Faery Tales & Nightmares (24 page)

Leslie slid her hand into the crook of his arm. “Should I pretend to be surprised?”

He smiled, and all of the tension fled. “Harbingers of my visit or just the fact that I was in town?”

“Did Gabe send for you?” She didn’t look around them. “Someone … else?”

“Why didn’t you tell me he visits?” Niall’s tone was more curious than hurt as he asked.

“Because I want you two to get along,” she admitted. “I want… I don’t know… I just like the idea that you are at peace with one another. That you can be there for each other.”

Niall gave her a curious look.

“What?”

He shook his head. “I’d move the court here if it made you come back to …
either
of us.”

“I know.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “And if he thought it would work, he’d be trying to manipulate you to do so. Sometimes I think he wants me in your life more than in his.”

Niall paused. “You’d be in both of our lives if—”

“I can’t.” Leslie’s voice wavered embarrassingly.

“So…”

She leaned in and kissed him. “So we take tonight for what it is, and then you return to our court, to him. You need him in your life. I can’t live my life in the Dark Court. That’s not where I belong.”

“Maybe there will be someone else who can be king.” He stroked her hair.

“How long was Iri the Dark King?” Leslie kissed his throat. “You know better.”

“I want to tell you to be with him,” Niall whispered. “He could keep you safe and you’d be away from the court … and maybe someday…”

“You need him with you, and I don’t want to be addicted to
anyone
.” Leslie wrapped her arms around him, leaned closer into his embrace. “Sometimes things simply aren’t meant to be. I’m not able to live in the Dark Court. I’d lose myself if I lived there. You might not see that, but I know myself.”

He pulled back and stared into her eyes. “What if—”

“If I thought I could live there, I would,” she interrupted. “Being there with both of you … it’s tempting. More so than I want to admit. I want to ignore the things that happen in the court, not be changed by what I remember. People die. Mortals were killed for sport. Violence is play. Excess is normalcy. I can’t live in that without changing in ways I don’t want to.”

Leslie felt relief at having this conversation finally. She’d expected that she’d be embarrassed by the admission that it wasn’t simple horror that stopped her.
That
she knew Niall would accept, expect, even, but her real reason was less honorable. She could accept the cruelty and excess of the Dark Court, and that terrified her.

Niall frowned. “I wish I could lie to you. I want to tell you that none of the horrible things happen anymore.”

“They do. If you aren’t doing the worst of them, he is. Don’t think that he’s changed. He’d do anything to protect you … including protecting you from yourself.” Leslie kept her voice gentle. She knew that there was one time when Irial hadn’t been able to protect Niall, but it wasn’t something any of them discussed. “He will do whatever it takes to keep you happy, so if you aren’t able to do…” Her words faded as Niall looked away.

“I know that there are parts of being the Dark King that he still handles.” Niall’s expression clouded. “I hate being this … almost as much as I enjoy it. Some of the ugly things, though, deals and cruelties… I can’t.”

“So he does.”

Niall nodded. “There are things I don’t see. If we could make it so you didn’t see…”

She ignored that suggestion. “You know what happened with Ren?”

Niall didn’t answer for a moment. Then he nodded. “I do.”

“I want to be sorry. I want to be the sweet girl you think I am. I want to say I’m sorry that Irial”—she paused, trying to find delicate words for what she knew had to have happened—“got rid of Ren.”

For a moment, Niall stared at her. He didn’t speak.

“I’m not that girl,” Leslie admitted. “Any more than you’re Summer Court. You belong in the Dark Court. With Irial.”

“And you.”

“No.” She sighed the word. “The person I would become in the court isn’t who I want to be. I could be. I could be crueler than you are right now. There are reasons that Irial chose me, that I chose his tattoo, and even if you don’t see them,
I do
. If I stay away from the court, I can be something else too.”

“I’ll love you either way,” Niall promised. “He would too.”

“I wouldn’t.” She laced her fingers through his, and they stood there quietly for several moments.

He didn’t look away. Cars passed on the street. People walked by. The world kept moving, but they alone were still.

Finally, he asked, “So should I go?”

“Not tonight. Can we pretend tonight? That you’re not the Dark King? That I’m not afraid of the things I learned about myself in your court? For tonight, can we just be two people who don’t know that tomorrow isn’t ours?” She felt tears on her cheeks. She wasn’t well yet, but she was sure that she couldn’t go back to the world of faeries without destroying all the progress she was making. Maybe if the two faeries she loved were of any other court, she could.

They aren’t. They never will be. And we would’ve never been together if they were
.

“What are you saying?” Niall asked.

“I can’t return to the court, but I can’t pretend that you aren’t in my life. I
see
you. All of you.” Leslie didn’t move any closer to him, but she didn’t back away either. “I need my life to be out here—away from the courts—but I look forward to your calls, to his visits. I want to talk to him, and I want to…”

“What?” Niall prompted.

At the end of the block, Irial stood watching. She’d known he was there, known that he’d be closer if he could, and known that he had made this night possible. She was safe from Ren because of Irial. She was in Niall’s arms because of Irial.

