Brimstone By Callie Hart - 20

VORATH SHAH’S SHOP was a disaster. Or . . . there was a strong chance that maybe I was hallucinating. Had it been like this before? I couldn’t remember. Either way, glass bulbs and shattered wooden crates cluttered the floor. The shelves were hanging off the walls, lopsided, the contents spilled onto the ground. A strange, musky scent filled the shop, too, pungent and sour. Carrion and I had both wrinkled our noses when we’d entered, and we were now breathing through our noses as we combed through the debris, searching for an alembic still that hadn’t been smashed to pieces.

“I swear I know that smell.” Carrion swayed, pressing his hand against the wall for support. “It’s so familiar.” He wasn’t far from passing out. It was a miracle, really, that he hadn’t toppled like a fallen tree with all the demon venom chugging through his veins. He’d thrown up multiple times on our way back through the tunnels across the Third, but then again so had I. Now, we were both running on empty, and much as I didn’t want to admit it, it wouldn’t be long before consciousness slipped away from both of us.

“Worry less about the smell and more about that still,” I told him.

My arms were tired. My thigh was screaming with pain. The puncture wound from Joshin’s stinger was deep and burned like someone had poured acid into it. Putting weight on the leg was excruciating, but I could baby the wound later. For now, the anti-venom was . . . was our only priority.

“Don’t we need . . . Oh, gods . . .” Carrion stiffened, his face turning gray. He closed his eyes, and I knew what he was experiencing: the rolling nausea, the spinning vision. I regretted thinking about it immediately as the same sensations passed over me. “Don’t we need a healer to make this for us?” he gritted out. “This anti-venom?”

I kicked a plank of rotting wood out of my way, scattering shards of glass and a pile of fine blueish powder, frustration building as my eyes didn’t alight upon a still. “No. All warriors know how to make anti-venom. We learn basic healing skills before we even learn how to wield a sword. There are plenty of things that want to poison a person in your kingdom, Your Highness . A warrior needs to know how to reverse a toxin when they find themselves in the frozen woods of Yvelia. They won’t get very far if they don’t.”

“I don’t like that,” the smuggler groused.

“Really? I’d say it’s really fucking handy that I’m trained in plant medicines.”

“No, not . . . that.” He had to take a breath between words. “ Your Highness. I don’t like it when you call me . . . Your Highness.”

I snorted. “You are the true heir to the Winter Throne, are you not?”

“All right. I’ll start calling you Lord Cahlish, then, shall I?”

“Not if you want to keep your fucking tongue,” I growled.

Carrion straightened, looking up at the ceiling as he thought about this. “Umm. Yeah, I kinda need my tongue.” He took a deep breath and then sighed it back out. “People do seem to like it.”

I almost laughed. Almost. Gods, I was losing my mind. The male was ridiculous. “Just keep searching for the still, Swift.”

For the first time since we’d arrived in Zilvaren, luck decided to favor us. We didn’t find a still, but we did find a shallow crucible in the back of Shah’s store that would suffice. The black-market trader had a full distiller constructed back there, out of sight from prying eyes, where he had clearly been up to no good. I broke down most of his setup, lit a taper beneath the burner, and got to work.

“You’re too late. Why even bother?” My mother was back. She sat on the end of Vorath Shah’s bench, swinging her legs beneath her long skirts, eating an apple. Her long black hair swirled around her head like she was underwater. “You’re just like your father, aren’t you, darling. Always too late.” She took a huge bite of the apple, offering it out to me.

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want it.”

“Is a dead person talking to you right now?” Carrion asked. He was bent over by the door with his hands on his knees again; it was probably the only position that helped with his nausea.

“Yes,” I told him.

“Oh, good,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “I thought that was just me.”

Whatever phantoms were haunting Carrion, he chose not to share, and I chose not to pry. A male’s ghosts were his own business, and I was having enough problems with my own.

“Well, look at you. Putting people in the line of danger. Again. ”

I cut the palm of my broken hand—two inches long, at least half an inch deep—and clenched my hand into a fist as best I could, grunting through the pain. Blood welled in the crucible’s bowl, gathering quickly.

I didn’t look at the other, sandy-haired female who had joined us and was leaning against the bench next to me. I couldn’t bear to see her face. Not now. Not here. Not after so many years of mourning her. I hadn’t heard her voice in centuries. The sound of it now, familiar, knocked the wind out of me. It hurt more than everything else I’d endured today combined.

