Susan's Summer (24 page)

“He’s right here,” said Seth’s tired voice. “I’m fine.”

I steeled myself to turn around. We weren’t even dating, but somehow I had felt like we belonged together. Until I found out that he had been betraying my trust all summer, that is.

He looked at me, but I looked away. I was too hurt to talk to him right now.

“You tell them,” I said. “I’m going to take a shower.”

No one followed me to Mae’s and my room. Once I was there, I stood under the hot, blasting water for a long time. It might have been minutes or hours, I wasn’t sure and I didn’t care. I let the steaming water run over my bruised body, but I barely noticed it enveloping me, I was too busy chiding myself for my foolishness.

I hadn’t wanted to know what was going on with Seth. I had thought his business was his business and I should stay out of it. Well, that was all well and good, but here he had been using me all along as his prime candidate for a marriage of convenience! For politics!

What? Pain dragged at my heart and I could think of only one thing to do.

I got out of the shower and called Autumn.

“Is everything okay?” Autumn asked breathlessly.

“It’s fine,” I said, and told her what had happened.

“The Supreme Council,” said Autumn, her voice filled with worry. “Yeah, them. They are scary.”

She had had her own experience with the Court the previous year, and it had ultimately brought disaster. Her life had been in danger, and Holt had given her his Rose to save it. But that act had made her his fiancée, and since she was supposed to marry Samuel it had created all kinds of difficulties in the fairy world. And those were the very difficulties that had ended in Holt’s death.

“Yeah, them,” I said tiredly. Sadness made me want to crawl into bed and cry. I had thought Seth understood that I was too fragile to be messed with, but he had been too selfish to care.

“Charming folks,” said Autumn sarcastically. “Samuel is nodding his head.”

I managed a smile. “I miss you.”

“Miss you too.”

There was a soft tap on my door. I sighed and went to open it, wondering why Mae was knocking. Probably because she doesn’t want to interrupt me while I’m prone and sobbing on the bed, I thought.

But of course it wasn’t Mae. It was Seth.

“What do you want?” I demanded, glaring at him. “I’m tired.”

“I won’t take up much of your time,” he said. He had changed shirts, not surprisingly since the white one he had worn to confront Rout had been hopelessly torn.

“How are you?” he asked as I let him in. I walked over to my bed and crawled beneath the covers, too tired to pretend I wasn’t upset and exhausted.

“I’m fine,” I lied, pulling the blanket up to my chin.

Seth moved to tuck me in, but I said, “No, don’t.” He stopped, but kept watching me closely.

“I didn’t have you here to marry you,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I really didn’t.”

That made me even angrier. “Oh, so I’m not good enough for you? Not good enough for a Prince? The Heir of Arsenal?” I knew I was being petty and childish, but I couldn’t help it. Trying to steady my voice I said, “Anyhow, it would be nice to believe that, but is it true? If you marry, do you get to keep Arsenal?”

“It’s true,” he said slowly. “But I didn’t want it to come to that.”

“But you never let people come here,” I cried. “The only reason you could have let us come here was for that. It didn’t make any sense, but now it does.”

Seth reached over and took my hands, holding tighter when I tried to pull away. My body hummed at his touch and I tried not to think about how badly I wanted him to kiss me. I only wanted to focus on how betrayed I felt.

“If I wanted that I wouldn’t have tried so hard to get you to like me,” he said, risking a smile.

I snorted. “You weren’t trying. If you’d been trying you would have fixed my stupid car.”

“Oh, that. You had a flat tire, but I didn’t want to tell you in case it hurt your feelings.”

~ ~ ~

Later that night we all gathered in the living room. I had ice on a bruise on my arm, and my friends looked grim-faced. When Mae and I came into the room Katie was talking animatedly about making peace not war with the Marchells, but she stopped abruptly when she saw how close Seth sat to me and the protective arm he put around my shoulders. When, instead of brushing him away, I moved closer, she downright beamed.

“At least Gaudet knows he’s crazy,” said Seth, rubbing his chin, his voice filled with worry.

“Do you think that will help us?” Katie asked, sitting forward. Seth shrugged. “It can’t hurt.” He looked at Mae and me. “I’m sorry for dragging you both into this.”

“What?” I said, horrified. “No way!”

He was grinning now. “Way.”

“So, if you don’t want to marry me, what do you want?” My voice caught on the question. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I held my hands tighter while I waited for him to answer

“Look,” he said. “I was furious when they told me I had to marry. I was furious when they said the land was in danger. I know we don’t have a functioning Court, but still. The land is strong and I protect the village. I was always planning on building the Court back up.”

“Can you forgive me?” he asked quietly, rubbing small circles on my hands with his thumbs.

