by Melissa Marr
He considers himself powerless?
Mutely she nodded, and Keenan let go of her arms, smoothing out her wrinkled sleeves.
Aislinn leaned in closer, her lips almost on his skin since the music and noise were growing louder by the moment. “I need to know more than this. You’re asking too much for me to…” She couldn’t continue for a moment, thinking of what he was asking her to give up, to become. What I’m already becoming. “I need more answers if you want me to think about any of this.”
“I can’t tell you everything. There are rules, Aislinn. Rules that have been in place for centuries…” He was almost yelling to be heard over the noise. “We can’t talk here amid their excitement.”
All around them the faeries were cavorting, moving in ways clearly not mortal, even with their glamours in place.
He held out his hand again. “Let’s go to the park, coffee shop, wherever you want.”
She let him take her hand, hating how inevitable her choice was beginning to seem.
Keenan felt her tiny hand in his, as soothing as the touch of the sun. She hadn’t said yes, but she was considering it, accepting the loss of her mortality. Sure, she would mourn, but it was often like that for the newly fey girls.
He led her toward the door, well aware that the summer fey were watching with approving looks. They danced nearer, brushing close and smiling at Aislinn.
And she held her head high, as bold as she’d been when she walked through the crowd to see him. He suspected that she saw them as they were: not their glamours, but their true faces. She did not dance, but she did not flinch away when they came near. For a sighted mortal, it was a truly courageous thing.
He knew she heard the murmurs of those who—unaware of her Sight—chose to stay invisible, who wandered even closer and brushed a hand against her hair.
“Our lady.”
“The queen is here.”
“Finally come to us.”
They hadn’t heard her doubts or desperation. They only heard that the mortal girl had sought him out; they only knew that she left with him. After the Eolas’ words at the faire, they believed she was the one who would free him, rescue them. He hoped they were right.
“The Summer Girls in the library, they said”—she looked away and blushed before rushing through the rest of her words—“they sounded like they, umm, dated mortals.”
It hurt, her asking that. He hadn’t ever thought that when he found his queen, she’d be so uninterested in him. He ground his teeth, but he answered, “They do.”
“So I could…” She paused as they approached the door.
The guard—who’d added strange metal rings to his glamour since Keenan had arrived—grinned at her. “Ash.”
Bold once more, she grinned at him. “Later.”
Shocked by her easy smile at the guard, Keenan turned to ask her what had transpired between them—far better that than discuss her desire to continue to have a relationship with a mortal.
They stepped outside, and he felt it: the bone-aching wave of cold.
“Beira.” Hurriedly he whispered, “Please, stay near me. My mother is coming toward us.”
“I thought you lived with your uncles.”
“I do.” He stepped in front of Aislinn, putting himself between them. “Beira is supremely unqualified to care for anyone.”
“Now, now, sweetling, that’s not very kind.” Beira stepped out of the darkness like a nightmare he couldn’t ever stop remembering.
Her glamour revealed her usual strand of pearls resting on a gray dress. It revealed the thick fur jacket she wore. It didn’t reveal her snow-filled eyes or the sparkle of frost on her lips. Keenan knew Aislinn saw it, though. He knew that she saw his mother’s true face. The thought didn’t comfort him.
Beira let her icy breath float toward his face as she sighed and said, “I just thought I should meet the girl who’s got everyone talking.”
Then the Winter Queen leaned closer still and kissed him on both cheeks.
Keenan felt the bruises, the frostbite, forming where her lips had touched his skin, but he didn’t speak. Fortunately, neither did Aislinn.
“Does the other girl know you’re out with her?” Beira stage-whispered, pointing at Aislinn and wrinkling her nose.
He balled his hand into a fist, wishing he could let his temper reign, thinking of Beira’s threats to Donia. Now, with Aislinn beside him—vulnerable still—he dared not. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Tsk, tsk, temper is so unattractive, don’t you think?”
He didn’t rise to the bait.
She clapped her hands together, sending a wave of cold toward him, and gushed, “Aren’t you going to introduce us, darling?”
“No.” He stayed in front of Aislinn, keeping her out of Beira’s reach. “I think you need to leave.”
Beira laughed, letting her chill roll through the sound, making him ache.
He tried to keep Aislinn shielded safely behind him where that icy air wouldn’t touch her, but she stepped up beside him and stared at Beira disdainfully.
“Let’s go.” Aislinn took his hand then, not in love or affection, but in a sign of solidarity. This wasn’t the anxious girl he’d been talking to at Rath. No, she looked more like a warrior, one of the old guard who forgot to smile even in moments of bliss. She was glorious.
While he stood there, fighting not to falter under the chill Beira had released, Aislinn pulled him down and kissed each of his bruised cheeks, her lips soft as balm on the painful bruises. “I can’t stand a bully.”
Warmth shot through his hand, burned on his cheeks.
It can’t be.
Keenan looked from Aislinn to his mother. They stood facing each other like they were ready to wage a war the likes of which fey hadn’t seen in millennia.
