Page 104 of Quicksilver

“You just drowned hundreds of vampires!”

“You can't drown something that's already dead.”

Why wasn't he even faintly concerned about any of this? It seemed to me that he was in some serious shit and was doing very little to get himself out of it. “Danya—”

“Danya will get over it. Everyone will. This will blow over and be long forgotten about by morning. The Fae live long lives. We learned a long time ago that holding a grudge was a great wayto ruin a decade or two. We hash it out quickly and then call it a day.”

He was delusional. “I was in that map room. You didn't resolve anything with those captains, Fisher.”

“Why don't you worry less about my friends and more about—”

“I want answers!” I cried. “Why was Malcolm different? He was nothing like the feeders. He seemed...”

“Normal?”

“Yes!”

“Malcolm’s a high Fae vampire. The very first. We were cursed thousands of years ago, and the Fae turned into something very like Malcolm. When a cure was found, my great-grandfather and most of the other Yvelian Fae took it. They were horrified by the monsters they'd become and wanted to return to their old lives. But there were those who liked the dark magic the curse afforded them. They liked the power and the promise of immortality.”

“Aren't the Fae already immortal?”

Fisher chuckled. “No, Little Osha. We’re not. Our lifespans are the subject of much research and conjecture. We outlive your kind by a long, long time. But we age. Eventually, we die. There were those like Malcolm who didn't want to age. They weren't content to make the most of the thousands of years they had already been granted. So they took what was supposed to be a punishment and embraced it with open arms. Malcolm is the strongest of them. Their king. Of all the Fae who chose to remain vampires, he alone is strong enough to fully turn someone and ensure they remain themselves. What makes them who they are. Their personality and their character traits. When his princes bite and turn someone, their victims die and return without their souls, nothing more than mindless, hungry shells. They obey their masters, and they feed.”

There was a bottomless well of horror within Fisher's words. I couldn't even begin to imagine the terror of being fully drained by one of Malcolm's princes and knowing that I was doomed to come back as one of thosethings.“Does that happen to humans, too?” I asked, already afraid of the answer.

“Where do you think most of your kind went? The vast majority of Malcolm's horde were once human. The Fae who chose to cure themselves of their curse tried to protect the lesser Fae and the humans who resided in this realm, but they were easier to target. More vulnerable. They had no magic to protect themselves, so...”

“So...” I was going to throw up. I'd wanted to know, but I couldn't bear to dwell on it now that I did. “You were with him, weren't you? For all those years you were missing.”

A tightness formed on Fisher's face. “I can't tell you that,” he said.

I can't tell you that.

Witnessing the strain around his eyes worsen, some part of me recognized it and knew what it felt like. As if he were trying to resist or push through something. As if he wasn't in control...

And there it was.

He wasn't in control. “You'rebound, aren't you?” I said, dismayed. “You literallycan'ttell me—”

“Stop,” he commanded. I'd anticipated relief from him. At least some kind of recognition that finally someone understood why he wouldn't share where he'd been or what he'd been doing. But Fisher's reaction was one of worry. Annoyance, even. “Have you considered that I might not want to tell you because it's none of your business?” he asked sharply.

“It is my business.” I adopted a firm stance, planting my feet into his rug.

“No, it isn't.”

“Whatever happens to you affects me. And I'm not stupid. You've been less of a prick these past fifteen minutes than you have been since you scraped me off the floor in the Hall of Mirrors and saved me. You only started snapping again when you wanted to push me away. The cold barbs and the awful shit that comes out of your mouth are a way for you to keep people at arm's length, aren't they?”

“You don't have acluewho I am,” he rumbled.

And maybe he was right about that. But I was beginning to. Beginning to figure him out. And how many times had Ren said it?I know him. This isn't who he is. He's not himself right now.This was all a front. Like a veil slowly being drawn back, I was starting to see right through it. “You don't hate me as much as you pretend to,” I said.

He stepped toward me, leonine, predatory, dangerous. “Don't I?”

“No, you don't.”

“That's an interesting theory.”

“I don't think you hate me at all.”