Darkest Mercy Read online

  “I will find you answers, my Queen. Summer is to be happy if we are to be as strong as we need, my Queen. Indulge in your happiness, if not for you, then for your court.” Tavish gave her a pointed look and then turned to Seth. “I am glad you were not killed in the fight with Bananach.”

  Seth quirked a brow. “Me too.”

  “Indeed.” Tavish nodded and left.

  For a moment after the door to the study was closed, Aislinn simply stared at Seth. He looked tired. Dark circles were under his eyes, and his shoulders were drooping slightly. His left cheek was discolored, and his bottom lip had a cut. There were no other visible marks, but she couldn’t see through the shirt and jeans he wore. The shirt, however, did confirm that he’d been to Faerie. Instead of one of his usual T-shirts, he wore a silky shirt that fit him as if it had been tailored especially for him.

  And probably was.

  “I . . . I know it sounds repetitive, but I wouldn’t have vanished without telling you if there was a choice,” he said. “There was a fight with Bananach and her Ly Ergs.”

  “I know. Tavish told me . . . and about Tish.” She couldn’t look away from Seth. “You’re okay?”

  “Mostly. Bruised up, but”—he shrugged, though his eyes gleamed with pride—“after all the training with Gabriel’s Hounds, I held my own.”

  The thought of it, of Seth fighting War and her minions, overruled the fear of rejection, overruled the fear of what could come. If not for me, for my court, she told herself. Happiness is a choice. She wanted to choose Seth; if it were that simple, she would’ve already done so. If it’s between love and duty . . . She still wanted love.

  She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around Seth. The rightness of being in his arms hadn’t ever stopped. For a moment, she rested her cheek against his chest; then she looked up at him.

  Before he could speak, she pulled his mouth to hers. Now that he was fey—and seemingly stronger than he realized—she didn’t worry about injuring him with her affection. Before, she had to be careful not to break him. Now, the risks of a faery loving a mortal were erased. Barring fatal injury, he’d live for centuries. She leaned into him, gave herself over to the thrill of his kiss. It wasn’t a trick or faery enchantment. It wasn’t for power. It was just them.

  And I don’t want it to ever end.

  When he started to pull away, she tangled her fingers in his hair. “Don’t stop. Please?”

  “Ash? Hey? It’s okay,” he whispered in the fraction of space between them.

  She felt his words against her lips.

  He repeated, “I’m okay. I’m here.”

  She didn’t step away. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “I’m here.” He smiled. “Right here with you.”

  “You’ll leave again, though.” Aislinn tightened her arms around him. “War is fighting with Niall’s fey. Your . . . mother would come unglued if . . .” Her words dwindled at the look on his face. “What?”

  “She had a bit of a, umm, grief thing over my absence.” Uncharacteristically, he blushed. “She’s new to the whole emotion thing . . . and . . .”

  “And?”

  “She almost destroyed Faerie.” He bit his lip ring as he watched her face for a reaction.

  Without meaning to, Aislinn laughed. In light of all the threats looming outside the door, of all that they stood to lose, the sheepish look on Seth’s face was too much.

  “She almost destroyed Faerie because she missed you?” Aislinn asked. When he nodded, she added, “Bit different than Linda, huh?”

  “Just a bit. I’m still not sure where Mom is, but”—he shrugged—“they’re just different.”

  “Oldest faery and mortal mother with wanderlust?” Aislinn giggled.

  Seth tried to look serious for a second, and then he laughed too. They stood there for a moment, and the laughter fled.

  He kissed her softly and then said, “I never imagined how much life would change or how quickly.”

  She held his gaze. “Do you ever wish . . . I mean, if you and I hadn’t . . . If I hadn’t told you about faeries that day . . .”

  “I love you.” He looked directly at her. “You are the single most amazing person, faery, woman in this world or the other. Because of you, I am a part of this strange new world, have a second mother, and . . . eternity. I have almost everything I could want.”

  “Almost everything,” she repeated.

