Page 18 of Quicksilver
“Obsidian. Ob—obsidian!” exclaimed Harron. “Broken. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Down in the ground. In the passageways. In the walls. They move. In the ground. I can't...it won'tdie!Ithasto!” he screamed.
“Unfortunate.” I had known Death’s voice to be a howling hot wind across the parched desert. A wet, hacking cough in the night. The urgent cry of a starving baby. I had never for one moment imagined his voice might also be the stroke of velvet in the ever-encroaching darkness. “Where's Madra?” he demanded.
Harron didn't respond. A scurrying, scratching was the only sound that reached me where I lay on the steps.
“I can't pull it out of you,” Death said wearily. “Your fate's sealed, Captain. You deserve far fucking worse.”
“The ground. The passages. They m—they move. In the ground. Obsidian. Ob...obsid...obsidian...”
A scuffling. A scraping. A low, hard thud. Harron let out a panicked screech, but his cry was quickly shut off.
When Death climbed the steps again, his boots were the only part of him that I could see in my narrowing field of vision. My heart wanted to pound when he crouched down beside me, coming into view, but it could only manage a weak squeeze of fear.
Of course Death was beautiful. How else would anyone choose to go with him without putting up a fight? Even though he scowled at me, his dark brows tugging together to form adark, unhappy line, he was still the most savagely beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
“Pathetic,” he murmured. “Absolutely...” He couldn't seem to find the words. Shaking his head, he reached into the front of his chest plate, fishing around for something. A moment later, he withdrew his hand, a long silver chain hooked around his index finger. He unfastened it.
“If you die before you can give this back, I'mnotgoing to be happy,” he groused. The chain was warm against my skin as he looped it around my neck. Ever since I'd fallen against the steps, my body had been blissfully numb, but the reprieve proved temporary as the stranger in black lifted me roughly into his arms.
The pain shattered me this time, until there was nothing left.
My silent scream died on my lips as Death carried me into the pool.
The darkness took me before the silver could.
6
EVERLAYNE
Once,when I was eight, it rained in the Silver City. The heavens cracked open, and a deluge of water fell from the sky for a whole day. The streets flooded, and buildings that had stood for generations washed away. No one had ever seen such a blanket of clouds blotting out the suns. And for the first and only time in my life, I had known what it was to be cold.
I wasn't cold now. This was something else entirely, and it wasunbearable.My bones were made of ice. They promised to shatter if I dared to move, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop shivering. Locked in darkness, I could see nothing at all. There were sounds in this icy prison, though. Voices. Sometimes many. Sometimes just one. I began to recognize them as time passed. I heard the female voice the most. She spoke to me, talking softly, telling me secrets. She sang to me as well. Her voice was soft and sweet and made me miss my mother in a way that caused me to ache inside. I couldn't understand the things she sang about. Her words were a mystery, the language she spoke unfamiliar and strange.
I lay in the darkness and shivered, wishing that she would fuck off. I didn't want to be haunted by these ghosts. I wanted toslip into the nothingness, until the cold froze me over, and the silence blocked my ears, and I became nothing and forgot that I had ever lived.
Instead, the tips of my fingers came back to me. Then my toes. My arms and legs followed. Gradually, over a span of time that could have been an hour but just as easily a week, my body returned bit by bit. The pain made me wish I'd been better in life. This had to be a punishment. My ribs threatened to crack with every breath I drew—and Iwasbreathing somehow. My insides felt as if they had been torn out of my body, shredded to pieces, and then stuffed back inside me. Everything hurt, every second of every minute, of every hour...
I prayed for an oblivion that refused to come. And then, out of nowhere, I opened my eyes, and the darkness was gone.
The bed I was lying in didn't belong to me. The only feather mattress I'd ever slept on in my whole life was Carrion Swift's, and this bed didn't belong to that asshole, either. This bed was far bigger, for starters, and it didn't smell like muskrat. A set of immaculate white sheets covered my body, on top of which lay a thick, woolen blanket. High overhead, the ceiling was not the pale golden color of sandstone. It was mostly white, but...no. It wasn't white. It was a pale, washed-out blue, and there were streaks and dabs of dove-grey sporadically daubed here and there, forming clouds. It was beautifully done. The walls of the room were a darker shade of blue, bordering on violet.
As soon as I marked the color, along with not one but five different paintings, displayed in heavy gilt frames mounted on the walls, the plush-looking couch in the corner of the room, and the shelf opposite the bed, loaded up with more books than I'd ever seen in one place at any one time, a sinking dread sank its claws into me.
I was still in the palace. Where else could I be? No one in the Third could possibly have scrounged together the type of moneyit would cost to create the dye for violet paint. Not to mention the only artworks I'd ever seen were faded pictures in books, but these were real. Oil paint on canvas, with real wooden frames.
I let out a panicked breath, my alarm rising in magnitude when I saw the cloud of fog form on my breath. Wherewas I, and what the five hells was happening? Why could Iseemy breath?
I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t comply. Not even the smallest twitch. I might as well have been paralyzed. If I could swing my legs out of—ah, ah, no. No, no. No. That wasn't going to work. I—
I froze as the door to the opulent room opened. My eyes were already open. It was pointless closing them now, when I'd already been caught awake. I was too anxious to look at whoever had entered the room, so I remained perfectly still, staring up at the clouds painted on the ceiling, holding my breath.
“Master Eskin said you'd wake up today,” a female voice said. The same voice that had sung to me. That had reached out to me in the dark. “And here I was, doubting him. I should know better by now.” The woman, whoever she was, laughed softly.
Was she one of Madra's lady's maids? Was she going to gut me the moment I stopped playing dead and looked at her? Common sense rejected both of these possibilities. A lady's maid wouldn't be so chatty. And why would they have gone to the effort of keeping me alive if they only planned on murdering me?
I slowly moved my head, turning to inspect this newcomer.
She leaned against the wall by the door, holding a stack of dusty books. Her hair was the lightest blonde, so long it reached well past her waist, tamed into two elaborate braids, each as thick as my wrist. She could only be, what, twenty-four? Twenty-five? Around the same age as me. Her skin was pale, her eyes a vivid shade of green.