“It’s not that you’re evil. You’re not unkind, either. You’re just careless ,” she said. “You promise to look out for people, and they put their trust in you. And then you let them down, don’t you? Too concerned about covering yourself in glory to pay attention to what’s happening to those around you.”

I took a pinch of salt from an open bowl on Shah’s bench and dropped it into the crucible. My chest felt like it was being cleaved wide open.

“See. You’re so worried about saving the day right now that you can’t even be bothered to look at me, can you?”

On the other side of the room, Carrion yelped and jumped away from the wall, batting away an invisible assailant.

I took out the little wooden box and set it down on the bench. My good hand shook as I tried to slide back the lid.

“Always the same. Always a coward. Always too afraid to acknowledge the consequences of his actions,” the female snapped.

The little scorpion inside the box was furious. It was the last remnant of Joshin’s form. The demon had been right—it would take lifetimes to replicate itself and return to full size. It stabbed at me, trying to sting my fingers, but I was done being stung by this motherfucker. I grabbed it by the tail and took it out of the box.

“Look at me, Fisher,” the female said.

I held the scorpion up, trying and failing to focus on it. “Hold up your end of the deal, Joshin. If you don’t, I’ll smear you across the fucking wall.”

“Fisher, look at me.”

The scorpion squirmed, trying to escape, but I wasn’t letting it out of my sight. It was growing harder to open my eyes every time I blinked. I held the scorpion against the side of the crucible, pressing its stinger against the lip of the metal. At first nothing happened.

Understandably, the demon was livid. We’d burned it to a crisp back in the bell tower. Its true form had died screaming, and this little piece of the demon had felt it all. It didn’t want to oblige me by producing some of its venom . . . but it would die for good if it didn’t.

Petulantly, the scorpion struck the side of the crucible at last, and a thin stream of clear liquid beaded and rolled down into the blood and salt.

As soon as the task was done, I shoved the scorpion back into the box, careful not to let it escape. Back into my pocket it went.

“Kingfisher, look at what you did to me!”

I spun without thinking. Renfis’s sister stood there, the ends of her lovely long hair frazzled and black. Her once beautiful face was blistered and raw, skin slick like melted candle wax. Her left eye was missing. Her lips were fused together on the left side of her face. She was mostly naked, but there were scraps of scorched leather stuck to the exposed bones of her rib cage. Tears ran from her right eye, coursing down her ruined cheek.

“The wages of your pride, Fisher,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “What do you think? Am I still beautiful?”

“Always,” I whispered.

“Do you know what it feels like to be burned alive?” she seethed.

Sadly, I nodded. “I do, Merelle. And I’m sorry.”

I knew Merelle didn’t blame me for her death. She would have had every right to, but she hadn’t. She had chosen to bind her soul with my blade, to remain a part of the Lupo Proelia and stay close to those she loved. It hadn’t been my choice. I would have preferred her to move on to the shores of the afterlife, to find her peace, but Merelle had always been a strong-willed female, even in death. This horror show was a manifestation of my own guilt and nothing more . . . but it shattered my heart into pieces.

I stepped around the charred corpse of my friend and placed my hands over the crucible, closing my eyes.

Venom laced with magic required an anti-venom laced with the same. Like for like. An exchange of power greater than the original to cancel it out. I threaded my shadows into the metal cup, sending them into the blood, salt, and venom, infusing the concoction with my power.

I felt it take hold.

“It’s pointless, trying to wring a drop of remorse out of him, child,” my mother said, looking back over her shoulder at Merelle. “He’s incapable of real emotion. Aren’t you?”

This wasn’t going to be pleasant, but it would work. I collected the crucible and tipped its contents into two dusty cups.

“That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it?” my mother spat. “That you’ll have to truly feel the weight of everything you’ve done if you really want to love her . The hate. The shame. The horror.”

She didn’t say Saeris’s name. Didn’t need to. The female eating the apple on the bench was me. I knew exactly who she was talking about.

I faltered, suddenly unable to lift my own feet. “I know I’ll have to do that,” I muttered. “But I’m not afraid. She’s worth it.”

I walked through the image of my mother, leaving her behind as I crossed the room.

“Stop! No! Don’t! She’s sick! Please! Please, please, please, don’t take it. I can’t help her without it. I’ll do anything, please, I promise—” Carrion’s eyes went wide when I put my hand on his shoulder. His pupils refocused, whatever he had been seeing vanishing as he realized I was standing in front of him.

“You’ve done it?” he panted.

“I have.”

He took the cup I handed to him, peering suspiciously at the liquid inside. “I’ve never considered drinking your blood before now, Fisher, but . . . I’ve got to say, I’m pretty fucking excited about this.”

