Fragile Eternity

Chapter 14

Aislinn didn’t lean on Evan as he walked her out of the house. She didn’t clutch his arm for stability as she stumbled on the steps. She kept a hand cupped over her wound, as if holding it would lessen the pain.

I am the Summer Queen. I am stronger than this.

It hurt, though. Donia had pierced skin and muscle, and those muscles moved with each step. There was no way to walk without pain. Each step made her want to cry.

That doesn’t mean they need to see it.

Faeries loitered in Donia’s yard; whisper-white Scrimshaw Sisters drifted over the snow like ghosts. A Hawthorn Girl perched in the boughs of an ice-draped oak. Her scarlet eyes glistened like frozen berries. Something with tattered wings sat beside her. A glaistig stood with her cloven feet in an old-fashioned gunfighter’s stance. They all watched Aislinn as she left their queen’s palace.

They heard.

In the moment when Donia had struck her, Aislinn had screamed. The sensation of being stabbed wasn’t the sort of thing one takes silently. They’d heard her cry out, and now they could see her blood-wet shirt around the cup of her hand.

I am not weak. I am not defeated.

Midway down the edge of the walk, Aislinn pulled herself straight. “You can go.”

The rowan’s expression was disinterested; the watching faeries were equally nonplussed, but Aislinn wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of seeing her as weak. She lowered her hand and walked to the end of the flagstones. She paused against the pain, leaning on the iron gate that marked the end of the Winter Queen’s yard, but in that pausing she reached into her pocket and withdrew her cell phone. Then she pulled a glamour over her bleeding and far too pale body and stepped onto the sidewalk.

Just a little farther.

She made it a block before the tears started to slide down her face. Without even looking at the phone, she pressed and held a button. When he answered, she didn’t let him speak. “I need you. Come get me.”

Then she hung up and slid to the sidewalk. Her eyes weren’t closed, but they were near enough to it that she was worried. It’s not a serious injury. She said so, and faeries don’t lie.

She stared at the ravens that had settled on a ledge on the building across from her, and she pressed another button and held the phone to her ear. She smiled at hearing Seth’s voice, even though it was just a recording. At the tone, she said in as clear a voice as possible, “I’m not going to make it for dinner tonight. Something’s come up…I love you.”

She wanted him to come to her, but she was bleeding on the street—a target unable to defend herself against capture or further assault—and he was a mortal. Her world wasn’t safe for him. It wasn’t safe at all.

Mortals walked past her. They were murmurs of sound and movement against the quiet she found inside her and held on to. Down the street she heard a bus stop. The din of people coming and going grew louder for a few moments. The ravens cried out, their hoarse calls blending into the sounds of the mortal world around her. She leaned her head back against a building, not concerned with the soot and dirt, but with the fact that the cement and brick were warm against her skin. Warmth was what she needed. Warmth will fix it, she thought about that in a tumble of words that sounded like a cadence in her mind. Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot, warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. He would bring those things.

She shivered. In her mind, she could see the fragments of ice that Donia’d left inside her skin. Slivers of Winter were buried inside her body. A lesson, that’s all it was: a lesson and a warning. Not fatal. But she wasn’t sure. As she sat there in the street, she wondered if she was hurt worse than Donia’d intended. Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot, warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. She thought them like a prayer. He would come. He would bring heat and sunlight.

Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. I am not that injured. I am not. She was. She felt like she was dying. Being a faery was to mean living forever. It wouldn’t if he didn’t come for her. Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. I’m going to die.

“Aislinn?” Keenan was lifting her. His skin was solid sunlight, and she burrowed tighter into his arms. He was speaking, telling someone something or other. It didn’t matter. Droplets of sunshine fell like rain on her face and soaked into her skin.

“Too cold.” She was shaking so hard that she thought she might fall, but he held her to him and then the world blurred.

When she woke, Aislinn was not in her bed at home—or in her bed at the loft or in Seth’s bed. She looked up at the snarl of vines over her head. Although she’d never seen them from this angle before, she’d stood in the doorway and marveled at the way they twined around Keenan’s bed.

“What are they?” She knew he was in the room; it wasn’t necessary to look for him. He wouldn’t be anywhere else, not now.

“Ash—” he started.

“The vines, I mean. They’re not anywhere else in the loft. Just…here.”

He came to sit on the edge of the ridiculous red-and-gold-brocade thing that covered his far-too-large bed. “They’re called ‘Cup of Gold.’ I like them. I’m sorry we had discord.”