Unable to focus, Keenan stared at the Dumpster down the alley, the half-asleep man curled in a nest of frayed cloth and boxes, and listened to the sound of his advisors and guards approaching behind them.
Beira moved closer, her bone-white hand lifting toward Aislinn’s cheek. “She has a familiar face.”
Aislinn stepped out of Beira’s reach. “No.”
Beira laughed, and Aislinn felt something cold and vile sliding down her back.
Whether or not she was angry about becoming one of them no longer mattered; it had stopped mattering when Beira bruised Keenan. An instinct to protect him flared to life in her—an urge she’d felt often enough for her friends but never for a faery. Maybe it was the way he’d looked in the club, the growing sense that he was as trapped as she was.
Beira couldn’t stand against us both. Not both the Summer King and Queen. As much as she didn’t like that possibility, it sounded right as she thought it.
“Until we meet again, lovelies.” Beira waved and two withered hags stepped forward, flanking her much the way ladies-in-waiting did in paintings of royalty. Under their glamours, these faeries shared none of Beira’s dark beauty; they simply looked like someone had sucked the life out of them, leaving empty shells, haggard and glassy-eyed.
Without glancing back, the three strolled down the alley. Shards of ice, cracked and angled like broken glass, glittered in Beira’s footsteps.
Aislinn looked over at Keenan. “What a bitch. Are you okay?”
But he was looking at her with awe in his eyes. He put a hand to his cheek; the bruises were fading as she watched—leaving a red imprint where her lips had touched his skin.
His two “uncles” came up on either side of him. His guards moved out around them. Too little, too late. Several of the faeries were speaking at once.
“Beira’s gone?”
“Are you…?”
But Keenan ignored them. He lifted Aisinn’s hand to his cheek, holding it there. “You did that.”
One of the faeries stepped closer. “What did she do? Are you injured?”
“She didn’t see, did she? Beira?” Keenan asked.
His eyes widened, and Aislinn saw tiny p
urple flowers blossoming inside them.
She pulled her hand away, shaking her head. “This doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t change a thing. I was just…I don’t know why I even did that.”
“You did, though,” he whispered, taking both of her hands in his. “You see how different it is now.”
She trembled.
He was looking at her as if she were the grail he’d spoken of, and her only thought was to run, far and fast, run until she could run no farther.
“We were going to talk. You said…” Her words vanished as the weight of it hit her. It’s true. I’m the… She couldn’t even think it, but she knew it was true, and he knew it too. She shook her head.
“Is someone going to fill us in here?” The quieter faery uncle stepped up.
Still holding fast to her hands, Keenan tilted his head to motion them forward. His voice a low whisper, like the rumble of thunderstorms, he announced, “Aislinn healed the Winter Queen’s touch.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she protested, trying to tug free of his grasp. Any flash of friendship, of protective instinct, had vanished as he gripped her hands too tightly in his.
“She kissed Beira’s frost, and it’s gone. She unmade Beira’s touch. She offered me her hand—by choice—and I was stronger.” He let go of one of her hands to touch his cheek again.
“She did what?”
“She healed me with a kiss, shared her strength with me.” Still holding one of her hands, Keenan dropped to his knees, staring up at her, golden tears running down his face like rivulets of liquid sunshine.
The other faeries dropped to their knees beside him in the dirty alley.
“My Queen.” Keenan let go of her other hand to reach up toward her face.
And she ran. She ran like she’d never run in her life, crushing the still-shimmering ice under her feet, fleeing the sunlight gleaming in Keenan’s skin.
Keenan knelt on the ground for several moments after Aislinn ran away. No one else rose.
“She left.” He knew he sounded weak, but he couldn’t find the strength to care. “It’s her, and she left. She knows, and she left.”
He stared down the alley where she’d vanished. She hadn’t moved as quickly as the fey, but she’d been moving far quicker than a mortal could. He wondered if she’d even noticed.
“Shall we retrieve her?” one of the rowan-men asked.
Keenan turned to Tavish and Niall. “She left.”
“She did,” Tavish said as he motioned the guards back.
They faded into the shadows, close enough to hear should they be summoned, but not so close that they’d overhear a softly spoken conversation.
Niall took Keenan’s arm. “Give her tonight to let it settle on her.”
Tavish moved to Keenan’s other side.
“She was going to think about it. She said that inside.” Keenan looked from Tavish to Niall and back. “She still will. She has to.”
Neither faery answered as they led him forward, his guards following behind them silently.
CHAPTER 25
The fairies, as we know, are greatly attracted by the beauty of mortal women, and…the king employs his numerous sprites to find out and carry [them] off when possible.
—Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland by Lady Francesca Speranza Wilde (1887)
Aislinn didn’t stop running until she was at Seth’s door. She pushed it open, calling his name, and stumbled to a stop when she saw the small crowd gathered there.
“Ash?” He was across the room and had her in his arms before she could think of what to say.
“I need…” She was still panting, her hair stuck to her face and neck. The noise of clinking bottles and moving bodies barely registered as she tried to catch her breath.
No one commented, or if they did, she didn’t hear it as Seth led her through the doorway to the second train car, where the tiny bathroom and his bedroom were. They stood in the hallway, outside the closed door of his room.
