Read a Quicksilver summary with spoilers, book #1 in Callie Hart’s Fae & Alchemy series. If you are wondering what happened in Quicksilver by Callie Hart, then you are in the right place! Get ready for book two by reading up on exactly what happened in the first one.

Author
Callie Hart

Ratings
4.6 stars on Amazon
4.34 stars on Goodreads
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Fae & Alchemy Series
#1 Quicksilver summary (this page)
#2 Brimstone (synopsis)

Special thanks to Emily for providing this Quicksilver summary!

***** Everything below is a SPOILER *****

What happened in Quicksilver by Callie Hart?

Your Quicksilver summary:

Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane lives in Zilvaren (the Silver City), where she lives in the third, the poorest ward. The weather is stifling, especially when the two suns are at their closest. Every drop of water is precious. 

She is caught stealing but manages to get away, taking the guard’s gauntlet. The two people closest to her are her younger brother, Hayden (20), and Elroy, an older man who works at the forge. Elroy does not want to help her melt down the gauntlet and bring trouble upon them.

Carrion Swift is the most notorious gambler and cheat in the city. Unfortunately, he heard someone stole a gauntlet, and he knows it was her. He urges her to take it out of the third. 

Leaving Carrion, Saeris finds that Hayden, with whom she left the gauntlet, is gone. Saeris finds him surrounded by guardians. She fights, killing a few of them, and they take her to the queen, a ruthless ruler with unnatural long life. 

The Queen tells the story of how she banished the ruthless Fae, beings that Saeris doesn’t believe in, and then explains that she is going to destroy the third ward because Saeris stole from her. 

The Queen leaves the room, and the captain of the guard is to execute Saeris. He stabs her, but somehow Saeris turns his blade to liquid. The liquid attacks him. 

Saeris removes an ancient sword from a raised platform, and the platform turns to liquid silver. A tall man, whom Saeris thinks is Death, rises from the surface. Just as she passes out, he puts a chain around her neck and picks her up to carry her within the liquid, and through the portal.

She wakes ten days later in Yvelia in the Winter Palace, a place she’s never heard of. She is attended by Everlayne, a Fae who is the daughter of Delikon De Barra, the king of the Yvelian Fae.

Saeris doesn’t know if Hayden is dead or alive. She wants to go back.

General Renfis comes for the chain and pendant around Saeris’s neck to take it back to Kingfisher, the one who saved her. Kingfisher is hiding from the king, his stepfather, and Everlayne, his sister, is worried about him.

Everlayne takes Saeris to King Delikon, and on the way, she tells her about the gods, notably mentioning the sun gods and Zareth, god of chaos and change.

The king (and everyone) is disappointed that a human was the one to awaken the quicksilver. He demands she stay and learn to open the portals (awaken the quicksilver) between this world and others. She will also study to learn their customs. Kingfisher has been discovered and is brought in. He was exciled for torching a city. He is not in his right mind.

Everlayne pleads with Malwae, the Oracle, to do something to save Kingfisher. She tells the king not to kill Kingfisher and that the pendant should be returned to him. The king relents and does as she asks. Kingfisher visibly comes back to himself once the pendant is around his neck.

General Renfis suggests that Kingfisher return to the front to finish the war he started. He reports that the situation in Cahlish is grave and that they will soon lose, but Kingfisher may be able to help. The king agrees he can go in a week. In the meantime, Kingfisher will help Rusarius, the librarian, deal with Saeris and the quicksilver.

Kingfisher reveals that his ancestors were cursed millennia ago. They received elongated canines and drank human blood to maintain their immortality. He also explains he has quicksilver within him, and his pendant, which his mother gave him, keeps it from overtaking his mind, though it isn’t working as well anymore.

Saeris learns she is an alchemist and that alchemy is a form of forgotten magic. The librarian and Everlayne teach her what they can. Kingfisher takes Saeris to the forge, where he forces her to hold a small amount of quicksilver. He’s surprised when she hears it calling, “Annorath more!” She turns it into liquid and then tells it to sleep. It obeys her.

Saeris befriends a fox that she names Onyx.

Kingfisher wants to see if Saeris can help him make a relic, which will aid in going through the quicksilver pool unharmed. Saeris makes out with him to distract him so that she can steal his ring, believing it to be a relic that will allow her to step through the pool. She runs away, and the quicksilver calls to her, leading her. But Kingfisher blocks her path, saying that the ring won’t work. She would have died. 

They make a bargain. Kingfisher will go through the portal for Hayden, and in exchange, Saeris will help him. Kingfisher accidentally brings Carrion Swift instead, believing him to be the brother, but Saeris is bound by their oath anyway. 

