"No." He swallowed, looking just as vulnerable and confused as she felt. "I don't want to be without her and without you. She refuses me because of what I feel for you. You both ask me to make choices that go against what I believe I should do. I could be happy with either of you, yet I am miserable and weakened by what we are right now."

"I'm sorry." She felt guiltier than she'd ever felt with him.

"Me too." He nodded. "I'd sooner die than see you hurt, but I don't think I could ever strike out at her. You're my queen, but she's...I've loved her for what feels like forever sometimes. If you really wanted me like"-he brushed his fingers over her still bare stomach-"this, I'd say good-bye to her. I knew that I'd need to do that when I found my queen. She knew. We accepted it. A king should be with his queen. I feel that. Every time I touch your skin, I feel it. It's like-"

"Inevitability," she finished in a whisper. "I know, but I don't love you. I shouldn't have agreed to the healing thing, should I?"

"You were injured. I didn't tell you it would feel..."

"Like s.e.x?" She blushed. "Did it feel like that when I healed you?"

"Not as much, but those were small injuries and it was winter then." His hand was not quite touching her but near enough that she could feel the heat beckoning her closer. He didn't so much as flex his fingers, though. "I wasn't to love someone who wasn't my queen. It was to be you I loved, not her, and you...you were supposed to love me."

Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she wasn't sure if they were from shame or pain. "I'm sorry." She kept saying it. "I need s.p.a.ce from you. I'm sorry...I just...I'm sorry."

Keenan sighed, but he stayed almost-touching her. "I had to try. Our being together would simplify everything."

"But I don't love you. Donia does. If I could trade places with Donia, I would. I'd walk away from our court if I could. If it would fix everything...."

"You're stronger than I am then. I want it all: court, queen, and love. Your being my queen gave me my court but"-he pulled away-"not you. Not yet. This rush of being unbound has made me foolish. I just need to stay away from you until we make sense of the compulsion to be closer. Maybe we need to keep the guards near us, or not stay in the loft together, or...something."

"Will you help me make Seth-"

"No. Never that. I can try harder to give you now, but I won't curse Seth. Even if I didn't want you. In time, Aislinn, we'll explore this thing between us. We are inevitable. For now, though, I'll walk away." He turned toward the door. "I'm not sure how to make us stay apart, but for as long as you have Seth, I'm going to try to be with Don."

"So what next?"

"I confront Donia about stabbing you, and hope that it isn't too late." He looked as injured as she felt as he pulled the door closed behind him.

She stared at the door, and then she let herself cry. She was safe. And alive. Everything had been so overwhelming, so confusing; her entire life had changed, and she was messing up as much as not. Seth wasn't happy. Keenan wasn't happy. Having someone she thought was a friend stab her was beyond what she could handle calmly.

She cried herself to sleep.

When she woke, Seth stood in the doorway of Keenan's bedroom, not crossing the threshold to actually enter the room. "Is there something you were going to tell me?"

She blinked, clearing sleep from her eyes.

"Tavish wouldn't tell me what was going on. The girls were either silent or tearful and hugging me," he continued. "All they said is that you were in here. If you were here because you're with him, I don't think they'd be crying."

"Seth-" She started to sit up and winced. She put a hand on her stomach.

"You're hurt." He was beside her. "Did he-"

"No. Keenan wouldn't hurt me. You know that."

"So who?"

She brought him up to date, telling him everything except how she felt when Keenan healed her, and added, "I guess rapid healing doesn't take away all the tenderness." She showed him her still slightly bruised stomach. "It's mostly fine, but sore. Faery healing and all..."

He sat on the floor beside the bed. "So he healed you. Like you've healed him? With a kiss?"

"Not a kiss. Just his hand." She blushed, and that blush said everything she hadn't spoken.

"Tell me it wasn't a big deal, Ash." His voice was low and pain-filled. "Look at me and tell me that it wasn't intimate for either of you."

