“I am. Now.”
“Because of the mortal?”
Rika nodded.
“If I say no, will you challenge me?” Sionnach asked. His voice was more cautious than she’d ever heard.
“You’re my friend.”
“Is that a no?”
Rika still didn’t have an answer to that question. She’d thought about it, but she had no desire to be in power. That wasn’t her goal. All she wanted was happiness. She settled on saying, “I don’t want to fight you.”
“You’d win.” Sionnach flashed her one of his mischievous smiles. “We both know that.”
“You’d leave the desert if you weren’t Alpha,” she half said, half asked.
Sionnach shrugged, neither agreeing with her nor denying her claim. He picked up a rock and tossed it into the distance. They both watched it hit the ground before he stood and brushed the sand from his legs. He glanced down at her. “You should tell him what you are. I’ll do the same.” He touched his misshapen ears. “I suspect the look of me without a glamour will convince him faster than anything you say.”
Rika came to her feet and impulsively hugged Sionnach. “You’re a good friend.”
“Not always,” he murmured.
She laughed. “For a faery, you’re amazing.”
He said nothing as he walked toward the gap in the rocks that would lead to the more open desert. He stayed silent as they walked toward Silver Ridge. It was only when they were almost at the town that he stopped her with a hand on her arm and said, “Don’t forget that you are fey too.”
At that, Rika stared at him, mouth open but no words coming to her lips. She knew what she was: she’d been mortal for less than two decades and faery for much longer. She wanted to argue with him, but all of her words were close enough to lies that they dried up before she could utter them.
“You have held yourself apart from us for years, Rika. Tell your mortal what you are, but stop hiding yourself away from the fey who live here.” Then Sionnach gestured back at the land they’d just crossed. “Bring him to your den, princess. I’ll be there to help him believe you.”
Rika was silent as he turned and fled. She knew that her insistence on seclusion frustrated him, but she hadn’t realized just how much until that moment. She’d been separate from the faeries in both the Winter Court and Summer Court, and they’d seemed to prefer it. Since she’d been in the desert, she’d assumed that the faeries here wanted the same thing, that her origin as something else bothered them. Faeries had a long history of treating mortals like playthings, sometimes like beloved toys but more often like things that could be discarded or broken. She’d watched them knock Jayce to what could have been serious injury only yesterday. She wasn’t like that—or okay with it.
Still pondering the things Sionnach had said, and trying not to think about things he had left unsaid, she walked through town until she found Jayce. He was sitting with Del and Kayley, and they all seemed to be having a loud discussion about the best way to reach a petroglyph site. When Jayce saw her, he smiled.
When she was near enough that only he would hear, she leaned in and whispered, “I can answer those questions if you want.”
He leaned back to look into her eyes. “When?”
“Now.”
At that, he stood and told his friends, “I’m out.”
Del’s expression wasn’t friendly. “Too good to be around—”
“Stop,” Kayley hissed at him. She flashed a smile at Rika and said, “Sorry.”
“We’ll be back,” Jayce offered. “We just need to talk.”
Kayley nodded, and Del made a shooing motion with his hand. “Go.”
When they reached the open desert, Rika took his hand in hers and reminded him, “Remember to run.”
Then they raced across the desert as they had when she’d taken him to her home the first time. It was an unsettling feeling, as if the ground didn’t quite exist but was instead almost like water. He felt his feet touch and slide, but it wasn’t the same as stepping on solid surface. He couldn’t decide if he liked it or found it frightening. What he did know was that it was different. She was different, and out here where the world was a vast expanse of the same thing, different was extra exciting. He loved the desert, the way the sky seemed to stretch out endlessly and the air sometimes seemed to leave a trace of a taste on his lips. He loved the fierce and sometimes odd creatures that thrived in what some would call an unfriendly land. None of that changed the fact that he’d lived here his whole life and was excited by the prospect of someone unusual.
