Undaunted, Rika smiled at her just as she’d smiled at Keenan earlier; today, she wouldn’t object to a challenge.
Maili stilled, unaccustomed to seeing Rika ready to fight, but she didn’t move toward Rika. As she had so many times, the solitary faery postured and antagonized, but she never actually started the competition she seemed to want.
Rika mouthed, “You’d lose.”
“C’mon, Rika. What’s say we have at it? Just us . . . and you,” Maili said.
If she were truly strong enough to challenge Rika, she wouldn’t need to surround herself with faeries who toadied for her approval. A true contender for Alpha should be able to act as an individual, should be strong enough to be truly solitary. Maili only played at being a legitimate challenger.
“Rika? Do you see something up there?” Jayce asked from behind her.
Rika held Maili’s gaze and said levelly, “Nothing important.”
Then she turned her back to Maili and the rest of the faeries.
“You’re making a mistake,” Maili called. Rocks and a fine cloud of sand showered down around Rika.
Rika ignored the faery and the debris, looking instead at Jayce, who had taken off his bloodied shirt, baring a well-defined chest and sculpted abs. The shirt he’d had on was balled up in his lap, and she forced herself to look at the bloody clothing instead of at his bare skin. She had to remind herself that he’d already bled because she was interested in him. She’d caused that. No good came of faeries wooing mortals. When she’d been mortal, a faery’s attention had cost her everything. Now, she’d already cost Jayce pain.
She kept her expression blank as she calmly walked to Jayce’s side and handed him the rucksack.
He looked at the sand in her hair and on her skin and shook his head. “You’re a strange girl, Rika.”
She sat down near him, but not too closely. It was silly to react so strongly to the bare skin he’d exposed. She’d lived among faeries for longer than he’d lived, but she was still shy. She’d never surrendered the mortal sensibility she’d had forever ago—or maybe it was simply that she liked him. He’d certainly stripped off his shirt where she could see him before, but every other time, she’d been invisible to him. It was harder to hide her appreciative glances when he could actually see her. If he did notice, though, he didn’t remark on it.
“When cliffs start tumbling on you, you might want to move away from the falling sand and rocks,” he said in a light tone.
He leaned over and brushed sand off of her shoulder and biceps. It wasn’t in any way affectionate, but she tensed. She swallowed, watching his hand intently as it touched her skin. She wasn’t sure she could recall the last time anyone had touched her so casually. Keenan’s touches were never casual, nor were Sionnach’s very rare moments of contact. There was always intent, meaning, so much that was hidden under what was meant to be casual but never truly was. Jayce, however, was only being kind.
When he withdrew his hand, she was trembling as if she were the human girl she appeared to be. Her voice came out very softly and tentatively when she said, “I . . . I wasn’t in danger. It was just a few rocks.”
He paused, almost imperceptibly, but she’d studied him often enough that she noticed. After a breath, he said, “Feeling invincible? A good scare will do that, won’t it?”
Rika made an agreeing noise.
Jayce pulled a wipe out of the rucksack and wiped the blood and sand from his arm. “But rocks falling like that can mean a bigger one is coming down too.”
She ignored the topic at hand. She wanted to talk to him, but the faery inability to lie was making her feel tongue-tied. The age-old tradition among faeries was to use omission and misdirection when avoiding truths, as Keenan had done, but she’d spoken so often to Jayce when he was unaware of her presence that she’d rather skip any topic altogether than misdirect.
“Do you need help?” she blurted.
“I’m good.” He bound his arm, wrapping the bandage around it tightly. “I was up there for a while. You’d think I’d have seen you down here, but it was like you just appeared out of empty air. . . .” His words trailed off as he stared at her as if he was looking at her as her, not a girl he fell on. He smiled at her again like she’d dreamed he one day would.
The temptation was too much: she gave in and touched his arm, not a caress, but contact. “Don’t stand so close to the edge next time, okay? Please.”
He said nothing. Her hand was on his skin, and they were both motionless, staring at each other.
