by Melissa Marr
Who am I kidding? She snorted at the rationalization she was indulging in: she shouldn’t be alone with either of them. It was why she didn’t talk to Irial. It was why she didn’t accept five out of six of Niall’s calls.
The buzzer for the downstairs door rang. She pushed the speaker on, knowing full well who was there.
“Leslie?”
For a moment, she couldn’t speak, but then she asked, “Are you alone?”
“Right now, I am . . . . Can I come up?”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Can you come down?”
“I shouldn’t either.” She’d already had her shoes on, though, and she grabbed her keys from the hook by the door.
She saw him watching her through the front door of the building as she came down the stairs. It wasn’t like seeing Irial, not now, not ever. With Irial, she was sure; they knew each other intimately. With Niall, she was still nervous; they’d never moved beyond kisses and what-ifs.
She opened the door—and paused. The awkwardness, the urge to touch and not-touch, the where-does-one-go-now wasn’t something they’d figured out. They both froze, and the moment of greeting passed. Then, it was too late to touch without being more awkward.
He stepped to the side, but reflexively offered her his elbow. It was basic civility for him, but he caught himself as soon as he did it. She could see his doubts, his fear that he’d crossed a line already.
Leslie slid her hand into the crook of his arm. “Should I pretend to be surprised?”
He smiled, and all of the tension fled. “Harbingers of my visit or just the fact that I was in town?”
“Did Gabe send for you?” She didn’t look around them. “Someone . . . else?”
“Why didn’t you tell me he visits?” Niall’s tone was more curious than hurt as he asked.
“Because I want you two to get along,” she admitted. “I want . . . I don’t know . . . I just like the idea that you are at peace with one another. That you can be there for each other.”
Niall gave her a curious look.
“What?”
He shook his head. “I’d move the court here if it made you come back to . . . either of us.”
“I know.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “And if he thought it would work, he’d be trying to manipulate you to do so. Sometimes I think he wants me in your life more than in his.”
Niall paused. “You’d be in both of our lives if—”
“I can’t.” Leslie’s voice wavered embarrassingly.
“So . . .”
She leaned in and kissed him. “So we take tonight for what it is, and then you return to our court, to him. You need him in your life. I can’t live my life in the Dark Court. That’s not where I belong.”
“Maybe there will be someone else who can be king.” He stroked her hair.
“How long was Iri the Dark King?” Leslie kissed his throat. “You know better.”
“I want to tell you to be with him,” Niall whispered. “He could keep you safe and you’d be away from the court . . . and maybe someday . . .”
“You need him with you, and I don’t want to be addicted to anyone.” Leslie wrapped her arms around him, leaned closer into his embrace. “Sometimes things simply aren’t meant to be. I’m not able to live in the Dark Court right now. I’d lose myself if I lived there. You might not see that, but I know myself.”
He pulled back and stared into her eyes. “What if—”
“If I thought I could live there, I would,” she interrupted. “Being there with both of you . . . it’s tempting. More so than I want to admit. I want to ignore the things that happen in the court, not be changed by what I remember. People die. Mortals were killed for sport. Violence is play. Excess is normalcy. I can’t live in that without changing in ways I don’t want to.”
Leslie felt relief at having this conversation finally. She’d expected that she’d be embarrassed by the admission that it wasn’t simple horror that stopped her. That she knew Niall would accept, expect even, but her real reason was less honorable. She could accept the cruelty and excess of the Dark Court, and that terrified her.
Niall frowned. “I wish I could lie to you. I want to tell you that none of the horrible things happen anymore.”
“They do. If you aren’t doing the worst of them, he is. Don’t think that he’s changed. He’d do anything to protect you . . . including protecting you from yourself.” Leslie kept her voice gentle. She knew that there was one time when Irial hadn’t been able to protect Niall, but it wasn’t something any of them discussed. “He will do whatever it takes to keep you happy, so if you aren’t able to do . . .” Her words faded as Niall looked away.
“I know that there are parts of being the Dark King that he still handles.” Niall’s expression clouded. “I hate being this . . . almost as much as I enjoy it. Some of the ugly things, though, deals and cruelties . . . I can’t.”
“So he does.”
Niall nodded. “There are things I don’t see. If we could make it so you didn’t see . . .”
She ignored that suggestion. “You know what happened with Ren?”
Niall didn’t answer for a moment. Then he nodded. “I do.”
“I want to be sorry. I want to be the sweet girl you think I am. I want to say I’m sorry that Irial”—she paused, trying to find delicate words for what she knew had to have happened—“got rid of Ren.”
For a moment, Niall stared at her. He didn’t speak.
“I’m not that girl,” Leslie admitted. “Any more than you’re Summer Court. You belong in the Dark Court. With Irial.”
“And you.”
“No.” She sighed the word. “The person I would become in the court isn’t who I want to be. I could be. I could be crueler than you are right now. There are reasons that Irial chose me, that I chose his tattoo, and even if you don’t see them. I do. If I stay away from the court, I can be something else too.”
“I’ll love you either way,” Niall promised. “He would too.”
“I wouldn’t.” She laced her fingers through his, and they stood there quietly for several moments.
