“In that drawer.” He waved a white hand, a gesture so impossibly elegant for such a mundane situation that Ángel wondered if it was some kind of mockery.

Ángel hopped down from the stool and went around the island to find a fork. Then he found himself unable to go back to his seat. He remained where he was, hands braced on the cool stone counter, the island between himself and Oberon, eyes lowered with humiliation.

“Will you accept my apology?” asked Oberon.

Surprised, Ángel looked up and met the fae’s eyes for the first time. They were luminous green shot through with gold and amber, fringed with straight, sweeping gold lashes.

He nodded. “It’s fine.”

“Why do you say it is fine when it is not fine?” asked Oberon calmly. “Right now I think that you’re either about to attack me or run away.”

“No, I—” Ángel consciously relaxed his grip on the countertop, stepped back from the island. “No.”

“This afternoon, as I was showing you to your room, your heart rate was elevated, as was your breathing. You were emitting a signal that I misinterpreted. I thought you were . . . happy. Excited. I was plainly quite mistaken, and you might have been injured because of it. I am sorry.”

What did emitting a signal mean? “Can you read my mind?” asked Ángel.

“Obviously not.”

Part of what was most disconcerting about Oberon was the lack of expression on his face, the stillness of his body as he spoke. His voice, however, was flexible; its timbre changed on words like happy, changed again on sorry. It wasn’t quite an accent, just a subtle shifting in the color of his voice.

Oberon said, “Are you going to eat your dinner?”

“Yeah.” Ángel pulled his dish of stir-fry toward him and speared a piece of fish with the fork. It was good, but his stomach ached with tension.

Courtesy. Courtesy was a performance, as much as playing a concert. It had its rules, its proper moves. Ángel couldn’t bring his heart to this performance, the way he should, but he could follow the rules.

He said, carefully, “Of course I accept your apology. You have been very kind. Thank you for making me feel at home.”

“You are welcome,” said Oberon, in the exact polite tone that Ángel had used. As if he, too, were just following the rules of courtesy.

Or mocking him.

After dinner, Oberon said, “Would you like to see the house’s music system?”

“Sure.”

He led Ángel into the music room and sank into a chair shaped like a swan. He was slim and graceful in his concealing black clothes. If you didn’t know he was an adult male, he would look as much like a tall boy, or a strong tall woman, as a man. Maybe he wasn’t a man, not the way human men were men. Maybe gender wasn't the same for his people.