Fragile Eternity

Chapter 21

“You all right?” Carla asked Aislinn softly as they waited for Rianne to come out of the restroom. She took a while to apply the makeup her mother forbade her to wear to school. “Sick?”

“No.”

“Do you want to talk? You look…off.” The words were hesitant, but they were still there. Carla had become mothering with both Aislinn and Rianne.

“Seth and I—” Aislinn started, but a sob threatened at the thought of finishing that sentence. She stopped the words before the tears at the end of that admission could fall. Saying it aloud in this world made it too real. “He’s not…here. We had a sort of fight.”

Carla hugged her. “It’ll be okay. He loves you. He’s been waiting around for you forever.”

“I don’t know.” Aislinn tried not to look at the faeries who stood invisibly in the hall. “He took off or something.”

“Seth?”

Aislinn nodded. It was all she could do. A part of her wished she could talk to Carla, to Rianne, to someone, but the person she talked to was missing—and telling Carla all about it would mean skirting the truth or admitting truths that Aislinn couldn’t quite handle. Mortals really didn’t belong in the world of faeries.

“He’s gone.” She looked at Carla and at the faeries behind her and whispered, “And it hurts.”

Her friend made comforting noises, and her faeries stroked their hands over her hair and face. Once that would have terrified her, but now their touches comforted her. The faeries were hers. They were her reason now, her focus and her responsibility. I need them. And they needed her; they weren’t going to ever leave her. Her court needed her. That truth was a comfort as she went through the motions of the school day yet again.

Faeries weren’t often in the school. The metal and plethora of religious symbols made them uncomfortable. Yet, throughout the day, her faeries surrounded her. Siobhan sat beside her in an empty desk during study hall. Eliza sang a lullaby during lunch. The soft cadence of her words was matched by affectionate brushes of faery hands as her guard and other assorted faeries came by without any reason but to show her they cared. This is my family. Her court was more than a collection of strangers or strange creatures. Their love didn’t make all the pain go away, but it helped. They helped. That sense of being cosseted in her court’s embrace was a salve on her injured heart—and it was all that helped.

After school, Aislinn didn’t race to see Keenan, but her steps as she went up the stairs to the loft were hurried. Being there, surrounded by her king and court, made her feel a sense of security she lacked outside the building.

She still went to school, and she still spent some nights at home with Grams, but in the eighteen days since Seth had vanished, her attempts to reenter her old life had stopped. She didn’t see or call her friends. She didn’t go anywhere alone. She was safest with Keenan. Together, they were stronger. Together in their loft, they were safer.

After the first couple days, he’d learned not to ask any awkward questions about how she was doing or how she felt or—worst of all—if Seth had called yet. Instead he gave her tasks to keep her distracted. Between schoolwork and court business and the new self-defense training, she’d been exhausted enough that she slept at least a few hours every night.

Sometimes, Keenan mentioned in passing that he’d not had any progress on finding Seth. But we will, he promised. It was only slow because they’d been cautious in their inquiries. Letting Seth’s absence become public could endanger him, he’d explained. If he’s left us, he’s vulnerable. It made things slower than she wanted, but endangering him—is he already in danger? — wasn’t an option she liked at all. Whether he left her by choice or not didn’t matter. She still loved him.

All they’d learned so far was that he’d gone to the Crow’s Nest and spent hours with Damali, a dreadlocked singer he’d once sort-of dated. The guards hadn’t seen him leave; a tussle with several Ly Ergs who’d captured one of the younger Summer Girls had called their attention away. When they returned to the Crow’s Nest, Seth had slipped out, but Skelley had spoken to him afterward. He was safe in his home, Skelley repeated. I don’t know how he left. He’s never done so before. Seth left stealthily; he took Boomer; he sounded excited. The evidence didn’t add up. Did he go willingly? The only reason to believe he hadn’t was that it seemed out of character.

Does it though?

Seth didn’t do relationships. He’d never been in one before her; he was increasingly tense about her bond with Keenan; and he’d sounded fine when he called. He didn’t sound quite right, but telling someone good-bye over voice mail was weird. Maybe he went to see his family. She’d spent hours thinking it through, ordering faeries sent to various locations, having them check ticket receipts at the bus and train station. None of it made her feel any better—or brought answers.

Seeing Keenan was all that eased the ball of tension she felt. Today though, when she walked through the door of the loft, he greeted her with a sentence she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear: “Niall would like to speak with you.”

“Niall?” She felt both fear and hope at the thought of talking to him. She’d tried to contact him the day after Seth had first vanished, but he’d refused to see her.

Keenan’s usually transparent emotions were tamped down so tightly that she couldn’t get any sense of what he was feeling. “After you meet with him, we can go over Tavish’s notes and have dinner.”

