Fragile Eternity

“Turn and face me, Seth Morgan,” Sorcha said.

  As Seth turned, the other faeries vanished; the room vanished; and he was alone in a vast garden with only her. To one side, flowers twined around one another to the point of chaos. Enormous blue orchids seemed to be choking daisies that tried to push between snarls of blossoms. On the other side of the path, orderly arrangements of roses and birds of paradise were growing at equidistant intervals from flowering cactus and blossoming cherry trees.

  Seth looked behind him. The faeries, the room, the building, they were all gone. It was garden and forest and ocean as far as he could see. Sorcha’s hidden city wasn’t a simple area behind a barrier. A whole world existed here.

  “It’s just us,” the High Queen said.

  “They vanished.”

  She gave him a patient look. “No. The world was reordered. That’s how it works here. What I will is what is. Most everything here is controlled by my thoughts and requirements.”

  Seth wanted to speak, to ask questions, but he couldn’t. Even with his charm securely fastened around his throat, he felt like he was caught in a glamour stronger than anything he could’ve imagined. Sorcha, the High Queen, was speaking to him in a fantastic garden…in the middle of a hotel.

  The High Queen looked at him and smiled.

  His phone buzzed. He held it up. Messages scrolled over the screen. As it was still blinking messages, he got a voicemail indicator too. He stared at his phone, at one message in the center of the screen—“where r u”—and then he looked around him.

  “It is not like over there. No mortal rules or trinkets function unless I think them useful. Things here are at my will alone,” she added.

  Seth knew exactly where he was. He lowered his arm, holding the phone tightly as he did so, and caught the High Queen’s gaze. “This is Faerie. Not like just that you’re a faery, but…this is it. I’m in another world. It’s not like Don’s house or the park….”

  Sorcha didn’t smile, not truly, but she was amused.

  “I’m in Faerie,” he repeated.

  “You are.” She lifted the hem of her skirt and took three steps toward him. As she did so, Seth could see that her feet were bare. Tiny silver tendrils spoked from between her toes and over the tops of her feet. It wasn’t the illusion of silver. It wasn’t tattoos like in the Dark Court, or living vines like on the Summer Girls. Thread-thin silver was inside her skin, part but not-part of her.

  He stared at those silver lines. If he looked closely, he could see silver tracery on the whole of her skin; faint outlines of veins showed under and through her skin.

  “You are in Faerie”—Sorcha took another step—“and you’ll stay here unless I determine elsewise. In the mortal realm, there are several courts. Once upon a time, there were only two. One left to find the depraved things they sought. Other faeries followed…a few were strong enough to create courts of their own. Others could have but chose to exist as solitaries. Here, there is only me. Only my will. Only my voice.” She dropped her hem so her skirt covered her silver-twined feet. “You won’t call anyone. Not from here or without my permission.”

  Seth paused. His phone had transformed into a handful of butterflies that took flight from his palm.

  “There will be no communication between my court and theirs. I would prefer you behave properly.” Sorcha glanced at his hand and the phone re-formed. “The decisions made here are mine alone. I have no co-ruler. I have neither successor nor predecessor. Your once-mortal queen’s happiness doesn’t matter here. Ever.”

  “But Ash—”

  “If you are here, you are subject to my will. You sought me, came to my presence, stand in a world that innumerable mortals have dreamed of and died for. Nothing comes without cost in Faerie.” Sorcha was nonplussed by his concerns. Her face was a silvered mask, no more flexible than a costume. She extended her hand palm up.

  He gave her the phone.

  “Why should I listen to your plea, Seth Morgan? What makes you special?”

  Seth looked at her. She was perfection, and he was…not. What makes me special? He had been trying to figure that one out for most of his life. What makes anyone special?

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Why do you want to be changed?”

  “To be with Aislinn.” He paused, trying to find the right words. “She is it for me, the one. Sometimes you just know. No one, nothing will ever mean even half as much as she does right now. And tomorrow she’ll mean even more.”

  “So you ask for eternity because you love a girl?”

