Melissa Marr - Fragile Eternity

“Oh.”

“She would’ve woven a portrait of you, but the consequence would not be one most mortals like.”

“It would kill me,” Seth confirmed.

“Yes, her portraits are sometimes anchored longer with mortal breath. Breath for art. Balance.” Devlin’s voice had a fervor Seth recognized: it was madness perhaps, but it was madness over Art.

Somehow that revelatory moment of passion made Seth feel more at peace.

“Sorcha requests you attend her,” Devlin said.

Seth quirked a brow. “Attend her?”

The taciturn faery paused. He stared at where Olivia had vanished several moments past. “You might be better off following Olivia. My queen is—like your queen and like Niall—required to consider the well-being of her court first. You are an aberration and thus in a rather untenable situation.”

Seth glanced at Boomer in his immense terrarium, assuring again that the boa was contained, and then closed the door to his room. “I’ve been in an untenable situation for months. This is about fixing that.”

“Bartering with faeries is not a wise plan,” Devlin said.

“Art isn’t the only thing worth being consumed for.”

“So I’ve heard.” Devlin paused and gave Seth a look of blatant assessment. “Niall cares for you, so I will hope you’re as clever as you think you are, Seth Morgan. My sisters are neither kind nor gentle.”

“I have no desire to fight them.”

“I didn’t mean in a fight. Their taking notice of a mortal has rarely been a good thing for the mortal, and you are very much drawing their attention.” Devlin spoke the words in an extremely low voice. “Come.”

The weight of the faeries’ gazes felt different as Seth followed Devlin through the hallways. It was unsettling to see them stop mid-sentence, mid-step, mid-breath as Seth passed. Like walking with Bananach, following Devlin involved a series of twists and turns through the building. They went up and down stairwells, in and out of rooms that appeared to be the same ones. Finally Devlin paused in the middle of a nondescript room that Seth was sure they’d just left. It has a strange doorway. Seth looked behind him for the door, and the room was suddenly filled beyond capacity with faeries.

All staring.

“Turn and face me, Seth Morgan,” Sorcha said.

As Seth turned, the other faeries vanished; the room vanished; and he was alone in a vast garden with only her. To one side, flowers twined around one another to the point of chaos. Enormous blue orchids seemed to be choking daisies that tried to push between snarls of blossoms. On the other side of the path, orderly arrangements of roses and birds of paradise were growing at equidistant intervals from flowering cactus and blossoming cherry trees.

Seth looked behind him. The faeries, the room, the building, they were all gone. It was garden and forest and ocean as far as he could see. Sorcha’s hidden city wasn’t a simple area behind a barrier. A whole world existed here.

“It’s just us,” the High Queen said.

“They vanished.”

She gave him a patient look. “No. The world was reordered. That’s how it works here. What I will is what is. Most everything here is controlled by my thoughts and requirements.”

Seth wanted to speak, to ask questions, but he couldn’t. Even with his charm securely fastened around his throat, he felt like he was caught in a glamour stronger than anything he could’ve imagined. Sorcha, the High Queen, was speaking to him in a fantastic garden…in the middle of a hotel.

The High Queen looked at him and smiled.

His phone buzzed. He held it up. Messages scrolled over the screen. As it was still blinking messages, he got a voicemail indicator too. He stared at his phone, at one message in the center of the screen—“where r u”—and then he looked around him.

“It is not like over there. No mortal rules or trinkets function unless I think them useful. Things here are at my will alone,” she added.

Seth knew exactly where he was. He lowered his arm, holding the phone tightly as he did so, and caught the High Queen’s gaze. “This is Faerie. Not like just that you’re a faery, but…this is it. I’m in another world. It’s not like Don’s house or the park….”

Sorcha didn’t smile, not truly, but she was amused.

“I’m in Faerie ,” he repeated.

“You are.” She lifted the hem of her skirt and took three steps toward him. As she did so, Seth could see that her feet were bare. Tiny silver tendrils spoked from between her toes and over the tops of her feet. It wasn’t the illusion of silver. It wasn’t tattoos like in the Dark Court, or living vines like on the Summer Girls. Thread-thin silver was inside her skin, part but not-part of her.

He stared at those silver lines. If he looked closely, he could see silver tracery on the whole of her skin; faint outlines of veins showed under and through her skin.

“You are in Faerie”—Sorcha took another step—“and you’ll stay here unless I determine elsewise. In the mortal realm, there are several courts. Once upon a time, there were only two. One left to find the depraved things they sought. Other faeries followed…a few were strong enough to create courts of their own. Others could have but chose to exist as solitaries. Here, there is only me. Only my will. Only my voice.” She dropped her hem so her skirt covered her silver-twined feet. “You won’t call anyone. Not from here or without my permission.”

Seth paused. His phone had transformed into a handful of butterflies that took flight from his palm.

“There will be no communication between my court and theirs. I would prefer you behave properly.” Sorcha glanced at his hand and the phone re-formed. “The decisions made here are mine alone. I have no co-ruler. I have neither successor nor predecessor. Your once-mortal queen’s happiness doesn’t matter here. Ever.”

“But Ash—”

“If you are here, you are subject to my will. You sought me, came to my presence, stand in a world that innumerable mortals have dreamed of and died for. Nothing comes without cost in Faerie.” Sorcha was nonplussed by his concerns. Her face was a silvered mask, no more flexible than a costume. She extended her hand palm up.

He gave her the phone.

“Why should I listen to your plea, Seth Morgan? What makes you special?”

Seth looked at her. She was perfection, and he was…not. What makes me special? He had been trying to figure that one out for most of his life. What makes anyone special?

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Why do you want to be changed?”

“To be with Aislinn.” He paused, trying to find the right words. “She is it for me, the one. Sometimes you just know . No one, nothing will ever mean even half as much as she does right now. And tomorrow she’ll mean even more.”

“So you ask for eternity because you love a girl?”

“No,” Seth corrected. “I ask to become a faery because I love a faery queen, and because she deserves to have someone who loves her for who she is, not what she is. She needs me. There are people— good people—I love and I’m a liability to them because I’m a mortal. I’m fragile. I’m finite.” He felt himself saying things aloud that he wasn’t sure he’d even been able to articulate to himself before, but here with Sorcha in front of him, he knew the right words. “I am in this world. People I care about, the woman I love, friends in all three of the courts…This is where I belong. I just need you to give me what it takes to stay with them and be strong enough not to fail them.”

Sorcha smiled. “You’re a curious mortal. I could like you.”