by Melissa Marr
His own voice echoed from the emptiness. “Now that he’s gone, let’s you and I get to know each other.”
The Summer Queen’s smile was caught between mortal innocence and faery cunning. He’d seen such a smile on his own lips. She was going to be a strong queen. He knew that already.
And she’d clearly had some affection for the kingling. It wasn’t the passion he felt for Thelma, but the girl was young. Perhaps, that would change for her in time. As much as he wanted to punch Keenan in his pretty face for debauchery with Irial’s future heir, he still wanted her to feel loved, cherished, worshipped.
The image of the future Summer Queen vanished.
“You’ll meet her, and you won’t know why you want to help her, but you will feel it. You’ll make sacrifices again. For love.” Sorcha leaned close to him. “For all that you are the Dark Court, you love in a way that few ever can, Irial. It is irrational, but this choice you make is right.”
He grabbed the bottle and turned away.
“One year, maybe a few months more. I can allow that much,” she said. “You may go there, do what you must so neither Beira nor Keenan think you are dead.”
He laughed dryly.
“And you must tell no one. Even your Gabriel. Let the Hounds run, and let your . . . creatures free to wreak what havoc they must.”
“The threads—"
“This will lead to the necessary path, Irial.”
He stopped at the mouth of the garden. “I am in your debt for . . . all of it.”
“No debt is owed, Iri, not on this. You may think me cold—”
“I don’t,” he said, glancing back at her. “You know that.”
The High Queen nodded. Her gaze drifted to a flower bed they’d destroyed together once in a brief moment of shared negotiations. “I would destroy the world for my brother. It is not the same, but I do understand the madness of love.”
Irial’s throat felt too tight for words. Perhaps she did. Perhaps many people did, but they were not about to lose that. He would lose the woman who seemed as essential as any could possibly ever be.
He would lose his daughter.
A year? He had a year to love them, and then they’d be ripped from his memories and his life. It felt like the sort of curse that he wouldn’t wish on hated foes—and he was doing it to himself.
Let them leave.
Let them go.
But not yet. Not today. Not this year.
He returned to the cottage where his beloved mortal and child waited.
When Irial told her what they’d do, Thelma wept as though her heart might break. “You won’t remember us?”
“I’ll remember everything up to when you left the house.” He wrapped his arms around her. “And after I meet Elena again, I’ll know all of it.”
“What if you don’t meet her?”
He shook his head. The fact that he would forget his own daughter seemed a punishment that he wouldn’t wish on anyone. He wouldn’t remember Thelma saying she loved him. He wouldn’t remember the way he felt when he found her again, when they stared at their daughter in awe together. All of it ripped away.
At his own request.
He was a monster.
“And I—”
“Will keep every memory.” Irial kissed the tears that raced over her cheeks. “You need to remember so you can keep her safe. In this year before I forget, I’ll make provisions to provide for you, for her, for her daughter--”
“Her daughter?”
He smiled as he lied to her by not sharing what he knew. “I hope to one day see one of my grandchildren, Thelma. Can we not call her a daughter, too?”
“Of course!” She kissed him lightly and said, “I’ll tell her about you. Elena. Her daughter. I’ll write you letters every week so you don’t miss it forever,” she swore.
And Irial nodded, because what else was there to do? He’d created a curse that was destroying his own life. After over a thousand years, he’d found love again, and in a brief flicker of time he wouldn’t even know later, he would lose it.
Tam
When Irial told her what he’d done, Tam wept. He would forget her. The idea made sense, but she detested it all the same.
“I could not guarantee that I would stay away,” he said. “When it happens, Sorcha will introduce us. You will be a mortal I met. That is it. Until the Summer Queen is found, I will not remember . . . us.”
“I won’t forget.” Tam stared at him, the guardian devil who had changed her life and given her a daughter. “I won’t. I need to know so I can be careful and—”
“You will not forget anything.” Irial kissed her tears away. “Only me, and through me my court. I cannot erase Keenan’s memory, but he has not seen you. I cannot erase Niall’s, but he saw you only in passing.”
“Beira?”
“Not her, Bananach, or Rika, but Thelma”—he made her look at him—“they are faeries who will live for centuries. They saw you once, and while I think you were carved from my very dreams, to them you were a mortal, fleeting, presumed dead.”
“I wish we could stay here.”
“I wish I could keep you at my side, but we only have a few months. No more.” Irial stared at her as if to memorize her face, and the impulse of it, of attempting to outwit the very thing they were doing intentionally, made her smile. There was no rule, no boundary, that he saw before him. In that, there were of a like mind.
The ability to fight the curse was gone by their choice: a choice that was about keeping their daughter safe.
She’d miss his laugh, his dry wit, his indulgent sensuality, his voice as he read to her by candlelight, but she’d miss this as much as the rest. He kissed her like she was the air he needed. Nothing held back, no thought of any moment before or after. Irial kissed like his life would end if they dared stop.
So tonight, she didn’t bother with any pretenses.
In a matter of moments, his clothes were gone, as were hers.
