Fragile Eternity (25 page)

Sorcha didn’t weep when she came to see him that last morning. Sorcha looked at the paintings he’d done for her, and she looked at him.

“They aren’t good enough,” Seth said. “None of them are, not really.”

“Would that I could lie to you,” she murmured. “But they are wrought of passion. I’d be selfish if I refused to let you leave.”

She walked around the room examining canvases she’d seen already.

“
They
aren’t good enough, but this is.” He opened his hand, and there in the center of his palm was a perfectly rendered cluster of silver jasmine blossoms. It was far more delicate than his other metalwork.

Sorcha’s eyes teared up. She stroked a fingertip over the silver petals. “It is. It’s exquisite.”

“I didn’t want to give you what you expected”—he
pinned it to her dress with a shaking hand—“so I worked on it when you weren’t here.”

She laughed, and since there were no witnesses to her foolishness, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. She’d seen so many mothers do that, but the simple gesture had never quite made sense to her. Objectively, she’d understood—maternal affection was a biological imperative. It caused the mother to feel tenderness toward her progeny, keeping the smaller, precious creature safe. It was all very reasonable, but as she pressed her lips to her son’s cheek, she wasn’t feeling logical. It didn’t feel reasonable. It was impulsive. It was something she wanted to tell him but found that she didn’t have words for.

“It’s perfect.” She glanced down at the pin, and while the impulsiveness was riding her, she blurted out, “I don’t want you to leave. What if they harm you? What if you need me? What if—”

“Mother.” He smiled, peaceful and so very beautiful to her. “I’ll be a faery. Under the Dark Court’s protection, beloved by the Summer Queen, made strong by your gift. I’ll be safe.”

“But Bananach…and Winter…and…” She actually felt her heart beating uncomfortably fast. She’d known she’d feel something when he left, but this degree of worry and sadness was unexpected. “You could stay. We’ll send Devlin to fetch your Summer Queen to us and—”

“No. I’m not going to ask her to abandon her court for me.” He led her to the seat that looked out into the garden
where they’d walked. She sat down, and he sat on the floor beside her feet.

“I need to go. I want to go. It’ll feel like a breath, and I’ll be back…
home
,” he assured her.

“I think I might hate your other queen right now.” She scowled.

Actual tears were building in her eyes. It was a simple physiological reaction; logic explained it away. The tears still fell.

“And I’m afraid. If my sister hurts you, I’ll…” She took a steadying breath. “Bananach is not to be trusted, Seth. Not ever. Never go with her anywhere again. Promise me you’ll stay away from her. She has only one goal—violence.”

“So why did she bring me to you?”

Sorcha shook her head. “In order to provoke someone. In order to get me to make a choice that would allow her to lay blame at my feet. I don’t truly know. I’ve spent eternity trying to guess her next move. It’s always about machinations for another war. I am left trying to make the right choices.”

“Did you make the right choice this time?”

“Yes.” She stroked his face. “Whatever happens next, this was the right choice.”

“Even if war comes…”

“The alternative was your death.” She swallowed a sob at the thought. “When you left with her there were two paths you could’ve ended up on—this one or left dead for your Summer Queen to find. Either Niall’s court or mine would
have been thought responsible. Perhaps Winter. War would have had her wish.”

It felt strange to talk of such things to anyone other than Devlin, but her son would have a voice in her court when he was ready. He could be fully faery if she wanted it so, but that would free him to leave her. Their bargain made him need to stay with her.
If he was fully faery, would he remain over there?
That wasn’t something they needed to discuss. He wouldn’t ever be High King: she was eternal, the Unchanging Queen. He would, however, be an influence, a voice, a power. He would stand equal to Devlin. Sorcha wondered how well both her son and her brother would accept that.

Seth didn’t speak; he merely waited, patient as befit her son.

“If I keep you here, the likelihood of war is still strong. Sooner or later, Keenan would be unable to hide where you were. Aislinn would try to bend my will to her wishes. She is not strong enough to do that, and I would not”—Sorcha paused, weighing the words carefully—“react well. If your beloved came seeking retribution, I’d nullify the threat.”

“You’d kill her.”

“If discussion wasn’t effective, yes. I’ll eliminate anyone who threatens what I love. Or who I love. If Aislinn came against my court, I’d have to stop her…although I’d regret that you’d mourn.” She wondered, briefly, if this mortal change inside her would be for the betterment of her court or not. She felt emotions driving her actions; she felt
tenderness for her son that was tinged with loss and fear. Such untidiness was not of the High Court.
Will it change my court?
It didn’t matter. She might have changed, but…the thought was one that had no completion.
What does it mean when the Unchanging Queen changes?
Sorcha shook her head. Pondering thusly was illogical. What was simply—
was
. She and her court would adjust.
That
was logical.

