Fragile Eternity

“Well, we shan’t tell him our business.” The faery shook her head like a disapproving parent. “He’d only tell you no if he knew.”

  He took another step backward. “Tell me no to what?”

  She paused mid-step. “Seeing her Royal Tediousness. That’s what you want, isn’t it? But they’ll all tell you no.” She sighed, but it wasn’t a sorrowful sound. It was longing, and Seth didn’t want to know what she was longing for. “Naughty boy trying to talk to the Queen of Reason. She knows of you. Sent her dirty hands to see you. Faerie’s all a-titter over the roaming mortal.”

  At that, Seth stopped as well. “Are you trying to help me?”

  The raven-faery resumed pursuing him. She stood only a couple arms’ lengths away now; she continued to move with calculated slowness. “But they stand in our way. How can you follow your dreams if they keep you on a leash? Telling you no. They’re like that. Taking away choices. Treating us like children.”

  She was in front of him then. Up close, he could see that the feather-hair falling down her back was singed in places. Shadowy wings blinked in and out of existence. Ashes had dried into patterns on her arms and cheeks. She looked like she’d come to his yard fresh from a battleground.

  “Who are you?” Seth asked.

  “You may call me Bananach.”

  He took another step and picked up his phone. “Why are you here?”

  “To take you to Sorcha.” She nodded as she spoke.

  “Why?” He didn’t look at the phone as he slid his thumb to the key that would ring Niall’s cell.

  “Don’t. I’m not going to bleed you unless you make it necessary. Doing that would make it necessary.” The madness in her words and expression had suddenly gone, and she was all the more frightening for it. She gave him a serious look. “We all have dreams, Seth Morgan. For the moment, yours and mine line up. Consider yourself fortunate that your use to me does not require me to injure you today.”

  Then she stepped past him into his home.

  Seth paused, finger still resting on the key that would call Niall. “You’re offering to take me to Sorcha?”

  “You seek her. Niall won’t help you. The ash-queen won’t give you what you want. Winter will refuse you…. Reason can help if she deigns to do so. Your changing will help me. I’ve been whispering words to get us here, Seth. Telling secrets to Winter.” She stopped and cooed at Boomer. The boa was resting atop one of his heated rocks. She didn’t look his way as she said, “Gather your traveling things.”

  He knew enough by now to realize that she spoke the truth as she saw it.

  And as I see it.

  The things Bananach said were true: neither Aislinn nor Niall was willing to help him in his pursuit of being a faery. The High Queen could make it happen.

  Bananach stood making kissy noises at Boomer—who was undulating in a way Seth had never seen. Then she glanced back at him. “Ask your question. The window is short.”

  Seth held Bananach’s gaze and asked, “You’ll take me directly to Sorcha and not harm me?”

  She corrected, “I will deliver you unharmed to Sorcha. You must be more specific in your words if you’re to do me any good. Suppose I’d had someone else harm you as we travel? Precision is the key to strategy. You have the boldness, but not the precision. I need you to be both brave and calculating.” Her gaze was assessing. “You’ll do. The ravens tell me that, but you must listen well to Sorcha’s wisdom. Tedious she is, but Reason will aid you in what we need.”

  “We? Why we?”

  “Because it serves my purpose.” She opened Boomer’s terrarium and lifted the boa. “Answering you further does not.”

  “Right.” He swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth.

  From outside the door, Skelley called, “Seth, are you well?”

  Bananach held a finger to her lips.

  “I am.” Seth didn’t open the door. The guard couldn’t stand against Bananach—and Seth wasn’t sure he wanted her to leave. She had answers. She could take him to Sorcha.

  Skelley was silent. “Do you need company?”

  “No, I think I have what I need.” Seth glanced at the faery, who stood sentinel-still watching him. “I just needed a moment alone to find it.”

  Skelley said his good-bye through the still closed door, and Seth turned to Bananach. “I don’t know how you know what I need, but I want to see Sorcha.”

