Many years and many foolish girls later, the Summer King had found his mortal—a girl named Aislinn—and taken her humanity as he had all of the others. This time, the newly fey girl was filled with sunlight, and Keenan was finally radiant with the summer strength he’d been seeking for so long. To herself, Rika could admit that she was happy that the curse was un-made. A world slowly freezing would have eventually killed every living creature except for those faeries who were a part of the Winter Court. It had been a horrible curse, a horrible fate for the world.

But I still can’t forgive him. Not for the loss of my mortality. Not for the trickery. Not for the years of carrying ice in my skin.

Spirals of wind and sand whipped out around Keenan as he stopped in front of her.

“Why?” Rika asked.

“Why what?” Keenan had stilled, but the air around him hadn’t. The sand was uplifted, held aloft by his magic.

It wasn’t really a question she could explain—or one he could ever answer to her satisfaction. Rika’s words were careful, whether out of sorrow or anger she couldn’t say. “Why do you still bother me?”

He paused, and in a moment, Keenan had willed the sand into two chairs. Rika wouldn’t admit it aloud, but the chairs were beautiful: they appeared as solid as sandstone cliffs, like rocks with striations. The sand-formed chairs were positioned at slight angles to each other, as if they were at a small two-person table in a bistro, not in the vast expanse of desert. The Summer King wasn’t quite posturing, but like every court faery he was clearly aware of his appearance. He always had been, even when half of his power was hidden away from him. Now that he was freed, he was positively preening. He sat upon a chair that hadn’t existed until he willed it and waited, looking like the king he was, expecting her to be flattered by his attention and awed by his skills.

She wasn’t flattered. His attention never boded well. So Rika didn’t sit. Instead, she folded her arms over her chest and glared at him.

He frowned. “Is it truly such a chore to talk to me?”

“I think it is,” she said. Fairies couldn’t lie—that rule was as old as the cliffs that stretched out in the distance of the desert—but they could prevaricate or temper their words. Rika stepped farther away from him.