I clinked my cup against his. “You’re welcome, Swift.”

We both downed the concoction and immediately began seizing.

My bones were broken. All of them. They had been badly set, their edges scraping against my flesh. My stomach churned with acid, my eyes burning so badly that I almost wished I was blind.

But I was alive.

“Do you ever wake up sometimes . . . and think . . . ‘Gods, wouldn’t it be nice if I hadn’t just gone toe-to-toe with a scorpion demon from hell?’ ” Carrion croaked.

“Hah!” I pressed my good hand against my solar plexus, curious to see if the pressure might ease the stabbing pain there. It did not. “More often than I’d like.”

We were sprawled on the floor, lying among the broken glass and destroyed furniture. We’d been here for at least an hour, twitching, and spasming, and foaming at the mouth. The fates must have been feeling particularly vicious today, because we’d been conscious the entire time as the anti-venom had wrought its work.

Slowly, I closed my eyes. “How do you feel?”

“Shitty,” Carrion answered. His voice was stronger now, though. His breathing didn’t sound as labored as it had twenty minutes ago. “You?” he asked.

“Shitty,” I agreed.

“Are you still seeing dead people?”

I took a moment to answer. Then: “No.”

“Me, either.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Appreciate that.” He shifted, the sound of broken glass crunching underneath him. “If I lie here for much longer, I’m going to pass out. And I do not want to pass out here.”

“Me, either.”

Carrion made a pained sound as slowly he dragged himself up into a sitting position and then miraculously up onto his feet. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”

I opened my eyes, and there he was, holding his hand out to me again. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I let the smuggler help me to my feet. But this time, I was too tired to scowl at him all that much.

“Careful. Last time I was home, there was a bartender in my bed. There’s a good chance she might still be here.” Carrion ducked his head, scooting through the window he’d just jimmied open, disappearing into the darkened room beyond.

I was drenched in sweat. According to Swift, reckoning wasn’t as hot as usual today, but the heat was hellish. Moving through the Third’s deserted streets had been easier, though. The people of Saeris’s ward knew to find shade during the hottest part of the day, when life slowed and those who were smart found a place to rest for a few hours.

I followed Carrion, vaulting through the window and immediately wishing I’d taken it slower, cradling my broken hand to my chest. The rooms were quiet. Still. There wasn’t much by way of furniture within. A chair. A desk. A bed. The kitchen was small, but there were pots stacked, neat and clean on the counter. In the living area, Carrion found a note waiting for him on the rickety table. He plucked it up and read it, then screwed it up into a ball and tossed it into a bucket in the corner of the room.

“The bartender?” I asked.

He huffed a breath of laughter down his nose. “The bartender. I am now officially banned from the Dusty Crab.”

“Shame.”

“I’ll live.” The smuggler grunted. “They do have the best whiskey in the ward, though. Speaking of which . . .” He headed into the kitchen. Cupboard doors squeaked open and thunk ed closed. When he came back, he was carrying two cut-glass tumblers half full of pale amber liquid. He didn’t ask if I wanted the drink. Even a priest chained tight to his morals would need one after what we’d just gone through. I accepted the glass and threw back the liquor inside, and Swift did the same.

The alcohol burned much like Joshin’s venom, but this time the sensation was self-inflicted, so it didn’t count. I considered the glass, processing the past few hours. We had our silver—bags of it, courtesy of the trunks stowed in the bell tower—but gods above, it had cost us.

“She made that, y’know.”

I looked up.

Carrion was propped up against the side of his small dining table, leaning his hip against it. He gestured tiredly toward the glass. “You had her hammering out quicksilver, but she made other things before. The man who gave her work after her mother died? Elroy? He makes incredible etched glassware. Delicate. Sells them to the people in the Hub. The stuff Saeris made was never fine enough for the likes of them, but they were more than good enough for the people of the Third.”

Suddenly, the glass in my hand became brand new.

It was a lovely thing. Small. The rim was embellished with a wound glass rope. A pattern was engraved into the sides of the glass, depicting a tower that looked an awful lot like Madra’s palace being engulfed in flames. Dogs with curled tongues chased each other around the glass’s base.

She had made this.

When I’d found her, I’d been full of panic. How was this woman, this human , the person I was supposed to fall in love with? How was I going to protect her from the kind of life I lived? She had surprised me. Where I had thought her weak, she was strong. Her heart was bigger than the horizon half the time—too big for her own good. I’d misjudged her. She was incredible. For twenty-five years, she had survived this harsh place and still had fire enough in her soul to create the kind of art that would undoubtedly have cost her life were it to end up in the wrong hands.

