She felt her muscles tense, but she did not back away from him.
Then Keenan, the King of Summer in all of his brightness, knelt before her and gave her yet another chance to turn away. “Is this what you freely choose, to risk winter’s chill?”
The Summer Girls drifted into the clearing, watching. Beira’s hags and a great number of other faeries, some more familiar than others, stood around them.
“Each mortal since Donia”—eyes wistful, he glanced briefly at Donia—“has chosen to stay in the sunlight. They would not risk becoming as she is.”
Donia’s corpse-white fingers tightened on Sasha’s pelt as Keenan added, “You understand that if you are not the one, you’ll carry the Winter Queen’s chill until the next mortal risks this? And you’ll warn her not to trust me?”
The rustling of trees roared around them, like a waterless storm, like voices crying out in a language she couldn’t remember.
Donia reached out and squeezed Aislinn’s hand.
“I do.” Aislinn’s voice was stronger then; she was sure this was right. Somewhere inside that knowledge waited; even if she hadn’t had any of the other proof, in that moment she was certain she’d still have known this was right. She let go of Donia’s hand and walked over to the hawthorn.
“If she refuses me, you will tell the next girl and the next”—Keenan followed her, radiating heat—“and not until one accepts will you be free of the cold.”
“There won’t be another girl.” Aislinn grasped the staff, wrapped her fingers around it, and waited.
She watched them—the last girl who’d done this and the faery king who still loved her. She wished—for them and for herself—that it had been Donia, but it wasn’t.
It’s me.
The staff was gripped in her hand, but there was no cold to bring her to her knees. Instead that blinding glow was no longer coming only from Keenan: it flared from her own skin.
The Summer Girls laughed and twirled in a blur of vines and hair and skirts.
Donia—her white hair now
a soft blond, her cheeks now flushed with health—said in a surprisingly musical voice, “You’re truly her.”
Aislinn looked at her hands, her arms, at the soft gold glow that covered her skin. “I am.”
It felt like nothing she could’ve imagined before: the world made sense. She could feel the faeries all around her drinking in her happiness, reveling in the sense of security that she and Keenan gave them. It made her laugh aloud.
Then he grabbed her in his arms, swinging her in the air, laughing. “My Queen, my lovely, lovely Aislinn.”
All around them, flowers sprang to life, the air warmed, and soft rain fell from the bright blue sky. The grass under Keenan’s feet grew lush, as verdant as his eyes.
For several moments she let him twirl her in the air—until she saw a wounded rowan-man struggling to reach them.
“My queen,” he croaked as he crawled over the grass, bleeding but still trying to reach her.
She paused, watching as her faeries—for they were truly hers now—carried him to her. Everyone paused. Keenan put a hand in the small of her back as he stepped up beside her.
“We tried,” the rowan-man said, more blood coming to his lips with every word he spoke. “We tried as we would’ve if she’d come for you. The mortal boy…”
If it weren’t for Keenan catching her, she’d have fallen. “Seth. Is he…” she couldn’t finish the words.
The guard closed his eyes. His breathing was labored, and when he coughed, shards of ice spilled out of his mouth. He spat them onto the grass. “She took him. Beira took him.”
Donia had slipped away, unable to bear watching Keenan with Aislinn. It was one thing to know he’d finally found his missing queen; it was another to feel the emotions that came with the knowledge. This was what needed to happen, what was best for everyone.
It still feels like a freshly reopened wound. She wasn’t the one, had never been the one for him.
Aislinn is.
And Donia couldn’t stay to watch them rejoice.