  The raven-faery nodded somberly. “Call your queen to tell her you’re leaving. You can’t go there. Not tonight. Not with me. They wouldn’t welcome me in their home. And if they saw me—” Bananach made a happy sound Seth felt embarrassed to hear before she added, “Nasty, bloody fun, but it’ll wait for another day.”

  Some residual bit of logic told Seth that he had ventured much too far from the path of good sense.

  You can still say no, he thought. Right now. Tell her you were wrong. Tell her to leave. Maybe she’ll listen.

  But that same logic reminded him of how much farther Aislinn seemed to drift each day, of how helpless he was against the weakest faeries, of how short a time he’d had with her as a mortal.

  He pushed “1” on his cell.

  When the voice mail picked up, he started, “I’m leaving tonight, and—”

  Bananach suddenly stood in front of him then, invading his space, whispering, “Tell her nothing else.”

  Seth looked away from the faery. He knew better than to trust her, but he did obey her. He spoke into his phone. “And I’ll call…later. I just need to go now. I don’t know when…if—I need to go.”

  He disconnected.

  “Good boy.” Bananach uncoiled Boomer from around her arms and handed the snake to him. Then she opened the door. “Hold tight to my hand, Seth Morgan. Reason doesn’t wait for us. We must go before the pieces move.”

  Seth wasn’t at all sure what the raven-faery meant, but he took her hand and went into the night with her. He locked the door. A heartbeat later they were far from the railyard, past the guards, and in a street that took a good half hour to reach on foot. She moved faster than Aislinn, and Seth stood trying not to retch.

  Boomer shivered a bit from where he was coiled around Seth’s shoulders.

  “Smart lamb,” Bananach murmured as she patted Seth’s head.

  Several ravens fluttered into the broken windows in the building across from them. They tilted their heads to watch him. Bananach tilted her head in the same gesture, in time with the black birds.

  He forced the nausea back. “Where is Sorcha? I need to see the High Queen.”

  “Hidden.” Bananach strolled away, and he ran after her.

  She’d offered him his answer, and he wasn’t going to let the opportunity escape him—regardless of the risk.

  Better to take a chance on forever than wonder “what if” later.

  CHAPTER 19

  Aislinn was a little surprised that Seth wasn’t at her door that morning—and a lot disappointed. The meeting with Keenan and Tavish and a handful of other faeries last night had run into the early hours, but she’d come home afterward in hopes of seeing Seth. They usually grabbed breakfast together before school at least twice a week. Today should’ve been one of those days.

  Invisible to the world, Quinn and a small group of guards were waiting along the street downstairs. She caught Quinn’s eye and smiled. They’d developed an accord on the whole privacy bit. It was hard enough to explain Keenan’s omnipresence to her friends—and to Seth’s friends. If she had a whole group of mostly male strangers shadowing her everywhere, there’d be no chance of explaining them away. Unless they were at the Crow’s Nest or faery-only places likes the Rath, her guards stayed invisible.

  Seth’s walking speed was a slow lope, so she usually left extra time in the morning so they could go slowly. Without him beside her, she walked at a brisk pace.

  I could run.

  She tried to shake off the uneasy feeling: Seth had been late a few times. Maybe he’d be at the Depot already. He hadn’t said he’d me
et her, but surely he wasn’t that upset still. Seth wasn’t temperamental like her. He was reasonable.

  Everything will be fine.

  She’d forgotten to charge her phone, so she couldn’t call him.

  The uneasy feeling wasn’t letting up. She turned into a lot and around the side of a building—out of sight of mortals—and donned a glamour so as to be invisible to all but faeries and Sighted mortals. Then, she ran.

  It felt amazing to move that fast; her body tingled with the sudden freedom. There were parts of being fey that thrilled her far more than she could ever have imagined. The speed at which she could now move was one of them. The downside, of course, was that she was where she needed to be in a few brief heartbeats. It was useful, but it was also over too fast. Being a faery skewed her sense of time. She hadn’t yet tried to come to terms with the alternate time that existed in the removed part of Faerie, in Sorcha’s demesne, but until she had to meet the High Queen, she wasn’t interested in pondering that particular paradox. For now, she’d been having enough trouble thinking about how finite everything mortal was, how brief a time she’d have with Seth and Grams.

