Spoiler Warning
Afternoon, readers.
Spoiler warning, right at the start. This is a full recap of Quicksilver, by Callie Hart, book one of the Fae and Alchemy series, and it gives away everything, the ending included. If you have not read it, come back later. If Brimstone is on your shelf and book one has gone fuzzy, stay.
Here is the short answer. A thief named Saeris is dragged out of her desert city into a fae realm, where a warrior called Kingfisher traps her in a blood oath. By the last chapter she has killed a vampire king and woken up as something new. Brimstone, book two, came out on November eighteenth, twenty twenty five. I have not read it, so you only get its title and date. Let’s pull the yarn.
Three Rulers, Three Realms
Start with the map, because the whole book hangs on it. Zilvaren is the Silver City, a human city in a desert, ruled by Queen Madra, who has lived for over a thousand years. Saeris is from its poorest district, the Third Ward, where the water ration she quotes is six ounces a day.
Yvelia is the frozen fae realm, with one sun and a lot of snow. Its king is Belikon, in the Winter Palace. Across the river called the Darn lies Sanasroth, home of the vampires, led by a king named Malcolm. The doors between the realms are quicksilver pools. Keep those three names in your head, because chapter forty makes them matter.
The Glove
Chapter one. Saeris is twenty four, a thief and metalworker. A guardian chokes her, she gives a false name, Lissa Fossick, and he is so scared of the Third Ward that he drops a gold gauntlet. She takes it.
Her brother Hayden gambles away his luck, the glassmaker Elroy begs her to give the gauntlet back, and by chapter three she is fighting guardians in the street. Captain Harron drags her to the palace cells. In chapter four, Queen Madra threatens to burn the Third.
In chapter five Harron stabs her. She melts a knife into liquid silver, frees an ancient sword from a platform, and the floor turns into a pool. A tall man with green eyes rises out of it and carries her under.
Yvelia
Chapter six, she wakes in the Winter Palace. Everlayne, a fae with pointed ears, tells her she has lost about ten days. Everlayne is the king’s daughter.
In chapter seven Belikon wants Saeris to wake the quicksilver and reopen the doors. The man from the pool is dragged in as a prisoner called Kingfisher, Fisher for short. A reprieve of one week saves his life.
Chapter eight, the librarian Rusarius guesses she is an Alchemist, because she held the sword called Solace. In chapter nine Fisher says it plainly. You are a bargaining chip. And Everlayne turns out to be his half sister.
The Fine Print
Here is the ledger of deals, and the book is really about reading them closely. In chapter thirteen Saeris tries to sneak out through the pool. Fisher catches her, and she agrees to a blood oath so he will fetch Hayden. The wording includes the line, you do as you’re told.
Chapter fourteen is called The Fine Print for a reason. The oath binds her to follow him, and he uses it. In chapter sixteen she learns from it, and makes him swear, word for word, to release her once enough relics are made.
Chapter seventeen shows the catch. He needs fifteen thousand relics.
The Rings
Cahlish is not a camp. It is a stately home in the snow, Fisher’s childhood house, where a fire sprite named Archer weeps when he returns. Inside is a trunk of eighteen hundred silver rings, with eight more trunks behind it.
Every one must become a relic, and he has fifteen thousand warriors. Saeris’s first trials with the metal all fail.
In chapter eighteen, four feeders crash through the dinner windows. Feeders are the vampires’ foot soldiers, and Fisher says silver is the only thing that kills them. Belikon’s embargo keeps silver scarce.
The Camp At The Darn
Chapter twenty moves the story to the war camp, twenty thousand tents beside the frozen Darn. A warrior named Danya accuses Fisher of leaving them at the fall of Gillethrye. Saeris shouts stop, and Danya’s sword shatters. Chapter twenty has a heated make out scene, chapter twenty two has the first explicit one.
Chapter twenty one is the first battle, when icebreakers smash the river and a vampire host gathers across it. In chapter twenty four the shards are counted, five hundred and sixty three of them, and Ren gives the deadline. One year, twelve months, before Malcolm wins.
Two Swords
Saeris asks the quicksilver in the shards what it wants. It answers, music, give us music, and we will obey. In chapter twenty nine she reforges the sword while Lorreth carves the pommel and sings a ballad.
Lorreth is the first to bleed on it. He names it Avisiéth, and it makes a pillar of light the whole camp sees.
