Fragile Eternity (Wicked Lovely 3)

Then she hung up and slid to the sidewalk. Her eyes weren’t closed, but they were near enough to it that she was worried. It’s not a serious injury. She said so, and faeries don’t lie.

She stared at the ravens that had settled on a ledge on the building across from her, and she pressed another button and held the phone to her ear. She smiled at hearing Seth’s voice, even though it was just a recording. At the tone, she said in as clear a voice as possible, “I’m not going to make it for dinner tonight. Something’s come up…I love you.”

She wanted him to come to her, but she was bleeding on the street—a target unable to defend herself against capture or further assault—and he was a mortal. Her world wasn’t safe for him. It wasn’t safe at all.

Mortals walked past her. They were murmurs of sound and movement against the quiet she found inside her and held on to. Down the street she heard a bus stop. The din of people coming and going grew louder for a few moments. The ravens cried out, their hoarse calls blending into the sounds of the mortal world around her. She leaned her head back against a building, not concerned with the soot and dirt, but with the fact that the cement and brick were warm against her skin. Warmth was what she needed. Warmth will fix it, she thought about that in a tumble of words that sounded like a cadence in her mind. Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot, warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. He would bring those things.

She shivered. In her mind, she could see the fragments of ice that Donia’d left inside her skin. Slivers of Winter were buried inside her body. A lesson, that’s all it was: a lesson and a warning. Not fatal. But she wasn’t sure. As she sat there in the street, she wondered if she was hurt worse than Donia’d intended. Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot, warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. She thought them like a prayer. He would come. He would bring heat and sunlight.

Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. I am not that injured. I am not. She was. She felt like she was dying. Being a faery was to mean living forever. It wouldn’t if he didn’t come for her. Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. I’m going to die.

“Aislinn?” Keenan was lifting her. His skin was solid sunlight, and she burrowed tighter into his arms. He was speaking, telling someone something or other. It didn’t matter. Droplets of sunshine fell like rain on her face and soaked into her skin.

“Too cold.” She was shaking so hard that she thought she might fall, but he held her to him and then the world blurred.

When she woke, Aislinn was not in her bed at home—or in her bed at the loft or in Seth’s bed. She looked up at the snarl of vines over her head. Although she’d never seen them from this angle before, she’d stood in the doorway and marveled at the way they twined around Keenan’s bed.

“What are they?” She knew he was in the room; it wasn’t necessary to look for him. He wouldn’t be anywhere else, not now.

“Ash—” he started.

“The vines, I mean. They’re not anywhere else in the loft. Just…here.”

He came to sit on the edge of the ridiculous red-and-gold-brocade thing that covered his far-too-large bed. “They’re called ‘Cup of Gold.’ I like them. I’m sorry we had discord.”

She couldn’t look at him; it was stupid to feel embarrassed, but she did. The conversation with Donia replayed in Aislinn’s mind, as if reexamining it would make it somehow different. The fear came just as quickly. I could’ve died. She wasn’t sure if it was true, but when she’d been alone and bleeding, she’d wondered it. “I’m sorry too.”

“For what? You weren’t asking for anything I didn’t expect.” Keenan’s voice was as warm as his tears had been when he lifted her from the ground. “We’re going to work everything out. For now, what matters is that you are home, safe, and once I know who—”

“Donia. Who else?” Aislinn lifted her head up and held his gaze. “Donia stabbed me.”

“Don?” He paled. “On purpose?”

Aislinn wished she could lift one brow the way Seth did. “Stabbing isn’t usually an accident, is it? She pushed ice into my stomach with her fingertips. Cold enough to make me sick…” She started to sit up and felt those tiny wounds resist. It wasn’t a sharp pain like the stabbing was, but even the duller sensation brought tears to her eyes. She leaned back. “Obviously this faery healing thing is overrated.”

“It’s because it was Donia.” Keenan’s tone was even, but the rumble of thunder outside belied his attempts at calm. “She is our opposite, and she is a queen.”

“So…now what?”

Keenan blanched again. “I don’t want war. It’s never the first choice.”

Aislinn let out the breath she’d been holding. War wasn’t something she wanted either, especially not with her court so much weaker than the Winter Court. The thought of her faeries feeling this sort of pain filled her with terror. There’d already been enough upheaval in Faerie with the changing of power in three courts. “Good.”

“If it were anyone but Donia, I’d gladly kill over this.” He brushed back Aislinn’s hair, letting a little extra sunlight into the gesture. “Seeing you there…she’s attacking my queen and therefore my court.”

Aislinn didn’t object to his comfort, not now. The feel of that cold inside her body was too recent. For a brief moment, she wished they were close enough that she could ask him to lie down and hold her. It wasn’t sexual, or even romantic; it was the idea of having sunlight spill over her. Warmth, heat, summer, sunlight, hot. She blushed guiltily as she thought it, though. It would mean something else to him, and she wasn’t going there.

“I could help.” He looked embarrassed as he gestured at her stomach. “I would’ve before, but I know how you are about your…space…especially since…”

She plucked at her shirt. It wasn’t her bloodied one.

“How did I get this on then?”

“Siobhan. She changed your blouse after I checked your wound. She was here, though—when I checked it. She stayed here.”

Aislinn took his hand in hers and squeezed. “I trust you, Keenan. Even if you had”—she blushed—“changed my clothes.”

And it was true. She might feel uncomfortable with their closeness and be discomforted with his attentiveness, but she didn’t think he’d maneuver her into anything she didn’t want or violate her. She’d thought that of him when she didn’t know him, but in her heart of hearts she believed differently now. Donia was wrong.