Irial reached out to touch the fabric that divided the two worlds, the veil that now separated the world of mortals for the home of his kind.
He pushed his fingers through the fabric and parted it. The material twisted around his hands, holding him captive for a moment. It had always done so, recognizing him as its own, as if it would pull him back to Faerie. In theory it wasn’t sentient, but one of Irial’s theories was that it was an extension of the High Queen’s will.
Irial parted the veil and let himself fall into the world he was technically to co-rule. Balance was the proper system for all of the fey. Each court had a balance—Dark existed to balance the logic and order of the High Court, and Summer existed to keep the ice and cold rage of Winter in check. There were those outside the courts, solitary fey, and there were those that defied classification. The embodiment of War, Bananach, lingered in the Dark Court, but she wasn’t truly his. Devlin, brother to the High Queen and War, stood at the High Queen’s most trusted. And Niall . . . the faery who now stood as advisor to the Summer King had once been Irial’s beloved, his intended heir, and in his sorrow, Niall had sought haven here in the arms of the High Queen. He was solitary before all of it.
“You dream of your love,” Sorcha said, lowering herself from a swing that seemed tethered to the sky, which for reasons Irial didn’t ask, was currently nearly purple with thick clouds.
The weather here was often expression Sorcha’s moods, so Irial was cautious, as he took another step closer.
“Push me,” she ordered.
There were moments when Irial missed Faerie. This was one of them. He’d missed being around a faery queen who was capricious and lovely and not trying to skewer him with ice-wrought knives. The Summer King had no love or even tolerance for the Dark, and the Winter Queen seemed angry at all times. The High Queen, however, was the sort of mad that Irial enjoyed. Sorcha was both clever and intriguing. He’d spent enough hours and days with her to know that avoiding boredom mattered more than power.
No fey other than Lady War or Death could have more power than Sorcha. What the High Queen sought in their negotiations was something else entirely. She wanted joy and unpredictability. Irial made it a hobby to offer her exactly that.
"Do you have a secret to share with me, Sorch?" he invited, lowering his voice as he teased.
Sorcha cringed at his bastardization of her name, as she always did, even though Irial felt her spike of pleasure at the act. He tasted her emotion, all fey emotions, and it was the weapon he used to know best how to manipulate other regents. The beauty of dealing with the High Queen was that the tightly controlled emotions of the High Court slipped just a touch in his presence. It was, he thought, why she tolerated his visits.
Once he acquiesced to her demand and gave her swing a push—which obviously she could have achieved on her own—he asked, “What shall I convince you to tell me?”
Sorcha smiled. “I have nothing save for secrets. Which one shall I refuse to tell you?”
"Does it have to do with Niall?" Irial stopped the swing and stepped in front of her. He looked into her eyes. Theirs was an odd honesty, a bond they’d shared over centuries. And the Dark King was well aware that she wasn’t this open with most faeries.
“Ask me no questions, Irial, about the things you have forgotten.” Sorcha reached out and cupped his face in her hand. “There was a time you asked me to take this knowledge from you. I will not give it back.”
“I asked to forget?”
Sorcha gave him a small smile. “Yes. You asked. It was your idea, your request to me.”
“When?”
Sorcha stared at him, as if she had no idea how to answer that, and Irial was reminded that time was complicated for the High Queen. She saw the threads of the past, the now, and many varieties of the future.
So he tried another question, “Would the future be better or worse if I knew?”
“Worse.”
Irial was stunned that she answered so quickly. It was typically a hard question, one that took weighing many lives and many potentials. Carefully, he tried, “Will my lack of knowledge create balance?”
“In some time,” the High Queen said.
The Dark King had spent other days, sometimes many in a row, trying to glean truth from Sorcha. “Will she—”
“I cannot answer questions about these halflings,” Sorcha said.
He startled. The High Queen rarely allowed such half-fey beings to live in the mortal world. Cautiously, he said, “The curse was that a mortal girl had the sunlight.”
The High Queen stared at him and in a droll tone pronounced, “Someone chose to bed one of the mortals who would be Summer Queen.”
“Who would dare?” Irial thought about it, the arrogance it must take to risk eternal winter for ruining the terms of the curse. No wonder he had chosen to forget. His rage at such a person must have been intense. He thought about the fey he knew within his own court who might be so bold. Niall? Gabriel? Niall claimed not to be Dark Court, but truth will out in time.
“I recognize the feel of Dark Court.” He watched Sorcha, seeking verification.
She smiled, knowing full well what he was doing, and he felt the laughter she didn’t let slip. After a moment, she confirmed, “No one but the Dark King will notice her ancestry.”
The swing backed away from him, pulling the High Queen backward into the air by way of a pair of long tree branches that had grabbed the sides of the swing.
“Even I cannot lie directly, “ she said. “I will speak plainly: you, Irial, asked me to take this knowledge from you. It was a curse, devised by you, and I placed it on you. You will forget again after this one either is chosen or is not. Your court will forget. The Hunt will forget.”
Such a curse was extreme. What had prompted it? Why had someone been so foolish as to bed the mortal meant to be the Summer Queen?
“Did he love her?”
“Thelma?” Sorcha asked. “Yes, he loved her enough to remake the world. And I . . . cared for him enough to make it so.”
It had to be Niall. Sorcha had always been fond of Irial’s beloved gancanagh. Irial stared at the High Queen, thinking about the questions he could ask. As she hurtled back toward him, Irial let the shadows that were extensions of his court loose. They caught her and slowed her, so that she was perfectly still in front of him.
His shadows held her aloft there and he asked the only thing he could, “Why?”
The High Queen leaned in and covered his mouth with hers, stealing his question and offering a distraction.
The swing vanished, and Irial felt a willow tree behind the High Queen. The branches of the willow draped around them, creating a curtain of greenery that granted them privacy.
When he paused in their kisses, Sorcha was crying. “One day you will have your answers. Between the young king’s choice of her and the future, you will forget again. You must. Do not ask me more, Irial. Do not try to find these answers. Death will come if you do.”
And that was all she would say.