“Why?” It was the only word left to Donia. “Why?”

“Why do you freeze the earth?” Bananach paused, and when Donia didn’t reply, she added, “We all have a goal, Winter Girl. Yours and mine are destruction. You accepted this when you took Beira’s court as your own.”

“That’s not what I want.”

“Power? Him to suffer for hurting you?” Bananach laughed. “Of course it’s what you want. All I do is find the threads in your actions that will give me what I want. I see them”—she waved at the room—“none of these are my possibilities. They are all yours.”

The next week seemed almost normal for Aislinn: things with Seth were right again, Keenan hadn’t pushed her boundaries, and court things seemed calm. She couldn’t continue ignoring Keenan, and it was becoming almost physically painful to stay so much away from him, so Aislinn had decided to simply pretend that the awkwardness of last week hadn’t happened. She might’ve been avoiding being alone with Keenan the past couple of days, but aside from a few very pointed glances when she called Quinn or Tavish into a conversation they didn’t truly need to be a part of…and okay, maybe a few very transparent moments of sudden needs for “girl bonding” with the Summer Girls, Keenan pretended not to notice her evasiveness. He merely waited as she held her faeries to her like a shield. She enjoyed time with them, Eliza especially, but that didn’t explain away her need to go dancing in the park the moment Keenan came too near.

Totally obvious. It was apparent to everyone, but no one had mentioned it. Aside from Keenan and Seth, no one had enough comfort with her to do so. She was their queen, and right now, that gave her an extra bit of privacy.

They all see that something is up though. They are unsettled by it. She had promised herself that she would be a good queen. Upsetting them all was not what a good queen should do.

With a bit of a tremble in her hand, Aislinn tapped on the study door. “Keenan?” She pushed it open. “Are you free?”

He had her charts spread out in front of him on the coffee table. Music played softly in the background—one of her older CDs, actually, Poe’s Haunted. She’d picked it up at the Music Exchange one afternoon with Seth.

Keenan looked at her and then made a point of looking beyond her. “Where’s your safety team?”

She closed the door. “I gave them the afternoon off. I thought I could be around you…that we could talk.”

“I see.” He looked back at her charts. “You have a good idea here, but we’re not going to get very far with the desert area.”

“Why?” She didn’t bother commenting on his subject change. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to talk about it either, but they needed to.

“Rika lives there. She was one of the Winter Girls.” Keenan frowned. “Far too much like Don. She has issues with me.”

“You say that like it’s surprising.” She stood next to the sofa, nearer him than she should be, but she wasn’t going to let whatever weirdness had happened control her.

“It is.” Keenan leaned back on the sofa, propped his feet up on the coffee table, and folded his hands. “They act like I set out to hurt them. I never wanted anyone hurt…except Beira and Irial.”

“So they should just forgive and forget?” Aislinn had avoided this topic for months. She’d avoided a lot of topics, but sooner or later they had to sort it all out. Eternity was an awfully long time to let things simmer. “We all lost so many things when you chose—”

“We?” he interrupted.

“What?” She pulled a chair over and sat down.

“You said, ‘We all lost so many things.’ You were including yourself with the Summer and Winter Girls.”

“No, I…” She paused and blushed. “I did, didn’t I?”

He nodded.

“I am one of them. We, all the ones you chose, lost a lot.” She ducked her head, her hair falling forward like a curtain she could hide behind. “It’s not like I didn’t gain some amazing things too. I get that. Really.”

His expression was unusually closed to her. “But?”

“But it’s hard. Being this. I swear I’m never going to get my feet to stay under me. Grams is going to die. Seth—” She stopped herself from even uttering that sentence. “I’ll lose everyone. I’m not going to die, and they are.”

He lifted a hand as if to reach for her, and then lowered it. “I know.”

She took a couple calming breaths. “It’s hard not to be angry about that. Your choosing me means that I lose the people I love. I’ll be around forever, watching them age and die.”

“It means I lose the person I love too. Donia will only be in my life as long as your heart is elsewhere,” Keenan admitted.

“Don’t.” Aislinn cringed at hearing him say such things so casually. “That’s not fair…to anyone.”

“I know.” He was as still as she’d ever seen him. The sun was rising in the oasis she could see in his eyes. “I never wanted it to be the way it’s been. Beira and Irial bound my powers, hid them away. What was I to do? Let summer die? Let the earth freeze until all the mortals and summer fey perished?”

“No.” The reasonable part of her understood. She knew that there weren’t many choices other than the ones he’d made, but she still hurt inside. Logic didn’t undo sorrow or fear or any of it, not really. She’d just found Seth, and he was already drifting out of her grasp. He’ll die. She thought it. She couldn’t say it, but she thought it more than once in a while. Years from now, centuries from now, she’d still be this, and he’d be dust inside the earth. How can I not be angry? If she weren’t a faery, she wouldn’t be facing a future without Seth.

“So what would you have done differently, Aislinn? Would you have let the court die? If Irial bound your powers, could you shrug it off and let humanity and your court wither and die?”

In Keenan’s eyes she could see a dying star, a dark orb with a few desperate pulses of flickering light. As she stared, speechless, she saw tiny stars all around that dying sun; they were already lifeless in a growing void. She didn’t mean to love her court; if he’d told her months ago that she’d feel like this toward them, she wouldn’t have believed him. She’d felt a fierce protectiveness toward them, though, from the moment she became their queen. The Summer Court needed to grow stronger. She was trying to take what little experience she had and her research of politics and governments to help them grow stronger. She was trying to slowly press back against the imbalance that Donia’s court still held. Her court, her faeries, the well-being of the earth—these were more than choices. She believed in them. Feeling as she did now, could she have done differently had she been in his position? Could she have let Eliza die? Could she watch the cubs all freeze to death?

“No. I wouldn’t have,” she admitted.

“Don’t think for a moment that I wanted what has happened to the Winter Girls and the Summer Girls.” He moved then, leaning forward on the edge of the sofa, and caught her gaze. “I’ve spent longer berating myself for what I’ve had to do than you will ever know. I wanted”—he looked at her as more stars, barely flickering in the void, formed in his eyes—“each one to be you. And when they weren’t, I knew I was condemning them to a slow death if I didn’t find you.”

She sat silently. He was my age when this started. Making those choices. Hoping.

“I’d give them all back their mortality if I could, but even that wouldn’t repair what they’ve lost.” Keenan started stacking the papers on the coffee table. “And even if I could make them mortal again, I wouldn’t be willing to risk offering that same thing to you for fear of it remaking Beira’s curse, so even then I’d be left with the weight of knowing that I’ve taken the mortality of the one who saved me. You’re my savior, and I can’t make you happy.”