"Do not touch the sword. Do not turn the key. Do not open the gate."
Characters
Queen Madra - Ruler of Zilvaren. Sister to Belikon and Malcolm.
Saeris - main female character. Human, thief.
Elroy - glassmaker, used to make weapons for rebels. Was in love with Saeris’ mother and when she died; father figure to Saeris and Hayden.
Hayden - the brother. Trouble maker.
Carrion Swift - gambler, cheat, and smuggler. You hate him…then you love him. Real name is Carrion Daianthus, was brought to Zilvaren by Fisher’s dad for safe keeping.
Caption Harron - Captain for Madra’s guards. Tries to kill Saeris but is stopped by Fisher; later killed by Saeris.
Kingfisher - Goes by many names: Living Curse, Bane of Gillethrye, Black knight, Fisher.
Everlayne - Fishers half sister; Belikons daughter.
Renfis - Fishers BFF and a member of his Lupo Proelia
Lorreth - Fisher saved his life by giving him a part of his soul. If he dies first, Fisher gets his piece back. If Fisher dies first, he just kinda floats around and waits for Lorreth to die. Another member of Lupo Proelia.
Danya - Dramaaaaa…another member of Lupo Proelia.
King Belikon De Barra - King of the Yvelian Fae; what a dick
Malwae - Oracle. says the sword calls to her, gave a prophecy, saves Fisher when Belikon is threatening to kill him.
Rusarius - librarian at the Winter Palace
Malcolm - leader of the vampires; major dick.
Taladaius - Malcolm’s “son”; a vampire, but not a dick.
Iseabail - granddaughter of the Balquihidder High Witch, helps save Everlayne and is helping Te Lena draw the quicksilver out of FIsher.
Te Lena - healer at Cahlish.
Rurik Daianthus - Carrions dad; last Yvelian King
Amelia Daianthus - Carrion’s mom; both her and Rurik were killed by Belikon.
Finran - Fisher’s dad. Took Carrion to ZIlvaren for safety and never returned. Then the quicksilver was sealed.
Guardians - soldiers for Madra
Oshellith - nickname Kingfisher calls Saeris. A type of butterfly, Osha for short, They hatch, live and die all in one day, cold kills them fast. Means “Most Sacred” in Fae language.
Gods - Styx - God of Shadows
Kurin - God of Secrets
Nicinnai - Goddess of Masks
Maleus - God of Dawn and New Beginnings
Balmithin aka Bal and Mithin - twins; Goddesses of the Sky. Bal of the sun; Mithin of the moon. What people call the two suns that preside over Zilvaren.
Zareth - God of Chaos and Change
Places
Zilvaren - “Silver City”. Different areas meant to keep rich away from poor.
The Third - supposed to be quarantined. Supposedly sick. Where Saeris is from.
Yvelia - Fae country
Winter Palace - where Belikon rules
Cahlish - where Fisher grew up
Gillethrye - a city that Fisher destroyed
Sanasroth - in a war with Yvelia; where Ren has been fighting at
Ballard - Small village where Fisher grew up.
Swords
Solace - Fisher’s dads sword, was in the quicksilver in Madra’s palace, the sword that Saeris pulls out Sword in the Stone style.
Nimerelle - Fisher’s sword.
Avisieth - Lorreth’s sword that Saeris makes out of the remains of Danya’s sword with the quicksilver.
Simon - Carrion’s sword that Saeris makes.
Going to recap this timeline wise…
Finran, Fisher’s dad, takes Carrion to Zilvaren, someone closes the realms.
There's a curse - turns the Fae’s into vampires. Witches help with the cure, using Rurik’s blood. Their canines remain but they no longer need blood.