She spoke her next words with a finality that felt like a vow: “I won’t allow Aislinn or Bananach or anyone else to take you from me. I won’t allow them to endanger my court or my son.”

And she knew as she said it that her court would come second to her son should the choice be before her. Somewhere inside she wondered if this was precisely what Bananach had intended, but that too was immaterial. After centuries of small victories back and forth, Sorcha knew enough to realize that every choice would echo through the tapestries of time. Her choices would change her sister’s warmongering; Bananach’s actions would shift to counter those ripples; so it had been for centuries.

“Is it acceptable to say I’ll worry too?” He looked young as he asked her. “I don’t want what you gave me to make you vulnerable. I didn’t think…I want you safe. If Bananach is such a threat, she should be stopped. Some in the other courts are friends to me. If I can keep you safe—”

“Children aren’t to worry about their parents, Seth. I’m fine.” Sorcha affixed her court smile, giving him what reassurances she could offer. “I have been fighting her since I
first existed. The only thing new is that I have a child to protect now. You are a gift. She just didn’t realize that when she brought you to me.”

He nodded, but worry was still plain in his eyes.

“Come,” she said. “Let us see what you need to pack.”

Aislinn sat in the study, curled into Keenan’s embrace with a discomfort she couldn’t quite erase. Tavish had given them approving glances as he’d shooed the Summer Girls away. The loft was peaceful, and she knew that her decisiveness was responsible for it. She dared a glance at him. This was it: her future. One way or another, they were bound together.

“…after lunch?”

“What?” She blushed.

He laughed. “Would you like to do something after lunch? A walk? A film? Shopping?”

“Yes?”

The look he gave her was new, or maybe just the openness of it was new. “Formal? Dine in? Picnic? Go to New York for pizza?” he added.

She scowled. “Now you’re just being foolish.”

“Why?” He moved around so he was facing her. “You’re a faery queen, Aislinn. The world is yours. A few moments and we’d be there. I’m not a mortal. Neither are you.”

She paused. The words she wanted to say weren’t there. There were no reasons not to.
I am not a mortal.
She took a deep breath. “Can you figure out this dating thing? I’ve
dated one person and…”

He brushed a soft kiss over her lips. “Be ready in an hour?”

She nodded, and Keenan left.

I can do this. The step from friendship to love isn’t that far.
It hadn’t been with Seth. She forced thoughts of him away. He was gone, and she was moving on with her life.

As Seth stepped through the moonlit veil, the world around him changed. It wasn’t as simple as going from the peace and perfection of his mother’s side to the harsh and jarring mortal world. In that single step, he was changed. The bargain he’d made was manifest. Seth was not mortal on this side of the veil: he was fey.

The world shifted under his feet. He felt it, the thrum of life that burrowed and nested in the soil. Wings from a far-off egret sent gusts of air that swirled into the currents in the sky.

Sorcha took his hand in hers. “It’s strange at first. I’ve watched the mortals in the Summer Court change. Let the difference find its place inside you.”

He couldn’t speak. His senses—and not just the same five he’d had before—were flooded. As a mortal, his understanding of the world was restricted to a basic comprehension. Now, he knew things that had no physical sensory
source. He could feel what was in order. He could feel the
rightness
of what was and what should be.

“Do they—
we
—all feel like this?” His words felt too melodic, like his voice was reflected back through some filter that was softening sound.

She paused, her hand still holding his. “No. Not so fully, but they aren’t my children. You’re the only one who is that.”

When he glanced over at her, he saw her through his changed vision. Tiny moonlit chains like silver filigree stretched between them in a net that wasn’t visible to him when they were in Faerie. He reached for the net. “What is this?”

He could touch it; even as he realized it wasn’t tangible, it felt weighty in his hand like chain mail, heavier than it looked.

“No one else will see it.” She caught his free hand in hers. “It’s
us.
You’re of me, as if I’d borne you myself. You share my blood. It means you’ll see things, know things…I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“‘See things’?” He looked beyond her to the white sand beach where they stood. He didn’t think it was
seeing
. He felt things: crabs scuttling in the sand, seagulls and terns’ feet touching the earth. Absently, he walked toward the edge of the sea. As the water brushed his feet, he felt the life teeming in that water—animal and faery. Selchies mated somewhere to the east. A merrow argued with her father.

