Fragile Eternity (9 page)

Seth wasn’t surprised when Aislinn became restless a few songs later and wanted to walk. She’d been that way before she became a faery. That was one of the things that hadn’t changed—like keeping things from him. She’d always had to keep secrets, and her first instinct when she feared rejection was to continue to do so. Understanding why she was secretive didn’t mean accepting it, though. They’d only gone a block or so when he asked, “Are we going to talk about what’s bothering you?”

“Do we have to?”

He raised his brow and stared at her. “You get that I love you, right?” Seth leaned his head against hers as he said it. “No matter what.”

She paused, tensed, and then her words tumbled out too fast. “Keenan kissed me.”

“Figured that.” He kept an arm around her as they resumed walking.

“What?” Her skin flickered as her anxiety spiked.

“He was being weird. You were weird.” Seth shrugged, but he didn’t alter his pace. “I’m not blind, Ash. I see it. Whatever this tie is between you two is getting worse as summer comes.”

“It is. I’m trying to ignore it, but it’s not easy. But I will. Are you
mad
?”

He paused, weighing his words before telling her. “No. Not pleased, but I expect it of him. It’s not about what he did. Tell me what
you
want.”

“You.”

“Forever?”

“If there were a way.” She held tight to his waist like he was going to vanish if she let go. It hurt. His skin was mortal, and hers wasn’t. “There isn’t, though. I can’t make you
this
.”

“What if I want that?” he asked.

“It’s not something you should want.
I
don’t want to be
this
. Why would—” She slipped in front of him and looked up at him. “You know I love you. I love only you. If I didn’t have you in my life…I don’t know what I’m going to do when you”—she shook her head—“but we don’t have to think about this. I told him no when he kissed me. I told him that I love you, and he’s only my friend. I resisted him when I was mortal, and I’ll do it now.”

“But?”

“It’s like a pressure inside me sometimes. Like being away from him is
wrong
.” She looked desperate, like she wanted
him to tell her the lies that she was trying to tell herself. “It’ll get easier with time. It has to. This being-a-faery thing is new. And his being unbound is new. It’s just…it
has
to get easier with time or practice or something, right?”

He couldn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. They both knew it wasn’t getting easier.

She looked down and lowered her voice, “I asked Donia…before. About you becoming
this.
She told me it was a curse, and she couldn’t do it, and neither could I…or Keenan. Keenan didn’t change me or the Summer Girls. Neither did Beira. That was something Irial did. It’s not something we can do.”

“So…Niall…”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She leaned into his embrace, but her words weren’t ones he wanted to hear. “But maybe it’s better this way. You getting cursed so we can be together isn’t cool. What if you hate me someday? Look at Don and Keenan. They’re stuck dealing with each other forever now, and they fight all the time. Look at the Summer Girls. They’ll wither away without their king. Why would I want that for you? I love you…and being this…My mother died rather than be a faery.”

“But I want to be near you always,” he reminded her.

“But you’ll lose everyone else, and…”

“I want forever with you.” Seth lifted her chin so he was able to look directly into her eyes. “The rest will fall into place if I can be with you.”

She shook her head. “Even if I didn’t think it was a bad
idea,
I
can’t make it happen.”

“If you could…”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t want to have power over you, and I don’t trust Niall, even if he could…and…” She was getting more and more upset as she spoke. Sparks flickered from her body. “I do want you with me, but I don’t want to lose you. What if you were like the Summer Girls? Or—”

“What if I wasn’t? What if I die because some faery is stronger than me?” Seth asked. “What if you need me and I can’t be there because I’m mortal? Being only halfway in your world makes me vulnerable.”

“I know. Tavish says I should set you free.”

“I’m not a pet to be released into the wild. I’m in love with you, and I know what I want.” Seth kissed her, hoping his emotions were as clear in his touch as he was trying to make them in his words. The sun sparks tingled against his skin—electricity and heat and some weird energy that mortal words couldn’t name.

Forever. Like this.
It was what he wanted; it was what she wanted too.

He pulled away, half drunk on her touch. “Forever together.”

She was smiling then. “Maybe there’s another way. We can…Tell me we’ll be okay either way?”

“We will,” he promised. “We’ll figure it out.”