There’s a war going on led by Malcolm, the leader of the vampires, who is actually brother to Belikon and Madra. Malcolm was in the city, Gillethrye, and Fisher leaves the front lines to go and try and kill him. When he arrives, he finds out that Belikon and Malcolm are in cahoots, and Malcolm has his league of vamps attacking the city. They offer him a deal - they’d flip a coin. If it landed leaf side up, Malcolm would leave the city without hurting anyone else. If it landed fish side up, he would take the city and destroy it. They also make sure to throw a few extras in there - Fisher wasn’t allowed to touch the coin, until it landed he couldn’t harm Belikon or Malcolm, and he wasn’t allowed to discuss the deal with anyone. What choice did Fisher have? He would have destroyed the city anyways, this at least gave them a 50% chance of escaping. So they flip it. Except, Malcolm catches it. It never lands. So Malcolm set his vamps upon the city to feast. FIsher barricaded the city and torched it. He knew they were all dead anyways, he just wanted to make it quick. This pisses Malcolm off so he takes Fisher and creates a labyrinth with the coin in the center. Told Fisher he just had to get to the coin. Except Malcolm kept moving the walls and putting deadly obstacles in his way. For 110 years. Malcolm also mentions that he sent his friends to “play with him” and that Malcolm visited him as well. I’m assuming he sexually assaulted Fisher but it's never directly said. He said they had “scintillating conversations” and then calls Fisher “my love”. Fisher finally found the center but he couldn’t find the coin (the center is filled with coins).
Let’s jump realms to meet Saeris. Saeris lives in the Third in Zilvaren. The Third is a very poor part of the Silver City. They barely have food, they have water rations (which is actually sewer run off….gross), and Madra has 70% of them sterilized at a young age so they will stop breeding and die off. She has told everyone that they are infected so they are supposed to be quarantined. Which isn’t true obviously. Saeris has not had an easy life. She watched her mother be murdered by Madra’s guards; Saeris and her brother Hayden then worked on being invisible to Madra’s guards. Saeris is a very good thief and our story opens with her stealing from one of Madra’s guards. She steals his gauntlet and takes it back to the Third and her plan is to melt it down, sell the gold, and get her and Hayden the hell out of the Third. Her father figure, Elroy, tells her this is a horrible idea, the Guards will come looking for it, and that she can’t melt it down in his shop. She goes to find another place to put it, runs into her brother, who has been beaten in a card game, and beaten up by Carrion. She gives her bag, with the gauntlet to Hayden, and goes to confront Carrion. Carrion already knows what she has done and also tries to get her to get rid of the gauntlet. Meanwhile, Hayden takes off with the bag, and gets cornered by a bunch of Guardians. Saeris fights them, kills a few, and is taken prisoner back to the palace by Captain Harron. After awhile in a cell, he takes her to the Queen. He takes her to some room where she sees a sword sticking out of the ground, it calls to her. (side note: Saeris doesn’t know why but she can make some metal move without touching it, and she can hear some metals talking to her. She tries to keep this on the DL, but Elroy knows for sure). Anywho, Harron drags her away from the sword.
Madra comes in; asks Saeris who has trained her, and says “It was the Fae wasn’t it?”
Saeris believes in Fae like she believes in unicorns so she thinks Madra has lost her damn mind.
Saeris has no answers for her so Madra tells Harron to kill her and then to go kill everyone in the Third as punishment. Madra leaves, Harron stabs Saeris in the shoulder, then in the stomach, he is getting ready to stab her in the other shoulder when the knife freezes. Harron couldn’t move it. Saeris was kind of out of it, multiple stab wounds remember? But she really didn’t want to get stabbed again. She ends up melting the knife and the liquid starts rolling towards him. Somehow she is able to get up from the ground with the knives still sticking out of it, and heads towards the sword in the ground to stab Harron with it. She removes the sword and the ground around her turns into a silver pool.
This is the part where our two stories meet.
Taladaius was visiting Fisher, when the ground shook and a quicksilver pool broke through the ground. Fisher didn’t hesitate, he jumped in. When he did, it took him to Madra’s palace where he finds Saeris bleeding out.
Saeris sees a huge figure rising up out of the pool. She thinks its Death that has come to claim her in person.
