by Melissa Marr
“No. It’s fine, Ash.” Donia smiled; for all her wishes of success to Keenan, she saw the look on Seth’s face and couldn’t help but respect him. A mortal stood against the considerable temptation of the Summer King, and it was the mortal holding Aislinn’s hand.
Donia added, “I just want to talk.”
Behind her Cerise came closer, announcing her approach by flapping her wings—as if she could frighten Donia.
“Maybe take a walk.” She glanced back at Cerise and blew a breath of cold air at her, not enough to wound, but frigid enough to remind her to watch her step.
Cerise shrieked, the mere touch of cold sending her fluttering backward.
Donia started to smile: there weren’t enough good moments lately. Then she realized that Aislinn had jumped at Cerise’s outburst. Seth hadn’t moved, hadn’t heard it: faeries could raise such a cacophony that mortals’ heads ached, but they didn’t respond in any other way, didn’t hear it.
The exclamations behind her confirmed that the others had seen Aislinn’s reaction as well.
Donia looked at Aislinn. “You can see them.”
Aislinn nodded.
Cerise trembled behind a rowan-man. The Summer Girls gaped.
“I see faeries. Lucky me,” Aislinn added, sounding as weary as she looked. “Can you come in here or is there too much iron?”
Donia smiled at the girl’s bravado. “I’d rather walk.”
Nodding, Aislinn lifted her gaze to the head guard and told the rowan-man, “Keenan already knows, and now Donia does too, so if there’s anyone else you need to scurry off and tell, now’s your chance.”
Donia winced. Not bravado, recklessness. She would be a good match for Keenan.
Before anyone could respond, Donia walked past the Summer Girls and stood before the rowan-man. “If anyone here tells Beira, I’ll find you. If loyalty to Keenan isn’t enough to keep your lips sealed, I’ll seal them for you.”
She stared at Cerise until the demi-succubus growled, “I would never betray the Summer King.”
“Good.” Donia nodded. Then she returned to Aislinn’s side.
Only the sound of Cerise’s wings flapping madly broke the silence until Donia asked, “Shall I tell you about Keenan’s infidelity, about his lasciviousness, about how foolish it’d be to trust him?”
Blanching even more, Aislinn looked away. “I may already know.”
Donia said softly to Seth, “You say you aren’t her beau, but she needs you. Maybe we can talk about herbs as well?”
“Hold on.” Seth pulled Aislinn back inside to talk for a moment, closing the door on Donia.
As she waited outside for their inevitable agreement, she gave the Summer Girls her coldest smile, hoping it was enough, hating the game she had to play.
I gave my vow.
From behind the rowan-man, Cerise hissed at her.
“Why?” one of the youngest Summer Girls—Tracey—asked, coming far closer to Donia than the others usually did. “He still cares for you. How can you do this to him?” Tracey looked genuinely confused, a familiar frown on her face.
With her reed-thin body and soft voice, Tracey was one of the ones Donia had tried hardest to convince not to risk the cold. She was too fragile, too easily confused, too gentle to be either Winter Girl or Summer Queen.
“I made a vow.” Donia’d tried to explain it often enough, but Tracey’s view was black and white. If Keenan was good, Donia must be bad. Simple logic.
“It hurts Keenan.” Tracey shook her head, as if she could make the troubles go away by saying no.
“It hurts me, too.”
The other girls pulled Tracey back to them, trying to distract her before she began weeping. She never should’ve been chosen. Donia still felt guilty for it; she suspected Keenan did too. The Summer Girls were like plants needing the nutrients of the sun to thrive: they couldn’t be away from the Summer King for long, or they’d fade. Tracey, however, never seemed to thrive, even though she stayed with Keenan year-round.
The door opened again. Seth stepped outside; Aislinn followed close behind him.
“We’ll come.” Aislinn’s voice was stronger, but she still looked far from well. There were dark hollows under her eyes, and her face was almost as pale as Donia’s. “Can you tell them they can’t follow us?”