“But I wasn’t too close—” He glanced at her hand, and then back at her. “I know this might sound crazy after I fell and just about crushed you, but do you want to do something later?”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. The last time anyone had shown romantic interest in her was well over a century ago, when she was mortal, when she had no idea that faeries were real. She couldn’t remember how to do this, how to be a girl next to a boy.
No good comes of faeries pursuing mortals, she reminded herself. I can’t do this.
Panicked, she looked at the cliff. The faeries were gone.
“I need to go,” Rika announced, and then she turned and ran, not as fast as she could, because that would be the sort of thing any mortal would notice as Other, but fast enough that there was no way Jayce could catch up to her.
CHAPTER 3
Hours passed as Rika sat inside the cave she’d called home for years. Only one lamp cast light in the shadows, and the fire pit remained cold. The desert heat was enough that she wasn’t uncomfortable, but the chill had begun to creep into her home. Rather than do anything about it, Rika curled on her pallet in the shadows, hiding like an injured animal. Water ran through the side of the cavern in a little fissure, and the sound of it calmed her a bit.
“I can’t risk it. Not again.” She spoke the words to no one in particular. Like most of her conversations, there was no one to reply to her complaints. She’d chosen this life, the solitude she’d found here in the cave in the desert, far from the faery courts, separate even from the desert fey.
She’d tried. Before. Before the winter, before I lost everything. . . . That had been a mistake. Love is a mistake.
She forced herself to remember, to dredge up the thoughts that would help her stick to her resolve. She remembered sitting at a table with Keenan. He had looked human, too. She didn’t know it then, but now she knew that he was hiding his true self under a glamour, an illusion faeries create to mislead mortals.
He holds her hand in his, staring at her intently. She blushes. He’s wearing fine clothes, fashioned from cloth nicer than her best dresses. Even his most modest attire speaks of wealth greater than anyone she’s met. Despite that, he doesn’t look askance at her faded dress—or her plain home. She’s never seen his home, but she’s imagined how different it must be. Her home is filled with simple handcrafted wooden furniture, and not much of it, but it is clean and orderly. She’s softened the sparseness with the bouquets of flowers he’s brought.
“Come with me? Please?” he pleads, and she can’t think of how she could deny him anything. Keenan’s very presence brightens everything, and he wants her to be his, to love him and stand by his side.
Rika answers the only way she can, “Yes.”
He pulls her to her feet and embraces her, as he whispers, “You are the one I’ve been waiting for. You have to be her. . . .”
In her cave, Rika wiped away tears as she remembered the hope she felt that day, the warmth that permeated her entire being. She’d believed that he loved her as she had loved him, that she had found a man who would cherish and protect her.
She had been so very wrong.
The ground is covered with snow, but as Keenan walks toward her his skin glows as if flames flicker just under the surface, the ground at his feet roils as it melts and churns. She knows now that he is not human, that he is something exceptional, a king. She feels like she’s in the middle of a fairy tale, on the verge of her very o
wn happily ever after.
He is barefoot, a golden effigy too beautiful to look at or to look away from. “You understand that if you are not the one, you’ll carry the Winter Queen’s chill until the next mortal risks this?”
She nods. This isn’t the wedding ceremony she’d expected. It’s better though. The boy she’s fallen in love with is a faery, a magical being who has chosen her to love. She’s about to become fey too, because he picked her to be his queen. There’s a risk; she knows that, but they are in love, and love will break the magic spell binding him.
“If she refuses me, you will tell the next girl and the next”—he moves closer—“and not until one accepts, will you be free of the cold.”
“I do understand.” She walks over to the hawthorn bush. The leaves brush against her arms as she bends down and reaches under it.
She sees the Winter Queen’s staff. It is a plain thing, worn as if countless hands have clenched the wood, and she almost hesitates.
Then, behind her, he moves closer. The rustling of trees grows loud, and the brightness from his skin intensifies. He needs her to do this.
Her fingers wrap around the Winter Queen’s staff.
