“THEY WON‘T LET you in. There’s no way. The bastards have been guarding that door since the dawn of time.” Renfis hurried along after Kingfisher, but his limp was proving a hindrance.
“They don’t have a choice,” Kingfisher replied. He wasn’t slowing his pace for anyone. Not for his injured friend. Not for the king’s daughter. And certainly not for me, the only human in the group, whose legs were considerably shorter than everyone else’s. I was on the verge of breaking into a jog just to keep the three of them in sight.
Now would be a perfect time to escape. I’d been looking for the right time to make a run for it, but Kingfisher had said the magic word. Forge. I couldn’t help myself. What did a Fae forge look like? Did it work the same way as a human forge? Was there magic involved? Gods, I hoped there was magic involved. And anyway, escaping Everlayne and the two warriors at this point would have been foolhardy.
I had nowhere to go. I’d been unconscious when Kingfisher brought me back through that rippling pool of silver. I had no idea where it was located. Or if it was even in the palace. The probability of me finding it on my own was slim, and even if I did, what then? I’d drawn that sword out of Madra’s pool the last time. Belikon had it now. Did I need it to activate the pool? Could I do it again? And how? I had no idea how I woke the quicksilver the last time, and by the sounds of things, the Fae didn’t know how to do it, either. Plus, they kept saying pathways. Plural. How the fuck would I make my way back to Zilvaren, specifically, if there was more than one pathway?
My anxiety over Hayden was all-consuming. Come hell or high water, I was going to get back to my brother, but I couldn’t rush into this. Rushing something so dangerous that I had no understanding of whatsoever would undoubtedly mean death or, at the very least, serious trouble.
So, for now, I was staying. Mind made up, I finally broke into that jog and caught up with the group. The three Fae were passing one of the many sets of alcoves occupied by statues of the gods. Everlayne bowed and touched her head to them as she hurried by. Ren grumbled, giving them a cursory nod. Kingfisher stuck out a hand and flipped all seven of them off as he stormed by.
Everlayne cried out, horrified, but Kingfisher only rolled his eyes, continuing whatever it was he’d been saying. “…then talk to Belikon. You heard him. He’s the one who told me to help Rusarius with the human.”
“This isn’t helping. This is diving into something head-first without considering the consequences!” Everlayne’s frustration had become a permanent fixture since Renfis had fastened that pendant around Kingfisher’s neck. “We have to cover the theory first.”
Kingfisher huffed derisively. “What theory?”
“He’s right on that, at least,” Ren chimed in. “There are no written accounts of the Alchemist’s processes. If there was, the elders might have had some luck understanding their abilities. How can we start at the beginning if there is no beginning?”
Everlayne’s loose hair streamed out behind her in a golden banner as she rushed forward and prodded Kingfisher in the back. Hard. “We start out slow, then. With the important things she needs to know about Yvelia. She won’t survive here without—”
Kingfisher halted his charge, stopping dead in his tracks. Everlayne ran straight into his chest, but the dark-haired warrior didn’t flinch. He stepped around her and prowled toward me like a hell cat creeping up on its dinner. I was an accomplished fighter. I knew how to put a guardian on his ass in three seconds flat. I could scale forty-foot-high walls and sprint across rotting rooftops, but the sight of Kingfisher prowling toward me turned my insides to a double knot.
Stumbling back, I nearly tripped over my feet in my attempt to put some space between us, but the bastard kept coming.
“All right, Oshellith. Layne isn’t going to let this go until you’ve been given the cliff notes, so listen close. I’m about to furnish you with the only
information you really need to know. You have the distinct pleasure of being the only living human in all of Yvelia. You are not safe here.” He bared his teeth, flashing long, sharp canines that lengthened right before my eyes. “There was a time when this place teemed with your kind—”
“Fisher, stop.” Ren tried to grab him by the shoulder, but the warrior in black jerked away and kept coming.
“Our ancestors were cursed millennia ago. As a result, we ended up with these,” he said, gesturing to his canines. “We used them to drink your kind dry. We drained you by the million before the blood curse was lifted. This was long before our time, of course, but the Fae line still bears the marks of its past. We might not need blood to maintain our immortality anymore, but by the gods, do we still have the teeth for it. Our dirty little secret. Our awful, horrible shame—”
“Fisher!” Everlayne had reached her breaking point. Tears streamed down her face, leaving wet tracks over her cheeks. She moved in front of Kingfisher and slammed her hands into his chest. “Why are you being like this?” she cried.
