Jayce nodded.
“I don’t know if it’s the weirdness or you saving me or . . .” His words faded, and he took a shuddering breath. “I know I should step back and think because I’m pretty sure that getting tangled up with you is risky. You were in a fight tonight, and we ran faster than is possible, and . . . you live in a cave.”
“I know.”
“I want to know you.” He paused. “If I stay, will you answer any of my questions?”
She didn’t know what to say. She was bound by rules, and she couldn’t break them without either consequences or permission. Jayce was appealing enough to make her consider it, but she would prefer another solution—one that didn’t involve him knowing what she was. She wasn’t looking for forever. Forever wasn’t something she intended to ever seek again. What she wanted was something brief, intense, real for a while. She wanted to burn up under the wanting. If she were a modern girl, a mortal girl from his time, she’d lean up and kiss him, solve the dilemma.
After a moment, she whispered, “Just kiss me. It doesn’t have to lead to anything. Just a kiss.”
Jayce brushed his closed lips against hers. It wasn’t enough. After so long being alone, after watching him and loving him in the only way she knew how, she was finally in his arms and all she wanted was the kiss she’d dreamed of in secrecy. He wasn’t giving her that, so she broke the rules. She said, “I’m not human, but I used to be a very long time ago.”
And then she decided to try out this modern-girl thing: she kissed him thoroughly before he could answer.
CHAPTER 8
After their kiss, Jayce had asked her to explain what she meant, but she couldn’t, not really. “I need to get permission to say any more,” she’d told him. Jayce went back to town, and Rika set out to find Sionnach, realizing that this would be the first time she went to her Alpha with a request. It rankled, and she pondered what she’d do if Sionnach said no.
She wasn’t sure. All she could say for certain was that while she wasn’t sure of the rules for courtship in this modern world, she was pretty sure that lying wasn’t a good plan. So she needed to seek Sionnach’s permission.
She found the fox faery nestled in the shadows of a rocky edge that formed the side of what would become a water hole in the wet season. He wouldn’t be visible if she hadn’t wound her way through the canyon and through a narrow opening. He didn’t quite flinch at her appearance, but he didn’t offer her a smile either. All he said was “Princess.”
Rika smothered a sigh. He didn’t often sink into melancholy moods—or if he did, she hadn’t seen many of them—so she was at a momentary loss. Carefully, she skirted the cacti that flourished here and walked over to stand awkwardly in front of him. “Why do you call me that?”
He shrugged. “You weren’t the queen of winter or summer, but you could’ve been. You aren’t the Alpha, but you could be . . . so, princess.”
She sat down next to him on the ground. “I never wanted to be a queen or Alpha. I just wanted to be loved.”
Sionnach stared at her for long enough that she squirmed. They had discussed her past enough that he shouldn’t be surprised by her words. Maybe it was his mood, or maybe it was because he’d almost kissed her. Either way, she felt uncharacteristically vulnerable.
“Shy?”
“You like the mortal,” Sionnach said.
“Yes.”
“That’s why you’re here.” He looked away from her to stare out at the desert.
Rika frowned. Sionnach had all but shoved Jayce into her arms, yet now he was looking at her like she was wrong to have done exactly what he seemed to want. Cautiously, she said, “I won’t tell him what I am if you forbid it.”
The fox faery nodded, but he didn’t look at her. “Do you remember when we met?”
She smiled. “You were dancing in the moonlight like you didn’t know anyone was around.”
“I knew you were there.” He glanced at her. “I knew you were there every time before that too. I thought maybe if I waited you’d come out of your prison and join me. I wanted you to love the desert like I do. I wanted you to be happy here.”
“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
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?”
