Chapter Nineteen
Iturnedtogo,andIwasintheSummerCourtnow,followingher.Shewantedtogoreadinthegarden.Ifollowedher.
She turned and smiled at me, and something about the golden light catching her eyes, making her hair shine, like honey on her skin—itmakesmy chest ache. My love. My wife, if only...
There is a ring on my finger that hasn’t left my skin in years. Its cool surface is a permanent part of me now, familiar as my own reflection.
I should have just put my foot down—
We’ve been to so many places together, on both Earth and in the Veil. For all the fantastical sights I’ve seen, I think the Summer Court remains my favorite place of all. The heat is far preferable to the bitter winters of home: the colors of life splashed across every surface so unlike the cold, austere estates that were so inaccessible to me, to my mother—
My mother! I still wonder what she must have thought of me, where she thinks I went. There is guilt, still, when I think of her. How different the world would be if I had stayed.
I should have just told her no!
The Summer Court remains my favorite. Sometimes it still feels surreal to live in such luxury. We have our own quarters, a bath house, multiple gardens, libraries, my own study, and her work room—a yawning chasm of darkness, blood—it hurts—ithurtsithurtsithurts—
I could never tell her no. She wanted more, wanted it so badly that she held too hard and broke it, broke the world—and for what? For me?
For me—she did the impossible once, after all, of course she could do it again. But I remember the witch, how she was certain it wouldn’t work, but wouldn’t dissuade her either. The witch couldn’t tell her no. Who could tell her no? She was a queen, and I was born a stable boy, nothing. Why was it me? What did she see that day that kept her coming back for me, that she might do the impossible to keep me with her? I was nothing, nothing, I’m nothing. She made me everything and nothing now.
And I couldn’t tell her no! If I had just told her no we would have had more time. We knew it was dangerous, but she believed she could, and I believed in her... But look at us now. Look at the world now. Was my life worth so much? The lives of the whole Summer Court, so many fae? So many shifters? The entirety of the Veil? This is the price she paid, and still it couldn’t save me.
I miss her—I miss the Summer Court—I want to go home!
“Don’t lose yourself, Florian,” a woman’s voice—nothervoice—came distantly, so faint it might have been an echo. Florian?
He blinked. He was Florian. He had to hold onto that, had to remember—
“Who are you?” he whispered, but he thought he knew now.
He was standing in the same forest again—no, not him. He was looking through someone else’s eyes. It was the same forest, but a different time—and stepping out of the faerie circle washer, the woman he had seen, Soleil. She was smiling at him, almost shy, almost amused. She was waiting. She had asked him something.
A voice came from his mouth—it wasn’t his own. His heart was pounding—he was nervous. “I’m Thaddeus Brown, ma’am, a stable hand over on the Hershel estate. Are you lost? Do you need help getting home?”
“Not at all.” She laughed as she spoke. Her voice was so familiar, a voice he heard every day for twenty years. His lover, his wife, his queen. He would know her anywhere, even now in this muddle of time and memory. How long had it been? “You are a handsome one, aren’t you, Thaddeus Brown?”
His heart leapt into his throat, blood rushing in his ears. She was the most divine being he had ever seen, and she thought he was handsome.
“Th-Thank you, ma’am,” was all he managed to get out.
“Please, you can just call me Soleil.”
Recognition had dawned on Florian, but this only confirmed it. He tried to pull away, but a wave of grief grabbed him and pulled him back down—not his own, but strong enough to keep him in the memory.
Her name was like the sound of windchimes in a breeze. My Soleil!
I could see myself, then—after it happened. I watched her weep over me. There was so much blood. My eyes were pale, then, the same color as her own. She did it. She loved how dark my eyes were, plain brown eyes that were somehow such a wonder in the Veil where everyone’s eyes glowed with magic. I knew she was going to try it before she did. I was floating away, and then she pulled me back—and that was when it happened, the light, the heat. Don’t you see? It was all my fault. I couldn’t tell her no, could never tell her no for anything. Of course I wanted more time with her. But instead we cut our time short and doomed everyone else with us. She couldn’t let me go, and here we are.
“I know who you are,” Florian—hewasFlorian—choked out.
I know you do. I know you do. I know.
“You have to let me go.”
But it’s been so long—please—don’t you want to see? I could show you, show you everything—
Images flashed by faster than he could process, distant snippets of age-old memories. He was a small boy weeping, stumbling to his feet in the forest—he was a young man bewildered and awed as she led him into another world, the Veil—he was a human amongst fae, none saying anything, only their knowing, gleaming eyes watching how he held her hand—he was consort to the Queen, never a king himself, never truly married—he was an outsider, a foreigner everywhere he went, as they visited every kingdom and nation in the Veil—he was home no matter where he went, because she was always with him—he was so in love, watching the way the sun caressed her bronze skin, her pale eyelashes fluttering as she slept in the garden—he wasdying, crying out her name as hot knives of magic tore him open from the inside—and he was nothing, only guilt and memory flung across the Blight like a haze, waiting to find a tether. He was tethered to so many, but they never went back to the Summer Court—how could they, when there was nothing to return to?