  She stopped in front of the Depot. The coffee spot was crowded. A number of people she knew were there, filling the tiny tables and leaning against the walls. Aislinn was glad they couldn’t see her as she went inside. She rushed through the main room into the smaller rooms: Seth wasn’t there either. Her sense of unease grew.

  Maybe he’s at school. It was possible. Sometimes he met her there before he went to the library or to sketch at the park. If not, it meant that he was upset enough to not meet her, to not want to talk about things. Panic tightened her lungs. What if he won’t talk to me?

  He was the only one who’d ever accepted her as she was, for who she was, with both sides of her new life. Grams tried. Keenan tried. Only Seth truly knew her; only Seth understood her completely.

  Still unseen by mortal eyes, she crossed the street and rushed to Bishop O’Connell High School. Not caring how stupid it was, she became visible in between steps. Quinn, behind her, made a disapproving sound, but he wouldn’t say anything. He wasn’t the sort to comment on faeries’ arrogances.

  Aislinn glanced back at the guards.

  Quinn said, “We’ll be here.”

  She nodded and went inside. For a few moments, she stood there, but the familiar sounds of her classmates’ voices were disquieting. These were the people she was to protect, but unlike her fey, they had no idea that she stood between them and a potential war that could devastate the earth. She watched them and listened to snippets of conversation that were so far removed from her now as to be in another language. This was the world she had never truly belonged to—the world her friends lived in, a world where economics exams and prom were life or death, a world where a fight with a boyfriend was even worse. She paused. Some things were the same. Seth being upset is still that important. She might not be prom bound, but the faery revels offered her more than enough dancing. Econ still mattered—in very practical ways. And Seth…he was everything.

  The best time to see him was now. Without another moment’s hesitation, she turned and walked right back out the door she’d just entered. She’d go see him. Maybe he overslept. Or maybe he didn’t want to talk. So he can at least listen. She wasn’t going to let this fester. She’d go to him. They’d talk it out. He was essential to her.

  So she ran—through the streets, across the railroad yard, and to his door. She heard the guards trailing behind her, but she didn’t stop to speak to them. Let them think I’m impulsive. All that mattered was reaching Seth.

  A few minutes after she’d left the school, she turned her key in Seth’s lock and pushed it open. “Seth?”

  There were no lights on, no music playing. The teakettle sat on the burner. Two unwashed teacups were on the counter. It looked like Seth had gone out suddenly. He didn’t usually leave his cups or dishes unwashed.

  “Seth?” Aislinn walked back to the second train car and into the bedroom.

  It was early morning, and the bed was already made. He’d left too quickly to wash his cups, but not too quickly to make his bed. She leaned over the side and plugged her phone into the spare charger. As the phone came to life she saw the voice mail notice. He had called.

  She was relieved—until she heard it: “I’m leaving tonight, and—” He stopped, and Aislinn could hear another voice faintly—a girl—but couldn’t make out what she said. Then Seth’s voice was back. “And I’ll call…later. I just need to go now. I don’t know when…if—I need to go.”

  Leaving? She replayed it twice more. It still didn’t make any sense.

  He sounds excited.

  She absently ran her hands over the new comforter they’d picked out and listened again. Aislinn heard the voice, whispering very softly in the pause in his words.

  He left.

  She’d trusted him with secrets that she’d never shared with anyone. When Keenan and Donia were stalking her, she’d opened up to Seth. She’d broken every rule she’d lived by, that her mother and Grams had lived by.

  Tears were stinging her eyes, but she blinked them away. “What just happened?”

  She couldn’t stand being in the bedroom, in the space that was just theirs, any longer. She left the room and went to check Boomer’s heat rock. The snake wasn’t coiled in his terrarium.

  Boomer’s gone.

  “Seth’ll be back.” Aislinn looked around the empty house.

  Aislinn wanted to run, but it was Seth she ran to when she was lost—and he was missing.

  “Where are you?” she whispered.

