Shannon’s Reviews > Quicksilver Bonus Scenes: Kingfisher's POV > Status Update

She had never been a collector of things. Never hungry to drape herself in finery. It had been my father who had purchased the silks for her. Gowns of every color and fabric. My strongest memories of my father all seemed to feature the quiet way he came alive and glowed with pride when he showered my mother with gifts from the other realms he visited.

“NI’ MIRELLE!”
The Old Fae came out as both challenge and curse.
For revenge.
For retribution.
For my friend, who the beast had taken, and for those who remained to mourn the loss of her ever afterward.
Ni’ Mirelle.
For Mirelle.”

I formed the gate without looking back. I knew they’d be with me. I didn’t doubt it for one second. We weren’t just warriors. We were family. And if one of us was ready to lay down their lives to protect the Ajun Gate, it went without saying that the others were, too… Their fear was a bright copper burn on the tip of my tongue. But I also felt their courage, and it was enough to bolster my own.

I don’t care if I die. Mirelle’s gone.”
“You’ll see her again one day, you fool,” I told him. “When the Fates deem it time and not before. But you’ll never see her again if you burn away your fucking soul.” It was harsh to speak so unkindly to him in this moment, when the wound was raw and hadn’t even begun to hurt as much as it inevitably would. But I wasn’t going to lose another of my friends.

A scent blew to me on the breeze, then, electrifying every part of me. Like lilies, and sugar, and light, and laughter, and smoke, and I couldn’t fucking breathe. “Who is that?” I gasped. “Up there on the hill with him?” No matter how hard I squinted, I couldn’t see her. The sudden ache in my chest was more powerful than anything I’d ever experienced before. It overrode everything.

“We do not bow,” it raged. Many voices, all speaking as one. Forever a curse crouching out of sight in a dark corner of my consciousness, it rose up and spread through me like a wildfire, galvanizing my veins and dousing the pain. “We are not bound by foreign magics,” it seethed. “Nor shall you be.”

“I knew I should have stayed home,” Renfis hissed under his breath. Locking eyes with me, his hand closed around the hilt of his blade, and I saw from the furrows on his brow that he’d reached the same conclusion I had a moment ago: we were fucked. Laughing silently, I winked at him, “Not too late to turn back.” He snorted. “You’re joking. There’s no way down that hill now.”