Tam straddled him there on the sofa. His eyes held in her gaze, she lowered herself, taking him into her body.
“Thelma . . .” His hands gripped her hips as they started to move. Nothing magic other than them, their love, their connection. There were times when the magic of the Dark King was a welcome aspect of their lovemaking, but tonight, she wanted none of that.
Just him.
Just Irial.
“There will never be another man for me,” she promised.
When he tried to answer, she kissed him again. A mortal lifespan was but a blink, but she didn’t want him to be alone for eternity.
After, when they were sated but still intimately connected, she closed her eyes and tried to freeze every detail in her mind. The way his held her as if she would vanish into the air, the sound of his breathing matching hers, the feeling of completion when he was inside her, and the way the very shadows seemed to caress her skin as they made love.
“As long as you are alive, Thelma Foy, my heart will belong to no other.” Irial’s words were magical in a way she hadn’t wanted. “I cannot offer you things a mortal man could—or the things I want to offer you—but you have my vow on this. My heart is yours as long as you live.”
In the space between the words, Irial created a thing out of the very air, a glimmering green stone that he held out to her.
“This is a sliver of my heart,” he said.
Tam looked at it, but didn’t accept it.
“My nature given shape.” He pressed it into her hand. “Wear it always.”
The stone was warm, as if a heart truly beat there in her hand. She placed her other hand on his chest, seeking the reassuring thump of his heartbeat under the skin.
Irial covered her hand with his. “My heart will always beat for you, as long as you live.”
“But you’ll stay away?” she asked, not looking up from where their hands rested on his bare chest.
The shadows in the room all surged toward her, as if to embrace her in intangible a
rms. She knew that the shadows could be as strong as solid things, holding her, touching her. They could wrap around her like a warm cloak or a thick almost gelatinous mass to help protect her.
“The High Queen will make it so I . . . can do that, and she’ll hide Elena’s heritage.” Irial’s voice was rougher than she’d ever heard, neither sorrow nor rage alone could explain the pain in him.
“I know you didn’t mean to curse me—or her.” Tam cupped his face in her hands. “I know that.”
“I’d die for you. For her.”
Tam brushed her lips over his before saying, “I know, my love. I do.”
And they stayed that way until their daughter woke.
A year was not enough, and Tam wept more often than she’d like. Sometimes, she started arguments with him, but every time, she found herself unable to let that impulse reign. Casting him away now didn’t make her heart ache less; it simply made it start sooner.
And she resented his court. All courts but Sorcha’s, to be truthful. His duties pulled him away, and she fostered that resentment until it created hate for the faeries in the mortal world. Irial saw it, but he said nothing. Her hate would be a well she cherished when she spoke to their daughter.
Those faeries made her unsafe.
Those faeries made her daughter unsafe.
Those faeries would harm her beloved Irial if they knew he was with her and Elena.
Those faeries thought her beloved Irial was a monster.
And so, Tam had no love for them. Not the faeries of other courts. Not the faeries of his court.
They watched Elena take her first steps, say her first words, and then at night when she slept—or when she napped—Tam spent every moment she could trying to learn all there was about Irial. His secrets. What made him laugh. What he dreamed of. What he liked. They spoke and they made love, and when they slept, they were entwined.
When he suggested she could move on in the mortal world, they fought. It only happened twice.
“With my faery child?” she asked. “She has the Sight, and she’s not human. How would I explain that?”
The Dark King frowned.
“Or my independent wealth? I make jewelry, Irial, and I do not come from wealth, but you have—"
“Provided for you. For my daughter. It is my right to take care of you in this way, at least.” He rarely raised his voice, but on this he was irrational.
Tam could finance a small nation with the wealth he’d given her. Jewels for her work. Stacks of silver and gold and brass. Stores. Buildings. Every time he returned, he added more papers to a box that held deeds and keys with addresses. Tam was wealthier than any person in the nation.
And she’d trade all of it for him.
“I love you,” she whispered. And in that, she knew he heard all the rest.
“I love you, Thelma Foy. Even when I forget, do not doubt that the love exists. It is simply hidden.”
They spoke less, and made love more as time passed, and when she was ready to leave Faerie, when the time was upon her, Tam had to decide if she would tell Irial of the child that quickened within her womb. Elena would have a sibling.
After several days, Tam woke him and said, “I have news.”
“News?”
They were mere days from the moment she and Elena would return to the world, the day when Irial would forget them entirely.
Tam took his hand and placed it on her stomach.
Irial’s eyes widened.
“Can you ask Sorcha to—”
“No.” He shook his head. “Let this one have time to grow where she or he is safe inside your body, under your heart. If the child wants to see me, give her or him my ring and send my child to me.”
Tam bowed her head.
“Faeries do not create children together. It is a choice, a bonded act, and one I have never entered. To carry a child risks probable death for us, but for mortals, it is safer,” Irial said. “In all my years, I’ve never thought to ask a woman to gift me with a child, and here you are, blessing me twice.”
