Ink Exchange (Wicked Lovely 2)

She turned to Niall. “Is he?”

Niall kept his face unreadable as he told them, “Fortunately, Seth did not attract the Dark King’s attention, but Leslie did.”

“Leslie?” Aislinn repeated. She blanched. “That’s the third time he’s met her, but I didn’t think…he didn’t pay any attention to her at Rabbit’s, and he was dismissive at Verlaine’s, and she said he wasn’t…I’m a fool. I…never mind.” She shook her head and refocused on the topic at hand. “What happened?”

“Seth took Leslie away. The guards followed, but—” He looked not at Aislinn but at Keenan, hoping that their centuries of companionship would weigh in his favor. “Let me stay nearer her until Irial leaves again. I can’t touch him, but he has…”

Niall couldn’t say it, even now with everything that had passed; he wasn’t sure how to finish that statement. Irial’s random moments of kindness weren’t something Niall liked to acknowledge.

A look of brief understanding passed over Keenan’s face, but he did not ask the obvious questions. He did not point out that Niall was treading on unsafe ground. He merely nodded.

Aislinn spoke softly, “She is already interested in you, Niall. I don’t want her to lose her mortal life because of a fleeting crush.”

It was a warning. He knew it, but he’d been fey longer than his queen had drawn breath. Hoping Keenan wouldn’t interfere, he asked, “What are your terms?”

“My terms?” She looked at Keenan.

“Terms under which he can go to her,” Keenan clarified.

“Nothing’s ever simple, is it?” Aislinn shoved at the gold-and-shadow streaks of her hair, looking like the sort of omnipotent deity mortals once believed the court fey to be.

“I will agree to whatever you ask of me if you let me keep her safe.” Niall looked at Aislinn, but he spoke to Keenan as well. “I don’t ask for many considerations.”

Aislinn paced several steps away from them. For a newly fey monarch, the queen did exceptionally well, but Keenan and Niall had been together in the courts for centuries. There were habits, laws, traditions that Aislinn couldn’t begin to understand so soon.

Niall looked at his king while Aislinn had her back turned.

Keenan didn’t offer assurances. Instead he spoke softly to Aislinn. “You can set terms to Niall’s presence in her life. He wants to protect the girl, to keep her safe. I would allow him to go to her.”

“So I just need to figure how much he can get involved in her life?” Aislinn looked from Niall to Keenan, her observant gaze letting on that she knew there were nuances to the conversation that she was missing.

“Exactly,” Keenan said. “None among us would willingly place a child in the Dark Court’s hands, but if Irial’s done no affront to our court, it’s not our concern by law. I cannot act, not directly, unless he violates the laws.”

Then his king walked away, having told Niall what he needed to know, what he’d already known: Keenan wasn’t going to act. The Summer King didn’t approve of Irial’s predilections, his cruelties, or anything that happened in the shadows of the Dark King’s court, but that didn’t mean he was willing to enter a fight with the other court unless he could justify it by law. Those were his terms, whether he’d spoken them into the negotiations or not.

The Dark Court—like any of the courts—had volition. If Leslie belonged to the Summer Court, things would be different. But she was unattached, and thus fair game for any fey who wanted her. Years ago, Keenan had forbidden his fey from collecting mortals. Donia had made the same ruling when she took the Winter Queen’s throne. The Dark Court, however, had no such compunction. Musicians who were particularly tempting “died young” to the mortal world. Artists retired to unknown locales. The striking, the unusual, the enticing—they were stolen away for the pleasures of the dark faeries. It was an old tradition, one Irial had always permitted his court fey. If he wanted her for himself, Leslie had no defense.

Niall dropped to his knees in front of his queen. “Let me tell her about us. Please. I’ll tell her, and she will swear fealty to you. She’d be safe then, out of his reach.”

The Summer Queen bit her lip. She almost flinched away from him. “I don’t want my friends under my rule. I didn’t want any of this….”

“You don’t know what the Dark Court is like. I do,” Niall told his queen. And he didn’t want Leslie to know. Self-consciously he touched the scar on his face. Irial’s fey had done that to remind him of them every day.

“I want her to be free of all of this.” Aislinn gestured at the fey cavorting in the Rath. “To have a normal life. I don’t want this world to be her life. She’s already been so hurt—”

“If he takes her with him, he’ll hurt her worse than you can begin to fathom.” Niall had seen the mortals the Dark Court had taken into their bruig, seen them after they left the faery mound—comatose in mortal hospitals, muttering and afraid in every city, shrieking in sanatoriums.

Aislinn l

ooked across the room, unerringly finding the Summer King where he stood waiting. She bit her lower lip nervously, and he knew she was considering it.

Niall pressed her, “If Irial has decided to claim her, you and Keenan are the only ones who can stop him. I can’t touch him. He’s a king. If you invite her to our court first, ask her to swear loyalty to you—”

“She’s doing better lately,” Aislinn interrupted. “She seems happier and more herself, stronger. I don’t want to stop that and introduce all of this mess into her life…. Maybe he’s just toying with us.”

“Would you risk that?” Niall was aghast that his queen was being so foolhardy. “Please, my queen, let me go to her. If you won’t bring her to you, let me try to keep her safe.”

Keenan didn’t approach—staying at a distance, making clear that it was the queen who was in charge—but he did speak. “Perhaps there is something to her we do not know, some reason for Irial to pursue her. And if not, Niall would still be there to try to keep her out of his reach, perhaps to distract her so she doesn’t go willingly to Irial.”