Fragile Eternity

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 Aisli

“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.

As Bananach moved forward, the barrier rippled out in tiny disturbances as if she had fallen into still water. Then she jabbed her taloned hands into the moonlight veil and parted it. “Come into the heart of Faerie, Seth Morgan.”

The voice of caution—a warning that he was on the edge of a decision that would change everything—hummed in his mind. He could see faeries walking through a city that hadn’t been visible when the veil was closed. Behind a barrier thicker than any he’d seen in Huntsdale, an entire world was hidden. Something about it was wrong. Logic insisted he pause, consider the dangers, weigh the consequences—but Sorcha was in there. She had the ability to solve his problems. If he could convince her to help him, he could be with Aisli

With Boomer draped around him like a scarf, Seth crossed the veil.

Bananach cackled. “Brave little lamb, aren’t you? Walking into a cage without but a moment’s pause. Trapped little lamb.”

Seth put a hand on the moonlight veil: it didn’t part. He tried to push his fingers through it as she had done. It was as steel. The murmured fears in his mind grew to cacophonic levels.

He turned back to her, but she was already walking away. Faeries were moving out of her path, not quite ru

He glanced behind him and could no longer tell where the veil was. The graveyard and the rest of the city he knew were hidden as surely as this part of the city had been hidden when he was surrounded by the familiar gravestones and mausoleums. He tried to convince himself that this wasn’t any more unusual than the things he’d seen since Aisli

It wasn’t just the earthiness that seemed surreal. The entire place had an atmosphere of order and precision. Alleys were bright and immaculate. A group of human-looking faeries played soccer in the street, but they were serious as they did so. No shouts or loud voices could be heard anywhere. It was akin to walking into a theater showing a silent film—but with a layer of Daliesque oddity to it.

Bananach paused at the entryway of an old hotel. Pale gray stone pillars stood on either side of a doorless opening. Burgundy drapes were held back with gilt leaves. It looked old Hollywood, except it wasn’t. Instead of a red carpet, a long roll of emerald moss extended out from the doorway.

The raven-faery stepped onto the moss.

“Come, Mortal,” she called. She didn’t look his way to see that he followed; she simply expected he would obey.

And Seth didn’t see many choices. The veil he’d crossed was impermeable. He could continue standing in the street, or he could follow her farther.

I didn’t come here to run away at the gate.

Hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, he crossed over to the moss carpet and into the bright doorway.

The hotel lobby was filled with faeries talking in small groups, curled into chairs reading, and in a few cases staring silently at focus objects. Books were stacked in orderly piles on side tables. A white-veiled man was dusting a faery who’d apparently been meditating for some time.

Glancing neither left nor right, Bananach walked past them into a sterile-looking corridor. The faeries who’d noticed her tensed. Some slipped away. Whispered words twisted into an overall breathy hiss in the still of the room as Seth passed among them. Their Otherness was more pronounced than the Summer and Dark Court denizens. Many of them looked almost mortal, but they radiated a stillness that felt alternately rapacious and dismissive. It was frightening.

The raven-faery seemed oblivious. Her feather-hair fluttered like pe

The tempo of the music increased as they raced through empty spaces, building to a fierce cadence that would burst a heart if it tried to keep pace. Then it stopped mid-beat just as Bananach put her hand, flat-palmed, on a closed door and murmured, “There you are.”

She opened the door into a vast ballroom. The floor was cut blue marble. Tapestries and art that belonged alongside the most revered masterpieces lined the walls. Some art was framed by pieces of silver that had been left in their natural threadlike state; others were held by simple wooden frames; still more were in what seemed to be glass frames. Vine-wrapped marble pillars stood at regular intervals in the room, supporting a star-scattered ceiling. Seth knew they couldn’t be real stars, but he gaped at the illusion all the same.

While he stood awed by the stars and the art, Bananach put herself in front of him and said, “I brought you a lamb.”

Reluctantly, Seth took his attention from the wonders around him to look at the faery who sat on a stiff-backed chair in the empty expanse of the room. She was the one who could save him—or crush his every dream. Her hair was like fire: flickering shades of heat shifted in and out of sight as he tried to watch her. Her skin was the same as the moonlight veil he’d crossed to enter Faerie, as if she herself had been formed of that cold light. Yet, as he watched, her skin shifted too. It became as dark as the depths of the universe. She was shadow and light, flame and coolness, white and black. She was both sides of the moon, all things, perfection.

The High Queen. Sorcha. It could be none other. She sat in her empty ballroom, pondering a game board, surrounded by nature and art.

He reached up to grip his charm and ran his thumb over it as if it were a worry stone. Even wearing it, he felt pulled to revere her. The temptation to drop to his knees and offer her his soul was the same sort of insistence a body felt to draw breath. It was automatic and near impossible to resist.