Sometimes, Keenan mentioned in passing that he’d not had any progress on finding Seth. But we will, he promised. It was only slow because they’d been cautious in their inquiries. Letting Seth’s absence become public could endanger him, he’d explained. If he’s left us, he’s vulnerable. It made things slower than she wanted, but endangering him—is he already in danger? — wasn’t an option she liked at all. Whether he left her by choice or not didn’t matter. She still loved him.

All they’d learned so far was that he’d gone to the Crow’s Nest and spent hours with Damali, a dreadlocked singer he’d once sort-of dated. The guards hadn’t seen him leave; a tussle with several Ly Ergs who’d captured one of the younger Summer Girls had called their attention away. When they returned to the Crow’s Nest, Seth had slipped out, but Skelley had spoken to him afterward. He was safe in his home, Skelley repeated. I don’t know how he left. He’s never done so before. Seth left stealthily; he took Boomer; he sounded excited. The evidence didn’t add up. Did he go willingly? The only reason to believe he hadn’t was that it seemed out of character.

Does it though?

Seth didn’t do relationships. He’d never been in one before her; he was increasingly tense about her bond with Keenan; and he’d sounded fine when he called. He didn’t sound quite right, but telling someone good-bye over voice mail was weird. Maybe he went to see his family. She’d spent hours thinking it through, ordering faeries sent to various locations, having them check ticket receipts at the bus and train station. None of it made her feel any better—or brought answers.

Seeing Keenan was all that eased the ball of tension she felt. Today though, when she walked through the door of the loft, he greeted her with a sentence she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear: “Niall would like to speak with you.”

“Niall?” She felt both fear and hope at the thought of talking to him. She’d tried to contact him the day after Seth had first vanished, but he’d refused to see her.

Keenan’s usually transparent emotions were tamped down so tightly that she couldn’t get any sense of what he was feeling. “After you meet with him, we can go over Tavish’s notes and have dinner.”

She was unable to breathe around the tightness in her chest. “Niall is here?”

The look on Keenan’s face was a brief blur of fury. “In our study. Waiting for you alone.”

Aislinn didn’t correct him as she once would’ve; the study was hers too now. This was her home. It had to be. Immortal only if I’m not murdered. She’d not thought about the finite and infinite until she’d become a faery, but since the change, the idea of reducing forever to just another heartbeat terrified her. The recent threats from Bananach, Donia, and Niall made the possibility of ending seem too real. There were those who could take everything away—and one of them was waiting on the other side of the door.

Knowing Keenan stood a moment away helped, but the trepidation she felt at seeing Niall was still awful. In the first rush of changing, she’d still felt terror, self-doubt, worries—all the stuff she’d hid over the years when she saw the faeries but had to keep her Sight secret. Fear for her safety had faded. It was back now, stronger than it had ever been before.

“Do you want me to come in?” Keenan’s offer was without inflection.

“If he said ‘no’…if he has information and didn’t tell me because…” She gave him a pleading look. “I need answers.”

Keenan nodded. “I am here if you need me.”

“I know.” Aislinn opened the door to go see the Dark King.

Niall sat on the sofa looking as comfortable as he had when he’d lived there. It was familiar enough to ease the tension Aislinn felt—but his expression of contempt wasn’t.

“Where is he?”

“What?” Aislinn felt her knees go weak.

“Where. Is. Seth.” Niall glared at her. “He’s not been home; he’s not answering my calls. No one at the Crow’s Nest has seen him.”

“He’s…” All the calm she’d been struggling to feel slipped away.

“He’s under my protection, Aislinn.” Niall’s shadowy figures appeared and perched behind him in postures of judgment. One male and one female sat on either side of Niall; their insubstantial bodies leaned forward attentively. “You cannot keep him away from me just because you don’t like—”

“I don’t know where he is,” she interrupted. “He’s gone.”

The shadowy figures shifted in agitation as Niall asked, “Since when?”

“Eighteen days ago,” she admitted.

The look on his face was censorious. He stared at her for several moments, not speaking or moving. Then, Niall stood and walked out of the room.

She ran after him. “Niall! Wait! What do you know? Niall!”

The Dark King spared a hostile glare for Keenan, but he didn’t stop. He opened the door and left.

Aislinn attempted to follow, but Keenan restrained her as she tried to pass him, before she could reach out to take hold of Niall.

“He knows something. Let go—” She pulled free of Keenan. “He knows something.”

Keenan didn’t try to touch her again or close the door. “I’ve known Niall for nine centuries, Ash. If he walks away, it’s not wise to follow. And he’s not our court now. He’s not to be trusted.”

She stared into the empty hallway beyond their loft. “He knows something.”

“Maybe. Maybe he is simply angry. Maybe he’s off to pursue a suspicion.”

“I want Seth home.”

“I know.”

Aislinn closed the door and leaned on it. “Niall didn’t know he was leaving. It’s not just me he left.”

“Niall will seek him out too.”

“What if he’s hurt?” she asked, giving voice to the fear she tried to hide even from herself. It was easier to believe he’d left her than that he was injured and unfindable.

“He took the serpent. His door was locked behind him.”

They stood there in silence until Keenan gestured toward the study. “Would you like to go over the notes Tavish had collected for us? Or do you want to hit something?”

“Hit something first.”

Keenan smiled, and they went to one of the exercise rooms to hit the heavy bags and speedballs that hung there.

Later, after she had hit the bag until her stomach muscles ached to the point that she felt like she’d be sick if she pushed further, Aislinn grabbed a quick shower in the bathroom attached to her bedroom. Until recently, she hadn’t felt like it was hers. It was a place to sleep and store a few things, nothing more, nothing less. That had changed after Seth left. She’d withdrawn into the room several times just to hide away from the world—only to retreat from there to roam the whole of the loft, where her faeries were. She needed them, needed to be around them.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t startled to find Siobhan sitting cross-legged in the middle of the massive canopy bed. The spiderweb drapes that hung like walls around the bed were fastened back, pinned by rose thorns that jutted from the posts of the bed. Surrounded by the fairy-tale setting, Siobhan looked like a princess from one of those animated movies Grams had never approved of watching. The Summer Girl’s hair was long enough that tendrils of it brushed the duvet that covered the bed. The vines that twisted like living tattoos around her body rustled as the leaves shifted toward Aislinn.

She’s too pretty to be human. Unnatural—Aislinn pushed away the old prejudices, but not before the rest of that thought was there—just like I am now. Not human.

“We are sad that he’s gone.” Siobhan’s voice was whispery. “We tried to make him stay.”

Aislinn stopped. “You what?”

“We danced, and we even took away his charm stone.” Siobhan pouted, seeming falsely young as she did so. “But Niall came and took him from us. We tried, though. We tried to keep him with us.”