QUICK LINKS: Quicksilver Recap by Chapter 1–11 | 12–19 | 20–26 | 27–35 | 42–45
Quicksilver Chapters 36–41 Summary
This chapter-by-chapter summary of Quicksilver by Callie Hart contains spoilers.
Quicksilver Chapter 36: Iseabail
Carrion’s snoring drives Saeris to the couch. At dawn, she finds Kingfisher at the window, watching the mountains. She tries to slip away, but he catches her hand and leans his head against her arm. She stays until Kingfisher signals he’s all right.
In the library, the group discusses the problem. Breaking Malcolm’s enthrallment requires a witch, and witches haven’t been seen in Yvelia for a century. They have fewer than thirty-six hours. Kingfisher finds a lead on half-witches at Faulton’s Gap and prepares to leave with Renfis and Danya immediately. Before the party departs, Te Léna pulls Kingfisher aside and extracts a promise. Saeris doesn’t miss the exchange. Whatever the quicksilver is doing to him, the effects are clearly getting worse.
Renfis returns hours later, furious and mud-covered. He reports that Danya’s hostility ruined the meeting, prompting Kingfisher to send her back to the war camp. Kingfisher eventually returns himself, accompanied only by Iseabail, the High Witch’s granddaughter, who appears sharp-tongued and entirely unimpressed.
When Kingfisher tells Saeris and Carrion to stay behind, Saeris refuses. He warns her what standing before Malcolm will cost. She doesn’t move. Carrion says he’s coming too. Kingfisher looks at them both, then relents. Seeing their resolve, Kingfisher relents.
Quicksilver Chapter 37: Much Sharper
Saeris is still trying to get comfortable in the living room when Kingfisher finds her. He tells her he wants one peaceful night before everything begins, one night that has nothing to do with Malcolm or Everlayne. Kingfisher opens a shadow gate, and she follows him to his apartment in Ballard.
When they make love, Saeris’s mating marks surface and new tattoos bloom across Kingfisher’s skin. He explains that he has accepted the bond. Saeris has a month to decide if she’ll claim him in return, and he doesn’t rush her.
Kingfisher tells Saeris he loves her and asks her not to say anything back. She doesn’t.
Quicksilver Chapter 38: Martyrs for Friends
Saeris wakes alone. A shadow gate hangs open in the middle of the room, and a note sits on the table.
Kingfisher has thought of everything. Saeris is to return to Cahlish, wait for Everlayne, and sedate her before the transformation takes hold. The note contains instructions for his friends and a declaration that Saeris’s blood oath is released. At the end, he asks her to help his people find a way out first, then she can walk back into her own world if that’s what she wants. He loves her, and he’ll wait for her in the afterlife.
Then Saeris sees Kingfisher’s sword still leaning against the wall. He went to Malcolm unarmed on purpose.
Saeris steps through the shadow gate and arrives in Kingfisher’s room, where Carrion sits with a book in his lap. It belonged to Kingfisher’s mother, filled with prophecies and drawings. One illustration looks unmistakably like Saeris, except Fae.
She takes the letter straight to Renfis. He reads it, as does Lorreth. Neither speaks. The weight of Kingfisher’s sacrifice settles over the room.
Saeris asks about the quicksilver pool at Gillethrye. Renfis says there isn’t one.
Then Carrion asks how long the shadow gate stayed open after Saeris came through. The room goes still. When Everlayne falls through, the gate will open again and lead straight to Gillethrye. Carrion grins. He’ll come with Saeris, but he wants a sword first.
At the forge, they work quicksilver into a blade, but the metal fights them. Then Carrion tells a joke, and somehow the quicksilver yields. He names the sword Simon.
When the shadow gate finally tears open, Everlayne drops through and shatters the table. Saeris orders Carrion up first, then grabs Solace and follows him. Everlayne starts to say something as Saeris steps through, something about the water. But the warning comes too late. Saeris is falling.
Quicksilver Chapter 39: Annorath Mor!
Saeris hits the water and goes under. Lorreth hauls her out, then goes back for Carrion, who surfaces limp and unresponsive. Saeris crouches over Carrion and tells him that if he doesn’t wake up, she’ll tell everyone back home he was terrible in bed. Carrion’s eyes fly open, and he coughs up half the lake.
Renfis didn’t make it through the gate. Lorreth presses Widow’s Bane into Saeris’s and Carrion’s hands, and as they chew, the pain becomes manageable.
The cliff ahead is black obsidian. They climb through drifting ash until they hear hundreds of voices, chanting in unison, “Annorath mor.” They pull themselves over the edge and stop. Below sits an enormous and packed amphitheater, with Kingfisher standing alone on a dais at its center.
Harron is on them before they can take in more. His eyes are quicksilver, bright and wrong, and he holds a dagger at Lorreth’s throat. A mass of newly turned feeders waits behind him. Then Harron raises a vortex and drives all three of them toward the portal.
Saeris reaches out to Kingfisher in her mind. His warning not to come is too late. She’s already inside..
Quicksilver Chapter 40: Introductions
Saeris, Lorreth, and Carrion come through the vortex and find Kingfisher at the foot of the dais, beaten and barely upright. Above him sit the Triumvirate: Malcolm, Belikon, and Madra.
Malcolm’s greeting is cold and unhurried. Harron drops Carrion to the ground while the siblings take their time. Belikon does most of the talking, admitting he always knew Madra was the one who closed the gates. Belikon had blamed Kingfisher’s father anyway and had fed his own soldiers to Malcolm’s army.
Belikon kicks Kingfisher, then speaks of Gillethrye and the oath that has kept Kingfisher silent for years. Malcolm gestures to the amphitheater around them. The audience is the Fae of Gillethrye, the very people Kingfisher stands accused of slaughtering.
Then Belikon releases Kingfisher from the oath and commands him to confess in front of the group exactly what deal he made and when.
Quicksilver Chapter 41: Gillethrye
Despite his injuries, Kingfisher gets to his feet and talks.
Kingfisher had come to Gillethrye with his wolves, only to find Malcolm’s horde already inside. Kingfisher confronted Malcolm and learned that Belikon had made a pact with the vampire king. Madra was part of it too.
Belikon offered a coin toss, staking the city’s fate on a single flip. But when Malcolm caught the coin mid-air, Kingfisher realized the game was rigged. By then, Gillethrye was already dead or turning, the horde ready to spill outward. To contain the rot, Kingfisher barricaded the city and burned it.
Malcolm later built a labyrinth inside the colosseum with the coin at its center. With the stands filled with the Fae of Gillethrye, Kingfisher was imprisoned within that maze. That captivity lasted a hundred and ten years, ending only when Saeris woke the quicksilver pool in Zilvaren and the gate opened.
In the present, Kingfisher uses Malcolm’s taunt as a distraction. With sudden speed, he snatches Solace from Saeris and drives the blade into Belikon. Madra screams. The room comes apart.