“Are you hurt?” He was running his hands over her arms, looking at her face and arms, checking for rips in the ridiculous clothes Donia had given her.
She shook her head. “Cold. Scared.”
“Take a shower. Warm up while I get rid of everyone.” He opened the door and turned on the little heater in the room. The soft whir filled the room as the heater started to glow.
She hesitated, and then nodded.
He kissed her briefly and left her there.
When Aislinn came out of the tiny bathroom, the house was silent; everyone was gone. She stood in the doorway—feeling safer now that she was here with Seth. Grams had done her best, but her fear of the faeries had made them too central—as if even the mundane things were somehow dependent on the faeries’ reactions.
Seth was stretched out on his sofa, his hands over his head, his feet dangling over the arm. He didn’t seem alarmed or even surprised by her panicked arrival.
Do I look different to him now?
She thought, invisible, and walked over to him. He didn’t get up, didn’t look at her, or speak.
He really can’t see me.
She ran her fingers over his arm, pausing on his biceps.
“Is it easier to be aggressive when you’re like that?” He looked right at her.
She yanked her hand away. “What? How…”
“The stuff in Donia’s recipe. You’re all shadowy, like the faeries outside, but I still see you.” He didn’t move, staying exactly as he had been when she walked into the room. “I don’t mind, you know.”
“I’m already as bad as them.”
“No.” He rolled onto his hip so there was room on the sofa for her too. “You weren’t touching some stranger on the street. It’s me.”
She sat down on the far end of the sofa. He wrapped his legs around her—one behind her back, the other resting on her lap.
“Keenan is convinced I’m the Summer Queen.”
“The what?”
“The one who can give him back the powers he lost. If he doesn’t find his queen, it’ll just keep getting colder. He says everyone, humans too, will die. That’s what this is all about. He thinks I’m her, this queen who’ll change it all.” She leaned forward just a little so Boomer didn’t get tangled in her hair as he made his way across the back of the sofa. “They made me a faery. I’m one of them.”
“I got that when you did the invisible thing.”
“They did this to me, changed me, and I’m…I don’t want to be their freaking queen.”
He nodded.
“I think I am, though…. I don’t know what to do. I met the other one tonight—the Winter Queen.” She shivered, thinking of the terrible cold, the ache of it. “She’s awful. She just walked up and attacked Keenan, and I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to bring her to her knees.”
She told him about the ice that Beira left in her wake, the hags, the kiss that made everyone so convinced that she was their queen. Then she added, “I don’t want this.”
“So we find a way to undo it.” He used his legs to pull her toward him so she was lying on his chest. “Or we figure out how to deal with it.”
“What if I can’t?” she whispered.
Seth didn’t answer; he didn’t promise it would be all right. He just kissed her.
She felt herself warming up, like a small glow starting somewhere near her stomach, but she didn’t think anything of it until Seth pulled back and stared at her.
“You taste like sunshine. More and more every day,” he whispered. He ran his fingertip over her lips.
She walked away, wanting to weep. “Is that why things changed with us? Me becoming something else?”
“No.” He was calm, slow, like approaching a frightened animal.
“Seven months, Ash. For seven months, I’ve been waiting for you to see me. This”—he picked up her hand, which glowed like Keenan had earlier—“is not why. I fell in love with you before this.”
“How was I to kn
ow?” She twisted the edge of the stupid blouse Donia had given her. “You didn’t say anything.”
“I said lots of things,” he corrected gently. “You just didn’t hear them.”
“So, why now? If it’s not this, why?”
“I waited.” He undid the bow on her blouse, twirling the ribbon around his finger. “You kept treating me like a friend.”
“You were my friend.”
“Still am.” He put one finger in the topmost lace and tugged the ribbon looser. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t be other things, too.”
She swallowed hard, but she didn’t move away.
He pulled the next cross of ribbon free.
“He didn’t. We didn’t, I mean,” she stammered.
“I know. You wouldn’t have gone there looking like this if you had.” He looked at her, slowly letting his gaze travel up over the vinyl pants and slightly gaping blouse, until he was looking at her flushed face. “Unless you want him. If you do, Ash, tell me now.”
She shook her head. “No. But when he, it’s not him, it’s some faery thing….”
He tipped her head up. “Don’t give up. Don’t leave me before you’re even here.”
“If I, if we…” She took a deep breath and tried to keep her words from tumbling over each other as she said, “If I wanted to stay here, be with you tonight?”
He stared at her for several seconds. “This stuff with them, it’s not the right reason.”
“Right.” She bit the inside of her lip, embarrassed.
But like an echo, she heard Keenan’s silence earlier at Rath and Ruins, his careful avoidance of her questions when she asked about faeries and mortals. There was a chance that if she was their queen, she’d lose Seth. She closed her eyes.
“Ash, I want to. I want you, but because of us, not because of something they do or don’t do.”
She nodded. He was right; she knew it. It didn’t feel fair, though. None of it felt fair or right. The only thing that felt right was Seth.