He kept one arm around her as they started walking again. It
would
be okay. The Summer King claimed that
his objection was to Seth’s mortality, to his pulling Aislinn away from her court. If Seth were a true part of the Summer Court, there would be no room for objection—but even as he thought it, Seth knew it wasn’t that simple.
It could be.
He’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted forever with Aislinn. He just needed to find a way.

“Riverside?” She glimmered then, her entire body pulsing with sunlight, and he held on to her, his own fallen star. “There’s music tonight.”

He nodded. He didn’t ask how she knew: it called to her. Large gatherings of her faeries were like beacons to her now.

“Can we run?” In her eyes endless blue lakes were shimmering. She might claim to not like being a faery, but part of her liked some of it very much. If Aislinn could set aside her fear of who—
what
—she was now, she’d be happier.

He nodded, and then he held on to her. His feet barely touched the sidewalk, glancing off the earth like they were flying. If he let go, he’d crash horribly, but he wouldn’t let go of her, not now, not ever.

When they stumbled to a stop at the bank of the river, she was laughing at the joy of speeding over the earth, at the freedom of who she was and what she’d become.

A band was set up alongside the banks. One of the singers was a merrow. She languished in the water, chirping orders at others on the shore. Her skin was tinted moss green, slightly phosphorescent in the dark. She wore a silver cape over a kelp-strand dress that revealed far more than it
covered. From the waist down her body was a scaled fishtail, but somehow even that looked elegant. Behind her, a trio of male merrows lolled about with kelpies, but unlike her, the other merrows were hideous. Their faces were those of catfish, whiskered mouths gaping open as they watched their sister with a protectiveness that made Seth wonder if the Dark Court faeries really were the ones to fear. Water-dwelling faeries were creepier.

But then she started to sing, and her brothers joined in on a chorus, and Seth forgot that they were anything other than glorious.

It wasn’t a language he knew. It wasn’t even a proper song, just them preening a little. Every cell in his body seemed to struggle to find a way to align with that music. His breathing found their rhythm. It wasn’t glamour; his charm protected him from that. They were just that good.

He and Aislinn stood silently, lost in the sound and the feel of the music. The notes lifted them, stealing their secrets, their souls, and spinning them into the air and water where pain was gone. There were no worries. There was no fear. It was every perfect moment filling him until his skin couldn’t contain it.

Then the music stopped.

The spell broke; gravity returned to his spirit and anchored him to the earth. Their music was like that, lifting you away from the world only to drop you without warning. The drop ached; the absence was like a physical blow.

“They’re amazing,” Aislinn whispered.

“More than.” Seth looked away from the merrows. The only time he and Aislinn could find a space to sit was between songs. When the music began, it was either stand transfixed or dance. He suspected that Aislinn could resist the pull of the songs, but he couldn’t. Faery music was all-consuming.

They’d taken only a couple steps when a skogsrå caught Seth’s attention. Of all the fey creatures he’d met, skogsrås were among the most unsettling. They existed to tempt; it was their sole purpose. Backless and hollow inside—literally and figuratively—skogsrås’ allure was in their neediness. That space was a hungry emptiness both mortal and faery found difficult to resist. Without the charm Niall had given him, Seth wasn’t sure how he’d overcome the temptation.

The skogsrå, Britta, blew him a kiss.

Aislinn tightened her hold on his hand but didn’t comment.

Seth didn’t react. He nodded but made no encouraging gestures. The music nights were held in areas declared neutral territory for the event, so the skogsrås would all be bolder. Truth be told, Britta would probably be bold regardless of where they were. Any faery strong enough to be solitary but linger where there were several courts in conflict was not to be dismissed lightly.

Britta walked toward them. Neutral ground meant they were all equal here. Seth liked that, but the tension
in Aislinn’s body made clear that right now she wasn’t liking it.

A few steps away, Britta tripped, and without thinking, Seth caught her. In doing so one of his hands slid over the space where her back should be. Even though the thin shirt she wore covered most of that void, he still felt the tug of that empty space.

“Nice save, love.” She kissed his cheek with a familiarity that was not earned. Then she looked at Aislinn. “Queenie.”

As she sauntered off, Aislinn murmured, “I’m never going to get comfortable around some of them, am I?”

“You will,” he reassured her. “We both will.”

