Quicksilver (The Fae & Alchemy Series Book 1)

During Zilvaren’s brutal “reckoning” heat, Saeris Fane is caught stealing in the wealthy Hub and nearly strangled by a gold-armored guardian. To protect her identity, she uses an alias and weaponizes the Hub’s fear of Third Ward “contagion,” prompting the Believer guardian to drop his gauntlet rather than touch her. Saeris steals it and escapes by climbing the Hub wall—an act the guardian cannot match in ceremonial armor. At the top, the gauntlet reacts to quartz and seems to whisper that an unseen “she” senses them, hinting at a larger force tied to metal and stone.

Back in the Third, Saeris clashes with her forge ally Elroy, who fears reprisals and the exposure of Saeris’s unusual ability to affect metal. Saeris’s brother, Hayden, is already in trouble with Carrion Swift, a notorious gambler-smuggler. When Saeris confronts Carrion, he warns that if the palace believes stolen armor is in the Third, Madra’s guardians will flood the ward with violence. Saeris agrees to move the gauntlet, but when she rushes outside, Hayden and the satchel are gone.

Saeris races to The Mirage and finds Hayden surrounded by a phalanx of guards, holding the stolen gauntlet. Realizing he will be taken or killed either way, Saeris claims the theft and fights to free him—killing and maiming guards and escalating her crime to an execution-level offense. With no clean escape, she forces Hayden to run by verbally lashing out and ordering him to find an unnamed “old man” and warn him about what happened.

Captured, Saeris is dragged into the palace and interrogated by Queen Madra, who fixates on Saeris’s combat skill and accuses her of connection to the banished Fae. Madra reframes Saeris’s theft as pretext for mass retaliation: she orders Captain Harron to make Saeris’s screams echo through the palace and threatens to purge the Third Ward, kill Saeris’s loved ones, and raze the community. Harron begins a brutal execution, impaling Saeris and torturing her. Near death, Saeris’s “heresy” manifests—she seizes control of a dagger and melts it into living silver that attacks Harron. Drawn to an ancient sword embedded in stone, she pulls it free despite Harron’s warning that it will “open the gate.” The hall floods into a rising pool of quicksilver, and a towering, black-haired figure with green eyes rises from it, kills Harron, chains Saeris, and carries her into the silver as she loses consciousness.

Saeris wakes ten days later in Yvelia’s Winter Palace, healed by Master Eskin and tended by Everlayne De Barra, a Fae princess. Saeris learns the rescuer is a feared exile known as Kingfisher and that a chain he placed on her is critical to keeping him stable; the warrior Renfis retrieves it, implying Kingfisher becomes dangerous without his relic. Everlayne admits Saeris cannot leave—she and the sword are too important—and brings her before King Belikon De Barra. Belikon claims Madra has destroyed Zilvaren and assigns Saeris a coercive task: awaken the quicksilver and restore the portals between worlds. The court then drags in a feral Kingfisher; Belikon attempts to execute him until the oracle Malwae invokes prophecy and forces Belikon to return Kingfisher’s pendant, restoring his sanity enough for him to be used again.

In the library, Rusarius and Everlayne treat Saeris’s awakening of quicksilver as evidence she may be an Alchemist tied to Solace, the blade that once sealed pathways. Kingfisher antagonizes the court but also offers the most practical “truths,” arguing Madra likely conscripted Zilvaren’s people rather than simply burning them. He takes Saeris to a ruined, guarded forge, explains how quicksilver pathways destabilize minds, and reveals his pendant quiets the “reminders” of quicksilver exposure in his head. He admits Saeris is leverage for his freedom, then humiliates her by magically restoring the forge only after making her clean it by hand.

As Saeris studies fragmented alchemist history—three branches of alchemy and transmuters who often went mad—Kingfisher begins forcing practical tests. He places quicksilver in her palm and pushes her to listen through the pain until Saeris stills it with a command. Their conflict intensifies into attraction, but the larger stakes tighten when Saeris tries to escape to the Winter Palace’s massive pool. The quicksilver mentally coaxes her toward stepping in; Kingfisher stops her and reveals the stolen ring is not protection—without shielding, she would die crossing. Under duress, they strike a blood oath: Kingfisher will retrieve Hayden from Zilvaren, and Saeris will obey and assist him “in any way” he demands.

Kingfisher returns from the crossing nearly destroyed—but the unconscious human he drags back is Carrion Swift, not Hayden. Kingfisher insists Carrion identified himself as “Hayden Fane,” and Saeris discovers the oath’s fine print compels her body to obey his orders. Kingfisher flees the Winter Palace with Saeris and Carrion, traveling through a shadow gate and then to Kingfisher’s warded refuge, Cahlish. There Saeris learns the true scale of her trap: she must forge quicksilver-shielding relics from meaningful family rings for all fifteen thousand of Kingfisher’s warriors.