Fisher had been told by his mother about a woman who would be his mate. Drew pictures of her, except she had Fae ears. So when he sees Saeris lying there, very much human, and dying, he says “What’s this? A fucking joke?” He wants to leave her there because he knows that if she goes back with him Malcolm and/or Belikon would hurt her to hurt him. But he couldn’t leave her because she was already dying. So he takes Saeris back to the Winter Palace, because that’s where the quicksilver pool is. He gave her his relic so that she could safely go into the pool.
Saeris was out for 10 days. Layne takes care of her. Renfis comes and gets the chain back from her. Says that Kingfisher needs it more than her.
Layne takes Saeris to see the King during court. He’s a jackass. Then he brings in “the dog” which is Kingfisher. Who is thrashing around like a psycho. Malwae interrupts the King berating him and says that the gods said the King isn’t going to kill Fisher but that he needs to give him back his necklace. Renfis shows up and says he needs Kingfisher back at the front lines. None of them really know what happened, they know that he went to Gillethyre, torched the place, and then disappeared. The King, who loves to hear himself talk, says that Fisher can go back to the front in one week, after he helps the human figure out the quicksilver.
Let’s skip around - they think Saeris is an Alchemist who is able to control the quicksilver. They want her to learn how to control it to make relics, to help people travel safely through quicksilver to other realms, and weapons.
Fisher is basically a giant dick to everyone but especially to Saeris. One day, while they are working in the forge, they start making out and Saeris steals his ring (that he claims is a relic). She attempts to go back to the quicksilver pool to go back home to get her brother and Elroy. Fisher catches up with her and is basically like you idiot, you would have died. They make a blood oath - Fisher will try to get Hayden and Saeris will make all the relics that Fisher asks for.
He goes in and comes back with Carrion Swift.
Then he uses a shadowgate and transports them to Cahlish - which is Fisher’s real home. No one there has seen him since he left for Gillethyre so they are shocked he is back.
Even though Fisher did not bring back Hayden (technically the agreement was he would try), Saeris is still bound to her end.
Many trials, many tests, she still has no idea what she is doing.
Fisher, Ren, Carrion, and Saeris travel back to the actual front lines. Where she gets to meet Lorreth and Danya. Two of Fisher’s Lupo Proelia. Danya thinks that Fisher abandoned them, he tries to tell them that he can’t tell them what happened, but she’s an emotional bitch, so she attempts to stab him. Saeris stops the sword (with her mind) and it explodes.
Skipping along here… the first time they have sex, Saeris develops runes on her hands and on her chest. The second time, she gets a lot of them on her hands and arms. He doesn’t tell her then, because keeping secrets always works so well for these Fae/Shadow Males, but we find out shortly later that they are the mating bond and god bindings (blessing from the gods themselves).
Next time Saeris is working in the forge, Carrion shows up, and asks her how come she doesn’t just ASK the quicksilver to cooperate. What a stupid idea she thinks…except wait…maybe it isn’t. She tries it and what do you know...it fucking works.
She wills Danya’s sword fragments out of the wall and it takes many many hours, but she manages to make a brand new sword. Unfortunately, it chooses Lorreth and not Danya (cue temper tantrum).
Malcolm and his vampires decide to start some shit across the lake again. But this time, they find out that Malcolm has Everlayne, and he has bitten her. She only has 56 hours left or she will belong to Malcolm, with no mind of her own, doing whatever he wants, or she dies.
They all head back to Cahlish to figure out how to save Everlayne. Te Lena, the healer, is there, and they decide they need her and a witch to save Everlayne. Also this is when Saeris finds out that the runes marking her skin are actually the mating bond and the god bindings. She confronts Fisher, who basically tells her that the quicksilver that still resides in him, is slowly driving him mad, there’s no cure, and he refuses to bind himself to her while he’s like this. Saeris is like oh, so you decided my future for me? Cool…
(This leads to some very frustrating, for us the readers, chapters. Because we just want Saeris to forgive him, quit being mean, and for them to communicate. Time is running out (there’s only 20% of the book left for gods sake) and we need them to be ok.)