  “No,” Seth corrected. “I ask to become a faery because I love a faery queen, and because she deserves to have someone who loves her for who she is, not what she is. She needs me. There are people—good people—I love and I’m a liability to them because I’m a mortal. I’m fragile. I’m finite.” He felt himself saying things aloud that he wasn’t sure he’d even been able to articulate to himself before, but here with Sorcha in front of him, he knew the right words. “I am in this world. People I care about, the woman I love, friends in all three of the courts…This is where I belong. I just need you to give me what it takes to stay with them and be strong enough not to fail them.”

  Sorcha smiled. “You’re a curious mortal. I could like you.”

  He knew not to say “thank you” so he said only, “You are kind.”

  “No, that I am not.” She looked for a quick moment as if she might laugh. “But I am intrigued by you…. If you are to be changed, you’ll spend one month of every twelve here with me.”

  “You’re saying yes?” He gaped at her. His legs felt weak.

  She shrugged. “You please me…and you have the potential to benefit Faerie, Seth Morgan. This is not a gift given lightly. You are binding yourself to me for as long as you live.”

  “I’m already bound in other ways to two other faery rulers, and fond of a third.” He tried to push back the fear that was creeping over him. He wanted this, but it was still terrifying. It was eternity they were discussing. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on breathing, on calm spaces in his mind. It took away the edge of panic.

  Then he said, “So what do I need to do? How’s it work?”

  “It’s a simple thing. One kiss and you’ll be changed.”

  “A kiss?” Seth looked at her; there were two other faery queens who could demand a kiss without making him uncomfortable. Kissing Aislinn was something Seth never tired of doing, and Donia…he didn’t think of her that way, but he liked her as a person. Plus it would irritate Keenan if I kissed Donia. He smiled at that thought.

  The High Queen, however, held absolutely no sexual or romantic appeal. She reminded Seth of the statues in the antiquities sections of art books, austere and unyielding. Even before Aislinn was the Summer Queen, she was passionate; Donia might be winter incarnate, but cold was not the same as temperate.

  “Is there another way?” he asked. A kiss seemed a strange request, and while faeries were clever, they also didn’t lie. Seth knew that questioning was not only expected, but also lauded.

  The High Queen’s expression didn’t change, not even a flicker of an emotion crossed her face, but when she spoke, her voice hinted at amusement. “Were you hoping for a quest? A seemingly impossible task that you could relay to your queen afterward? Would you like to tell her that you found and slayed the dragon for love of her?”

  “A dragon?” Seth weighed his words carefully. “No, not so much. I just don’t think Ash would be cool with me kissing you, and faeries aren’t always very forthcoming about the ins and outs of things.”

  “We aren’t, are we?” Sorcha sat down on a chair that was almost as elegant as she was. Wrought of silver, it was all graceful lines that had no visible beginning or end, like Celtic knotwork made tactile. It also hadn’t existed in the moment before she sat in it.

  “So, is there another way?” he prompted.

  Sorcha smiled at him, a Cheshire cat’s grin, and for an instant he expected t
he rest of her to vanish. Instead, she fluttered a fan she slid from her sleeve, a demure gesture at odds with her now obvious amusement. “Not that I’m inclined toward. A kiss for your new monarch. It seems only fair to ask what you don’t want to give.”

  “I’m not sure ‘fair’ would be the right word there.”

  The fan stilled as she asked, “Are you arguing with me?”

  “No.” Seth was pretty sure Sorcha was intrigued, so he didn’t back down. “Debating, actually. Arguing would involve anger or fear.”

  Sorcha crossed her ankles, resettling her old-fashioned skirts and exposing the silver threads that crept up her ankles. “You amuse me.”

  “Why a kiss?”

  A spark of something dangerous slid into the High Queen’s voice as she asked, “Do you think she’d mind that much? Your Summer Queen?”

  “It wouldn’t make her happy.”

  “And that’s reason enough for you to not want to do it?”

  “It is.” He tugged on his lip ring, hoping briefly that he wasn’t telling her the exact things she wanted to hear, but increasingly certain that Sorcha found appeal in the idea of Aislinn’s displeasure.

  This no-lying-to-faeries thing is a bad plan. He wasn’t particularly fond of having a moral code just then. She’d lie to me if she were able.