She couldn’t look at him; it was stupid to feel embarrassed, but she did. The conversation with Donia replayed in Aislinn’s mind, as if reexamining it would make it somehow different. The fear came just as quickly. I could’ve died. She wasn’t sure if it was true, but when she’d been alone and bleeding, she’d wondered it. “I’m sorry too.”

“For what? You weren’t asking for anything I didn’t expect.” Keenan’s voice was as warm as his tears had been when he lifted her from the ground. “We’re going to work everything out. For now, what matters is that you are home, safe, and once I know who—”

“Donia. Who else?” Aislinn lifted her head up and held his gaze. “Donia stabbed me.”

“Don?” He paled. “On purpose?”

Aislinn wished she could lift one brow the way Seth did. “Stabbing isn’t usually an accident, is it? She pushed ice into my stomach with her fingertips. Cold enough to make me sick…” She started to sit up and felt those tiny wounds resist. It wasn’t a sharp pain like the stabbing was, but even the duller sensation brought tears to her eyes. She leaned back. “Obviously this faery healing thing is overrated.”

“It’s because it was Donia.” Keenan’s tone was even, but the rumble of thunder outside belied his attempts at calm. “She is our opposite, and she is a queen.”

“So…now what?”

Keenan blanched again. “I don’t want war. It’s never the first choice.”

Aislinn let out the breath she’d been holding. War wasn’t something she wanted either, especially not with her court so much weaker than the Winter Court. The thought of her faeries feeling this sort of pain filled her with terror. There’d already been enough upheaval in Faerie with the changing of power in three courts. “Good.”

“If it were anyone but Donia, I’d gladly kill over this.” He brushed back Aislinn’s hair, letting a little extra sunlight into the gesture. “Seeing you there…she’s attacking my queen and therefore my court.”

Aislinn didn’t object to his comfort, not now. The feel of that cold inside her body was too recent. For a brief moment, she wished they were close enough that she could ask him to lie down and hold her. It wasn’t sexual, or even romantic; it was the idea of having sunlight spill over her. Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. She blushed guiltily as she thought it, though. It would mean something else to him, and she wasn’t going there.

“I could help.” He looked embarrassed as he gestured at her stomach. “I would’ve before, but I know how you are about your…space…especially since…”

She plucked at her shirt. It wasn’t her bloodied one. “How did I get this on then?”

“Siobhan. She changed your blouse after I checked your wound. She was here, though—when I checked it. She stayed here.”

Aislinn took his hand in hers and squeezed. “I trust you, Keenan. Even if you had”—she blushed—“changed my clothes.”

And it was true. She might feel uncomfortable with their closeness and be discomforted with his attentiveness, but she didn’t think he’d maneuver her into anything she didn’t want or violate her. She’d thought that of him when she didn’t know him, but in her heart of hearts she believed differently now. Donia was wrong.

“So how?” she prompted.

“Just sunlight. Like what you’ve done for me, but more. It’ll heal almost as slowly as if you were…” His voice faded at the word.

“Mortal. It’s okay to say it. I know what I am, Keenan.” She realized they were still holding hands and squeezed his again. “If I were mortal, I’d be dead right now.”

“If you were mortal, she wouldn’t have struck you.”

“I’m not so sure. If you cared about the Summer Girls like…this, would she have hurt them?” Aislinn hadn’t thought Donia so cruel, but as she lay in Keenan’s bed with four icy cuts in her, it was hard to hold on to that belief.

At first, Keenan didn’t answer. Instead he stared beyond her at the Cup of Gold vine that was twined around the posts of the bed. Blossoms opened up, revealing deep purple star-lines, and tendrils stretched toward him.

“Keenan?” she prompted.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, though. Not right now.”

“What does matter?”

“That she struck my queen.” Something new shimmered in the depths of his eyes: swords wavered and flashed.

Perhaps it should frighten her, that glimpse of rage in her king’s eyes, but it comforted her. The other emotions she thought she also saw there, the possessiveness and fear and longing, those were the frightening ones. “But you came for me. I’ll heal.”

He pulled his hand away from hers, tentative now. “Can I make you well?”

“Yes.” She didn’t ask what he needed to do; that would be a type of doubt, and right now neither of them wanted that doubt in the room. They were friends. They were partners. They could figure the rest out. They had to.

He is why I’m alive right now.

The ice inside would have kept her wound from healing if he hadn’t removed it. In time, the loss of blood would’ve killed her.