Kingfisher shrugged. “I’m only telling her the truth.” “You’re being an asshole!”
This elicited a scornful blast of laughter from the warrior. “You should be used to that by now, Layne. Or did you spend the last century years forgetting what a shit I am? I’m the Bane of Gillethrye, remember? The Black Knight?”
“You’re my brother,” Everlayne hissed. “Though I sometimes wish you weren’t!”
Kingfisher jerked back as if she’d struck him. Even Renfis took a step back, his jaw dropping a little, but the general regained himself quickly, glancing up and down the hallway. I got the feeling that he was checking to see if anyone might have heard Everlayne’s little outburst. The long, open- aired hallway stretched off in both directions, though, completely deserted apart from our group.
“Careful, little sister,” Kingfisher rumbled. “We don’t want to spill all of our secrets in one go now.”
Everlayne’s sob filled the hallway. “Oh, fuck you, Fisher.” She bolted, running back the way we’d come, as fast as her legs could carry her.
Well. It seemed that even the immortal Fae were still susceptible to family drama. I looked back over my shoulder, watching the poor female
flee. “I—I should go and make sure she’s okay…”
“I’ll come, too,” Renfis growled, casting Kingfisher a look of unmistakable disgust. “You can’t wander the court without one of us to watch over you. And you? Everlayne’s right. You are being an asshole. The Kingfisher we used to know cared about his family and his friends.”
Even with the cruel smirk playing across his mouth, Kingfisher was savagely handsome. “What can I say?” he purred. “Being completely cut off from civilization and summarily forgotten about has a way of changing you after a while.”
Renfis was already walking backward. “We didn’t forget about you. You have no idea what we went through to try and get you back.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure my suffering paled in comparison to yours.”
A look of hurt flickered across Ren’s face, but he said nothing more to the male at my back. “Let’s go, Saeris. We’ll find Layne and head back to the library.”
“Oh, come on. She’s not going with you,” Kingfisher drawled. “She’s coming with me, aren’t you, Oshellith? She wants to know secrets, and I’m the only one willing to give them to her.”
“Why are you calling me that? Oshellith?” I snapped. “What does it mean?”
He’d turned around. Was walking away. I listened to his boots striking the cold stone beneath his feet, each step ringing in my ears. “An Oshellith is a type of butterfly,” he called as he went. “Osha for short. They hatch, live, and die all in one day. The cold kills them very fast. Isn’t that right, Renfis?”
Ren scowled at Kingfisher’s back, though he didn’t answer him. “Ignore him. Will you come, Saeris?”
I was stuck between the two of them, being asked to make a decision I was in no way qualified to make. Everlayne had been kind to me. Taken care of me. Made sure I was comfortable here. Renfis was full of laughter and seemed solid and good. Kingfisher was a miserable, grouchy bastard without a kind word for anyone. The way he called me that—Oshellith— like it was a dirty word, made me want to smash my fist right through his gorgeous face. But he was offering me the truth, even if it was frightening. The quickest way out of this nightmare was through Kingfisher.
I winced at Ren. “Sorry. Can we do the library later? I…I just…” “Told you so!” Kingfisher called out in a singsong voice.
Renfis just nodded, his mouth drawing into a flat line. “Of course. I understand. I’ll come and get you in a couple of hours.”
 |
Unlike all of the other doors in the palace, this one was of a normal height. Plain. Simple. No ornate carvings or embellishments. It was just a wooden door. And it was locked.
I risked a sidelong glance at Kingfisher out of the corner of my eye. “Should we, uh…knock?”
An arrogant smile curled up at the corner of his mouth. “Sure,” he said, as if this was a charming suggestion made by a single-brain-celled idiot. A second later, he slammed the sole of his boot against the wood, and then the door was on the ground in pieces. “Knock knock.” He stepped to one side, holding his hand out in a mockery of manners, gesturing for me to go ahead of him. “I don’t think anyone’s home.”
“I’m not going first. What if it’s warded by, I don’t know…by magic, or something?”
