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.”