Page 154 of Brimstone
I implore you, please. Do not do it.
Each entry in this book had been written in service of a specific moment to come. For any of this to bear fruit, the dominoes must fall in order.
With that said, I must acknowledge that there are many ways to approach what comes next, and nearly all of them will kill you.
Your second rune has awoken. By now, you must know that brimstone is not a plentiful resource in Yvelia, as it once was. Historically, Alchemists shied away from the second bough of the Tria Prima, not only because it was too powerful and difficult to wield, but because its only purpose seemed to be linked with death and destruction. Even knowing you must conquer this rune, it pains me to advise that you must do so, as sealing this magic to your soul will come at great cost.
You will have to unlock a door within yourself that will be hard to close thereafter. I will not—cannot—lie to you. You will change if you choose to walk down this path. But with the brimstone rune sealed to you, there is a chance you will be able to use it to help save Yvelia from the veil I see descending upon it. If you decide to reject this rune, there are still other courses of action that can be taken to fend off the darkness, but the odds of those plans working are slight in comparison.
In fairness to you, I will first explain how you can reject your brimstone rune . . .
I read on, skimming over Edina’s elegant handwriting, devouring her words. She had known everything, then. Seen everything. It was all here: a map to surviving the chaos and the pain that lay ahead. It was almost impossible not to flick through the book and go to the end, to see what might tip the scales of victory to our favor . . . but Edina’s warning rang voiceless in my head.
You will read things that will prevent you from facing the challenges in front of you for fear of the ones ahead, to the ruin of us all.
The warning did not inspire confidence in me. The book waslong, after all. But as I read past Edina’s instructions for rejecting my brimstone rune—I would need to submerge my hand in quicksilver and instruct it tostripthe magic from me—she went on to explain that the first half of the book was a guidebook to my powers. It was thelatterhalf of the book that contained instructions with regard to the rot.
The beginning of her prophecies read thus:
Concerning the Evenlight Ball: turn this page before leaving your chambers.
An appointment awaits.
Hours later, my head was still buried in Edina’s book. I had learned more from her in the span of an evening than I could have gleaned in a lifetime scouring the libraries of Yvelia for scraps. And, honestly, I was scared. The Alchemists were often corrupted by their powers. Their fates were ruled by their strength of will, but also by the heritage of their blood. If I was born an Alchemist, then I definitely had a Fae relative somewhere in my ancestry. Knowing nothing about them meant I had no idea whether I had a predisposition to succumb to my magic or not, and that was frightening in and of itself. But there was more.
The Alchemists hadn’t just channeled quicksilver. In some cases, they had become so intertwined with it that they merged with it altogether to become silver-eyed heralds of the gods. These were the Alchemists who had spurred Belikon and his ilk to murder the Alchimeran line and eradicate them from this realm and all others—because they had become powerful beyond all measure and threatened the grasp of the Triumvirate’s power.
As I read, the pain in my hand slowly ebbed, until the new rune on the back of my hand was healed. It was only an outline, not filled in like the quicksilver rune that had preceded it. Incomplete. A door that went to nowhere. There was no magic to it yet. I could sense that. But maybe soon therewouldbe.
Fisher found me staring into space, attempting to process all that I had read, just as dusk was bruising the sky and ushering in the night. He carried Onyx in his arms; my mate had taken him along when he’d left Cahlish earlier, and now the little fox was excited to see me.
Chittering loudly, he yelped, slipping out of Fisher’s arms, then collided with my chest, tumbling over himself, hind legs sticking up, tufts of white fluff floating into the air.
“Good gods. You’re ridiculous.” I sniffed as I ruffled his fur, scratching his sides and the base of his skull, behind his ears—his favorite spot.
Fisher smelled like fresh snow, smoke, and thefaintesthint of powdered sugar, which told me that he’d stayed at Wendy’s long enough to share a cup of tea and a Bettell biscuit with the female before returning home from Ballard. I reached for his hand, and he brushed my fingertips with his own as he stepped over me and sank down on the floor next to me, sagging back against the bed. It was then that I saw how drawn he looked.
Onyx was busy licking my ear. I petted him distractedly, frowning at my mate. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He rolled his head to the right so that he was looking at me. “Ren,” he said. “He was supposed to ride along the Darn and then up into the Shallow Mountains to treat with the Gilarian Fae, then down through the forests to Ballard, then on to Inishtar, where I would collect him. I went to Inishtar first, but the satyrs haven’t seen him. They knew nothing of the rot. I had to tell them of it myself. I went on to Ballard to see if Ren had stayed there to wait for me, but Wendy hasn’t seen him, either. I checked in with Royan, king of the Gilarian Fae, next. Ren did warn them. They’ve already started taking steps to quarantine their cities in the mountains. Royan said Ren left their stronghold a day and a half ago and hasn’t been seen in the Shallow Mountains since.”
“What?”
“I visited every small town between Gilaria and Ballard to see if he’d been waylaid, but no one’s seen hide nor hair of him.”
A lead weight, ice-cold, formed in the pit of my stomach. “You don’t think . . . Belikon . . .”
Fisher shook his head, dark waves brushing the tops of his shoulders. “No. Ren’s smarter than every single one of Belikon’s guards put together. He moves like a ghost along those forestroads. There’s no way anyone stumbled across him and knew to command him to return to the Winter Palace on behalf of the king. No, this is something else. I just can’t put my finger on it.”
“Do you think he’s in danger?”
Fisher gave me a sidelong look that answered that question in no uncertain terms. “We’re all in danger, Osha. But yes, I think Ren might be in some kind of hot water. And I have no idea how to find him so we can get him out of it.”
37
THREE MINUTES
KINGFISHER
