Page 118 of Quicksilver

“Thanks for the reassurance, but you'll have to forgive me if I don't fall down from relief. You might remember that I still haveto crack the transmutation process and turn thousands of rings into relics. And that,” I said wearily, “is beginning to sound like a lifetime's work.”

Fisher sighed, digging the heel of his boot into the grass. “I'm going to help you with that,” he said.

“I'm sorry, did you just say you're going to help me with my work? Did I hear that correctly?”

He pulled a face. “If I'm helping you in the forge, we might actually have a fighting chance of getting this done. It'll also mean that I won't have to put up with Danya's constant death threats.”

“You don't think she'll come and threaten you at the forge?”

“She can't threaten me if she can't find me,” he said.

I was not a graceful victor. ‘I told you so’was one of my favorite things to say, but I refrained from rubbing it in too much. “It's funny. It's almost as if you were completelywrongwhen you said all that mess with your friends would be blown over by morning,” I mused. “I don't think Danya's ever going to forgive you for disappearing on them.”

I expected a snarky response to this, but Fisher just smiled sadly. He took a drink, the warm orange glow from the fire casting his features in bronze and turning his midnight black curls to a dark, warm brown. “I don't know what you mean. Danya's already back to her delightful, cheery self.”

He was joking. Had to be. No way anyone would have kept her around for so long if she was really this abrasive.

We were quiet for a while. We drank our ale and watched the musicians play, and around us, Ballard revelled. It wasn't long before a group of female High Fae adolescents started doing laps around the fire, giggling behind their hands, throwing furtive glances Fisher's way. They looked like they were about twelve or thirteen in human years—that awkward age between childhoodand the chaos of puberty—though I had no idea how old they were in Fae terms.

Fisher hadn't thrown any sharp barbs at me at all yet, so I decided to risk a question. “How do you age here? Your children? You all live for so long, but...are you born, and then you stay a child for a hundred years, or...?”

He shook his head. “A child is vulnerable. Weaker than an adult. Too liable to be picked off by predators. Our offspring actually age twice as fast as human children. We're fully grown by twenty-one or twenty-two. That's when the aging process slows down dramatically.”

“Predators?”

“Plenty of dark and hungry things lurk in the forgotten corners of this realm, Little Osha. At least four different kinds of Banshee feed from the souls of the very young. Their vibrant energy's just too potent for them to resist. Then, there are wraiths, and saw-toothed mermaids, and a whole plethora of den-dwelling creatures that like to burst out of the ground and swallow whole anything they can fit inside their jaws. You've really got to watch where you're putting your feet around here.”

Gods alive. I'd known Yvelia was rife with danger, but I hadn't realized how precarious a person's safety was here.

“There's also the plant life. Poisonous thorns and carnivorous flower buds. If those don't kill you, they'll sure as hell leave a mark. And then, of course,” Fisher noted, his eyes darkening. “There's Malcolm.” He didn't say'the vampires.'He said'Malcolm,' as if the pale figure with the silver hair I'd seen on the other side of the riverbank was solely responsible for the death and destruction his horde left in its wake. “His hatred alone would wipe the world clean of life if it were given free rein.”

A chilled wind blew, snaking icy fingers down the back of my shirt and making me shiver. I thought there had been a blast ofwind, anyway, but the air seemed strangely still all of a sudden, as if the world were holding its breath.

Change the subject, Saeris. For the love of the gods, change the subject.

“You're causing quite a stir,” I said into my cup of ale as I drank.

“Hmm?”

I eyed the gaggle of young girls as they completed their fourth lap around the fire, still throwing hopeful glances Fisher's way. “I think this little group might be wondering if the Lord of Cahlish is in the market for aLadyof Cahlish,” I said teasingly.

I didn't think Fisher wouldlovethe comment, per se, but I figured he'd at least know that I was joking. His hand tightened around his mug, his shoulders drawing up uncomfortably around his ears. “You shouldn't call me that. I'm not Lord of Cahlish,” he bit out.

“But...that is your title. Weren't you your father's only son?”

“That doesn't matter. I'm not—” He changed tack. “A lord is charged with watching over his people. He protects them. Defends them. Creates a safe place for them to live. Do you know where they are now? The people who used to live on my lands?”

An awful anger burned in his eyes as he looked at me. I wasn't going to like what he was about to tell me, but I answered anyway. “I don't.”

“On the wrong side of the Darn, baying for the blood of their own fucking children,” he said bitterly. “Or else they've abandoned their homes and moved away, where they won't have the entire Sanasrothian horde kicking down their front doors in the middle of the night. A hundred and ten years. I left them fora hundred and ten years.Ren and the others did everything they could to stem the tide. It's not their fault.Iwas supposed to be here to protect them.Ifailed them. So I don't deserve to be called Lord of Cahlish. I am lord of nothing.”

The arrogance he wore like plate armor was gone. All of the artifice. The walls that stood between him and the outside world. Gone. The silver in his eye pulsed, reflecting the light from the fire, relentless as ever, giving him no peace. It hurt to see him like this, torn wide open by a grief that I could see now lived just below the surface of the stony, give-no-fucks facade he presented to the world.

My throat ached. I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but the lines were so blurred now. Would he accept that small comfort, or would he laugh and spit in my face? I had my own defenses in play. My walls were just as tall as his and just as thick. I didn't know if I'd survive that kind of rejection if he turned around and mocked me for thinking I could be any kind of support to him.

Courage,I thought to myself. And also,fuck him. If he showed cruelty in the face of kindness, then he deserved to be miserable and alone. I drew in a deep breath, and was about to reach for him, when—

“Why haven't you said anything?” he demanded, twisting to face me.