No other High Court faery remained on this side of the veil.
When a regent is meant to be, he can make it so. Seth pondered the words that Bananach had used to explain her ability to become queen. Either she’s wrong, and it doesn’t matter; or she’s right, and this will work.
When Bananach’s hordes were done offering their promises to the raven-queen, they watched her with rapt adoration.
“I am the . . . Dark King’s balance,” Seth said as quietly as he could. “I am the faery that will balance Niall. I am the son of Order; I am made of the High Queen; I am your brother, Niall.”
He felt ridiculous, but he kept repeating the words over and over as he looked down at the faeries that stood before the self-declared Dark Queen.
“I balance you, Niall . . . order to your darkness,” Seth whispered.
Bananach stood and took two steps away from her throne.
“I am Order on this side of the veil.” Seth stood and gripped the bars of the cage. “I am the Order to your Darkness.”
The raven-faery let her gaze travel over the assembled fey. She glanced up at Seth briefly.
“The other regents would not give me the word I needed; they refused my hunger for war; but I am a regent now.” Bananach lifted her voice and said the words that the other courts refused: “The Dark Queen, your queen, speaks War. They will bow before us, or they will be trampled under our feet.”
Chapter 31
When Donia woke, she looked upward to see icicles and snow arches. For a moment, she wondered if she’d slept outside, but sheets were tangled around her legs. My home. My bed. She sighed happily. A wintery heaven filled her room to the point that she could hardly believe she was inside a house. She looked up at the crystalline ceiling over her head, and then at the faery sleeping beside her.
I want to stay right here forever.
Unlike the previous times she’d touched Keenan since she’d been fey, this time his skin was unbruised. Her ice didn’t injure him as it had when he was the Summer King. She propped herself up on one arm, and with the other, she carefully slid her fingers through his hair, and then on to his bare shoulder. No steam lifted from his skin as it had when they’d spent Solstice together; no bruises formed as they had when she’d touched him other times. After decades of wanting this, of believing it could never truly happen, they were together.
“If I pretend to be asleep, will you keep touching me?” He kept his eyes closed, but he reached out and slid his knuckles down her bare arm.
When she didn’t answer, he looked at her. “Don?”
“Tell me again.”
With the same wicked smile that had stolen her breath when she’d met him, he pulled her into his arms and rolled her under him. He braced himself over her and stared into her eyes as he reminded her, “I love you, Donia.”
Snow fell on him from somewhere above the bed as he lowered his lips to hers and told her, “And I will spend the rest of eternity loving you. Every day.”
“And every night,” she added with a smile.
“Mmmm, and every morning?” he asked.
To that question, there weren’t any words that would do justice the way actions would, so Donia answered him with her touch and her kisses.
Afterward, when hungers of other sorts necessitated leaving the pleasures of the bed—and the snow-covered floor—Donia couldn’t stop smiling. They walked through the house hand in hand.
Her faeries looked on approvingly, much to her surprise.
“I want you to stay here,” she blurted.
Keenan paused. “Right now?”
“No.” Donia turned so they were face-to-face. “Stay here, live here, be here.”
The look of joy on his face made her realize that the things she’d thought alluring when he was filled with sunlight were only a fraction of what he was now that he had only Winter within him. His eyes glimmered with the sheen of a perfect frost; his features seemed somehow sharper as she looked at him.
And I don’t have to resist now.
With a satisfied sigh, she pulled him to her and kissed him. When she stepped back, his lips parted and his eyes widened in surprise.