His sunlight warms her, and his radiance makes her shadow fall on the ground in front of her. The heat grows as he whispers, “Please. Let her be the one. . . . Please. This time . . .”
She holds on to the wooden staff as she straightens. She turns to face him, blinking against the brightness that fills him. Until this moment, she has believed, but as she holds it, his light fades away and an impossible chill consumes her body.
Her skin covers with frost, and she collapses. Ice spreads out from under her now prone body, freezing the ground that had only moments before been boiling mud. She can barely move from the pain, and her teeth chatter as she tries to speak.
A very large white wolf approaches her, and she knows that the wolf is as magical as the boy she’s fallen in love with. She rests her face in the wolf’s warm fur, and then she turns her head to Keenan and says, “I’m sorry I’m not . . . her.”
But he is walking away, no longer glowing, no longer even looking at her.
As she let the memories wash over her, Rika felt the tears that were slipping down her cheeks, and she wished that she had lit the fire before allowing herself to dwell on the folly of love. More years than she ever expected to live had passed since those days, but the chill was hard to forget, even here.
“Always a princess, never a queen.”
She looked up at the words, even though she knew who had spoken. No one else had the audacity to enter her home without her consent.
“Sionnach,” she greeted him quietly.
The fox faery leaned against the wall at the mouth of the cave. He smiled at her, flashing her the sly smile that he wore more often than he wore a shirt. Even though he had the only true authority in this desert, he was poised on her threshold like he hadn’t a care in the world. Unlike some of the other desert fey, Sionnach looked more human than Other, but he still had telltale foxlike features. His short auburn hair wasn’t remarkable, but his eyes were—angular and large, those eyes could drown a person. His cheeks were edged too sharply, and his movements were quick and agile, emphasizing the fact that even with his almost-human appearance his actions often seemed alien. The way he stood hid his fox tail from her view, and in the shadows, his pointed ears were barely noticeable. In all, though, most of his features were just enough out of normal mortal proportions that a person wanted to look longer, but not so Other that they were unsettling. The glamour he donned around humans was primarily to hide his tail and ears.
“I hear that pretty boy visited you, and that you were playing with the mortals. . . .” He came closer as he spoke, but he didn’t walk directly toward her. He slid farther into the cavern. Years ago, his peculiar way of moving when he was inside struck her as unsettling, but now she knew that it was simply how Sionnach was: he walked almost sideways into the cave in a skittish way that revealed that he was not comfortable inside, even if that inside was only a cave. He was shy, long ago earning himself the nickname of “Shy” as a result.
“I loathe this den of yours,” he complained as he leaned on a thick stalagmite almost beside her, one foot crossed over the ankle in a pretense of ease. This, too, was his way, posturing as if he were among the court fey. If Rika had not lived among the courts, Sionnach’s carefully casual mien might intimidate her as it did the others in the desert.
“If you hate it, don’t visit.” Rika glared at him, embarrassed that he’d seen her tears even though he didn’t remark on her wet cheeks.
A coy smile came over him. “No chance of that. You’d be even more miserable without me.”
When she didn’t answer, he dropped down beside her, cross-legged, and rested his elbows on his knees. He folded his hands under his chin and stared at her. “What with all of these new habits, are you going to go out roaming with me next? Venture out visibly? . . . Or are you going back with the pretty boy now that he’s not so impotent?”
“No. No. And NO.” She sighed and looked away. Tears blurred her vision again, and she wished that she could pretend to be unmoved by Keenan’s visit and her subsequent encounter with Jayce. She’d spoken to Keenan often enough over the years to be beyond her emotions, but knowing that he’d finally found his missing queen had stirred up old hurt. There truly had been a mortal who wouldn’t suffer for having been chosen by him. Rika simply hadn’t been her.
Without knowing the specifics of what she’d been worrying over, Sionnach knew Rika well enough that he caught her face in his hands and made her look at him. “Temper suits you better than self-defeat, princess.”
