Fragile Eternity

Chapter 19

Aislinn was a little surprised that Seth wasn’t at her door that morning—and a lot disappointed. The meeting with Keenan and Tavish and a handful of other faeries last night had run into the early hours, but she’d come home afterward in hopes of seeing Seth. They usually grabbed breakfast together before school at least twice a week. Today should’ve been one of those days.

Invisible to the world, Quinn and a small group of guards were waiting along the street downstairs. She caught Quinn’s eye and smiled. They’d developed an accord on the whole privacy bit. It was hard enough to explain Keenan’s omnipresence to her friends—and to Seth’s friends. If she had a whole group of mostly male strangers shadowing her everywhere, there’d be no chance of explaining them away. Unless they were at the Crow’s Nest or faery-only places likes the Rath, her guards stayed invisible.

Seth’s walking speed was a slow lope, so she usually left extra time in the morning so they could go slowly. Without him beside her, she walked at a brisk pace.

I could run.

She tried to shake off the uneasy feeling: Seth had been late a few times. Maybe he’d be at the Depot already. He hadn’t said he’d meet her, but surely he wasn’t that upset still. Seth wasn’t temperamental like her. He was reasonable.

Everything will be fine.

She’d forgotten to charge her phone, so she couldn’t call him.

The uneasy feeling wasn’t letting up. She turned into a lot and around the side of a building—out of sight of mortals—and donned a glamour so as to be invisible to all but faeries and Sighted mortals. Then, she ran.

It felt amazing to move that fast; her body tingled with the sudden freedom. There were parts of being fey that thrilled her far more than she could ever have imagined. The speed at which she could now move was one of them. The downside, of course, was that she was where she needed to be in a few brief heartbeats. It was useful, but it was also over too fast. Being a faery skewed her sense of time. She hadn’t yet tried to come to terms with the alternate time that existed in the removed part of Faerie, in Sorcha’s demesne, but until she had to meet the High Queen, she wasn’t interested in pondering that particular paradox. For now, she’d been having enough trouble thinking about how finite everything mortal was, how brief a time she’d have with Seth and Grams.

She stopped in front of the Depot. The coffee spot was crowded. A number of people she knew were there, filling the tiny tables and leaning against the walls. Aislinn was glad they couldn’t see her as she went inside. She rushed through the main room into the smaller rooms: Seth wasn’t there either. Her sense of unease grew.

Maybe he’s at school. It was possible. Sometimes he met her there before he went to the library or to sketch at the park. If not, it meant that he was upset enough to not meet her, to not want to talk about things. Panic tightened her lungs. What if he won’t talk to me?

He was the only one who’d ever accepted her as she was, for who she was, with both sides of her new life. Grams tried. Keenan tried. Only Seth truly knew her; only Seth understood her completely.

Still unseen by mortal eyes, she crossed the street and rushed to Bishop O’Connell High School. Not caring how stupid it was, she became visible in between steps. Quinn, behind her, made a disapproving sound, but he wouldn’t say anything. He wasn’t the sort to comment on faeries’ arrogances.

Aislinn glanced back at the guards.

Quinn said, “We’ll be here.”

She nodded and went inside. For a few moments, she stood there, but the familiar sounds of her classmates’ voices were disquieting. These were the people she was to protect, but unlike her fey, they had no idea that she stood between them and a potential war that could devastate the earth. She watched them and listened to snippets of conversation that were so far removed from her now as to be in another language. This was the world she had never truly belonged to—the world her friends lived in, a world where economics exams and prom were life or death, a world where a fight with a boyfriend was even worse. She paused. Some things were the same. Seth being upset is still that important. She might not be prom bound, but the faery revels offered her more than enough dancing. Econ still mattered—in very practical ways. And Seth…he was everything.

The best time to see him was now. Without another moment’s hesitation, she turned and walked right back out the door she’d just entered. She’d go see him. Maybe he overslept. Or maybe he didn’t want to talk. So he can at least listen. She wasn’t going to let this fester. She’d go to him. They’d talk it out. He was essential to her.

So she ran—through the streets, across the railroad yard, and to his door. She heard the guards trailing behind her, but she didn’t stop to speak to them. Let them think I’m impulsive. All that mattered was reaching Seth.

A few minutes after she’d left the school, she turned her key in Seth’s lock and pushed it open. “Seth?”

