The stereo system was playing a fae song, pure, lovely, incomprehensible, and loud enough to reverberate through Ángel’s chest. Oberon was still slumped across his desk, arms folded, face buried, hair mussed.

Seeds—the messages from the oval box—were scattered across the surface of the desk and on the floor. There was a sharp chemical smell in the air, like vinegar. Emotion, thought Ángel, magically expressing itself from his skin, with no one able to understand.

Ángel approached the desk, reached for the tablet, and turned off the music. Oberon was breathing. Asleep?

“Oberon?”

He didn’t move.

“Oberon.” Ángel pulled a leather armchair close to the desk and sat in it, then leaned over the desk, noting that the acrid smell was rising from the fae’s body.

God, what if he was really ill? Was there a doctor on the planet who would have the faintest idea how to treat him?

“Oberon!” he said loudly.

He didn’t stir.

Ángel drew a breath and, in full voice, sang the nine notes of Oberon’s name. Oberon’s head lifted with a jerk that made Ángel jump. His eyes, flat and dull, found Ángel’s.

His face was as lacking expression as the head of a coin, but his skin was gray and shiny like wet cement, and the smell rolling off him was overpowering. Not vinegar—closer to ammonia. He stared at Ángel for a blank moment, and then closed his stony eyes and dropped his head back onto the desk.

“Oberon,” whispered Ángel, shocked. “What’s wrong?”

He bit his lip, and grasped Oberon’s hand. Oberon’s whole body lurched at his touch.

Ángel sucked in a breath.

God, somehow he’d forgotten.

Electric tingles shot up Ángel’s arm. The hairs lifted on Ángel’s arms, on the back of his neck.

He’d gotten used to Oberon, gotten comfortable enough around him to find him attractive: his body and scent, the graceful way he moved his hands. But oh, Christ. The appalling weirdness of Oberon’s touch, the jolt of wrongness that contact with Oberon’s skin brought. Ángel closed his eyes, bit down on his cheek in the effort to not flinch away.

Oberon’s palm felt cold and almost greasy. Ángel squeezed it.

“Ángel,” whispered Oberon. His voice made Ángel shiver.

“Please,” he said, tightening his grip. “Oberon. Tell me what’s happened. Are you sick?”

“Sick,” Oberon repeated.

Could the messages from the Otherworld have done this to him? “Tell me,” he said, pressing Oberon’s hand harder, ignoring the way the nerve endings in his hand prickled, the way it made his legs judder with tension. “I want to help you. Please. What can I do?”