“I was afraid to care about you,” I said. I watched his fingers bring out the silver designs under my skin, as bright as I’d ever seen them. Seth was showing designs of his own. “My parents died. Holt died. People I care about die. On top of that there’s a guy my parents want me to marry and it isn’t you. Now I find out you lied to me.”

“Look,” said Seth. “I wanted you here. I wanted to get to know you. I never wanted you here just so I could protect Arsenal. I can protect Arsenal without tricking someone into caring about me, but you. . . .”

He paused and looked out the window. The night was closing in, but my room was brightened by a silver glow. “You came here all sad and confused, and even when you were like that you just brightened the place. Katie loves you. The plants love you. Everything says that you belong here, everything says that you are welcomed. I can’t imagine you anywhere else. You walk around and the world reaches for you. Even the Marchells think well of you, and they normally hate Summer Fairies. And it’s NOT because Teegan likes you. They like you for you, just as you deserve.”

I stared into his determined face. His strong jaw was set. He had taken on so much, and there was such need there, and such quiet strength. He knew loss, too. It wasn’t just me.

“You promise you didn’t have some master plan to get a wife? Like, seriously, how hard is it to change a tire?”

His face broke into a grin. “It’s not something I can manipulate. The Rose decides.”

Ah, right. He’s a Prince with a Rose, I reminded myself. Maybe Autumn wasn’t the only one among us who would be offered a Rose. The thought made me shiver happily.

I didn’t keep track of how long we stayed up talking after that, talking and kissing. It felt like hours and at the same time it went by all too fast. My lids were getting heavy with the need for sleep when the door slammed open. My designs never faded. It was like I was truly alive for the first time.

I jumped, but it was only Mae.

Followed by Teegan.

“We have a problem,” she said.

I tried not to look at Teegan, who was standing still, taking in the sight of Seth sitting next to me while I lay comfortably in my bed.

“What?” Seth asked, ignoring the Winter Fairy.

“Rout’s attacking the village,” said Katie, racing around the other two and into the room. “I don’t know where Gaudet is, but he’s destroying everything.”

~ ~ ~

Seth and I raced out of the house, following after Teegan, Katie, and Mae. Teegan filled us in as we ran.

“He attacked the town. No way the Court is going to give him land now. He just destroyed his only chance.”

“What’s he trying to do?” I asked.

“Will all five of us fit in a car?” Katie asked breathlessly.

Seth skidded to a halt. “No, no way are you going!”

Katie, incensed, glared at her big brother. “Of course I’m going. Are you crazy? No way I’m missing this!”

Seth crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s too dangerous. There’s no point.”

“I am too old to have these arguments with you. You’ve been protecting me long enough. Stop. Now!”

Seth stared at his sister for what seemed like a long time given the emergency we were heading toward. This was not a battle he was likely to win. Finally he said, slowly, as if he was working it out as he spoke: “You can come. But I’ll never stop protecting you.”

Katie beamed at him as if she thought he was the best thing in the world, and to her, he was. I only wished he knew that I felt the same.

“I think a car’s a bad idea,” said Seth, coming back to the original question. “We’ll be more mobile on foot. But we’ve got to hurry.”

We ran down the drive and toward the village. I tried to keep my racing heart in check, but I failed. Rout was now attacking innocent people—humans—who didn’t deserve to be put in the middle of a fairy fight. Although I thought that if he happened to singe the eyebrows off that blond girl who had flirted with Seth, I might not mind so much. . . . Humm.

Battles with Glamour almost always end with ugliness; there’s more power flying around than the non-fairy world can contain, and the result is inevitably painful for someone. That’s why Fairies are so careful and why what Mrs. Cheshire had done against the Roths had been so bad. Threatening to start a war is never a good idea, especially when the person making the threat is entirely serious about following through.

The night sped past us. If I had been alone I would have been scared, or at least creeped out; racing through the woods with branches reaching out like claws was not my idea of a good time. But I wasn’t alone. My best friend Mae, and Teegan, Seth, and Katie were all with me, and I felt more powerful than I had in a long time.

I tried to shake the feeling of foreboding, but I couldn’t. I wanted to yell and scream at Gaudet for causing such a mess. I blamed the Supreme Council, but of course I couldn’t say that out loud. If I could call starting a war a bad idea, then yelling at the Fairy Council could simply be called suicide.

As we reached the edge of the village I could feel Rout’s dark Glamour coiling and exploding. The Winter Prince was destroying everything in view. Luckily, it didn’t feel like he was hurting people yet, he was just creating more charred earth. But to us as Summer Fairies, that was almost as bad as taking a life. We certainly took it as seriously.

