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Wispy tendrils of frosty air slipped from her lips as she laughed. “There were days when I’d have done anything to hear those words . . . but you know that. You’ve always known.”
He stood an arm’s length away from her and wished he could close the distance, but the whole of his strength was necessary to be this near her. Every drop of sunlight had become essential to face her. If he could, though, he’d leave it at the edge of her domain, so he could reach out to her. “Don, I’m sorry.”
She motioned for him to continue. “Go ahead, Keenan. Tell me the next line. You started this. We might as well go through the whole drama.”
“I know I don’t deserve—”
“Oh, you deserve all sorts of things.” Her voice was as sharp as the remembered tortures that he still dreamt of. “You deserve things that I’m too kind—even now—to give you.”
“I love you,” he said.
Icicles formed on his skin as she stared at him for several heartbeats. “Do you suppose that changes anything?”
“I want it to.” He knelt at her feet, but didn’t even dare touch her hand. “Don, I want it to mean everything. It should.”
“I’ve wanted that for decades,” she admitted. “I wanted to believe that love can conquer all, that somewhere along the line, in the middle of the ridiculous game of finding your missing queen, that I would be loved by you just once the way I’ve always loved you.”
“Don—”
“No.” She narrowed her gaze and stood. The divan drifted away as if it had never been. The ground was a perfect, unmarred surface. “Not ‘Don’ in that I’m-sorry-
and-now-you’ll-forgive-me-like-you-always-do way. Not this
time, Keenan.”
“I made mistakes.”
“Dozens of them. Hundreds of them,” she agreed. “Winter Girls and Summer Girls, a Winter Queen and a Summer Queen: you want the world. You expect everyone to bow to your wishes. You collect our hearts like trinkets. No more.”
Reminding her that he’d done so because of being cursed wouldn’t change the way it had made her feel. He hated Beira and Irial a little bit more just then; the curse hadn’t hurt only him. Dozens of faeries suffered because of the curse, including the two he most wished he could have protected from any pain. The faery he loved and the faery who shared his throne had suffered more than most.
Or maybe I just know how much they hurt.
Still on his knees, he stared up at Donia. “Tell me how to make things right. Please?”
“I don’t think you can,” she said. “We had our chance. You gave up on us.”
I didn’t. He couldn’t say it, though. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t a full truth either. He’d stepped away to try to win his queen, to heal his court.
What else was I to do?
Donia waited; she knew. In truth, she knew everything he would say, could say, and she understood it. She was a regent too. The problem, of course, was that he didn’t know how to give her up.
Even now.
“Tell me there’s a way to be—”
“Keenan,” she interrupted. “We’ve done this already. You failed.”
He looked up at her, holding her gaze, hoping for something that he didn’t see there anymore. “And now?”
“I have no idea.” There were no tears in her eyes, no softness in her voice. “I suppose you return to your court and try to make amends with Ash or you keep running. It’s not my concern anymore. It can’t be. You can’t be. The cost to both of our courts is too high. I’m done with you.”
In the months he’d been away, he’d imagined this moment so many different ways. Her absolute dismissal still hurt more than most every pain he’d known these last nine centuries.
“I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you,” he whispered.
“Lucky them.”