They reached the cave where she lived, and he stiffened at the sight of her friend Sionnach, who sat on a small ledge, kicking his feet like a child and watching them with an unreadable expression. He’d obviously seen their approach, but he made no move to greet them.
“Shy,” Rika said, her tone holding something of both a greeting and a warning.
He flashed teeth at them in a smile that didn’t look very friendly, and Jayce tensed. He’d thought that the two were friends, but right now, he wondered if they’d argued or he’d misunderstood their friendship. He stepped closer to Rika. Sure, she’d more than held her own in the fight at Dead Ends, but for some reason, Sionnach seemed more menacing than that group.
For a fraction of a moment, Jayce could have sworn that Sionnach’s ears were pointed and—disturbingly—that he had a fluffy fox tail that flicked to the side. He blinked to try to clear his eyes, thinking maybe he had sand in them and it was messing with his vision.
“Something wrong?” Sionnach said in a teasing voice.
“Shy!” This time Rika definitely sounded like she was warning him.
“Seeing things maybe?”
Jayce looked at Rika and then down at his ankles. “Maybe I was bitten.” He lifted one foot and looked at his hiking boots. There were no holes where something could have gotten to his skin. He didn’t feel like he had heat stroke, so he suspected he wasn’t hallucinating. He looked back at Sionnach, who was now standing at the mouth of the cave.
Rika sighed while staring at Sionnach, and then she looked at Jayce. “You’re not seeing things.” She motioned toward the rocks. “Climb up. We can talk inside.”
Mutely Jayce did as she asked. Sionnach was standing inside the cave, his back against the wall and body angled to the side. It was dim enough that Jayce couldn’t look at his ears without going over close to him. He didn’t need to do that though because in the next moment, Sionnach said, “I’m not human.”
He pushed his hair away from his ears, revealing pointed tips. He flashed his teeth at Jayce again, showing sharper-than-normal incisors. Finally, he stared at Jayce as he flicked his tail forward.
Jayce didn’t fall to the ground in shock, but he did lower himself to the cave floor. “Huh.”
“I’m not either.” Rika’s voice was soft, but it still felt loud in the silence that followed Sionnach’s little show. “I used to be. I told you that.”
“I thought it was, I don’t know, a metaphor or something.” Jayce looked from her to the guy with the fox tail and back. “Do you have a tail too?”
“No.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I was human, like you.”
“And now you’re . . . what?”
“Faeries,” Sionnach answered. “We live for pretty much ever, and we have some traits that are different.”
“I thought faeries were little winged—”
“No,” Sionnach all but snarled. “We’re not the things of children’s stories. I don’t know when that rumor started, but we’re not going to throw glitter at you and simper. We’re the things that nightmares—”
“Shy,” Rika cut him off. She sighed and walked closer to Jayce. Cautiously, like she expected him to flee, she sat down beside him. “There are faeries who are frightening, but not all of us. I don’t mean you any harm. I like you, and I hope you still want to . . . be around me now that you know.”
Jayce looked at her and then at S
ionnach. Some part of his mind wanted to explain this away, to have an answer that proved that they were messing with him. The rest of him realized that this was real. He was talking to creatures that shouldn’t exist. He wasn’t afraid, though. Mostly, he was fascinated.
“So why didn’t I see the tail before?”
“Glamour. We can hide our true appearances from mortals, or”—Sionnach vanished and then reappeared crouching down beside Jayce a moment later—“hide from you completely.”
“Whoa!”
Sionnach laughed, turned away, waved over his shoulder, and then vanished again.
“Is he still here? Can you see him?” Jayce asked quietly.
“I can. Faeries can.” She smiled nervously before adding, “But he’s gone now. It’s just us. Is that okay?”
Jayce reached out and traced her cheek with his fingertips. “I’m alone with the girl I like who happens to be even cooler than I already thought. It’s very okay.” He leaned closer and kissed her. He’d known she was different, but he couldn’t have guessed she was this unusual. He was kissing a faery. The thought made him pull back and grin at her. “This is awesome.”
