Fragile Eternity (Wicked Lovely 3)

“But I am telling you,” he said. “Quinn ought to have kept—”

“No.” She pulled away. “Quinn was right to tell me. I am the Summer Queen, not a voiceless consort. We’ve discussed this.”

“You’re upset.”

“War has my things. Seth’s things. You’re telling me Seth threatened you. Yeah, I’m upset.”

“That was exactly what I didn’t want. I need you happy, Aislinn.”

She leaned back into the sofa cushions, putting distance between them. “And I need answers.”

The Summer Court had searched all over. She’d had no signs of where Seth could have gone—until now.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I met her. Seth’s not…she’s not someone he’d go with by choice.”

“Really? Seth’s closest friend is the Dark King. There are parts of your mortal that you aren’t seeing. What was he like before you?” Keenan stared up at her. “Seth isn’t an innocent, and the Dark Court is filled with temptations that have called more than a few mortals into their embrace, Ash.”

“Aislinn. Not Ash. Don’t call me that.” Her heart ached. She hated the way it felt, how wrong it was to hear Keenan call her a mortal name anymore. I am not a mortal. I am not that person now. She was a faery queen whose court needed a stronger monarch. Other courts were as enemies, threatening from crossways she didn’t understand. Donia was distant; Niall was resentful; both were secretive. The two courts that the Summer Court dealt with were closed off. And through that tension was the shadow of Bananach’s proclamation that war was pending.

“If you want me to find out more, I could ask for an audience with Niall,” Keenan suggested. “Unless you want to invite War into our home….”

“No.” Aislinn could still taste the smoke in the air when Bananach had spun her illusion in the park. “If we are on the edge of violence, I don’t want her here. I’m trying to find a way to be the queen our faeries deserve, and bringing her to their haven is not the way. I can’t just sit here doing nothing. She must know something.”

“So what do you want, Aislinn?” Keenan looked wary. “Do you really want to put yourself in harm’s way? Is that going to help? He wasn’t happy. If he went with her, got ensnared in the temptations of—”

“Can we go to Bananach?” Aislinn thought she was out of tears, but she felt the sting in her eyes as she tried not to cry. “If she hurt him—”

“We don’t know if Seth was there socially or if it was something else. Let me—”

“If she hurt him”—Aislinn began again—“I won’t ignore it. If she’d injured Donia or me, you wouldn’t ignore it.”

Keenan sighed. “I can’t risk our court over a single mortal, Aislinn.”

“It’s my court too,” she reminded him.

“Even if she took him, you can’t attack War.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“No.”

“Then don’t tell me I can’t,” she said. If Bananach had taken Seth and killed him, Aislinn would figure out how to exact revenge. She had eternity.

“You’d risk our court for this?” he asked.

“Yes. For someone I love? Without a doubt.”

Keenan sighed, but he didn’t continue his objections. “Let’s go to the lion’s den, my Queen.”

Accompanied by a full platoon of guards, the Summer King and Queen made their way to Bananach. After the way Aislinn had fallen during her visit to Donia and the way she and Keenan were both debilitated the last time they confronted Niall, Aislinn wondered if they needed still more. Entering the Dark Court, the court of nightmares—the home of the Gabriel Hounds, of the carrion crow—no matter how she phrased it, it sounded like an unwise plan.

But Bananach might have answers.

Aislinn didn’t ask how Keenan knew where to find Bananach; she was too frightened to think beyond the possibility that she was walking into the court of a faery who was decidedly hostile toward their court—and into the presence of the epitome of war and bloodshed.

Keenan led her across Huntsdale to a condemned ruin with blacked-out windows. This wasn’t a bright, airy loft like their home or an aging mansion like Donia’s. Even the air outside the building felt dirty. It made her cringe, like being naked in front of a crowd of lecherous strangers.

Fear. Pure, raw fear. They were in the right place.