The night before they go rescue Everlayne, Fisher takes Saeris back to Ballard, and after they fuck, he tells her he accepted their bond. Which shocks Saeris because he was just saying he was trying to figure out how to reject it.
The next morning, Saeris wakes up, and fucking Fisher is gone. He left a note and was like (paraphrasing here) “I’m going to go be the hero and sacrifice myself, don’t come find me, just let me go, I love you”.
Asshole.
He left a shadow gate open for her to return to Cahlish. She goes back, and they come up with a plan. Saeris makes a sword for Carrion and he names it … Simon. Carrion is such a dork. Lorreth named his Avisieth. And Carrion…Simon…seriously.
When Fisher opens a gate and sends Everlayne through it to Cahlish, Saeris, Lorreth, and Carrion go into it to Fisher.
This is where the bad men monologue so we know what has been going on. And we find out who Carrion really is - Carrion Daianthus. His parents were Rurik and Amelia. Long fight short - they end up back in the labyrinth, Saeris kills Harron (in a slightly funny way), finds the coin in the mouth of a gross demon (she had to make a deal with the quicksilver to be able to find it quickly), she kills Malcolm (good fucking riddance), but he inflicted a lot of damage prior to that, Fisher makes the decision as Saeris is dying, that Taladaius can save her. So he turns her. Lorreth and Carrion deal with Belikon but he and Madra escape. As the gang are trying to escape because the labyrinth is collapsing, the quicksilver calls in the favor, and pulls Saeris out of Fisher’s arms. She gets transported to a different realm, where she meets two twin girls (Bal and Mithin) and their dad, Zareth.
He tells Saeris that a long time ago he saw her and Fisher. He saw how powerful they would be together so he swayed the fates. Saeris should have been born Fae and in the same realm as Fisher. But Zareth shifted things so that maybe they wouldn’t come into contact with each other. He tells her that she and Fisher together are so powerful, there has to be a counter to it, and every possible future with them together, ends with half of the universe dying.
But there is a small chance that that won’t happen and there is always a common factor - her and Fisher are god-bound. He tells her that the marks on her wrists mark her as his ward, they protect her and Fisher from the other gods. The other gods want to kill Fisher, and just take the chance of what happens with the universe. But that Bal and Mithin would be sad, so he doesn’t want that to happen. Time to quote:
“If you truly accept Fisher as your mate, then you must agree for the thread of your life to be severed from the tapestry of the universe. Once you do, none of us may affect your future. We won’t be able to see you at all, nor will my brothers and my sister be able to interfere with timelines or events that affect you, either. You’ll be on your own.”
She’s like wtf does that mean.
He says “You’re not responsible for anything. All you need to do is live your life.”
Also, this is the way to save Fisher from the quicksilver. So no pressure. Oh, and you won’t be a vampire, or fae, or human. You’re something new.
Its weird, because it seems like this is a good thing, but is it?
She agrees because she doesn’t want Fisher to die. He grabs her wrists, the god bindings flare, and then he pushes her back into the quicksilver.
Last chapter summary
Taladaius isn’t actually bad, he was bound by Malcolm, and now he is free. And Saeris’ sire.
Carrion tells Saeris that Fisher’s dad took him to Zilvaren to save him from Belikon. Carrion’s dads blood was the blood that was used to create the blood curse, and that drinking his blood should have killed Malcolm instantly but Malcolm was too old and powerful.
Fisher tells Saeris that Te Lena and Iseabail have been working together to help draw the quicksilver out of him. Also, Everlayne is ok, she’s unconscious, but ok. Then he drops a bomb and tells her the vampire court has only ever had Malcolm, and he never named an heir. So it goes automatically to whoever kills the ruler. So according to the vampires, Saeris is now Queen. Surprise!
Book 2 comes out in 2025.
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