CHAPTER 9
For the next two weeks, the desert fey were quiet. Sionnach had called in what favors he could to assure that Rika had time alone with her mortal boy. Seeing her come out of her shell to be romanced by the human boy was exactly what Sionnach had planned, but as he’d watched them smile tentatively at each other, his heart hurt at the sight—enough that he’d increasingly sought comfort in a mortal as well. He’d let himself grow closer to Carissa, although he’d almost called her the wrong name more than once.
But the more time he’d spent with her, the more Sionnach realized that she was nothing like Rika. The two shared the same tiny stature, but Carissa was lighthearted where Rika was serious. Carissa was quick to laughter, teasing as if she were fey, happy to dance in the middle of the desert. There were no long-carried sorrows in his Carissa, and as the days passed, Sionnach had lost himself a little more in her affection. At first, he thought only to distract himself, but as time passed, he remembered why he had enjoyed frolicking with mortals: there was something pure in the lives of the finite.
Sionnach found himself temporarily enchanted by the girl with whom he spent his days. Today, though, he was interrupted before he could reach his evening date with the mortal girl. Maili had waited in the shadows. She stalked toward him, looking like something darker than should be in his town. At Maili’s feet a mortal teen lay facedown on the ground. One arm was flung out so the fingertips were in the edge of a puddle. The streetlight at the end of the alley cast enough light to illuminate the blood that the boy had lost. The mortal was either unconscious or dead.
“You need to rein it in,” Sionnach said warningly. “I’ve been patient.”
“I get bored, Shy. Before you got so close to someone who used to be one of them”—she wrinkled her nose like she smelled something unpleasant—“you used to understand that.”
“Things change.” He was so tense that his tail flicked to the side. He didn’t bother pointing out that Rika had been fey far longer than she’d been mortal. Mildly, he added, “People change; faeries change.”
“Not us. Not real faeries.”
“Even us, Maili.”
“Not all of us.” She took a step away from him, tucking one hand behind her back at the waistband of her pants, where he knew a weapon was undoubtedly hidden.
“We are strong, and they are disposable. They don’t matter.”
“Mortals matter.” As he looked at Maili, he tilted his head as if his animal nature would let him see what she still hid. There was something more to see here. This scene was too carefully constructed for it to be about a dead or injured boy.
“They shouldn’t, not to us,” Maili insisted.
“If we want to survive in the world today—” Sionnach stopped midsentence, caught by the sight of a silhouette at the end of the alley. He didn’t need to turn around to see that the person peering into the shadows was Carissa.
He knew that the alley looked deserted to Carissa; she couldn’t see him or Maili. She would see the body if not for the fact that Sionnach hurriedly crouched down and touched the boy’s arm to extend his own invisibility over the fallen mortal. In touching him, Sionnach knew that he was dead.
“Sionnach?” Carissa called. “Are you here? I got your message.”
He didn’t answer, and Maili grinned cruelly. Two of her lackeys came to stand on either side of the mortal girl. Carissa didn’t see them either. She was a pawn to Maili, nothing more than an object to force his hand. The boy was killed to set the stage, to clarify the threat to Carissa that Maili wanted Sionnach to understand.
Sionnach didn’t move away from the boy; he couldn’t without revealing him. His tail flicked wildly as he ordered, “You’ve made your point. Leave her alone.”
“For tonight,” Maili agreed. “But I haven’t made my point, not yet.”
He felt the wound that followed her words almost before he realized what was happening. Maili swung her arm up and slashed across Sionnach’s chest with her carved bone knife.
“They are a distraction, Sionnach. You were so busy watching her and hiding him that you didn’t see the real danger, the danger to a faery.” Maili unwrapped a rusty iron quad-pronged thing, and before he could reply, she jabbed it into his stomach. “Faeries have no business worrying about mortals.”
Maili didn’t pull the weapon out of his stomach. She just let go. Sionnach stared at it, trying to determine the best next step. The pain was excruciating enough that he felt separate from himself, as if he weren’t exactly anchored within his body.