Seth concentrated on not-feeling it, not knowing.

“It’s not seeing,” he told Sorcha. “I feel the world. It’s like the whole time I thought I was alive, I was really barely conscious.”

“That is faery. More so because you are mine. The Hounds create fear. Gancanaghs create lust. That’s what they feel.” She led Seth away from the water to a bit of worn rock. “You’ll feel all that and other things too. A few of us can feel all of it, but some things will be stronger. Niall feels lusts and fears more truly. You’ll feel rightness, logical choices, pure reason.”

Seth sat beside her on the rocky outcrop and waited.

“The seeing part is different.” Her gaze was wary, but her voice was unwavering. “My sister and I have far-seeing. She chooses to see the threads to pluck to create disorder. I choose to focus on the inverse. But they are
all
only possibilities and connections. You must remind yourself of that.”

“Because I’m yours.” He hadn’t thought about any traits beyond longevity and strength when he sought this bargain. “This is all different because I’m your son.”

“Yes. You will have some…differences from other faeries.” She squeezed his hand in hers. “But when the seeing becomes too much, you will have time to be not-this within Faerie. You can return to me anytime and enjoy being mortal; you can escape from being a faery, from being of my blood.”

“What all will I…I mean, what other changes…” He struggled to make sense of this added gift—
curse
—as he struggled too to make sense of the flood of information
from the world around him. “I see possibilities.”

She held tight to his hand when he thought to pull away. “Your own threads are less clear. It is only be others’ threads you see. It may be only sometimes. I don’t know how much of me you carry inside.”

He lowered his head and closed his eyes, trying to block out everything but Sorcha’s words. The sensory differences dulled to a distant din, but silvered threads of knowledge stretched out like roads he could follow with his mind. He would Know things if he let himself—and he didn’t want to. Knowing without the power to change things was enough to make him feel unstable. He wanted to fix the conflict between the two merrows. He saw their threads. The girl was going to leave in anger. Her father would mourn because her death was likely after she left.

“How do you endure this?” he whispered.

“I change what I can, and I accept that I am not omnipotent.” She stood before him and looked at him intently. “If you weren’t able to be this, I wouldn’t have chosen you. I can’t see what you’ll do now; too much of my essence lives in you. I know, however, that you are quite capable of anything you want to be. You are someone who will slay dragons, who will do feats worthy of ballads.”

Seth realized that the gift Sorcha had given him was so much larger than he’d guessed. He had a purpose, a true purpose, out here as well as in Faerie. In Faerie, he created art for his queen mother; in the mortal world, he knew the
things that could be set right. He could be her hand of order in this world if he had the skills to do so. “I don’t know how to fight or politics or
anything
….”

“Who are your friends?” she prompted.

“Ash, Niall…” He smiled as understanding dawned. “Niall knows how to fight. Gabriel and Chela are all about fighting. Donia knows all about politics. So does Niall. And Ash. So do the Summer Court guards…I can learn part of what I need from all three courts.”

“All
four
courts,” Sorcha added. “But you don’t have to do those things. You don’t have to become a hero, Seth. You could stay in Faerie, create art, walk with me and talk. I will bring us poets and musicians, philosophers and—”

“I will. Every year I’ll come home to you…but this”—he kissed her cheek—“is my world too. I can make things better for the people I love. For you. For Ash. For Niall. I can make both worlds safer.”

They sat silently for a few moments. Seth thought about the merrows who quarreled under the water.

“If the kelp strands were snarled as if by a storm, woven too tightly for the daughter to leave—” He stopped as that very thing happened. The merrow daughter was frustrated, but she turned back to her home.

Before he could comment, Sorcha pulled him to her in a quick embrace and said, “I need to leave. Go to your Aislinn. Find your place, and if you need me…”

“I do need you,” he assured her.

“Call, and I’ll be here.” She gave him a look that was one he’d seen often on his father’s face when he was younger—worry and hope. “Or you can come to me. Anytime. Devlin will assure your safety as well…and Niall…and…”

“I know.” He kissed her cheek. “I remember all the instructions you gave me.”

She sighed. “There’s no stalling it, is there?”

With a small gesture, she bent space to open a doorway into the park across from Aislinn’s loft. Sorcha was silent as Seth crossed the veil into the park.

He’d had the Sight before, so seeing the faeries who loitered in the park was not surprising. Aobheall was shimmering in her fountain; she paused as Seth appeared before her. Rowan guards stared at him. Summer Girls stopped mid-dance.

