Melissa Marr - Fragile Eternity

But then she started to sing, and her brothers joined in on a chorus, and Seth forgot that they were anything other than glorious.

It wasn’t a language he knew. It wasn’t even a proper song, just them preening a little. Every cell in his body seemed to struggle to find a way to align with that music. His breathing found their rhythm. It wasn’t glamour; his charm protected him from that. They were just that good.

He and Aislinn stood silently, lost in the sound and the feel of the music. The notes lifted them, stealing their secrets, their souls, and spinning them into the air and water where pain was gone. There were no worries. There was no fear. It was every perfect moment filling him until his skin couldn’t contain it.

Then the music stopped.

The spell broke; gravity returned to his spirit and anchored him to the earth. Their music was like that, lifting you away from the world only to drop you without warning. The drop ached; the absence was like a physical blow.

“They’re amazing,” Aislinn whispered.

“More than.” Seth looked away from the merrows. The only time he and Aislinn could find a space to sit was between songs. When the music began, it was either stand transfixed or dance. He suspected that Aislinn could resist the pull of the songs, but he couldn’t. Faery music was all-consuming.

They’d taken only a couple steps when a skogsrå caught Seth’s attention. Of all the fey creatures he’d met, skogsrås were among the most unsettling. They existed to tempt; it was their sole purpose. Backless and hollow inside—literally and figuratively—skogsrås’ allure was in their neediness. That space was a hungry emptiness both mortal and faery found difficult to resist. Without the charm Niall had given him, Seth wasn’t sure how he’d overcome the temptation.

The skogsrå, Britta, blew him a kiss.

Aislinn tightened her hold on his hand but didn’t comment.

Seth didn’t react. He nodded but made no encouraging gestures. The music nights were held in areas declared neutral territory for the event, so the skogsrås would all be bolder. Truth be told, Britta would probably be bold regardless of where they were. Any faery strong enough to be solitary but linger where there were several courts in conflict was not to be dismissed lightly.

Britta walked toward them. Neutral ground meant they were all equal here. Seth liked that, but the tension in Aislinn’s body made clear that right now she wasn’t liking it.

A few steps away, Britta tripped, and without thinking, Seth caught her. In doing so one of his hands slid over the space where her back should be. Even though the thin shirt she wore covered most of that void, he still felt the tug of that empty space.

“Nice save, love.” She kissed his cheek with a familiarity that was not earned. Then she looked at Aislinn. “Queenie.”

As she sauntered off, Aislinn murmured, “I’m never going to get comfortable around some of them, am I?”

“You will,” he reassured her. “We both will.”

“Things weren’t easier before, but it seemed like they made more sense.” She rested her head against him.

“It’ll all make sense again. You’re new to this,” he said.

She nodded, and he suspected that it was because she couldn’t answer without trying to twist her words into a misdirection so she sounded less afraid than she was. He was afraid too. If he told her the things Keenan had said, if he told her how much she really hurt him when she forgot her strength, it’d push her away when he wanted to pull her closer. He wanted closer to her, but until she figured out who she was and he found a way to become not just a mortal caught in a world of faeries, distance was inevitable.

Then the merrows began singing in earnest. Musicians joined in from along the river’s edge and from in the trees and farther away in the darkness where mortal eyes couldn’t see them. Thrumming beats and lilting piping, sounds that weren’t made by any instruments mortals had, and voices rising and falling like the fingers of water lapping the shore—pure music was all around them.

Aislinn sighed in contentment. “It’s not all bad, is it?”

“Not at all.” He felt the music, the purity of it, like it was a tangible thing. The world of Faerie wasn’t perfect, but it was so much fuller sometimes. Their casual music was more intense, more enthralling than the music that even the best human musicians could make. No one choreographed the movement of the dancers who interpreted the notes with their bodies; no one directed the musicians who blended together in the darkness.

“Come with me.” Aislinn led him to a dead tree.

In the boughs, three ravens perched. For a heartbeat, he was certain their gazes were affixed on him, but Aislinn tugged his hand and he followed, as consumed by her as he was by the music. He thought his heart would beat right through his chest when she let go of his hand. His back was to the singers, but the music swirled around him. In front of him, she was a vision that rivaled their music. She touched a bit of a vine that was twined around the skeletal tree. It grew under her hand, rustling and extending until a hammock-like chair dangled from a branch.

Then she let go of the vine and took his hand again.

As long as he was touching her, seeing her, lost in her, he could move. The music still held him, but she was more than faery magic. Love can give a person strength to break through glamours and magicks.

“Curl up with me?” she asked.

“With pleasure.” He sat back into the vine-net and held his arms open for her.

When Bananach arrived, Donia was sitting in a window seat on the fourth floor watching the stars appear in the sky. It was one of her favorite times of day, when the colors that streaked across the sky faded. Things were neither bright nor dark, but caught somewhere between. That was how life had felt for so long: it could get better or worse. She’d hoped it would get better, but tonight War stood at her gate, seeking her out.

Donia watched Bananach stroll up the path, pausing to grip one of the spiked fence posts. The arrowlike tops of the posts were knife-sharp. Bananach didn’t squeeze hard enough to truly wound herself as she stood staring at the house.

Why are you here?

Donia hadn’t spent enough time studying the strong semi-solitary faeries. She’d had no reason to do so. But in the past few months, she’d been observing them as much as she could, reading Beira’s files of old correspondence with various solitary fey and with the heads of other courts. The Dark Court, in many ways, made far more sense to her than the other courts. Keenan’s Summer Court was a fledgling court now. They were still forming an identity. Despite the long history of the court, it was being made new by the recent discovery of Keenan’s lost queen. Sorcha’s High Court was reclusive and unwilling to interact with anyone outside her realm in any but the most minimal ways. The Dark Court was an elaborate network of criminal enterprises. During Beira’s time, Irial had sold whatever drugs were in vogue. His fey had ties to celebrated crime and petty enterprises. He himself owned a string of adult clubs and fetish bars that catered to almost every kink. Some of that had changed when Niall took over the Dark Court. Like Irial, the new Dark King did not cross some lines, but he had more of them. Bananach, however, had no lines. She had only one goal, one purpose—the chaos and bloodshed of war.

As Donia stared down at War through the dingy window, the amoral, single-minded faery stood, eyes closed, and smiled.

Behind her, Evan tapped lightly on the door. “Donia?”

He entered, filling the dusty room with the woodsy scent that clung to him. “Aaaah, you see already that she is here.”