Fragile Eternity

Chapter 1

The High Queen walked toward the lobby with a sense of trepidation. She normally required that visitors be brought to her, but in this case, Sorcha would make an exception. Having Bananach roaming the hotel was far too dangerous.

In the past few months, Sorcha had moved the High Court to the edge of the mortal world, taking over a city block and remaking it as her own. Stepping within that block meant one left the mortal realm and entered the edge of Faerie. Her domain stood separated, divided from all else. The rules of the mortal world—their sense of time and place, their laws of nature—were all moot within Faerie, even in this space-between where she’d brought her court.

It was the closest to the mortals’ realm Sorcha had taken her court in centuries, but now that the other courts were shifting, Sorcha couldn’t stay quite so far removed. Her being in the mortal realm too long was untenable, but living at the edge of mortality wouldn’t alter their world. It was the reasonable path. The boy king was enthroned with his centuries-missing queen in the Summer Court. His beloved was holding the Winter throne. And Niall, Sorcha’s almost-temptation, had taken the Dark Court throne. None of it was unexpected, but all had changed in barely a blink.

She ran her hand along the stair rail, touching the smooth wood, cherishing the reminder of simpler times—and promptly dismissed the lie of nostalgia. She’d held her court for longer than memory. She was the High Queen. Hers was the unchanging, the heart of Faerie, the voice of the world removed, and she was the Unchanging Queen.

The alternative—her antithesis, her twin, Bananach—stood in the room. She swayed toward Sorcha with a slightly mad look in her eyes. Every stray thought of chaos and discord that could have been Sorcha’s found its way to Bananach’s spirit instead. As long as Bananach existed to host those feelings, Sorcha was mostly spared the burden of such unpleasantness. It made for an awkward bond.

“It’s been a while,” Bananach said. Her movements were tentative, hands glancing over surfaces as if she needed to familiarize herself with the world, as if the tactile experience would anchor her to reality. “Since we’ve spoken. It’s been a while.”

Sorcha wasn’t sure if these were questions or statements: Bananach’s grasp on reality was tenuous on her best days.

“It is never as long as I’d like.” Sorcha motioned for her sister to take a seat.

Bananach lowered herself to a floral divan. She shook her head, unsettling the long feathers that spilled down her back like mortal hair. “Nor I. I dislike you.”

The bluntness was off-putting, but war wasn’t concerned with delicacy—and Bananach was the essence of war and violence, carrion and chaos, blood and mayhem. The Dark Court might be Sorcha’s opposing court, but it was Bananach who was her true opposition. The raven-headed faery was neither contained by the court nor divided from it. She was too primal to be within the Dark Court, too conniving to be without it.

Bananach’s unflinching attention was disquieting. Her abyss-black eyes sparkled unpleasantly. “I feel less right when you are near me.”

“So why are you here?”

Bananach tapped her talons on the table in a discordant way: no music, no pattern. “You. I come here for you. Each time, no matter where you are, I will come.”

“Why?” Sorcha felt herself caught in the centuries-old conversation.

“Today?” Bananach tilted her head at an angle in her avian way, watching, tracking the slightest movement. “I’ve things to tell. Things you’ll want to know.”

Sorcha held herself still; not reacting was usually safer with Bananach. “And why should I listen this time?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not here to help me.” Sorcha wearied of their eternity of discord. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she simply did away with Bananach. Would I destroy myself? My court? If she knew that answer, if she knew she could kill her sister without damning them all, she’d have done so centuries ago.

“Faeries don’t lie, sister mine. Where’s the reason in not listening?” Bananach crooned. “You’re Reason, are you not? I am offering you Truth…is there logic in ignoring me?”

Sorcha sighed. “So acting on what you tell me will presumably cause some sort of chaos?”

Bananach swayed a bit in her seat, as if she suddenly heard a thread of music that no one else could—or would want to—hear. “One can hope.”

“Or failing to act will cause chaos…and you are prodding me to get me to do the inverse,” Sorcha mused. “Do you ever tire of this?”