"Seth-"

"Tell me I'm not losing more of you to him every f.u.c.king day." He held her gaze, looking for answers that she didn't have. He closed his eyes and lowered his forehead to the mattress.

"Seth, I'm...I needed healing. You couldn't...but I mean...I'm sorry. But we talked. He's done pushing. We're going to find a way to sort it out."

"For how long?"

"As long as you..." she started, but she couldn't finish the words.

"As long as I'm here? As long as I'm still alive?" He stood up. "And then what? I know how he looks when you touch his skin. I know this wasn't...this isn't casual. And I couldn't help you. Again. I wasn't even strong enough for you to call me."

He shook his head.

"I'm sorry." She reached out her hand.

He took it.

"I talked to him...about you. Changing things." She felt tentative as she said it, but she wanted him to know she was trying to find a way. If I live long enough. Lately, it felt like threats were everywhere.

"And?" Seth looked hopeful for only a moment.

"He said no, but-"

"Just like that. Niall's right about him. He'd rather I wasn't in your life, Ash. And someday, I won't be. He'll have everything, and I'll have nothing left." He stopped himself, forced his expression to one that lied to her. Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. "You know what? You don't need this right now, not when you're hurt. I'm going to head out."

"Seth. Please?" Her heart thudded horribly. This wasn't what she wanted: seeing Seth look like this hurt almost as much as the stab wound did. "I'm trying."

"I'm trying too, Ash, but I...it's like having heaven and then finding it slipping away. I just need a little s.p.a.ce right now. Let me have that." He let go of her hand and left.

And she was alone, injured and lying in a bed she didn't belong in. Outside the door, innumerable faeries waited on her every command, but the two people she most needed had both turned away from her.

Chapter 15.

Seth didn't look at or respond to the faeries in the living room. He didn't honestly know if they spoke. Quinn stood and followed him to the door.

I can't deal with him right now.

Seth crossed the street into the park where they held their revelries. The gra.s.s was trampled down in a big circle, the whole of it pressed flat like those pictures of crop circles. Rowan-people milled through the darkness of the falling evening. Summer Girls sat in little groups talking among themselves or twirled like small dervishes around the park. A few of the cubs had a drum circle going. It wasn't entirely clear whether the vine-covered Summer Girls danced to the drumbeats or if the lion-maned faeries played to the dancers' rhythm.

Here, in the Summer Court's park, the world of Faerie looked beautiful.

"You don't need to follow me. I'm perfectly safe in the park," Seth said without looking over his shoulder at Quinn.

"Will you stay in the park?"

"Not forever." Seth sat on a bench that was made from a twist of vines. Some faery artisan had shaped the vines into a braid as they grew. Now, they were a flowering seat. It was one of the myriad amazing things he could see with the benefit of faery Sight.

See illusions. Or maybe see truths. He didn't know. At the edge of the park, a group of six ravens settled in an oak tree. The sight of them gave him pause, but Tracey, one of the gentlest of the Summer Girls, took Seth's hands in hers. "Dance?"

She was already swaying with his hands in her grasp. She was reed thin, but she was still a faery-which meant that she could pull him to her even if he resisted. Tendrils of vines snaked out to draw him closer.

"I'm not really in the mood, Trace." He tried to extricate his hands from hers.

"That's why you should." She smiled as she tugged him to his feet. "It helps you be not sad."

"I just need to think." He had enjoyed the few times he'd spent empty hours dancing with the Summer Girls or listening to them talk. It was like the parties he'd lost himself in. Before-Ash. That's how life was divided: Before-Ash and With-Ash.

"You can think on your feet too." She pulled him away from the bench, inside the ring, and once his feet touched that soil, he was lost.

He could see the stone sculptures and the fountain as she led him into the circle. He could see the knowing grins on the cubs' faces as the tempo of the music changed. Seeing didn't change anything, though. He saw all sorts of things in his life, but he was powerless to remake them as he wanted them to be.

Vines entwined his waist as Tracey came closer to him; fleeting touches of her hands and hair made her seem all the more ethereal. There was nothing he could grasp and hold; nothing was solid.