Kingfisher waggled his fingers, his eyes going wide. “Oh no, not
magic!”
“Ass.”
“Coward,” he volleyed back. “I knew it wasn’t warded.” “How?”
“Because I’m magic.” “What about you is magic?”
“Everything,” he said, entering the room. “My looks. My sword skills.
My personality—”
“Your personality is trash.” The quip was out before I had a chance to bite my tongue. Ever since I was little, I got mouthy when I was nervous, and I was really nervous right now. Literally nothing about this male screamed, ‘Bait me and see what happens.’ I clenched my jaw, cursing myself for my own stupidity as I followed behind Kingfisher, studiously staring at the ground.
Kingfisher said nothing. I looked up and—
Holy hells.
Maybe this place had been a forge once, but now it was nothing of the sort. The rough stone walls were slick with frost. The workbenches were covered in vines that were such a dark green they were almost black. Pale blue, purple, and pink flowers dotted their stems like tiny, upturned daggers, their shape strange and unusual. A variety of other flowers, creeping vines, and plant life exploded up the wall on the far side of the cavernous space, crowding around a large window, hungry for a spot in the light.
The thickest of the vines actually climbed out of the window, the glass having been smashed out. The rest of the uneven stone floor was carpeted with broken glass. Vials, beakers, bulbs, and flasks. Shattered equipment lay strewn around the room, as if someone had flown into a rage and destroyed the place.
Rust had been busy eating away at all of the tongs, pliers, and hammers. Clearly, it hadn’t satisfied its voracious appetite because the anvil next to the cracked enamel water bath was so pitted that the iron was sloughing off in great orange flakes. And the forge itself. Gods, the forge. The open-sided hearth was nice and large, there was no denying that. Big enough for a whole family of furry animals to have made a den in it, by the looks of things, though its occupants were either out and about their business or had bolted when Kingfisher kicked the door down. It was vented, too, thanks to the yawning hole in the roof directly above it.
Kingfisher sifted through a pile of decaying wood with the toe of his boot, scowling darkly. “I see why Clements has guarded this place so fiercely now.”
“Who’s Clements?”
“The King’s Royal archivist. He’s been receiving a royal stipend for the past two hundred years or so, charged with figuring out how the Alchemists used to activate the quicksilver. A handsome stipend if I recall correctly. Looks to me like he pissed it all up a wall, though, ’cause this place is a fucking disaster.”
He was right. This was no working forge. The hearth hadn’t been fired here in a long time. The place smelled of dust, age, and animal musk.
“I’m going to kick his teeth down his throat,” Kingfisher announced.
“How about you help me instead of threatening violence?” I countered.
His lip curled with distaste when I stooped down and started stacking some of the shattered pieces of wood by the now-empty doorway. “You’re
going to clear all of this by hand?”
“Unless you can utter some sort of spell and clear it all up with magic?” “I don’t do spells. I’m not a witch. Fae magic isn’t some kind of cheap conjuring trick, human. Our abilities are sacred gifts to be used
discerningly, for righteous purposes.”
My cheeks colored hotly at that. Of course he wasn’t just going to click his fingers and whisk all of this away. He had a real knack for making me feel stupid, though. He didn’t need to do it. No, he did it because he wanted to.
Arrogant bastard.
He obviously thought I was worth less than the dirt beneath his feet. He didn’t like humans. I doubted that, if the situation were different, he’d bother to put me out if I was on fire. But as it was, he needed me, which meant that I could get away with asking a few questions. Right?
I grabbed a rusty old bucket by the rim and began picking through the debris on the ground, looking for any tools that might be salvageable. “If there’s a winter palace, then there are other royal residences, too, yes? An Autumn Palace? Spring? Summer?”
Kingfisher drew his sword.
“Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Sorry. Gods alive. I didn’t—I’m not—”
His nostrils flared as he unfastened the leather strap at his chest and slid the scabbard from his back, re-sheathing the weapon and propping it against the wall. Running his hand through his hair, he looked askance in my direction, his fingers moving deftly over more leather straps and buckles as he began removing pieces of his armor. “Nervous?” he asked conversationally.