She was unable to breathe around the tightness in her chest. “Niall is here?”

The look on Keenan’s face was a brief blur of fury. “In our study. Waiting for you alone.”

Aislinn didn’t correct him as she once would’ve; the study was hers too now. This was her home. It had to be. Immortal only if I’m not murdered. She’d not thought about the finite and infinite until she’d become a faery, but since the change, the idea of reducing forever to just another heartbeat terrified her. The recent threats from Bananach, Donia, and Niall made the possibility of ending seem too real. There were those who could take everything away—and one of them was waiting on the other side of the door.

Knowing Keenan stood a moment away helped, but the trepidation she felt at seeing Niall was still awful. In the first rush of changing, she’d still felt terror, self-doubt, worries—all the stuff she’d hid over the years when she saw the faeries but had to keep her Sight secret. Fear for her safety had faded. It was back now, stronger than it had ever been before.

“Do you want me to come in?” Keenan’s offer was without inflection.

“If he said ‘no’…if he has information and didn’t tell me because…” She gave him a pleading look. “I need answers.”

Keenan nodded. “I am here if you need me.”

“I know.” Aislinn opened the door to go see the Dark King.

Niall sat on the sofa looking as comfortable as he had when he’d lived there. It was familiar enough to ease the tension Aislinn felt—but his expression of contempt wasn’t.

“Where is he?”

“What?” Aislinn felt her knees go weak.

“Where. Is. Seth.” Niall glared at her. “He’s not been home; he’s not answering my calls. No one at the Crow’s Nest has seen him.”

“He’s…” All the calm she’d been struggling to feel slipped away.

“He’s under my protection, Aislinn.” Niall’s shadowy figures appeared and perched behind him in postures of judgment. One male and one female sat on either side of Niall; their insubstantial bodies leaned forward attentively. “You cannot keep him away from me just because you don’t like—”

“I don’t know where he is,” she interrupted. “He’s gone.”

The shadowy figures shifted in agitation as Niall asked, “Since when?”

“Eighteen days ago,” she admitted.

The look on his face was censorious. He stared at her for several moments, not speaking or moving. Then, Niall stood and walked out of the room.

She ran after him. “Niall! Wait! What do you know? Niall!”

The Dark King spared a hostile glare for Keenan, but he didn’t stop. He opened the door and left.

Aislinn attempted to follow, but Keenan restrained her as she tried to pass him, before she could reach out to take hold of Niall.

“He knows something. Let go—” She pulled free of Keenan. “He knows something.”

Keenan didn’t try to touch her again or close the door. “I’ve known Niall for nine centuries, Ash. If he walks away, it’s not wise to follow. And he’s not our court now. He’s not to be trusted.”

She stared into the empty hallway beyond their loft. “He knows something.”

“Maybe. Maybe he is simply angry. Maybe he’s off to pursue a suspicion.”

“I want Seth home.”

“I know.”

Aislinn closed the door and leaned on it. “Niall didn’t know he was leaving. It’s not just me he left.”

“Niall will seek him out too.”

“What if he’s hurt?” she asked, giving voice to the fear she tried to hide even from herself. It was easier to believe he’d left her than that he was injured and unfindable.

“He took the serpent. His door was locked behind him.”

They stood there in silence until Keenan gestured toward the study. “Would you like to go over the notes Tavish had collected for us? Or do you want to hit something?”

“Hit something first.”

Keenan smiled, and they went to one of the exercise rooms to hit the heavy bags and speedballs that hung there.

Later, after she had hit the bag until her stomach muscles ached to the point that she felt like she’d be sick if she pushed further, Aislinn grabbed a quick shower in the bathroom attached to her bedroom. Until recently, she hadn’t felt like it was hers. It was a place to sleep and store a few things, nothing more, nothing less. That had changed after Seth left. She’d withdrawn into the room several times just to hide away from the world—only to retreat from there to roam the whole of the loft, where her faeries were. She needed them, needed to be around them.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t startled to find Siobhan sitting cross-legged in the middle of the massive canopy bed. The spiderweb drapes that hung like walls around the bed were fastened back, pinned by rose thorns that jutted from the posts of the bed. Surrounded by the fairy-tale setting, Siobhan looked like a princess from one of those animated movies Grams had never approved of watching. The Summer Girl’s hair was long enough that tendrils of it brushed the duvet that covered the bed. The vines that twisted like living tattoos around her body rustled as the leaves shifted toward Aislinn.

She’s too pretty to be human. Unnatural—Aislinn pushed away the old prejudices, but not before the rest of that thought was there—just like I am now. Not human.