Keenan folded back the heavy comforter, taking the decadently soft sheet with it.

She was injured, but still, she felt the awkward tension building. She had an uneasy suspicion that the discomfort wasn’t going to be one of pain, but of pleasure.

“Can you lift up your shirt? I need to see the cuts.” His voice was shaky, either from fear or something she didn’t want to think about.

The door to the rest of the loft was open. They didn’t have closed-door privacy, but no one would come near the room with them in it. Their court would accept their not-dating if they continued this way, but it wasn’t the preference. That was no secret.

Silently, she lifted the edge of her shirt so her stomach was laid bare to him. White gauze covered the place where the cuts were. “This too?”

He nodded, but he didn’t offer to help. He had his hands clasped together, and he refused to look directly at her.

She peeled back the tape and bandage. Dark plum bruises surrounded the red centers of four cuts. They weren’t much more than an inch wide, but they went deep into her. Donia had widened and extended the ice on her fingertips as she drove it into Aislinn’s skin.

“This won’t hurt,” Keenan murmured, “but I suspect it’ll be…uncomfortable in another way.”

She blushed brighter this time. “I trust you.”

Without another word he pressed his palm over the frostbitten cuts. The touch of his skin to hers was electric. In his eyes, waves crashed against a deserted beach under a perfect sunrise.

She felt the jolt of pleasure and drew her breath in sharply.

He didn’t look away as the sunlight soaked into her body through those tiny incisions; he held her gaze and told her, “You healed Beira’s frost with a kiss. I could heal you faster that way, but I can’t…not like this. I want to, Ash. I want to use the excuse to kiss you here”—he glanced at her bare stomach—“I want to take this trust you’re giving me right now and use it to get lost in each other, but I can’t. Not with you being mine-but-not-mine. Healing this way is slower, but better. For you and…everyone.”

“That’s probably wise.” She took a shaky breath. Her heart was beating out a dangerous rhythm; tiny bits of bliss surged through her entire body as the sunlight melted away whatever cold had lingered. And all the while, he watched her with awe in his eyes. It was a look she usually ran from, but in that moment, there was nowhere to run.

Look away. She couldn’t. All she could do was stare at him.

The sunlight grew stronger. She gripped his wrist and shivered, not with cold but with bliss at the electricity zinging in her skin and bones. There was no way to deny that it was sexual. The only touch was his hand on her bare stomach, but it was almost as sexual as what she shared with Seth.

Keenan drew in deep breaths, a steady rhythm that she tried to use as a meditative focus.

“You should stop…”

“Should?”

“Yes,” she whispered, but she didn’t pull his hand away, didn’t let go of his wrist. Her skin was alive with sunlight. His sunlight. Our sunlight. A sigh slipped from between her lips as a pulse of sunlight stronger than all the rest combined slid from his palm to her skin. Her eyes fluttered closed as wave after wave of pleasure rolled through her body.

Rustling flowers stretched toward the light they were casting in the room.

Then he took away his hand.

Glancing down, she felt like there should be a burned imprint of his touch. There wasn’t. There were still four tiny cuts, but the bruising was mostly gone.

“Are you okay?” she asked him softly.

“No.” He swallowed, looking just as vulnerable and confused as she felt. “I don’t want to be without her and without you. She refuses me because of what I feel for you. You both ask me to make choices that go against what I believe I should do. I could be happy with either of you, yet I am miserable and weakened by what we are right now.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt guiltier than she’d ever felt with him.

“Me too.” He nodded. “I’d sooner die than see you hurt, but I don’t think I could ever strike out at her. You’re my queen, but she’s…I’ve loved her for what feels like forever sometimes. If you really wanted me like”—he brushed his fingers over her still bare stomach—“this, I’d say good-bye to her. I knew that I’d need to do that when I found my queen. She knew. We accepted it. A king should be with his queen. I feel that. Every time I touch your skin, I feel it. It’s like—”

“Inevitability,” she finished in a whisper. “I know, but I don’t love you. I shouldn’t have agreed to the healing thing, should I?”

“You were injured. I didn’t tell you it would feel…”

“Like sex?” She blushed. “Did it feel like that when I healed you?”

“Not as much, but those were small injuries and it was winter then.” His hand was not quite touching her but near enough that she could feel the heat beckoning her closer. He didn’t so much as flex his fingers, though. “I wasn’t to love someone who wasn’t my queen. It was to be you I loved, not her, and you…you were supposed to love me.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she wasn’t sure if they were from shame or pain. “I’m sorry.” She kept saying it. “I need space from you. I’m sorry…I just…I’m sorry.”

