Fragile Eternity (Wicked Lovely 3)

They picked a table with some privacy, and Seth unfolded one of the battered menus he’d snatched from the next table.

“It hasn’t changed.” Niall pointed at the menu. “And you’ll order the same thing.”

“True, but I like looking at it. I like that it’s the same.” Seth waved one of the waitresses over and placed his order.

Afterward, when it was just the two of them, Niall gave him an odd look and asked, “Do I seem the same to you?”

“There’s more shadows”—Seth gestured at the air around Niall where whispery shapes swayed and spiraled into each other—“around you, and the whole weird-eyes thing is new. Creepier than Ash’s too. She gets seas and nice stuff mostly. You? There’s weird abyss people.”

Niall didn’t look happy about that detail. “Irial still has the same eyes.”

Seth knew better than to pursue that topic. Niall’s relationship with the last Dark King was never something to bring up when Niall was already melancholy. Instead, Seth told him, “You seem happier.”

Niall made a rude sound that might have been a laugh. “I don’t think I’d call it happy.”

“More comfortable in your skin then.” Seth shrugged.

This time Niall laughed for real, a sound that seemed to cause everyone in the room—except Seth—to shiver or sigh longingly. Without thinking, Seth reached up to touch the stone he wore on a cord around his throat. It was an anti-glamour charm that Niall had given him; arguably it was to protect him from Niall’s uncontainable appeal to baser traits, but it had the side benefit of helping Seth resist other faery magicks as well.

Keenan never offered or even told me there were charms…. Seth shook his head. It was no secret that the Summer King wasn’t going to volunteer to do anything that would make life easier for Seth. If Aislinn suggested something, Keenan cooperated without hesitation, but he never initiated it. When Niall became the Dark King, he’d been free to share all manner of knowledge with Seth.

Niall said, almost casually, “Have you mentioned the charm to Ash?”

“No. You know she would ask Keenan why he hadn’t offered me one first…and I’m not sure I want to be the reason for yet another fight between them.”

“You’re a fool. I know why he didn’t offer you a charm. So do you. And if Ash found out about it, she would know as well.”

“All the more reason not to tell her. She’s having a rough time with the changes and balancing,” Seth said.

“And he’ll use every one of those things to his advantage if he can. He’s—” Niall stopped with a fierce look.

Seth followed Niall’s gaze. A dark-haired faery, with woad-written art on her face and arms like warriors in Celtic battle paintings, stood surrounded by a cluster of six shorter faeries with red-stained hands. The image of a raven shimmered over the top of the female faery’s face. Blue-black hair that was somehow also feathers stretched to her waist in tangled snarls. Unlike most faeries, both her faux-mortal face and birdlike features were visible, blinking in and out of dominance.

“Don’t get involved.” Niall moved his chair back away from the table as she approached.

She tilted her head in a decidedly not-human way. “What a pleasant surprise, Gan

can—”

“No.” Niall’s temper snapped out with actual tendrils of shadow, invisible to the Un-Sighted mortals in the club. “Not ‘Gancanagh.’ King. Or have you forgotten?”

The faery who’d spoken didn’t flinch; instead she let her gaze slip slowly over Niall. “That’s right. Things are cloudy in my mind some days.”

“That is not why you chose to not-name me.” Niall didn’t stand yet, but he had angled his body in a position that would make sudden movement easier.

“Too true.” The birdlike faery’s posture tensed. “Would you fight me, my king? The battles I need are not near enough.”

Seth felt the tension grow increasingly thick. The other faeries had dispersed, taking up posts throughout the Crow’s Nest. They looked gleeful.

“Is that what you want?” Niall stood.

She licked her lips. “A little tussle would help me.”

“Do you challenge me?” He reached out and ran a hand through the faery’s feather-hair.

“Not yet. Not a real challenge, but blood…yes, I want that.” She leaned forward and snapped her mouth with an audible clack, and Seth wondered if she had an actual beak.

Niall fisted his hand in her hair and held her head away from him.