“Did you realize that he was asking Niall to watch over you back then because Niall was . . . addictive?” Aislinn hadn’t really thought much about it at the time. She’d barely been making sense of her own changes at the time.
“Not at first. No idea why him, but when I started thinking things that weren’t my sort of taste, I knew something was weird.” Seth shrugged. “We’re cool, though. Friends, and since I’m not mortal anymore, it worked out. Don’t really like what Sunshine was willing to do to get rid of me, though. That sort of addiction kills people, you know?”
“My great-grandfather. . . he addicted Thelma. That’s what it had to be, right?”
“Irial wasn’t like that because he was a king at the time,” Seth reminded her. “He wasn’t addictive to your great-gran. Your uncle is simply batshit to ignore that detail. Hehasto know that his mother didn’t die because Iri loved her. Logically—”
“Not everyone is logical,” Aislinn pointed out.
When Seth was silent, she caught his gaze. There was no doubt that he was hiding something.Logical.That was a hint. He said that word because he couldn’t outright say it.
“Sorcha is involved,” Aislinn muttered. “I fucking hate politics.”
“Pretty good at them, though.” Seth grinned. “You sussed that out with a single clue.”
The Summer Queen rolled her eyes.
“You’re the rightful Queen of Summer, Ash.” Seth brushed her hair away from her face, letting the strands fall like silk through his fingers. “You’re willing to do whatever it takes to protect them, even walk away.”
“Keenan did the same.”
Seth snorted. “Yeah, and at the final battle with that feathered menace, what did he do?”
Aislinn sighed. “Protected Donia.”
“Abandoned everyone,” Seth said.
“Same thing, though, wasn’t it?” Aislinn glared at her love. “Would you let the world burn for me?”
“I’m not a king,” Seth evaded, stabbing her heart with his words. “And you know better than to ask me that. If Sorcha thought I might die over here, she’d wall me up like a pet.”
The thought of the High Queen’s fondness for Seth, her adopted son, was enough to make Aislinn gnash her teeth. She was the one regent that they all had to fear. The oldest faery, the least sane now that her twin was dead, and she’d picked Seth to mother. Of all the mortal to pick, she’d bonded with Seth. The upside was that he was half-immortal now, but the downside was that no one could surmise what half of eternal meant—or what risks her love posed for all of them.
“I wanted this,” Seth reminded her. “Chose a curse to be with you.”
“And the High Queen would crush me like I was a sliver of glass if I spoke against her weird bond with you,” Aislinn added. “I know the rules.”
“So . . .?”
Aislinn sighed. “I appreciate the clue you carried back from Faerie. I appreciate that she lets you come home to me. I just sort of hate the whole mess sometimes.”
Seth smothered a smile. “Says the temperamental Summer Queen with the Dark King’s heritage in the mix . . .”
“Oh hush!” Aislinn poked him in the side. “I’m serious, Seth. Maybe I’m not cut out for being a queen.”
He propped himself up on one arm and stared down at her. “Or maybe it’s still new, and you have a bit of post-traumatic stress because there was a faery war, and you’re in your twenties dealing with these things when every other regent is, I don’t know, a hundred or thousand years old.”
“Fair,” she admitted in a quiet voice. “I still don’t like it.”
“I know.” He kissed her forehead. “But you are amazing. As a queen. As a woman. You are everything good and bright, Ash.”
“And this is why my advisor sometimes shrugs and says ‘go see Seth.’” She smiled. “You make the impossible seem possible, Seth.”
He stroked her arms and said nothing.
So she took a deep breath and admitted, “I hate how often you leave me. I hate everything about that. I don’t want to feel like I’m your last priority . . .”
Seth toyed with the piercing in his lip, staring at her, weighing words he wasn’t saying. When he replied, it was only to say, “I love you, Ash.”