Fragile Eternity

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 Aisli

“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.

Aisli

“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.

Aisli

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 Aisli

“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.

Chapter 33

As her fey started filtering into the room, stealing glimpses of Seth and whispering things she didn’t want to hear, Aisli

Seth sat on her bed and watched her, patient as he’d always been. He’d changed too, not just what he was, but who he was.

The words wouldn’t come. She’d thought them, spoken them to him in scenarios she played out in her mind, whispered them in the dark as if he could hear her. Now, they weren’t there. She wanted to tell him she hated that he’d left her, that she was devastated that Niall had known where he was but she hadn’t, that she’d thought she’d never be whole again, that she’d never love anyone else the way she loved him, that it hurt to breathe when he was away. She didn’t know how to say any of that, not now, but there was something she had to tell him. “Keenan and I are…were…dating.”

Seth crossed his arms over his chest. “Which means?”

“It means I told him he could try to make me…love him. That I was willing to give us a chance….” She hated that he was looking at her like she was the one who’d messed everything up. He’d left her. He’d stayed away. He hadn’t even called. She flopped down on the bed. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Have faith in us?”

“You vanished without any explanation and were gone for six months….” She tucked her feet up under her. “I thought you weren’t coming back. You left me without a word…after refusing to talk to me.” She wasn’t sure if it was temper or sorrow that was welling up inside of her. “You vanished.”

“How long?” he asked.

“What?”

“Until you were with him? How long did he wait, Ash?”

She had never been truly angry with him, not once, but right then she would’ve gladly struck him. After six months of being worried and hurt and afraid, she finally felt the anger she hadn’t allowed herself before.

“You left me.” The words were bitten off.

“I had a chance to get to the faery who could give me forever with you. The timing sucked, but—” Seth stopped. “I didn’t know I’d be gone so long. I’m sorry it happened that way. I saw a chance. I took it.”

“I waited. We sent faeries to look for you. I tried to talk to Niall…to Bananach. I waited for six months.” She clasped her hands together to keep from gesturing.

They’d never had a fight; they’d never had a reason for one either.

She looked down at her hands until her temper stilled. “I thought you had abandoned me. Niall said—”

“The Dark King who’s pissed at you told you something that made you doubt me, and you believed him.” Seth crooked his brow.

“There was a girl in the background…in the voice mail…”

“Bananach. War. She took me to—”

“You left with Bananach? What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking it was worth the risk if it meant forever with my faery girlfriend.” He spoke very softly. “I was thinking that being with you was worth the risk. She took me to Sorcha, and I made a deal so I could be in your world the whole way, so I’d be strong enough to not need guards and babysitters, so I’d be able to be around for you forever.”

“And the cost?” She was afraid. She was a faery—and apparently he was too, now—but faery bargains weren’t renowned for their fairness.

“A month with Sorcha every year.”

“You were gone six months.”

“I was with her for a month. In Faerie.” He looked at her with a plea to understand, to agree that he didn’t make a mistake. “Niall told me she was the one who could make me this. No one else was willing to help. It was only thirty days for me. I didn’t know that it was longer for you.”

“So every year…” she prompted.

“I leave for what feels like a month to me and six months to you.”

“For the rest of your life.”

He nodded.

She tried to make sense of his being gone, of his being around for eternity. It didn’t make sense yet. He was hers, but at what price? Her heart raced as she thought about what he’d sacrificed. “And when you’re there, is it awful?”

“No. It’s almost perfect. The only thing that kept it from perfection was that you weren’t with me.” He looked enthralled as he spoke. “Faerie is incredible, and my only task is to create…and that’s it. I walk in the gardens. I think. I create. It’s amazing there.”

“And…Sorcha?”

The expression on his face was one of tenderness and of longing. “She’s perfection too. She is kind and gentle and wise and fu