He forces her, along with Carrion, to run away from the palace to a place near the battlefront called Cahlish, the city where Kingfisher grew up. By leaving, Kingfisher effectively stole the alchemist from the king, along with Solace, the god sword, which once belonged to Kingfisher’s father. 

Carrion assures Saeris that her brother is alive and well. Saeris makes another ill-advised oath with Kingfisher. She will make relics for him until he has enough for his people, which turns out to be nearly fifteen thousand, and she doesn’t even know how to forge them yet. She conducts experiments using a small amount of quicksilver but has no luck. 

Saeris learns that Kingfisher’s sword, Nimerelle, is the only sword that still has some magic within.

Ren tries to get Saeris and Kingfisher to get to know each other better by having dinner together. But all they do is bicker. Feeders (vampires) attack during one of the dinners, and afterward, Kingfisher compels her to stay in bed for five days.

They all go to a meeting where the captains are gathered. One named Danya draws her sword on Kingfisher, calling him a traitor, and Saeris reveals to all that she is an alchemist by turning the sword to shards. Kingfisher claims Saeris as his in front of everyone.

Feeders begin crossing the frozen river (The Darn) toward camp. The Fae break the ice, stopping them. Then the voice of the vampire king, Malcolm, comes across the river, taunting Kingfisher to come out. Malcolm makes it sound like Kingfisher was in league with him. 

Later, when in his room, Saeris asks Kingfisher where he’s been for the last 100+ years, but he’s been compelled not to say. They sleep together, but he leaves her to spend the night alone. She later reveals that she is unable to bear children due to Madra’s sterilization mandates in the third, and that their time together left a bird tattoo on her chest.

Saeris and Carrion work together in the forge. Their tests are unsuccessful.

Saeris is tasked with recovering the shards of Danya’s sword and putting it back together. The fact that she was able to do that to the sword makes her the most powerful alchemist ever recorded. Ren details just how desperate their situation is. They have only a year to figure something out, or they’ll likely be overrun.

Lorreth reveals that Kingfisher saved him many years ago, giving him part of his soul. They are brothers now and linked in death. 

Kingfisher takes Saeris to Ballard, a city that was important to his mother and to him. They spend the night in his apartment, and he has some sort of thrashing episode brought on by the quicksilver in his body. Saeris stays with him for hours until it passes, and then she tells him about her difficult childhood and her mother’s death at the hands of Madra’s guardians. 

After another night together, she has new runes on her hands where his spilled over onto her skin. They can now hear each other’s project thoughts. Kingfisher takes the hand runes back onto his own body and says she has a month to decide if she wants them back.

Saeris finally remakes Danya’s sword after learning that she must make a deal with the quicksilver to get it to do her bidding. It wants a song, so Lorreth sings to it. The quicksilver agrees to allow magic in the sword, but then it bonds to Lorreth instead of Danya. Lorreth names the sword Avisiéth, and the sword emits a blinding light called angel’s breath that everyone sees. 

Saeris tries to coerce the quicksilver out of Kingfisher, but it insists that it is part of him now. It seems Kingfisher may have made a deal with it at some time.

The vampire horde is at the riverbank again. Kingfisher gives his father’s sword, Solace, to Saeris, and together the Fae fight off the vampires who have learned to swim across the river. Solace’s magic responds to Saeris. After the fighting, they realize the vampires have captured Everlayne and that Malcolm has bitten her. Taladaius, Malcolm’s son, brings a message to Kingfisher. Malcolm wants an audience, and he intends to have Saeris as his own alchemist. 

The group is in chaos as Danya arrives to reclaim her sword. She touches it and it burns her hand away. They all return to Carrion so Danya can see a healer and the others can search the libraries for a way to release Everlayne from her new bond with Malcolm. Otherwise, she can never return.

Saeris keeps trying to make a deal with the quicksliver so that it will make a relic, and she eventually realizes it wants a secret. She tells it that she wants to get her brother back, but stay in this realm. The quicksilver agrees that she needs to stay and save Kingfisher. It becomes a relic. 

Te Léna, the healer, shows her the runes on her hands and says it is a true mating bond. Gods blessed. Something of legend now. The couples in the old stories always end in tragedy. 

Kingfisher finally tells her that he knew for years that she was coming. His mother, an oracle, told him. He says he delayed their bond and they should probably reject it, because he is going to die (even if he has to do it himself). His existence with the quicksilver is a torment. 

She learns the nickname he’s been calling her means “most sacred.”

The group decides they need a witch to have on hand when they rescue Everlayne. The find one named Iseabail, granddaughter of the high witch Malina.

