Free Stopping Time by Melissa Marr Page B

say that I love and am loved by…Dark Kings? Faeries? Monsters? There weren’t words to explain—and the only one there who deserved her explanation already knew it.
    She stood. “I’ll catch you in class.”
    She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked away. She paused after she passed him and whispered, “Good night, Irial.”
    “Be safe, love. I’ll be here if you need me,” he promised her. There was no censure in his words; he gave her the reassurances he knew she needed: that he loved her, that he protected her, and that he did so from a distance.
    Faeries don’t lie, he’d once told her, so listen carefully to what we actually say.
    By every mortal standard, the worst faeries in the world were those in the Dark Court. They fed on the baser emotions; they engaged in activities that the other—also amoral—faery courts repudiated. They were also the only ones she truly trusted or understood.
     
    Irial watched her walk away until he was sure that she waswithin sight of her guards. She grew stronger every week. If any mortal could’ve survived the Dark Court, it was his Leslie. Her strength awed him, even as it manifested in choosing to continue loving two faeries but to be with neither of them. Few mortals had the mettle that she did.
    But being strong didn’t mean that she should hurt. If he had his way, she’d spend the rest of her life cosseted. And that life would be as long as Niall’s. Irial had learned centuries ago that the world didn’t always bend to his will. Unfortunately.
    After he was sure Leslie was far enough away that she wouldn’t think he was stalking her, he walked away from the coffee shop. There were always guards near enough to hear her if she cried out for help. He’d prefer that there were guards walking alongside her, but she would suffer more for that. Their visible presence saddened her, so the guards had been ordered not to crowd her. At least not all of the time. It was a delicate dance, watching her but not being too present. In this, as in so many other things, Leslie was an anomaly. She accepted their guardianship, but not their omnipresence. She accepted their love, but not their companionship.
    Everything on her terms or not at all. Just like Niall.
    He walked only a block before he saw Gabriel leaning against his steed, which was currently in the form of a deep-green classic Mustang. If Irial asked, Gabriel could spout off the year, engine, and modifications his steed was currently adopting, and for a moment, Irial considered doing just that. It would be more entertaining than a lecture.
    Gabriel pushed away from the car. “What are you doing?”
    Irial shrugged. “Checking on her.”
    “And if Niall finds out…your king who told you to stay away from her? What do you think he’ll say?” Gabriel joined him, walking in the direction Irial had already been going. The car didn’t follow.
    “I suppose he’d be angry.” Irial smiled to himself. Angry Niall was far more fun than sulking Niall. If it wasn’t so counterproductive, Irial’d spend more time actively trying to provoke his new king. My only king. Sometimes the fact that he had a king amused Irial to perverse degrees. After centuries of leading the Dark Court, he was monarch no more. He’d returned to what he was before, a Gancanagh, fatally addictive to mortals, solitary by nature—except that Irial had never really been one to follow anyone’s conventions but his own. Rather than resume solitary status, as was typical of former Dark Kings or Queens, he swore fealty and stayed in his court as advisor to his new king.
    Gabriel scowled at him. “Seriously, Iri, you can’t see her if you want to stay in the court…and you know he needs you. You don’t expect him to put up with this, do you?”
    “I wasn’t planning to tell him. Are you planning on spilling my secrets?” Irial stopped and stepped in front of his friend and former advisor. “Tell him the things I do when I’m not dutifully