“No! I just—well, I thought—”
“You can learn about the other courts in your library sessions with Layne and Rusarius. I offered you truths earlier. Don’t squander the opportunity to ask more interesting questions.” He reached around behind his neck with one hand and unfastened the silver plate with the snarling wolf’s head engraved on it, letting it slip away from his throat. Tossing it down onto the pile of leather he’d made—chest protector, shoulder guards, wrist guards—he then unfastened the top buttons of his shirt. Once upon a time, not too long ago, I would have lunged for that neck plate and made a run for it. I didn’t need the silver anymore, though. I had enough food and
water to last me a lifetime here, and I hadn’t been asked to pay for any of it. Not yet, anyway.
So, I ignored the plate and pointed to the chain hanging around his neck instead. “All right. What is that? What does it do? And why are you completely unhinged without it?”
Kingfisher smiled a cold smile, pressing the tip of his tongue into the point of one of his sharp canines. “Straight for the jugular then, Little Osha? Ruthless. I like it.”
“You said to ask an interesting question. I want to know about the chain.”
Kingfisher laughed silently. He bent double, scooping out a bunch of leaves and rotting wood from the hearth. Gods, he actually was going to help? That was why he removed all of the armor, then. I figured he was taking it off so he could sit down and make himself comfortable while he watched me do all of the work. “To explain the pendant, there are other things you need to know first. Things Layne probably hasn’t told you.”
“She hasn’t told me much of anything yet.”
“Well, let’s start at the beginning, then. The quicksilver pools are pathways that connect different realms. I’m sure you’ve figured as much.”
“Yes.”
“The quicksilver itself is volatile. Some of our elders believe it possesses a low level of sentience. Whether this is true or not doesn’t really matter. The stuff is dangerous. If the quicksilver comes into contact with bare skin…” Kingfisher trailed off.
“It was in Harron’s dagger, wasn’t it?” I asked.
Kingfisher nodded. “It was an ancient blade. Alchemists used to forge quicksilver into weaponry for Fae warriors. Harron had no business touching that weapon, let alone claiming it.”
“It made him see things, I think. When it touched his skin, he started screaming.” The sound of the captain’s horrified wailing still haunted me when I closed my eyes. It was a chilling thing to hear such a powerful, strong fighter pleading for his life.
“Oh, he saw things all right. The quicksilver will push any living creature beyond the boundaries of sanity.”
I had done that to Harron. I’d panicked and unwittingly lashed out, and Harron’s blade had responded and embarked on its mission to destroy him. But Harron had speared me through with his sword first. He had tried to kill
me on Madra’s orders. He would have succeeded, too, if Kingfisher hadn’t brought me back here. I wouldn’t feel guilty for defending myself.
If only it was as easy as telling myself that…
I changed the subject. “So, these Alchemists. They inherited their abilities? It’s about blood?”
“Everything is about blood, human. Now do you want to know about the pendant, or do you want to harry me by continually interrupting?”
I made a show of sealing my mouth shut.
“My mother gave me this pendant, this relic,” he clarified, “when I was eleven. The night before we left for the Winter Palace. She knew I’d have need of it. Later, when I came of age and joined Belikon’s army, I was called upon to travel between Yvelia and the other realms because my pendant was one of the most powerful. To cut a very long and boring story short, I was forced to travel a pathway without it once. The quicksilver took me, just as it takes everyone. A healer managed to draw most of it from me once I made it back to the Winter Palace, but I was left with a few...lasting reminders. Most Fae only wore their relics when they traveled from one realm to the next. But wearing mine is the only thing that calms the noise in my head. Without it, the line between what’s real and what isn’t blurs very quickly.”
His eye. That was his permanent reminder, wasn’t it? The filaments streaking through his jade iris were remnants of quicksilver. Gods. It was inside him, always present, constantly whispering in his ear, nudging him toward madness. The relic really was the only thing keeping him sane.
Nausea welled up in the hollow where my stomach used to be, and I did my best to swallow it down as I grabbed another set of pitted tongs and dropped them into the bucket. The iron clanged loudly, sending a puff of rust into the air. “Then…why did you give me the relic? Back in Zilvaren?”
He raised his hand, the thick signet ring gleaming on his finger. “Ah, right. Yes. You have a ring, too,” I said.
“If I hadn’t given you the relic, you’d be dead.”
