Page 42 of Quicksilver
Wood, and leather, and spices, and something green, and faint musk, and—
“Ow.”
Kingfisher narrowed his eyes. “What is it?”
“Ow! That hurts!” I tried to pull my hand free, but Kingfisher's grip tightened. He held on, grasping my hand tighter and tighter in his, and the burning sensation in the center of my palm really started to sting. “Kingfisher,” I said in a warning tone. He didn't release me, only stood there, staring down at me, watching me, the metallic threads of silver shifting wildly in his right eye. “Fisher, what are you doing?”
“Tell me what it is,” he demanded.
“It'shurtingme, is what it is!” I cried, really pulling on my hand now. I wrenched and yanked, putting my whole bodyweight behind the motion, desperate to free myself, but Kingfisher held fast.
“Is it hot? Cold? Sharp? Soft?”
“Cold! It's cold! It'sburning, it's so cold!” That made no sense, but it was true. Ice crawled inside me, leeching into my bones. “It hurts! Let go, Fisher! Please! Make it stop!”
“You make it stop,” he commanded.
“I can't! I can't!”
Resolve flickered in his eyes. “You can.”
“Let go!”
“You want to prove me right, is that it? You're weak? You're a human, so you're weak and useless and pathetic? Is that it?”
“FISHER!”
He spun us around so that my back was to the workbench. I felt the edge of the wood digging into the small of my back, but the pressure was nothing compared to the awful ball of pain he had trapped between our hands.“Listento it,” he commanded.
“What?”He wasn't making any sense.
Kingfisher removed one hand, but it made no difference—he only needed one hand to hold both of mine. With the hand he now had free, he grabbed me firmly by the chin, forcing me to be still. To look at him. “Listen,” he repeated. “What is it saying?”
“It's saying that you're an—evil—piece of—shit,” I ground out.
He didn't react to that. “The sooner you do as I say, the sooner this all ends, Human.”
My jaw was screaming, I was clenching my teeth so hard. “Fuck—you—”
“There you go again. Hungry, needy little bitch in heat, begging to be fucked...” he taunted.
“Let. Go!”
“LIIIIISTENNN!!” Kingfisher's roar snatched my breath away. It snatched the light, too. The whole forge went black as pitch in an instant, and the pain in my hand, traveling up my arm, turned into a rope of fire. “There is you, and there is the pain. Nothing else,” he whispered. “Move past it. Move through it. Let it roll over you.”
This was cruel. This was torture. I was burning alive. He was going to kill me. “I can't,” I sobbed.
“You can. Show me that I'm wrong. Show me that you're tougher than I think you are.”
Of all the things he'd said to me, it was this that somehow reached me. I sucked in a stuttering breath and tried to calm my mind. The thrumming, throbbing, panicking, desperate part of me calmed the tiniest fraction. An infinitesimal amount. It made the pain flicker for a second—not long enough to provide any real kind of relief—but it was long enough.
There was a voice.
A million voices.
Annorath mor!
Annorath mor!
