Melissa Marr - Fragile Eternity

Something is wrong. It wasn’t like Seth to just vanish.

She looked around and found broken dishes in the trash. Someone had broken them and cleaned up. If not for Boomer’s absence and the excitement in Seth’s voice, she could believe that he was in danger.

He took Boomer with him.

Her emotions felt too close to the surface, and since she’d become the Summer Queen, that wasn’t something she could let happen, not with emotions like these. She’d seen the result of Keenan’s mood swings—miniature tropical storms trapped in small spaces, a sirocco on a city street—and she’d helped contain the consequences of those emotional upheavals. Her presence calmed him. Even after nine centuries as Summer King, he still slipped, but his storms weren’t the overwhelming nightmare she felt pulsing inside of her.

She didn’t have the control to deal with any of those emotions on her own.

Outside the train, a mist wafted like the fog coming in from the sea, but there was no sea near Huntsdale. The fog was her fault. She felt it, her confusion and fear and anger and hurt swirling faster and faster.

Seth left.

She walked to the door and pulled it closed behind her.

Seth is gone.

Her steps through the city were propelled by sheer will. She was in a haze. Guards spoke. Faeries paused as she passed them. None of it mattered. Seth was gone.

If Bananach or anyone else wanted to hurt her, this would’ve been the time to do it. She was aware of only the constant repetition of his message in her ears as she played it over and over.

By the time she reached the loft, all she knew of life was reduced to one fact: Seth had left.

She opened the door. The guards were talking to Keenan. Some noise about her being reckless was filtering from their mouths. Others were speaking more noise. The birds were chattering. It was all meaningless.

Keenan stood in the middle of the room; all around him, birds swooped among the trees and vines he kept in the loft. The sight of it usually made her feel a loosening of tension. It didn’t this time.

“He’s gone,” she said.

“What?” Keenan didn’t glance away from Aislinn or move toward her.

“Seth. He left.” She still wasn’t sure if she was more frightened or more hurt. “He’s gone.”

Without a sound, the room emptied of everyone but Aislinn and Keenan. Tavish, the Summer Girls, Quinn, several rowan—they all slipped away.

“Seth left ?”

She sat down on the floor, not bothering to walk the rest of the way into the room. “He says he’ll call, but…I don’t know where or why or anything. He was upset with me, and now he’s gone. When he left the loft the other night, he said he needed space, but I didn’t think he meant this. I keep calling. He’s not answering.”

She looked up at Keenan. “What if he’s not coming back?”

Seth stood with Bananach in one of the older graveyards in Huntsdale; it was an oasis set off from ruined buildings and graffiti-decorated walls. It was a place he’d come with friends, a familiar space where he and Aislinn had spent hours walking among the dead. Today, the sense of comfort he usually felt there was replaced with trepidation.

“This is it? The door is here ?” he asked.

“Some days. Not always.” She motioned him forward, past a pair of crooked stones leaning together. “Today it is here.”

Between the Sight and the charm-impeding glamour, Seth could see the barrier that stood in front of them. He’d seen barriers elsewhere—at the park by the loft, at Donia’s house and cottage, and at the Rath. There were still others shimmering around places where a lot of faeries frequented or nested. But none of the barriers he’d seen were this substantial. The others were misty, like smoke or fog that he could slip through. Contact with them felt uncomfortable as he crossed them, so much so that if he didn’t know they were there—or that faeries were real—the barriers would deter him from crossing. It was what they did: kept humans out.

This was different in every way. Neither smoke nor illusion, a veil of moonlight hung from higher up than he could see and touched the earth. The solid fall of it bespoke weight, like thick velvet drapes. He reached out a hand to touch it. He could not push through.

As Bananach moved forward, the barrier rippled out in tiny disturbances as if she had fallen into still water. Then she jabbed her taloned hands into the moonlight veil and parted it. “Come into the heart of Faerie, Seth Morgan.”

The voice of caution—a warning that he was on the edge of a decision that would change everything—hummed in his mind. He could see faeries walking through a city that hadn’t been visible when the veil was closed. Behind a barrier thicker than any he’d seen in Huntsdale, an entire world was hidden. Something about it was wrong. Logic insisted he pause, consider the dangers, weigh the consequences—but Sorcha was in there. She had the ability to solve his problems. If he could convince her to help him, he could be with Aislinn for eternity.

With Boomer draped around him like a scarf, Seth crossed the veil.

Bananach cackled. “Brave little lamb, aren’t you? Walking into a cage without but a moment’s pause. Trapped little lamb.”

Seth put a hand on the moonlight veil: it didn’t part. He tried to push his fingers through it as she had done. It was as steel. The murmured fears in his mind grew to cacophonic levels.

He turned back to her, but she was already walking away. Faeries were moving out of her path, not quite running but obviously fleeing. Bananach strode down a street that could’ve been in any city, but somehow couldn’t be in any of them. It was an area that had clearly been a regular human city before, but everything seemed a degree off of normalcy. Buildings were stripped of most metals and had earthy replacements: hardened vines with perfumeless blooms clung to buildings in lieu of fire escapes; wooden poles supported awnings; rock and mineral slabs were shaped into fences and frames.

He glanced behind him and could no longer tell where the veil was. The graveyard and the rest of the city he knew were hidden as surely as this part of the city had been hidden when he was surrounded by the familiar gravestones and mausoleums. He tried to convince himself that this wasn’t any more unusual than the things he’d seen since Aislinn revealed the faery world to him.

It wasn’t just the earthiness that seemed surreal. The entire place had an atmosphere of order and precision. Alleys were bright and immaculate. A group of human-looking faeries played soccer in the street, but they were serious as they did so. No shouts or loud voices could be heard anywhere. It was akin to walking into a theater showing a silent film—but with a layer of Daliesque oddity to it.

Bananach paused at the entryway of an old hotel. Pale gray stone pillars stood on either side of a doorless opening. Burgundy drapes were held back with gilt leaves. It looked old Hollywood, except it wasn’t. Instead of a red carpet, a long roll of emerald moss extended out from the doorway.

The raven-faery stepped onto the moss.

“Come, Mortal,” she called. She didn’t look his way to see that he followed; she simply expected he would obey.

And Seth didn’t see many choices. The veil he’d crossed was impermeable. He could continue standing in the street, or he could follow her farther.

I didn’t come here to run away at the gate.

Hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, he crossed over to the moss carpet and into the bright doorway.

The hotel lobby was filled with faeries talking in small groups, curled into chairs reading, and in a few cases staring silently at focus objects. Books were stacked in orderly piles on side tables. A white-veiled man was dusting a faery who’d apparently been meditating for some time.