“Well, aren’t you unexpected?” Aobheall murmured. The water around her froze, droplets held in the air like tiny crystals.

Seth stood, speechless as the differences in perception assailed him. Aobheall’s voice was unchanged, but the pull to reach out to her was gone. There was no charm in his hand. Reality was different.
He
was different. The earth breathed around him, and he could feel it. The sighs of trees were a music that wove among the seeming silence of no one speaking to him.

“You are like us,” Tracey whispered. “Not mortal.”

She walked toward him with a sad expression that was
common for her, but as far as Seth saw it, not warranted by the circumstances. Tears filled her eyes. She hugged him. “What have you done?”

For the first time since he’d met any of the Summer Girls, Seth was not affected by her touch. He didn’t feel the temptation to hold her longer or feel the fear of her injuring him in her forgetfulness.

He released her. “I’ve changed.”

Skelley took Tracey in his arms and held on to her as she began to sob. Other Summer Girls wept silently.

“This is a
good
thing.” Seth felt stronger, more alive, and sure of his choices. “It’s what I want.”

“So did they,” Skelley said. “That’s why they weep. They remember making that same foolish sacrifice.”

Aobheall didn’t frown or weep. She blew him a watery kiss. “Go see our queen, Seth, but know that life as a faery isn’t as kind as you thought. She had to do what was best for her court.”

The pressure in Seth’s chest, the fears of what else had changed, grew. He hadn’t felt that unease so strongly when he was in Faerie with Sorcha. There, he had calm. There, he had certainty. Now, he was walking into his beloved’s home, hoping that what he’d built with her was still strong enough to be saved.

He didn’t speak to the guards he passed; he didn’t knock. He opened the door and walked into the loft. She was there. Her cheekbones were more obvious, as if she’d lost a bit too much weight, and she sat much closer to Keenan than she
had before. She was smiling, though, looking at Keenan, who was midsentence.

Everything stopped as Seth came into the room. Keenan didn’t move away from Aislinn, but his words and gestures stilled. Aislinn’s smile vanished, replaced with a look somewhere between amazed and unsure. “Seth?”

“Hey.” He hadn’t been so nervous in months. “I’m back.”

There were so many emotions racing through her expressions that he was afraid to move, but then she was across the room and in his arms, wrapped in his embrace, and in that moment everything was right in the world. She was crying and holding on to him.

Keenan stood, but he didn’t cross the room. He looked furious. Small eddies of wind lifted around the room. Sand bit Seth’s skin. “You’re not mortal anymore,” Keenan said.

“No, I’m not,” Seth acknowledged.

Aislinn pulled back and looked at Seth. She didn’t let go of his arm, but she stepped back. “What did you do?”

“I found an answer.” Seth pulled her closer and whispered, “I missed you.”

Keenan didn’t say another word; he was almost mechanical in his movements as he walked past them and out the door.

Aislinn tensed as he passed, and for a moment, Seth wasn’t sure if she was going to go after Keenan or stay with him. “Keenan? Wait!”

But the Summer King was already gone.

Donia knew it was him when he knocked at her door. Her spies had told her that Seth had returned to the mortal world as a faery. Keenan’s arrival was inevitable.

“You knew where he was.” She needed to hear it. They’d spent too long with half-truths. The time for such tolerances was past. “You knew Seth was in Faerie.”

“I did,” he admitted. He stood just inside her doorway and looked at her with the same summer-perfect eyes that she had dreamed of for most of her life and silently asked her to forgive him, to tell him something to make it all right.

She couldn’t. “Ash is going to find out.”

“I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?”

“With her?” Donia stayed at a distance, not touching him, not approaching. It was what she had to do. He’d given her words of love and then abandoned her to romance Aislinn. It wasn’t unexpected, but it still hurt. Now he’d come seeking comfort. “Yes.”

“And with you?” he asked.

She looked away. Sometimes love wasn’t enough. “I think so.”

“So I am left—” he broke off. “I’ve ruined everything, Don. My queen is going to…I’ve no idea what this will do to my court. I’ve lost you. Niall hates me…and Sorcha cares for Seth, the mortal—the
faery
I…” He looked at her. The sunlight that usually shone so brightly when he was upset had all but faded from him. “What am I going to do?”

He sunk to the floor.

“Hope that some of us are kinder to you than you’ve been to us,” she whispered. Then, before she could soften again, she walked away and left the Summer King kneeling in her foyer.