He didn’t look away. Cars passed on the street. People walked by. The world kept moving, but they alone were still.
Finally, he asked, “So should I go?”
“Not tonight. Can we pretend tonight? That you’re not the Dark King? That I’m not afraid of the things I learned about myself in your court? For tonight, can we just be two people who don’t know that tomorrow isn’t ours?” She felt tears on her cheeks. She wasn’t well yet, but she was sure that she couldn’t go back to the world of faeries without destroying all the progress she was making. Maybe if the two faeries she loved were of any other court, she could.
They aren’t. They never will be. And we would’ve never been together if they were.
“What are you saying?” Niall asked.
“I can’t return to the court, but I can’t pretend that you aren’t in my life. I see you. All of you.” Leslie didn’t move any closer to him, but she didn’t back away either. “I need my life to be out here—away from the courts—but I look forward to your calls, to his visits. I want to talk to him, and I want to . . .”
“What?” Niall prompted.
At the end of the block, Irial stood watching. She’d known he was there, known that he’d be closer if he could, and known that he had made this night possible. She was safe from Ren because of Irial. She was in Niall’s arms because of Irial.
She concentrated on the tendril of connection she had to him, trying to let it open. enough to feel him—and for him to feel her emotions. She wasn’t sure if it worked, but he blew her a kiss.
“Leslie?” Niall looked as tentative as he had when they’d first met. “What do you want?”
“I want you to come upstairs with me. Tonight.”
Irial smiled.
Niall stepped back, but he took her hand in his. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Give us ton
ight. Tomorrow”—she looked past him to let her gaze rest on Irial—“tomorrow, you go back to your court, and I continue my life. Tonight, though . . .”
“I can love without touching.” Niall looked behind him, as if he’d known where Irial was all along, and added, “I learned that lesson centuries ago.”
“Tomorrow you can love me from a safe-distance.” Leslie opened the door; then, she looked back at the faery standing in the shadows watching the two of them. “But it’s okay to stop time every so often to be with someone you love.”
Niall paused. “You make it sound so easy.”
“No.” She led him inside. “It’s not easy. Letting you go in the morning will hurt, but I don’t mind hurting a little if it’s for something beautiful.”
A shadow passed through Niall’s eyes.
“He wouldn’t ask you to change who you are, anything between you, if you stopped time there either.” Leslie started up the stairs, holding on to Niall’s hand as she did so. “But not tonight.”
“No, not tonight.” Niall kissed her until she was breathless.
And then they let time—and worries and fears and the rest of the things that meant they couldn’t have forever—stop for the night.
The End
Love Hurts
Wicked Lovely Story
Love Hurts
A Wicked Lovely Story
Irial looked at the letters that had been delivered to the current house in Huntsdale. He stood in the doorway, exposed in his bare feet and bare chest. Spring, fortunately, was a true and reliable event the past few years. If anything, the former Dark King was wondering if the season had come a touch early this year. Trees were erupting in new growth, and the ground seemed speckled with flowers. If not for the curious, hand-delivered package, he’d be debating popping over to Winter’s abode and asking for a last frost, just a brief freezing before the Summer Queen had her way with nature.
Not that he minded an early summer, of course, simply that he was the embodiment of Discord. Stirring a minor tiff over the greenery seemed the right path. It had, in fact, been his plan. Now, though, he couldn’t focus. In his hand was what appeared to be the key to his unraveling. Yellowed pages were covered in protective sheaths.
Inside the package was a ring he’d purchased over a century ago, a gift bought in love and given in love. When he’d last seen it, that ring adorned the hand of one Thelma Foy, gifted jeweler and beloved of the Dark King.
Irial was no longer king, no longer the faery who’d loved a mortal woman who had aged and died as all of their kind did. Now, Irial was the embodiment of chaos, of discord. He’d fought, slain, and even died. He’d loved and lost—more than once. His first love, Niall, abandoned him for many centuries. His next love, Thelma, died as all humans do. The third love, Leslie, had once risked death to leave him.
The fears that he’d tried to keep at bay flooded him again. Love meant loss, one way or another. He’d endured it enough times that he was no longer sure he could weather it if Niall or Leslie abandoned him.
What fool I am to think I won’t lose them!
With a jolt, Irial realized that the door was still open. Still, he stood at the threshold of his home, a house he shared with the current Dark King, and read letters in a long-ago script. There were hints of things that he needed to know, but no one to ask. Tam was dust now. Humans did that, withered and died.
Flowers bloomed outside, and the sky was clear. Somehow, Irial felt as if a storm was about to erupt. Sadly, his was not a court of nature, as the Winter Court and Summer Court were. He could not send storms free to vent his feelings. All he could do was draw shadows to his skin.
• ♦ •
Niall stood in the grand lobby of the Benedum Center, appreciating the now-familiar chandeliers of theater. In the latter part of the 1900s, it had been a concert hall of a different sort. He’d seen both Prince and Bob Marley there in the ‘80s. These days, it housed both opera and ballet, and as much as some faeries mocked his fondness for both, the current Dark King knew that anyone who doubted the appeal of opera simply hadn’t been paying attention. It was often terribly tragic stuff, rife with manipulation, murder, and mayhem. Any faery worth his salt would like theatre.