“No. They are his, not mine.”
“So they’ll hear everything?” Aislinn looked like she needed someone to help her make decisions, not like her usual self at all.
What didn’t Keenan tell me?
“They can’t come into my home. We’ll go there,” Donia offered before she could think it through. Then, before she had to hear the comments that followed the gasp of surprise, she walked away, leaving Aislinn and Seth rushing to catch up with her.
More strangers in my home. She sighed, hoping it wouldn’t soon become Aislinn’s home, hoping that Keenan was right. Let Aislinn be the one.
At the edge of the yard where they came upon the natural barrier that protects a fey domicile from mortal intrusion, Seth’s eyes widened, but Aislinn didn’t flinch. Perhaps she’d always been immune; perhaps it was only her Sight that made her oblivious to it. Donia didn’t ask. Instead she whispered the words to ease Seth’s aversion and led them—still silent—into her home.
“Are we the only ones here?” Seth looked around the room, although his mortal eyes would see nothing if the three of them weren’t alone. He still held Aislinn’s hand and made no move to let go anytime soon.
“We are.” Aislinn’s gaze lingered on the simple natural wood furnishings in the small room, the massive fireplace that took up most of one wall, and the gray stones that finished out that wall. “It’s just us.”
Donia leaned against the stones, enjoying their warmth. “Not quite what you pictured?”
Aislinn leaned on Seth; they both looked thoroughly exhausted. She crooked her mouth in a half-smile. “I don’t think I pictured anything. I didn’t know why you were talking to me, still don’t. I just know it’s got something to do with him.”
“It has everything to do with him. Beyond here, to those who wait out there”—Donia motioned to the door—“what he wants is the most important thing. Nothing else matters to them. You, me, we are nothing in their worlds other than what we can be to him.”
Leaning her head against Seth’s arm, Aislinn asked, “So what about in here?”
Seth wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to the sofa, murmuring, “Sit down. You don’t need to stand to talk to her.”
Donia came closer then, standing across from them, gazing at Aislinn. “In here, what matters is what I want. And I want to help you.”
Trying to contain her emotions, Donia paced through the room; she paused periodically, but she made no move to continue the conversation. How do I say what needs saying? They were weary, and she couldn’t blame them for it.
“Donia?” Aislinn curled into Seth’s arms, half asleep and lethargic. She was vulnerable from whatever Keenan had done.
Donia ignored her. Turning instead to the shelf that held the mortal- and faery-authored books that the Winter Girls had collected over the past nine centuries, she ran her fingers over some of her favorites—Kirk and Lang’s The Secret Commonwealth, the complete collection of Tradition of the Highest Courts, Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology, and Sorcha’s On Being: Faery Morality and Mortality. She slid her fingers past these, past an old copy of The Mabinogion, past a collection of journals the other girls had kept, past the tattered book holding letters Keenan had sent them over the centuries—always in that elegant script of his, even if the language wasn’t always the same. There she stopped.
Her hand lingered on a well-worn book with a torn green cover. In it, handwritten in the strangely beautiful words of an almost lost language, were two recipes known to give the Sight to a mortal.
It was forbidden to allow those recipes to be read by a mortal. If any of the courts learned that she’d done so, Beira’s threat would b
e a minor worry. Many fey had grown fond of being a hidden people; they’d be loath to lose that should mortals begin to see them again.
“Are you okay?” Seth didn’t come toward her, staying protectively at Aislinn’s side, but his voice held worry.
For me, a stranger.
He was worthy of protection. She knew fey history well enough, having spent long hours poring over these books. Once the courts might have given him a gift for what he did, defending the one who would be queen. “I am. I am surprisingly fine.”
She pulled the book out. After sitting down across from them, she rested the book in her lap and gingerly flipped the pages. Several slid loose of the binding, coming free in her hands. She spoke barely above a whisper but she said it, “Write this down.”
“What?” Aislinn blinked and straightened up, pulling away from the circle of Seth’s arms.