“Things weren’t easier before, but it seemed like they made more sense.” She rested her head against him.

“It’ll all make sense again. You’re new to this,” he said.

She nodded, and he suspected that it was because she couldn’t answer without trying to twist her words into a misdirection so she sounded less afraid than she was. He was afraid too. If he told her the things Keenan had said, if he told her how much she really hurt him when she forgot her strength, it’d push her away when he wanted to pull her closer. He wanted closer to her, but until she figured out who she was and he found a way to become not just a mortal caught in a world of faeries, distance was inevitable.

Then the merrows began singing in earnest. Musicians joined in from along the river’s edge and from in the trees
and farther away in the darkness where mortal eyes couldn’t see them. Thrumming beats and lilting piping, sounds that weren’t made by any instruments mortals had, and voices rising and falling like the fingers of water lapping the shore—pure music was all around them.

Aislinn sighed in contentment. “It’s not all bad, is it?”

“Not at all.” He felt the music, the purity of it, like it was a tangible thing. The world of Faerie wasn’t perfect, but it was so much fuller sometimes. Their casual music was more intense, more enthralling than the music that even the best human musicians could make. No one choreographed the movement of the dancers who interpreted the notes with their bodies; no one directed the musicians who blended together in the darkness.

“Come with me.” Aislinn led him to a dead tree.

In the boughs, three ravens perched. For a heartbeat, he was certain their gazes were affixed on him, but Aislinn tugged his hand and he followed, as consumed by her as he was by the music. He thought his heart would beat right through his chest when she let go of his hand. His back was to the singers, but the music swirled around him. In front of him, she was a vision that rivaled their music. She touched a bit of a vine that was twined around the skeletal tree. It grew under her hand, rustling and extending until a hammock-like chair dangled from a branch.

Then she let go of the vine and took his hand again.

As long as he was touching her, seeing her, lost in her,
he could move. The music still held him, but she was more than faery magic. Love can give a person strength to break through glamours and magicks.

“Curl up with me?” she asked.

“With pleasure.” He sat back into the vine-net and held his arms open for her.

When Bananach arrived, Donia was sitting in a window seat on the fourth floor watching the stars appear in the sky. It was one of her favorite times of day, when the colors that streaked across the sky faded. Things were neither bright nor dark, but caught somewhere between. That was how life had felt for so long: it could get better or worse. She’d hoped it would get better, but tonight War stood at her gate, seeking her out.

Donia watched Bananach stroll up the path, pausing to grip one of the spiked fence posts. The arrowlike tops of the posts were knife-sharp. Bananach didn’t squeeze hard enough to truly wound herself as she stood staring at the house.

Why are you here?

Donia hadn’t spent enough time studying the strong semi-solitary faeries. She’d had no reason to do so. But in the past few months, she’d been observing them as much as
she could, reading Beira’s files of old correspondence with various solitary fey and with the heads of other courts. The Dark Court, in many ways, made far more sense to her than the other courts. Keenan’s Summer Court was a fledgling court now. They were still forming an identity. Despite the long history of the court, it was being made new by the recent discovery of Keenan’s lost queen. Sorcha’s High Court was reclusive and unwilling to interact with anyone outside her realm in any but the most minimal ways. The Dark Court was an elaborate network of criminal enterprises. During Beira’s time, Irial had sold whatever drugs were in vogue. His fey had ties to celebrated crime and petty enterprises. He himself owned a string of adult clubs and fetish bars that catered to almost every kink. Some of that had changed when Niall took over the Dark Court. Like Irial, the new Dark King did not cross some lines, but he had more of them. Bananach, however, had no lines. She had only one goal, one purpose—the chaos and bloodshed of war.

As Donia stared down at War through the dingy window, the amoral, single-minded faery stood, eyes closed, and smiled.

Behind her, Evan tapped lightly on the door. “Donia?”

He entered, filling the dusty room with the woodsy scent that clung to him. “Aaaah, you see already that she is here.”

Donia didn’t look away from the window as Evan came to stand at her back. “What does she want of us?”

“Nothing we want to give her.” Evan shivered.

Donia didn’t think that having her faeries, even her Head of the Guard, around was a wise move. War would overcome any solitary guard—and often entire platoons—without effort. It was better to not set temptation before her. It was better to avoid contact entirely, but that wasn’t an option today.