Maili swallowed audibly before she said, “Power, strength, that’s what gives you voice. You are weakening because of her, because of Rika’s influence.”
There was no help for it. Sionnach fell, but he didn’t crumple or cry out. He hadn’t become Alpha in this territory without learning to hide his pain. In a sort of slow-motion tilt, he let himself fall back against the wall, and then he slid down so he was reclining in the dirty street. “That was really foolish.”
“Smart, actually. It’s iron, Sionnach. Rusty bits of poison just broke off inside your body. The others will see you like this, an example of what happens when I’m not obeyed.” Maili sounded weak, shivery with either the pain of her own contact with the iron or the fear of what she had just done. She glanced at her hand. In that brief contact, it was already bruised and had raised welts from gripping the vile metal. “You’ve forgotten what you are, and I need you out of my way.”
“I know exactly what I am.” Sionnach slid the weapon out of his stomach. He didn’t fling it away; instead he dropped it in the puddle beside him. He didn’t want to have it tucked between his body and his hand, but he had no other weapon. He’d keep this one near him in case he needed it. Pointedly, he looked from her injured hand to his own. His hand was barely bruised by touching the handle. He was stronger, and they both knew it.
“Think about this,” he cautioned her.
“I have. Rule of might: I have it, and you’re losing it.” Maili’s expression was anxious, but she squared her shoulders before adding, “I just need a chance to prove I’m strong enough to be Alpha. You were in the way.”
“You’re making a mistake.” Sionnach glanced at the mouth of the alley. Several of Carissa’s friends that he hadn’t yet met had just joined her. Despite the worried look on her face, she was safer now, and he was relieved. Right now, he didn’t think Maili would harm her; her goal seemed to have been merely to use her to distract him, to make him look away. It had worked. Nonetheless, he was glad Carissa wasn’t alone now—and therefore not as vulnerable.
Maili squatted beside him, glaring. “You are no better than us, fox.”
“Maybe not better, but I am smarter. Rika won’t forgive this, and she’s stronger than all of us.”
Maili laughed. “Power is only valuable if you
use it. Rika doesn’t.”
In silence, Sionnach watched Carissa walk away with her friends. He wished he could tell her that he hadn’t sent a message and then abandoned her, but there were more important things than a few moments of her worry. Being Alpha in the desert meant that he had to put security and order in front of his own interests. Alpha was a duty, one that he sometimes wished he could hand to another faery—not forever, but for a few years so he could enjoy life more. It had been far too long since he’d had a true holiday.
Maili didn’t understand what being Alpha meant. She saw being Alpha as a thing of power. It wasn’t. It was a responsibility, and the only reason Rika hadn’t claimed it was because she hadn’t had someone to protect or defend. Now that she had Jayce, she was more likely to be receptive. That had been his original plan. Now that Sionnach had been poisoned with a toxic weapon, Rika had another reason to step forward.
Maybe I should’ve just gotten myself stabbed instead of finding her a date. He wasn’t quite sure which of the two had caused more pain. He closed his eyes with a laugh at his own expense.
CHAPTER 10
Since the day she’d kissed Jayce, Rika had been happier than she’d thought possible. He was with her as a real part of her life, and the faeries in the desert had been leaving them alone since that odd night at Dead Ends. She knew Sionnach was responsible for that, but he acted like it was the most normal thing in the world to help her navigate the difficulties of dating a mortal while keeping him safe from meddling faeries.
Today, Rika walked through town visibly with Jayce’s arm around her. Maybe Jayce was what she’d been waiting for all this time. She could finally have a relationship. When she’d “dated” Keenan, it had been a different century, and the Summer King hadn’t ever kissed her with the sort of fervor Jayce now did. Keenan had never touched her without ulterior motivation, but Jayce . . . he was different. When he pulled her into his arms, he wasn’t trying to convince her to sacrifice anything, wasn’t trying to hide his true intentions from her. Jayce’s only interest seemed to be making her forget the world around them—and that was an interest she could happily support.