  “Ash? That wasn’t pressure. You know what I want from you. Until he’s back and you’re sure you’re able to refuse him, I’m not going to cross that line. He’s your king, and you can’t promise either of us that the temptation to strengthen your court by being . . . with him is over.” A look of regret crossed Seth’s face, and then he added, “He’ll be back, Ash. Equinox is coming, and there is no way that the Summer King won’t be here for the start of his season.”

  “I thought he’d be back at Solstice for Donia,” Aislinn said, and then, before Seth could reply, she added, “I don’t want to talk about him. Actually, I don’t want to talk at all.”

  “Ash,” Seth started.

  “Just for a minute, can we leave all the things out there”—she looked toward the door he’d entered only moments before—“alone? Can we be just us?”

  A look of hesitation crossed his face, but he didn’t push her away.

  “Just kiss me, Seth. Please?” she urged. “Later. Tomorrow. We can tell each other all of the things that are going to cause stress. Can’t we just let it alone and . . . be? I need you.”

  He swept her legs from under her and lifted her into his arms. She wound her arms around his neck. Silently, he walked over to the sofa behind her and sat. She was sideways on his lap now; her arms were still looped around his neck.

  “You could stay here in my arms,” she invited.

  Seth kissed her softly and then pulled away. “No, I can’t.”

  “Did I mention”—she let her sunlight fall around them—“that I want to be with you?”

  As she knew they would, his eyes widened at the touch of sunlight on his skin; his whole body tensed as the pleasure of the sunlight slid over him. Still, he forced out a sentence: “That’s not fair.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to play fair, Seth.” She breathed the words and was rewarded by his arms tightening around her. “Faeries have been seducing mortals—”

  “Not mortal right now, Ash.”

  “Mortals and each other,” she continued, “for centuries. You’re asking me to pretend I’m content with a few kisses?” Aislinn didn’t blush as she said it: there was no reason to hide what she wanted. “I love you, and I want you.”

  He groaned. “Ash—”

  She brushed her lips over his in an invitation. Thankfully, he didn’t resist, so she kissed him for real.

  After only a moment, he pulled away again. “You’re killing me here, Ash.”

  “Good,” she said. She’d bend a few rules, but they both knew she wasn’t going to push him beyond where he chose to go. Love wasn’t to be based on trickery.

  But reminding him what he’s refusing isn’t trickery.

  With sunlight pulsing in her skin, she trailed her fingertips over his chest and stomach. As she did so, she held his gaze.

  His hands went to her hair, tangled there, and held her. “As much as I wish I could stay . . . even if we just do this . . . I need to go.”

  She frowned, but she moved to sit beside him. “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you after. Promise.” Seth played with a strand of her hair. “Trust me?”

  “I do, but—”

  “Please?” Seth interrupted. “I’ll explain, but I need to go now.”

  “Okay.” Aislinn turned her face to kiss his palm. “Maybe afterward, I can convince you to let me lock you away for a few days. I want to. . . .”

  “You’re the Summer Queen,” he said, as if that was all there was to it.

  “Summer or not, there’s no one else in my bed. No one els
e has ever been there,” she reminded him.

  A look of sorrow crossed his face almost too quick to see, but he didn’t point out that the only reason that was true was because Keenan hadn’t accepted her invitation. Instead, Seth only said, “I hope that’s always true.”

  Me too.

  Chapter 12

  The Winter Queen had curled into a snowbank in her garden for a moment’s rest and found herself in one of the dreams that inevitably meant she would wake with tears on her cheeks, but someone was repeating a phrase yet again and the words were out of context: “I am sorry to wake you, but your guests are here, my Queen.”

  In her dream, Donia had been walking toward the boardwalk where she’d met Keenan. Sand caked her feet. A gull cried out behind her. Donia woke. She stared up at the face of the person speaking to her. Evan. His leafy hair was brittle at the tips, frozen by the snow that fell as she’d slept. He wasn’t the one in her dreams.

  “Gabriel and some of his lot are here. Not one Hound, but several.” Evan’s disdain for the Hounds was obvious in both his tone and expression. “I do not like their presence.”