Summer Fairies don’t even mow their lawns; they have intense discussions with the grass instead, asking it not to grow so fast, more like a contract negotiation than anything else. I had always thought you had to be born a fairy to understand stuff like that, but knowing Autumn had taught me differently. Her appreciation for the living world, even if she was now dating a Winter Prince, was heartwarming.

Seth didn’t run into the village, though I could see every line of his body screaming for him to do so. This land was like his family, and his family was burning. I knew how much it must pain him to pause, but he did. And turned to me.

“You don’t have to be here, you know,” he said, stepping forward and lightly touching me on the arm. He looked at Mae. “You don’t either.”

I was about to protest, but Mae did it for me. “Excuse me,” she said, “but you should really stop trying to get rid of the women in your life. Clearly we are here to stay.”

Seth’s eyes widened in surprise for a brief second, then he grinned. “All right, fine, but just let me say ahead of time that I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

“Apology accepted . . . when you make it with chocolate,” said Mae. “Now, stop wasting time. We have a crazy heir to stop.”

Seth nodded once.

Then we ran.

It was worse than I thought, and I pride myself on having a super overactive imagination. My throat burned at the thought of anything happening to my friends—to Seth.

Rout was standing in the center of town, just under the one stop light the place had to boast about, except that the light wasn’t working any more because Rout’s power had exploded it. I was relieved that I couldn’t see any people around, but the town square looked like a tornado of fire had ripped through it and come out the other side, joining it to a trail of destruction that I felt sure led back to Marchell.

“Rout,” Teegan yelled, running past me to stand between the Winter Prince and the Arsenals without any regard for his own well-being. Just like Teegan. “You have to stop this. You’re going to get hurt.”
Good
, I thought.
Appeal to the narcissist in him.

Rout didn’t even acknowledge our presence, he just kept blasting stuff. I tried to concentrate, to see exactly what he was doing, in hopes of figuring out how to countering it. It wasn’t obvious, because the funny thing about Glamour is that it’s different for every fairy, and especially across the gap between Winter and Summer Fairies. The only thing I recognized immediately was that Rout’s designs, his silver tattoos under the skin, were blazing like white ice. He was almost all light, his power fueled by crazy rage.

“Teegan, stop!” I screamed. But he didn’t. I hadn’t expected him to; his sense of honor was stronger than anything prudence could dictate. But I had to try.

Seth rushed forward to help him.

“We’ll help the plants,” Katie called, grabbing Mae’s hand.
Good for Katie
, I thought. In my fear for Teegan, Seth, and the town, I hadn’t even thought of that. Some of the growing things Rout had burned could probably be salvaged if Mae and Katie set to work right away.

I took a deep breath and chased after Seth.

Teegan had reached Rout, but just as he got near enough to send out some power of his own, the Prince turned and sent a blast at him that should have sent him reeling. Teegan didn’t look ready for the attack, but he was. He tucked and rolled and just kept moving forward. Rout, who wasn’t very fast, mobile, smart, kind, or—okay, I can heap insults on him later—Rout simply wasn’t expecting Teegan to keep fighting.

His face contorted to a new level of rage. He fired at Teegan again, and this time the gust of wind was laced with shards of ice. I gasped. Teegan was never going to be able to avoid all of it, it covered was too wide an area for any evasive maneuver to work.

But Rout couldn’t face two directions at once, and Seth was on him before the older Prince could reorient himself after sending the blast of ice at Teegan. Seth fired heat to counteract Rout’s cold, conjuring warmth, summer breezes, sunshine, and sweltering summer nights, but it wasn’t enough to thaw all the ice that had formed around Rout. It was like he was frozen to his core, right down to the center of his empty heart. The fact that he cared for exactly nothing explained how he could commit such an atrocity and still stay standing, despite the weight of his despicable actions.

Rout blasted Seth just like he had blasted Teegan. There was too much rage. Seth, having seen what had happened to Teegan, managed to dodge. For now.

Teegan sprang to his feet. Dirt covered his calf and the part of his shoulder where he had rolled, and his face was white, either from the cold or from the use of his own Glamour to protect himself; never having been in a battle with Winter Fairies before, I couldn’t be sure which, and it hardly mattered. What did matter was that Teegan and Seth were attacking Rout from the opposite ends of the spectrum, and if they didn’t figure out a way to stop canceling each other out they were never going to generate enough power to win this battle.

Rout blocked Teegan’s attack, which left him open again to Seth. The Summer Prince didn’t bother with just Glamour this time, he lowered his head and charged, slamming into Rout with enough force to knock them both to the ground. They fell in a blaze of light and yelling. The wind howled around us and the ground shook, going darker and more dead looking where Rout had stood. I wanted to cry for the pain and ruin taking place before my eyes, but I didn’t have time for tears.

I had an idea.

And I had to help.

Even if it meant sacrificing everything I held dear.