War intrudes immediately. Saeris faces repeated failures in the forge while learning silver is scarce—Belikon’s embargo and a stripped realm have made quicksilver trade routes vital. Sanasrothian “Feeder” soldiers attack; Saeris is claw-poisoned, and Kingfisher reveals silver is the only reliable way to kill them. As Saeris recovers under further oath coercion, she learns more about the Lupo Proelia (“wolves”), the Oath-Bound who cannot lie, and Kingfisher’s history: he once saved the wolf warrior Lorreth by sharing a piece of his soul in a rite that binds their fates.

At the border war camp, Saeris trains with Renfis and is pulled into deadly politics around Kingfisher’s long absence. When the vampires attempt to cross the frozen River Darn, Saeris and Carrion help break the ice while Kingfisher’s black-smoke magic drags the first wave under. Malcolm, vampire king, appears across the bank and publicly taunts Kingfisher, implying a recent “deal” meant to sow distrust. Later, Everlayne appears across the river in a collar and chain: she has been bitten and enthralled by Malcolm, and a barrier prevents rescue. The group learns a single Malcolm bite creates a thrall; within roughly fifty-six hours, Everlayne will die and return as a feeder unless Malcolm gives her his blood and she drinks, transforming instead. They seek witch blood magic, eventually bringing the powerful witch Iseabail to help once Everlayne is retrieved.

Meanwhile, Saeris finally breaks her forging deadlock by treating quicksilver as sentient and negotiating with it. She bargains with the quicksilver shards embedded in Danya’s shattered godsword, promising to restore the blade and give it a full song. The shards free themselves, and Saeris reforges the weapon; when Lorreth sings a ballad to seal the bargain, the quicksilver steals the song from everyone’s memory but Saeris’s. Because Lorreth is first to bleed on the new edge, the quicksilver claims him as bearer, and the sword—named Avisie9th—erupts with rune-lit power.

When Kingfisher goes alone to Gillethrye to rescue Everlayne, he releases Saeris from her blood oath in a note that reads like a farewell. Everlayne is violently thrown back through a lingering shadow gate, and Saeris, Carrion, and Lorreth pursue—falling into a freezing lake, climbing an obsidian cliff through ash, and emerging into a colossal arena where hundreds of thousands chant “Annorath mor” (“Release us”). Captain Harron, grotesquely altered with quicksilver eyes and commanding feeders, forces them through a corrupted gate and into the amphitheater’s killing floor.

There, Saeris finds Kingfisher tortured before a dais where Malcolm sits flanked by Belikon and Madra—revealed as a reunited Triumvirate allied across realms. The arena is a magic-dead graveyard, and the “crowd” is the burned, animated dead of Gillethrye. Forced to confess, Kingfisher admits he burned and sealed the city long ago to prevent a mass turning that would have consumed the realm; Malcolm punished him with a lethal labyrinth and this arena of eternally burning victims. In the chaos, Kingfisher retrieves Solace from Saeris and stabs Belikon, triggering a flight into the shifting obsidian labyrinth.

Saeris kills Harron by snapping his neck, then guides Kingfisher, Lorreth, and Carrion by sensing quicksilver. They battle Morthil, a movement-tracking spider-demon, and reach the labyrinth’s coin-filled center, where the Triumvirate corners them again. Carrion sacrifices himself by letting Malcolm bite him, revealing he is Carrion Daianthus; his blood poisons Malcolm, creating an opening. Kingfisher sends Saeris to find the one real quicksilver-laced coin hidden among illusions. Guided by the quicksilver’s whisper, Saeris retrieves it from Morthil’s corpse—but Malcolm intercepts her.

Saeris deceives Malcolm and flips the coin herself, unleashing a cleansing wind as the trapped dead chant “Annorath mor” and finally turn to ash, freeing their souls and destroying Malcolm’s intended army. With Malcolm distracted, Saeris decapitates him with Solace as the sword’s long-dormant power surges. Mortally wounded, Saeris is found by Kingfisher and Taladaius, Malcolm’s powerful second, who offers the only alternative to death: turning Saeris. As the arena collapses, the quicksilver calls in a separate debt and drags Saeris to the Corcoran, where the sun goddesses Bal and Mithin and their father, Zareth, reveal Saeris and Kingfisher have become an “axis” that draws a catastrophic counterweight. Zareth offers to sever Saeris from fate by transforming her into something unrecognized; Saeris agrees, and she is plunged into quicksilver.

Saeris wakes days later with pointed Fae ears and vampire canines: an unprecedented half-vampire, half-Fae. Taladaius admits he bit her and placed a memory block; when removed, Saeris relives her brutal transition and confirms key aftermath details. Carrion is revealed as a hidden Fae royal heir smuggled to Zilvaren by Finran and raised under the Swift name by Orlena Parry. Kingfisher reveals Te Le9na and Iseabail have found a way to dampen and slowly tease the quicksilver out of him, offering hope he won’t lose himself. The final turn is political: because Saeris slew King Malcolm and he named no heir, vampire law demands Saeris be crowned queen of Sanasroth in two days.