He stepped closer to her, reached out, and stroked her face. “I’ll do it. I can pretend not to see them if I have to. It makes it easier on you if I can see threats near me, right?”

She nodded.

“Tomorrow then.” He wrapped his arms around her. He comforted her, erased her nervousness, and it took but a moment.

Rika motioned toward a blank section of the cave and offered, “You could do one of the open spots if you wanted.”

“I’d feel weird defacing—” He stopped himself. “Not that what you did was . . . I mean—”

“I’ve lived here for a very long time. I didn’t have access to many other supplies when I came here. Most faeries can’t create art.” She shrugged, trying not to make too much of her difference even though it was something that filled her with pride.

“Why can you create?”

“Because I used to be human, I guess.” She looked at the bit of the wall visible in the firelight. “I don’t know what I’d have done without my art.”

He stepped away from the sleeping bag and stood nearer to her, his gaze taking in the portraits on the wall. Miners and farmers stared back at them as if the past could look into the present. Buildings filled the spaces around them; most were ones that had long since fallen under the weight of time and nature. “What was it like here? When you came?”

“Emptier. There were some humans here already, but the others that came and built small mortal towns were often violent.” She thought about other faces and places long gone, of a home she’d known on another continent, of other towns that she’d visited before the desert. There she’d felt too crowded by the mortals that she was no longer like. Here in the desert, she’d discovered open spaces. Even so, the people had frightened her. She admitted, “Some of the people who came here were interesting for a heartbeat or two, but I stayed in the cave a lot.”

“And the faeries?”

“Those too weak to survive the growing winter out in the rest of the world or trying to escape notice or hoping for autonomy . . . they came here.” She gave him a wry smile. “Much like the mortals, I suppose—seeking freedom, power, or escape.”

He didn’t comment, waiting in that way of his that made her want to keep talking, that made her think that her words were interesting.

“Much like me, too,” she confessed.

“Which were you seeking?”