Donia said, “I’ll see her alone.”

Evan bowed and left as Bananach came racing up the stairs.

Once in the room, the raven-faery settled herself in the center of the rug. She sat cross-legged as if at a campfire—dressed in bloodstained fatigues, perfumed with the scent of ashes and death—and patted the floor. “Come.”

Donia watched the more-than-slightly-mad faery carefully. Bananach might appear friendly in this moment, but War didn’t come calling for no reason. “I’ve no business with you.”

“Shall I tell what business I have with you then?” Bananach gestured around the room, and screams rose from the silence that reigned over Donia’s domain. Faery and mortal voices intertwined in a raucous cry that forced tears to Donia’s eyes. Smoky faces hovered and blinked out in the room. Bleeding corpses trampled by faery feet appeared—only to be replaced by grotesque misshapen limbs reaching through windows. Those images gave way to montages of past battles in fields where the grass was stained red and homes burned. Flickering among these were glimpses of
mortals sickened by plague and famine.

“Lovely possibilities come to us.” Bananach sighed as she looked at the stark corners of the room where her rendered images flashed to almost-life. “With you on my side, so much can be done sooner.”

The red-stained grass vanished as a new image appeared: Keenan stretched out under the faint image of Donia. They were on the bare floor where they’d once made love. As Donia watched, she saw herself on the floor entangled in Keenan’s arms. The image wasn’t real, but it gave her pause.

Sunlight flared, briefly blinding her even though it was illusion.

“You are just like Beira,” Bananach’s words came out as a sigh. “Just as tempestuous, just as ready to give me my chaos.”

Donia couldn’t move. She sat staring at the shimmering vision of herself with hands red with Keenan’s blood.

“I worried, feared you’d be different.” Bananach crooned the words. “Beira took so much longer to reach the point of striking the last Summer King. Not you.”

“That hasn’t happened.” Donia called every reserve of Winter’s calm to the forefront. “I have not hurt Keenan. I love him.”

Bananach crowed. It was an ugly sound, breaking the peace of Donia’s home. “A thing I am grateful for, Snow Queen. If you were cold inside, you wouldn’t have the cruelty of Winter that we need to get things in place.”

“Why tell me this?”

“Tell you what?” Bananach’s head tilted in small increments until the angle of it was grotesque.

“If you tell me what it will take to start your war, why would I do it?” Donia crossed and uncrossed her ankles. She stretched, briefly letting her eyes drift shut as if she was nonplussed by the horrors Bananach brought in her wake. It wasn’t very convincing.

Battle drums rose like a wall of thunder around them.
Screams pierced the rhythms of that drumming. Then the sound ended abruptly, leaving only the melancholy music of bagpipes, purer for the chaos that had preceded them.

“Perhaps I want you not to stab the kingling.” Bananach grinned. “Perhaps that would stop my lovely destruction…. Your action can lead to the same upheaval Beira’s killing Miach caused.”

“Which action?”

Bananach snapped her jaw with a decisive clack. “One of them. Perhaps more.”

Donia winced as the illusory figures continued their conflict. Her doppelgänger was struck again and again by a sun-and-rage-filled bleeding Summer King. Then, the scene looped back to the moment where Keenan said Aislinn’s name, but this time Donia struck him until he stretched motionless on the floor.

“There are so many lovely answers to your question, Snow.” Bananach crooned the words. “So many ways you can give us bloody resolutions.”

Again the scene unfolded.

Donia couldn’t look away.

Once more the scene began.

This time they both struck out at each other until the room was filled with steam. In the steam, corpses appeared again, growing seemingly more solid as the moments passed. In the center of the carnage, Bananach stood like the gleeful carrion crow she was.

“Why?” It was the only word left to Donia. “Why?”

“Why do you freeze the earth?” Bananach paused, and when Donia didn’t reply, she added, “We all have a goal, Winter Girl. Yours and mine are destruction. You accepted this when you took Beira’s court as your own.”

“That’s not what I want.”

“Power? Him to suffer for hurting you?” Bananach laughed. “Of course it’s what you want. All I do is find the threads in your actions that will give me what I want. I
see
them”—she waved at the room—“none of these are my possibilities. They are all yours.”