As if reading my mind, Carrion said, “She had a penchant for incendiary designs. Elroy couldn’t sell them. I’d take them off his hands sometimes, when I could convince him to part with them.” Carrion disappeared into the kitchen and came back with an earthen stoneware jug. Again, he didn’t ask. I watched him pour the whiskey into the glass in my hands, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

A nest of vipers writhed behind my rib cage. They wanted me to punch Carrion in the face. Hard. But it was exhausting, this blind anger I harbored toward the male. It served no purpose. I was tired down to the marrow of my bones, and I didn’t have the energy to maintain it. I knocked back the shot and set the glass down carefully, still staring at it.

Her hands had touched it. Her hands had made it.

That made me feel . . .

Fuck, I just ached for her. I wanted her here, next to me. I wanted to hold her; the fact that she wasn’t in my arms right now felt like the greatest injustice that had ever been inflicted upon me. There was no breathing my way past it.

When I looked up, Carrion was watching me. “Go on,” he said. “Ask.”

It was beneath me to pretend that I didn’t know what he was talking about. So I asked. “Are you in love with her?”

He let his head drop, laughing quietly as he pulled out a chair at the table and sank down heavily in it. Stretching his legs out in front of himself, he rested his hands on his stomach, one on top of the other, and looked up to meet my gaze. “No,” he said simply. And then, immediately, “Yes?”

Heat flared up inside me, making my throat close.

“It’s not a simple thing, Fisher. She’s . . . well . . .”

“Spectacular,” I whispered.

The smile that spread across his face was sad. “Right. Exactly. She always has been. When other people are full of the kind of fire that burns inside her, it eats them alive. It hollows them out until there’s nothing left inside them but the fire. They burn everyone around them with it, until all that remains is scorched earth. But not Saeris. Her fire keeps others warm in the cold dark. It is her strength, not her weakness. Being around her reminds you that you’re alive.”

It made me want to vomit, hearing him talk about her like this. But he wasn’t saying anything that was untrue. If I could see how incredible she was after knowing her for such a short time, then how the hell could I expect him to be blind to it when he had known her for years?

No, I couldn’t blame the male for seeing what was obvious. I could only pity him that she wasn’t his and be fucking thankful that she was mine.

“I could have loved her. Truly,” Carrion said softly. “But this place broke me centuries before Saeris was born. I made the mistake of letting myself fall for a human once, and believe me when I say that once was enough. A long time ago, someone told me that the pain of loss was a temporary thing. That it would soften as the years went by, until the ache became an old friend that felt comfortable to be around. But the person who told me that was human.” He sighed the kind of sigh that had been held in for a thousand years. “I didn’t have much to go on when it came to my kind, but it always seemed to me that the Fae must experience grief differently from humans. Humans live for such a short time. It made sense that their pain visited them and left soon enough after. It would be cruel. Would swallow up their entire lives otherwise. But for me . . .” He shook his head, looking down at his hands. “Every year that I live, it seems the magnitude of my loss eclipses the last. So yes. I love Saeris Fane, because she’s electric, and fierce, and loyal, and being around her brings the world back into focus. But I’m not in love with her, Fisher. I tried. But my heart was just too full of sorrow to make room for her.”

The fire in my chest had gone out as the smuggler was speaking. Renfis would have had something profound or comforting to say in this situation. But I knew the eternal well of grief, how deep it ran, on and on forever, so I just nodded. It was all I had to give him—my understanding, and my presence. I dragged myself over to the chair in the corner of the room and sat, my broken hand singing with pain as I tried to hold the glass that Saeris had made in it.

“You barely even flinched today,” the smuggler noted. “The pain of that venom. The pain of your dead.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he asked, “Will you show me?”

Show you?”

“How to close it off. To shut it all down, so I don’t have to feel it anymore?”

Sinners. I puffed out my cheeks, unable to look at him for a moment. “No, Carrion. I won’t.”

“Why not?” He sounded like I’d just kicked him.

“There’s only one way to learn how to endure pain the way I have. You have to suffer through it. Again, and again, and again. It galvanizes you. Tempers you like steel. But I wouldn’t wish the kind of pain I’ve lived through on anyone. I’ve borne it because I had to and for no other reason. Feel the pain you’ve been given, Carrion. Don’t be fool enough to ask for more. It’s a curse I would spare you from, believe me.”