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.”

“I could stay,” she offered.

“No.” He made a shooing gesture. “Go get Jayce. Please?”

“Okay.” Rika turned and walked away, but she paused at the doorway and said, “I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

When Rika reached the skate park, she stopped and remained invisible briefly, standing behind the mortals who were gathered there. She felt a strange mix of inclusion and exclusion around Jayce’s friends. On the other side of a wire-mesh fence—coated steel far too toxic for a faery to touch—Jayce sat with Del on metal bleachers while Kayley was on a vertical half-pipe. The boys watched her. Del’s skateboard was propped next to him, but neither of the boys took it out to the ramps. Kayley was the artist here.

Jayce grinned at Del as Kayley executed another nice trick. Several other people noticed her prowess as well. “Your girl would shame me if I went out there,” Jayce said.

Del preened. “She shames me. I swear I’m going to get as good as her, but she comes out harder every time.”

They watched her for a moment, and Rika was struck at how different they were from the men she’d known in her human life—and the faeries she knew in the courts. Keenan had believed that women were to be delicate, that men were to be better at every act of skill. Rika had tried to be that, even after she was fey. It hadn’t worked. She smiled to herself at the thought of Donia, the girl who’d become Winter Queen. She wasn’t ever meek, and from the rumors that had made their way to the desert so far, neither was the Summer Queen. Not for the first time, Rika hoped that both formerly mortal faeries were making Keenan squirm.

On the other side of the chain fence, Del and Jayce continued to discuss Kayley. “She outskates me, but on a climb”—Del grinned at Jayce—“I get her back.”