She concentrated on the tendril of connection she had to him, trying to let it open enough to feel him—and for him to feel her emotions. She wasn’t sure if it worked, but he blew her a kiss.

“Leslie?” Niall looked as tentative as he had when they’d first met. “What do you want?”

“I want you to come upstairs with me. Tonight.”

Irial smiled.

Niall stepped back, but he took her hand in his. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Give us tonight. Tomorrow”—she looked past him to let her gaze rest on Irial—“tomorrow, you go back to your court, and I continue my life. Tonight, though…”

“I can love without touching.” Niall looked behind him, as if he’d known where Irial was all along, and added, “I learned that lesson centuries ago.”

“Tomorrow you can love me from a safe distance.” Leslie opened the door; then, she looked back at the faery standing in the shadows watching the two of them. “But it’s okay to stop time every so often to be with someone you love.”

Niall paused. “You make it sound so easy.”

“No.” She led him inside. “It’s not easy. Letting you go in the morning will hurt, but I don’t mind hurting a little if it’s for something beautiful.”

A shadow passed through Niall’s eyes.

“He wouldn’t ask you to change who you are, anything between you, if you stopped time
there
, either.” Leslie started up the stairs, holding on to Niall’s hand as she did so. “But not tonight.”

“No, not tonight.” Niall kissed her until she was breathless.

And then they let time—and worries and fears and the rest of the things that meant they couldn’t have forever—stop for the night.

T
HE
A
RT
OF
W
AITING

O
NCE THERE WAS A TOWN TUCKED IN
the hollow between two mountains. In the winter, the snows fell so heavily that the passes out of the town became sealed by layer upon layer of dense white snow.

When winter would come, the townsfolk spent long months sealed in their hollow, away from outsiders. Sometimes, it was well past winter before the walls of snow and ice melted enough to make travel safe again. And in these melting times the natural springs overflowed, and the hills grew verdant once more. Wildflowers pushed through the last remnants of snow, and trees burst with new life. Every year, the wait was long, but spring reminded them why they stayed in their tiny hollow. No place in all of creation was as lovely to the townsfolk as their own town.

The townsfolk—often sequestered by nature’s moods—were quite satisfied with their place in life. They had learned the wisdom of waiting.

They grumbled about the difficulties to passing strangers, lamenting the inconveniences of long winters cut off from the outside world, but should a stranger suggest the unthinkable—“Why not move?”—they’d smile and shake their heads, knowing well that one cannot teach the inexplicable.

And it was to this town that the man and his young daughter came to live. Once, the man had lived among the priests, learning dead languages and archaic literature. Once, he had traveled, seeing strange sights and mysteries. But when his child began to walk, he chose this small hamlet as their home. He chose to tend the soil. He chose to bury the remains of last year’s crop—to carefully carve seedling potatoes, leaving at least one eye on each, and set them into well-watered soil.

Those who had been in the town their whole lives murmured to one another—grizzled heads slowly bobbing as they spoke in hushed undertones—and waited.

They did not ask the man in the planting time; they did not ask during the harvest. Nature would answer in due time.

When the frosts came, the townspeople waited still.

Thick snows fell.
Then
, they began to watch the man.

He stayed that first year, the man with his daughter. He weathered the snows without wavering. And in the melting time, when the springs flowed freely, he smiled alongside those who had always been there.

Nature had answered: the man with his daughter belonged between the two mountains; they fit in the hollow.

More than a decade passed. Snows fell, and springs gushed. The crops flourished as often as not. Strangers paused in the late spring to ask foolhardy questions. The world was as it must be.

But then, one year, a young stranger stopped beside the man and his daughter.

The stranger asked the man’s daughter, “Why do you stay here, trapped in this tiny hollow?”

She looked at him, this stranger with his runningso-fast words and his pretty-as-spring smile.

And he asked, “Why don’t you leave?”

Her eyes were the green of lush fields as, instead of the answer townsfolk always gave to strangers, she asked, “What’s out there?”

Gazing into the distance, the stranger offered, “There are sights, unbelievable mysteries I could show you. I’ll be back this way before winter. Come with me; we could travel….”

She smiled. “Maybe.”

Late that night, the man listened to the gurgles of the spring. It bubbled, forcing water over the edge, spilling it onto the soil. The water, cold and pure, soaked into fallow fields.

As he stared into the distance—seeing the pass, that narrow fissure that wouldn’t again fill with snow for many months—he listened to the spring and waited.

Come morning, he began his day—waiting. Each morning that followed, he began his day—waiting. In the years he’d spent in the hollow, he’d learned the art of waiting, understood it in a way he’d not understood the other long-ago mysteries he’d studied.

He waited as his daughter spent all of her time with the stranger.

He waited as his beloved child rushed about, seeing imaginary flaws in the peace of the hollow.

The stranger spoke much, his mouth brimming with fanciful tales of the world’s wonders, things found beyond the two mountains, lessons learned away from the hollow.

By autumn, the stranger became restless.

When the frosts came, they all three gazed toward the pass.

And the stranger announced that he would leave, that she should leave. He told her foolish tales, and the man’s daughter laughed—a sound rushing and out of season, a sound not of winter’s coming but of flowing springs.