Melissa Marr - Fragile Eternity

Donia didn’t look away from the window as Evan came to stand at her back. “What does she want of us?”

“Nothing we want to give her.” Evan shivered.

Donia didn’t think that having her faeries, even her Head of the Guard, around was a wise move. War would overcome any solitary guard—and often entire platoons—without effort. It was better to not set temptation before her. It was better to avoid contact entirely, but that wasn’t an option today.

Donia said, “I’ll see her alone.”

Evan bowed and left as Bananach came racing up the stairs.

Once in the room, the raven-faery settled herself in the center of the rug. She sat cross-legged as if at a campfire—dressed in bloodstained fatigues, perfumed with the scent of ashes and death—and patted the floor. “Come.”

Donia watched the more-than-slightly-mad faery carefully. Bananach might appear friendly in this moment, but War didn’t come calling for no reason. “I’ve no business with you.”

“Shall I tell what business I have with you then?” Bananach gestured around the room, and screams rose from the silence that reigned over Donia’s domain. Faery and mortal voices intertwined in a raucous cry that forced tears to Donia’s eyes. Smoky faces hovered and blinked out in the room. Bleeding corpses trampled by faery feet appeared—only to be replaced by grotesque misshapen limbs reaching through windows. Those images gave way to montages of past battles in fields where the grass was stained red and homes burned. Flickering among these were glimpses of mortals sickened by plague and famine.

“Lovely possibilities come to us.” Bananach sighed as she looked at the stark corners of the room where her rendered images flashed to almost-life. “With you on my side, so much can be done sooner.”

The red-stained grass vanished as a new image appeared: Keenan stretched out under the faint image of Donia. They were on the bare floor where they’d once made love. As Donia watched, she saw herself on the floor entangled in Keenan’s arms. The image wasn’t real, but it gave her pause.

He was frostburnt; she was blistered.

She spoke to him, said words she had said over and over, words she’d once swore never to tell him again. “I love you.”

He sighed a name not hers. “Aislinn…”

Donia rose.

“I can’t do this, Keenan,” she whispered. Snow squalls rolled into the room.

He followed her, pleading forgiveness yet again. “Don…I didn’t mean…I’m sorry….”

Her illusory doppelgänger buried her hands in Keenan’s stomach, stabbing him.

He fell.

Sunlight flared, briefly blinding her even though it was illusion.

“You are just like Beira,” Bananach’s words came out as a sigh. “Just as tempestuous, just as ready to give me my chaos.”

Donia couldn’t move. She sat staring at the shimmering vision of herself with hands red with Keenan’s blood.

“I worried, feared you’d be different.” Bananach crooned the words. “Beira took so much longer to reach the point of striking the last Summer King. Not you.”

The red-handed Donia stood over Keenan, watching him bleed. He had rage in his eyes.

“That hasn’t happened.” Donia called every reserve of Winter’s calm to the forefront. “I have not hurt Keenan. I love him.”

Bananach crowed. It was an ugly sound, breaking the peace of Donia’s home. “A thing I am grateful for, Snow Queen. If you were cold inside, you wouldn’t have the cruelty of Winter that we need to get things in place.”

“Why tell me this?”

“Tell you what?” Bananach’s head tilted in small increments until the angle of it was grotesque.

“If you tell me what it will take to start your war, why would I do it?” Donia crossed and uncrossed her ankles. She stretched, briefly letting her eyes drift shut as if she was nonplussed by the horrors Bananach brought in her wake. It wasn’t very convincing.

Battle drums rose like a wall of thunder around them. Screams pierced the rhythms of that drumming. Then the sound ended abruptly, leaving only the melancholy music of bagpipes, purer for the chaos that had preceded them.

“Perhaps I want you not to stab the kingling.” Bananach grinned. “Perhaps that would stop my lovely destruction…. Your action can lead to the same upheaval Beira’s killing Miach caused.”

“Which action?”

Bananach snapped her jaw with a decisive clack. “One of them. Perhaps more.”

Donia winced as the illusory figures continued their conflict. Her doppelgänger was struck again and again by a sun-and-rage-filled bleeding Summer King. Then, the scene looped back to the moment where Keenan said Aislinn’s name, but this time Donia struck him until he stretched motionless on the floor.

“There are so many lovely answers to your question, Snow.” Bananach crooned the words. “So many ways you can give us bloody resolutions.”

Again the scene unfolded.

She spoke to him, said words she had said over and over, words she’d once swore never to tell him again. “I love you.”

He sighed. “I love you, but I can’t be with you.”

Donia couldn’t look away.

Once more the scene began.

She spoke to him, said words she had said over and over, words she’d once swore never to tell him again. “I love you.”

He sighed a name not hers. “Aislinn…”

“I can’t do this, Keenan,” she whispered. Snow squalls rolled into the room.

He struck her. “It was just a game….”

This time they both struck out at each other until the room was filled with steam. In the steam, corpses appeared again, growing seemingly more solid as the moments passed. In the center of the carnage, Bananach stood like the gleeful carrion crow she was.

“Why?” It was the only word left to Donia. “Why?”

“Why do you freeze the earth?” Bananach paused, and when Donia didn’t reply, she added, “We all have a goal, Winter Girl. Yours and mine are destruction. You accepted this when you took Beira’s court as your own.”

“That’s not what I want.”

“Power? Him to suffer for hurting you?” Bananach laughed. “Of course it’s what you want. All I do is find the threads in your actions that will give me what I want. I see them”—she waved at the room—“none of these are my possibilities. They are all yours.”

The next week seemed almost normal for Aislinn: things with Seth were right again, Keenan hadn’t pushed her boundaries, and court things seemed calm. She couldn’t continue ignoring Keenan, and it was becoming almost physically painful to stay so much away from him, so Aislinn had decided to simply pretend that the awkwardness of last week hadn’t happened. She might’ve been avoiding being alone with Keenan the past couple of days, but aside from a few very pointed glances when she called Quinn or Tavish into a conversation they didn’t truly need to be a part of…and okay, maybe a few very transparent moments of sudden needs for “girl bonding” with the Summer Girls, Keenan pretended not to notice her evasiveness. He merely waited as she held her faeries to her like a shield. She enjoyed time with them, Eliza especially, but that didn’t explain away her need to go dancing in the park the moment Keenan came too near.

Totally obvious. It was apparent to everyone, but no one had mentioned it. Aside from Keenan and Seth, no one had enough comfort with her to do so. She was their queen, and right now, that gave her an extra bit of privacy.

They all see that something is up though. They are unsettled by it. She had promised herself that she would be a good queen. Upsetting them all was not what a good queen should do.