Page 62 of Quicksilver

“No, I don’t like horses. Horses don’t like me. We mutually dislike each other.”

Fisher hefted a saddle down from a rack on the wall and barged passed me, carrying it out of the tack room. “You're gonna have to get over it.”

I followed him, stepping over Carrion as Kingfisher entered one of the stalls. “It doesn't work like that! I can't justget over it!”

“Sure you can. Keep your ass in the saddle. Keep your mouth shut. It's easy.”

“Fisher!”

The male placed the saddle he was carrying carefully over a monstrous black horse's back, working quickly to fasten the girth. “This isn't a negotiation. You made a blood oath, human. You're bound by it, which means you're coming with me.”

“I swore I'd help the Yvelian Fae figure out how to use the quicksilver—”

He wagged a finger at me. “Think again. What did I say to you when I asked you if you agreed to the pact?”

“You said you'd go and get my brother, and in return, I would help create relics for Yvelia!”

Kingfisher pushed passed me, out of the stall, heading back to the tack room. “I said, verbatim, 'I go, and I try to get your brother. You help me and assist me in any way I ask you to, and you do as you’re told. You agree to this pact?' to which you replied, “Yes, gods, I agree! Just get on with it!”

“But we both know what I meant! I didn't mean that I'd go traipsing off into the unknown with you in the middle of the night!”

“Unless you're paying very close attention, what you mean to agree to and what youactuallyagree to are often two very different things in Fae, Little Osha. You agreed to help me and assist me in any way I asked you to, and that you’d do as you were told. You sealed that deal with blood. Now, I'm telling you to find a horse and saddle it up as quickly as you can, before my psychotic stepfather catches a whiff of what we're up to and murders us where we stand.”

“You fuckingtrickedme!”

“No,” he said bluntly. “I taught you a valuable lesson that will serve you well for the rest of your very short human life in this realm. Always pay attention to the fine print. The devil's in the details. Now go.”

Since I'd woken up in Yvelia, I'd only seen the world outside through windows. A part of me had suspected the town below the palace and the forest stretching off to the mountains beyond were illusions.

They were not.

My mind broke a little when Kingfisher ordered me out of the barn. At first, leading the horse he'd mounted for me outside, I was mostly concerned about the animal's big, square teeth, but then I looked up, craning my head back to look up into the vast darkness, and I experienced the kiss of snow against my cheeksfor the first time. Really experienced it. Seeing it from inside had been one thing, but being outside...

My whole life had been consumed by the need for water. I'd seen people fight for a mouthful of it. Die from the lack of it. Claw each other bloody, and lie, and betray, and steal for it. A dire thirst permeated Zilvaren. That thirst was the city's heartbeat. No matter who you were or where you went, you felt the rhythm of that heartbeat like a hammer striking an anvil. It lived inside your blood. The suns beat down so hot that the ground beneath your feet turned to liquid glass, and your body grew weaker with every breath you took. From the moment you woke up until the second you fell asleep each night, you were on a clock, and that clock was ticking.

Water.

Water.

Water.

Water.

You had to be willing to die for it to survive.

In Yvelia, it just fluttered down from the sky.

I wanted to scream.

Briefly, the thick layer of clouds overhead broke, and I caught a glimpse of the midnight sky beyond: a handful of brilliant white lights flickered in the black. I didn’t want to ask, but the sight had stolen my breath. I needed to know. “What are they?” I whispered.

Fisher moved around his horse, looking up at the sky, too. “Stars,” he answered stiffly. “There are billions of them. More than any mind can comprehend. Suns, like the two that hang in Zilvaren’s sky.”

“So far away, though.” My voice conveyed my awe.

“The quicksilver closes the gap. With it, we can travel to the realms that orbit those stars.” He said it so simply. As if he hadn’t just told me that Zilvaren wasn’t hidden through somemystical door somewhere. My home was up there. Amongst the stars. I gaped at the pinpricks of twinkling light, wondering if any of them weremysuns. The clouds crowded in again, blotting out the sky, and my chest ached, full of grief.

“Get on,” Kingfisher commanded, nodding at my horse. He was a dark-haired wraith, made of shadows, the flash of his pale hands and face the only part of him I could make out as he fixed two large bags to his own horse's saddle.