“It’s a crime with the most serious of punishments if they learn I’ve given you this. Keenan may look the other way if no one else knows, but I want him”—she inclined her head ever so slightly at Seth—“to stand a fair chance in what will follow. To leave him defenseless and blind…it would be wrong.”
“Thank—”
She cut him off, “No. Those are mortal words, made empty by casual use. If you are to walk among our kind, remember that: they are an insult of sorts. If one does you a good turn, an act of friendship, remember it. Do not lessen it with that shallow phrase.”
She told him then, gave him the words that would let him make the salve to see.
He raised an eyebrow as he wrote it down, but he did not ask questions until she’d closed the book and returned it to its place on the shelf. Then he asked only, “Why?”
“I’ve been her.” Donia looked away, staring at the spines of the worn books on her shelves, feeling shaky as the weight of what she’d just done settled on her. Would even Keenan forgive her? She wasn’t sure, but—like him—she believed Aislinn truly was the Summer Queen. Why else would Beira be so adamant that she stay away from the staff?
Donia pulled her gaze from the shelves and looked at Aislinn as she said the rest: “I was a mortal. I had no idea what he was; none of us ever do. You’re the first one to see him, see any of them for what they are. What I am now.”
“You were mortal?” Aislinn repeated shakily.
Donia nodded.
“What happened?”
“I loved him. I said yes when he asked me to choose to stay with him. He offered me forever, love, midnight dances.” She shrugged, unwilling to think too long about dreams she had no right to still have, especially with Aislinn looking back at her. Someday Seth would fade away, but Keenan would not. If Aislinn were the Summer Queen, it was merely a matter of time until she fell in love with Keenan. Once she saw his true nature—the person he could be…
Donia shook her head and added, “There was another girl who tried to talk me out of it, a girl who had believed in him once.”
“Why didn’t you listen?” Aislinn shivered, moving closer to Seth.
“Why does Seth sit here?”
Aislinn didn’t answer, but Seth did. He squeezed Aislinn’s hand and said, “Love.”
“Choose wisely, Aislinn. For Seth, he can choose to leave you, choose to walk away—”
“I won’t,” Seth interrupted.
Sparing him a smile, Donia said, “But you could. For us, if we choose Keenan, there’s no walking away. If we don’t—”
“It’s not a problem then. I don’t want Keenan.” Aislinn lifted her chin, looking defiant despite her trembling hands.
“You will, though,” Donia said gently.
Donia remembered the first time she’d seen him as he truly was, in the clearing when she stood waiting to lift the Winter Queen’s staff. He was so incredibly perfect that she had to remind herself to breathe. How could any mortal deny him when he could be himself?
“Now that he knows of your Sight, he can be himself in front of you. You’ll forget your own name.”
“No.” Aislinn shook her head. “I’ve seen him as he is, and I’m still saying no.”
“Really?” Donia stared at her, hating that she had to say it, but knowing that Aislinn needed to hear the truth. “Were you saying it last night?”
“That was different,” Seth ground out. He stood up and stepped forward.
Donia didn’t even move. She blew gently, thinking: ice. A wall of ice formed around Seth, like a glass cage. “All I know is that he believes Aislinn is the one destined to be his. Once he believed I was, and this is the result of his love.”
She reached out and touched the ice, shivering as it retracted back into her skin. “That’s all I can tell you tonight. Go make your salve. Think about what I said.”
CHAPTER 22
[A] woman of the Sidhe (the faeries) came in, and said that the [girl] was chosen to be the bride of the prince of the dim kingdom, but that as it would never do for his wife to grow old and die while he was still in the first ardour of his love, she would be gifted with a faery life.
—The Celtic Twilight by William Butler Yeats (1893, 1902)
When Sunday morning came, Aislinn wasn’t surprised to find Grams up and alert. At least she waited until after breakfast to pounce.
Aislinn sat down on the floor beside Grams’ feet. She’d sat there so often over the years, letting Grams comb out her hair, listening to stories, simply being near the woman who’d raised and loved her. She didn’t want to fight, but she didn’t want to live in fear, either.