  Donia smiled at his protective streak. She knew as well as he did that creating allies was essential, but he still held old angers at the Hunt. She rubbed her hands over her face, letting the chill in her palms seep out to sooth her skin. Then she looked up at him as the clarity began to settle over her. “And you’ve no information yet.”

  Frost clung to his skin, sparkling on him as it did on true trees. A roar from the gate drew his gaze, and when he looked back, he said only, “I do not want to invite your guests in.”

  “They will not harm me,” she said evenly, as she willed the snow around her to form a throne.

  “With all due respect, they are the Hunt, my Queen.” Evan scowled at the increased growls outside the garden. “They are not the sort of fey we—”

  “I am the Winter Queen.”

  “As you wish.” He gestured to one of the Hawthorn Girls at the door to the garden.

  In a fraction of a moment, Gabriel stood before her.

  To greet him without aggression would be an affront, so she fixed the leader of the Hounds with a stare that would make most fey tremble. “I would not summon the Gabriel himself to ask what I would know. I asked only to summon a Hound.”

  “The girl said you wanted a Hound. I am the Gabriel.” Gabriel bowed his head.

  The other Hounds bowed in turn. They dressed differently from one another—running the gamut from biker to businessman—but the expression of each was the same predatory one. Sometimes it was a posture, a tilt of the head, a wide-legged stance. Sometimes it was a look, fathomless eyes, bared teeth. No matter the garb or the face, the Hounds always evoked terror in a way that defied categorization.

  And Donia knew instinctively that being as direct as she could was the right tactic. She started, “Word has come to me that Bananach took one of your number. That there was a fight with her. . . .”

  “My own flesh,” Gabriel snarled. “My daughter.”

  Donia stilled. “Your daughter?”

  The Hounds as one let out such a howl that even she wanted to run in terror.

  “The Winter Court . . . I offer our sympathy.” She caught his gaze. “How is the king—”

  “I cannot speak of the king’s . . . state,” Gabriel interrupted.

  She held Gabriel’s gaze, ignoring the feel of her fey sidling into the garden. They weren’t a noisy lot, but they murmured among themselves as they came. Their soft voices and crackling footfalls tumbled together in the silence of the garden.

  A thick snow began to fall as she sent her assurances to her faeries. Several rebellious lupine snapped their teeth audibly. They weren’t aware that the Hunt had been invited, and even if they had known, they’d spare little love for the insult of the Hounds standing in their territory.

  Donia looked around, taking the opportunity to assess where her Hawthorn Girls were, noticing the lupine fey and one of the glaistigs who’d joined them. Each of her fey stood facing one of the bulky Hounds. The glaistig faced Gabriel with a look that announced to all and each that she’d claimed him if violence were allowed.

  The Hunt’s baying made enough noise that Donia suspected her words would be unheard. Still, she lowered her voice. “Has Bananach injured the king?”

  “I cannot answer that.” For a moment, Gabriel stared at Donia as if willing her to understand the things he could not speak. Finally, he said, “The Dark Court has exiled her.”

  “Exiled War? For her action against your daughter?” Donia’s incredulity was great enough that she wasn’t sure how to process that detail. Bananach had been among the Dark Court from almost the beginning. Sure, she’d pursued her own goals, but for nearly all of forever, the raven-faery had been tied to the Dark Court just as her twin, Sorcha, was a part of the High Court. They were of a pair, balancing their urges to chaos and order in two courts that stood in opposition.

  “No.” Gabriel flexed his hands, fisting and unfisting them as the glaistig, Lia, eased closer still. “Not just that. Things . . .” He broke off and held out his forearms.

  “I can’t read them. I’m sorry,” she said. The language used for his orders wasn’t one she knew.

  He growled in frustration. “Can’t speak things I would say. Told my king I sought aid. I do seek aid for—” He stopped, growled again. “Can’t say.”

  Startled, Donia stood.

  Behind her, Evan waited. At some small gesture of his, two of the Hawthorn Girls floated nearer and stood on either side of Donia.

  She stepped forward, but Gabriel did not move, so she was all but touching him. Quietly, she said, “I will learn what I need to know.”

  Gabriel’s words were a rough whisper: “I would owe you a great debt. The Hunt would owe much.”

