As Carissa and Sionnach walked toward the tiny diner he liked, he offered her his arm. He tried to move slower with her, careful in his movements so he didn’t slip and reveal his Otherness. Technically, a faery shouldn’t ever reveal his true nature to a mortal. Exceptions were only to be made in extreme circumstances—a detail Sionnach used to justify giving so much information to Jayce. Sionnach considered the well-being and safety of the desert just such a circumstance; he simply hadn’t quite verbalized how Jayce fit into his plans before allowing the mortal boy such rare access. Rika’s anger over Sionnach’s lies of omission made sense, but once she calmed down, she’d see that his plan had been the only solution left to him at that moment.

She has to.

As Carissa snuggled close to Sionnach, he pushed his anxieties away to focus on her. “I’ve missed you lately,” he told her.

“I worried that you were”—she blushed—“bored with me.”

“For some reason, I don’t find you at all boring.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair, before nuzzling his face against her throat to smell her. Then he kissed her neck, partly so she didn’t notice that he enjoyed sniffing her.

She giggled.

“I like you,” he said simply. “I missed you, but it wasn’t a good time to see you. I had things I needed to deal with.”

Then, before she could ask questions he couldn’t answer honestly, he gave her a proper kiss. She looked dazed when he pulled back.

“Okay,” she whispered.

He grinned at her before opening the door of the diner. “After you, lovely . . .”

Sionnach learned years ago that mortals appreciated it when his manners were theater-elegant. She might not be in pearls and velvet, but she was beautiful and should be treated like it. He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and was rewarded with another adoring look.

A few steps in, she stopped and said, “You realize that we’re at a total dive, right?”

He looked around with feigned shock. “This? My staff tells me this is a prime establishment.”

He led her to a booth and brushed crumbs to the floor. The seat had a visible gash in it, and the tabletop was carved with former patrons’ names. The table tilted just a bit as he put a hand on it. But, like so many places in the desert, there was a defiance in the beauty of the old diner that glimmered just under the surface.

“Your seat, my dear.”

She slid into the booth and looked up at him curiously.

He ducked his head in a flare of instinctive shyness—fearing that he was wrong about her, worrying that she would hate it—and looked up at her through the hair that fell over his eyes. “Is it too awful for you?”