Bananach tilted her head in several small increments and snapped her teeth as if she truly had a beak. It was a version of laughter, a curious gesture Sorcha disliked. The raven-faery peered at her with an intent gaze. “Why would I?”

“Why indeed.” Sorcha sat in one of the innumerable water-carved chairs that her staff had scattered throughout the lobby. It was studded with uncut jewels, ruining the comfort of the thing but heightening its raw beauty.

“Shall I tell you then, sister mine?” Bananach leaned closer. Her dark eyes glittered with a sprinkling of stars, constellations that sometimes matched the mortal sky. Today, Scorpius, the beast that killed Orion, was in the center of Bananach’s gaze.

“Speak,” Sorcha said. “Speak so you can be gone.”

Bananach’s demeanor and tone became that of a storyteller. She quieted, leaned back, and steepled her hands. Once, many centuries past, they would have been near a fire in the dark for these disagreeable conversations. That was when she liked to come with her mutterings and machinations. But even here, in the near opulence of the mortal-made palace, Bananach spoke as if they were still at a fireside, the words lilting in the cadence of tale-tellers in the dark. “There are three courts that are not yours—the one that should be mine, the court of sun, and the court of frost.”

“I know—”

Bananach caught Sorcha’s gaze with her own and spoke over her, “And among those courts there is a new unity; a mortal walks unimpeded through all of them. He whispers in the ear of the one who has my throne; he listens as the new Dark King and the new Winter Queen lament the cruelties of the boy king.”

“And?” Sorcha prompted. She was never sure how long these tales would last.

This time, it seemed a short telling. Bananach came to her feet as if she saw a specter in the room who’d beckoned her closer.

“The boy king has much potential for cruelty. I might like Summer.” Her hand stretched out to touch something no one else could see. Then she stopped and scowled. “He won’t see me, though.”

“Keenan does only what he must to protect his court,” Sorcha murmured absently, already musing on the point behind her twin’s tale: it wasn’t the Summer King’s propensity for cruelties that mattered; it was the role of the mortal. Mortals shouldn’t have voice in the affairs of the Faerie courts. If things were kept properly in order, they wouldn’t ever see faeries, but Sorcha’s objection to mortals being granted Sight was disregarded from time to time.

As if mortals born Sighted weren’t more than enough trouble.

But trouble was what Bananach craved. Small troubles led to larger disorder. On this, at least, they agreed. The difference was that one of them sought to prevent disorder and the other sought to nurture it.

Hundreds of moments of seeming insignificance combined to create Bananach’s desired results. She had been the voice urging Beira, the last Winter Queen, to smite Miach—the centuries-gone Summer King and Beira’s sometimes lover. Bananach was the voice that whispered the things they all dreamt in silence, but generally had the sense not to act upon.

Sorcha was not about to have another small problem evolve into chaos-causing troubles. “Mortals have no business meddling with Faerie,” she said. “They shouldn’t be involved in our world.”

Bananach tapped her talon-tipped fingers in a seemingly satisfied rhythm. “Mmmm. This mortal has their trust, all three of the courts-not-yours listen to his words. He has influence…and they protect him.”

Sorcha gestured for more. “Tell me.”

“He lies with the Summer Queen, not as a pet, but as if a consort. The Winter Queen gave him the Sight. The new Dark King calls him ‘brother.’” Bananach retook her seat and assumed a somber demeanor, which always troubled Sorcha—with good reason: when Bananach was focused, she was more dangerous. “And you, sister mine, have no influence over him. You cannot take this one. You cannot steal him as you have the other Sighted pets and half-mortals.”

“I see.” Sorcha did not react. She knew that Bananach waited, holding back something to needle her last reserves of calm.

Bananach added, “And Irial had a pet, a little mortal thing he bound and caressed like she was worthy of being in the presence of the Dark Court.”

Sorcha tsk’d at Irial’s idiocy. Mortals were too fragile to bear up under the excesses of the Dark Court. He knew better. “Did she expire? Or go mad?”