“I’ll take care of them.”
Irial kissed her not yet rounded stomach. “When they are grown, give them the choice to find me.”
“My vow,” Tam promised.
“They will know of you, and I will always love you,” Tam added, their hands entwined on her stomach.
It wasn’t enough, not for either of them, but it was the fate they’d drawn.
“Loving you and the children is my privilege,” he assured her.
And they made love yet again as they waited for morning.
Epilogue
Twelve Months Later
Irial drank deep from the goblet Sorcha handed him. His entire body burned as if lightning slid into his veins and heart.
“And who might you be?” he asked the lovely woman who was there with the High Queen.
“Thelma.”
He eyed the child standing near her. “Yours?”
“They’re under my protection, Irial.” Sorcha smiled at him. “The child will need to be hidden in the mortal world soon. Your court will not harm her—or her children. I will owe you a gift if you do this.”
Irial studied the girl. There was a touch of fey to her. Some careless faery had fathered a child in his time in the mortal world. He knew Sorcha often blinded or captured them. As far as he knew, she’d never let one return to the mortal world, so it was peculiar that she’d offered this one her protection.
“I will instruct the court,” he said.
The girl toddled toward him and ordered, “Up.”
Her mother, Thelma, stifled a sob, and Irial flashed her his most charming smile. “I’ll not hurt her or you, Thelma. I give you my word. I’m not a father myself, but I’m fond of children.”
He scooped the child into his arms and carried her back to her mother.
Tears trickled from Thelma’s eyes. “If I can ever . . . show you my appreciation, Irial, I’d only ask that you . . . that . . .” She met his eyes. “My door is ever open if you want to see me while I am in this world.”
Then she turned and ran.
And Irial had the overwhelming urge to chase her, to go wherever she might.
“She’s human,” Sorcha said, drawing his gaze. “She’ll go to their world for now, but when the child is grown, Thelma will return here to live out her days. You can visit her once before she returns there, and as often as she wants when she comes back to Faerie. You will not know where she is over there.”
He chuckled. “I have plenty of distractions, Sorcha. You needn’t worry that I’ll be plaguing one you want to protect.” He paused. “Is the child Devlin’s?”
“No.” Sorcha sighed. “She made the mistake of falling in love with one of us, though. Her heart is broken, and I want her to have space to heal. Someday, the child’s granddaughter will make a choice that will change the world.”
There was no way to know whether that choice was a painting the High Queen would cherish or a cure for something. Irial had long since realized that asking too many questions of the future-seeing regent was futile.
He stared in the direction the woman had gone. Thelma. She was lovely, and perhaps he could ease her sorrows. He might not be the faery who’d broken her heart, but he was certain that he was a more than adequate salve on whatever longing plagued her.
“Have I met her before?”
At that, the High Queen pressed her lips together before saying, “She seems to like you, Irial, so I cannot imagine that you have.”
Irial laughed. The High Queen herself liked him. That was one of many secrets the two regents shared. He shook off the strange urge to follow the mortal.
For now.
“What brings you to my realm, Irial?”
“Mine, as well,” he reminded his balancing regent lightly. “I may not live here, but I share dominion here as the Seasonal Courts do over there.”
“I do not forget.” Sorcha’s answering smile was equivalent to a laugh from mo
st faeries, but she was one of the oldest of their kind, the embodiment of logic. Laughter was a rare treat from her.
“You know I cursed the kingling. I’ve always been able to find his missing powers—and the woman who held them--as a result.”
The High Queen made a small gesture to continue.
“Something’s changed.” The Dark King looked at his opposing regent, letting his worry into his expression, telling her in his voice and face that he was concerned. It was a strange accord they had, a way to find balance without conflict most of the time. Unlike the Winter and Summer Courts, Irial and Sorcha had often sought balance.
“I know,” she said quietly. “You used to know what had changed, too. At your request, you have forgotten.”
Irial paused and glanced after Thelma again. He didn’t ask if she was a part of it, but it raised questions about the importance of the child with her. If he’d sought forgetfulness, there was reason for it. Was she the mortal? Had the High Queen stolen the future Summer Queen? Was the choice her child would make the one that would end Winter’s curse? Had he and Sorcha conspired to hide the future Summer Queen or her kin?
He’d obviously agreed to help in some way. “So, the future queen will be halfling? A faery’s child?”
“No. By then, she’ll be stronger than mortal, but not a halfling. The girl’s mother will not wed a faery.”
“Which girl? Thelma? Her daughter? What do you see?” Irial kept his voice low, stepping near and offering Sorcha his hand as she stepped from the dais toward him.
“Thelma will teach her daughter and her daughter’s daughter to fear us.” Sorcha rested her hand on his arm. “But things will be as they must in the end. You agreed with me, else you’d remember what I know and what she knows. If you doubt me, ask her. No one forces you to do anything, Irial. You know that.”
“I agreed with this plan?”
“Not only that. You agreed and devised it with me.” Sorcha squeezed his arm. “Trust me, Irial. We want the same end here.”