  Sorcha answered in a whisper-soft voice, “The simple things are perhaps the most difficult.”

  Then she held out her hand in an invitation he suddenly wanted to refuse. Despite having been surrounded by faeries the past few months, her unnaturally elongated too-thin fingers creeped him out. She could crush me with that delicate hand.

  “This will make me like you? I’ll be a faery after?”

  “You will, for all but one month of true fealty spent in my realm each year.” Sorcha hadn’t moved anything but that bone-thin hand and even that was unwavering. “During that month, you will be mortal.”

  He couldn’t quite get his feet to move, but his mind told him he needed to. Retreat or proceed, those were the choices. “One kiss for eternity with Ash.”

  At that, Sorcha’s calm faltered. “Oh, no, I don’t guarantee that. One kiss in exchange for faery longevity. You’ll be held to faery law: lying will be beyond your capabilities; your word will be a vow. Basic glamour will be yours to wield. You’ll be one of us in almost every way, but cold iron and steel will be not be toxic to you because you will retain a touch of your mortality. As to your queen, Summer Court faeries are a fickle lot—volatile, untidy in their emotions. I cannot promise you eternity with her.”

  She wiggled her fingers then, beckoning him. “Come now. If you’ll accept the deal you’re seeking…”

  Seth took a step toward her. “And I’m still me? When I’m out there and here? I’m not your subject out there either?”

  “Correct,” she confirmed. “Examine my words, Seth Morgan, and choose now. This isn’t an offer that will last if you walk away from me today.”

  Am I forgetting anything? He’d read enough on faery contracts to know that they always looked better than they were. Mortals had been bargaining and losing through loopholes for as long as they’d had dealings with the fey. He’d been paying attention when Aislinn sorted through faery politics; he’d borrowed books from Donia; he’d talked to Niall. The key was in precision.

  One month a year, a kiss, and eternity with Ash.

  He couldn’t see any way that this was a bad bargain. Except… “Are all the months I owe you in a row?”

  When Sorcha smiled this time, it was actually breathtaking. Here, then, was the faery queen he’d expected to see. That glimmer of emotion softened her faery perfection, and he saw in her that same wicked, lovely temptation that Aislinn and Donia exuded.

  “No. One month of fealty in my presence, and then you leave Faerie and return to the mortal realm for eleven months there.” She let a glamour fall over her until she looked like every dream he’d ever have—perfect and untouchable and somehow deserving of worship for it. “You may, of course, petition me to stay here for those eleven months as well.”

  Seth reached up and gripped the charm Niall had given him. He squeezed until he thought the smooth stone might cut into his skin. It was little, if any, use in this moment. “Don’t hold your breath for that.”

  “Do you choose to accept my offer, Seth Morgan?”

  He shook his head as if to clear the spider webs that seemed to be wrapping around him as she spoke. “I do.”

  “It’s your choice. Come to me if you would choose this. Do you choose to accept this, Seth Morgan?”

  He came closer, letting himself be pulled toward her by tendrils he couldn’t see. Intangible fibers wrapped around him; they would weave him to her, assure him a place in a world of purity, protect him from the taint of mortality when he was outside Faerie.

  And she is Faerie. She’s everything.

  “I do choose this,” he said for the second time.

  “To be subject to a faery queen is to give every breath at her command. With no hesitation, you offer your fealty and presence here in Faerie for a month each year as long as you draw breath?”

  He was kneeling on the earth in front of her, touching her perfect hand. In her eyes, moonlit slivers beckoned. He’d be destroyed by them if he erred. He let go of the charm he’d been clutching so he could reach out to her.

  My queen.

  “Will you give me your last breath if I ask it of you? Do you choose to accept what I’m offering you, Seth?”

  He shivered. “I will. I do. I choose this.”

  “Then give me my kiss, mortal.”

  Sorcha waited. The Summer Queen’s mortal knelt at her feet, clutching her hand, and unable to shake free of her residual glamour, despite his charm, despite her gentleness. She held her appeal in check, but this mortal was meant to be hers. She’d seen it when he first stood in front of her, boldly asking for the gift of immortality. She saw it now when she looked to the future. Seth Morgan belonged to her, to her court, to Faerie. He mattered—and he needed to be not just a faery, but strong as few faeries were.