Luckily, even the fey like the Hounds, who might not understand his love of this type of art, appreciated arts and music in general. Even better, Leslie shared his interest. Typically, Irial did, too.
Tonight, they had planned to see Faust, a French opera of the medieval scholar who makes an ill-fated deal with a devil. Niall had, not so secretly, always wondered if Méphistophélès was inspired by Irial. An unwise bargain with a “devil” who is clever . . . the idea seemed rather than a mortal dealing with the fey, and although Irial never owned up to it, Niall recalled the years the courts all gathered in Germany. Goethe met fey creatures. Of that, Niall was certain.
But Irial had made excuses. Worse yet, he’d done so badly. Now, Niall was left trying to convince Leslie that all was well—an illusion neither she nor he believed.
A glass of wine. A smile. A stroll under beautiful chandeliers that sparkled in the high-ceilinged lobby that was filled with mortals and more than a few fey things. It should’ve been lovely.
“You look beautiful,” he told his date again.
“And you look handsome,” Leslie replied.
This is when Irial would’ve made an inappropriate remark, fished for praise, or simply kissed one of them. His absence rankled. The lights all seemed to dim at once as shadows swarmed to Niall like a ripple of midnight seeping into the evening.
Leslie’s hand tightened on his arm, and Niall sent his emotions like a nourishing elixir toward the rest of his court. Some of his faeries perched in nooks in the high ceiling, and others languished in the room, dressed in human guises, pretending to be nothing more than ruffians amongst the gems in their fine dresses. It was far from the theatre of the past, where everyone was bedecked in gems and formal attire, but it was still very much a crowd where those who have wanted to be clear that they were superior.
Or maybe there were as smitten by the grand spectacle of the opera as he was. His box seat was not a statement of status. It was simply a space where he could have privacy. No one not with him was in the box. The idea of reserving only a few seats in the box seemed odd. Privacy mattered.
He and Leslie made their way to the Dark Court’s seasonal box and took their seats.
She was silent, uncharacteristically so, but he was attempting to respect that. They were never awkward, with or without Irial at their sides, but tonight things were tense in a palpable way. Irial had asked Niall to excuse him, had put Niall in the position of misleading Leslie. There was no good answer, so Niall had chosen evasive as his solution to the mess.
Leslie vibrated with tension at his side. The lights dimmed, and he thought that the moment of risk was over. Then she leaned closer.
“He’s not ill?”
And as much as Niall wished he could lie, he could not do so. “No.”
“Injured?”
As much as he did not want the former Dark King to be ill, he could not help the flicker that came over him in that moment. “Not yet.”
Leslie smiled wanly.
“I don’t understand either,” Niall admitted.
The show began, and with every tear that trickled down Leslie’s cheek, Niall thought about strangling Irial. Avoiding him Niall could forgive. Avoiding her? There was no excuse that Niall could imagine accepting.
After the show, Niall and Leslie walked to the street, and there a steed waited. It was a living creature, one that had the heart of a wild steed but chose to serve as Leslie’s personal guard. Not quite a horse, not exactly a car, it was a member of the Hunt, but was riderless and technically remained so. Leslie was not a Hound, so she couldn’t be its rider—and the steed tolerated no other unless Leslie was there, too. Tonight, it wore the illusion of being a fire-red convertible.
Leslie caressed the side of the car, much
the way one greets a beloved pet. The fact that this particular “pet” was a monstrous beast with fire glimmering where eyes ought to be was immaterial. She was beloved by the whole of the Dark Court.
“He’ll explain, or we’ll make him,” Niall swore to her as he walked around to the passenger seat.
The engine roared when Leslie’s hands touched the steering wheel. She didn’t steer, not really. The steed carried her home or wherever else she wanted, as if it were a car. And Niall chose not to linger long on the thought that this once-mortal woman had tamed a steed so thoroughly that it functioned as her car—and seemed quite content to do so.
When they reached the apartment where she lived—in a building he’d recently and stealthily bought when the landlord was causing her anxiety—Leslie stayed in the car, as it purred loudly enough to mimic a fine engine. She stroked the dashboard and steering wheel. After a moment she announced, “I’ll handle Irial.”
And Niall wasn’t fool enough to argue. If anything, he was certain that when he returned from his trip the issue would be resolved. Leslie wasn’t meek, and she’d become downright formidable these last few years.
“Should I warn him?” Niall asked lightly.
“Not unless you want to get caught in the crossfire.” Leslie stepped out of the car. “I won’t have him ruin our night, though. Join me?”
If Méphistophélès were a woman, she’d be no more tempting than Leslie as she held out a hand. Niall would give her his soul, his vow, whatever she wanted. He was certain Irial would, too.
“Forever,” Niall told Leslie as he took her hand.
And she smiled with a sweet darkness that made him wonder how he could have earned such love.
The weekend would come, and they would confront the secretive faery they both loved. Whatever Irial was hiding was something they could figure out together. First, Niall would attend to business, and Leslie to her classes.