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“How is this going to strengthen the court? I’m not sure—”
“Ash,” he interrupted. Without looking away from her face, he reached out with his other hand and entwined her fingers with his. “Tell me you’re truly mine, or tell me good-bye.”
“You’re really leaving for good if I say no?”
Mutely, he nodded.
“I can’t be only yours. You’ll always—”
The rest of her words were swallowed as the Summer King leaned forward and sealed his lips to hers. Sunlight filled her mouth. It covered her skin and trickled over her like a million tiny hands. Her eyes were open. The blinding brightness of the Summer King as he pressed against her was too beautiful to look away from.
He pulled away briefly, and she realized that they weren’t touching the ground anymore. The air burned, crackling with heat lightning.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I am.” She hadn’t asked to be fey, hadn’t wanted the future she had, but she cherished it now. She was happy—to be a faery, to be the Summer Queen—but she wasn’t Keenan’s
beloved. “We would be making a mistake. I am never going to be that faery for you . . . or you for me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me too.”
And then he kissed her again.
The sunlight pulsing into her body made it impossible to keep her eyes open any longer. She felt like an eternity of languid bliss were seeping into her every pore, and as on the night that Keenan had healed her, she felt too consumed by it to object. His arms were the only things that kept her from tumbling to the ground, which was now far below them.
Aislinn wasn’t sure how long they hovered above the park kissing. She only knew that her king was kissing her good-bye.
Finally, Keenan pulled away. “Think of the soil, Ash.”
“The soil?” she echoed.
“The earth. Think of sunlight falling—” They plummeted, and Keenan said, “Gently. Falling gently, Ash.”
She nodded, and they slowed. “I’m doing this.”
“You are,” he confirmed. “Sunlight isn’t bound to the earth. Neither is the Summer Queen.”
Her feet touched the soil, and Keenan released her. She would’ve fallen to her knees, but he steadied her. Carefully, he helped her sit on the ground.
As her hand touched the soil, vines shot out and wove together into an elaborate flowering throne. It lifted her from the ground, and she looked toward him. “Keenan?”
He backed away from her. “It’ll be okay, Ash. Tavish will tell you what you need to know. You can do this. Remember that.”
She blinked and looked past him to the park. The trees were a riot of blossoms. The hedges had grown as tall as trees, creating a formidable barrier. It was not yet full spring, but the area outside of the Summer Court’s park was in bloom. All through the park, her faeries now stood waiting. She felt connected to each one of them more intensely than ever before.
Except Keenan.
Her gaze went to him. Her Summer King was . . . not Summer. She held out a hand to him. “Keenan?”
He took her hand and knelt. The sunlight that usually pulsed back when they touched, that had all but drowned her in pleasure barely a moment ago, was absent.
He lifted his head to look up at her. “I would hope to be welcome in your court, but this is not where I belong now.”
Aislinn was speechless. The faery who had remade her, who had been the other half of the embodiment of summer, was no longer sunlit. In their good-bye kiss, he had somehow given her the sunlight that had been his own.
I am the only Summer regent.