There were no lights on, no music playing. The teakettle sat on the burner. Two unwashed teacups were on the counter. It looked like Seth had gone out suddenly. He didn’t usually leave his cups or dishes unwashed.

“Seth?” Aislinn walked back to the second train car and into the bedroom.

It was early morning, and the bed was already made. He’d left too quickly to wash his cups, but not too quickly to make his bed. She leaned over the side and plugged her phone into the spare charger. As the phone came to life she saw the voice mail notice. He had called.

She was relieved—until she heard it: “I’m leaving tonight, and—” He stopped, and Aislinn could hear another voice faintly—a girl—but couldn’t make out what she said. Then Seth’s voice was back. “And I’ll call…later. I just need to go now. I don’t know when…if—I need to go.”

Leaving? She replayed it twice more. It still didn’t make any sense.

He sounds excited.

She absently ran her hands over the new comforter they’d picked out and listened again. Aislinn heard the voice, whispering very softly in the pause in his words.

He left.

She’d trusted him with secrets that she’d never shared with anyone. When Keenan and Donia were stalking her, she’d opened up to Seth. She’d broken every rule she’d lived by, that her mother and Grams had lived by.

Tears were stinging her eyes, but she blinked them away. “What just happened?”

She couldn’t stand being in the bedroom, in the space that was just theirs, any longer. She left the room and went to check Boomer’s heat rock. The snake wasn’t coiled in his terrarium.

Boomer’s gone.

“Seth’ll be back.” Aislinn looked around the empty house.

Aislinn wanted to run, but it was Seth she ran to when she was lost—and he was missing.

“Where are you?” she whispered.

She couldn’t make herself leave yet. She washed her hands and then cleaned the couple of dishes. It wasn’t as if she really thought he’d walk in the house while she stood there washing his teacups; she just couldn’t bear leaving. When she went to put them away, she discovered that the other dishes were all gone, except the two teacups and the teapot she’d bought him. Why did he take everything? Why didn’t he take the teapot I got him?

Something is wrong. It wasn’t like Seth to just vanish.

She looked around and found broken dishes in the trash. Someone had broken them and cleaned up. If not for Boomer’s absence and the excitement in Seth’s voice, she could believe that he was in danger.

He took Boomer with him.

Her emotions felt too close to the surface, and since she’d become the Summer Queen, that wasn’t something she could let happen, not with emotions like these. She’d seen the result of Keenan’s mood swings—miniature tropical storms trapped in small spaces, a sirocco on a city street—and she’d helped contain the consequences of those emotional upheavals. Her presence calmed him. Even after nine centuries as Summer King, he still slipped, but his storms weren’t the overwhelming nightmare she felt pulsing inside of her.

She didn’t have the control to deal with any of those emotions on her own.

Outside the train, a mist wafted like the fog coming in from the sea, but there was no sea near Huntsdale. The fog was her fault. She felt it, her confusion and fear and anger and hurt swirling faster and faster.

Seth left.

She walked to the door and pulled it closed behind her.

Seth is gone.

Her steps through the city were propelled by sheer will. She was in a haze. Guards spoke. Faeries paused as she passed them. None of it mattered. Seth was gone.

If Bananach or anyone else wanted to hurt her, this would’ve been the time to do it. She was aware of only the constant repetition of his message in her ears as she played it over and over.

By the time she reached the loft, all she knew of life was reduced to one fact: Seth had left.

She opened the door. The guards were talking to Keenan. Some noise about her being reckless was filtering from their mouths. Others were speaking more noise. The birds were chattering. It was all meaningless.

Keenan stood in the middle of the room; all around him, birds swooped among the trees and vines he kept in the loft. The sight of it usually made her feel a loosening of tension. It didn’t this time.

“He’s gone,” she said.

“What?” Keenan didn’t glance away from Aislinn or move toward her.

“Seth. He left.” She still wasn’t sure if she was more frightened or more hurt. “He’s gone.”

Without a sound, the room emptied of everyone but Aislinn and Keenan. Tavish, the Summer Girls, Quinn, several rowan—they all slipped away.

“Seth left?”

She sat down on the floor, not bothering to walk the rest of the way into the room. “He says he’ll call, but…I don’t know where or why or anything. He was upset with me, and now he’s gone. When he left the loft the other night, he said he needed space, but I didn’t think he meant this. I keep calling. He’s not answering.”

She looked up at Keenan. “What if he’s not coming back?”