"You need to let me leave." He said the words although his feet were moving still. "I need to go, Trace."

"Why?" Her wide-eyed expression seemed guileless, but he knew better. The Summer Girls weren't as unaware as they appeared. Frivolous? p.r.o.ne to random bursts of glee? Amorous? Definitely. But they also had agendas. They'd lived centuries, waiting for their queen, watching their faery king struggle. You don't live that long under adverse circ.u.mstances without developing agendas of your own-or learning how to use people's perceptions to support your illusions.

"Tracey"-he backed away from her-"I'm upset."

She followed, twirling to him, and the music switched to a samba beat. "Stay."

"I need to-"

"Stay." She reached up and tore away his charm, leaving him vulnerable to her glamour.

The chain slithered like a living thing as she dropped the stone into her top. He stared at the flower petals that were raining around them.

"Stay with us. It's where you belong." Tracey tugged him into her arms.

Some brief awareness pressed on him: he needed that stone. This wasn't right, but the thought was no more lasting than the brush of b.u.t.terfly wings. The world shifted. All he felt was joy. This was where he wanted to be. Somewhere inside he knew that he shouldn't stay here, but the Summer Girls had taken such pains to teach him to dance the ways they liked, and the cubs were playing so beautifully, and the earth was humming under his feet.

"Yes. Let's dance," he said, but they already were.

Too soon, Tracey kissed his cheek and twirled away, and then Eliza was in his arms. "Rumba?" she asked.

The music switched, and his body moved in time with the beat that reverberated through the soil. He could barely pause long enough, but he did, pulling off his boots so his skin could feel the rhythm.

The moon was high overhead. A girl undulated in the fountain.

Not a girl. A faery. Like Ash.

"Come dance with me, Seth," she beckoned.

Siobhan let go of his hands. When did Eliza become Siobhan? He stepped into the fountain. The water soaked his jeans, soothing his sore feet as he reached out for her. The contact was shiveringly good. I could drown in her. Logic pushed at him, warning, reminding him that she was made of water. He really could drown in her.

"Are you going to hurt me, Aobheall?"

She pressed her lips to his ear. "Get free of this place, mortal. Their plan doesn't bode well for you tonight."

The fountain spray was a thick curtain around them, blocking clear vision from the others. The sound of the cubs' drumming filtered through the crash of water.

"Call for help," she said.

"Call?"

"Who would come for you, Seth? If you needed rescue, who would save you?" She pressed her body to his as she spoke. "I can't. The girls? The cubs? Our king? Who would make you safe from the whims of Faerie?"

"Niall. Like a brother." He pushed a b.u.t.ton on his phone. The water didn't touch him as he did so, only her, Aobheall. He held the phone in his hand but didn't lift it to his ear.

"Where are we, mortal?" Aobheall murmured.

"Fountain." He felt stoned, drifting further into some reality that would keep him untethered.

"And how long have you been in our arms?"

"Forever."

"d.a.m.n it, Seth." The voice was from the phone.

"Would you stay here, Seth? Or would you walk out of the park?"

"Stay forever." He couldn't pull away from Aobheall. With her, with them. He could see them beyond the veil of water. Ash's Summer Girls. They'd take care of him. He remembered being sad before he was in Tracey's arms. He wasn't sad now. "With you."

Seth was still in the fountain when Niall arrived.

The Dark King stepped into the water, and for a moment, Seth was struck by a wave of emotions completely at odds with his true feelings. Niall was a G.o.d. Seth looked at him and couldn't remember ever wanting anyone quite so intensely.

Then Niall lifted Seth's hand and pressed something into it. "You seem to have misplaced yours."

The touch of the charm to his skin cleared Seth's head. He realized he was soaking wet and standing in the fountain with Aobheall-and l.u.s.ting on his best friend.

"You"-he took Aobheall's hand-"are kind."

Her laughter was the sound of crashing water. "Not truly, Seth. If I were kind, I would've suggested you call Niall before I had my chance to dance with you."