Keenan sighed, but he stayed almost-touching her. “I had to try. Our being together would simplify everything.”

“But I don’t love you. Donia does. If I could trade places with Donia, I would. I’d walk away from our court if I could. If it would fix everything….”

“You’re stronger than I am then. I want it all: court, queen, and love. Your being my queen gave me my court but”—he pulled away—“not you. Not yet. This rush of being unbound has made me foolish. I just need to stay away from you until we make sense of the compulsion to be closer. Maybe we need to keep the guards near us, or not stay in the loft together, or…something.”

“Will you help me make Seth—”

“No. Never that. I can try harder to give you now, but I won’t curse Seth. Even if I didn’t want you. In time, Aislinn, we’ll explore this thing between us. We are inevitable. For now, though, I’ll walk away.” He turned toward the door. “I’m not sure how to make us stay apart, but for as long as you have Seth, I’m going to try to be with Don.”

“So what next?”

“I confront Donia about stabbing you, and hope that it isn’t too late.” He looked as injured as she felt as he pulled the door closed behind him.

She stared at the door, and then she let herself cry. She was safe. And alive. Everything had been so overwhelming, so confusing; her entire life had changed, and she was messing up as much as not. Seth wasn’t happy. Keenan wasn’t happy. Having someone she thought was a friend stab her was beyond what she could handle calmly.

She cried herself to sleep.

When she woke, Seth stood in the doorway of Keenan’s bedroom, not crossing the threshold to actually enter the room. “Is there something you were going to tell me?”

She blinked, clearing sleep from her eyes.

“Tavish wouldn’t tell me what was going on. The girls were either silent or tearful and hugging me,” he continued. “All they said is that you were in here. If you were here because you’re with him, I don’t think they’d be crying.”

“Seth—” She started to sit up and winced. She put a hand on her stomach.

“You’re hurt.” He was beside her. “Did he—”

“No. Keenan wouldn’t hurt me. You know that.”

“So who?”

She brought him up to date, telling him everything except how she felt when Keenan healed her, and added, “I guess rapid healing doesn’t take away all the tenderness.” She showed him her still slightly bruised stomach. “It’s mostly fine, but sore. Faery healing and all…”

He sat on the floor beside the bed. “So he healed you. Like you’ve healed him? With a kiss?”

“Not a kiss. Just his hand.” She blushed, and that blush said everything she hadn’t spoken.

“Tell me it wasn’t a big deal, Ash.” His voice was low and pain-filled. “Look at me and tell me that it wasn’t intimate for either of you.”

“Seth—”

“Tell me I’m not losing more of you to him every fucking day.” He held her gaze, looking for answers that she didn’t have. He closed his eyes and lowered his forehead to the mattress.

“Seth, I’m…I needed healing. You couldn’t…but I mean…I’m sorry. But we talked. He’s done pushing. We’re going to find a way to sort it out.”

“For how long?”

“As long as you…” she started, but she couldn’t finish the words.

“As long as I’m here? As long as I’m still alive?” He stood up. “And then what? I know how he looks when you touch his skin. I know this wasn’t…this isn’t casual. And I couldn’t help you. Again. I wasn’t even strong enough for you to call me.”

He shook his head.

“I’m sorry.” She reached out her hand.

He took it.

“I talked to him…about you. Changing things.” She felt tentative as she said it, but she wanted him to know she was trying to find a way. If I live long enough. Lately, it felt like threats were everywhere.

“And?” Seth looked hopeful for only a moment.

“He said no, but—”

“Just like that. Niall’s right about him. He’d rather I wasn’t in your life, Ash. And someday, I won’t be. He’ll have everything, and I’ll have nothing left.” He stopped himself, forced his expression to one that lied to her. Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. “You know what? You don’t need this right now, not when you’re hurt. I’m going to head out.”

“Seth. Please?” Her heart thudded horribly. This wasn’t what she wanted: seeing Seth look like this hurt almost as much as the stab wound did. “I’m trying.”

“I’m trying too, Ash, but I…it’s like having heaven and then finding it slipping away. I just need a little space right now. Let me have that.” He let go of her hand and left.

And she was alone, injured and lying in a bed she didn’t belong in. Outside the door, innumerable faeries waited on her every command, but the two people she most needed had both turned away from her.