Fragile Eternity (22 page)

Sorcha came to Seth’s room again the next day—and the three that followed. She’d stay all day, for countless hours while he worked. They spoke of life and dreams, of philosophy and art, of music he’d enjoyed and theater she’d seen. They walked in the garden. And sometimes, she simply sat quietly meditating or reading while he painted or sketched. Seth couldn’t imagine being away from her. If not for missing Aislinn, he could see himself staying in Faerie. Out there, he had no real purpose, no direction, no family. He lived only for Aislinn. In Faerie, he existed to create Art. He felt whole for the first time he could remember, at peace and sure of everything. He’d come seeking immortality, but what he’d found was more valuable.

Happiness. Peace. Home.
It was tinged with an unending ache for Aislinn and a new sorrow that he’d be leaving Sorcha at the end of the month. His choice to be a faery had given him everything he’d sought—and other gifts he
hadn’t dreamed he could ever have.

The thought of leaving Faerie was frightening.

He channeled those emotions, desires, and fears into his art. Mostly, he’d been painting. The room was littered with half-finished canvases. He tried to work with the metals that had appeared in the side room as well. He’d completed a few tolerable things, but nothing worth her—nothing that met his goal.

“Seth?” Sorcha was beside him. “Are you able to pause for a bit today?”

“For?”

She smiled and wiped a bit of paint from his face. “You have a guest, dear.”

Guests
. He couldn’t leave, but he could have guests if Sorcha allowed it. His heart was thundering. “A guest? Ash? She’s here?”

“Not her.” Sorcha sounded almost sad as she said it.

The Dark King appeared out of nothingness behind Sorcha. “I see my advice was completely ignored,” he said.

Seth embraced Niall. Aside from seeing Aislinn, nothing else could please him as much as seeing the Dark King. He stepped back and said, “You were wrong.”

Niall laughed. “More arrogant already…you’ve been spending time with the wrong court, little brother.”

The High Queen’s tense expression relaxed ever so slightly. “I’ll leave you to roam with Niall then. I’ll be in the dining hall after.” To Niall, she only said, “Return to
me when you’re ready to talk about other matters. Mayhaps we can discuss regrets….”

Seth couldn’t help but watch her as she left. He could count the heartbeats between each movement. He had: they never altered. The rhythm of her motion was one of perfection. When her hand lifted to open the door, it was with the same arc each time she reached out. If he measured the distance, Seth knew she’d match it with precision. Today though, she hesitated for a heartbeat extra on several steps. The beat of her movements was imprecise.

“She’s upset,” Seth said.

“What?”

Seth explained the counting and added, “Like music. Her song is not as it always is.” He glanced at Niall. “You unsettle her.”

Niall’s gaze went to the doorway through which Sorcha had left. The flickering dancers surged forward as if they would step from his eyes to pursue the High Queen. “It’s a natural antipathy.”

“Perhaps she would be pleased by your attention. If it would please her, maybe—”

“I don’t know if you realize it or not, but your sudden devotion to her is creepy.” Niall shook his head.

Seth bit his lip ring, thinking the words over before he answered. “My closest friend rules the court of nightmares. My girlfriend is the embodiment of a
season
. I’m not sure you can really call this ‘creepy.’ Sorcha makes me
feel peaceful. I like it.”

“There are going to be consequences.”

“I made the right choice. This is what I want.”

Niall shook his head. “Let’s hope you’re still saying that later.”

Seth walked over to the window that led to his garden. He pushed it open. “Come on.”

When Niall followed, Seth resumed speaking. “I find a different sort of peace in Sorcha’s court. It’s taken years of meditation to reach the calm I had before, and it felt like it was going to slip away every time I saw Keenan’s influence growing stronger…but in one moment, one promise, complete peace. One month a year with her and I can have everything I need. Out there, I will be as you used to be—with faery weaknesses and faery strengths. I can be with Ash forever. I can be there for you forever. Don’t you see? It’s perfect.”