She couldn’t speak. It wasn’t often that Sionnach was serious. Often, he’d cajole or tease when she was sad, but rarely did the fox resort to seriousness. She’d heard the shift in his tone just now. He continued, “The Summer King doesn’t deserve your tears. He never did.”
“I know,” she said, but she was still crying.
One hand cupped her face. With the other, Sionnach caught a tear on his fingertip as it slid down her cheek and then licked it from his finger. “Not ice. Not now. Not ever again.”
But I’m still cold, she thought.
She couldn’t say those words, couldn’t admit that she could feel the chill too strongly when her memories washed over her, so she said, “I hate it when he comes here.”
“Me too.” Sionnach lowered his hand from her face and scooted back just a little. He teased, but she’d never taken his teasing or his assurances as something more. Tonight was no different. The fox’s seriousness faded, and his smile grew dangerous. “But, it’d be silly of you to be here pouting while irritable faeries break that mortal you keep watching. . . .”
“What?” she gasped.
Sionnach shrugged, but his eyes twinkled with trouble. “They’re mad at pretty boy, mad at you, so they’re in a mood. You know how they get.”
“But—”
“You saved the mortal,” Sionnach reminded her. “You can’t be surprised that they felt petulant about it.”
“Why didn’t you stop—”
“Your mortal shouldn’t be my concern.” He widened his already enormous eyes in a beguiling look. “You should have enough time . . . if you go now. He’s at the railroad tracks.”
“You’re such a pain.” She shoved him backward, any flash of tenderness she felt for him thoroughly quashed.
In that faery-quick way, Sionnach rushed to the mouth of her cave alongside her. Then he stopped, going no farther, but as she raced past him, he murmured, “You needed a distraction, princess.”
CHAPTER 4
Inside the town of Silver Ridge, everything was faded. In the desert around the town, the colors were the beautiful hues of cactus and desert wildflowers, vibrant skies and impossibly rendered clouds, shimmers of serpents and flutters of birds. Silver Ridge, however, had a weathered tone. Sand and heat consumed everything here, but even s
o, the town had a beauty all its own. The buildings were a strange mix, as if architecture from various times and places had been thrown together in a weird hodgepodge.
Rika remembered when Silver Ridge was only a speck of a possibility, when adventurous miners came here in search of fortunes, when their families put down roots, and when the mishmash of people became a town. The peculiarity of knowing the town’s history so well comforted her as she walked. She’d watched this small outpost of humanity grow in the great expanse of nature; she’d walked among them and drawn portraits of their faces as they came, aged, and died. She felt protective of the mortals who lived there now, but several in particular evoked a fiercer sense of concern.
She stopped midway into town, not wanting to get too close to the railroad tracks that stretched like a line of beautiful poison on the earth. Steel, because it was created from iron, was poisonous to faery. Humans—without knowing why they gravitated toward the steel—often lingered here at the edge of the tracks. A few decades ago, they’d created a park of sorts, filled with metal sculptures and benches, but even before that, mortals had clustered here since the tracks had been installed.
On the edge of the rail yard were faeries who had been stopped by the metal as if it were a wall they could not climb. They watched the mortals: Jayce, Del, and Kayley. Del no longer wore his bandana, and Rika noticed that his blue mohawk now had white tips. It suited him, his vibrant hair against his suntanned skin, but it struck her as being so different from Jayce. Del’s mohawk with its ever-changing color was much like his carefully chosen clothes: proof that he put time into looking like he didn’t worry over his appearance. By contrast, Jayce truly didn’t pay much attention to the way he looked. He had a splash of color in his dark dreads, but that had been a whim. Rika knew; she’d watched. Everything about Jayce was as real with or without an audience; she admired that about him.
Rika passed the faeries, putting herself between them and the mortals. She could go closer to the dangerous metal than the other faeries could because she’d been mortal first, but she still couldn’t walk all the way up to it. Being even this close to the steel made her queasy and weak. Fortunately, the nearby faeries couldn’t approach it either, but sooner or later, Jayce would have to leave the protection of the railroad tracks and thus become vulnerable.