“And then we’ll remind her that the most dangerous faery in the desert is you. . . . Now that you aren’t in seclusion.”

Jayce shivered at the way Sionnach smiled at them as they left the cave. The injured faery was clearly manipulative, but Rika seemed oblivious to it and Jayce wasn’t entirely sure he objected. Whatever Sionnach’s endgame was, for now he’d manipulated things so that Jayce was with the most interesting girl he’d ever met. It was hard to object to that.

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

Rika wished she could have talked to Sionnach without Jayce there, but she admitted to herself that she wouldn’t have felt the need to confront Sionnach without her mortal boyfriend’s influence. He saw Sionnach without the filter of friendship and gratitude, and in doing so, he enabled her to see the fox faery more truly. While she might have been able to understand objectively that Sionnach was impish and unreliable in his way, she also trusted him as she’d trusted no one else in her life. She saw some of his flaws, but tended to overlook many of them.

She and Jayce followed the passageway to the room with her murals. They both kept art supplies in the chamber now. There were easels and wooden crates with jars of paints nestled in straw. She’d only ever let Sionnach and Jayce into this room, and only Jayce had slept there. Quietly, they both rolled out their sleeping bags.

“We could stay in the room where Sionnach is,” Jayce offered quietly. “If you need to hear him so you can take care of him, I mean.”

“I can hear him just fine from here.” Rika ducked her head, bashful even now. “And I wanted to be with only you.”

Jayce kissed her and then said, “I like that plan.”

“You don’t have to use the salve,” she said gently, moving away from him and not meeting his eyes. “They—we—aren’t all good. Seeing them is dangerous, so you might be safer without the Sight.”

Her words skirted near enough to a lie that she felt them like physical things rolling over her tongue. Was he safer? Maili had already stabbed Sionnach, and she’d shoved Jayce off a cliff. Maili was just one faery, though. If the court fey knew of a mortal with the Sight, they might come looking for him.

The Summer Queen had the Sight when she was mortal.

Rika didn’t know if the new queen’s mortal life would change how things were done, and even so, she was one faery regent in a world of centuries-old creatures with traditions even older than they were. She stared at Jayce, struggling with what and how to tell him without making herself sound like a monster too.