Summerfall by Claire Legrand Page B

everything as you did in your dreams.”
    I thought all humans would be as beautiful and good as I imagined.
    I was a foolish girl. Unforgivably naïve.
    She swallowed hard against the sourness in her throat. “I have betrayed everyone, by loving you.”
    “Rinka—”
    “You know I’m right. We have to stop.” She turned, her face firm, looked him unflinchingly in the eye. Her heart was breaking; she could hardly breathe. “Too much is happening, too much is unpredictable. I can’t concentrate on my work if I’m forever worrying that someone will find us together, or that the very thing I’m working to correct could be made worse by my own selfishness.”
    “Is it so selfish,” Alban said, his voice hollow, “to love someone?”
    “It is when it comes at the expense of others.”
    “And I thought faeries didn’t care about such things.”
    Rinka smiled sadly. “This is different.”
    He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering tenderly on the pointed curve and its array of silver earrings.
    Rinka found herself wanting to say too many painful things. “Do you think Rohlmeyer will obey you?” she asked, moving away from him. “Do you think they’ll find any evidence? I hope they do, and hope they don’t.”
    “I’ve never heard of a bound mage able to disobey his king. And even if he did risk it for a time, I’d imagine the pain would be unbearable.”
    “I hope you’re right,” Rinka said. “I don’t trust him.”
    For a long time, they were silent. Rinka watched the night sky outside, and Alban stood a horrible distance away. Rinka thought she might soon begin to cry. She began searching for the right way to leave him.
    “Rinka,” he said at last. There was a question in his voice.
    “You won’t change my mind.”
    “It isn’t fair.”
    It was a childish thing to say, and yet Rinka found herself agreeing with him. “Not many things are.”
    “I should have been the one to end this. I shouldn’t have put you in this position to begin with.”
    “And I could have decided not to kiss you, but I did, and here we are. You aren’t alone in this, Alban. We started it, and now we will end it.”
    He moved closer; he raised her hand to his lips and kissed her wrist. Took her other hand and kissed her palm. “It wasn’t enough. I didn’t have enough of you. We could have years, and it wouldn’t be enough.” His voice was torn. “Know that, Rinka. Remember that.”
    She nearly turned into his arms, thinking for a desperate moment that one more night couldn’t hurt, but then managed to gasp, “Let go of me,” and he did.
    This was nothing like it should be, none of it. It was not the faery way to refuse love, to walk away from passion. She wondered what Garen would think, what her father would think, if they could feel the agony of this moment. Would they pity her for being so unfortunate as to love a human, or would she disgust them? She couldn’t begin to guess; she didn’t know what to feel, herself.
    When she thought Alban might not speak again, he said, “I’ll miss you.” He cleared his throat, and then, “When everything is different, when everything is better, maybe we . . . maybe this . . .”
    Rinka couldn’t bear the stubborn hope in his voice. “I doubt it,” she said, her voice hard and unfamiliar, and moved past him without another word, leaving him alone in darkness.

9
    T HREE WEEKS LATER, the queen’s cousins from the west arrived, per Alban’s summons. The moment Rinka met them, she knew they would be trouble.
    Alban threw a party in honor of their arrival, and to soothe anyone’s anxieties about perceived tension between the houses of Somerhart and Drachstelle. The Emerald Hall was a vision of color that night—the deep green walls, the gilded molding, the mural on the ceiling that incorporated each of the four royal families’ sigils—stallion and nightbird, sea serpent and dragon.
    Rinka wore the silken gown from some weeks