Fisher plans a special night with just the two of them on the night before they go to rescue Everlayne. Kingfisher accepts their bond, earning more runes, but Saeris still has not. He confesses that he’s in love with her.

The next morning, he is gone. He’s left a note saying he went to give himself up and send Everlayne through a shadow gate. He releases her from her oath. Saeris is livid. 

Saeris makes Carrion a sword just before Everlayne comes through a shadow portal on the ceiling. Lorreth, Carrion, and Saeris rush through it before it closes. 

They fall into a lake and then climb a cliff face to find a huge amphitheater. It holds hundreds of thousands of the dead from when Kingfisher burned their city. They are calling, “Annorath mor,” which means, “Release us.”

Harron, captain of Madra’s guard, finds them and takes them to where Malcolm, Madra, and Belikon (Fisher’s stepfather) are holding Kingfisher. The three have settled their differences and are now in league with each other.

Belikon releases Kingfisher from his oath of silence, and he tells them that he made a deal with Belikon to save some of the citizens, since the city was overrun. Belikon flips a coin, but Malcolm catches it, never letting it hit the ground. Malcolm’s feeders feasted on the city, and so Kingfisher torched it because all the citizens were destined to become vampires anyway. Malcome built the colosseum and the labyrinth and hid the coin at its center. Kingfisher was here, searching for it to free the dead from their torment, for the last 150 years. That is, until Saeris opened the quicksilver pool. 

How did Quicksilver end? Quicksilver summary

 They all run into the labyrinth. Saeris leads them toward the quicksilver pool, though the walls keep changing. They finally come across a mountain of coins meant to torment Fisher since he needs to find the one coin. Belikon and Malcolm arrive. 

Carrion taunts Malcolm into biting him, which causes Malcom to spew blood. Carrion reveals that he is Carrion Daianthus, firstborn son of Rurik and Amelia Daianthus. (His father’s blood was used to create the curse that allowed Malcolm to become a vampire, so Carrion’s bloodline is poison to him.)

Saeris runs off to follow the voice of the quicksilver in the missing coin.

Saeris makes a deal with the quicksilver to grant it a small favor if it leads her to itself. The coin is inside a many-legged demon. She retrieves it, noticing that runes have spread over her hands. She has accepted the mating bond. 

Malcolm is in bad shape after drinking from Carrion, but he takes the coin anyway. He thrusts his fist into Saeris’s stomach. She is dying, but manages to steal the coin back and tosses it on the ground. The undead in the amphitheater float away in ash, their torment ended. Saeris cuts Malcolm’s head off, killing him.

She is going to die, but Taladaius, who happens to be Kingfisher’s friend from his time in the laderynth, bites Saeris to turn her and save her.

But while she is in the process of changing, the quicksilver calls in its favor, asking for an audience. She is pulled through the quicksilver and meets the sun goddesses and Zareth, the God of Chaos. Turns out Kingfisher is his champion.

Zareth has been waiting for an alchemist like her to restore balance since there is a rot spreading through the realms of his domain. When he consulted the fates, he saw Saeris and Kingfisher together. Zareth has been bending the fates, trying to keep them apart, because every thread of fate where they meet ends in destruction. But every change he made still led the two of them together and to the destruction of the universe. But there are some veiled, uncertain paths they can take together, fighting at each other’s side. 

The marks on her hands make her (and Kingfisher) his wards. They protect them from Zareth’s brothers and sisters, who would prefer to kill them and take their chances on that future. Zareth says that if she accepts Kingfisher as her mate, he will sever her from the tapestry of the universe, meaning the gods will no longer be able to see or affect her future, and she will become something new. This is how she will save Kingfisher. 

She agrees, goes back to her body, and becomes a new species. Something that is a mix between a Fae and a vampire.

When she wakes, she learns that Madra disappeared into the quicksilver pool, Belikon fled, Taladaius is free now that Malcom is dead, and Everlayne is alive but in a deep sleep they cannot rouse her from. Carrion Swift is no longer glamoured to hide his Fae heritage. He is the true heir to Yvelia and Kingfisher’s father took him to Saeri’s realm when he was a child. Madra unknowingly trapped him there for a thousand years when she froze the quicksilver. The quicksilver within Kingfisher has lessened since the witch has been helping him.

The book ends as Kingfisher reveals to Saeris that Malcolm never named an heir. The vampires want to crown her as queen of Sanasroth in two days.

There you go! That’s a recap of what happened in Quicksilver by Callie Hart. We hope you enjoyed this Quicksilver summary with spoilers.

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