“Except for the month here. Just come with me. I took you into my court’s protection and…my court is the one that balances hers. We can take you home now.”

“I
am
home, Niall. Aside from missing Ash—” Seth stopped himself. “Why do you know I’m here but she doesn’t?”

“Seth…” Niall dropped his gaze.

“What?”

“Keenan hasn’t told her. He knows.
Everyone
knows.”

“Except her.” Seth swallowed the words of anger and fear that rose up. Panic wasn’t the answer. He was in Faerie; he
had peace; and he’d have forever with Aislinn. “Why?”

“Come home with me,” Niall repeated. “We can go to her.”

“Keenan is taking advantage of my absence.” Seth said the truth that Niall was avoiding. “
Already
? I’ve only been here a few days. Thirty days without me isn’t going to change everything.”

Devlin appeared in the path in front of them. “Tread carefully, Niall. Sorcha will not be pleased if you say what you would reveal.” To Seth, Devlin said, “Sorcha requires that you do not pursue this matter.”

And just like that, Seth was unable to continue the conversation. “I believe we need to talk about something else.”

“Is that what you
want
? Give me the word…” Niall glared at Devlin. “Think, Seth. If you choose to, you can resist her wishes. It’s harder with her. Harder in Faerie, but I know you can—”

“She’s my queen, Niall. I want what she wants. She gave me the world.”

“Do you have any idea how disturbing you are?” Niall’s expression was raw. “You’re my
friend
, Seth, and you’re vacant.”

“I’m not vacant. I’m just”—Seth shrugged—“at peace.”

“I think I should go.”

“It would be best. I have work yet, and she is oddly possessive of my attention. There’s a door you can use.” Seth gestured toward a thorn-hidden doorway in the distance,
one of the openings from Sorcha’s demesne into the mortal world.

“Be safe.”

“I am. I’m happy here. She knows things. Everything makes so much more sense when she explains it.” He let his thoughts wander to the late-night conversations they’d been having in the garden. Philosophy, religion, so many things were clear when he spoke to his queen. Then—brimming with art and passion and epiphanies—he’d return to the studio she’d given him and create until he could barely stay upright.

“Later, once you’re away from Sorcha, we need to talk. Come see me when you are home? You
are
coming home, right?”

“I am coming back. Aislinn is on the other side of the veil.” Seth reached out to clasp Niall’s forearm. “But I will only discuss what Sorcha permits. Even when I am not here, I’ll honor my vows to my queen.”

“I’ll see you when you come home—and are yourself again.” Niall turned away.

Seth walked a few moments longer, and then he returned to his art. A little more than two of his four weeks were over in Faerie. Soon he’d be able to see Aislinn.

More than four months had passed since Seth left. There were no calls or messages from him, nor was there any news from Niall. Skirmishes between Summer and Winter Court faeries happened more and more. Dark Court faeries attacked the increasingly vulnerable Summer Court fey, who were weakened by Aislinn’s inability to move forward. Choosing to be happy was far easier to say than to do. She and Keenan were in a stasis of sorts, and their court was suffering for it. They sat side by side in the study as guards shared reports from around Huntsdale and beyond. It wasn’t a new event, but the tone was worse yet again.

“The Ly Ergs grow bolder every day,” a glaistig reported. She was not as disappointed by this as most Summer Court faeries would be, but the glaistigs were mercenaries. The hooved faeries roamed all of the courts, hiring on for trouble at times, living as solitaries at other points.

Keenan nodded.

Aislinn felt her court face lock into place, a mask to hide her worry.

Beside her, Keenan squeezed her hand. Sunlight slipped from his palm to hers.
Comfort but not enough.
He let her stay quiet as guards reported troubles, as if she were fragile.
I am.
She felt like that some days, that she was nothing more than spun glass that would shatter if she moved the wrong way.

