“Now, why don’t my real Hounds obey so quickly?” Niall had apparently decided to try to lighten up. He smiled, weakly, but still it was a smile.

Seth went over and pulled the darts out of the board. He wasn’t serious enough about the game to carry his own. Niall, however, did carry his own. He had been a faery-but-not-king for too long. As a king, he wasn’t prone to reacting to steel, but that was a very recent change. A lifetime habit didn’t let go so easily. He opened his case; inside were bone-tipped darts.

While Seth selected the straightest of the steel-tipped darts for himself, Niall watched with a bemused expression. “It’s not toxic anymore, but I still would rather it not touch my skin.”

“Cigarettes aren’t toxic to you either, but you certainly don’t hesitate there.”

“Point. The darts shouldn’t bother me,” Niall agreed, but he still made no move to touch the darts in Seth’s hand.

With a comfort he rarely felt around the denizens of the Summer Court, Seth turned his back to the King of Nightmares and eyed the board.Home. Safe. The fact that Niall’s presence in his home of sorts only added to his sense of security was not lost on him.

“Cricket?”

“Sure.” Seth didn’t see the benefit in pretending he was up to playing something more serious. He wasn’t good enough to give Niall any challenge on his best days, but that wasn’t what throwing darts was about anyhow. It was a way to pass the time, a task for focus.

They played three games in almost complete silence, and even though he was obviously distracted, Niall won them all with his usual ease. When Niall had aimed and thrown his third and final dart, he said, “I hope you forgive better than you shoot.”

“What’s up?” Seth couldn’t stop the wave of worry that rose at the Dark King’s carefully neutral tone.

Niall spared him a glance as he retrieved his darts. “Unfinished business. Trust me.”

“I don’t want trouble.”

“I’m the Dark King, Seth, what trouble could there possibly be?” Niall grinned, finally looking almost happy. “They’re here.”

And for a heartbeat, Seth didn’t want to turn. He knew he’d see them—his girlfriend and his competition for her affection—when he turned. He didn’t like to see them together, but his self-control was short-lived. Even though it meant seeing her with Keenan, Seth couldn’t resist looking at her. He never could, even when she was mortal. Aislinn was smiling up at Keenan; she had a hand resting lightly in the crook of his arm. She’d begun to adopt more of the faeries’ formal mannerisms in public.

Niall spoke in a low undertone: “Don’t ever think he can be trusted. He counts the days until you are out of his way, and he has time on his side. I know you love our—the—Summer Queen, but yours is a losing battle, especially as you’re not fighting. Cut your losses before they destroy you, or fight back.”

“I don’t want to give up.” Seth looked at Ash. He’d thought the same thing more than a couple times lately. “But I don’t want to fight anyone.”

“Fighting is…” Niall started.

Seth didn’t hear the rest of the words: Aislinn had looked up and caught Seth’s gaze. She left Keenan and started across the room.

Casually, Keenan turned to talk to one of his guards as if her absence wasn’t painful.It is though. Seth knew that; he had studied the Summer King’s reactions, watched them change as winter ended. Keenan would keep Aislinn nearer him always if he could.

Just like I would.

Niall gave Seth a pitying look as Aislinn approached them. “You’re not listening at all, are you?”

All the air in Seth’s lungs seemed to vanish.

Is itheror what she is? He’d wondered that more and more. He’d never really done the relationship thing before Aislinn, so trying to figure out what was normal was a challenge. Was the escalation of fascination normal? Or was it because he was in love with someone who wasn’t human anymore? He’d done enough reading of old folk stories the past months to know that humans could rarely resist a faery’s allure.

Is that what’s happening to me?

But Aislinn was slipping into his arms then. When she brought her lips to his, he couldn’t care less about why he was fascinated by her, or if Niall’s warnings were true, or what Keenan intended. All that mattered was that he and Aislinn were together. Sunlight soaked into his skin as she wrapped her arms around him.

He held on to her tighter than he would’ve before—when she was human.He couldn’t grasp her tightly enough to ever hurt her, not now that she was faery.

Her hands slid up his spine, and she let a trickle of sunlight into her skin as she touched him. Such boldness in public was uncharacteristic.

He broke their kiss. “Ash?”

She pulled back a little more, and he shivered at the loss.

Like the sun being taken away.

“Sorry.” A light blush colored her cheeks.

He didn’t have any faith in his ability to formulate a sentence yet.

“I love you,” she whispered against his lips.

“You too.” Seth promised.Always.

She nestled into his arms with a little sigh. She wasn’t a queen, wasn’t a faery, wasn’t anyone but his Aislinn then.

“You okay?”

“I am now.”

Not a minute later, though, she tensed. Although Aislinn couldn’t see Keenan, she obviously knew that he stood behind her. Whatever connection they had was growing stronger, and it wasn’t making life any easier.

For his part, Keenan’s expression hinted at confusions he wouldn’t voice. Aislinn’s residual humanity, her ability to switch from ruler to just a girl, seemed to baffle Keenan. Seth had watched him try to make sense of Aislinn’s refusal to distance herself from the human world. It was a strength: the people she saw benefiting from her dedication to rebuilding Summer’s strength inspired her to do more. But it was also a weakness: time with mortals reminded her of the unpleasant differences between mortal and fey and kept her aloof from her faeries. That distance was the source of a rift in the court, a vulnerability that caused more than a little rumbling.