Page 157 of Quicksilver
His crooked smile nearly broke my heart. “Be honest. I think it worked a little bit.”
Ruefully, I shook my head. “Would those marks have shown up on my hands if it had?”
“No,” he admitted. “I don't think they would.”
“What do theymean,Fisher? For us?”
“Didn't Te Léna tell you?” he asked.
“I wantyouto tell me.”
The room was thick with quiet. Fisher stared down at the rug, picking at his thumbnail. “My mother never said anything about a mating bond. They haven’t existed for so long. The thought never even crossed my mind. But when I found you lying in that pool of blood, I felt it, like a band snapping into place. I smelled it on you, too. And I…I was so fucking angry.” He clenched his jaw. “Angry that the fates had sealedusthat way, when no oneelse in living memory had been affected by a bond. Angry that it had happened before either of us had even had a chance to get to know each other. I had no idea the marks would show up like that. Without any fucking warning. Without us being married, or even...even...deciding for ourselves that we wanted to be together.
“I saw them appear while you slept the other night. I watched them growing darker, one after the other, more marks than I'd ever heard of, and it scared the hell out of me, Saeris.” He nodded sadly to himself. “Historically, Marks like that come at a cost. They're the kind of Marks that people will want to write stories about. And not happy ones.”
So, it was true then. Te Léna's was right. Tragic, she'd said. The word echoed through the empty halls of my mind, growing louder with each repetition.
“I'm not well,” Fisher whispered. “I can't sleep. I'm haunted, constantly. I see things. I hear things. And it's gettingworse.” He hooked his pendant around his finger, closing his hand around it. “This won't help for much longer—”
“I can make you another relic. I just made one—”
“This isn't just a relic, Saeris. It's warded with spellwork, too. My mother went to the witches and had it, along with a number of other items, made for me before she died. Things she knew I’d need. But this thing inside me is getting stronger. There isn’t a spell in existence strong enough to keep it at bay forever. Soon enough, the pendant won't work at all, and I'll be lost. But you don't need to worry. I refuse to bond you to me with that on the horizon. I won’t accept it. I won’t have you chained to me when things get really bad.”
“You…rejected our bond?” My throat throbbed when I spoke. The words cut like blades. I walked an emotional tightrope, torn straight down the middle by what I was learning.
Fisher sighed. “I’m not sure how it works exactly. I scoured the library at Cahlish. For two weeks, I read everything I could lay my hands on that referred to the mating bond. I wanted to find a way to prevent it from forming in the first place, even though I knew it was already too late for that.” He shrugged. “I did read that, if marks appeared, a waiting period could be initiated, though. Where either party could choose to accept or reject a bond. I initiated the waiting period for us back in Ballard.”
The pieces were beginning to fall into place now. “So that’s what all of those books were for? In your tent back in Innìr?” The thought of it made me want to curl into a ball and stop breathing. “That’s what you were doing all that time you were gone? After I was bitten by the feeder? You were looking for a way to free yourself.”
Fisher’s eyes were hollow. Slowly, he shook his head. “I was looking for a way tosave you.”
“So you evoked the waiting period. For me. For my own good. Because it was the right thing to do,” I snapped.
Fisher laughed, the sound bitter. “Rejecting the bond altogether would have been the right thing to do.”
“Then why didn't you?”
“I've asked myself that question a lot. I'd decided that's what I was going to do when I watched them darken on your skin. Especially when I saw the god bindings appear. But then, when it came down to it, I couldn't do it. I don't know why. I—I just couldn't. But don’t worry. The month will pass, and nothing will change. First, we're going to get Everlayne back. Then you'll finish making the relics. Once that's done, you'll go back to Zilvaren and your brother.”
I was drowning by the second, dragged deeper into misery, further from hope and happiness. “Oh, great. You've got it all figured out, then. Congratulations. I'm so happy for you.”
Fisher looked stung by my tone. Good. He fucking should be. “Saeris—”
“No. No, really. I'm thrilled that you've had so long to think about all of this. That you've known for hundreds of years that I was going to show up in your life. That you knew what those tattoos meant, and you got to decide that you were going to reject me for my own good and send me packing back to Zilvaren. I'm ecstatic that you've made all of these awful, difficult decisions on my behalf, Kingfisher.”
“Oh, come on! Berealistic!”Fisher stood, dragging his hands through his hair. He towered over me, a wall of muscle and ink and despair. “Does it change anything? Now that you know all of this? Do we suddenly have more options available to us? Ones that don't completely fucking suck?”
“I don’t know if it changes anything! You’re the one with all the answers. What does your mother’s book say happens next?”
Fisher’s jaw worked. “It says nothing. You were right at the end of the book. She wrote only that I’d find you, and the fates would guide our path from there.”
Well, wasn’t that just wonderful? I let my head fall back against the chest of drawers and closed my eyes. “Fuck the fates. They don’t get to decide shit for me.Idecide what my future is going to be.”
“You have to go home, Saeris. You can go back and work to free your people. You can still be happy. I’m going to die, and—”
My eyes snapped open. “What do you mean, you're going todie? You aren'tdying.You're just...you're...”
He let out the heaviest sigh I'd ever heard. He came and stood in front of me and dropped down into a crouch. When he reached for my hand, I pulled it away, slamming my elbow against the chest of drawers in the process. He tutted, reaching for my hand a second time. This time I let him have it. He threaded his fingers with mine and looked down at our joinedhands for a very long time. “You're right,” he said at last, looking up at me. “Being driven to the point of madness by pain and horrific hallucinations won't kill me, no. But it's no life. At least not one that I want to live. And I won't be safe. I'll end up hurting the people I care about. In the very least, I'll be a burden, and I won't saddle you or anyone else with the burden of caring for me. That's just not happening.”