“And why didn’t you just let me die? You could have left me there.”
Kingfisher dumped the armful of faded, dog-eared papers he was carrying onto the workbench, his expression blank. “You haven’t been paying attention, human. Yvelia is at war, and war machines are insatiable. They need constant feeding—food, clothes, gold, building supplies, weaponry. Before Madra drove that sword into her pool, stilling every pool in every realm, Belikon used the pathways for supplies. It was the only way to trade in many magical items. When the pathways closed, so did the door to our supply trains. You shouldn’t have been able to touch that sword, let alone draw it. And the silver responded to you. You did what only an Alchemist can do. So, no. Human or not, I couldn’t have just left you there to die.”
“Great. So, you brought me back to save your people and win the war.”
Kingfisher ran a hand through his ink-black waves, his eyes cold as ice. “You think very highly of me, human. In a way, I suppose what you say is true. But don’t mistake me for some kind of saint. I don’t care about Yvelia, and I don’t care about Belikon’s war. You are a bargaining chip. I saw my only way to freedom, and I took it. Ask me what I would have done if I had found you in that state under any other circumstances.”
I stared at him—at the hard set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, and the cruel twist of his mouth—and a shudder rippled through me, leaving panic in its wake. “I don’t think I want to know,” I whispered.
Kingfisher’s hint of a smile widened. “Clever girl.”
It took hours to finish clearing the forge, and we did it in silence. I didn’t ask any more questions, too afraid of the answers, and Kingfisher kept his thoughts to himself.
Every so often, I found myself watching him. With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his cheek streaked with soot, he looked almost normal. But then he’d mutter something under his breath or meet my gaze with those silver-streaked eyes, and I’d be reminded that this male was not human. It was neither safe nor wise to let my gaze linger on him. The smartest thing I could do was figure out how I accidentally activated that pool and get back to Zilvaren as quickly as possible.
The sky was darkening outside the window—a strange sight—when Renfis came to find me. He looked tired, though the bruise under his eye and the split lip had miraculously healed over the past few hours. Standing in the doorway, he surveyed the nearly cleared floor and the bucket of rusted tools I’d collected, sending a confused look Kingfisher’s way. “What’s this? You haven’t even started working.”
“The place was a disaster!” I exclaimed. It was easy for him to come along and criticize. The forge looked so much better than it had, and he hadn’t seen it before.
Kingfisher sighed. The chill in the air grew to icy levels as shadows leaped up the walls, conjured from nowhere. They spilled like wet paint across the floor, crawling up the legs of the workbench, blooming in the air until everything went black. Everything. The forge became a pit of ink. It felt as though the shadows slipped down my throat and into my lungs when I gasped. This was true darkness. Even deep in the underground tunnels beneath the Silver City, the darkness wasn’t this absolute.
“Oh, gods. What’s happening?”
“Fisher,” Renfis scolded. “Enough now.”
The darkness snapped back like a rubber band. The remaining daylight flooded into the forge, revealing it to be immaculate. The window was fixed, a fresh pane of glass glinting in the frame. The shattered vials and beakers we had swept into piles were gone. The hearth was brushed out, the bricks bright and new. The shelves were stocked with all kinds of fantastical equipment I had never seen before. The plants that had overrun the forge were still there but were now tamed into pots and a small planter beneath the window. And it was warm. All day, I’d been freezing, my teeth chattering while I cleaned with numb fingers, and now it was warm?
I spun, searching for something to hurl at Kingfisher. The nearest object was a set of brightly shining, beautiful tongs. I grabbed them and pointed them at the dark-haired warrior. “You! We broke our backs cleaning this place! What’s wrong with you? What happened to ‘our abilities are sacred gifts to be used for righteous purposes,’ or whatever the hell it was you said?”
“Him? Righteous purposes?” Renfis stifled a cough that sounded suspiciously like laughter. “The male standing before you isn’t shy about using his gifts to handle mundane tasks.”
I glowered at Kingfisher. “You monster.”
There wasn’t a scrap of remorse to be found on the warrior’s face. He scooped up his armor and his sword, then paused beside me on his way toward the brand-new door that now hung in the doorway.
“I just wanted to see if you knew what hard work was. I told you I was magic,” he whispered.
And then he was gone.
