Quicksilver

Quicksilver is a 2024 romantasy novel by American author Callie Hart. Hart has written over a dozen dark romance novels; Quicksilver is her romantasy debut. It is the first in a series, with the second installment planned for 2025.

This guide references the 2024 Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature “madness” in a literary context, genocide, forced sterilization, discrimination against sex workers, fantasy violence, sexual violence, genocide, and suicide.

Plot Summary

Saeris Fane stands off against a guardian in her home city of Zilvaren, a desert where water is strictly rationed. She steals the guardian’s invaluable gold gauntlet despite knowing that the punishment for such theft will be torture and death. Prize in tow, Saeris seeks out her brother, Hayden, and finds him with Carrion Swift, a flirtatious criminal with whom she has a sexual history. Saeris entrusts her bag, with the gauntlet inside, to Hayden while she banters with Carrion. When Hayden disappears, Saeris pursues him, worried he will be caught with the gauntlet. Indeed, he is cornered by guardians; to protect her brother, Saeris admits her crime and fights back against the guardians, killing two before she is arrested.

Arresting officer Captain Harron brings her to a strange chamber, empty except for a sword stuck into the ground. Immortal Queen Madra enters, demanding to know where Saeris learned to fight; Madra fears that Saeris has been trained by the Fae, whom Saeris has always assumed to be a myth. When Saeris provides no useful information, Madra orders her killed and promises to kill the entirety of Saeris’s ward in Zilvaren as retribution. Harron impales Saeris. In response, she summons her skill to control metal (which she does not fully control or understand) to liquefy his dagger. Saeris then seizes the sword from the middle of the room. Once the sword is free, the floor beneath it liquefies and overflows. A figure who Saeris assumes to be Death emerges from the pool, loops a chain around her neck, and takes her through a portal within the pool.

Saeris wakes fully healed in Yvelia, a Fae realm. There, she meets Everlayne “Layne” De Barra and Renfis “Ren” Orithian, friends who have long been searching for the banished Kingfisher, or “Fisher.” Their quest is now complete: Kingfisher is the figure whom Saeris saw as Death. Belikon, Everlayne’s father who is also the Fae king, demands Saeris learn to awaken the quicksilver pool that she activated when she removed the sword. Belikon hates Fisher, who is his wife’s son from a previous marriage; however, Belikon now permits Fisher to help Saeris learn how to work with the quicksilver.

Saeris works for several days to learn to transmute quicksilver, to no avail. Using kissing as a distraction, she steals Fisher’s ring, hoping it is one of the relics that can transport her safely home through the quicksilver pool. Fisher catches her and agrees to attempt to bring Hayden through the quicksilver in exchange for a blood oath. She agrees but is furious when Fisher returns not with Hayden but with Carrion. Nevertheless, the wording of the oath makes it binding, so Fisher, Saeris, and Carrion flee Belikon’s castle. Ren joins them, and they travel magically to Cahlish, Fisher’s home.

At Cahlish, Saeris continues to experiment with quicksilver as she learns the stakes of Yvelia’s longstanding war with neighboring Sanasroth. Sanasroth is a charred land occupied by vampires: mindless “Feeders” and intelligent vampire lords, who can only be created by extremely powerful vampires, such as Malcolm, their leader. Though Yvelia has fought Malcolm for decades, they are losing against his ever-growing horde.

Saeris and Fisher become increasingly close, even though their conversations are often antagonistic. Their mutual attraction leads them to have sex, though Saeris insists she still despises Fisher; however, after their encounters turn emotionally intimate, Saeris discovers that she has mysterious runes on her hands. Fisher causes these to temporarily disappear; Saeris later learns that these marks indicate that she and Fisher are fated mates. After the runes appear, she and Fisher can speak telepathically.

Saeris hones her skill with the quicksilver. She can hear it speak and can control metal even with very low levels of quicksilver, something former Alchemists were unable to do. At Carrion’s suggestion, she asks the quicksilver to change for her; it agrees to do so for a bargain. She trades a song to forge a blade for Lorreth, one of Fisher’s closest allies. The sword proves to be magical, the first such blade in centuries.

Taladaius, a vampire lord, reveals that Malcolm has kidnapped Everlayne and infected her with his venom. If Fisher does not deliver Saeris to the destroyed city of Gillethrye, Everlayne will be transformed into a vampire and tortured for eternity. Fisher scrambles to find a witch who can help Everlayne once they rescue her. Saeris confronts him about being fated mates; he intends to reject the bond, as the quicksilver in his body is killing him with increasing speed. When they spend a romantic night together, however, he accepts the bond, causing runes to appear on his skin.

When Saeris wakes the next morning, Fisher has left a note that indicates that he intends to die while rescuing Everlayne. In response, she, Lorreth, and Carrion use a magical gate to follow him to Gillethrye. There, they find hundreds of undead Fae trapped in perpetual torment and learn the truth about Yvelia. For the century of his exile, Fisher was in the horrific labyrinth Malcolm built, trying to find a coin that would free the Fae. Belikon, Madra, and Malcolm are all siblings who are in cahoots to keep the war going so that Malcolm can generate an unstoppable undead army.

Saeris uses her magic to detect the quicksilver coin within the labyrinth, while Carrion taunts Malcolm into biting him, only to reveal that he is a member of the Fae royal family whose blood curse made the initial vampires. Carrion’s blood wounds Malcolm, distracting him long enough for Saeris to find the coin, though Malcolm mortally wounds her in the process. When the freed souls evaporate, Saeris uses Malcolm’s distraction to kill him. As she dies, Taladaius transforms her into a vampire. The quicksilver summons her to an audience with Zareth, the God of Chaos and Change, who announces that her relationship with Fisher is fated; however, their union might trigger the end of the world. Zareth adds that there is still a chance to save things.

When Saeris awakens, she finds that she is half-Fae, half-vampire. Fisher has discovered a way to slowly remove the quicksilver from his body, saving him from his decline. Because she killed Malcolm, Saeris is to be crowned queen of Sanasroth.