then you must agree for the thread of your life to be severed from the tapestry of the universe. Once you do, none of us may affect your future. We won’t be able to see you at all, nor will my brothers and my sister be able to interfere with timelines or events that affect you, either. You’ll be on your own.”
On my own? What was he talking about? “This burden shouldn’t be placed on one person’s shoulders. It definitely shouldn’t be placed at mine. I’m a thief! Just…one woman! I can’t be held responsible for—”
“You’re not responsible for anything. All you need do is live your life.” “But—”
“Let me put it this way, child,” Zareth said, cutting me off. “Do you want your mate to die?”
“No, of course not!”
“Then this is how you save him.”
“I…” What was I supposed to say? If I did this, then Zareth and the other gods wouldn’t be able to see ahead or do anything to affect events as they were about to happen. But should they be allowed to do that, anyway? Their meddling meant that I’d been born in Zilvaren, not in Yvelia. How many times had they swayed the tides of fate, and how many people had suffered because of it? What gave them the right?
Zareth narrowed his eyes at me. “Fuck the fates. They don’t get to decide shit for me. I decide what my future is going to be. Did you not just say that mere days ago?”
I had said that. And I’d meant it, too. “Yes, but…”
“If you truly wish to be the master of your own life, then this is how you accomplish that goal.”
I got the feeling that Zareth was desperate—a God who would say anything to bend me to his will. But there was no denying it. He was a God. He could make me do anything he desired, and yet he was giving me this choice.
I asked carefully, “How painful are we talking? This thread cutting?” “No more painful than the transition that is already beginning inside
your body as we speak, Saeris Fane.”
Why the hell didn’t that sound reassuring? “How would you do it exactly?”
“By transforming you into something that has never been seen before,” he answered cryptically. “The universe cannot focus on that which it does not recognize.”
“But how?”
“I’m not just the God of Chaos, Alchemist. I’m also the God of Change.
I will it, and it is done.” “I—”
“Time is running out, Saeris. You must make your decision.”
“Okay. All right. Yes. I’ll do it.” I blurted it out before I could take it back. If it was a decision between becoming something new, and most
certainly dying along with the rest of the universe, then it wasn’t really a tough call to make.
The God Bindings at my wrists flared out of nowhere, biting into my skin like burning ropes. “The best of luck to you, then, Saeris. Give Kingfisher my best.” And then he shoved me into the quicksilver.