Then Quinn spoke. “When Bananach was out and about, the guards looked in her nest. There’s no evidence that Seth was ever there.”

“What?” Aislinn’s slight grasp on calmness fled. Hearing Seth’s name so casually tied to Bananach’s was bone chilling.

Keenan held tighter to her hand; he was an anchor tethering her to some semblance of stability. “Quinn—”

“No evidence?” Aislinn tried to keep her voice steady, and failed. “What do you mean?”

Quinn’s posture didn’t shift. He stayed focused on her although the other guards shifted anxiously. “She’s the carrion crow, my Queen. If she’d killed him, there would be evidence. Neither blood nor bone there is his—”

“Enough,” Keenan snarled. He kept her hand in his and pulled her closer to him.

Aislinn felt as much as saw a shimmer of fog uncoiling in the room. “No. I want to know.” She looked over and caught Keenan’s gaze. “I
need
to know.”

“I can deal with this, Ash,” Keenan spoke in a low voice,
feigning privacy. “You don’t need to hear if there’s…unpleasantness.”

“I need to,” she repeated.

He stared at her silently for several breaths before saying, “Continue.”

Quinn cleared his throat. “There were strange things. A shirt of yours”—he paused as he stumbled over the words and glanced at Keenan—“hers, our queen. A bit of the pet serpent’s shed skin. A book of Seth’s.”

“Why would she have any of that?” Aislinn had begun to accept that he’d simply left her. Now, with Seth’s things at Bananach’s nest, she wondered if she’d been completely wrong.

Keenan looked at the guards, at Quinn. The Summer King was angry. “Leave us.”

The guards vanished amid murmured chastisements to Quinn. After turning his back on the departing faeries, Keenan pushed the coffee table away and knelt on the floor in front of her. “Let me handle this. Please?”

Aislinn rested her head on his shoulder. “I need to know why our things are there. He wouldn’t go to her as a friend.”

“Maybe he would. He
is
friends with Niall. Bananach is of that court.” Keenan stroked her hair. “Seth’s already accepted the Dark Court’s protection. He was angry with me. We had words before, Aislinn. He told me that he’d use what influence he had to strike me if I…if I manipulated you.”

“Seth?”
She pulled back and stared at her king. “Seth
threatened
you? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Keenan shrugged. “It didn’t seem the right choice. You and I had talked. I intended to…Donia had forgiven me. I thought it would be unwise to tell you, and then he left and I saw no reason to upset you further.”

“You should’ve said something. You agreed to not keep secrets from me.” Her skin was steaming from the pulse of sunlight shifting angrily inside of her. Had he been anyone else he couldn’t have touched her just then.

“But I
am
telling you,” he said. “Quinn ought to have kept—”

“No.” She pulled away. “Quinn was
right
to tell me. I am the Summer Queen, not a voiceless consort. We’ve discussed this.”

“You’re upset.”

“War has my things.
Seth’s
things. You’re telling me Seth threatened you. Yeah, I’m upset.”

“That was exactly what I didn’t want. I need you happy, Aislinn.”

She leaned back into the sofa cushions, putting distance between them. “And I need answers.”

The Summer Court had searched all over. She’d had no signs of where Seth could have gone—until now.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I met her. Seth’s not…she’s not someone he’d go with by choice.”

“Really? Seth’s closest friend is the Dark King. There are parts of your mortal that you aren’t seeing. What was
he like before you?” Keenan stared up at her. “Seth isn’t an innocent, and the Dark Court is filled with temptations that have called more than a few mortals into their embrace, Ash.”

“Aislinn. Not Ash. Don’t call me that.” Her heart ached. She hated the way it felt, how wrong it was to hear Keenan call her a mortal name anymore.
I am not a mortal. I am not that person now.
She was a faery queen whose court needed a stronger monarch. Other courts were as enemies, threatening from crossways she didn’t understand. Donia was distant; Niall was resentful; both were secretive. The two courts that the Summer Court dealt with were closed off. And through that tension was the shadow of Bananach’s proclamation that war was pending.

