Page 105 of Brimstone
Pretty, it hissed.A pretty one. Yes.
“Will you bind with it? Will you make it a relic?” I half expected it to say no, but I felt the quicksilver’s attention prick up at the request.
A memory, it purred.We will become a relic in exchange for a memory.
“Anymemory?” I asked.
The tiny thread of quicksilver thought about this for a second.Any memory will do, it concluded.
Any memory. Without thinking, I reached for the most painful one.
My mother, on her knees.
The blade, slicing her throat open.
Her blood spilling into the sand . . .
The quicksilver probed around it, encircling that awful moment in my mind. I felt it tighten around it. Felt the memory work loose . . .
“Stop!” the cry bounced around the windowless forge. “Wait.” I panted, my heart suddenly beating too fast. Swallowing, I shook my head. “Not that one.” I used to wake in the night, covered in sweat, that scene playing out on repeat in my head. It haunted me. It had been the very last time I’d seen my mother alive. Horrific as it was, Ineededthat memory. Without it, I didn’t know who I would be.
The quicksilver laughed softly, relinquishing its hold on the memory. The vision of my mother dying in the sand became all too real once more.
“Take this one,” I whispered, drawing forth a different memory. A morning, one much like any other, sitting in the loft of the Mirage. I had been counting money. I had been telling Hayden . . .
Been telling Hayden . . .
I gasped, a sudden, sharp, shooting pain at my temple. It was there and then gone again.
Wait.
What had I just been thinking about?
A relic, the quicksilver purred at the bottom of the crucible.A pretty one. We are made. Seal us now. Give us the blood.
It was a disconcerting thing, staring down at the ring. The quicksilver was gone, bound into it. The tiny scrap of normal silver, too. I had traded a memory, but for the life of me I had no idea what kernel of my past I had given up to facilitate the exchange.
The blood, the quicksilver chanted.The blood. The blood.
I pricked myself with the end of the dagger Fisher gave me and let the crimson bead at the end of my finger, still reeling from the void that the deal had left behind in my mind. It was a strange feeling, like probing at the space in your mouth where a tooth used to be, knowing what it should feel like but finding an empty space instead.
My blood hissed when it hit the bottom of the crucible.
Thatwas new.
The quicksilver hummed, singing quietly to itself as it absorbed the blood.
I held my breath. Waited.
It’s done. Done. Done.
I exhaled, relief washing over me as—
“You are surprised.”
I spun around, dropping the crucible and the set of tongs I was holding it in. The metal clanged heavily when it struck the ground. “Fucking saints! What the f-f-f-f . . .”
It was the Hazrax.
