Wicked Lovely (Wicked Lovely 1)

“I planned on talking about this before….” He squeezed the pillow between his hands, mashing it. “I know it’s not all romantic.”

“It’s good.” She bit her lip. “I’ve never…you know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“There’s been nothing that would, umm, put me at risk.” She picked at the comforter, feeling increasingly shy.

“Why don’t I go…”

“No, please, Seth”—she climbed across the bed and pulled him toward her—“stay with me.”

Several hours later Aislinn felt her hands curling, gripping the comforter. She’d been kissed before but not like that, not there. If sex was any better than that, she wasn’t sure she’d survive it.

All the stress, the worry, had faded away under Seth’s touch.

Afterward he held her. He still had his jeans on, scratchy against her bare legs.

“I don’t want to be one of them. I want this.” She put her hand on his stomach. She slipped her pinky nail in the edge of his belly ring. “I want to be here, with you, go to college. I don’t know what I want to be, but it’s not a faery. Definitely not a faery queen. I am, though; I know it. I just don’t know what to do now.”

“Who says you can’t still do all that even if you are a faery?”

She lifted her head to look at him.

“Donia uses the library. Keenan goes to Bishop O.C. now. Why can’t you still do the things you want?” He slid a handful of her hair forward, making it fall over her shoulder onto his chest.

“But they do those things because of this game of theirs,” she protested, but even as she said it, she wondered. Maybe it didn’t have to be all or nothing.

“So? They had reasons; you have different reasons. Right?”

It sounded so much easier when he said it—not easy, but not impossible, either. Could she really keep her life? Maybe Keenan hadn’t answered her questions because he didn’t like the answers.

“I do.” She laid her head back down on him, smiling. “More reasons every day.”

CHAPTER 26

If we could love and hate with as good heart as the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them.

—The Celtic Twilight by William Butler Yeats (1893, 1902)

“It’s her.” Beira stomped her foot, setting frost rippling over Donia’s yard like a glistening wave. “You cannot let her near the staff. Do you hear me?”

Donia winced at the bite in Beira’s voice. She didn’t speak or move as Beira’s wind ripped through the yard, shredding trees, uprooting the fall flowers still clinging to life.

Beira tossed the staff on the ground and said, “Here. I brought it. Followed the rules.”

Donia nodded. In all the times Beira had brought the staff to her, in all the times they’d played this game, there had never been any real doubt in the Winter Queen.

This time it’s different. This girl is different.

Beira’s eyes had bled to pure white, her temper so close to uncontrollable that Donia couldn’t speak.

“If she comes for it, lifts the staff”—Beira held out her hand and the staff moved toward her like a living thing going to its master—“you can stop her. I cannot. Those were the terms Irial dictated when we bound the whelp: if I actively interfere, the mantle that makes that mortal the Summer Queen is unavoidably manifest. I lose my throne; she gains hers and frees Keenan.”

Beira caressed the staff as she spoke. “I cannot act. Balance, damnable balance, those were Irial’s terms when we placed the limits on Keenan.”

Donia could not speak much above a whisper, but she tried, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that those pretty blue lips of yours could solve my problem.” Beira tapped a finger twice against her own far-too-red lips. “Is that clear enough?”