Page 83 of Brimstone

Carrion was propped up against the side of his small dining table, leaning his hip against it. He gestured tiredly toward the glass. “You had her hammering out quicksilver, but she made other things before. The man who gave her work after her mother died? Elroy? He makes incredible etched glassware.Delicate. Sells them to the people in the Hub. The stuff Saeris made was never fine enough for the likes of them, but they were more than good enough for the people of the Third.”

Suddenly, the glass in my hand became brand new.

It was a lovely thing. Small. The rim was embellished with a wound glass rope. A pattern was engraved into the sides of the glass, depicting a tower that looked an awful lot like Madra’s palace being engulfed in flames. Dogs with curled tongues chased each other around the glass’s base.

She had made this.

When I’d found her, I’d been full of panic. How was this woman, thishuman, the person I was supposed to fall in love with? How was I going to protect her from the kind of life I lived? She had surprised me. Where I had thought her weak, she was strong. Her heart was bigger than the horizon half the time—too big for her own good. I’d misjudged her. She was incredible. For twenty-five years, she had survived this harsh place and still had fire enough in her soul to create the kind of art that would undoubtedly have cost her life were it to end up in the wrong hands.

As if reading my mind, Carrion said, “She had a penchant for incendiary designs. Elroy couldn’t sell them. I’d take them off his hands sometimes, when I could convince him to part with them.” Carrion disappeared into the kitchen and came back with an earthen stoneware jug. Again, he didn’t ask. I watched him pour the whiskey into the glass in my hands, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

A nest of vipers writhed behind my rib cage. They wanted me to punch Carrion in the face.Hard.But it was exhausting, this blind anger I harbored toward the male. It served no purpose. I was tired down to the marrow of my bones, and I didn’t have the energy to maintain it. I knocked back the shot and set the glass down carefully, still staring at it.

Her hands had touched it. Her hands had made it.

That made me feel . . .

Fuck, I justachedfor her. I wanted her here, next to me. I wanted to hold her; the fact that she wasn’t in my arms right now felt like the greatest injustice that had ever been inflicted upon me. There was no breathing my way past it.

When I looked up, Carrion was watching me. “Go on,” he said. “Ask.”

It was beneath me to pretend that I didn’t know what he was talking about. So I asked. “Are you in love with her?”

He let his head drop, laughing quietly as he pulled out a chair at the table and sank down heavily in it. Stretching his legs out in front of himself, he rested his hands on his stomach, one on top of the other, and looked up to meet my gaze. “No,” he said simply. And then, immediately, “Yes?”

Heat flared up inside me, making my throat close.

“It’s not a simple thing, Fisher. She’s . . . well . . .”

“Spectacular,” I whispered.

The smile that spread across his face was sad. “Right. Exactly. She always has been. When other people are full of the kind of fire that burns inside her, it eats them alive. It hollows them out until there’s nothing left inside thembutthe fire. They burn everyone around them with it, until all that remains is scorched earth. But not Saeris. Her fire keeps others warm in the cold dark. It is her strength, not her weakness. Being around her reminds you that you’re alive.”

It made me want to vomit, hearing him talk about her like this. But he wasn’t saying anything that was untrue. If I could see how incredible she was after knowing her for such a short time, then how the hell could I expect him to be blind to it when he had known her for years?

No, I couldn’t blame the male for seeing what was obvious. I could only pity him that she wasn’t his and be fucking thankful that shewasmine.

“I could have loved her. Truly,” Carrion said softly. “But this place broke mecenturiesbefore Saeris was born. I made the mistake of letting myself fall for a human once, and believe me when I say that once was enough. A long time ago, someone told me that the pain of loss was a temporary thing. That it would soften as the years went by, until the ache became an old friend that felt comfortable to be around. But the person who told me that was human.” He sighed the kind of sigh that had been held in for a thousand years. “I didn’t have much to go on when it came to my kind, but it always seemed to me that the Fae must experience grief differently from humans. Humans live for such a short time. It made sense that their pain visited them and left soon enough after. It would be cruel. Would swallow up their entire lives otherwise. But for me . . .” He shook his head, looking down at his hands. “Every year that I live, it seems the magnitude of my loss eclipses the last. So yes. I love Saeris Fane, because she’s electric, and fierce, and loyal, and being around her brings the world back into focus. But I’m notinlove with her, Fisher. I tried. But my heart was just too full of sorrow to make room for her.”

The fire in my chest had gone out as the smuggler was speaking. Renfis would have had something profound or comforting to say in this situation. But I knew the eternal well of grief, how deep it ran, on and on forever, so I just nodded. It was all I had to give him—my understanding, and my presence. I dragged myself over to the chair in the corner of the room and sat, my broken hand singing with pain as I tried to hold the glass that Saeris had made in it.

“You barely even flinched today,” the smuggler noted. “The pain of that venom. The pain of your dead.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he asked, “Will you show me?”

Showyou?”

“How to close it off. To shut it all down, so I don’t have to feel it anymore?”

Sinners. I puffed out my cheeks, unable to look at him for a moment. “No, Carrion. I won’t.”

“Why not?” He sounded like I’d just kicked him.

“There’s only one way to learn how to endure pain the way I have. You have to suffer through it. Again, and again, and again. It galvanizes you. Tempers you like steel. But I wouldn’t wish the kind of pain I’ve lived through on anyone. I’ve borne it because I had to and for no other reason. Feel the pain you’ve been given, Carrion. Don’t be fool enough to ask for more. It’s a curse I would spare you from, believe me.”

20

HUNTSMAN

SAERIS