  As he faltered, she debated the wisdom of how she’d chosen to make this so. It was of her own self she was giving. He had no need to know that or to know what a rarity it was. Simply because she could engender a transfer didn’t mean she often did so. Mortals simply didn’t become faeries, not without being bound to the faery who’d shared an essence with them. There were two ways to do so—as a loved one or as chattel. If he came to her more out of pure selfishness, she’d offer him only selfish use. If he offered more selflessness than self-gain, she’d return that generosity.

  “A kiss to finalize our bargain, to unmake your mortality…” Sorcha didn’t let her hopes into her voice. She wanted him to be worthy of what she was giving to him; she believed him to be so. He could still turn away; he could fail her in this moment.

  “You’re not her,” he whispered. “Only should kiss her.”

  “Be strong, Seth.” She kept her glamour in check. “If you want this, you must give me my kiss.”

  “Give you a kiss.” His words weren’t slurred or unclear, but they were slower.

  Sorcha couldn’t reach out. She couldn’t take his will-power. The choice was his; it was always theirs. “Seal the bargain, or reject the offer.”

  His eyes were unfocused; his heartbeat was rapid. Then he quirked his metal-decorated brow, and she saw a spark of something unexpected.

  “Yes, my queen.” He held her gaze as he turned her hand palm up. Then, he gently kissed her palm. “Your kiss.”

  For a moment, Sorcha didn’t react at all. Here was a bold one. Mortals strong enough to resist the temptation of the Unchanging Queen were a rare treasure. Bananach had been right; her own visions of what might be were true: this mortal was different.

  Wars are fought over lesser things.

  She aided him to his feet, holding his hand in hers as his body began to sway under the first crush of the change. “Our deal is bindi
ng.”

  He pulled away. “Good.”

  She had intended to leave him drunk on a kiss, lost under a narcotic touch that would lessen the pain. He ought not have to suffer for being clever. It’s not unfair to offer a kindness to my subject. When Keenan had changed his mortal girls, they had almost a full year to adjust. Seth had only a month—and within Faerie. The first wave of change would be harsh.

  She didn’t allow her subjects to suffer unnecessary cruelty. It was irrational. “Give me the charm.”

  She was his queen now: Seth obeyed.

  Then the High Queen donned a glamour to look like his other queen. “Seth? Come here.”

  “Ash?” He stared at Sorcha in confusion.

  She held her hands out. “Let me help you.”

  “I feel wrong, Ash. Sick,” he muttered, weaving slightly on his feet as he tried to look around. “Where’d you come from? Missed you.”

  “I’ve been here all along,” Sorcha told him.

  Few truths were more complete than that revelation.

  “Need to sit down.” He stretched a hand out for a wall that was not there.

  Sorcha stroked his face. “Mortals have no business playing in this world. Sometimes they attract the wrong attention….”

  “Just trying to keep your attention.” He leaned his forehead against hers briefly and then pulled back with a puzzled look. “You’re not this tall.”

  “Shhh.” Then she kissed him while his mortality was pushed out by the new faery energy coursing into his body. She let her own calming breath slip into him. It wouldn’t take away all the pain, but it would help. Sorcha could remake the world in Faerie, but she couldn’t change everything. Pain, pleasure, sickness, longing, there were things that even the High Queen couldn’t affect.

  Sorcha found herself hoping that the Summer Queen was worthy of this mortal-no-more’s passion and sacrifice.

  Because he’s my subject now.

  And like any good queen, Sorcha did what was best for her subjects whether they asked it of her or not.

  CHAPTER 23

  Donia waited at the fountain on Willow. This late at night the mortal saxophone player was long gone, and the crowds of children who had frolicked in the water were tucked into their beds somewhere. Matrice, one of the Hawthorn People, perched in a tree nearby. The white-winged faery was one of the only fey in the area. Her tattered wings fluttered like ripped spider webs as she sat watching the sky on the edge of a branch. On the ground at the other end of the courtyard, Sasha crouched attentively. Somewhere farther out, several glaistigs roamed the perimeter.