  His voice seemed to tremble in a most un-Houndlike way, adding to Donia’s increasing sense of alarm. Something is very wrong in the Dark Court. She briefly put her hand on the massive Hound’s upper arm. “I’ve been thinking of calling on the Dark Court.”

  Relief flooded Gabriel’s expression. “The Hunt defends the Dark Court. I can no longer stand near the last king, but I will stand with the Dark King. . . . I would protect him from further . . . I would make him well.”

  Make him well? The possibility of Bananach having struck Niall hadn’t occurred to Donia. As a member of the Dark Court, Bananach shouldn’t be able to injure Niall. No one else was truly safe from her, but faeries could not kill their regents. Does exile nullify that rule? Who else would be strong enough to injure Niall? Had Bananach found a strong solitary to do the deed for her?

  “Niall lives?”

  Gabriel gave a terse nod.

  “Is he injured?”

  At that, Gabriel paused. “Niall is not fatally injured.”

  But someone is, Donia finished silently. “Is Ir—”

  “Can’t,” he interrupted.

  And the Winter Queen felt a burst of panic threaten her calm. She nodded and suggested, “Perhaps I should seek out your king to tell him I will stand with him against Bananach.”

  The Hound cleared his throat and asked, “Soon?”

  “At first light,” she promised.

  Gabriel bowed, and Donia walked toward the door to the house. Behind her, she heard snarls and growls, but she resisted looking back until she reached the doorstep. Donia glanced past the Hawthorn Girls and said, “I am sorry for your loss. If a tussle would soothe you, my fey seem amenable to it.”

  The Hound’s expression flickered from sorrow, to rage, to confusion, and then finally to hope. “Can’t bargain anything on my king’s behalf, but—”

  “Gabriel?” Donia interrupted. “The Hunt is not only the concern of the Dark Court. You align yourself with his court, but it has not always been so. I would have you and yours not in sorrow.”

  The massive Hound flashed her a grateful smile. Then he looked back at Lia, and the glaistig launched herself at him.<
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  The Winter Queen lifted a hand to her fey and exhaled, setting a blizzard shrieking through the garden, darkening the sky, and sending hailstones to clatter all around the grinning faeries.

  Then she closed the door against the screams and howls that rent the air.

  Chapter 13

  Evening had fallen as Keenan stood at the same door where he’d once been afraid to knock, where the last Winter Queen had lived. Beira was dead, by his hand, but the lingering fear of icicles ripping into his skin was well earned. For years, she’d shredded his skin—and his dignity.

  The impotent Summer King.

  Times had changed.

  Because of Aislinn.

  Now that he’d come back to Huntsdale, he should be with his queen, with his court, but he’d been gone long enough that a little longer wouldn’t matter. He wanted to be the king that the Summer Court deserved; he wanted to love his queen as she deserved; but the moment he’d returned to Huntsdale, he went to the Winter Queen. For decades, Donia had been his haven. She saw him for who he was, not what he was. Even when they stood in opposition time and again during his attempts to convince mortal girls to take the test, she was his first and last comfort.

  Why couldn’t it have been her?

  He’d pondered a lot the past several months, but he hadn’t arrived at many answers. Instead, he had to face the unpleasant possibility that he brought only pain to those in his life. His steadfast desire to strengthen his court had been necessary, but it had also led him to hurt those he cared for: the faeries he owed the most were also the ones he had failed the most.

  And I don’t know how to change that.

  “Are you going to knock or stand there?” Donia’s voice was as cold as he’d ever heard it, but the Winter Queen wasn’t much for warmth.

  He turned away from the door to look at her. She stood in the snow-covered yard behind him. It took his breath away to see her. Her skin was icy perfection, and her eyes glittered with a crystalline sheen. Her long, pale blond hair was unbound, and her feet were bare on the snow. Touching that frozen surface would pain him. Merely being here made him ache. He shouldn’t be out this time of year, especially in her domain. She parted her hawthorn-berry-red lips, but didn’t speak. For a breath, he couldn’t speak either: his memories never did her justice.