Desert Tales: A Wicked Lovely Companion Novel

The water was ice cold, a fact for which she had been grateful earlier when the fever had threatened to burn Sionnach’s skin. She carried it over to him and resumed her seat on the ground. “He’s a smart mortal.”

Sionnach opened his mouth to object, but instead, he let out a small sound of pain as the skin of his arm started pulsing, like something alive was squirming under it. He blanched as he looked at his arm. “She was clever this time.”

“No. She was stupid.” Rika tried to keep her now rising temper in check. He had confirmed that it was Maili who’d stabbed him. With a calm she didn’t quite feel, Rika lifted the tiny bone knife and made a small incision in his arm. Her face emotionless, she plucked the minuscule fleck of rusty metal out and quickly dropped it into the ceramic bowl with the two other tiny pieces of metal already in it.

“Three for luck.” She took the bowl away, and after discarding the poison, she retrieved a new but tattered cloth and a bowl of clean water. As she walked back to his side, she said, “You know we can’t ignore something like this.”

Despite how haggard he looked, Sionnach’s smile suddenly became a familiar tricksy one, the expression she’d seen so often and feared she’d never see again. Even sick and on his back, he was spirited, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“We?” he repeated. “There’s a we in this, princess? I thought you were unwilling to get involved in faery politics?”

Carefully not looking at him, she sat on the ground next to the bed where he was recovering, dipped the cloth into the bowl of water, and then squeezed out the excess. His words forced her to face the part of being a faery that she had tried for years to avoid, but in the past few weeks, she’d been drawn into the world of faery politics and conflicts. First, Maili’d struck Jayce, then she’d fought with Rika, and now she’d stabbed Sionnach.

Sionnach didn’t speak as she wiped away the fresh blood on his arm with the wet rag in her hand. He watched her motions, but avoided looking into her eyes. She’d had enough conversations with him over the past few years that she knew that he was merely waiting for her to admit what she’d rather not say. This alone she knew with complete certainty when it came to the fox faery: he was wily and patient.

She rinsed the blood from the rag in her hand, looking at the water rather than him, and said, “I don’t seem to have many choices right now. The only other faery strong enough to hold order in the desert is bleeding in my bed.”

“And, sadly, far too weak for either of us to enjoy my being here . . .”

Her gaze snapped to him, and her cheeks colored with embarrassment. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why? It’s who I am.”

“But it’s not . . . we’re not . . .” She tried to look stern as she wiped blood from his stomach, looking at her hand rather than at his face. “You just shouldn’t say things like that, Sionnach.”

“So it’s Sionnach now, not Shy?” he murmured.

She met his gaze. “I can’t . . . we’re not like that.”

He looked serious now. He put his hand over hers, keeping her from escaping. “I know. You need a relationship without any ulterior motives. I knew that Jayce could give you that. I can’t.”

She paused, processing the implications of his words and the feel of his hand on hers. If she were more fey, she’d focus on the offer that he wasn’t making, at the admission he wasn’t speaking, but she couldn’t think about that. Her body tensed as if she were poised to flee. All she said was, “So you have ulterior motives?”

“Always.” Sionnach didn’t look the least bit apologetic—nor did he remove his hand from hers.

“Will you tell me what they are?”

“Someday.” His tricksy smile returned, chasing away the seriousness that felt strangely heavy between them. “Some of them.”

“How am I to trust you then?”

Sionnach squeezed her hand once and then entwined his fingers with hers. He pulled her hand away from his bare skin but held on to her, keeping her from retreating. “You aren’t to trust me . . . not on everything. Trust your instincts. Trust your judgment.”

“You’re—”

“A faery by blood,” he interrupted. “Just like Keenan.”

She wasn’t sure what Sionnach was admitting—that he was manipulative, capricious, deceitful?—but she did know that nothing she could think of was particularly comforting. Trusting a faery was what had gotten her into this strange world; it was why she had never had the mortal life that she’d wanted. Despite all of that, she did trust Sionnach. He was the closest friend she’d ever had in either her mortal or fey lives.

Sionnach used his grasp on her hand to turn her arm and then kissed the underside of her wrist where her pulse was thudding. “And, like the Summer King, I’ve never been prone to lingering; that’s why I didn’t try to get in your bed when we met. Jayce is good for you right now. I’m not. Not in that way. . . .”

Despite having known Sionnach for years, she felt off-kilter. She hadn’t felt like a human girl for a very long time, but Sionnach was right in that she didn’t want to be cast away as if she were unimportant. At the same time, she felt foolish that she hadn’t realized that Sionnach had genuinely looked at her in any way other than as a friend. He’d flirted for years, but he was a fox faery. It was his nature. She’d thought he might have had such thoughts a couple of weeks ago on the night when he wore Jayce’s face and pretended he would kiss her—and the next day—but then he’d helped her explain what she was to Jayce.

“You wanted me to be with Jayce,” she half protested. It seemed odd that he would admit that he’d thought of her in a way other than friends, yet continue to push her toward Jayce. She wasn’t sure what to think, but she was unsettled by the realizations that Sionnach was eliciting—and the way he watched her.

“Go get Jayce, Rika,” Sionnach said gently as he released his hold on her hand. “I’m fine for the few moments you’ll be away, and you have the mortal boy you wanted.”

Rika was silent as she watched him. She ran her recently freed fingers around the top rim of the water bowl. “I care for you, but I love him. He doesn’t know, but I fell in love before he knew I existed. I just want that, to be loved—even though loving mortals is foolish.”

“Love—even with such finite creatures—is everything, Rika,” Sionnach said gently. “He’s what I want for you, and I’m sure you’re worried about him. Just go fetch him. Please?”

“Why?”

Sionnach pushed himself into a sitting position and reached out to take her hand from the bowl she now clutched tightly. She let go of it and instead busied herself putting extra pillows behind him so he was propped up on them.

“Why?” she repeated. “Why do you want me to be with Jayce if you . . .” She felt stupid, trying to verbalize what he didn’t say.

“There’s a price for spilling secrets,” he warned her.

“I know what you are, Shy. I’ve known since we met. ‘Fox faeries are equally loyal and deceitful,’” Rika said it as if she was reading it from a page. She shook her head. “I had a lot of time to read when I was hiding out here those first years—and even more before . . . when I carried winter. Cursed faeries are solitary faeries. Formerly mortal faeries are even more so.”

Sionnach looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.

Rika picked up the knife from the floor, buying a moment to hide her hurt expression. She handed the knife to him hilt first. “I’ve always known what and who you were, but I still trusted you. I do trust you.”

“You probably shouldn’t,” he said, but he looked happier than he usually did—not secretive, not tricksy, just genuinely happy.

Rika shrugged. “It sounds like I should. You just admitted that you cared enough not to seduce me.”

“What I need from you matters more than sex.” He gave her an impish grin before adding, “You’re awfully scrawny anyhow. I usually like—”

“I know.” She held up a hand, grateful that he’d resorted to his usual lighthearted ways. “I’ve heard enough stories.”

Sionnach laughed, and then he promptly put a hand atop his injury. “Ouch . . . I’ll stay right here and”—he glanced down at his wounds and scowled—“not laugh while you’re gone.”