Melissa Marr - Fragile Eternity

Her brother had existed almost as long as she and Bananach had. He was a tether between his sisters, an advisor to Order, a friend to War. Of the three, he found his the least appealing position, but Sorcha would gladly have traded fates with him. He had a freedom of choice that she lacked. Bananach had freedom but lacked a firm grasp on sanity.

“Forgive my questioning, but what good can come of letting him leave here? Keep him or kill him. He’s just a mortal. His going there will complicate matters. The other courts will quarrel.”

“Seth is mine now, Devlin. He’s my court, my subject, mine .”

“I could remedy that. He introduces risks that are dangerous. Your caring for him is…untidy, my queen.” Devlin’s tone was even, but even didn’t mean safe. His devotion to order was often bloody: murder was merely another sort of order.

“He is mine,” she repeated.

“He would be yours in the earth too. Let the hall take him. Your affection is causing you to act oddly.” Devlin caught her gaze. “He inspires you to forget your tasks. You spend all of your time with him…and then he’ll go to their realm, where you won’t walk. If he doesn’t return to you or if War kills him, I fear that you will be irrational. There are solutions. You can still control this situation. Kill him or keep him here where he is safe.”

“And if that’s what Bananach wants?” Sorcha paused to look in at Olivia. The starscapes she was painting were perfectly wrought—equidistant pinpoints of light with sporadic glimpses of randomness. The touch of chaos in the order—art required that. It was why true High Court faeries couldn’t create.

Devlin stayed silent as they watched Olivia string stars on celestial spider-thread, weaving a frame to anchor bits of eternity for a few brief moments. If envy weren’t so untidy, Sorcha suspected she’d feel it in such moments. Devlin, for his part, was in awe. Consuming passion fascinated him, and Olivia was consumed by her art. She had only the barest tie to the world, moving through it like a breeze. She spoke, but never while she worked, and rarely when she thought of work.

Sorcha stepped back into the hall.

When Devlin followed, she told him, “I want Seth to have his freedom, but to be kept safe over there. I want him observed when I’m not with him. I need this, Dev. I’ve not asked for anything like this in all of forever.”

“What do you see?”

Sorcha didn’t like to talk about the arcs she saw in life-threads. They were rarely predictable, only temporally true, and always fluid. Each choice made the whole pattern shift and refine itself. Like Bananach’s far-seeing, Sorcha saw what-ifs and maybes. Bananach only looked to those that would help her further her goals; Sorcha’s vision was wider.

“I see his thread woven in mine,” she whispered. “And it has no end, no knots or loops…and it shifts even as I speak. It blinks in and out of forever. It chokes mine; it fills in my own where it looks as I had died. He matters.”

“Murdering him before this emotion clouded your logic would’ve simplified things.”

“Or destroyed them.”

Devlin frowned. “You’re keeping something from me.”

When Sorcha opened her mouth to reply, Devlin raised a hand. “I know. You are the High Queen. It is your right. All is your right.” For a strange moment, he seemed almost affectionate as he gazed at her, but then he spoke, “I will keep him safe over there, but you must tuck this emotion away. It is unnatural.”

The faery who had been her counsel for longer than either of them could quite recall seemed to have only the court’s needs in mind.

As I should.

But as she returned to business, she wondered if Seth would like her private garden and what art he would make for her before he left.

Every day, Sorcha came to Seth’s quarters and listened to him talk, and when he wasn’t working, she spent hours showing him as much of the breadth of Faerie as she could in their limited time. He’d miss her when he left. Much like when he’d known Linda was leaving, he felt a dull ache at the thought of going months without her company. It was a maudlin truth, but he suspected he’d admit it to her all the same.

Today, when she walked in, the High Queen had a pensive mien; her moonlight eyes sparkled with cold light so very different from Aislinn’s sunlit looks.

Soon I’ll see the sunlight again. He smiled at the thought of being with Aislinn, of telling her what he’d seen, of revealing that he’d found a way to have forever with her. He wanted to bring her to Faerie with him. Maybe Sorcha would agree to let Ash stay with me during that month. Or visit. He wasn’t sure he was ready to ask, not until he talked to Aislinn, but even if they couldn’t work that out, one month out of each year was a small price. He’d gained eternity with Aislinn in exchange for a few short months.

Sorcha didn’t speak. She simply walked to the window and opened it, letting in moonlight and the thick scent of jasmine. It was day, but in Faerie, the skies shifted at Sorcha’s whim: she apparently felt it should be night just then.

“Good morning,” Seth murmured. He had been up working on another painting. It wasn’t right, but something would be. It drove him, the pressure to capture something perfect, something ideal, and give it to her—a gift to one queen to pay the fee to return to another. What he felt for Sorcha was oddly like what he’d felt for Linda. He wanted her approval. He wanted her to look at him with pride.

But right then, Sorcha extended a hand, and he offered her his arm as expected.

“Manners, Seth. Women always appreciate a man who treats them with manners.” Seth’s father was at the mirror fastening the stiff white collar of his dress blues at the time. The military dress uniform seemed to turn his father into a different person, with a straighter spine and sharper moves. It also turned Linda into a different person. Seth’s mother sat beside him, stroking his hair absently and gazing adoringly at her husband.

“Manners,” Seth repeated obediently as he snuggled into her embrace. He might be in the fourth grade now, but he wasn’t going to turn down one of his mother’s rare moments of cuddling. There was no doubt that she loved him, but she wasn’t usually affectionate.

“Do little things to let her know that there’s nothing and no one in the universe that matters more than she does when you look at her,” his father said as he turned from the mirror. He held out a hand to Linda, who smiled and came to her feet. She was still in her housecoat, but her hair and makeup were already done for the night out.

As Seth watched, his father kissed her hand as if she were a queen.

His father’s lessons on life weren’t always clear at the time they were given, but they were invaluable. Seth tamped down on a surge of longing for his family.

Beside him, Sorcha was silent. She’d led him to another hall and approached one of the numerous tapestries that hung on the walls. Faded threads made the palette more muted than it must once have been, but age didn’t detract from the beauty of the scene. Sorcha herself was depicted in it, surrounded by courtiers in various positions of attentiveness. Couples danced in what looked to be a formal way. Musicians played. But it was apparent that everyone in it was gazing at Sorcha, who sat regally observing the tableau. The real Sorcha—who looked much the same as her rendered image—pushed the weighty fabric aside. Behind it was yet another door.

“It’s like a rabbit warren around here. You realize that this”—Seth pushed the aged wooden door open—“doesn’t look like it belongs in the hotel at all?”