Rika and Jayce were silent as they crossed the desert. There were more things to discuss than she knew how to handle. The hardest of which just then was that she was going to tell Jayce he couldn’t come with her to see the Winter Queen. There were rules in dealing with the courts, and she wasn’t foolish enough to expect that all of those rules would vanish because she’d known Donia when she wasn’t yet a queen. Unfortunately, Rika wasn’t convinced that leaving Jayce in the desert was ideal either. Things were increasingly unsettled in the wake of the attack on Sionnach, and before that Keenan’s visit, and earlier still, the Summer King’s assumption of his full power. The solitary faeries might be outside the courts, but that didn’t mean they were untouched by the events that happened within the courts. They all knew trouble was brewing. The only question was if they could avoid the worst of it.

Beside her, Jayce looked pensive, and while she couldn’t solve all of the problems facing the solitaries, she hoped she could sort out whatever was worrying her mortal boyfriend.

Rika took his hand as they walked. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m a part of your world now, Rika, just as you are a part of mine.” Jayce’s expression became the already-familiar determined one that told her that he was going to say something he didn’t expect her to like. Quietly, he said, “I’m not like Keenan . . . or like Sionnach.”

Rika looked startled. “I know.”

“So everything will be okay.”

She had to look away. Seeing him so open, so unlike the fey, made it hard to refuse whatever he wanted—especially right now. As her gaze darted around the desert, she could see a dozen or so faeries peering out at her from behind rocks. They weren’t the ones who had seen her with Maili, and by the curious way they watched her, it was clear that they hadn’t heard about her altercation with Maili. They were simply acting as they always did, watching and teasing. They came out of hiding to approach her.

“Ooooh, she’s leaving.”

“With her pet.”

“Running away with a mortal.”

Rika shook her head before she corrected them. “I’m not leaving. I’ll be back.”

“Mortals aren’t all bad,” a faery muttered.

The others all paused to stare at the faery who’d just spoken such an unusual thing out here in the desert. Rika smiled at him approvingly. The desert fey weren’t a bad lot; they simply needed to learn some new ideas.

Jayce glanced at her questioningly, and she nodded.

“Or just pets,” Jayce casually added.