“We are sad that he’s gone.” Siobhan’s voice was whispery. “We tried to make him stay.”

Aislinn stopped. “You what?”

“We danced, and we even took away his charm stone.” Siobhan pouted, seeming falsely young as she did so. “But Niall came and took him from us. We tried, though. We tried to keep him with us.”

Yelling at Siobhan wasn’t going to help. Despite the posturing of vapidity, Siobhan was clever. Some days, she was unnerving for it. Mostly, Aislinn thought the Summer Girl was loyal to their court—just not so loyal that trusting her was a safe bet.

Aislinn tightened her robe belt and sat down, not on her bed but on the stool in front of the dressing table. “Niall took Seth from the park. Did he take the charm stone?”

Siobhan smiled slowly. “It was he who gave it to Seth, so he’d not leave it with me, would he?”

“Because the charm made Seth…” Aislinn lifted a beautiful olive-wood brush, but she didn’t do anything with it.

“Impervious to our glamour, my Queen.” Siobhan came over, took the brush, and began brushing Aislinn’s hair. “It kept him safe from any illusions a faery might press onto him.”

“Right. And Niall gave it to him, but you took it.” Aislinn closed her eyes as Siobhan methodically pulled the knots from her hair.

“We did,” Siobhan confirmed.

“Did you?” Aislinn opened her eyes again and held Siobhan’s reflection in the mirror.

The faery paused in her brushstrokes and admitted, “No. I wouldn’t upset Niall that way. If you asked it of me, I’d cross him, but unless I must…We’ve been dancing together for centuries. He was the one who taught me what it meant to be not-mortal. When my king turned his attention to the next mortal…” She shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t upset Niall unless my regents required it.”

“I didn’t know he had a charm stone,” Aislinn whispered. “Did he mistrust me that much?”

“I don’t know, but I am sorry that you are sad.” Siobhan resumed brushing.

Aislinn’s eyes filled with tears. “I miss him.”

“I know.” Siobhan shook her head. “When Keenan turned his attention away from me…We all tried to replace Keenan. I sometimes thought I had.” She looked down for a second. “Until he left too.”

“Niall. You and he were something more—”

“Oh, yes.” Siobhan’s expression left no doubts. “Eternity is a long time, my Queen. Our king was often distracted, but until you were found, Niall had a purpose in our court. He hid his darkness with dizzying bouts of affection. I took the lion’s share.”

She walked over to the wardrobe, opened it, and pulled out a dress. “You ought to dress for dinner. For the king.”

Aislinn stood and went over to the wardrobe. She ran a hand along the outside. The tableaus of faery revelries carved into the wood didn’t make her pause anymore. The opulence of the room didn’t either. Keenan had found these things in an attempt to make her happy; he’d decorated the room lavishly, but she couldn’t deny that she liked it—or the dresses inside the wardrobe.

“I don’t want to dress up,” she said.

Siobhan’s princess-perfect face was a vision of contempt. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Wallow. Weaken us as Bananach scouts our perimeter. Distract our king with your selfishness. Keep him from finding happiness with you or with the Winter Queen.”

“That’s not—”

“He stays away from Donia in order to be by your side when you need him, yet you still refuse to see him as you should—as your true king and partner. He’s willing to sacrifice his new chance with her in hopes that you’ll move on. Yet you weep and hide, and he worries and mourns. Both of you saddened is unacceptable. Our court requires laughter and frivolity. This melancholy and denial of pleasure weakens the very core of who you are—and weakens us as a result.” Siobhan closed the wardrobe with a slam and, in the next heartbeat, turned a plaintive gaze on Aislinn. “If your mortal isn’t here to share laughter and pleasure, if our king is denied his joy at loving the other queen, if you are both so maudlin, we grow weak and sad. Your laughter and bliss filters into all of us, as does this wallowing in despair. Go to dinner with our king. Let him help you smile.”

“But I don’t love him.” Aislinn knew the words sounded weak, even as she said them.

“Do you love your court?”

Aislinn looked at her, the faery who’d had the courage to tell her what she very much didn’t want to hear. “I do.”

“Then be our queen, Aislinn. If your mortal comes home, you can deal with it, but right now, your court needs you. Your king needs you. We need you. Take pleasure in the world…or send our king to Winter so he can have pleasure. You keep him at your side but give him nothing to smile about. Your pain is hurting all of us. Accept what you can take of the pleasure he would offer.”

“I don’t know how,” Aislinn said. She didn’t want to move on, but she admitted—to herself, at least—that she treasured Keenan’s comfort. She looked at Siobhan, well aware that her confusion was plain in her expression. “I don’t know what to do.”

Siobhan’s voice gentled as she said, “Choose to be happy. It is what we have all done.”