“If you want me to find out more, I could ask for an audience with Niall,” Keenan suggested. “Unless you want to invite War into our home….”

“No.” Aislinn could still taste the smoke in the air when Bananach had spun her illusion in the park. “If we are on the edge of violence, I don’t want her here. I’m trying to find a way to be the queen our faeries deserve, and bringing her to their haven is not the way. I can’t just sit here doing nothing. She must know something.”

“So what do you want, Aislinn?” Keenan looked wary. “Do you really want to put yourself in harm’s way? Is that going to help? He wasn’t happy. If he went with her, got ensnared in the temptations of—”

“Can we go to Bananach?” Aislinn thought she was
out of tears, but she felt the sting in her eyes as she tried not to cry. “If she hurt him—”

“We don’t know if Seth was there socially or if it was something else. Let me—”

“If she hurt him”—Aislinn began again—“I won’t ignore it. If she’d injured Donia or me, you wouldn’t ignore it.”

Keenan sighed. “I can’t risk our court over a single mortal, Aislinn.”

“It’s my court too,” she reminded him.

“Even if she took him, you can’t attack
War
.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“No.”

“Then don’t tell me I can’t,” she said. If Bananach had taken Seth and killed him, Aislinn would figure out how to exact revenge. She had eternity.

“You’d risk our court for this?” he asked.

“Yes. For someone I love? Without a doubt.”

Keenan sighed, but he didn’t continue his objections. “Let’s go to the lion’s den, my Queen.”

Accompanied by a full platoon of guards, the Summer King and Queen made their way to Bananach. After the way Aislinn had fallen during her visit to Donia and the way she and Keenan were both debilitated the last time they confronted Niall, Aislinn wondered if they needed still more. Entering the Dark Court, the court of nightmares—the home of the Gabriel Hounds, of the carrion crow—no matter how she
phrased it, it sounded like an unwise plan.

But Bananach might have answers.

Aislinn didn’t ask how Keenan knew where to find Bananach; she was too frightened to think beyond the possibility that she was walking into the court of a faery who was decidedly hostile toward their court—and into the presence of the epitome of war and bloodshed.

Keenan led her across Huntsdale to a condemned ruin with blacked-out windows. This wasn’t a bright, airy loft like their home or an aging mansion like Donia’s. Even the air outside the building felt dirty. It made her cringe, like being naked in front of a crowd of lecherous strangers.

Fear. Pure, raw fear.
They were in the right place.

As they walked up to the door, Keenan scowled. He didn’t pause or knock. He slid the door open and strode inside. He looked ready to strike someone.

Rage.

“Keenan!” She grabbed his arm. “We need to talk to them. Remember? That—”

“Ash-girl, you’ve finally come calling.”

Aislinn looked upward. Bananach was perched on a rafter like a nightmarish vulture. Her feathers were expanding as she sat there, building themselves into sweeping wings that would span two body lengths if they were spread wide. With a crackling sound, she fluttered those wings, stretching them.

“You are good to me,” Bananach crowed. She dropped to the floor in front of them. “Come now. The Dark King will
be irritating if I keep you to myself.”

Aislinn started, “We’re here to see you. I need to know—”

Bananach’s hand clamped over Aislinn’s mouth before the sentence was finished. “Shhh. Mustn’t ruin my fun. No more speaking from you if you want speech of mine.”

Aislinn nodded, and Bananach pulled her hand away, scratching furrows into her cheek in the process.

They followed Bananach into a gutted concrete abyss. A sickly smell, like burned sugar and musky bodies, lingered in the air. The floor was sticky underfoot, so that each step was accompanied by a squelching sound. Aislinn had the almost irrepressible urge to run. She kept her arms close to her body in an attempt not to touch anything or anyone. They weren’t all misshapen, but many of the faeries seemed ill made. Others looked closer to what she was accustomed to but were equally frightening.

