Fragile Eternity

by Marr, Melissa

• ISBN13: 9780061214714
• ISBN10: 006121471X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-15
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Seth never expected he would want to settle down with anyone-but that was before Aislinn. She is everything he'd ever dreamed of, and he wants to be with her forever. Forever takes on new meaning, though, when your girlfriend is an immortal faery queen.Aislinn never expected to rule the very creatures who'd always terrified her-but that was before Keenan. He stole her mortality to make her a monarch, and now she faces challenges and enticements beyond any she'd ever imagined.In Melissa Marr's third mesmerizing tale of Faerie, Seth and Aislinn struggle to stay true to themselves and each other in a milieu of shadowy rules and shifting allegiances, where old friends become new enemies and one wrong move could plunge the Earth into chaos.

Excerpts

Fragile Eternity

Chapter One

The High Queen walked toward the lobby with a sense of trepidation. She normally required that visitors be brought to her, but in this case, Sorcha would make an exception. Having Bananach roaming the hotel was far too dangerous.

In the past few months, Sorcha had moved the High Court to the edge of the mortal world, taking over a city block and remaking it as her own. Stepping within that block meant one left the mortal realm and entered the edge of Faerie. Her domain stood separated, divided from all else. The rules of the mortal world—their sense of time and place, their laws of nature—were all moot within Faerie, even in this space-between where she'd brought her court.

It was the closest to the mortals' realm Sorcha had taken her court in centuries, but now that the other courts were shifting, Sorcha couldn't stay quite so far removed. Her being in the mortal realm too long was untenable, but living at the edge of mortality wouldn't alter their world. It was the reasonable path. The boy king was enthroned with his centuries-missing queen in the Summer Court. His beloved was holding the Winter throne. And Niall, Sorcha's almost-temptation, had taken the Dark Court throne. None of it was unexpected, but all had changed in barely a blink.

She ran her hand along the stair rail, touching the smooth wood, cherishing the reminder of simpler times—and promptly dismissed the lie of nostalgia. She'd held her court for longer than memory. She was the High Queen. Hers was the unchanging, the heart of Faerie, the voice of the world removed, and she was the Unchanging Queen.

The alternative—her antithesis, her twin, Bananach—stood in the room. She swayed toward Sorcha with a slightly mad look in her eyes. Every stray thought of chaos and discord that could have been Sorcha's found its way to Bananach's spirit instead. As long as Bananach existed to host those feelings, Sorcha was mostly spared the burden of such unpleasantness. It made for an awkward bond.

"It's been a while," Bananach said. Her movements were tentative, hands glancing over surfaces as if she needed to familiarize herself with the world, as if the tactile experience would anchor her to reality. "Since we've spoken. It's been a while."

Sorcha wasn't sure if these were questions or statements: Bananach's grasp on reality was tenuous on her best days.

"It is never as long as I'd like." Sorcha motioned for her sister to take a seat.

Bananach lowered herself to a floral divan. She shook her head, unsettling the long feathers that spilled down her back like mortal hair. "Nor I. I dislike you."

The bluntness was off-putting, but war wasn't concerned with delicacy—and Bananach was the essence of war and violence, carrion and chaos, blood and mayhem. The Dark Court might be Sorcha's opposing court, but it was Bananach who was her true opposition. The raven-headed faery was neither contained by the court nor divided from it. She was too primal to be within the Dark Court, too conniving to be without it.

Bananach's unflinching attention was disquieting. Her abyss-black eyes sparkled unpleasantly. "I feel less right when you are near me."

"So why are you here?"

Bananach tapped her talons on the table in a discordant way: no music, no pattern. "You. I come here for you. Each time, no matter where you are, I will come."

"Why?" Sorcha felt herself caught in the centuries-old conversation.

"Today?" Bananach tilted her head at an angle in her avian way, watching, tracking the slightest movement. "I've things to tell. Things you'll want to know."

Sorcha held herself still; not reacting was usually safer with Bananach. "And why should I listen this time?"

"Why not?"

"Because you're not here to help me." Sorcha wearied of their eternity of discord. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she simply did away with Bananach. Would I destroy myself? My court? If she knew that answer, if she knew she could kill her sister without damning them all, she'd have done so centuries ago.

"Faeries don't lie, sister mine. Where's the reason in not listening?" Bananach crooned. "You're Reason, are you not? I am offering you Truth . . . is there logic in ignoring me?"

Sorcha sighed. "So acting on what you tell me will presumably cause some sort of chaos?"

Bananach swayed a bit in her seat, as if she suddenly heard a thread of music that no one else could—or would want to—hear. "One can hope."

"Or failing to act will cause chaos . . . and you are prodding me to get me to do the inverse," Sorcha mused. "Do you ever tire of this?"

Bananach tilted her head in several small increments and snapped her teeth as if she truly had a beak. It was a version of laughter, a curious gesture Sorcha disliked. The raven-faery peered at her with an intent gaze. "Why would I?"

"Why indeed." Sorcha sat in one of the innumerable water-carved chairs that her staff had scattered throughout the lobby. It was studded with uncut jewels, ruining the comfort of the thing but heightening its raw beauty.

"Shall I tell you then, sister mine?" Bananach leaned closer. Her dark eyes glittered with a sprinkling of stars, constellations that sometimes matched the mortal sky. Today, Scorpius, the beast that killed Orion, was in the center of Bananach's gaze.

"Speak," Sorcha said. "Speak so you can be gone."

Bananach's demeanor and tone became that of a story­teller. She quieted, leaned back, and steepled her hands. Once, many centuries past, they would have been near a fire in the dark for these disagreeable conversations. That was when she liked to come with her mutterings and machinations. But even here, in the near opulence of the mortal-made palace, Bananach spoke as if they were still at a fireside, the words lilting in the cadence of tale-tellers in the dark. "There are three courts that are not yours—the one that should be mine, the court of sun, and the court of frost."

Fragile Eternity. Copyright © by Melissa Marr. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

---

Excerpted from Fragile Eternity by Melissa Marr
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.