She kept her voice level as she said, “I’m almost grown, Grams. I don’t want to run and hide.”
“You don’t understand….”
“I do, actually.” Aislinn took Grams’ hand in hers. “I really, really do. They’re awful. I get that, but I can’t spend my life hiding from the world because of them.”
“Your mother was the same way, foolish, hardheaded.”
“She was?” Aislinn paused at that revelation. She’d never had any real answers when she asked about her mother’s last years.
“If she hadn’t been, she’d still be here. She was foolish. Now she’s dead.” Grams sounded feeble, more than tired—exhausted, drained. “I can’t bear to lose you too.”
“I’m not going to die, Grams. She didn’t die because of the faeries. She…”
“Shh.” Grams looked toward the door.
Aislinn sighed. “They can’t hear me in here even if they’re right outside.”
“You can’t know that.” Grams straightened her shoulders, no longer looking like the worn-out woman she had become, but like the stern disciplinarian of Aislinn’s childhood. “I’m not letting you be foolish.”
“I’ll be eighteen next year….”
“Fine. Until then, you’re still in my house. With my rules.”
“Grams, I—”
“No. From now on, it’s to and from school. You can take a taxi. You will let me know where you are. You will not walk around town at all hours.” Grams’ scowl lightened a little, but her determination did not. “Just until they stop following you. Please don’t fight me, Aislinn. I can’t go through that again.”
And there wasn’t much else to say after that.
“What about Seth?”
Grams’ expression softened. “He means that much to you?”
“He does.” Aislinn bit her lip, waiting. “He lives in a train. Steel walls.”
Grams looked at Aislinn. Finally she relented and said, “Taxi there and back. Stay inside.”
Aislinn hugged her. “I will.”
“We’ll give it a little longer. They can’t reach you in school or in here. They can’t reach you in this Seth’s train.” Grams nodded as she listed the safety measures, restricting but not yet impossible. “If it doesn’t work, though, you’ll need to stop going out. You understand?”
Although Aislinn felt guilty for not correcting Grams’ mistaken beliefs about school and about Seth’s, she kept her emotions as securely hidden as she d
id when the fey were near, saying only, “I do.”
The next day, Monday, Aislinn went through school like a sleepwalker. Keenan wasn’t there. No faeries walked the halls. She’d seen them outside, on the steps, on the street as the taxi drove by them, but not within the building.
Has he already had what he wanted? Was that all this was?
The way Donia had talked there was far more to it, but Aislinn couldn’t focus on anything other than the blank spot in her memories. She wanted to know, needed to know what had happened. It was all she could think about as she went through the motions of classes.
At midday, she gave up and walked out the front door, not caring who saw.
She was still on the steps when she saw him: Keenan stood waiting across the street, watching her. He was smiling, gently, like he was happy to see her.
He’ll tell me. I’ll ask, and he’ll tell what happened. He has to. She was so relieved that she went toward him, dodging cars, almost running.
She didn’t even realize he was invisible until he said, “So you truly can see me?”
“I…” She stammered, stumbled over the words she’d been about to say, the questions she needed to have answered.
“Mortals can’t see me unless I will it.” He acted as calm as if they’d been talking about homework, as if they weren’t discussing something that could get her killed.
“You see me, and they”—he pointed to a couple walking their dog down the street—“don’t.”
“I do,” she whispered. “I’ve always seen faeries.”
It was harder to say this time, to tell him. Faeries had terrified her as long as she could remember, but none so much as Keenan. He was the king of the awful things that she’d fled from her whole life.
“Walk with me?” he asked, although they already were.
He faded into what she now thought of as his normal glamour—dulling the shimmer of his copper hair, the rustling sound of wind through trees—and she fell in step with him, silent now, trying to think of how to ask him.
They had just passed the park when she turned to him and blurted, “Did you? Did we? Sex, I mean?”