Red-palmed Ly Ergs grinned, too wide, gleeful in the funereal atmosphere. Vilas turned their gray gazes on Aislinn and Keenan. Jenny Greenteeth and her cluster of nightmarish kin spoke softly, like gossips at the gate. Spreading a cloud of fear, the Gabriel Hounds moved like sentinels throughout the crowd.

Aislinn looked back at their own guards. They were fine for individual skirmishes, but a full-out war would be devastating. The Summer Court wasn’t ready for fighting, not truly. The Dark Court was wrought of violence, among other things. This was their domain.

“Do you like it?” Bananach whispered. “How they want to eat you alive? You took away the last king’s mortal. You make the new king mourn for both of his mortals.”

“
His
mortals? Seth is my—” Aislinn started.

But Bananach crowed. Her shadow-wings stretched out behind her and she dragged her talons over Aislinn’s arm in a feigned caress. “Pitiful little ash-girl. I wonder if he mourns falsely. Pretending to blame you for taking the boy?”

In front of them, Aislinn saw a shadowed tableau. Unlike in the park when the image had looked real, this was an obvious illusion hanging in front of them. A battlefield spread out of the image. The ground was ravaged. Faeries lay broken and bloodied. Shades of the dead drifted in the smoke from funeral pyres. Mortals were tangled in the mix—horror-stricken and mad, dead and empty.

In the center of the carnage was a table of sun-bleached bone. Skulls were stacked high for legs; ribs and arms and spines were woven together with sinew to make the flat of the table. Bananach sat at the head of the table—and Seth was stretched out on it in front of her.

The shadow Bananach in the image caught Aislinn’s gaze and said, “If I were queen, I’d eat his entrails at my table just to make you ache.” Then she plunged her talons into Seth’s stomach.

He screamed.

It’s not real. It’s not real at all.
But the war faery’s earlier words made Aislinn’s fear grow.
Is this a “what-if”? Is this what will happen if I make the wrong choice?

Keenan pulled her to him. “It’s not real, Aislinn. Look away. Look away
now
.”

The image shattered then as one of the Vilas spun through the room. Her delicate shoes, held to her feet with silver chains, made an unpleasant clattering noise as she moved across the cement floor.

“It’s an illusion,” Keenan said. “Seth is not here.”

“Are you so sure, little kingling? Can you be sure of anything?” Bananach reached out and laid her hand over the site of Aislinn’s now-healed stab wounds. “Stirrings, beautiful stirrings that will bring me my violence…”

Aislinn had to remind herself that she was not a mortal to be daunted so easily. She put her hand on the raven-faery’s taloned hand. “Do you have Seth? Did you take him?”

“What a good question,” Niall said.

The Dark King had come up behind them. He paused beside Bananach. “Well?”

“They were in my nest; they are in your presence. The mortal isn’t here. But
you
know that….” She leaned on his shoulder and let her wings curl forward to embrace him. Her wings were still shadowy, not fully tangible, but they weren’t illusory anymore.

“Don’t.” Niall walked over to a throne on a raised platform. Unlike the Summer and Winter Courts, the Dark Court actually had a dais. The Dark Court embraced a bizarre mix of old-fashioned manners and disturbing perversities.

Aislinn walked forward several paces. Keenan stayed by her side. Some of their guards followed; others scattered into the room—not that they would be very effective in this crowd. Bananach was not the only threat: throughout the room were Ly Ergs, several glaistigs, the Hounds, and Cath Pulac. Aislinn shuddered at the sight of the feline faery. Like the great sphinx in the desert, she typically only watched.

Why is
she
keeping company with the Dark Court?

Aislinn and Keenan exchanged a glance as they took in the faeries who were sitting in Niall’s presence. Bananach’s whispering of war seemed far more frightening when they stood in a den filled with promises of fear and violence.