  She couldn’t make herself leave yet. She washed her hands and then cleaned the couple of dishes. It wasn’t as if she really thought he’d walk in the house while she stood there washing his teacups; she just couldn’t bear leaving. When she went to put them away, she discovered that the other dishes were all gone, except the two teacups and the teapot she’d bought him. Why did he take everything? Why didn’t he take the teapot I got him?

  Something is wrong. It wasn’t like Seth to just vanish.

  She looked around and found broken dishes in the trash. Someone had broken them and cleaned up. If not for Boomer’s absence and the excitement in Seth’s voice, she could believe that he was in danger.

  He took Boomer with him.

  Her emotions felt too close to the surface, and since she’d become the Summer Queen, that wasn’t something she could let happen, not with emotions like these. She’d seen the result of Keenan’s mood swings—miniature tropical storms trapped in small spaces, a sirocco on a city street—and she’d helped contain the consequences of those emotional upheavals. Her presence calmed him. Even after nine centuries as Summer King, he still slipped, but his storms weren’t the overwhelming nightmare she felt pulsing inside of her.

  She didn’t have the control to deal with any of those emotions on her own.

  Outside the train, a mist wafted like the fog coming in from the sea, but there was no sea near Huntsdale. The fog was her fault. She felt it, her confusion and fear and anger and hurt swirling faster and faster.

  Seth left.

  She walked to the door and pulled it closed behind her.

  Seth is gone.

  Her steps through the city were propelled by sheer will. She was in a haze. Guards spoke. Faeries paused as she passed them. None of it mattered. Seth was gone.

  If Bananach or anyone else wanted to hurt her, this would’ve been the time to do it. She was aware of only the constant repetition of his message in her ears as she played it over and over.

  By the time she reached the loft, all she knew of life was reduced to one fact: Seth had left.

  She opened the door. The guards were talking to Keenan. Some noise about her being reckless was filtering from their mouths. Others were speaking more noise. The birds were chattering. It was all meaningless.

  Keenan stood in the middle of the room; all around him, birds swooped among the trees
and vines he kept in the loft. The sight of it usually made her feel a loosening of tension. It didn’t this time.

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  “What?” Keenan didn’t glance away from Aislinn or move toward her.

  “Seth. He left.” She still wasn’t sure if she was more frightened or more hurt. “He’s gone.”

  Without a sound, the room emptied of everyone but Aislinn and Keenan. Tavish, the Summer Girls, Quinn, several rowan—they all slipped away.

  “Seth left?”

  She sat down on the floor, not bothering to walk the rest of the way into the room. “He says he’ll call, but…I don’t know where or why or anything. He was upset with me, and now he’s gone. When he left the loft the other night, he said he needed space, but I didn’t think he meant this. I keep calling. He’s not answering.”

  She looked up at Keenan. “What if he’s not coming back?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Seth stood with Bananach in one of the older graveyards in Huntsdale; it was an oasis set off from ruined buildings and graffiti-decorated walls. It was a place he’d come with friends, a familiar space where he and Aislinn had spent hours walking among the dead. Today, the sense of comfort he usually felt there was replaced with trepidation.

  “This is it? The door is here?” he asked.

  “Some days. Not always.” She motioned him forward, past a pair of crooked stones leaning together. “Today it is here.”

  Between the Sight and the charm-impeding glamour, Seth could see the barrier that stood in front of them. He’d seen barriers elsewhere—at the park by the loft, at Donia’s house and cottage, and at the Rath. There were still others shimmering around places where a lot of faeries frequented or nested. But none of the barriers he’d seen were this substantial. The others were misty, like smoke or fog that he could slip through. Contact with them felt uncomfortable as he crossed them, so much so that if he didn’t know they were there—or that faeries were real—the barriers would deter him from crossing. It was what they did: kept humans out.

  This was different in every way. Neither smoke nor illusion, a veil of moonlight hung from higher up than he could see and touched the earth. The solid fall of it bespoke weight, like thick velvet drapes. He reached out a hand to touch it. He could not push through.