In chapter thirty, Fisher hands Saeris his father’s sword, Solace, and makes her swear to obey him in battle. Chapter thirty one is the fight on the Darn, where the camp chants the name of Lorreth.
Marks And Secrets
Chapter thirty three gives the clock. Malcolm has bitten Everlayne, and she has a little less than fifty six hours. Meanwhile the marks on Saeris’s hands are God Bindings, a mating bond, and Fisher has been avoiding her name out of fear. In chapter thirty four the quicksilver demands a secret and says, save him. In chapter thirty five he confesses.
Chapter thirty six is the search for a cure. The last witches left Yvelia a hundred years ago, but Fisher returns with the witch Iseabail. In chapter thirty seven he accepts the bond, new wings appear on his neck, and he tells her he loves her.
Gillethrye
Chapter thirty eight, Fisher has gone alone, leaving a note and an open shadow gate. Saeris forges a sword for Carrion, who names it Simon. In chapter thirty nine the friends fall eighty feet into a lake, and climb to an amphitheater of burning fae who chant, Annorath mor.
In chapter forty the three rulers sit on a dais, and they are siblings. Malcolm, Belikon and Madra call each other brother and sister, and the war was never real.
In chapter forty one Fisher tells his secret. A coin toss decided Gillethrye, Malcolm caught the coin, and Fisher burned the city. Nearly two hundred thousand fae. Malcolm says he spent a hundred and ten years in the labyrinth he built.
The Twist
Chapter forty two, the labyrinth. Saeris follows a silver thread past a spider demon called Morthil, and Carrion does something reckless. He lets Malcolm bite him.
Malcolm rots, because Carrion says his real name is Carrion Daianthus, the first born son of the old king Rurik. Chapter forty five adds that Daianthus blood made the curse, so no vampire can drink from that line.
Saeris finds the coin in the demon’s throat. In chapter forty three Malcolm stabs her, and she steals his pouch while he does it. She flips the coin. The dead are freed as ash, and she beheads Malcolm with Solace.
The God Of Chaos
Dying, Saeris refuses to let Fisher give her a piece of his soul. Taladaius, Malcolm’s second, says he can turn her. Fisher says, she consents.
Then chapter forty four. The quicksilver calls in a favor she once promised, and she finds herself in a field with the God of Chaos, Zareth. He wipes out three realms with a wave, and says she should have been born fae. If she and Fisher stay together, most of his tree of worlds dies. He offers to cut her life from fate itself, and she says yes.
Who She Is Now
Chapter forty five. Three days later, she wakes with pointed ears and long canines, burned by sunlight, half fae, half vampire. Nothing like her has been seen before.
Carrion appears with fae ears, over a thousand years old. Everlayne is alive but asleep. Te Léna and Iseabail have dampened the quicksilver in Fisher’s head, and the room is inside Ammontraíeth, the vampire fortress. The last line is Fisher’s, telling her that in two days she becomes the new queen of Sanasroth.
Content Note
Here is the content note, as facts with chapter numbers. Explicit sex scenes are in chapters twenty two, twenty seven and thirty seven. There is strong language throughout.
Graphic violence shows up in chapters three, five, eighteen, thirty one and forty one to forty three. Chapter twenty three discusses forced sterilization in the Third Ward, and chapter thirty five has talk of suicide, with no method.
The ratings are my opinion. To me this is a high spice book, and the violence is intense in the last act.
Brimstone And What Is Open
As of October thirtieth, twenty twenty six, here is what I can say. Brimstone, Fae and Alchemy book two, went on sale November eighteenth, twenty twenty five, and the publisher’s page shows that date. That is all I am doing, because I have not read it.
Book three has no title yet. The publisher’s listing shows September seventh, twenty twenty seven, and retailers had earlier listed November twenty twenty six, which is reported.
From book one, these threads are open. Madra and Belikon escaped. Hayden and Elroy are still to be found. Everlayne is asleep. And Saeris is about to be crowned.
Before You Go
That was Quicksilver in order. If you only want the ending, my ending video covers it, and the book page lists every video.
My opinion is that it works best if you accept the length. The middle is slow, and the last third is the payoff.
Subscribe if you want a recap when book three lands. Tap like if this saved you a reread. And in the comments, tell me which twist hit hardest, Carrion or Zareth.