“Neither, he gave up his throne over her…so corrupted was he by her mortality…sickening, how he cherished her. That’s why the new one sits on the throne that should be mine.” Bananach’s storyteller’s guise was still in play, but her temper was growing uglier. The emphasis of words, that rise and fall of tones she adopted when telling tales, was fading. Instead random words were emphasized. Her covetousness over the Dark Court’s throne upset her; her mention of it didn’t bode well for her state of mind.

“Where is she?” Sorcha asked.

“She’s of no influence now….” Bananach fluttered a hand as if to brush webs from in front of her.

“Then why tell me?”

Bananach’s expression was unreadable, but the constellation in her eyes shifted to Gemini, the twins. “I know we’ve shared…much; I thought you should know.”

“I have no need to hear of Irial’s discarded pets. It’s a deplorable habit, but”—Sorcha shrugged as if it didn’t matter—“I cannot control the depravity of his court.”

“I could…” A yearning sigh followed those words.

“No, you couldn’t. You’d destroy what little self-control they have.”

“Perhaps”—Bananach sighed again—“but the battles we could have…I could come to your step, blood-dressed and—”

“Threatening me isn’t the way to enlist my help,” Sorcha reminded, although the point was moot. Bananach couldn’t help but dream of war any more than Sorcha could resist her inclination toward order.

“Never a threat, sister, just a dream I hold dear.” In a blur too fast for even Sorcha to see clearly, Bananach came to crouch in front of her sister. Her feathers drifted forward to brush against Sorcha’s face. “A dream that keeps me warm at night when I have no blood for my bath.”

The talons that Bananach had tapped so erratically took on a regular cadence as they dug in and out of Sorcha’s arms, pricking the skin with tiny moons.

Sorcha kept to her calm, although her own temper felt close to surfacing. “You ought to leave.”

“I should. Your presence makes my mind blurry.” Bananach kissed Sorcha’s forehead. “The mortal’s name is Seth Morgan. He sees us as we are. He knows much of our courts—even yours. He is strangely…moral.”

Some whisper of fury threatened to surface at the feel of her sister’s feathers drifting around her face; the calm logic that Sorcha embodied was only challenged by the presence of the strongest Dark Court faeries. Neither Summer nor Winter faeries could provoke her. The solitaries couldn’t ripple the calm pool that rested in her spirit. Only the Dark Court made her want to forget herself.

It’s logical. It’s the nature of opposition. It makes perfect sense.

Bananach rubbed her cheek against Sorcha’s.

The High Queen wanted to strike the war-faery. Logic said Bananach would win; she was violence incarnate. Few if any faeries could outlast her in direct battle—and the Queen of Order was not one of them. Yet, in that moment, the temptation to try grew strong.

Just one strike. Something.

The skin of her arms had begun to sting from so many small wounds when Bananach tilted her head in another series of short jerky moves. The feathers seemed to whisper as Bananach pulled back and said, “I tire of seeing you.”

“And I you.” Sorcha didn’t move to stanch the blood that trickled to the floor. Movement would lead to pitting her strength against Bananach or angering her further. Either would result in more injuries.

“True war comes,” Bananach said. Smoke and haze filtered into the room. Half-shadowed figures of faeries and mortals reached out bloodied hands. The sky grew thick with illusory ravens’ wings, rustling like dry corn husks. Bananach smiled. The not-yet-there shape of wings unfolded from her spine. Those wings had spread over battlefields in centuries past; to see them so clearly outside a battlefield did not bode well.

Bananach stretched her shadow-wings as she said, “I follow the rules. I give you warning. Plagues, blood, and cinders will cover their world and yours.”

Sorcha kept her face expressionless, but she saw the threads of possible futures as well. Her sister’s predictions were more probable than not. “I’ll not let you have that sort of war. Not now. Not ever.”

“Really?” Bananach’s shadow spread like a dark stain on the floor. “Well, then…it’s your move, sister mine.”